The Roman Kingdom was the first period of Roman history, when Rome was ruled by kings. Tradition dates it from the city's founding in 753 BC to the overthrow of the last king in 509 BC, but most of what we are told about it is legend.
Key takeaways
- Tradition says seven kings ruled Rome, from Romulus to Tarquin the Proud, but no written records from their time survive.
- On our map the date 753 BC is drawn as a symbolic circle around the city, covering just 7 km², so it shows a symbol and not a real border.
- By 264 BC Rome had grown from a single city to about 131,515 km², a story told on the homepage.
- The kingdom ended, traditionally in 509 BC, and was replaced by the Roman Republic.
How the Roman Kingdom works
The Roman Kingdom is the name for the earliest stretch of Roman history, when the city was ruled by kings. The traditional story says Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus, who became its first king. Six more kings followed. The last of them, Tarquin the Proud, was driven out in 509 BC, and Rome became a republic [1][2].
The seven kings in the traditional list are Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. The list is useful as a way of telling the story, but it should be read with care. No records or inscriptions from the kings' own time survive. The tale comes mainly from writers such as Livy, who wrote in the late Republic and early Empire, hundreds of years after the events [1]. Gauls sacked Rome in the early fourth century BC and many early records were lost, so later writers had to rely on oral tradition [1].
What can be said with more confidence is that Rome began as a group of settlements on hills beside the Tiber, near a river crossing, with defensible high ground and fertile land around it [1]. Two of the later kings are said to have come from Etruscan families, which fits with the strong influence of the Etruscans, who lived to the north, on early Rome [1]. Modern scholars generally treat the traditional dates as rough and the names as partly legendary [1].
For a map site the kingdom is a tricky case. Rome at this stage was a city and its farmland, not a state with borders, so there is nothing to outline. The slider starts here anyway, because 753 BC is the date Romans themselves counted from.
An example from our data
Set the slider to 753 BC. The red shape is not a border. It is a symbolic circle around the city, and it covers 7 km². It is there so that the starting point is visible. The map holds no provinces for this date (0 are held) and the red area sits inside 1 modern country. The page says how every outline was made, and the years page lists all 13 dates.
Now step forward to 264 BC. The event for that date is: Start of the First Punic War; Rome controls peninsular Italy south of the Apennines. The outline is built from modern regions, and it covers about 131,515 km². The distance from a symbolic dot to that figure is what the Republic did after the kings. How it happened is told in how the empire grew. Why the early outlines are so rough is explained in why the borders are approximate.
The thing people get wrong
Many people take 753 BC as a firm fact, as if someone recorded Rome's birthday. It is a traditional date, worked out by Roman writers long afterwards. Historians disagree about when the city really took shape, and many think it grew gradually from villages rather than being founded on one day. The kings, too, are known through stories more than records [1]. On this site, treat 753 BC as the date Romans gave, and the circle on the map as a marker and not a measurement.
Roman Kingdom vs Roman Republic
| Roman Kingdom | Roman Republic | |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional dates | 753 BC to 509 BC | 509 BC to 27 BC |
| Who ruled | Kings | Two consuls, elected each year, working with the Senate |
| Evidence | Mostly legend and later writers | Written records, inscriptions and coins increase |
| On our map | A symbolic circle | Real outlines from 264 BC |
Frequently asked questions
When did the Roman Kingdom begin and end?
Traditionally it began in 753 BC and ended in 509 BC. Both dates come from later Roman writers, and modern historians treat them as approximate.
Why is the 753 BC area on the map so small?
Because it is not a border. The map uses a symbolic circle around the city of 7 km² to mark the city, since nobody knows what land Rome controlled then.
Was Romulus a real person?
Historians disagree. The stories about him were written down centuries later, and the evidence for him as a real individual is thin.
Sources
- Roman Kingdom, Wikipedia.
- Roman Republic, Wikipedia.
- Roman Empire, World History Encyclopedia.
- Every figure from our own map is worked out from the datasets on the data sources page (checked against Ancient World Mapping Center outlines and Pleiades).