Happy Birthday, Rome!

Today is the traditional celebration of the anniversary of the founding of Rome by Romulus in 753 B.C. Early Roman history is shrouded in all kinds of myth and legend regarding Romulus, his brother Remus and their Trojan ancestry, but it has long been accepted that this is not an unreasonable year to assign the city's beginning. Here is an interesting article that suggests there may have been more to the original Rome than the collection of mud huts generally assumed.

The Romans themselves used a method of counting years based on the this anniversary, so that one can see dates recorded as being so many years "ab urbe condita" or "AUC" which means "from the founding of the city".