<P> After that, Rome hastily rebuilt its buildings and went on the offensive, conquering the Etruscans and seizing territory from the Gauls in the north . After 345 BC, Rome pushed south against other Latins . Their main enemy in this quadrant were the fierce Samnites, who outsmarted and trapped the legions in 321 BC at the Battle of Caudine Forks . In spite of these and other temporary setbacks, the Romans advanced steadily . By 290 BC, Rome controlled over half of the Italian peninsula . In the 3rd century BC, Rome brought the Greek poleis in the south under its control as well . </P> <P> Amidst the never ending wars (from the beginning of the Republic up to the Principate, the doors of the temple of Janus were closed only twice--when they were open it meant that Rome was at war), Rome had to face a severe major social crisis, the Conflict of the Orders, a political struggle between the Plebeians (commoners) and Patricians (aristocrats) of the ancient Roman Republic, in which the Plebeians sought political equality with the Patricians . It played a major role in the development of the Constitution of the Roman Republic . It began in 494 BC, when, while Rome was at war with two neighboring tribes, the Plebeians all left the city (the first Plebeian Secession). The result of this first secession was the creation of the office of Plebeian Tribune, and with it the first acquisition of real power by the Plebeians . </P> <P> According to tradition, Rome became a republic in 509 BC . However, it took a few centuries for Rome to become the great city of popular imagination . By the 3rd century BC, Rome had become the pre-eminent city of the Italian peninsula . During the Punic Wars between Rome and the great Mediterranean empire of Carthage (264 to 146 BC), Rome's stature increased further as it became the capital of an overseas empire for the first time . Beginning in the 2nd century BC, Rome went through a significant population expansion as Italian farmers, driven from their ancestral farmlands by the advent of massive, slave - operated farms called latifundia, flocked to the city in great numbers . The victory over Carthage in the First Punic War brought the first two provinces outside the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Sardinia . Parts of Spain (Hispania) followed, and in the beginning of the 2nd century the Romans got involved in the affairs of the Greek world . By then all Hellenistic kingdoms and the Greek city - states were in decline, exhausted from endless civil wars and relying on mercenary troops . </P> <P> The Romans looked upon the Greek civilisation with great admiration . The Greeks saw Rome as a useful ally in their civil strifes, and it wasn't long before the Roman legions were invited to intervene in Greece . In less than 50 years the whole of mainland Greece was subdued . The Roman legions crushed the Macedonian phalanx twice, in 197 and 168 BC; in 146 BC the Roman consul Lucius Mummius razed Corinth, marking the end of free Greece . The same year Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of Scipio Africanus, destroyed the city of Carthage, making it a Roman province . </P>

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