【 collation 】 Rome now piled victory upon victory all across Italy as one by one her neighbours fell to the legions. Rome's rise was gathering momentum, and by now seemed unstoppable. But she suff...
【collation】 The next night, when he knew Lucretia's husband was away, King Tarquin's son crept back to her house alone. With a knife at her throat, he raped her, and swore that if she breathed a w...
【 collation 】 The census didn’t create equality or democracy. Rome remained a society governed by kings and nobles. Women had few rights. But it created a level of organization unheard of in the...
【 collation 】 As it approached the 5th century BC, Rome was emerging from its legendary past into the real world of recorded history. It was now a thriving province of the Etruscan world ruled by...
【 collation 】 The story about Romulus killing his twin brother, at the moment of the founding of the city is a very old story. It is very very remarkable that in the late Republic, the Romans were...
【 collation 】 Livy set out to write a brief history of early Rome, celebrating its glories and virtues, propaganda for the reforms of Augustus. What he had to go on were stories handed down over t...
【 collation 】 Rome took everything from the Etruscans. Etruscan engineers showed them how to drain the marshes where Rome now stands and channel the water into underground sewers. Etruscan archite...
But above all, the Etruscans were famous for their open displays of affection between men and women. It shocked the ancient world. The Greeks who knew the Etruscans from very early on before Rome was,...
When the Mediterranean sailors of ancient Greece and Egypt looked west toward Italy, they stared into a great unknown. It was 800 years before the birth of Christ and Rome still didn't exist but stori...
And this vast, well-organized empire would muster the largest army the world had ever seen: over half a million soldiers. Rome was the superpower of the ancient world. Later superpowers never stopped...
Rome's savagery was matched by its size. When the Colosseum was built, Rome was a city of a million people and growing. Not until London of the 19th century would a city approach this size again. What...
Over 1,000 years after Rome's fall, the armies of the French emperor Napoleon descend on the city. Napoleon's forces have already battled their way through Europe, take Rome seems an afterthought. By...