league itself, which seems to have been offered on the one hand by the expelled Tarquins, and on the other by the royal clans and by partisans well affected to monarchy in the other communities of Latium.  The mighty development of the power of Etruria that occurred at this very time, the constant assaults of the Veientes, and the expedition of Porsena, may have materially contributed to secure the adherence of the Latin nation to the once-established form of union, or, in other words, to the continued recognition of the supremacy of Rome, and disposed them for its sake to acquiesce in a change of constitution for which, beyond doubt, the way had been in many respects prepared even in the bosom of the Latin communities, nay perhaps to submit even to an enlargement of the rights of hegemony.

Extension of Rome and Latium to the East and South

The permanently united nation was able not only to maintain, but also to extend on all sides its power.  We have already(9) mentioned that the Etruscans remained only for a short time in possession of supremacy over Latium, and that the relations there soon returned to the position in which they stood during the regal period; but it was not till more than a century after the expulsion of the kings from Rome that any real extension of the Roman boundaries took place in this direction.

With the Sabines who occupied the middle mountain range from the borders of the Umbrians down to the region between the Tiber and the Anio, and who, at the epoch when the history of Rome begins, penetrated fighting and conquering as far as Latium itself, the Romans notwithstanding their immediate neighbourhood subsequently came comparatively little into contact.  The feeble sympathy of the Sabines with the desperate resistance offered by the neighbouring peoples in the east and south, is evident even from the accounts of the annals; and—­what is of more importance—­we find here no fortresses to keep the land in subjection, such as were so numerously established especially in the Volscian plain.  Perhaps this lack of opposition was connected with the fact that the Sabine hordes probably about this very time poured themselves over Lower Italy.  Allured by the pleasantness of the settlements on the Tifernus and Volturnus, they appear to have interfered but little in the conflicts of which the region to the south of the Tiber was the arena.

At the Expense of the Aequi and Volsci—­
League with the Hernici

Far more vehement and lasting was the resistance of the Aequi, who, having their settlements to the eastward of Rome as far as the valleys of the Turano and Salto and on the northern verge of the Fucine lake, bordered with the Sabines and Marsi,(10) and of the Volsci, who to the south of the Rutuli settled around Ardea, and of the Latins extending southward as far as Cora, possessed the coast almost as far as the river Liris along with the adjacent islands and in the interior