A League of Latine cities is said to have been founded in the eighth century, and Rome under her kings gradually attained in it a leading position. The expulsion of the kings and the introduction of an Aristocratic government, with two consuls and a governing assembly, the Senate, caused internal dissensions which brought the Romans again under the rule of the Etruscans, until, after a long period of strife, the conditions were reversed and Rome with the Latines and Sabines conquered all round.
This development was interrupted by the Keltic invasion, which in the beginning of the fourth century descended on Italy from over the Alps. Rome was overwhelmed but soon recovered herself and drove back the Kelts, who then settled permanently in the Plain of the Po. No energetic attempts were made to Latinize them till after the Second Punic War. The powerful mountain tribes gave the Romans much trouble, as we learn from the accounts of the Samnite wars, the more so as these nations had just before destroyed the Etruscan rule in Campania and had laid hands on several of the Greek colonies.
After the overthrow of the Samnites, Lucanians, and other nations of Southern Italy, the Greek towns on the coast necessarily became subject to Rome. Tarentum held out the last by inviting over Pyrrhus, the warlike but unstable King of Epirus, and made a successful stand during a series of years until it fell in 270 B.C., and Rome was acknowledged as the predominant power from the Apennines to the Straits of Messina.
This war with Tarentum had forced Rome, owing to the expedition of Pyrrhus to Sicily, to interfere in the politics and trade of the island. Since the overthrow of the Etruscans the dominion of the Tyrrhenian Sea had fallen into the hands of Rome. Thus she became a rival of Carthage, who had treated the Western Mediterranean from Africa and Sicily onwards as her own domain and had made the utmost of it.
Assistance given to the Greeks of Sicily and an alliance with the Mamertines of Messina brought about a conflict with Carthage, leading to the First Punic War and a delimitation of the respective spheres of influence. Carthage surrendered the island but compensated herself richly in Spain. Sicily was shared between Rome and Hiero of Syracuse, and became the first Roman Province.
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