Dr Simon Elliott

I have to say, that's a really good question, actually, Dan, because...

I wouldn't personally definitively say he would think that Rome was important at all.

There are much more important cities in the Italian peninsula.

So for example, when I'm leading tours in Campania, the place we go to first is Paestum, which was Poseidonia, which was an amazing sort of port with through the best classical temples in the ancient world.

You'd have probably heard of Poseidonia, maybe not have heard of Rome.

That's a really good question.

They really, really, really don't like kings.

So the last Etruscan Roman king, Tarquin the Proud, was overthrown in 509 BC and that's when the Roman Republic begins.

So 509.

509.

Now that runs all the way through to 27 BC when Augustus is acclaimed the first emperor by the Senate.

So that is the Roman Republic that we're talking about there.

And they don't like kings.

You can see by analogy the same thing happening in the States today where you have campaigns saying no kings.

So it's intrinsically threaded through Roman psyche from the point Tarquins discarded that no more kings existed.

And they're quite clever at sharing power.

So let's quickly run through Roman society.

Bottom, slaves.

Then freed men who were manumitted slaves.

Then free men who had never been slaves.