Continuous settlements on the future site of Rome—around the fording point of the Tiber and in the surrounding hills that, unlike other low-lying areas of Latium, are free of malaria—probably begin about 1000 BCE.

Latins move into Italy by the middle of the eighth century BCE.

Local Latins and Sabines of the Villanovan culture are probably the actual founders of the city of Rome in the eighth century BCE, a date compatible with the Roman tradition.

According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were sons of the god Mars and Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin and the daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa, who had been driven from his throne by Amulius.

After birth the usurper placed the twins in a container and cast them upon the Tiber, but they floated ashore and were nursed by a bitch wolf until found and raised by the shepherd Faustulus and his wife, Acca Laurentia.

(Plutarch alleges they were also fed by a woodpecker, the bird sacred to Mars).

Upon reaching maturity, the twins restore Numitor to his throne and, on April 21, 753 (at that time the date of the vernal equinox, an event sacred to Mars), establish Rome on the Palatine Hill, one of seven proximate hills in the midst of a dozen Etruscan cities in central Italy.

Set by Varro in the first century BCE, this is the most common date used as the beginning of the Roman 'Ab urbe condita' calendar.

Rome adopts the Etruscan alphabet, which the Etruscans themselves had adopted from the Greeks.

The brothers rule jointly for a while, then quarrel, whereupon Romulus, heeding an omen indicating that he is the true founder of the city, kills Remus and becomes the first king of Rome.

(Romans will venerate Romulus as Quirinus, god of the winter solstice).

Romulus, according to Rome's early semi-legendary history, founds an asylum for fugitives on the Capitoline Hill, establishes the establishes the Senate and divides the people into tribal units.

He seeks to obtain women as wives for his male citizens.

After delegation sent to nearby regions requesting wives are refused, Romulus devises a festival of Neptune Equester and proclaims the festival among Rome's neighbors.

The citizens of nearby Caenina (the Caeninenses) attendthe festival along with many others of Rome's neighbors, including the Crustumini, and Antemnates, and many of the Sabines.

At the festival Romulus gives a signal, at which the Romans grab the virgins among the spectators for wives.

This event is known as The Rape of the Sabine Women.

(This legend, if such it be, probably developed to explain Rome’s population of Sabines, who lived in the Sabine hills northeast of Rome and maintained an antagonistic relationship with the Latin city.

Scholars believe many Roman religious practices to be Sabine in origin.

Roman legend marks 717 BCE as the date that Romulus ended his rule.

After the death of Romulus, there was an interregnum of one year in which the royal power was exercised by Senate members in rotation for five days in a row.

In 715 BCE, after much bickering and as the result of a compromise between the Roman (Romulus-originating) and Sabine (Tatius-originating) factions, Numa Pompilius, himself a Sabine, is elected by the Senate of Rome to be the next king.

According to Plutarch, Numa's very first act was to disband the personal guard of three hundred so-called "Celeres" (the "Quick-stepped") that Romulus permanently entertained about himself.

Whether self-protective (future Roman history will demonstrate that such guards are a double-sided weapon), or a sign of humility, or a signal of peace and moderation for all to understand is not certain.

Numa reforms the Roman calendar in 713, and in 712 creates the office of Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs (Collegium Pontificum) and the most important position in the ancient Roman religion.

The legendary Ancus Marcius becomes the fourth king of Rome in about 640.

Upon the death of the previous king, Tullus Hostilius, the Roman Senate had appointed an interrex, who in turn called a session of the assembly of the people who elected the new king.

According to Livy, his first act as king was to order the Pontifex Maximus to copy the text concerning the performance of public ceremonies of religion from the commentaries of Numa Pompilius to be displayed to the public, so that the rites of religion should no longer be neglected or improperly performed.

The Etruscans, who enter the territory of the warlike Latin tribes around 625, cross the Tiber River to take over the cluster of disconnected villages collectively called Roma, and establish the Tarquinian dynasty of kings.

Tarquinius Priscus, according to Livy, had come from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii and was originally named Lucumo (it is now thought that lucumo was the name of an Etruscan political position).

Disgruntled with his opportunities in Etruria, he had migrated to Rome with his wife Tanaquil, at her suggestion.

He had been prohibited from obtaining political office in Tarquinii because of the ethnicity of his father, Demaratus the Corinthian, who had come from the Greek city of Corinth.

On his arrival in Rome in a chariot, an eagle took his cap, flew away and then returned it back upon his head.

Tanaquil, who is skilled in prophecy, had interpreted this as an omen of his future greatness.

Tarquinius Priscus has attained great respect Ii Rome through generosity and skill.

King Ancus Marcius, Rome’s fourth king according to tradition, himself had noticed him and adopted him as his son, also appointing him guardian of his other sons.

After the death of Ancus Marcius in 616, Tarquinius Priscus is able to persuade the People's Assembly that he should be elected king over Marcius' natural sons.

His military ability is immediately tested by an attack from the Sabines.

The attack is defeated after dangerous street fighting in Rome, and he then further subjugates the Etruscans.

