📱 eBook en inglés FROM "ROMA QUADRATA" TO "LA GRANDE ROMA DEI TARQUINI"

By the end of the regal period (late 6th c. BC) Rome was by far the greatest non-Greek city in Italy. How she attained her enormous size was a problem for the ancients no less than for the moderns. The former agreed on Romes birth (the first city of the 8th c. BC on the Palatines 15 hectares) and completion (all the traditional Seven Hills, ca. 400 hectares); everything in-between was a matter of dispute. The latter, while agreeing on the point of arrival, evidenced by the archaic remains of the Servian Wall, reject the point of departure and so the whole literary tradition on Romes growth, pointing out that the Palatine was inhabited much earlier and the Capitol earlier still; another argument is a hypothetical huge (200–300 hectares) proto-urban centre on Romes site. The aim of this study is to assess the worth of the ancients certainty that the Palatine was the citys cradle and see if their writings preserved dependable information on her growth; the results – Rome was in fact founded on the Palatine and had one stage of growth between the Romulean birth and the Servian-Tarquinian achievement – pass well the test of confrontation with the archaeological material.