Meanwhile, research suggests the city began as a small farming settlement around B. Whatever the formal start date, in the centuries that followed, Roman builders would construct some of the most famous architectural feats ever seen in the ancient world. From aqueducts and arches to dams and domes, the Romans were masters of improving on and expanding existing ideas.
The ill-fated Amphitheater of Pompeii and the iconic Colosseum and Pantheon were a few of the Roman buildings that were unrivaled in their day — and their remains still leave visitors in awe. Though the city rose in fits and starts, Rome reached the height of its great building period between roughly 40 B.
After that, the nation lost its wealth and saw its central government destabilize. Finally, the collapse of the Roman Empire came in A. So, according to the dates offered by ancient historians, it took 1, years to build Rome by counting from its founding until its collapse. However, the ancient city actually saw its population max out at one half to one million people in the second century A.
That means it took roughly years to build ancient Rome to its peak. According to ancient Roman historians, many great works of literature were destroyed along with much of the rest of the city during the sack of Rome by the Gauls in B. Thankfully, a handful of historians — all born centuries later — wrote down their versions of the oral histories of the day, providing us with some basis to understand the so-called Period of Kings. Legend tells us that Rome was founded on April 21 of B.
And another historian, Livy, recorded the story of Rome being founded by two twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. It was during this same Period of Kings that the Circus Maximus, one of the largest sports arenas ever constructed, was first built. Livy tells stories of Romulus himself staging chariot races at the site.
And Livy also writes that Romulus constructed walls around the city, making them bigger and bigger, with the intention to draw in new territories and plan for the population he hoped Rome would someday have, rather than the one it possessed at the time. But more modern investigations have disproved this idea. The oldest known defensive wall encompassing the city is called the Servian Wall, named for the sixth king of Rome, Servius Tullius, who actually died long before it was built in the fourth century B.
In all, a total of seven kings are said to have ruled Rome from the time of its founding until the political revolution that overthrew the Roman monarchy around B. However, modern scholars question much about these earliest rulers. Clearly, building the initial city took much longer than one lifetime. Instead, archaeology paints a much more mundane picture.
Digs in the hills surrounding Rome show people were living there as early as B. Then, local farmers slowly started to transition from a rural, agrarian life to one inside the walls of a gradually growing city. The Latium people spoke a precursor language to Latin and farmed on a small region of fertile, volcanic soil near the Tiber River in central Italy.
These Latium villagers feuded with the nearby Etruscan civilization. And somehow, whether through conquest or in a defensive move against their neighbors, farmers from across the region had come together and built the foundations for what would become the city of Rome by sometime around the sixth century B. Much of this early history remains uncertain.
Things progressed relatively fast from there. In recent years, an expansive archaeological excavation called The Sant'Omobono Project has discovered some of the oldest-known buildings from this Period of Kings. Rome lacked women, however, so Romulus invited the neighboring Sabines to a festival and abducted their women. A war then ensued, but the Sabine women intervened to prevent the Sabine men from seizing Rome.
A peace treaty was drawn up, and the communities merged under the joint rule of Romulus and the Sabine king, Titus Tatius. After a long and successful rule, Romulus died under obscure circumstances. Many Romans believed he was changed into a god and worshipped him as the deity Quirinus.
After Romulus, there were six more kings of Rome, the last three believed to be Etruscans. Around B. Another Roman foundation legend, which has its origins in ancient Greece, tells of how the mythical Trojan Aeneas founded Lavinium and started a dynasty that would lead to the birth of Romulus and Remus several centuries later. In the Iliad, an epic Greek poem probably composed by Homer in the eighth century B.
A passage told of how he and his descendants would rule the Trojans, but since there was no record of any such dynasty in Troy, Greek scholars proposed that Aeneas and his followers relocated. In the fifth century B. In the fourth century B. In the first century B. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
On the morning of April 21, , Prince, the polymathic musician who created more than 30 albums and won seven Grammy Awards over a year career, is found dead in Paisley Park, his Minnesota home and recording studio. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of the opioid The yellow ribbon has long been a symbol of support for absent or missing loved ones. As legend has it, Rome was founded in B. After killing his brother, Romulus became the first king of Rome, which is named for him.
A line of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan earlier Italian civilizations kings followed in a non-hereditary succession. The power of the monarch passed to two annually elected magistrates called consuls. They also served as commanders in chief of the army. The magistrates, though elected by the people, were drawn largely from the Senate, which was dominated by the patricians, or the descendants of the original senators from the time of Romulus. Politics in the early republic was marked by the long struggle between patricians and plebeians the common people , who eventually attained some political power through years of concessions from patricians, including their own political bodies, the tribunes, which could initiate or veto legislation.
The Roman forum was more than just home to their Senate. In B. These laws included issues of legal procedure, civil rights and property rights and provided the basis for all future Roman civil law. By around B. During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size and power. Though the Gauls sacked and burned Rome in B. Rome then fought a series of wars known as the Punic Wars with Carthage, a powerful city-state in northern Africa.
In the Third Punic War — B. At the same time, Rome also spread its influence east, defeating King Philip V of Macedonia in the Macedonian Wars and turning his kingdom into another Roman province. The first Roman literature appeared around B. The gap between rich and poor widened as wealthy landowners drove small farmers from public land, while access to government was increasingly limited to the more privileged classes.
Attempts to address these social problems, such as the reform movements of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus in B. Gaius Marius, a commoner whose military prowess elevated him to the position of consul for the first of six terms in B. By 91 B. After Sulla retired, one of his former supporters, Pompey, briefly served as consul before waging successful military campaigns against pirates in the Mediterranean and the forces of Mithridates in Asia.
During this same period, Marcus Tullius Cicero , elected consul in 63 B. When the victorious Pompey returned to Rome, he formed an uneasy alliance known as the First Triumvirate with the wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus who suppressed a slave rebellion led by Spartacus in 71 B. After earning military glory in Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to vie for the consulship in 59 B.
From his alliance with Pompey and Crassus, Caesar received the governorship of three wealthy provinces in Gaul beginning in 58 B. With old-style Roman politics in disorder, Pompey stepped in as sole consul in 53 B. In 49 B. With Octavian leading the western provinces, Antony the east, and Lepidus Africa, tensions developed by 36 B. In 31 B. In the wake of this devastating defeat, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. By 29 B.
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