The story of Rome

Romulus en Remus

To follow the accounts of Virgil, the poet of the empire, and Livy, the great 1st-century Roman chronicler and mythographer, Rome must have been founded like this:

Once a man called Aeneas fled from Troy after the Homeric sack and found his way over the sea to Latium. Aeneas' son Ascanius founded Alba Longa, a city that by the 800s was leader of the Latin Confederation. Later, Numitor, a descendant of Ascanius and a good king of Alba Longa, was tossed off the throne by his evil brother Amulius. To be sure that Numitor should have no heirs, Amulius forced Numitor's daughter Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal . Here Rome's destiny begins, the god Mars came into her chamber and made Rhea Silvia pregnant with the twins Romulus and Remus.

When Amulius found out, he of course packed them away in a little boat, which the gods directed up the Tiber to a spot somewhere near today's Piazza Bocca della Verita. The famous she-wolf then looked after the babies, until they were found by a shepherd, who brought them up. When Mars told the grown twins their origins, they returned to Alba Longa to punish Amulius, and then returned home (in 754 BC, traditionally) to found the city, which the gods had ordered. Romulus soon found himself forced to kill Remus, who would not believe the predictions that declared his brother should be king, and this was the beginning of the bloody millennium of Rome's history.

In the legends early Rome was a glorified pirates' camp. Because there was a shortage of women in Rome, the Romans stole some from the Sabines. Not espacially interested in farming or learning a trade, they adopted the hobby of conquering their neighbours and soon made it an art.

Romulus was the first king who ruled Rome. He was followed by Numa Pompilius, who made by inspiration of the gods the forms for Rome's cults and priesthoods, its auguries and its College of Vestals. Tullius Hostilius, the next king, made Rome ruler of all Latium, and Ancus Martius founded the port of Ostia. The next king, Tarquinius Priscus, was an Etruscan, and probably gained his throne thanks to a conquest by one of the great Etruscan city-states. Tarquin made a city of Rome, by building the first real temples, the Cloaca Maxima or Great Drain, and the first Circus Maximus. His successor, Servius Tullius, restored Latin rule and divided the citizens into two classes: the patricians (the senatorial class) and the plebeians, and built a great wall to keep the Etruscans out. It apparantly did not work, because the next king was the Etruscan Tarquinius Superbus (about 534 BC), another great builder. His misfortune was to have a hot-headed son like Tarquinius Sextus, who imposed himself on a noble and virtuous Roman maiden named Lucretia. She committed public suicide in the morning and the enraged Roman patricians, under the leadership of Lucies Junius Brutus, then chased out

proud Tarquin and the Etruscan dynasty forever. The republic was established before the day was out with Brutus as first consul, or chief magistrate. The patricians took an oath never to allow another king in Rome and they designed a novel form of government, a republic (res publica - public thing) governed by the two consuls elected by the Senate, the assembly of the patricians themselves; later innovations in the Roman constitution would include a tribune, an official with inviolable powers elected by the Plebeians to protect their interests. The two classes fought like cats and dogs at home, but combined with impressive resolve in their foreign wars. Etruscans, Aequi, Hernici, Volscii, Samnites and Sabines, all powerful nations,

were defeated by Rome's citizen armies. By 270 BC, Rome had eliminated all its rivals to become master of Italy. It had taken about 200 years, and in the next 200 Roman rule would be established from Spain to Egypt. The first stage had proved more difficult. In Rome's final victory over the other Italians, the city digested its rivals; whole cities and tribes simply disappeared, their peoples joining the mushrooming population of Rome. After 270 it was much the same story, but on a wider scale. In the three Punic Wars against Carthage (264-146 BC), Rome gained almost all the western Mediterranean. Rome's history was now the history of the western world.