Roman Italy (called Italia in both the Latin and Italian languages referring to the Italian Peninsula) was the homeland of the Romans and metropole of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in classical antiquity. According to Roman mythology, Italy was the ancestral home promised by Jupiter to Aeneas of Troy and his descendants, who were the founders of Rome. Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italic city-state that changed its form of government from Kingdom to Republic and then grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Gauls, Ligures, Veneti, Camunni and Histri in the North, the Etruscans, Latins, Falisci, Picentes and Umbri tribes (such as the Sabines) in the Centre, and the Iapygian tribes (such as the Messapians), the Oscan tribes (such as the Samnites) and Gre