of Africa Rome/Greece: 146 BC Battle of Corinth, beginning of the Roman era South Asia: 185 BC: Fall of the Maurya Empire China: Confucianism became the state ideology of China 1st century BC China: 91 BC: Records of the Grand Historian finished Rome/Europe: 58–50 BC Gallic Wars Rome: 32/30 BC: Final War of the Roman Republic (Battle of Actium) Rome/Egypt: 31 BC: Roman conquest of Egypt Rome/Europe/West Asia/Africa: 27 BC: Roman Empire Inventions, discoveries, introductions 8th century BC Greek alphabet, the first alphabet with vowels. 7th century BC Trireme 6th century BC paved trackway Pythagorean theorem Monotheism 5th century BC Blast furnace China Atomism crossbow siege engine 4th century BC formal grammar Kyrenia ship 3rd century BC Lighthouse of Alexandria Malleable Cast iron China buoyancy (Archimedes) Spherical earth water clock Qin built and unified various sections of the Great Wall of China. Qin built Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum guarded by the life-sized Terracotta Army. 2nd century BC Antikythera mechanism Literature Greco-Roman literature Archaic period Homer (late 8th or early 7th c.), Iliad, Odyssey Hesiod (8th to 7th c.), Theogony and Works and Days Archilochus (7th century), Greek poet Sappho, (late 7th to early 6th c.), Greek poet Ibycus Alcaeus of Mytilene Aesop's Fables Classical period Aeschylus (c. 525–455 BC), Greek playwright Herodotus (484–425 BC), Histories Euripides (c. 480–406 BC), Greek playwright Xenophon: Anabasis, Cyropaedia Aristotle (384–322 BC), corpus Aristotelicum Hellenistic to Roman period Septuagint Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica Callimachus (310/305-240 B.C.), lyric poet Manetho: Aegyptiaca Theocritus, lyric poet Euclid: Elements Menander: Dyskolos Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants Old Latin Livius Andronicus, Gnaeus Naevius, Plautus, Quintus Fabius Pictor, Lucius Cincius Alimentus Classical Latin: Cicero, Julius Caesar, Virgil, Lucretius, Livy, Catullus Chinese literature I Ching (date unknown, between the 10th and 4th centuries BC) Classic of Poetry (Shījīng), Classic of Documents (Shūjīng) (authentic portions), Classic of Changes (I Ching) Spring and Autumn Annals (Chūnqiū) (722–481 BC, chronicles of the state of Lu) Confucius: Analects (Lúnyǔ) Classic of Rites (Lǐjì) Commentaries of Zuo (Zuǒzhuàn) Laozi (or Lao Tzu): Tao Te Ching Zhuangzi: Zhuangzi (book) Mencius: Mencius Sanskrit literature Vedic Sanskrit: Vedas, Brahmanas Vedanga Mukhya Upanishads early layers of the Sanskrit epics (c. 3rd century BC to 4th century AD) Hebrew c. 8th to 7th c.: the Book of Nahum, Book of Hosea, Book of Amos, Book of Isaiah c. 6th c.: Psalms c. 5th century: redaction of the Torah 3rd century: Ecclesiastes 2nd century: