Rome and the Western Mediterranean · Part 3 · The rise of Rome · B1–B2
Early Rome: Kings, Legends and the Republic
Part 3 of Rome and the Western Mediterranean: the Romans told wonderful stories about how their city began, with twins fed by a wolf, seven kings and heroes who saved the city. Archaeology tells a quieter story about huts on a hill. Then the Romans threw out their last king and invented a Republic. The past simple passive (Rome was founded, the king was driven out), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the city that rules us now: Rome, when it was small.
The wolf is a good story. The huts on the Palatine Hill are better evidence.
The Romans say their city was founded in a particular year. How do they know?
They don’t. A Roman scholar worked it out not long ago, by counting backwards.
Rome began as a group of villages on the hills beside the river Tiber, where a road crossed the river. Archaeologists have found the remains of huts on the Palatine Hill from the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. The Romans later said that their city was founded by Romulus in 753 BCE, a date calculated by Roman scholars centuries afterwards.
According to tradition, Rome was ruled by seven kings, the last of them Etruscans. In 509 BCE, the last king, Tarquin the Proud, was driven out, and Rome became a Republic: it was governed by two consuls elected each year, a council of elders called the Senate, and assemblies of citizens.
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