To all appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock.

After the overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions unchecked approached the Liris.

As early as 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.