The Early Republic
The early years of the Republic were marked by an attempt on the part of the patrician families to achieve a monopoly of secular and sacred office. The fall of the monarchy also meant the partial loss of the superiority which Rome had achieved vis-a-vis her immediate neighbours. Furthermore, in the fifth century the Volscians emerged from the upper Liris valley and conquered most of the Trera valley and the coastal plain south of Rome. The first century and a half of the Republic saw first the re-assertion of Roman leadership of the other Latin communities and then a long sequence of wars against the southern Etruscan cities, principally Veii (captured and destroyed in 396), and against the Volscians to the south. In the latter struggles Rome and the Latins could usually rely on the Hernicans, who had also suffered from Volscian expansion. (Boardman, 1986)