[MUSIC] Hello guys and welcome back. Until now, we've talked about how we archaeologists work and how will we try to understand the history of cities and landscapes? Now we move to the whole of Rome. We will go on talking about the Palatine hill but the Palatine was just a part of a huge body. It was the largest city in the Roman Empire and was the largest city even of modern Europe. 1 million people lived in it so it could be worth spending a few minutes talking about the whole body of Rome. This is modern Rome. You can tell the river Tiber flowing here, the hills on the right bank, the flood plane on the left blank and the very famous Seven hills of Rome covered of course, by the modern buildings all around. As you probably know, Rome was not built in one day but it's also true that Rome was not built in the middle of nowhere. There was a large settlement dating back to the ninth century before Christ, on the same spot of Rome. Let's look at this history from a small settlement to the largest city in Europe. This is modern Rome once again, and you see this yellow line is the limit of one settlement spread over these hills here. The Palatine is over there, it's just one corner of this huge settlement, and this area is smaller than the city of Rome and the later city of Rome. It's one of the largest settlements in the Iron Age Tehranian area. It's round about 200 hectors wide, and it's a common size for the largest Iron Age settlement in the history of Italy. This settlement was inside subdivided into 27 small regions, they will quote curiae in the Latin languages and you see the Palatine is just one of them. May be divided into three of these small regions in the middle of the eighth century before Christ Rome was founded. The Romans thought they knew the birth date of the City, April the 21st, 753 BC. The foundation of Rome can be imagined as we will see later, as a right, a foundation right very complicated, very complex, but just one right. The middle was to transform land into something that it was not yet, you have to turn an uninhabited area into an inhabited area. This could be possible for the blessing of the king of the gods, Jupiter so they celebrated a right on the Palatine, possibly in this spot here, and suddenly the Palatine was turned into a city, a small city, but in Latin terms a blessed area. It transformed part of the countryside, which was no more a rural site but the urban site at that moment. This city in itself was not much larger than the Iron Age settlement just a few small regions were added in this area, possibly. They became 30 small regions rather than 27 but the most important addition to the oldest settlement was this reddish area here. You see, this is the top of this valley where the Roman Forum is scattered from the border of the Palatine up to the Capitoline Hill and it was the core of the political power of Rome. The foundation of Rome, in a few words, is the addition of three small regions to the oldest settlement, and then much more important addition in terms of political power in this area here. Note that the political c ore of the new city is outside any region no one could control this area. There was another sacred subdivision of the city landscape, which was these three parts here, they were called tribes and it was a larger group of people within this settlement. Again, the ninth-century settlement, which coincides more or less with the first city. During the sixth century BC, things changed once again. A larger wall all around this pink area was built and a new city was born. This new city is not just larger than the first one. It's more complicated also, and it's structure. You have, first of all, a larger wall here, including a much larger area. We had an addition from the ninth century to the eighth century. We have a second edition, you can see here in light blue from the seventh century to the sixth century. A second enlargement of the urban area. All around the wall you have the graves here, here and here. Minor scatters all around with the main roads flowing into the urban area through the gates. You have the inhabited area, the walls enclosing also the addition, the Necropolis, and the territory of Rome limited by a circle of sacred places. You can see here from one to eight, placed one mile away from any gate of the city, on any side of the city. If you look at the inside organization of the Archaic city we have no more small regions but just four larger districts here they were called regiones, regions in modern language. Also, this gray area here was added to the urban area. But Rome grew larger and larger. At the end of the first century BC, with the first emperor Augustus, Rome grew this large. The inner part was divided now into 14 regiones, regions. This is how they were scattered inside the urban area. There were numbered in a counterclockwise order from one to 14 including, for the first time, the area on the right bank of the river. Towards the end of the empire, we are at the end of the third century AD, for the first time the urban area of Rome had to shrink. The so-called barbarian people were invading the territory of the empire. The Senate and the Emperor are afraid over this so they create a new world, cutting off larger or minor parts of the earlier city. You can see the green area here with the gates numbered, once again in a counterclockwise order. In ancient times, being a city meant to be blessed by the god. You can have a large settlement with just a small part blessed by the god. The Romans would say, inaugurated by the gods. You can see in this map the larger extension of the city of Rome and the primeval inaugurated part, which coincides exactly with the Palatine Hill. That's why the Palatine is so important, because it was the core of the city even from a secret point of view. The line which enclosed the blessed area was called the Pomerium. As the centuries went through you have more than one Pomerium all around, it was enlarged and enlarged many times. You can see the green area, which is the area enclosed in the Pomerium of the Archaic city. You can see that the blessed area is not as large as the area enclosed by the Roman walls. Once again, the Pomerium of the Imperial Age enlarged, once again, not as large as the whole urban area. We know the extension of this line because of this inscribed cippi. They were small columns of stone with inscriptions indicating the line of the Pomerium. Here, once again, you have the location of the cippi during that time. More than this, you have a custom circuit around Rome. You have to pay taxes for goods coming inside or outside of the city. You have another group of this stone cippi indicating the line of the customs line.
