If we accept the traditional date for the founding of Rome, then its history extends more than twelve centuries, from 753 BCE until its fall in 476 CE. In the first century CE consecration that conferred divinity on an emperor was introduced that dominated Roman history for three hundred years. This was a ritual that established a new narrative created by the Roman Senate. Throughout this imperial period Rome projected its power and authority across the Mediterranean, much of Europe, West Asia, and northern Africa. The emperor was in fact the most dominant and compelling aspect of power in Rome and central to the dominant imperial cult of the region.

The era of the divine ruler extends from the first deification ceremony upon the death of the Emperor Augustus in 14 CE to the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312—covering about one quarter of the entire history of Rome. While historical records prior to the installation of an imperial cult are sparse, they provide a unique picture of origins entangled with numerous contributory cults of the Mediterranean world. The term “cult” has acquired a pejorative sense of fringe religion but the Latin cultus meant cultivated or cultured and thus worthy of divine status. The transition to the era of the imperial cult thus meant that emperors were now considered suitable objects of veneration and worship.

Prior to the inauguration of the imperial cult, Rome experienced two earlier forms of government. These consisted of a 250-year monarchy (753–509 BCE) followed by a 500-year republic (530–14 CE). The Roman historian Livy provided an account of both, but his treatment of the monarchy in The Early History of Rome (27 BCE) lacks the solidity of reliable history. The number of alternate dates that other Romans claimed for the founding of Rome that vary by as much as a century indicates the tenuous nature of Rome's early history. The founding cannot be untangled from myth. For instance, one story has the city founded by Romos, the offspring of Odysseus and Circe (Goldberg 1995, 50–51)—a legend that derives historical fact from a linguistic echo and incorporates the stature of one of the most prominent of Greek heroes.