Thus the cities Corniculum, Firulea, Cameria, Crustumerium, Americola, Medullia and Nomentum become Roman.

Tradition credits Rome’s King Tarquinius Priscus with subduing the Sabines and the Latins; draining the marshes; building the Circus Maximus, the Forum, and the Capitoline temple; and infusing Roman institutions with elements of Etruscan culture.

The first games of the Ludi Romani are staged at the location of the Circus Maximus (Latin for greatest circus), a hippodrome and mass entertainment venue situated in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, first utilized for public games and entertainment by Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the legendary fifth king and first Etruscan ruler of Rome.

Following a great flood, the damp lowlands of Rome are drained by the construction of the Cloaca Maxima (great sewers) to create a site for the Forum Romanum.

This public work, ordered by Priscus, is largely achieved through the use of Etruscan engineers and large amounts of semi-forced labor from the poorer classes of Roman citizens.

As his last great act, Priscus begins the construction of a temple in honor of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill, partially funded by plunder seized from the Latins and Sabines.

Many of the Roman symbols both of war and of civil office date from his reign, and he is the first to have celebrated a Roman triumph, after the Etruscan fashion, wearing a robe of purple and gold, and borne on a chariot drawn by four horses.

His thirty-eight-year reign supposedly ends with his assassination in 579 BCE at the behest of the natural sons of his adoptive father, the late King Ancus Marius.

Thanks to the intelligent foresight of the widowed queen Tanaquil however, the assassins are not chosen, but rather Tarquinius' son-in-law Servius Tullius is elected as his successor.

Servius Tullius is the first king to come to power without the consultation of the plebeians.

After military campaigns against Veii and the Etruscans, he improves the administrative and political organization of Rome.

He undertakes building projects and expands the city to include the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline hills.

Favoring the goddess, Fortuna, he builds several temples to her as well as to Diana.

He also builds a palace for himself on the Esquiline.

Servius Tullius had arranged the marriage of his two daughters to the two sons of his predecessor Lucius Tarquinius Priscus.

The sons were named Lucius Tarquinius and Aruns Tarquinius.

According to Livy, the younger of the two daughters had the fiercer disposition, and yet she was married to Aruns, who was the milder of the two sons.

"Tarquin and the younger Tullia, did not, in the first instance, become man and wife; for Rome was there by granted a period of reprieve."

Livy says that the similar temperament of the younger Tullia and Lucius Tarquinius drew them to each other, and she inspired Lucius to greater daring.

The younger Tullia and Lucius Tarquinius next arranged the murder of their respective siblings, the elder Tullia and Aruns, in quick succession, and Lucius and the younger Tullia were afterwards married.

She then encouraged Lucius Tarquinius to seek the throne.

Lucius was convinced, and began to solicit the support of the patrician senators, especially those families who had been given senatorial rank by his father.

He bestowed presents upon them, and to them he criticized the king.

Tarquinius, seizing the throne in 534, goes to the senate-house with a group of armed men, seats himself on the throne, and summons the senators to attend upon King Tarquinius.

Tarquin then speaks to the senators, criticizing Servius: for being a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the Senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for being gifted the throne by a woman; for favoring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy and for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census so that the wealth of the upper classes might be exposed in order to excite popular envy.

When Servius Tullius arrives at the senate-house to defend his position, Tarquinius throws him down the steps.

Servius returns home, but is murdered in the streets of Rome by a group of men sent by Tarquin, possibly on the advice of Tullia.

Tullia then drives in her chariot to the senate house, where she hails her husband as king.

He orders her to return home, away from the tumult.

She drives along the Cyprian street, where the king had been murdered, and turns towards the Orbian Hill, in the direction of the Esquiline Hill.

There she encounters her father's body and, on a street later to become known as wicked street because of her actions, drives her chariot over her father's body.

Livy also says that she took a part of her father's body, and his blood, and returned with it to her own and her husband's household gods, and that by the end of her journey she was, herself, covered in the blood.

Tarquinius refuses to permit Servius to be buried, thereby earning for himself the name "Superbus", translated as 'proud.

The Latin Romans, in a revolt led by the Senate, an advisory body to the monarch, expel Tarquinius Superbus, from Rome in 510. (According to tradition, Tarquinius Superbus’s son Sextus Tarquinius brings down the dynasty by his rape of Lucretia, a virtuous and beautiful Roman matron. The act supposedly turns the Romans against the Etruscan rulers; Lucretia makes her husband and father vow to avenge her dishonor before she commits suicide.)

The Senate decrees that Rome should have no more kings.

In place of the deposed monarchy, the Senate creates two principal magistrates (later called consuls), equal in power and holding supreme authority in all civil and military matters.

Chosen from among the patricians and elected by the comitia centuriata for one year, they cannot be reelected for ten years.

Thus, in 509, the Roman Republic is born.

The Romans base their new republic on a considerable amount of customary law, which originates in family customs, handed down from one generation to another and in judgments (leges regiae) of chieftains or kings.

The law is oral, not written, and in the keeping of the most ancient patrician families (gentes), thus placing the common people (plebeians) at a disadvantage in disputes.