Founded around 750 B.C.E., Rome was first ruled by kings. In the sixth century B.C.E., an aristocratic revolt led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic. Over the next two hundred years, Rome gained control of the whole Italian peninsula, partly by conquest and partly in alliance with other states. During these same centuries, Rome’s legal and political institutions underwent substantial change, as the common people of Rome, the plebeians, fought for, and won, greater political and legal equality. In the course of three wars (264 to 146 B.C.E.) the Romans destroyed Carthage, the greatest power in the western Mediterranean, clearing the way for further Roman expansion. The wealth that came with the expanding empire allowed Roman culture to flourish and created more opportunities for leisure and the arts. Expansion was not, however, without costs. As the first millennium B.C.E. came to a close, republican institutions proved insufficient to cope with the growing social and economic problems created by expansion, and Rome descended into military rule and civil war. ■