name to the whole body
of contingent-furnishing Italian allies.(45) Whatever can still be
recognized of this grand political structure testifies to the great
political sagacity of its nameless architects; and the singular
cohesion, which that confederation composed of so many and so
diversified ingredients subsequently exhibited under the severest
shocks, stamped their great work with the seal of success. From the
time when the threads of this net drawn as skilfully as firmly around
Italy were concentrated in the hands of the Roman community, it was a
great power, and took its place in the system of the Mediterranean
states in the room of Tarentum, Lucania, and other intermediate
and minor states erased by the last wars from the list of political
powers. Rome received, as it were, an official recognition of its new
position by means of the two solemn embassies, which in 481 were sent
from Alexandria to Rome and from Rome to Alexandria, and which, though
primarily they regulated only commercial relations, beyond doubt
prepared the way for a political alliance. As Carthage was contending
with the Egyptian government regarding Cyrene and was soon to contend
with that of Rome regarding Sicily, so Macedonia was contending with
the former for the predominant influence in Greece, with the latter
proximately for the dominion of the Adriatic coasts. The new
struggles, which were preparing on all sides, could not but influence
each other, and Rome, as mistress of Italy, could not fail to be drawn
into the wide arena which the victories and projects of Alexander the
Great had marked out as the field of conflict for his successors.

Notes for Book II Chapter VII

1. The story that the Romans also sent envoys to Alexander at Babylon
on the testimony of Clitarchus (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5, 57), from
whom the other authorities who mention this fact (Aristus and
Asclepiades, ap. Arrian, vii. 15, 5; Memnon, c. 25) doubtless derived
it. Clitarchus certainly was contemporary with these events;
nevertheless, his Life of Alexander was decidedly a historical romance
rather than a history; and, looking to the silence of the trustworthy
biographers (Arrian, l. c.; Liv. ix. 18) and the utterly romantic
details of the account--which represents the Romans, for instance,
as delivering to Alexander a chaplet of gold, and the latter as
prophesying the future greatness of Rome--we cannot but set down this
story as one of the many em