Rome, planted on a march, rose, in the way in which marchlands often do rise, to supremacy among her fellows. Our first authentic record of the early commonwealth sets Rome before us as bearing rule over the whole of Latium. This dominion she seems to have lost soon after the driving out of the kings, and some of her territory right of the Tiber seems to have become Etruscan. Presently Rome appears, no longer as mistress of Latium, but as forming one member of a triple league concluded on equal terms with the Latins as a body, and with the Hernicans. ♦Wars with her neighbours.♦ This league was engaged in constant wars with its neighbours of the Oscan race, the _Æquians_ and _Volscians_, by whom many of the Latin cities were taken. ♦More distant wars. | B.C. 396.♦ But the first great advance of Rome’s actual dominion was made on the right bank of the Tiber, by the taking of the Etruscan city of _Veii_. ♦B.C. 343.♦ Fifty years later Rome began to engage in more distant wars; and we may say generally that the conquest of Italy was going on bit by bit for eighty years more. ♦B.C. 296.♦ By the end of that time, all Italy, in the older sense, was brought in one shape or another under the Roman dominion. The neighbouring districts, both Latin and of other races, had been admitted to citizenship. Roman and Latin colonies were planted in various parts of the country; elsewhere the old cities, Etruscan, Samnite, Greek, or any other, still remained as dependent allies of Rome. ♦Incorporation of the Italian states. | B.C. 89.♦ Presently Rome went on to win dominion out of Italy; but the Italian states still remained in their old relation to Rome, till the Italian allies received the Roman franchise after the _Social_ or _Marsian_ war. The _Samnites_ alone held out, and they may be said to have been altogether exterminated in the wars of Sulla. The rest of Italy was Roman. § 3. _The Western Provinces._