This article is about the unification of Italy by the Roman Republic. For Justinian's Italian campaign, see Gothic War (535–554).
Roman expansion in Italy from 500 BC to 218 BC through the Latin War (light red), Samnite Wars (pink/orange), Pyrrhic War (beige), and First and Second Punic War (yellow and green). Cisalpine Gaul (238–146 BC) and Alpine valleys (16–7 BC) were later added. The Roman Republic in 500 BC is marked with dark red.
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Roman expansion in Italy
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The Roman expansion in Italy covers a series of conflicts in which Rome grew from being a small Italian city-state to be the ruler of the Italian region. Roman tradition attributes to the Roman kings the first war against the Sabines and the first conquests around the Alban Hills and down to the coast of Latium. The birth of the Roman Republic after the overthrow of the Etruscan monarch of Rome in 509 BC began a series of major wars between the Romans and the Etruscans. In 390 BC, Gauls from the north of Italy sacked Rome. In the second half of the 4th century BC Rome clashed repeatedly with the Samnites, a powerful tribal coalition of the Apennine region.
By the end of these wars, Rome had become the most powerful state in central Italy and began to expand to the north and to the south. 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. Starting from the First Punic War (264–241 BC) the territories subject to Roman rule also included Sicily (241 BC), Sardinia and Corsica (238 BC), islands transformed into provinces.
Later, in conjunction with the Second Punic War (218–202 BC), Rome also proceeded to subjugate the Celtic territories north of the Apennines of Cisalpine Gaul (from 222 to 200 BC) and then of the neighboring populations of Veneti (to the east) and Ligures (to the west) until reach the foothills of the Alps. With the end of the period of civil wars (44–31 BC), Augustus undertook the conquest of the Alpine valleys (from the Aosta Valley to the Arsia river in Istria) from 16 BC to 7 BC completing the conquest of the Italian geographical region. Following the conquest of the entire Alpine arc, and with it the entire Italian territory, he divided Italy into 11 regions (about 7 AD). Conquered territories were incorporated into the growing Roman state in a number of ways: land confiscations, the 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 unrivaled by any contemporary state and paved the way to the eventual Roman interference of the entire Mediterranean world.
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