Roman conquest of Italy

The Roman conquest of Italy was the result of a series of conflicts in which the city-state of Rome grew from being the dominant state in Latium to become the ruler of all of Italy. The first major Roman conquest in historical times came with the final defeat of her neighbour Veii in 396 BC. In the second half of the 4th century BC Rome clashed repeatedly with the Samnites, a powerful tribal coalition. By the end of these wars Rome had become the most powerful state in Italy. The last threat to Roman hegemony came when Tarentum enlisted the aid of Pyrrhus of Epirus during the Pyrrhic War (282 - 273 BC). By 218 BC Roman conquest of Italy had been completed. Conquered territories were incorporated into the growing Roman state in a number of ways: land confiscations, establishment of coloniae, granting of full or partial Roman citizenship and military alliances with nominally independent states. The successful conquest of Italy gave Rome access to a manpower pool unrivalled by any contemporary state and led the way to the eventual Roman domination of the entire Mediterranean world.

The single most important source on early Roman history is the Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BC - 17 AD), usually called Livy in English literature, who wrote a history known as Ab Urbe Condita (From the Foundation of the City) covering the entirety of Rome's history from her mythical origins up to his own times in 142 books. Of these only books 1-10 and 21-45 have survived down to our times, covering the years from the foundation up to 293 and 220 - 167 BC. However summaries of the lost books have been preserved, and later historians such as Florus, Eutropius and Orosius used Livy as their source, so that we do have some knowledge of the contents of the lost books.

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