BCE

Definitions

Initialism of Before the Common Era, Before the Current Era, or Before the Christian Era.

abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, not-comparable

Equivalents

Examples

“Socrates was tried and executed in the year 399 BCE.”

“We now know⟳ that circa 1600 BCE, the angara were created and seeded across Heleus by the Jardaan. Records of this process⟳ are less substantial than ancient angaran history, but it was apparently in service of a grand experiment⟳.”

“The earliest reliable accounts of Chinese eclipses come⟳ from Spring⟳ and Autumn Annals (Ch’un-ch’iu), recording eclipses from 772 to 481 BCE, including a total solar eclipse in 709 BCE.”

“The ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the forebears of the Lycians, the Trm̃mili, "sprang originally from Crete", though modern-day scholars believe⟳ they were an Anatolian people who became Hellenised after Alexander the Great seized the region from the Persians in 333 BCE. […] Formed in the 2nd Century BCE and composed of 23 city-states, the Lycian League was the world's first democratic union, a model⟳ of a strong confederacy based on popular and proportional representation.”

CEFR level