The founding of Rome
The men who built their huts on the hills in front of the little island on the river, were looking for a possibility of better life. The boats that were going along the river were coming from faraway lands and were asking of being able to stock up of fresh foods to the shepherds and farmers who were living on the hills. These men were receiving in change tools, utensils and materials coming from people more highly developed compared to them and they did not worry about them until did not see rising stone house and long the river the points of mooring and of passage began to be watched.
The formation of the first core of the city of Rome has been certainly favoured by its position on the river, in fact already in the Iron Age settlement had risen on the tuffaceous slopes of the hills along the river Tiber, but up to VII century, the valley between the palatine and the Campidoglio was the place of burial of those who were living the shores of the river.From the VII century B.C. this peoples began to build their houses to the interior and they delimited the border of their new city that they called Rome.
The legend tells what Rome has been founded by Romolo, marking with the plough the border of that will be known like the Roma Quadrata or "The Square Rome", on April 21 of 753 B.C.
The date commonly accepted is that one indicated by Varrone, but if it is truth that is not a certitude about the year, instead it might be right the day how the archaeologist Andrew Carandini proposes, the foundation of a city had to happen according to a rite that was already sanctioning the lawfulness; this group of men who were rising to people had to do it so that, especially for the people who were living nearer to them, it was recognising the new city.
These men chose to found their city as Etruscans and Latins were doing: the king-augur grasping a ritual stick, arched in the superior extremity, called lituo marked the borders of the new city. The day could only be April 21, holiday of Pales, divinity of the palatine.
In the Curia of the "Sali Palatini" the lituo used by Romolo to mark the borders of Rome was kept.
by M.L. ©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Ed 1.0 - 01/04/2015)