Founding of Rome
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According to Roman tradition the city was founded on 21 April 753 BCE by Romulus, after he killed his twin brother Remus for leaping over the wall he had built. The story was told and retold by Livy, Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote in the Augustan age when the legend served to explain Rome's destiny. Archaeology is plainer: Latin and Sabine villages grew on the Palatine and the surrounding hills from the tenth century BCE, draining the marsh between them, and by the sixth century the forum was a public space with a temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline. The tradition dates the expulsion of the kings and the beginning of the republic to 509 BCE, and the Romans counted their years from the founding, an era called ab urbe condita, which the historian Eusebius used to date other events. Whether one king or many stood behind the legend, the date of 753 BCE has anchored the Roman calendar for two thousand years, and every later ruler of the city has measured itself against the republic that followed. The Palatine hill gave its name to the palace of every later emperor, and the word itself carries the memory of the village on the hill.