Tarquinius Superbus was the seventh King of Rome, The Romans beat off these attacks, but from now on they were continually at war with their neighbors – Latin, Sabine, Volscian and Etruscan. Tarquin and his Etruscan allies organized a co-ordinated attack on them, and hill-tribes such as the Sabines and Volsci raided their territory. With the expulsion of the last king, Tarquin the Proud, the Romans immediately found themselves fighting for their lives. The Romans’ triumph over both these challenges laid the foundations for future greatness. The early history of the Roman Republic was one of fierce external pressure accompanied by sharp internal tensions. Around 500 BCE the Etruscan kings were expelled and in their place the Patricians, the heads of the leading clans in Rome, chose consuls from amongst their own numbers.
In Rome’s case the move towards the expulsion of the kings was also probably something of an independence movement. These Kings, the Tarquinii (who, according to legend, were descended from the kings of Corinth in Greece) embellished the city with walls, a central forum (public square), an efficient drainage system, a wooden bridge across the Tiber, and temples – all the accoutrements, in fact, of a city-state of the ancient Mediterranean.īy the time of the later Tarquin kings, another Greek innovation was spreading through Italy – republicanism. Etruscan lords came down and took control of the city, probably shortly after 600 BCE, and gave the city a line of kings. Sometime in the centuries after 700 BCE these farmers merged their villages together to form a city-state and very soon their location at a strategic crossing point on the river Tiber, twelve miles or so from its mouth, attracted the attention of their powerful Etruscan neighbors to the north. The Romans were not in fact typical of the usual Latin communities, in that from an early date they seem to have been a mix of Latins and Sabines, a more pastoral people who lived in the hills east of Latium.
They originally inhabited a cluster of villages on a group of hills in northern Latium, at a well-trodden crossing pint of the river Tiber. One such community affected by these changes was that of the Romans. Many of them came under the political domination of Etruscan lords. The Latins could not but help feel the influences radiating from north and south, and slowly they merged their farming villages into urban settlements. They had close commercial contacts with Greeks, Carthaginians and other civilized peoples of the region. They too lived in towns and cities rather than in small villages, and developed a sophisticated urban culture. They developed an advanced material culture which, like that of the Greeks, owed a great deal to contacts with the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Meanwhile, to the north of the Latins another civilization arose, that of the Etruscans. Within a century or so of their coming they had also brought such innovations as the alphabet and coinage to the Italian peoples amongst whom they lived and traded. Greek colonies were established in the plain of Campania, just south of Latium, and they introduced a new way of life based on towns and trade. In the eighth century BCE their rural way of life began to be effected by influences coming in from outside. They had come down into Italy from the north, like other Italic peoples, and had settled in small villages of thatched huts, sometime in the second millennium. In central Italy there is a plain on the west coast called Latium, which takes its name from the Latin people who lived there in the first millennium BCE. This was a period of cultural change, when the simple way of life of the peoples of central Italy was beginning to be affected by new influences from the eastern Mediterranean. The rise of the Roman Empire can be traced back to Italy of the eighth century BCE. This article takes the story of Rome from the foundation of the city of Rome in the 8th century BCE right up to the reign of the first emperor, Augustus, in the first century BCE.Īn overview of the entire history of the Roman Empire, from origins to the fall of the Western Empire, can be found in the article the Roman Empire.įor more on the society and culture of ancient Rome, go to the article on the Civilization of Ancient Rome.
The rise of the Roman Empire took place over centuries and included many ups and downs.
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