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Entry 30 of 240Reform

The Founding of Rome

753 BCE/Italy/Early Rome
Today Rome, ItalySpan Roman Kingdom · 753–509 BCE

Rome began as a cluster of villages on hills above a ford in the Tiber — a defensible spot on a trade route, which is most of why it mattered. Romans later told themselves a founding story of twins raised by a wolf and a murder between brothers, and another about taking wives by force from a neighboring people. What actually distinguished early Rome was less romantic and more consequential: an unusual willingness to absorb outsiders, extending citizenship to conquered peoples rather than merely ruling them, which let a small city grow without running out of Romans.

◆ Worth knowingRome's own founding legend features a fratricide and a mass abduction — the Romans told a story about themselves that most nations would have quietly edited, and treated it as a source of pride rather than shame.
◆ The mechanismState formation & institutional founding

A durable new order — a state, an institution, a system of rule — is deliberately built and consolidated, outlasting the people who founded it.

Also: Trade-route shift · Migration pressure

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