Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome.

After defeating the Etruscans in the north and the Samnites in the east, the Romans now

looked to Magnagracia in the south for fresh conquests.

All that stood between Rome and an Italian-wide empire was the fiercely independent and disunited

Greek cities.

Despite the collective threat they faced from Rome, the rivalry between the cities of Magna

and Magnagracia precluded any organized resistance.

The Romans decided all they had to do was play the cities off one another, knowing they

would have little trouble finding a few willing Greek accomplices who, in return for preferential

treatment from their new Roman overlords, would aid Romans subduing their Greek countrymen.

But Roman plans were complicated by the introduction of an army from across the Adriatic, led by

the Greek king Pyrrhus.

During calls for aid against the Romans, Pyrrhus had dreams of an Italian kingdom for himself,

and though his dreams were ultimately foiled, the battles he fought against the Romans

marked the opening salvo in a struggle between the Roman west and the Greek east, though

it would end a hundred years later with a bewildered Greek nation kneeling before

their new Roman masters.

Prior to the invasion by Pyrrhus, the eastern and western Mediterranean had, for the most

part, been completely separate from one another.

Despite roughly by the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the two halves had, politically at least,

developed independently.

Greek attention had always faced east, and been consumed by its rivalry with Pyrrhus,

...