Ancient Rome [antikvár]

THE MONUMENTS OF ROME from the Village of Huts on the Palatine to the Cosmopolitan City on the Banl(s of the Tiber. The floors of the mo or three huts cut out of the rock of the Palatine and the simple earth graves of a burial ground, the Sepulcretum, on the edge of the Forum are the earliest traces that we can find today of what was later to become Rome, her most ancient 'monuments' as it were. One of the several small villages which had sprang up on these hills separated by bi~oad marshes, the one on the Palatine controlled the Tiber crossing and the market which had long existed on the left bank of the river. This constituted the nucleus around which the other inhabited areas began to concentrate between the 8th and the 7th centuries EC, giving rise over time to the actual city. By the 6th century it was already encircled by walls and protected by a fortified strong point on the Capitoline, it boasted a landing stage on the Tiber and a commercial and political center in the Forum, and it was enriched by public buildings and sanctuaries (most notably the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus). Over the course of next century the city grew to include the Aveiitine, and in the first half of the 4th century, following recovery from the invasion of the Gauls and the ruin it had left in its wake, a new circle of walls was erected to protect an extensive urban area, which now covered over 400 hectares.