ABSTRACT
According to the legend, Romulus and Remus were the twin sons of Mars by the Vestal Rhea Silvia, daughter of King Numitor of Alba. Their mother's uncle, who had usurped the Alban throne, cast them adrift in the River Tiber but, grounded in marshes below the hill later called Palatine, they were discovered and suckled by a she-wolf and then adopted by shepherds. According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 bce. History is less precise. Moulded by severe authority at first,3.99 the base for imperial expansion began as a rude settlement straddling seven hills by the Tiber in central-Italian Latium: a thousand years later, two hundred years before her fall, Rome was the greatest city the world had ever seen, the capital of its richest empire. Pressing up from the south, the Romans took their first major Etrurian prize in 396 bce. Highly authoritarian beliefs matched a highly authoritarian society.
