... Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, was deposed. The first period in this span of more than a thousand years ended in 509 B.C. with the expulsion of the seventh and last of Rome's kings, Tarquin the Proud, and the establishment of a republic. Geography And Early Settlers Of Italy Geography did much to shape the course of events in Italy. The Italian peninsula is 600 miles long and about four times the size of Greece and two-thirds that of California. A great mountainous backbone, the Apennines, runs down almost the entire peninsula. But the land is not so rugged as Greece, and the mountains do not constitute a barrier to political unification. Unlike in Greece, a network of roads could be built to link the regions. Furthermore, the plain of Latium and its city, Rome, occupied a strategic position. It was easy to defend, and once the Romans had ...

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