Okay, another update for all of you at last!
Sorry it took so long. Also, apologies for the overlap, but there are a number of events I realised I left out in the previous update as I was filling it in. It should be here now, and all updates should be more or less without any overlap beyond a few years.
=====================
115 CE - Roman control in Syria is loosened briefly when Antioch is levelled in an earthquate. Trajan institutes a grand rebuilding project, including the construction of a triple wall around the city.
125 CE - Rome looses control of Mesopotamia as Hadrian shores up his power in the west, putting down small rebellions in Gaul and Hispania.
137 CE - Rome has yet another new emperor. Hadrian's son, 25 year old Lucius becomes the new Augustus. This would be the first in a series of direct successions where the father Augustus would give the son the Imperial throne upon his death.
137-145 CE - Rome wars with the Parthians after they cross over the Euphrates and raid eastern Syria. Rome wins the long war, but only with Armenian and Judean help when at last the allied armies conquered the land between the two rivers.
147 CE - Joshua ascends to the throne of Judea, succeeding his father, Gilad I.
148 CE - Cimmerian Kingdom along the Black Sea collapses due to a succession crisis. The Kingdom is succeeded by a bevy of city states that compete with each other and also serve as a very useful speed bump against the Sarmatians and Scythians that sometimes press from the north down into Roman territories.
168 CE - Mattathias briefly becomes King after a coup deposes Joshua. Ananias II deposes Mattathias in a counter-coup, restoring the rightful sucession.
173 CE - Malichus III dies childless in Petra. Kingdom is given to Ananias II.
174 CE - Lucius dies, aged 62 in a coup against him lead by the Praetorian Guard. His middle son, Marcus Aelius Pontius, ascended. He promptly disbands the guard, committing all Praetorians and their descendants damnatio memoriae. Marcus Aelius institutes the Protectores Domestici, the Guardians of the House, an imperial bodyguard to replace the Praetorians.
189 CE - Marcus Aelius dies, poisoned by his wife, who takes the throne. Rome's first imperatrix, Cornelia Faustina takes the throne. Civil War erupts between Cornelia and her inner circle and countless generals who all take the chance that has presented itself to grab for power.
191 CE - Britannia, under Clodius Albinus, rebels. After expelling those who were loyal to the Imperatrix, he takes command of the full Roman army on the island. He also convinces the Romano-Irish client state to the west to support his uprising. Britannia thus falls out of the Roman Empire, despite attempts by Rome in the coming several centuries to reclaim the territory.
193 CE - Judea, under Ananias II, refuses to send troops levied by her Roman ally to quell generals rising up in Syria and Asia Minor. Gaius Pescennius Niger marches on Antioch, but is defeated north of the city by the Romans. Pescennius' army retreats south, into Judea, where Ananias, gives the defeated general a warm welcome. Pleas from the Empress Cornelia Faustina are refused.
196 CE – Pescennius marches from Sepphoris at the head of three legions, Legio II Traiana Fortis, Legio VI Ferrata, and XV Apollinaris. In the course of a 7 week siege, Pescennius conquers the city and establishes himself over eastern Asia Minor, as well as the remaining Roman territories in northern Mesopotamia.
207 CE - Ananias III comes to power in Judea.
208-214 CE - Ananias III leads a series of expeditions from Petra to pacify the nomads to his south.
224 CE - Ardashir, satrap of Fars, overthrows the Parthian empire and declares a new dynasty; the Sassanid Empire. Ardashir ruled from Ctesiphon.
225 CE - Yoohanon I, dies. Maththaayi, Yoohanon's son, takes the throne. Capitalising upon the death of Yoohanon, as well as the unrest that was rampant in those last years of the previous king's life. Immediately, Maththaayi cleared out those he saw most at fault for Yoohanon's troubles in those last years. Amongst these, numerous Hindi and Buddhist opponents of Christianity were high on the list. These men were given a choice – convert to Christianity and then retire to a confiscated and converted Buddhist monastery now inhabited by Thomasine monks.
226 CE - Gilad II takes the throne of Judea. He rules independently for only three years before madness forces a regency by Mahol for the remaining ten years of Gilad's life.
226-228 CE - The Sassanids declare war and invade from the west. Ardashir I leads an army of some 150,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry, plus various allied armies including 15,000 Armenians and a further 25,000 assorted others, into Bactria in five major columns in 226. The Kushans, lead by Maththaayi, give battle over the course of the following two years with an army numbering perhaps 100,000 all told. By and large, the Kushan were defeated until they came to a place eight miles south-west of Purushapura along the Bara River. There, the Kushans took up a position on the east bank. The Sassanid forces were forced to ford the river into the smaller Kushan army. A stern defence and swift counter-attack cut down many in the Sassanid army, with the majority of the rest of the casualties drowning in the river during the chaotic retreat when Ardashir realised the Indian line would not give. In a single day's battle, Ardashir lost some 35,000 men according to sources, and with the Roman attacks in the east, the Shahanshah knew he could not split his forces so. Though the Persians left early in 227, a treaty was not concluded between the Sassanids and Kushans until 228, when the Persians recognised the western borders of the Kushan empire as the northern and eastern banks of the Oxus river to its confluence with the Sughd, which in turn formed a portion of the Kushan's north-western border.
