Augustus had arranged in about 5 BCE…

Bato II is captured soon afterwards by Bato of the Daesitiates, whose assembly puts the Bato of the Breuci to death.

The Romans face further reverses on the battlefield and a bitter guerrilla war in the Bosnian mountains, but bitter fighting also occurs in southern Pannonia around Mons Almus (modern Fruška Gora) near Sirmium.

Bato of the Breuci in the summer of CE 8, after two years of war, surrenders his forces to Tiberius on the bank of the river Bathinus (probably the river Bosna).

Rome’s new calendar is much simpler than the pre-Julian calendar, but the pontifices initially added a leap day every three years, instead of every four.

According to Macrobius, the error was the result of counting inclusively, so that the four-year cycle was considered as including both the first and fourth years; perhaps the earliest recorded example of a fence post error.

After thirty-six years, this has resulted in three too many leap days.

Augustus remedies this discrepancy by restoring the correct frequency.

He also skips three leap days over twelve years in order to realign the year.

Once this reform is complete, intercalation resumes in every fourth year and the Roman calendar is the same as the Julian proleptic calendar.

Ovid, in his beautifully told Metamorphoses, published in this year to immediate popularity, uses Greco-Roman mythology as his material and change as his theme.

He isolates, as the particular agent of change, love, now viewed in its more profound ethical dimensions.

A Latin poem in fifteen books that recounts a series of transformations, largely of humans into animals, plants, and mineral forms, the Metamorphoses range through history from the most distant mythic times to the foundation of the Empire.

Among the most famous of these tales is Apollo's pursuit of Daphne, who becomes a laurel tree; Echo's ill-starred love for the selfish Narcissus, who metamorphoses into a flower; and the hospitality of the devoted elderly couple Baucis and Philemon, who Zeus, in recompense, transforms into interlocking trees.

Ovid had proposed in the Fasti to deal wittily with the events (holidays, national heroes, seasonal changes) suggested by the Roman calendar, devoting one book to each month.

At the height of his success, the prolific 50-year-old poet has completed six of these by CE 9, when Augustus suddenly dispatches him into exile to Tomis, on the Black Sea, without any participation of the Senate or of any Roman judge.

The specific circumstances that have led to this event, which is to shape all of his following poetry, are unclear (remaining so even today); Ovid deliberately obscured them—as did Augustus.

Ovid's writing in the Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) concerns the serious crime of adultery: he may have been banished for these works, which appeared subversive to the emperor's moral legislation.

(The Julian Marriage Laws of 18 BCE promoted monogamous marriage to increase the Roman population's birth rate.)

However, because of the long distance of time between the publication of this work (1 BCE) and the exile (CE 8), some authors suggest that Augustus used the poem as a mere justification for something more personal.

Ovid wrote that the reason for his exile was carmen et error—"a poem and a mistake", claiming that his crime was worse than murder, more harmful than poetry.

The Emperor's grandchildren, Agrippa Postumus and Julia the Younger, are banished around the time of his banishment; Julia's husband, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, is put to death for conspiracy against Augustus, a conspiracy about which Ovid might have known.

Arminius, a member of of the Germanic Cherusci tribe, who had apparently received Roman military training as a legion officer, around the year CE 4 had assumed command of a Cheruscan detachment of Roman auxiliary forces, probably fighting in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula.

He had returned to northern Germania in CE 7 or 8, where the Romans have established secure control of the territories just east of the Rhine, along the Lippe and Main rivers, and is now seeking to extend its hegemony eastward to the Weser and Elbe rivers.

Having risen risen to chieftainship in the Cherusci tribal structure, Arminius begins plotting to unite various Germanic tribes to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their lands into the empire.

Wang, after the defeat of Zhai and Liu Xin becoming even more convinced that the empire is entirely under his control, decides to finally seize the throne and start a new dynasty.

After receiving a false prophecy written by the hoodlum Ai Zhang that purports to be a divine decree from Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang) stating that the throne should be given to Wang, and that Grand Empress Dowager Wang should follow this divine will,  Wang in the winter of 8-9 issues a decree accepting the position of emperor, establishing the Xin Dynasty.

The self-confident Wang Mang believes that he now has the power to implement his ideals of restoring the legendary golden age of the early Zhou Dynasty.

To this end, he modifies the governmental structure in many ways to conform with Zhou standards.

He also continues the regime of modifying geographical names to fit with ancient names (or more euphemistic names, as he sees fit)—so much so that even imperial edicts discussing the locations by their new names are forced to include notes on the old names so that the recipients of the edicts can tell what locations he is referring to.

As part of this regime, the capital Chang'an's name is changed as well, involving the change of a homophonous character: literally, long peace, to, literally, enduring peace.

Wang Mang creates his wife, Lady Wang, empress.

By this point, only two of her four sons are still alive.

