The early history of Rome is a history of war. Its heroes are soldiers.
When the city was founded and throughout its early life Italy was
divided among different peoples, ruling over different parts of the
country. With these peoples--the Latins, the Etruscans, the Volscians,
the Samnites--the Romans fought. War with one or other of them was
always going on. Its fortune varied, but in the end the Roman spirit and
the Roman organization told. One by one the other Italian tribes
submitted and accepted Roman overlordship. This was a long and slow
business, extending over hundreds of years. While it was still going on
the Romans had to meet another danger: the danger of invasion from
without. Again and again the Gauls swept down upon Italy from the north.
Once (390) they actually occupied parts of the city of Rome itself.
After that they were finally driven out and defeated by Camillus. Later,
though they came again across the northern hills, they were always
beaten and driven back. When on the march, their armies were dangerous;
but the Gauls had no plan of permanent conquest: after a defeat, they
retired to their northern plains and hills.
Within the space of a hundred years, in the third century before the
birth of Christ, the Romans had to meet two invaders of a very different
and far more dangerous kind: invaders with a settled plan of conquest,
who came against them in order to subdue and rule Rome and Italy. These
were Pyrrhus and Hannibal. Had either of them succeeded, the whole
history of Rome and of the world might have been different. In a very
real sense Pyrrhus and Hannibal are heroes in the story of Rome. They
were the greatest enemies the Roman people ever had to meet. They were
defeated because of qualities in the Roman people as a whole, rather
than by the genius of any single general. No single Roman leader at the
time was a first-rate commander like Pyrrhus, still less a genius like
Hannibal, a much greater man than he. It is during their struggle with
Pyrrhus, in the war with Carthage that followed Pyrrhus's defeat, and in
the long war with Hannibal that ended in his defeat and the destruction
of Carthage as a great power that we can see the Roman character at its
best. We can appreciate it and understand it only by understanding the
enemies whom it met and broke.