Founding of Rome

According to Roman tradition, the city of Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BCE by Romulus, who along with his twin brother Remus had been raised by a she-wolf after being abandoned as infants, a legendary account first systematized by ancient historians such as Livy and the antiquarian Marcus Terentius Varro, who calculated the specific founding date from a chronology of the traditional seven kings of Rome. Archaeological evidence broadly supports a real settlement history on the Palatine Hill dating to roughly this period, with excavations having identified traces of an eighth-century BCE wall and habitation consistent with the emergence of a fortified village on the site in the mid-eighth century BCE, even though the specific story of Romulus and Remus is regarded by historians as legendary rather than factual. Rome grew from this early settlement through the period of the semi-legendary kings into the Roman Republic after the traditional expulsion of the last king, Tarquinius Superbus, in 509 BCE, beginning the trajectory that would make it the capital of one of history's largest and most influential empires.