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Founding of Rome
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Founding of Rome
The founding of Rome was a prehistoric event or process later greatly embellished by Roman historians and poets. Archaeological evidence indicates that Rome developed from the gradual union of several hilltop villages during the Final Bronze Age or early Iron Age. Prehistoric habitation of the Italian Peninsula occurred by 48,000 years ago, with the area of Rome being settled by around 1600 BC. Some evidence on the Capitoline Hill possibly dates as early as c. 1700 BC and the nearby valley that later housed the Roman Forum had a developed necropolis by at least 1000 BC. The combination of the hilltop settlements into a single polity by the later 8th century BC was probably influenced by the trend for city-state formation emerging from ancient Greece.
Roman myth held that their city was founded by Romulus, son of the war god Mars and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, fallen princess of Alba Longa and descendant of Aeneas of Troy. Exposed on the Tiber river, Romulus and his twin Remus were suckled by a she-wolf at the Lupercal before being raised by the shepherd Faustulus, taking revenge on their usurping great-uncle Amulius, and restoring Alba Longa to their grandfather Numitor. The brothers then decided to establish a new town but quarrelled over some details, ending with Remus's murder and the establishment of Rome on the Palatine Hill. The year of the supposed founding was variously computed by ancient historians, but the two dates seeming to be officially sanctioned were the Varronian chronology's 753 BC (used by Claudius's Secular Games and Hadrian's Romaea) and the adjacent year of 752 BC (used by the Fasti and the Secular Games of Antoninus Pius and Philip I). Despite known errors in Varro's calculations, it is the 753 BC date that continues to form the basis for most modern calculations of the AUC calendar era.
The legendary account was still much discussed and celebrated in Roman times. The Parilia Festival on 21 April was considered to commemorate the anniversary of the city's founding during the late Republic and that aspect of the holiday grew in importance under the Empire until it was fully transformed into the Romaea in AD 121. Most modern historians dismiss these ancient accounts of a single founder descended from a Trojan lineage establishing the city at specific point in time as fiction.
The conventional division of pre-Roman cultures in Italy deals with cultures which spoke Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The Italic languages, which include Latin, are Indo-European and were spoken, according to inscriptions, in the lower Tiber Valley. It was once thought that Faliscan – spoken north of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber – was a separate language, but inscriptions discovered in the 1980s indicate that Latin was spoken more generally in the area. Etruscan speakers were concentrated in modern Tuscany with a similar language called Raetic spoken on the upper Adige (the foothills of the eastern Italian Alps).
When drawing a connection between peoples and their languages, a reconstruction emerges with Indo-European peoples arriving in various waves of migrations during the first and second millennia BC: first a western Italic group (including Latin), followed by a central Italic group of Osco-Umbrian dialects, with a late arrival of Greek and Celtic on the Italian peninsula, from across the Adriatic and Alps, respectively. These migrations are generally believed to have displaced speakers of Etruscan and other pre-Indo-European languages; although it is possible that Etruscan arrived also by migration, almost certainly before 2000 BC.
The start of the Iron age saw a gradual increase in social complexity and population that led to the emergence of proto-urban settlements in central and northern Italy writ large. These proto-urban agglomerations were normally clusters of smaller settlements that were insufficiently distant to be separated communities; over time, they would unify.
There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern Rome from at least 5,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures any Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites. Traces of occupation have been found in the general region – including Lavinium and the coast near Ardea – going back to the 15th century BC. The area was home to the Apennine and Proto-Villanovan cultures before the advent of the more regional Latial culture.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Rome developed over a long period, but it was definitely occupied by the middle of the Bronze Age. Core samples have shown that the terrain of Bronze-Age Rome differed greatly from what is present now. The area of the Forum Boarium north of the Aventine Hill was a seasonally dry plain that simultaneously provided a safe inland port for the era's seafaring ships, a wide area for watering horses and cattle, and a safe ford of the Tiber with shallow and slow-flowing water even if Tiber Island had not yet formed, one of the river's major fords between Etruria and Campania. This advantageous but exposed location was closely flanked by the Capitoline, which at that time rose sharply from the more easterly bank of the Tiber and provided a ready citadel for defense and for control of the salt production along the river and at its mouth. The other hills and the marshes between them provided similarly defensible points for settlement.
