3008 AM · 753 BCE · world history
The Founding of Rome
A city is founded on seven hills by the Tiber that will one day rule the Mediterranean.
The city is founded on seven hills by the Tiber, and seven centuries later it will rule the Mediterranean. Legend tells of the brothers Romulus and Remus, suckled by a she-wolf, and of a quarrel over the city's boundary that cost Remus his life. Archaeology shows something quieter: shepherds' villages on the Palatine merging into a town. Romans dated everything from this year—ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — the Roman count ab urbe condita on monuments and in dating
Scholarship
- Roman authors: Tacitus, Suetonius, Livy — the legend of Romulus and Remus — Livy, book I; the archaeology of the Palatine shows villages growing together into a city
Basis: documents and evidence.