Ancient Rome

Rome started as a muddy village on the Tiber and ended up ruling the Mediterranean world. That took about a thousand years, and the story is messier than the marble statues suggest. We've got founding myths involving twins raised by a wolf, military disasters so bad they became case studies (Cannae), and enough political backstabbing to fill several seasons of prestige TV.

The Kingdom (753-509 BCE)

Romulus supposedly founded Rome in 753 BCE after killing his twin brother over a wall. The she-wolf nursing the abandoned infants makes for a better story than whatever actually happened. Seven kings ruled during this period, the last of whom was so terrible the Romans abolished monarchy entirely.

The Republic (509-27 BCE)

Rome replaced its kings with elected officials and the Senate, then spent the next few centuries picking fights with everyone. The wars against Carthage nearly ended Rome altogether. Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants, ambushed Roman armies repeatedly, and at Cannae killed roughly 50,000 Roman soldiers in a single afternoon. Rome lost the battle badly but won the war anyway.

The Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE)

Augustus ended the Republic and started calling himself emperor, which worked out well enough that his successors kept the title for five centuries. At its peak, you could walk from Hadrian's Wall in Britain to the Euphrates River without leaving Roman territory. The western half collapsed in 476 CE. The eastern half, ruling from Constantinople, lasted another thousand years.