Etruscan maritime power would be
inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when
the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the Etruscans found
themselves assailed with the severest blows oil every side by land.
About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious
war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman
annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its
course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved the memory of
the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal
commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had
undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were
slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera.
But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated
the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored
the -status quo- of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae
and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber. We
cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected
directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with
that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans
were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there
was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.

The Samnites Opposed to the Etruscans in Campania

The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves upon the
Etruscans; and hardly had their Campanian settlement been cut off
from the motherland in consequence of the battle of Cumae, when it
found itself no longer able to resist the assaults of the Sabellian
mountain tribes. Capua, the capital, fell in 330; and the Tuscan
population there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by
the Samnites. It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and
weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion: Cumae itself was
conquered by the Sabellians in 334. But the Hellenes maintained their
ground at Neapolis especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans,
while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history
--excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged
a pitiful and forlorn existence there.

Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in
Northern Italy. A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps:
it was the Celts; and