Ancient Rome

A community portal about Ancient Rome with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a humble city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean. In its twelve-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a...more

A community portal about Ancient Rome with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a humble city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean. In its twelve-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to a vast empire. It came to dominate Western Europe and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest and assimilation. Nonetheless, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire. The western half of the empire, including Hispania, Gaul, and Italy, eventually broke into independent kingdoms in the 5th century ; the eastern empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date for the "fall of Rome" and for the subsequent onset of the Early Middle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages.