Rome had now completed the conquest of Italy up to the margin of the valley of the Po, and had everywhere inaugurated the system sketched in broad outline above. How firmly she had welded it was proved by the fiery test of the war of Hannibal. There was no lack of the particularist spirit even in Italy, and the numerous nationalities which inhabited the peninsula, none of whom understood the language of the others, had no such common bond as knit the various tribes of Greece together. In the territory over which Rome ruled in 264, no less than six different languages were spoken, without counting the Ligurians, Celts, and Veneti. But Rome, by repressing all open insubordination with inflexible energy while at the same time pursuing a liberal policy with regard to the interests of the dependent communities and leaving scope for local autonomy as long as it was not dangerous to herself, did more than create a political entity; from this germ begins to grow a sentiment of Italian nationality that reaches beyond racial differences, and the new nation of the Italians or toga-wearers (togati) has come to the birth.
The mainspring of Roman success was the policy of agrarian expansion, and the farmers were the first to profit by it. This fact rendered impossible the development of a municipal democracy after the Greek model (such as Appius Claudius had attempted to set up in 308) based upon capital, trade, and handicraft, and the masses of the urban population, with an all-powerful demagogue at its head.
From that time forward the urban population, restricted as it was to four districts, was practically overridden, as far as political rights were concerned, in the comitia tributa (with which ordinary legislation rested) by the thirty-one districts of the agricultural class. But as the state grew into a great power and its chief town into a metropolis, the urban elements could not fail to acquire increasing influence, especially the wealthy capitalists (consisting largely of freedmen and the descendants of freedmen) who managed all matters of public finance. In the comitia centuriata which were organised on the basis of a property qualification, and whose functions included the election of magistrates and the settlement of peace and war, these circles exercised very great influence, and the wealthiest found a compact organisation in the eighteen centuries of knights.
The interests of the agricultural class did not extend beyond Italy; the late wars had provided plenty of land for distribution, and if more were wanted it could be found in the territory of the Celts on the Po, the southern portion of which had been conquered as early as 282 but not yet divided. The interests of the urban elements, the capitalists, on the contrary, extended beyond the sea. To them the most pressing business of the moment was to vindicate the preponderance of the state to the outside world, to adjust their relations abroad as best suited their own interests, and to deliver Italy from foreign competition, and, above all, from Carthage; and not a few of the great ruling families were allured, like the Claudii, by the tempting prospect.
Carthage and Rome had come dangerously near together during the last few decades. As long before as the year 306 the two had concluded a compact by which Rome was not to intervene in Sicily nor Carthage in Italy. The rival states had indeed united against Pyrrhus, but without ever laying aside their mutual distrust; each feared that the other might effect a lodgment within its sphere of influence. And now, in the year 264, the Oscan community of the Mamertines in Messana (whilom mercenaries of Agathocles, who had exterminated the Greek inhabitants of the city) appealed to both Carthage and Rome for aid against Hiero, the ruler of Syracuse.
Rome was thus brought face to face with the most momentous decision in her whole history. The Romans were not untroubled by moral scruples nor blind to the fact that to accede to the petition would necessarily lead to war with Carthage, since Carthage had promptly taken the city under her protection and occupied it with her troops; but the opportunity was too tempting, and if it were allowed to pass, the whole of the rich island would undoubtedly fall under the sovereignty of Carthage for evermore, and her power, formidable already, would be correspondingly increased. The senate hesitated, but the consul Appius Claudius brought the matter before the comitia centuriata, and they decided in favour of rendering assistance, and thereby in favour of war.
It was a step that could never be retraced, a step of the same incalculable consequence to Rome as the occupation of Silesia was to Prussia, or the war with Spain and the occupation of Cuba and the Philippines to the United States of America. Its immediate consequences were a struggle of twenty-four years’ duration with Carthage for the possession of Sicily, and the creation of a Roman sea power which was not merely a match for that of Carthage, but actually annihilated it; its ultimate result was the acquisition of a dominion beyond sea in which Rome for the first time bore rule over tributary subjects governed by Roman magnates and exploited by Italian capitalists. A further consequence was that the Romans took advantage of the difficulties in which Carthage was involved by a mutiny of mercenaries in 237 to wrest Sardinia and Corsica from her and at the same time once more exact a huge indemnity.
In other directions, too, Rome became more and more deeply involved in the affairs of the outside world, and consequently with the political system of Hellenic states. As in the old conflict with the Etruscans and the recent war with Carthage, so a decade later she solved in the Levant a problem which had been propounded to Greece and for the solution of which she had not been strong enough. When the pirate state of the Illyrians of Scodra extended to the coasts of Italy the ravages it had inflicted upon the Greeks, Rome took vigorous action, used her lately acquired sea power for the speedy overthrow of the pirate state (229) and planted her foot firmly on the coast of the Balkan peninsula; thereby encroaching on the sphere of influence of Macedonia, which was constrained to be a helpless spectator.
On the other hand the close amity with the court of Alexandria, which had been inaugurated after the war with Pyrrhus, was cemented; there were no grounds for antagonism between the first maritime power of the East and the first land power of the West, while, as far as their rivals were concerned, the interests of the two in both spheres went hand in hand. One result of this development was the ever readier acceptance of Greek civilisation at Rome. After the conclusion of the First Punic War the Greek drama, which formed the climax of the festivals of the Hellenic world, was adopted in the popular festivals of Rome, and a Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum, Livius Andronicus by name, who translated the Greek plays into Latin, likewise introduced Greek scholarship into Rome and translated the Odyssey, the Greek reading-book. There is no need to tell how with this the development of Latin literature begins, or how Nævius the Latin, who himself had fought in the First Punic War, takes his place beside the Greek author as a Roman national poet.
In other respects, however, Rome returned to her ancient Italian policy. After the year 236 she entered upon hostilities with the Ligurians north of the Arno; in 232 the border country taken from the Gauls was partitioned and settled by Caius Flaminius. This led to another great war with the Celts (225-222), the outcome of which was the conquest of the valley of the Po—involving the acquisition of another vast region for partition and colonisation. In this war the Veneti and the Celtic tribe of the Cenomani (between the Adige and the Addua) had voluntarily allied themselves with Rome, and her dominion therefore extended everywhere to the foot of the Alps.