Roman colonization

AbstractAccording to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian who wrote a history of regal and early republican Rome in the final decades of the 1st centuryBCE, the Roman practice of founding colonies in newly conquered territories started as early as the reign of Romulus, who is credited with the foundation of Fidenae (DH 2.53.4). Dionysius describes the colony as a garrison of three hundred men. Modern historians regard Romulus as a purely legendary figure and find it difficult to believe that Dionysius or his sources had any reliable information about historical events that took place in the 8th centuryBCE. It seems clear, for instance, that Dionysius' description of Romulean Fidenae was inspired by the citizen colonies of mid‐republican times (cf. below). The reliability of the tradition (e.g. Livy 1.33) which credits the fourth king, Ancus Hostilius, with the foundation of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber is also doubtful. Archaeologists place the establishment of the first fortified settlement at Ostia between 380 and 350BCErather than in the second half of the 7th centuryBCE(Cornell 1995: 321).