classical+civ.sl

=**ORIGINS OF ROME**=

Archaeologists discovered that Rome begun in the 9th or 8th century BC. The city was made up of small farmsteads on a group of hills overlooking the River Tiber. Early Rome houses looked like huts and were preserved as a pattern of postholes on the Palentine. This settlement was intelligently positioned, as it was overlooking a convenient crossing point on the Tiber and near a important salt route to and from the river mouth. A critical development came in the late 7th century BC, when an Etruscan dynasty, the, took control of Rome and changed it from a village and into a city. The Forum valley was then converted into a public square with a gravel paved surface. Pons Sublicius a wooden bridge was thrown across the River Tiber, as well as an Etruscan-style temple to Jupiter Capitolinus build on the Capitol. There may also have benn an agger, or city wall, with a defensive ditch beyond it. This is the oldest defence which survives today, the Servian Wall, which dates back from the 4th century BC. Roman historians state that the Romans, in 510 BC, and became a republic governed by a pair of annualy elected magistrates, the consuls. It was a huge step, the first step which was to take Rome in less than five centuries from small Italian town to the giant of the Mediterranean.
 * The city of Rome was founded in 753 b.c. according to legend. It was supposedly founded by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of the god Mars and Latin princess. The twins were abandoned on the Tiber River as baby's and were raised by a she wolf. So they decided to build the city next to it. Really it was men who built the city, not mortals. They chose this spot mainly because of its strategic location and fertile soil. Rome was built on seven rolling hills at a curve on the Tiber River, towards the middle of the Italian peninsula. It was midway between the Alps and Italy's southern tip. It was also near the midpoint of the Mediterranean Sea.**