Italian peninsula during the Ancient Rome

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roman Italy</span>

Roman Italy

Italia was the homeland of the ancient Romans. According to Roman mythology, Italy was the ancestral home promised by Jupiter to Aeneas of Troy and his descendants, Romulus and Remus, who were the founders of Rome. Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italic city-state that changed its form of government from Kingdom to Republic and then grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Gauls, Ligures, Veneti, Camunni and Histri in the North, the Etruscans, Latins, Falisci, Picentes and Umbri tribes in the Centre, and the Iapygian tribes , the Oscan tribes and Greek colonies in the South. The consolidation of Italy into a single entity occurred during the Roman expansion in the peninsula, when Rome formed a permanent association with most of the local tribes and cities. Such a status meant that, within Italy in times of peace, Roman magistrates also exercised the imperium domi as an alternative to the imperium militiae . Italy's inhabitants had Latin Rights as well as religious and financial privileges. The period between the end of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century BC was turbulent, beginning with the Servile Wars, continuing with the opposition of aristocratic élite to populist reformers and leading to a Social War in the middle of Italy. However, Roman citizenship was recognized to the rest of the Italians by the end of the conflict and then extended to Cisalpine Gaul when Julius Caesar became Roman Dictator. In the context  of the transition from Republic to Principate, Italy swore allegiance to Octavian Augustus and was then organized in eleven regions from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. 