REVOLT OF THE LATIN CITIES (340-338 B.C.).--The strife between the Romans and their Latin allies was simply the old contest within the walls of the capital between the patricians and the plebeians transferred to a larger arena. As the nobles had oppressed the commons, so now both these orders united in the oppression of the Latins--the plebeians in their bettered circumstances forgetting the lessons of adversity. The Latin allies demanded a share in the government, and that the lands acquired by conquest should be distributed among them as well as among Roman citizens. The Romans refused. All Latium rose in revolt against the injustice and tyranny of the oppressor. After about three years' hard fighting, the rebellion was subdued. The Latin League was now broken up. Some of the towns retained their independence (Tibur, Præneste, and Cora); some received full Roman citizenship (Aricia, Lanuvium, and Nomentum); while others received only the private rights of Roman citizens, the right of suffrage being withheld. SECOND AND THIRD SAMNITE WARS (326-290 B.C.).--In a few years after the close of the Latin contest, the Romans were at war again with their old rivals, the Samnites. Notwithstanding the latter were thoroughly defeated in this second contest, still it was not long before they were again in arms and engaged in their third struggle with Rome. This time they had formed a powerful coalition which embraced the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Gauls, and other nations. Roman courage rose with the danger. The united armies of the league met with a most disastrous defeat (at Sentinum, 295 B.C.), and the power of the coalition was broken. One after another the states that had joined the alliance were chastised, and the Samnites were forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. A few years later, almost all of the Greek cities of Southern Italy, save Tarentum, also came under the growing power of the imperial city. WAR WITH PYRRHUS (282-272 B.C.).--Tarentum was one of the most noted of the Hellenic cities of Magna Græcia. It was a seaport on the Calabrian coast, and had grown opulent through the extended trade of its merchants. The capture of some Roman vessels, and an insult offered to an envoy of the republic by the Tarentines, led to a declaration of war against them by the Roman Senate. The Tarentines turned to Greece for aid. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a cousin of Alexander the Great, who had an ambition to build up such an empire in the West as his renowned kinsman had established in the East, responded to their entreaties, and crossed over into Italy with a small army of Greek mercenaries and twenty war- elephants. He organized and drilled the effeminate Tarentines, and soon felt prepared to face the Romans.