Latium (Latin: Lătĭŭm), the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the first continental European empire, originally was a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil on which resided the tribe of the Latini. It was located on the left bank of the Tiber river, northward to the Anio river (a left-bank tributary of the Tiber) and southeastward to the Pomptina Palus (Pontine Marshes, now the Pontine Fields), an uninhabitable, malarial swamp, as far south as the Circeian promontory.[1] The right bank of the Tiber was occupied by the Etruscan city of Veii, and the other borders were occupied by Italic tribes. Subsequently Rome defeated Veii and then its Italic neighbors, expanding Latium to the Apennine Mountains in the northeast and to the opposite end of the marsh in the southeast. The modern descendant, the Italian Regione of Lazio, also called Latium in Latin, and occasionally in modern English, is somewhat larger still, but not as much as double the original Latium.
The ancient language of the Latini, the tribesmen who occupied Latium, was to become the immediate predecessor of the Old Latin language, ancestor of Latin and the Romance languages. Latium has played an important role in history owing to its status as the host of the capital city of Rome, at one time the cultural and political center of the Roman Empire. Consequently, Latium is home to celebrated works of art and architecture.
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