THE ROMAN
EMPIRE

According to legend, Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BCE by a pair of twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. The story says they had been abandoned as babies beside the River Tiber and rescued by a she-wolf that nursed them as if they were her own cubs. When they grew up they decided to build a new city, but could not agree on which hill to build it on, so they fought, and Romulus killed his brother. He named the city after himself: Roma. Whether the tale is true or not, archaeology shows that by around 750 BCE small villages of mud-brick huts really did dot the seven hills beside the Tiber, and those villages steadily joined up into a single walled city. Rome's location was lucky, a bend in the river made it easy to defend and easy to cross, the hills gave it high ground, and the flat plains around it were perfect for farming. That tiny hilltop settlement would one day grow into the largest and most powerful empire the ancient world had ever seen.