SPREADING ROMAN CIVILIZATION THROUGH COLONIZATION
The first Roman settlements outside the City of Seven Hills were founded in the eighth century BC to defend territory in east Latium from attacks by mountain-based tribes. They mostly failed, yet the people of Rome persisted. When they annexed Antium on the coast in 467 BC, the Romans re-established the town as a colonia. Over the next 600 years, this special kind of ‘new town’ would prove to be a successful way to build – and hold on to – a global empire.
The colonia was an extension of the political and legal system of Rome itself. The emperor Hadrian (r. AD 117-138) noted:
[coloniae] do not come from the outside to the state, nor rely on their own roots; but they have, as it were, been propagated from
