Legend has actually it the Romulus and Remus—twin brothers that were also demi-gods—founded Rome ~ above the flow Tiber in 753 B.C. End the next eight and a half centuries, it thrived from a little town the pig farmers into a huge empire that stretched from England to Egypt and fully surrounded the Mediterranean Sea.


The roman inn Empire dominated these soil by attack them with unmatched army strength, and also it organized onto lock by letting them govern themselves.

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Rome’s desire to expand had deep historic roots, states Edward J. Watts, a professor that neurosoup.org in ~ the college of California, san Diego, and author that Mortal Republic: exactly how Rome fell Into Tyranny.

“There’s a legacy going earlier to basically roman inn preneurosoup.org, supernatural neurosoup.org, wherein they talk around the expansion of the city under the kings,” he says. “Marcius is one of the at an early stage Roman queens , and also he’s said to in reality have involved in expansion and also extended the city come incorporate other hills. For this reason the idea of them widening is constantly deep in the historical DNA of the republic, and even the monarchy before the republic.”


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The taking of the Etruscan city that Veii by the Romans in 396 B.C. ~ a siege of numerous years they lastly won victory after digging into the soft tuff rock listed below the walls while distracting the Veiians with assaults on the walls and infiltrating the city's drainage device to emerge in the citadel. 

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Even so, Rome was still relatively small by the moment it transitioned indigenous a kingdom come a republic in 509 B.C. The republic’s first significant expansion came in 396 B.C., once Rome defeated and captured the Etruscan city that Veii. Rather of ruining Veii, the classicist mary Beard says the Romans mostly let the city proceed operating together it had before, only under roman control and also with the knowledge that Rome might conscript free men because that the roman inn army.


The conquest of Veii to be “a huge turning allude for since they take end a region that’s fifty percent the size of the territory they already have,” watt says. End the next two-and-a-half centuries, Rome spread out throughout the Italian Peninsula by overcoming territories and also either making them independent allies or expanding Roman citizenship.

“The absorb of Italy was actually an absorption; that wasn’t supposed to be a colonial regime,” the says. Later, in the very first century B.C., it expanded Roman citizenship to all cost-free people. Still, it never extended citizenship come the countless enslaved civilization in Italy obtained through trade, piracy, wars and also other means.

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Roman occupations Reach Overseas


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The Roman victory at The fight of Mylae, 260 B.C. Throughout the very first Punic War. From Hutchinson's neurosoup.org the the Nations, published 1915.

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This strategy that absorption adjusted as Rome overcame its first overseas territories. Throughout the Punic Wars through Carthage between 264 B.C. Come 146 B.C., Rome spread over many Mediterranean islands and onto the east coast of contemporary Spain. Yet rather of expanding its republic right into these territories or forming alliances, Rome designated these brand-new territories together provinces and appointed roman governors come oversee them.