Hello everybody and welcome back. We've seen that it's possible to assume a coincidence. We see in the process emerging from the archaeological framework of early Rome and the memory of the ancients. There's a discontinuity around the middle of the 8th century BC, when the settlement on the side of Rome is somewhat changing, acquiring central places, public and political places. This is why we think that Rome was actually born around the middle of the eighth century BC. According to the ancient historians, this new city was ruled by kings. The Latin word, rex, meaning King, indicates a lifelong magistrate, which is at the same time the chief of the Army and the chief of the sacred organization. According to the ancient memories as well, the city was ruled by seven kings as you see here. Modern historians use to divide this long period, spanning from the middle of the 8th century BC until the end of the 6th century BC in two large phases, the early kingdom and the late kingdom as you can see on this slide. The landscape of Rome, the archaeology of Rome and of the Palatine in particular. Lets us see this changing in time. We can tell many differences from the landscape of the early kingdom and the landscape of the late kingdom as we shall see in a while. Let's have a look at the Palatine at the beginning of our story. At the very beginning of the early kingdom, the hill was surrounded by a wall which enclosed the area. Sacred places where here and here at the very corner of the hill. The fact that this hill was surrounded by a wall means that it had a special status. It was religious special status because the ancients believed that the hill had been transformed by the will of the king of the gods, Jupiter. Inside the wall, there was an inner limit, which was called the pomerium. It was really the limit of the , Urbs which is the Latin word meaning, city. You have to imagine a larger settlement with a political core at one side and one hill, just one hill surrounded by a wall and sacred by the will of the God. Archaeology lets us see some features of this framework. First of all, the wall. During the second quarter of the 8th century BC along the lowest slope of the hill, a fortification was built. We have been able to identify a stretch of this wall with a bulwark here and a gate. We have to assume that this wall was built with a sacred ceremony. We know that the limit of a settlement had to be traced by a plow as we can see here. The trace of the plow was then the foundation trench of the wall that was erected along this line. This is what we actually found. This is the foundation trench of the wall with this large stone inside. This is the foundation filled in and the bulwark. This is the threshold of the gate, and this is a small hut, maybe a sacred or a guardian hut attached to the bulwark here. A specific rite had been celebrated at the end of the construction of all this because this group of vases has been placed here in a pit underneath the threshold of the gate. At the same time, thanks to the literary evidence, we can also tell the sacred status of the whole area. For example, we know that the line of the fortification was a limit between two different Loci Sancti in Latin, this means sacred places. In these places, it was not possible to plow, to build, or to do anything. It was a sacred defense, the wall. Maybe to stress this limit, a line of small stones was placed here. Exactly Seventy Roman feet far from the line of the wall. In front, there was a valley, which had been turned into a defensive ditch. Outside of this wall, things are about to change, according to the legend of the foundation of Rome, the group of men who joined Romulus in the foundation lacked women, they needed women. But no one wanted to marry these guys because they thought they were too brave and too tough. They decided to steal women from the people around Rome, and they did. The fathers, the brothers, and the husbands of these raped girls came into Rome in seek of revenge, so an enemy army moved to Rome and there was a fight in the forum valley. At the first stage of the fight, the Romans had to retreat along the sacred way up to the gate of the Palatine. If we lay the story over the topography of the eighth century BC, this is the framework we have. The forum area, the eighth-century plots here, and the major gate here and the minor gate here. This is the place where according to this legend, Romulus stopped the flight of his army and asked Jupiter to stop his guys and promised him to found a sanctuary there. As a matter of fact, we found a sanctuary there. This is how we can imagine the whole area at the middle of the eighth century on the side of the Palatine. The major gate, the minor gate, the plot outside this gate and the sanctuary here. The religious status of the whole area changed once again because we have the defensive stretch outside and inside of the wall, and a new sacred area. This is called the locus inauguratus it's a place transformed once again by the will of the god and dedicated to a specific god. His name is Jupiter Stator, the god who stops the flight of the Romans. From an archaeological point of view, an eighth-century sanctuary is something not very substantial, but nonetheless, not so simple. We have a huge altar inside with a fire here, surrounded by a limit made of wooden posts, as you can see here by this post hole and inside an enclosure made of clay and wooden posts once again. The altar of the sanctuary is placed on the same line of the earlier stones delimiting the area in front of these walls. This sanctuary is also founded according to a ritual, and somebody offering has been buried in front of the entrance here. As you can see, the fireplace, the altar, the enclosure, and the votive offering inside here. This is what we actually found. The stones here, that pit with ashes, as you can see here, and the two vases placed inside this. This sanctuary was used from this moment on until 64AD, and it changed slowly, always maintaining its original structure for a certain time. At the beginning of the seventh century, we have a new enclosure, a new altar, a new sacellum here with the fireplace inside and the altar. At the beginning of the seventh century nonetheless, major changes are identified because the original gate is built in a new form and a large stretch of this wall is destroyed and built once again. This was the place of the original gate, which is now changed and something special is made here on this stretch. Along the street, climbing up from the valley up to the Palatine. The stretch of the wall is smashed down, and on top of it, this is the line of the destroyed wall, an enclosure. A small enclosure is built and four people are buried inside it. A man with a child, a second man, and a woman. This is the body of the man and the child inside this large vase, this is the woman and this is the second man. The remains of the skeleton are very scant, and this is the bed of fragments of vases placed on the bottom of the grave. But this is a very interesting remains because as you can see these stones here are the foundation of the wall. The guys who buried this man knew exactly where the foundation of the wall was. There's a close relation between these graves and this wall. This is why we think that all this should be interpreted as a votive offering because the wall was sacred and destroying a wall even if necessary, because it has to be upgraded and restored, needed a sacred right with major sacrifice, which is the human sacrifice. This, the vases joined to the grave with the man who's with the child and the second man and the woman. These vases let us know that these graves can be dated to the beginning of the seventh century BC. A fifth grave is placed once again inside the foundation of this wall. You see the threshold of the earlier gate, the foundation of the wall, the bulwark, the hut, and this is the place where the foundation of the wall is cut. A large vase with the body of a child and two vases placed inside it. On top of this grave, the new wall is built with a different structure. There is one line of stones here, one line of stones inside and a clay fill. This is the side of the gate with a new posts and the threshold. The place stays the same, but the structure of the wall changes. Also, a new hut is associated to this wall. The valley is still in use as a ditch. As you can see here, this is the limit. The Palatine is here, and the valley is up here. This is what we actually found. On this side of the major gate there's a second minor entrance with a threshold here. You can see this limit here and this limit and the threshold in clay. This is the valley and the trench fill of the ditch. After a few years, the first hut maybe burned down and they built up a second hut. These are two remains, once again, for the threshold of the small entrance, the line, the external line of the wall, the clay fill, the burnt floor of this new hut. This is the limit here, and this is the second limit here with a small channel or drain driving water out of the hut and out of the small gate. This is how we can imagine this. The valley had a wooden bridge, possibly the gate, that inside, and the minor gate here. We found more than one stretch of the second wall too, so for example, here we found this stretch here. You see the structure is just more or less of the same with an inner line of stones and another line of stones and the clay fill inside.
