Latium

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Latium was a region of ancient Italy, home to the original Latin people. Its area is now part of the (much larger) modern Italian Regione of Lazio, also called Latium in Latin and also occasionally so in modern English. Their language later became Latin.

Latium has played an important role in history owing to its status as the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is home to celebrated works of art and architecture.

[edit] History

The region which would become Latium had been home to settled agricultural populations since the early Bronze Age and was known to the Ancient Greeks from an early date. It was populated by a mixture of Indo-European and non-Indo-European language speakers. The Etruscans, from their home region of Etruria (modern day Tuscany) exerted a strong cultural and political influence on Latium from about the 8th century B.C. onward. However, they were unable to assert political hegemony over the region, which was controlled by small, autonomous city-states, somewhat akin to the contemporaneous situation in Greece. Indeed, the region's political and geographic proximity to the states of Ancient Greece had a strong impact upon its early history. The Phoenicians, who had a long tradition of trading with Italy, also exerted a more modest influence.

One of the earliest recorded non-Etruscan settlements in Latium is the quasi-mythical city of Alba Longa located somewhat southeast of the present day city of Rome. According to Livy and other ancient authorities, it was here that the Latin league was founded, a coalition of city-states intended as a bulwark against Etruscan expansion.

The city-state of Rome emerged as the dominant political and military power in the region following Rome's destruction of Alba Longa in the middle of the 7th century B.C.

[edit] References

Strabo - Geographica (Strabo) book V chapter 3 - Rome 20 BC
Athanasius Kircher - Latium - 1669 - Amsterdam 1671
G.R.Volpi - Vetus Latium Profanum et Sacrum - Rome 1742
T.J.Cornell - The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars - London 1995
C.H.Smith - Early Rome and Latium. Economy and Society, c. 1000 - 500 BC, "Oxford Classical Monographs" - Oxford 1996

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