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509 BCE

This year falls in the Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BCE). Iron tools and weapons spread, and new powers rise, among them Assyria, Babylon, the Zhou dynasty in China and the Greek city-states. Alphabets and coined money spread, and the Persian Empire is founded in the sixth century BCE.

Dated to 509 BCE

Civilization · Classical antiquity · Roman RepublicRoman Republic509–27 BCEThe Roman Republic grew from a city state into the master of the Mediterranean. Its system of consuls, Senate, and assemblies balanced power for centuries. Civil wars destroyed it, and Augustus made himself emperor in 27 BCE.

Within fifteen years

Philosopher · Classical antiquity · ItalyParmenidesc. 515–c. 450 BCGreek thinker of Elea in southern Italy who argued, against the senses, that being is one, whole, and unchanging. His poem On Nature survives in large fragments. He lived about 515 to 450 BC and founded the Eleatic school.

Civilization · Classical Greece · GreeceClassical Athens5th–4th century BCThe city-state of Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. A container for the philosophers and texts placed there, not a history of the city.

Era · Classical Greece · GreeceClassical Greece5th–4th century BC

Ruler · Iron Age · IranDarius Ir. 522–486 BCKing of Persia from 522 to 486 BC, who organized the empire Cyrus founded into a working state. He divided it into satrapies, built the Royal Road, and raised Persepolis. His reign saw the first clashes with mainland Greece, including the Persian defeat at Marathon in 490 BC.

Ruler · Classical antiquity · GreecePericlesc. 495–429 BCAthenian statesman and general, dominant in Athens from about 461 to his death in 429 BC. Under him Athens reached the height of its power and built the Parthenon, and democracy paid its citizens to serve on juries and row in the fleet. He died of the plague in the second year of the Peloponnesian War.