=--Rome began by subjecting her neighbors, the
Latins, first, then the little peoples of the south, the Volscians,
the AEquians, the Hernicans, later the Etruscans and the Samnites, and
finally the Greek cities. This was the hardest and slowest of their
conquests: beginning with the time of the kings, it did not terminate
until 266, after four centuries of strife.[124]
The Romans had to fight against peoples of the same race as
themselves, as vigorous and as brave as they. Some who were not
content to obey they exterminated. The rich plains of the Volscians
became a swampy wilderness, uninhabitable even to the present time,
the gloomy region of the Pontine marshes.
In the land of the Samnites there were still recognizable, three
hundred years after the war, the forty-five camps of Decius and the
eighty-six of Fabius, less apparent by the traces of their
intrenchments than by the solitude of the neighborhood.
=The Punic Wars.=--Come into Sicily, Rome antagonized Carthage. Then
began the Punic wars (that is to say, against the Phoenicians). There
were three of these wars. The first, from 264 to 241, was determined
by naval battles; Rome became mistress of Sicily.
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