The west had peace (513).
Remarks on the Roman Conduct of the War Let us pause for a moment over the conflict, which extended the dominion of Rome beyond the circling sea that encloses the peninsula.
It was one of the longest and most severe which the Romans ever waged; many of the soldiers who fought in the decisive battle were unborn when the contest began.

Nevertheless, despite the incomparably noble incidents which it now and again presented, we can scarcely name any war which the Romans managed so wretchedly and with such vacillation, both in a military and in a political point of view.

It could hardly be otherwise.

The contest occurred amidst a transition in their political system--the transition from an Italian policy, which no longer sufficed, to the policy befitting a great state, which had not yet been found.

The Roman senate and the Roman military system were excellently organized for a purely Italian policy.