Latium was a region of ancient
Italy, home to the original
Latin people. Its area constituted a part of the much larger modern
Italian Regione of
Lazio, also called
Latium in
Latin, and occasionally in modern
English. The ancient language of the region was to become the basis of
Latin.
Latium has played an important role in history, owing to its status as the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is home to celebrated works of art and architecture.
The region that would become Latium had been home to settled agricultural populations since the early Bronze Age, and was known to the Ancient Greeks. It was populated by a mixture of Indo-European and non-Indo-European language speakers. The Etruscans, from their home region of Etruria (modern day Tuscany) exerted a strong cultural and political influence on Latium from about the 8th century B.C. onward. However, they were unable to assert political hegemony over the region, which was controlled by small, autonomous city-states, somewhat akin to the contemporaneous situation in Greece. Indeed, the region's political and geographic proximity to the states of Ancient Greece had a strong impact upon its early history. The Phoenicians, who had a long tradition of trading with Italy, also exerted a more modest influence.
One of the earliest recorded non-Etruscan settlements in Latium is the quasi-mythical city of Alba Longa located somewhat southeast of the present-day city of Rome. According to Livy and other ancient authorities, it was here that the Latin League was founded, a coalition of city-states intended as a bulwark against Etruscan expansion.
