AD 166
year
Year 166 (CLXVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Pudens and Pollio (or, less frequently, year 919 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 166 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Events
By place
Roman Empire
Dacia is invaded by barbarians.
Conflict erupts on the Danube frontier between Rome and the Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius appoints his sons Commodus and Marcus Annius Verus as co-rulers (Caesar), while he and Lucius Verus travel to Germany.
End of the war with Parthia: The Parthians leave Armenia and eastern Mesopotamia, which both become Roman protectorates.
A plague (possibly small pox) comes from the East and spreads throughout the Roman Empire, lasting for roughly twenty years.
The Lombards invade Pannonia (modern Hungary). They are quickly dispatched by the Roman Army.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “AD 166” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25221. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow AD 166 primary sources, AD 166 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “AD 166” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.