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Rh limits of the Latin lowlands. The fame of the capture of Rome by the Celts had reached Athens, and her subsequent victories over marauding Celtic bands had given her prestige in South

Italy as a bulwark against northern barbarians. In 354 she had formed her first connexions beyond the Liris by a treaty with the Samnites, and in 348 followed a far more important treaty with the great maritime state of Carthage.

Rome had won her supremacy from the Ciminian forest to the Liris as the champion of the comparatively civilized

communities of the lowlands against the rude highland tribes which threatened to overrun them, and so, when her legions first crossed the Liris, it was in answer to an appeal from a lowland city against invaders from the hills. While she was engaged in clearing Latium of Volsci and Aequi, the Sabellian tribes of the central Apennines had rapidly spread over the southern half of the peninsula. Foremost among these tribes were the Samnites, a portion of whom had captured the Etruscan city of Capua in

423, the Greek Cumae in 420, and had since then ruled as masters over the fertile Campanian territory. But in their new homes the conquerors soon lost all sense of relationship and sympathy with their highland brethren. They dwelt in cities, amassed wealth, and inherited the civilization of the Greeks and Etruscans whom they had dispossessed; above all, they had before long to defend themselves in their turn against the attacks of their ruder kinsmen from the hills, and it was for aid against these that the Samnites of Campania appealed to the rising state which had already made herself known as the bulwark of the lowlands north of the Liris, and which with her Latin and Hernican allies had scarcely less interest than the Campanian cities themselves in checking the raids of the highland Samnite tribes.

The Campanian appeal was listened to. Rome with her confederates entered into alliance with Capua and the

neighbouring Campanian towns, and war was formally declared (343) against the Samnites. While to the Latins and Hernicans was entrusted apparently the defence of Latium and the Hernican valley against the northerly members of the Samnite confederacy, the Romans themselves undertook the task of driving the invaders out of Campania. After two campaigns the war was ended in

341 by a treaty, and the Samnites withdrew from the lowlands, leaving Rome the recognized suzerain of the Campanian cities which had sought her aid.

There is no doubt that the check thus given by Rome to the advance of the hitherto invincible Sabellian highlanders not only made her the natural head and champion of the low countries, south as well as north of the Liris, but also considerably added to her prestige. Carthage sent her congratulations; and the Etruscan city of Falerii voluntarily enrolled herself among the allies of Rome. Of even greater service, however, was the fact that for fifteen years the Samnites remained quiet, for this inactivity, whatever its cause, enabled Rome triumphantly to surmount a danger which threatened for the moment to wreck her whole position. This danger was nothing less than a desperate effort on the part of nearly all her allies and dependants south of the Tiber to throw off the yoke of her supremacy.

The way was led by her ancient confederates the Latini, whose smouldering discontent broke into open flame directly the fear of a Samnite attack was removed. From the Latin Campagna and the Sabine hills the revolt spread westward and southward to Antium and Tarracina, and even to the towns of the Campanian plain,

where the mass of the inhabitants at once repudiated the alliance formed with Rome by the ruling class. The struggle was sharp but short. In two pitched battles the strength of the insurrection was broken, and two more campaigns sufficed for the complete reduction of such of the insurgent communities as still held out. The revolt crushed, Rome set herself deliberately to the task of re-establishing on a new and firmer

basis her supremacy over the lowlands, and in doing so laid the foundations of that marvellous organization which was destined to spread rapidly over Italy, and to withstand the attacks even of Hannibal. The old historic Latin league ceased to exist, though its memory was still preserved by the yearly Latin festival on the Alban Mount; Most if not all of the common land of the league became Roman territory, five at least of the old Latin cities were compelled to accept the Roman franchise and enter the pale of the Roman state. The rest, with the Latin colonies, were ranked as Latin allies of Rome, but on terms which secured their complete dependence upon the sovereign city. The policy of isolation, which became so cardinal a principle of Roman rule, was now first systematically applied. No rights of conubium or commercium were any longer to exist between these communities. Their federal councils were prohibited, and all federal action independent of Rome forbidden.

In Campania and the coast-lands connecting Campania with Rome, a policy of annexation was considered safer than that

of alliance. Of the two frontier posts of the Volsci, Antium and Velitrae, the former was constituted a Roman colony, its long galleys burnt and their prows set up in the Forum at Rome, while the walls of Velitrae were razed to the ground, its leading men banished beyond the Tiber, and their lands given to Roman settlers. Farther south on the route to Campania, Fundi and Formiae were, after the precedent set in the case of Caere, declared Roman and granted the civil rights of Roman citizenship, while lastly in Campania itself the same status was given to Capua, Cumae, and the smaller communities dependent upon them.

During the ten years from 338 to 328 the work of settlement was steadily continued. Tarracina, like Antium, was made a Roman colony. Privernum, the last Volscian town to offer resistance to Rome, was subdued in 330, part of its territory allotted to Roman citizens, and the state itself forced to accept the Roman franchise. Lastly, to strengthen the lines of defence against the Sabellian tribes, two colonies with the rights of Latin allies were established

at Cales (334) and at Fregellae (328). The settlement of the lowlands was accomplished. As a single powerful and compact state with an outer circle of closely dependent allies, Rome now stood in sharp contrast with the disunited and degenerate cities of northern Etruria, the loosely organized tribes of the Apennines, and the decaying and disorderly Greek towns of the south.

The strength of this system was now to be tried by struggle with the one Italian people who were still ready and able to

contest with Rome the supremacy of the peninsula. The passive attitude of the Samnites between 342 and 327 was no doubt largely due to the dangers which had suddenly threatened them in South Italy; But the death of Alexander of Epirus, in 332, removed their only formidable opponent there, and left them free to turn their attention to the necessity of checking the steady advance of Rome. In 327, the year after the ominous foundation of a Roman colony at Fregellae, a pretext for renewing the struggle was offered them. The