After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine territory, Rome evidently felt herself powerful enough to tighten the reins of her hegemony and to reduce the whole of the Latin cities to a position so dependent that they became in fact completely subject.  At this period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were subject to Rome, viz. the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii, and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans.  This plainly shows by what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected by it and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course.

It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least—­if not also the Hernican—­retained its formal title to a third of the gains of war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of rights; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the exasperation which at this period prevailed among the Latins against Rome.  Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign standards against the community at their head, wherever they found armies in the field against Rome; but in 405 even the Latin federal assembly resolved to refuse to the Romans its contingent.  To all appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock.  After the overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions unchecked approached the Liris.  As early as 397 they had contended; successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the upper Liris.  Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier; and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy—­a struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians —­the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period—­on the other by the Greeks and Etruscans.  But the fall of the Etruscan power towards the end of the