The older, Wang An, is described as lacking in talent; Wang makes him the Lord of Xinjia.

Wang makes the younger, Wang Lin, crown prince, and appoints several Confucian scholars to advisors him.

Grateful to his aunt Grand Empress Dowager Wang (who, however, resents him for deceiving her and usurping the throne), continues to honor her as empress dowager, but also gives her an additional title of Wangmu, the same title carried by the mother of King Wen of Zhou, implying that she is also his mother and had helped establish a new dynasty.

In 9 also, Wang Mang institutes a revolutionary land redistribution system, ordering that all land in the empire become legally the property of the empire, to be known as wangtian, in a system similar to the Zhou well-field system.

All further land transactions are banned, although property owners are allowed to continue to possess the property.

However, if a family has less than eight members but has one "well" or larger property (about 0.6 km²), it is required to distribute the excess to fellow clan members, neighbors, or other members of the same village.

Criticism of the wangtian system is punishable by exile.

Wang also abolishes slavery.

In 9, after Wang Mang has usurped the throne, Liu Kuai, the Marquess of Xuxiang, attacks the Dukedom of Fuchong, held by his brother Liu Ying, the former Prince of Jiaodong.

He is defeated and dies while fleeing from the battle.

Wuhuan had become somewhat of a dual vassal to both the Han and the Xiongnu during the late Han Dynasty, and, under a policy in effect since 121 BCE, is supposed to pay Xiongnu tributes in textile and leather.

Should Wuhuan fail to pay the tributes, Xiongnu forces kidnap Wuhuan women as hostages.

The first sign of irritation with Wang Mang’s policies had come sometime before 10, by which time the Xin director of Wuhuan affairs had informed the Wuhuan tribes not to pay further tribute to Xiongnu.

In response, the Xiongnu mount a punitive military action against Wuhuan, taking hostage about one thousand women and children.

At Wang Mang's orders, the Xiongnu are later forced to return the Wuhuan hostages.

Rivalry between Maroboduus and Arminius, the Cheruscan leader who inflicts the devastating defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest on the Romans under Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 CE, prevents a concerted attack on Roman territory across the Rhine in the north (by Arminius) and in the Danube basin in the south (by Maroboduus).

However, according to the first century CE historian Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Arminius sent Varus' head to Maroboduus, but the king of the Marcomanni sent it to Augustus.

Tiberius and Germanicus launch an operation against the Daesitiatesin the next year.

Bato and the Daesitiates after fierce battles surrender to Tiberius in  September CE 9, only a few days before the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

This is just in time: the Roman high command does not doubt that Arminius and the Cherusci would have formed a grand alliance with the Illyrians.

It has taken the Romans three years of hard fighting to quell the revolt, which is described by the Roman historian Suetonius as the most difficult conflict faced by Rome since the Punic Wars two centuries earlier.

It is alleged that when Tiberius asked Bato and the Daesitiates why they had rebelled, Baton was reputed to have answered: "You Romans are to blame for this; for you send as guardians of your flocks, not dogs or shepherds, but wolves."

Bato will spend the rest of his life in the Italian town of Ravenna.

Augustus, as part of his ongoing effort to increase the Roman populace, passes the Lex Papia Poppaea in CE 9, promoting large families.

It includes provisions against adultery and celibacy and complements and supplements Augustus' Lex Julia de Maritandis Ordinibus of 18 BCE and the Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis of 17 BCE.

The law is introduced by the suffect consuls of this year, M. Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppaeus Secundus, although they themselves are unmarried.

The rebellion in the Balkans has only just been completed when Arminius raises the Germans against their Roman governor Varus and destroys him and his three legions.

As Augustus cannot readily replace the troops, the annexation of western Germany and Bohemia is postponed indefinitely; Tiberius and Germanicus are sent to consolidate the Rhine frontier.

The lower reaches of the Elbe River, known to the Romans as the Albis, marks the limit of the Romans' farthest advance in Germany in CE 9.

Angered by the governance of the arrogant and tactless Varus, Arminius deceitfully persuades Varus to lead his entire force—composed of the Seventeenth, Eighteeth and Nineteenth legions, plus three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries—into the Teutoburger Wald (Teutoburg Forest) in the late summer of 9, with Arminius as head of a rear guard.

Lying in wait is an allied coalition force of Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri, Chauci and Sicambri.

Once the supply wagons mire (at a point supposedly near present Detmold, Germany) and the legions break formation, Germanic guerillas, the home advantage lying with their more loosely organized forces in the heavy woods, attack the unsuspecting Romans; the German recruits desert, and the rear guard falls on the legions from behind.

Varus desperately attempts to march west to safety, but the tribesmen annihilate his cavalry by the second day; by the end of the third, twenty thousand Roman soldiers are dead.

Varus, humiliated, takes his own life.

The Roman advance into Germany is thus halted at the Rhine, not the Elbe.