Ancient Rome — A Video Map Guide

Early Italy and the founding of Rome Founding of Rome tmulti .multiimageinnertmulti .trowtmulti .tsingletmulti .theadertmulti .thumbcaptiontmulti .text-align-lefttmulti .text-align-righttmulti .text-align-centerThe Capitoline Wolf, now illustrating the legend that a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus after their mother's imprisonment in Alba LongaModern reconstruction of the marshy conditions of early Rome, along with a conjectural placement of the early settlement and its fortifications Archaeological evidence of settlement around Rome starts to emerge c. 1000 BC.[4&

The Roman Forum, the political, economic, cultural, and religious center of the city during the Republic and later Empire The imperial city of Rome was the largest urban center in the empire, with a population variously estimated from 450,000 to close to one million. Around 20% of the population under jurisdiction of ancient Rome (25–40%, depending on the standards used, in Roman Italy) lived in innumerable urban centers, with population of 10,000 and more and several military settlements, a very high rate of urbanisation by pre-industrial standards. Most of those centers had a forum, temples, and other buildings similar to Rome's. The average life expectancy in the Middle Empire was about 26–28 years. Law Roman law The roots of the legal principles and practices of the ancient Romans may be traced to the Law of the Twelve Tables promulgated in 449 BC and to the codification of law issued by order of Emperor Justinian I around 530 AD (see Corpus Juris Civilis). Roman law as preserved in Justinian's codes continued into the Byzantine Roman Empire, and formed the basis of similar codifications in continental Western Europe. Roman law continued, in a broader sense, to be applied throughout most of Europe until the end of the 17th century. The major divisions of the law of ancient Rome, as contained within the Justinian and Theodosian law codes, consisted of Jus civile, Jus gentium, and Jus naturale. The Jus civile ('citizen law') was the body of common laws that applied to Roman citizens. The praetores urbani (sing. Praetor Urbanus) were the people who had jurisdiction over cases involving citizens. The Jus gentium ('law of nations') was the body of common laws that applied to foreigners, and their dealings with Roman citizens. The praetores peregrini (sing. Praetor Peregrinus) were the people who had jurisdiction over cases involving c

of ancient Rome The seven hills of Rome Life in ancient Rome revolved around the city of Rome, located on seven hills. The city had a vast number of monumental structures like the Colosseum, the Trajan's Forum and the Pantheon. It had theatres, gymnasiums, marketplaces, functional sewers, bath complexes complete with libraries and shops, and fountains with fresh drinking water supplied by hundreds of miles of aqueducts. Throughout the territory under the control of ancient Rome, residential architecture ranged from modest houses to country villas. In Rome, there were imperial residences on Palatine Hill. The low plebeian and middle equestrian classes lived in the city center, packed into apartments, or insulae, which were almost like modern ghettos. These areas, often built by upper class property owners to rent, were often centred upon collegia or taberna. These people, provided with a free supply of grain, and entertained by gladiatorial games, were enrolled as clients of patrons among the upper class patricians, whose assistance they sought and whose interests they upheld. Language The Roman Empire in 180 AD. Latin had a great influence in the western part of the empire, both as a native language and as an administrative language. In the eastern part, the Greek language was predominant. Latin The native language of the Romans was Latin, an Italic language the grammar of which relies little on word order, conveying meaning through a system of affixes attached to word stems. Its alphabet was based on the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn based on the Greek alphabet. Although surviving Latin literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin, an artificial and highly stylised and polished literary language from the 1st century BC, the spoken language of the Roman Empire was Vulgar Latin, which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar and vocabular

Ancient Roman technology Pont du Gard in France is a Roman aqueduct built in c. 19 BC. It is a World Heritage Site. Ancient Rome boasted impressive technological feats, using many advancements that were lost in the Middle Ages and not rivalled again until the 19th and 20th centuries. An example of this is insulated glazing, which was not invented again until the 1930s. Many practical Roman innovations were adopted from earlier Greek designs. Advancements were often divided and based on craft. Artisans guarded technologies as trade secrets. Roman civil engineering and military engineering constituted a large part of Rome's technological superiority and legacy, and contributed to the construction of hundreds of roads, bridges, aqueducts, public baths, theatres and arenas. Many monuments, such as the Colosseum, Pont du Gard, and Pantheon, remain as testaments to Roman engineering and culture. The Romans were renowned for their architecture, which is grouped with Greek traditions into "Classical architecture". Although there were many differences from Greek architecture, Rome borrowed heavily from Greece in adhering to strict, formulaic building designs and proportions. Aside from two new orders of columns, composite and Tuscan, and from the dome, which was derived from the Etruscan arch, Rome had relatively few architectural innovations until the end of the Republic. In the 1st century BC, Romans started to use Roman concrete widely. Concrete was invented in the late 3rd century BC. It was a powerful cement derived from pozzolana, and soon supplanted marble as the chief Roman building material and allowed many daring architectural forms. Also in the 1st century BC, Vitruvius wrote De architectura, possibly the first complete treatise on architecture in history. The Romans also largely built using timber, causing a rapid decline of the woodlands surrounding Rome. The first evidence of lon

Main articles: Legacy of the Roman Empire and Classics Ancient Rome is the progenitor of Western civilisation. The customs, religion, law, technology, architecture, political system, military, literature, languages, alphabet, government and many factors and aspects of western civilisation are all inherited from Roman advancements. The rediscovery of Roman culture revitalised Western civilisation, playing a role in the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.

Primary and secondary sources Roman historiography The two longest ancient accounts of the Roman history, the histories of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, were composed 500 years later than the date for the founding of the republic and 200 years from the defeat of Hannibal. Although there has been a diversity of works on ancient Roman history, many of them are lost. As a result of this loss, there are gaps in Roman history, which are filled by unreliable works, such as the Historia Augusta. Caesar wrote his own accounts of his military campaigns in Gaul and during the Civil War in part to impress his contemporaries. In the Empire, the biographies of famous men and early emperors flourished, examples being The Twelve Caesars of Suetonius, and Plutarch's Parallel Lives. Other major works of Imperial times were that of Livy and Tacitus. Polybius – The Histories Sallust – Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Jugurthinum Julius Caesar – De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili Livy – Ab urbe condita Dionysius of Halicarnassus – Roman Antiquities Pliny the Elder – Naturalis Historia Josephus – The Jewish War Suetonius – The Twelve Caesars (De Vita Caesarum) Tacitus – Annales and Histories Plutarch – Parallel Lives (a series of biographies of famous Roman and Greek men) Cassius Dio – Historia Romana Herodian – History of the Roman Empire since Marcus Aurelius Ammianus Marcellinus – Res Gestae Interest in studying, and idealising, ancient Rome became prevalent during the Italian Renaissance. Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "began the modern study of Roman history in the English-speaking world". Barthold Georg Niebuhr was a founder of the examination of ancient Roman history and wrote The Roman History, tracing the period until the First Punic War. During the Napoleonic, The History of Romans by Victor Duruy highlighted the Caesarea