Roman expansion in Italy

The last threat to Roman hegemony came during the Pyrrhic war (280–275 BC) when Tarentum enlisted the aid of the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus to campaign in the North of Italy.

Resistance in Etruria was finally crushed in 265–264 BC, the same year the First Punic War began and brought Roman forces outside of the peninsula for the first time.

The successful conquest of Italy gave Rome access to a manpower pool unrivaled by any contemporary state and paved the way to the eventual Roman interference of the entire Mediterranean world.

[4][5] Although Livy, a Roman historian, in his work Ab Urbe condita lists a series of seven kings of archaic Rome, from the first settlement up to the first years, the first four 'kings' (Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martius) are almost certainly entirely apocryphal.

[14] The last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, was the first to fight the Volsci[15][16] and then subdued numerous cities of Latium vetus, making peace with the Etruscans.

From 390 BC, many Gallic tribes had begun to invade Italy from the north, unbeknownst to the Romans whose interests still turned to security on an essentially local scenario.

Rome was alerted by a particularly warlike tribe,[27] the Senones, who invaded the Etruscan province of Siena from the north and attacked the city of Clusium (Chiusi),[28] not far from the sphere of Roman influence.

The Gauls, led by the leader Brennus, defeated a Roman army of about 15,000 soldiers[27] and pursued the fugitives right into the city itself, which was subjected to a partial but humiliating sack[29][30] before being driven out or convinced to leave on payment of a ransom.

Considering the natural barrier of the Alps to the north and still not wanting to compete in battle with the proud Gallic peoples, Rome turned its gaze elsewhere, to Sicily and the Mediterranean islands, bringing it into open conflict with its former ally, Carthage, in the Punic Wars.

During the Second Punic War, Rome also subjugated the Celtic territories north of the Apennines of Cisalpine Gaul (from 222 to 200 BC) and then those of the neighbouring Veneti (to the east) and the Ligures (to the west) before reaching the base of the Alps.

After crossing the Po river the Roman penetration continued peacefully; the local populations, Cenomani and Veneti, realized that Rome was the only power capable of protecting them from the assaults of the other neighboring tribes.

A few decades later, Polybius could personally testify to the decline of the Celtic population in the Po valley, expelled from the region or confined to some limited subalpine areas.

[59] After the second Punic War, Rome pursued an unprecedented program of reorganisation in southern Italy where many of the cities were annexed to the Roman Republic in 205 BC as a consequence of their defection to Hannibal.

In the south, for example, the Italian aristocrats began to organise mixed marriages with the Roman and Etruscan aristocracies, in order to create conjugal relationships that led to blood ties throughout the peninsula.

So he proposed to distribute excess land to less well-off citizens, giving new vigor to the class of small agricultural owners, which was in serious difficulty due to the continuous wars.

[67] The constant wars at home and abroad forced the small landowners to abandon their farms for many years to serve in the legions; but they supplied Rome (by means of looting and conquests) with an enormous quantity of cheap goods[68] and slaves, who were usually employed in the farms of the wealthy, with huge consequences for the Roman social fabric, as small landed property could not compete with the slave estates, with their low running costs.

All those families who, due to debts, had been forced to leave the countryside, took refuge in Rome, where they formed an urban underclass; a mass of people who had no job, no home and no food to eat, with the inevitable and dangerous social tensions in the Italian world.

[77] Many historians agree that the Roman civil wars, mostly fought on Italian soil, were a logical consequence of a long process of decline of Rome's political institutions, which began with the murders of the Gracchi in 133 and 121 BC.

[78] and continue with the reform of the legions of Gaius Marius, who was the first to hold many extraordinary public positions inaugurating an example that would be followed by the future aspiring dictators of the decadent republic, the social war, the clash between Marians and Sullans which ended with the establishment of the dictatorship of Sulla, known for the proscription lists issued in its course, and finally in the First Triumvirate.

That same year, citizenship was also extended to the Cisalpine Gauls and the Veneti through the Lex Roscia, crowning the long-awaited social integration of the entire Italian peninsula, effectively becoming all Italics, Romans to all intents and purposes.

The young man hastened to claim the adoptive name of Gaius Julius Caesar, publicly declaring that he accepted his father's inheritance and therefore asking to take possession of the family assets.

The Senate, and in particular Cicero, who saw him at that moment as an inexperienced beginner given his young age,[84] ready to be manipulated by the senatorial aristocracy, and who appreciated the weakening of Antony's position, approved the ratification of the will.

With Caesar's patrimony now at his disposal, Octavian was able to recruit a private army of about 3,000 veterans, while Mark Antony, having obtained the assignment of Cisalpine Gaul already entrusted to the proprietor Decimus Brutus, was preparing to wage war on the Caesaricides to regain favor of the Caesarian faction.

On this occasion Cicero wrote to Titus Pomponius Atticus demonstrating certainty about Octavian's fidelity to the republican cause, certain of the possibility of exploiting the potential of that young scion to eliminate Antony,[85] who emerged unscathed (to the orator's grave displeasure) from the Ides.

[88] At that point, however, Octavian had to face the ambitions of Lepidus, who believed that Sicily should be his turn and, breaking the alliance pact, moved to take possession of it with 20 legions.

However, quickly defeated, after his soldiers abandoned him by going over to Octavian's side, Lepidus was finally confined to the Circeo, while retaining the public office of pontifex maximus.

[89] After the gradual elimination of all contenders over six years, from Brutus and Cassius, to Sextus Pompeius and Lepidus, the situation remained in the sole hands of Octavian, in the West, and Antony, in the East, leading to an inevitable increase in contrasts between the two triumvirs.

Only the casus belli was missing, which Octavian found in Antony's will, in which his decision to leave the eastern territories of Rome to Cleopatra of Egypt and her children, including Caesarion, son of Caesar, were recorded.

[90][91] Octavian had become, in fact, the absolute master of the Roman state, even if formally Rome was still a republic and Octavian himself had not yet been invested with any official power, given that his potestas of triumvir had never been renewed: in the Res Gestae Divi Augusti acknowledges having governed in recent years by virtue of the "potitus rerum omnium per consensum universorum" ("general consensus"), having for this reason received a sort of perpetual tribunicia potestas[92] (certainly an extra-constitutional fact).

Among the privileges of Italy there was also the construction of a dense road network, the embellishment of the cities by equipping them with numerous public structures (forums, temples, amphitheaters, theaters and baths)[96] and tax collection offices.