229 CE - Mahol's Regency begins when it becomes clear that Gilad II is thoroughly unfit to rule.
232 CE - Ardashir instates as co-regent his son, Shapur, planning to groom the man for the throne one day. Over the next eight to ten years, Ardashir uses Shapur as his eyes in the west, along the Tigris River, the western border of the Sassanid empire, and also along the southern frontiers as well, where the nomadic tribes has begun to regularly press up along the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
238 CE - The beginning of a westward migration of nomadic peoples across Central Asia after a campaign ordered by Cao Rui of Cao Wei and lead by Sima Yi turns its attention from the east to the west where the Qiang people, often troublesome for the kingdom based out of Xuchang, are again subjugated.
239 CE - Due to pressure relieved by Wei turning its attention westward, Gongsun looks to Goguryeo, attempting to conquer much of the kingdom. After allying with Silla and Baekje, the three states invade Goguryeo. Gongsun Yuan over the next two years manages to conquer territory up to the Yalu River along the coast. This show of force in the Korean Peninsula convinces Wei to shelve plans for a campaign for the time being, fearing that the warlord's Korean allies might march to his aid since they too managed to conquer portions of the Goguryeo kingdom as well. Missions intended to go to Wei to join in a military expedition to reclaim the conquered territory taken by Gongsun Yuan are put off.
239 CE - Mahol becomes King of Judea upon the death of King Gilad II.
240 CE - Shapur ascends to the throne. He turns Sassanid attentions northward, towards the Caucasus and Armenia, who over the previous decade had floundered back and forth between Rome and Persia depending on the waxing and waning of each power's relative strengths.
246 CE – Judea conquers Syria, Maritime Palestine, and the Sinai from an ever-weakening Rome. The land connection in the east between Asia Minor and Egypt is cut off through Roman lands. In exchange for no further conquests, Rome agrees to continue to ferry grain along the roads on the Levant, paying exorbitant tolls to do so. However, it does sate Mahol, who needs to fill the treasury after the incredible expenses of Gilad's expedition alongside Rome into Persia, as well as the costs of maintaining order in the Jewish state due to Gilad's madness. Taxes are raised and the currency devalued, in large part due to the devaluation of Roman coins by Rome itself to take care of its own ever-increasing fiscal problems. Coastal Syria is traded in exchange for protection to the Antiochian state established by Gaius Pescennius Niger, and currently ruled by Flavius Titus Pescennianus, the adoptive grandson of the conqueror of Antioch.
251 CE - Shapur leads an expedition from Ctesiphon against the Roman Empire, seeking to take the Roman province of Assyria, laying between the Tigris and Euphrates, as his own. Further campaigns in the years to come batter also at the Kushans in the west. Both campaigns do little but drain the Persian treasury. In the west, Rome does cede Mesopotamia eventually, but only because it has grown too expensive to protect. In the east, the Kushan Empire pays a trifling tribute as a symbolic gesture to the Sassanids.
c. 264 CE - Exiles from south-western China arrive in Purushapura. They are received by Maththaayi III, who allows them refuge in his kingdom. They are the first of a large number of Chinese exiles who, over the coming half-century or so, would flood the Kushan empire, who by this point has been largely Christianised after the conversion of Yoohanon (born Vasudeva) in 192. Over the previous seventy years, the nobility and intellectual elite had discussed and slowly converted to this new religion, often incorporating as saints or angelic figures their old gods and folk figures. Amongst them is the disgraced, ineffective, and easily swayed Duke of Anle, formerly the Emperor of Shu, who was exiled by the Prime Minister of the northern kingdom of Wei from the Middle Kingdom.
265 CE - A Kushan general, known as Mamgo, is amongst the Chinese exiles, leading his cavalry force against Scythian raiders along the Scythian frontiers. Finding that Kushan territory is not easy to raid, the Scythians turn their attention westward, riding over the Aral and Caspian Seas in the years to come, with several. Kushan Christians are amongst the various slaves and prisoners the Scythians take with them before heading west.
268 CE - King Maththaayi III institutes a large building project, constructing a series of monasteries along the Oxus River, and a series of churches in Samarkand. Liu Shan, Duke of Anle, is amongst the Chinese exiles who have converted to Christianity, and headed one of these temples. Monastic records indicate he oversaw the completion of the construction, wrote the monastery's tenets, and lived a simple life in stark contrast to the extravagant life that had lead to his downfall in Chengdu before dying in 272. He is recorded in Kushan records as either Laushen or the Riverland Duke.
278 CE - The Cimmerian states, successors to the kingdom that ringed the northern parts of the Black Sea, receive the first of a series of migratory waves of Scythians that ransom cities, taking over those that refuse to pay. Amongst those cities that refuse are several on the Bosporan Peninsula that were taken over.
==
And for those also wondering, a map!
The world, as of c280 CE:
Brown - Rome
Pink - Romano-British territory of the Albinii
Dark Purple - Antioch and Pescennian kings
Gold - Persia
Light Blue - Judea
Green - Extent of Christianised Arab tribes - no centralised leadership in any sense.
Light Purple - Kushan Empire and her Christianised client states along the western coast of the subcontinent.
