GEOGRAPHY & MAPS
Shaped like a giant boot reaching into the Mediterranean Sea, Italy is this type of landform surrounded by water on three sides.
peninsula
An extra supply of something, like having more wheat than your village needs to survive.
Surplus
According to legend, this god of war was the father of Rome's twin founders, showing that early Romans valued military power.
Mars
The Romans adopted this neighborhood group's pantheon of gods, keeping their personalities but giving them new Latin names like Jupiter.
Greeks
Because Italy features a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, these were the two most prized crops grown.
Grapes and olives
Running down the center of Italy like a protective backbone, this mountain range made land invasions difficult.
Apennine Mountains
A lifelike Roman sculpture or statue that shows only a person’s head and shoulders.
A bust
This twin brother was killed during a fierce argument over where to build the new city, leaving his brother to rule alone.
Remus
This style of art became wildly popular when Roman realistic elements blended together with traditional Greek influences.
Greco-Roman Art
To farm on hilly or rocky areas unsuited for planting crops, Romans adapted by raising these instead.
livestock (Accept: animals/cattle/pigs/sheep)
To protect itself from surprise attacks by foreign navies and pirates, the city of Rome was built this many miles inland.
15 miles
A detailed, tiled picture created by piecing together hundreds of tiny, colored stones.
mosaic
Before being found by a shepherd, the abandoned baby twins were saved and cared for by this wild animal.
She-wolf/wolf
The Etruscans taught Roman engineers how to build this curved structural design using wedge-shaped stones held together by pressure.
Arch
This underground trench or irrigation ditch was borrowed from the Etruscans to drain swampy lowlands and bring water to dry fields.
cuniculus
This specific flat, fertile region in central Italy was where the original ancestors of the Romans first built their villages.
Latium Plain
This term describes a religion, like the one practiced by early Romans, that worships many different gods and goddesses.
polytheistic
In real history, this Indo-European tribe was the true group of early ancestors who settled Rome around 1000 B.C.
Latins
This massive Roman stadium was built specifically for chariot racing, a sport the Romans originally learned from the Etruscans.
Circus Maximus
Because the giant city of Rome grew too fast for local farms to keep up, they had to import grain from this northern African region across the sea.
Egypt
Because Italy sits in this perfect "relative location," it became a central hub able to control trade across the entire Mediterranean Sea.
the middle (or center) of the Mediterranean Sea
Romans studied these signs from nature, such as heavy weather or bird flights, to figure out if the gods were happy or mad.
He was the revered Roman poet who wrote The Aeneid, an epic poem about a Trojan hero's grand adventure to Italy.
Virgil
Unlike restricted Greek women, women from this northern culture could own property, attend public events, and talk politics with men.
Etruscans
Competing over sea lanes with this powerful trade rival in North Africa actually forced Rome to build its very first massive navy fleet.
Carthage/Carthaginians