Foundation of Rome and the Early Roman Kingdom

The foundation of the city of Rome is shrouded in mystery and legend. The traditional founder of Rome is Romulus, who, according to mythical accounts, was raised by a she-wolf with his brother Remus and later and killed his brother for control of their new city. Other myths include the city being founded by Aeneas of Troy, whose feuds with Dido was the eventual cause of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. (Dido, according to legend, founded the city of Carthage in northern Africa.) Whether or not these people existed, a group of hilltop villages lying upon an Italian trade route on the river Tiber were unified in the mid-8th Century B.C. (traditionally 753). The Iron Age culture of the Tiber river valley was known as Villanovan, and slowly groups of villages unified under a powerful ruling class.

Image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6
a/She-wolf_suckles_Romulus_and_Remus.jpg

In the 7th Century B.C., Etruscan traders from the Eastern Mediterranean established a mercantile empire in Italy. Renowned seafarers, the Etruscans came into conflict with other seafaring powers, such as the Phoenicians operating from Carthage and various Greek colonies in southern Italy and Sicily. In midst of these conflicts over trade, the Etruscans made an offensive into Latium, the region in central Italy surrounding Rome and the Tiber, at the end of the 7th Century. While the Etruscans fought the Greeks in the south over the course of the next hundred years, Rome was ruled by a Etruscan military overlord, and under Etruscan dominion became the chief city in Latium. Meanwhile, the Etruscans forced their way southward and captured a few Greek colonies and established a few of their own, surrounding the Greek city of Cumae, which was located near modern-day Naples.

The Etruscans were at their peak of their power throughout the 6th Century B.C., even forming an alliance with the Carthaginians to fight the Greeks at Alalia (on modern-day corsica) in 535 B.C., gaining control of the island. It was during this time period that the first sewers and walls were built in Rome. However, the Etruscan dominance over Rome was somewhat short-lived. To the south, the Etruscans continued to have  difficulty subduing the city of Cumae. Eventually, the Latin cities revolted near the end of the 6th Century B.C., quite possibly at the request of the Cumaeans. In the decades to come, Rome and the surrounding towns of Latium were at odds with their Etruscan overlords and their Italian neighbors, leading to a long path of war for Rome to gain and sustain her sovereignty.

Works Cited:

Connolly, Peter. "Italy and The Western Mediterranean: The Rise of Rome 800-275 B.C., Part 1: The Struggle for Italy." Greece and Rome at War. 4th ed. Chicago: Frontline, 2012. 86-95. Print.

Grafton, A.T. and Swerdlow, N.M. Classical Philology. Vol. 81, No. 2 (Apr., 1986), pp. 148-153. Published by The University of Chicago Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269789

Edlund, Ingrid E.M. Vergilius (1959-). No. 27 (1981), pp 1-7. Published by The Vergilian Society. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41591853

Drews, Robert. Historia: Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte. Bd. 41, H. 1 (1992), pp. 14-39. Published by Franz Steiner Verlag. http://www.jstory.org/stable/4436222