Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/90

 78 THE GLORY OF GREECE AND RISE OF ROME The Roman supremacy, however, was becoming alarming to the Latins. A war followed in which the Romans were 4. End of the victorious, and the Latin League was dissolved. Latin League. The cities of the League were deprived of their independence in many cases, but were admitted to the full Roman citizenship as Tusculum had been. Several cities of the more southerly district of Campania, which had supported the Latins, were given the more limited rights granted to Caere. In the meanwhile the Patricians had been frustrated in an attempt to ignore the Licinian Law, which only led to some extension of the right of Plebeians to the magistracies, and a limitation of the power of the Patricians in the Comitia. Now, however, the Romans found themselves in contact with a stubborn enemy, the Samnites. A war broke out, in the Wars with course of which a Roman army was entrapped in the Samnites. a p asS) the Caudine Forks, and had to submit to the degradation of 'passing under the yoke.' The war was still going on without showing any marked prospect of a decisive victory on either side, when the Etruscans again took up arms. They had hardly been overcome and forced to submission, when the Sabellian tribes on the east joined their Samnite kinsmen. A peace was patched up, but not for long. The Samnites with other Sabellians, the Etruscans, and a contingent of Gauls, renewed the war. The Etruscans were again forced to make peace; and at last the Samnites, practically isolated, came to terms with the Romans after nearly half a century of indecisive fighting. The year 287 is notable for the Hortensian Law, which finally ratified a principle which had more than once been enacted : Hortensian that the Plebeian assembly of tribes could pass Law. laws with authority as complete as though they had been ratified in the Comitia Centuriata. The expansion of Rome was now bringing her in contact with the peoples of the south, where the Greek colonies were situated. Roman intervention was invited in local quarrels; the opportunity was taken for fresh risings of the hostile peoples. The Roman arms were successful, but the intrigues of the Greek