Latin War

The Latin War, also called the Second Latin War, was fought from 340 to 338 BC between the Roman Republic and the Latin peoples of ancient Italy, a group of self-governing towns bound by a shared language, culture and some legal and religious institutions. The Latins had long been Rome's partners in a mutual military alliance, the Foedus Cassianum, but by the 340s they feared a growing Rome, and the war grew out of the tangled aftermath of the First Samnite War and a quarrel over the Sidicini and the Campanians. The Romans under the consuls Publius Decius Mus and Titus Manlius Torquatus defeated the Latins and their allies at the Battle of Vesuvius, again at Trifanum in 339 BC, and finally at Pedum in 338 BC. The war ended with the dissolution of the Latin League and the absorption of its territory into the Roman sphere, while the Latins received partial rights and varying levels of citizenship. The ancient accounts, chiefly Livy, are a mixture of fact and fiction, and modern historians treat many of the details of the outbreak as later inventions.