page_title: Roman Kingdom
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Kingdom / Origin
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Tessons de plaques décoratives en terre cuite, VIe siècle av. J.-C. (période étrusque), fouilles de la Regia, sur le forum romain. Objets exposés dans la section épigraphique du musée des thermes de Dioclétien, Rome
context_page_description: The Roman Kingdom, also referred to as the Roman monarchy, or the regal period of ancient Rome, was the earliest period of Roman history, when the city and its territory were ruled by kings.
  Little is certain about the kingdom's history, as no records and few inscriptions from the time of the kings survive, and the accounts of this period written during the Republic and the Empire are thought to be based on oral tradition. According to these legends, the Roman Kingdom began with the city's founding circa 753 BC, with settlements around the Palatine Hill along the river Tiber in central Italy, and ended with the overthrow of the kings and the establishment of the Republic circa 509 BC.
context_section_description: The site of the founding of the Roman Kingdom (and eventual Republic and Empire) had a ford where one could cross the river Tiber in central Italy. The Palatine Hill and hills surrounding it provided easily defensible positions in the wide fertile plain surrounding them. Each of these features contributed to the success of the city.
  The traditional version of Roman history, which has come down to us principally through Livy (64 or 59 BC – AD 12 or 17), Plutarch (46–120), and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 BC – after 7 BC), recounts that a series of seven kings ruled the settlement in Rome's first centuries. The traditional chronology, as codified by Varro (116 BC – 27 BC) and Fabius Pictor (c. 270 – c. 200 BC), allows 243 years for their combined reigns, an average of almost 35 years. Since the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, modern scholarship has generally discounted this schema. The Gauls destroyed many of Rome's historical records when they sacked the city after the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC (according to Varro; according to Polybius, the battle occurred in 387/6), and what remained eventually fell prey to time or to theft. With no contemporary records of the kingdom surviving, all accounts of the Roman kings must be carefully questioned.
caption: Shards of terracotta decorative plaques, 6th century BC (Roman Kingdom and Etruscan period), found in the Roman Forum, now in the Diocletian Baths Museum, Rome
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