Rome Was Founded in a ... Day

The traditional date for the founding of the greatest city of the Western world was the product of guesswork by Roman writers of the late centuries BC, working backwards from their own time. There were reports of kings of Rome in the early days before the last of them, Tarquin the Proud, was expelled and the Roman Republic was founded, which was believed to have happened in 510 BC. Allowing for the reigns of Tarquin's predecessors carried the calculation back some two to three hundred years. After ranging shots by various writers, the author Varro, greatly respected for his learning in the first century BC, settled on the year 753, which became the accepted, official date. All subsequent dates were expressed ab urbe condita, 'from the city's founding'.