Roman consul Marcus Atilius Regulus captures the…

Macedon, its vigor restored, needs only to gain mastery over the Aegean Sea in order to keep Greece in a state of complete dependency by controlling the straits and the supply of grain from the southern Russian region.

To avert this danger to Hellas, …

…King Areus of Sparta and …

…the city of Athens—urged on by Ptolemy II of Hellenistic Egypt and receiving some support from Epirus—declare a war against Macedon for the liberation of Greece: the so-called Chremonidean War (266-262), named for Athens' leader, the handsome Chremonides.

In Athens itself, the Lyceum had declined considerably in importance by the time of Strabo’s death in 269.

Antiochus I, ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom, is in 266 drawn into a war with the Greek city of Pergamon, in Mysia.

The city, situated sixteen miles from the Aegean Sea on a lofty isolated hill on the northern side of the broad valley of the Caicus (modern Bakir) River, has existed at least from the fifth century BCE.

The Chremonidean war continues.

Although the Egyptian fleet in 265 has blockaded the Saronic Gulf, Gonatus defeats Areus near Corinth.

The freedman of Volsini have become a powerful plebeian class, having subsequently been allowed members in the Senate and to hold public offices.

They seem to have acquired majorities, using them to shape the law.

Other slaves are set free; they give themselves all the privileges formerly reserved to the Etruscans, such as the rights of intermarriage and inheritance, and aggressively insist on them against the will of the Etruscan patrician class.

There are complaints of rape and robbery.

When the revolutionary party begins to pass laws limiting patrician political activity, certain of the patricians send a clandestine embassy to Rome in 265 BCE asking for military assistance.

On their return they are executed for treason, but shortly a Roman army arrives to lay siege to the town.

The subsequent conflict is intense; the consul and commanding general, Quintus Fabius Gurges, is a casualty.

The Mamertini appeal for and receive troop support from the Carthaginians when Hiero II of Syracuse blockades Messana in around 265 BCE.

Nicomedes of Bithynia, in imitation of his father, and so many others of the Greek rulers of Asia, determines to perpetuate his own name by the foundation of a new capital, placed by Eusebius in 264 BCE.

The site that he chooses, in the immediate neighborhood of the Megarian colony of Astakos, is so judiciously selected that the city of Nicomedia will continue for more than six centuries to be one of the richest and most flourishing in Anatolia.

The Macedonians repel an Epirote invasion in 264 BCE.

Gurges’ successor, Marcus Valerius Flaccus, after receiving the surrender of Volsinii through its starvation in 264, razes the town and executes the leaders of the plebeian party.

The first display of gladiators at Rome in 264 is believed to have featured now-captive freedmen from Volsinii.

The Romans rescue and restore the remaining Etruscans of Volsinii, but decide it is necessary to remove them from that location to a new city on the shore of Lake Bolsena.

The new city has none of the natural defenses of the old and is not in any way sovereign.

The portable wealth from the old city is carried off to Rome.

If the old city was in fact Orvieto, it cannot have remained unoccupied for long; however, it is never again to be a threat to Rome.

The new city soon assimilates to Roman culture, including language.