At the
consummation of the conquest of Italy in B.C. 270 Roman burghership
already extended, in varying degrees of completeness, through the
greater part of Etruria and Campania, from the coast to the mountains;
while all the rest of Italy was admitted to privileges for which ancient
history had elsewhere furnished no precedent. Hence the invasion of
Hannibal half a century later, even with its stupendous victories of
Thrasymene and Cannae, effected nothing toward detaching the Italian
subjects from their allegiance to Rome; and herein we have a most
instructive contrast to the conduct of the communities subject to Athens
at several critical moments of the Peloponnesian War. With this
consolidation of Italy, thus triumphantly demonstrated, the whole
problem of the conquering career of Rome was solved. All that came
afterwards was simply a corollary from this. The concentration of all
the fighting power of the peninsula into the hands of the ruling city
formed a stronger political aggregate than anything the world had as yet
seen. It was not only proof against the efforts of the greatest military
genius of antiquity, but whenever it was brought into conflict with the
looser organizations of Greece, Africa, and Asia, or with the
semi-barbarous tribes of Spain and Gaul, the result of the struggle was
virtually predetermined.
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