Introduction

The romans enjoyed ten years of peace after the end of the latin war in three 38 b c, and spent the years quietly expanding their territory. This decade saw the emergence of a new attitude towards territorial expansion. It was no longer enough to merely insure ther of rome by controlling ladium and fending off intruders. The romans now sought to spread their influence over a much wider geographic area in order to draw taxes and man power from a wider pool of citizens. No one power had controlled the entire italian peninsula before, but the romans started to think that maybe they could pull it off. They essentially looked around italy, sized up the competition, liked their odds