The Romans: Gallery 1 - Origins of Rome

The bronze sculpture of the Capitoline wolf and twins is one of the most famous symbols of early Rome. The wolf (85 cm high) was believed until very recently to be Etruscan work from the end of the sixth or early fifth century BC. It was officially announced in July 2008 that carbon dating and other tests now gave an indication of a thirteenth-century AD date for the sculpture, with the suggestion that it was cast somewhere in the valley of the river Tiber. The figures of the boys were added in the fifteenth century. (VRoma: Conservatori Museum, Rome: Barbara McManus)

Handle of a silver bowl of the second century AD. Mars and two cupids descend from mount Olympus on a sleeping Rhea Silvia. (VRoma: British Museum: Barbara McManus)

(VRoma: “The Rape of the Sabine Women”, sixteenth-century fresco by Cavalier d’Arpino. Capitoline Museum, Rome: Susan Bonvallet)

Aeneas on his voyaging. (Detail from the Low Ham fourth-century AD mosaic pavement. VRoma: Somerset County Museums: Barbara McManus)

The Emperor Augustus (Suzanne Cross)

Aeneas, carrying his aged father on his back, leads Ascanius from the devastation of Troy. Bronze coin issued by the emperor Antoninus in AD 147 to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the founding of Rome. (VRoma: British Museum: Barbara McManus)

Thatched village hut, 8th century BC, on the Palatine Hill. (From Helen and Richard Leacroft, The Buildings of Ancient Rome, Brockhampton Press, 1969)

Etruscan temple, based on the description by the Roman architect Vitruvius. Steps led up to a platform (podium), across which was a wide portico. While some temples had only one room inside (cella), others had three, each one dedicated to a different god. (From Helen and Richard Leacroft, The Buildings of Ancient Rome, Brockhampton Press 1969)

Etruscan terracotta sculpture, known as an antefix, depicting the head of Medusa, one of the gorgons. It was used on a temple roof to hide the gap between the sloping roof and the tiles below. (VRoma: Villa Giulia Museum, Rome: Barbara McManus)

Servius Tullius transferred the regional festival of Diana, goddess of wild nature and hunting, from Aricia to the Aventine Hill. (Gallery of the Candelabra, Vatican: René Seindal)

Bronze decussis ( = 10 asses) of the third century BC, with the image of an ox. (From Sir John Edwin Sandys (ed.), A Companion to Latin Studies, Cambridge University Press 1913)

The Porta all’ Arco at Volterra, an Etruscan gate of the fourth century BC, is still standing. (Acknowledgment to Communi di Volterra)

Tarquinius Superbus planned, if not also built, the Cloaca Maxima (Great Sewer) of republican and imperial Rome. Its arched exit, where it discharged into the Tiber, can still be seen under the Ponte Palatino.(VRoma: Jim Reubel)

Etruscan terracotta horses at Tarquinia. (VRoma: Susan Bonvallet)

Etruscan bronze head, with inlaid eyes, of a Roman, so-called Lucius Junius Brutus, leader of the rebellion against Tarquinius. (VRoma: Capitoline Museums, Rome: Barbara McManus)

Mucius Scaevola plunges his right hand into the fire. (Sixteenth-century fresco by Tommaso Laureti: VRoma: Susan Bonvallet)

Model of Rome from the time of Tarquinius to the beginning of the republic. (VRoma: EUR, Rome: Ann Raia)

(Richard Stoneman)