Rome: republic, empire and legacy
A small city on the Tiber grows into an empire spanning the Mediterranean, and leaves Italy its language, law, roads, ruins and the seat of the Catholic Church.
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome — Mary Beard, Profile Books (2015)
- The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples — David Gilmour, Allen Lane (2011)
Romans told that their city was founded by Romulus on 21 April 753 BCE, a date Rome still celebrates as its birthday; archaeology shows settlements on its hills earlier, and historians treat the story as legend. Italy before Rome was a patchwork of peoples, Etruscans, Latins, Samnites, Greeks in the south and Celts in the north, and Rome absorbed them over centuries, extending citizenship to most free Italians after the Social War of 91–88 BCE.
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome — Mary Beard, Profile Books (2015)
The Republic, traditionally founded in 509 BCE, conquered the Mediterranean and then collapsed into civil war. Augustus became the first emperor in 27 BCE. Under the empire Christianity spread, was persecuted and then, from Constantine in the early fourth century, became favoured and finally the official religion, with the bishop of Rome claiming leadership as Peter’s successor.
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome — Mary Beard, Profile Books (2015)
- Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
The western empire ended when the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. Italy would not be politically united again for almost fourteen centuries, but Latin evolved into its dialects and Roman law, cities and the papacy endured.
- The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples — David Gilmour, Allen Lane (2011)
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome — Mary Beard, Profile Books (2015)
Why it matters today
Italians live among Roman remains, from the Colosseum to the roads and aqueducts in their countryside, and learn Latin in many secondary schools. Rome gave Italy its sense of a once-universal civilisation, a heritage claimed by the Renaissance, the Risorgimento and, most disastrously, Mussolini. Most Italians today carry it lightly: a source of pride and of a certain humour about past glories.