ABSTRACT

Archaeological evidence indicates that the territory of Rome was not permanently inhabited until around 1000 BC. The first people who settled around the Tiber valley and the area that became Rome were the Latins and the Sabines, two of the Indo-European peoples referred to collectively as Italians. These groups drifted down from the North across the Alps into the Italian peninsula at the end of the second millennium BC. The people of Latium, as this area was later called, were divided into several independent groups organized in separate communities, but all considered themselves members of the same broader family with largely common interests.1 The Latin culture and conditions of life displayed very little change until the late seventh century BC. In this period the people of Latium encountered the Etruscans, who occupied the neighbouring territory of Tuscany, and later the Greeks and the Carthaginians.