Rome begins with a story.
In 753 BC, a man named Romulus drew a line in the earth on the Palatine Hill and declared that everything within it was a city.
He killed his twin brother Remus for jumping over the line.
Rome was founded in blood, which turned out to be appropriate.
For the first two and a half centuries, Rome was a monarchy.
Seven kings ruled in succession — some legendary, some historical, some somewhere in between.
They built the first walls, drained the marshes between the hills, and laid out the Forum.
The city grew from a hilltop village into something that looked, for the first time, like a state.
The last king, Tarquinius Superbus — Tarquin the Proud — was expelled in 509 BC after his son committed a notorious crime.
The Romans swore they would never again be ruled by a king.
They meant it.
The very word 'rex' — king — became toxic in Roman political culture for centuries.
Fun fact: modern archaeologists have found traces of 8th-century BC huts on the Palatine, broadly consistent with the founding legend.
Rome almost certainly did begin as a cluster of villages on these hills.
The story of Romulus is myth, but the archaeology underneath it is real.