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Founding of Rome
The founding of Rome was a prehistoric event or process later greatly embellished by Roman historians and poets. Archaeological evidence indicates that Rome developed from the gradual union of several hilltop villages during the Final Bronze Age or early Iron Age. Prehistoric habitation of the Italian Peninsula occurred by 48,000 years ago, with the area of Rome being settled by around 1600 BC. Some evidence on the Capitoline Hill possibly dates as early as c. 1700 BC and the nearby valley that later housed the Roman Forum had a developed necropolis by at least 1000 BC. The combination of the hilltop settlements into a single polity by the later 8th century BC was probably influenced by the trend for city-state formation emerging from ancient Greece.
Roman myth held that their city was founded by Romulus, son of the war god Mars and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, fallen princess of Alba Longa and descendant of Aeneas of Troy. Exposed on the Tiber river, Romulus and his twin Remus were suckled by a she-wolf at the Lupercal before being raised by the shepherd Faustulus, taking revenge on their usurping great-uncle Amulius, and restoring Alba Longa to their grandfather Numitor. The brothers then decided to establish a new town but quarrelled over some details, ending with Remus's murder and the establishment of Rome on the Palatine Hill. The year of the supposed founding was variously computed by ancient historians, but the two dates seeming to be officially sanctioned were the Varronian chronology's 753 BC (used by Claudius's Secular Games and Hadrian's Romaea) and the adjacent year of 752 BC (used by the Fasti and the Secular Games of Antoninus Pius and Philip I). Despite known errors in Varro's calculations, it is the 753 BC date that continues to form the basis for most modern calculations of the AUC calendar era.
The legendary account was still much discussed and celebrated in Roman times. The Parilia Festival on 21 April was considered to commemorate the anniversary of the city's founding during the late Republic and that aspect of the holiday grew in importance under the Empire until it was fully transformed into the Romaea in AD 121. Most modern historians dismiss these ancient accounts of a single founder descended from a Trojan lineage establishing the city at specific point in time as fiction.
The conventional division of pre-Roman cultures in Italy deals with cultures which spoke Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The Italic languages, which include Latin, are Indo-European and were spoken, according to inscriptions, in the lower Tiber Valley. It was once thought that Faliscan – spoken north of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber – was a separate language, but inscriptions discovered in the 1980s indicate that Latin was spoken more generally in the area. Etruscan speakers were concentrated in modern Tuscany with a similar language called Raetic spoken on the upper Adige (the foothills of the eastern Italian Alps).
When drawing a connection between peoples and their languages, a reconstruction emerges with Indo-European peoples arriving in various waves of migrations during the first and second millennia BC: first a western Italic group (including Latin), followed by a central Italic group of Osco-Umbrian dialects, with a late arrival of Greek and Celtic on the Italian peninsula, from across the Adriatic and Alps, respectively. These migrations are generally believed to have displaced speakers of Etruscan and other pre-Indo-European languages; although it is possible that Etruscan arrived also by migration, almost certainly before 2000 BC.
The start of the Iron age saw a gradual increase in social complexity and population that led to the emergence of proto-urban settlements in central and northern Italy writ large. These proto-urban agglomerations were normally clusters of smaller settlements that were insufficiently distant to be separated communities; over time, they would unify.
There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern Rome from at least 5,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures any Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites. Traces of occupation have been found in the general region – including Lavinium and the coast near Ardea – going back to the 15th century BC. The area was home to the Apennine and Proto-Villanovan cultures before the advent of the more regional Latial culture.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Rome developed over a long period, but it was definitely occupied by the middle of the Bronze Age. Core samples have shown that the terrain of Bronze-Age Rome differed greatly from what is present now. The area of the Forum Boarium north of the Aventine Hill was a seasonally dry plain that simultaneously provided a safe inland port for the era's seafaring ships, a wide area for watering horses and cattle, and a safe ford of the Tiber with shallow and slow-flowing water even if Tiber Island had not yet formed, one of the river's major fords between Etruria and Campania. This advantageous but exposed location was closely flanked by the Capitoline, which at that time rose sharply from the more easterly bank of the Tiber and provided a ready citadel for defense and for control of the salt production along the river and at its mouth. The other hills and the marshes between them provided similarly defensible points for settlement.
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