The Birth of Rome
The Secret Essence of the “Eternal City” Lies in its Historical Foundations
The most powerful empires have humble beginnings. When we think of Rome, we immediately conjure up the grandiose images of the Colosseum, the Imperial Forums, the Pantheon, and the great imperial villas. But it all began in a miserable village of clay and wood, and that is its history.
The area where these events took place has been continuously inhabited since ancient times (at least 300,000 years ago, according to the archaeological site of Polledrara di Cecanibbio, less than 15 kilometers north-west of the center of Rome) but only entered history during the Iron Age, when the Latins, a population from Eastern Europe, settled in the area around 1500 BC. They differed from the Italic peoples already living in the area because they practiced the cremation of the dead, a practice typical of patriarchal and nomadic cultures. In contrast, the Italic peoples buried the dead according to rituals typical of matriarchal and agricultural cultures.
The word ‘Latin’ is said to derive from a root («latus») meaning ‘broad’: the Latins would therefore be ‘the people of the plains,’ as opposed to the peoples of the mountains, such as the Sabines, since they settled south of the river Tiber, pushing south a few dozen kilometers, in the so-called…
