By Roman tradition, the city of Rome was founded by twin brothers raised by a wolf. The traditional date is also unusually specific. What date?
The traditional foundation date is 21 April 753 BC — the day Romulus killed his twin Remus in a dispute about which hill to build the city on. The date was a Roman religious-political calculation, working backward from later dynastic chronologies; modern archaeology suggests continuous settlement on the Palatine hill from approximately the 8th century BC, broadly consistent with the date but with no specific evidence for the twin-wolf-fratricide narrative. 509 BC is the founding of the Roman Republic (the expulsion of the last king Tarquinius Superbus). 600 BC is roughly when the historical urban-Roman state becomes archaeologically visible.
Read the full facts →Rome was a city-state in central Italy that grew into the dominant power of the Mediterranean world. It was traditionally founded in 753 BC; the Western Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. The civilisation lasted approximately 1,200 years.
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