THE SITE WHERE ROME WAS BORN
After c. 800, signs appear that a larger and more highly organized community was emerging. Burials begin to concentrate at a few large cemeteries on the margins of the settled area; meanwhile the scattered cemeteries, each shared by a few hamlets, begin to fall into disuse. The first graves in the Esquiline necropolis in the seventh and sixth centuries Rome’s chief cemetery date to this period. At the same time, finds of Greek pottery on the site of the Forum Boarium may show not only that the inhabitants of Rome were in contact with distant places, but also that the plain along the Tiber River had already taken up its later role as market and port. Later too, this area would be the site of the Ara Maxima, an altar dedicated to the Greek hero Heracles (Latin, Hercules) and associated with commerce; his cult may have been established here as early as the eighth century.
Perhaps the most striking indications that a more highly organized community now occupied the site of Rome have emerged along the northeast slopes of the Palatine hill. Here, recent excavations have uncovered a mid-eighth-century wall, built of clay and timber on a stone foundation, running along the bottom of the hill. The wall’s function is uncertain: Some scholars believe it to be a fortification, while others suggest that it marked some sacred boundary. Between 675 and 550, three successive stone walls followed the line of the early clay-and-timber wall; but by around 530 the usefulness of all these walls had ended, for builders now covered them with a large earth platform supporting a number of private dwellings. Even though the construction of the first wall naturally required much organization and effort, the identity of the workforce remains obscure. Residents of the villages on the Palatine may have been responsible, although it is possible that people from other hills also participated, making the wall an early sign of an increasingly united community.
From the middle of the seventh century, the Romans began to transform the val¬ley separating the hills into the civic and religious center of the city, the Forum Ro-manum. Earlier, this valley much of which was marshy and liable to flooding held no more than a few clusters of huts and some cemeteries. The first phase of construction, which began around 650, turned part of the valley into a place where Romans could gather for communal events; for this purpose, the huts were cleared, the valley’s lowest areas were drained and filled, and a rough surface of beaten earth was laid. A quarter of a century later, this pavement was refurbished and extended by filling in more wetlands. Henceforth the Forum would serve as the chief place for large public assemblies and ceremonies in the city.