s 397 they had contended;
successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the
upper Liris. Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier;
and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful
of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the
sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy--a
struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within
the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable
period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the
Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto
found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians
--the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period--on the
other by the Greeks and Etruscans. But the fall of the Etruscan power
towards the end of the third, and the decline of the Greek colonies in
the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west
and south; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to,
and even moved across, the south Italian seas. They first made their
appearance in the plain adjoining the bay, with which the name of
the Campanians has been associated from the beginning of the fourth
century; the Etruscans there were suppressed, and the Greeks were
confined within narrower bounds; Capua was wrested from the former
(330), Cumae from the latter (334). About the same time, perhaps even
earlier, the Lucanians appeared in Magna Graecia: at the beginning
of the fourth century they were involved in conflict with the people
of Terina and Thurii; and a considerable time before 364 they had
established themselves in the Greek Laus. About this period their
levy amounted to 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry. Towards the end of
the fourth century mention first occurs of the separate confederacy of
the Bruttii,(19) who had detached themselves from the Lucanians--not,
like the other Sabellian stocks, as a colony, but through a quarrel
--and had become mixed up with many foreign elements. The Greeks of
Lower Italy tried to resist the pressure of the barbarians; the league
of the Achaean cities was reconstructed in 361; and it was determined
that, if any of the allied towns should be assailed by the Lucanians,
all should furnish contingents, and that the leader