49 BC

__NOTOC__Year 49 BC was a year of the pre-Julian calendar.

Events

By place

Rome

*Consuls: Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Maior.
*The Great Roman Civil War commences
**January 1 — The Roman Senate receives a proposal from Julius Caesar that he and Pompey should lay down their commands simultaneously. The Senate responds that Caesar must immediately surrender his command.
**January 10 — Julius Caesar leads his army across the Rubicon, which separates his jurisdiction (Cisalpine Gaul) from that of the Senate (Italy), and thus initiates a civil war. In response, the Roman senate invokes the "senatus consultum ultimum".
**February — Pompey's flight to Epirus (in Western Greece) with most of the Senate.
**March 9 — Caesar advances against Pompeian forces in Spain.
**April 19 — Caesar's siege of Massilia against the Pompeian Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; the siege was conducted later by Caesarian Gaius Trebonius.
**June — Caesar arrives in Spain; seizes the Pyrenees passes against the Pompeians L. Afranius and Marcus Petreius.
**June 7 — Cicero slips out of Italy and goes to Salonika.
**July 30 — Caesar surrounds Afranius and Petreius's army in Ilerda.
**August 2 — Pompeians in Ilerda surrender to Caesar and are granted pardon.
**August 24 — Caesar's general Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in North Africa by the Pompeians under Attius Varus and King Juba I of Numidia (whom he defeated earlier in the Battle of Utica), in the Battle of the Bagradas River, and commits suicide.
**September — Decimus Brutus, a Caesarian, defeats the combined Pompeian-Massilian naval forces in the naval Battle of Massilia, while the Caesarian fleet in the Adriatic is defeated near Curicta (Krk).
**September 6 — Massilia surrendered to Caesar, coming back from Spain.
**October — Caesar appointed Dictator in Rome.

Births

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Deaths

*Gaius Scribonius Curio (suicide)
*Xuan, emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty (b. 91 BC)
*Lucretius, Roman poet and philosopher
*Zheng Ji