Origins
According to the traditional Roman foundation myth, the city was founded by the twin brothers Romulus and Remus on 21 April 753 BC. Archaeology suggests continuous settlement on the Palatine Hill from approximately the 8th century BC, broadly consistent with the traditional date. Rome’s early form was a small Latin city-state ruled by kings, until the last king Tarquinius Superbus was expelled in 509 BC and the Roman Republic was established.
The Republic, 509–27 BC
The Republic was governed by a complex system of elected magistrates and the Senate. Rome conquered the Italian peninsula by approximately 270 BC and won the three Punic Wars against Carthage (264–146 BC), securing Mediterranean dominance. The Republic produced figures including Cicero, Cato, the Gracchi, Pompey, and Julius Caesar. Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC began the civil wars that ended the Republic; his great-nephew Octavian (later Augustus) consolidated power and became the first emperor in 27 BC.
The Empire, 27 BC–476 AD
The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent in 117 AD under Trajan, controlling territory from Britain to Mesopotamia. The empire developed an extensive road network, a unified legal system, citizenship rights eventually extended to all free inhabitants (212 AD, Edict of Caracalla), and an administrative apparatus that ruled approximately 60 million people at peak.
The empire was formally divided into Western and Eastern halves in 285 AD under Diocletian. The Western Roman Empire collapsed gradually under pressure from Germanic migrations; the deposition of the last Western emperor Romulus Augustulus by the Germanic general Odoacer in 476 AD is the conventional end date. The Eastern Roman Empire (also called the Byzantine Empire) continued until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
Legacy
The Latin language is the ancestor of all Romance languages. Roman law forms the basis of legal codes across Europe and Latin America. The Roman alphabet is in use globally. Roman architectural and engineering principles — concrete, arches, aqueducts, road construction — continued in use through the medieval period and inform modern civil engineering. The Roman political vocabulary (republic, senate, consul, dictator) is the working vocabulary of modern democratic government.
What survives
The Forum, Colosseum, Pantheon, and substantial sections of the Aurelian Walls remain visible in modern Rome. Roman roads, bridges, and aqueducts are still in use across Europe and the Mediterranean. Substantial portions of Latin literature have survived continuously since antiquity; additional texts have been recovered through medieval manuscript traditions and (in a few cases, including some by Archimedes) through palimpsests.