Sharp internal conflicts characterized many Etruscan cities. The majority of their populations had only a restricted role in community government, and this limitation may have contributed to the persistent Etruscan defeats. In 265, the wealthiest and most powerful families of Volsinii lost control of their city and sought Roman intervention. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 264, captured the city, which he destroyed, although in this instance, too, some of the survivors were then permitted to settle at a less defensible site nearby. When civic disturbances occurred in allied cities, Roman officials and the Roman senate usually supported the leading families, a policy which in many instances may well have encouraged these families to submit to Roman leadership.
At the end of the Third Samnite War in 290, Rome’s hold over the Samnites and Lucanians was precarious, and its power over more distant communities was virtually nonexistent. In the first half of the third century, the Romans also campaigned regularly in the southern regions of the Italian peninsula, but these wars would involve a different kind of enemy, leading to changes in Roman methods of making war.
Roman officials quickly involved themselves in the affairs of the Greek cities of southern Italy. In 285, Thurii appealed to Rome for protection from the Lucanians and Bruttii. Gaius Fabricius Luscinus then forced the Lucanians to abandon their siege of Thurii, and he left a Roman garrison there for its protection. Shortly afterwards, other cities Locri, Rhegium, and Croton also successfully sought Roman protection. This growing Roman presence now alarmed the citizens of Tarentum, the largest Greek city in the region and often ambitious to lead the others. In 282, the Tarentines attacked and sank some Roman warships that had appeared outside their harbor, apparently in violation of an agreement between the two cities. The Tarentines then marched on Thurii, expelled its Roman garrison, and replaced the ruling oligarchy with a more democratic regime. Tarentum took these actions, it should be noted, while Rome was heavily involved in wars against Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls.
In the far south of Italy, the Romans were entering a region in turmoil. Tensions between oligarchic and democratic factions were common in the Greek cities there and in Sicily. Generally speaking, the more democratic leaders wished to give increased power and freedom of action to voting assemblies of citizens; they sought to enable these assemblies to instruct and restrain elected officials; and they wanted to open elected offices to a wider circle. Supporters of a more oligarchic order, on the other hand, sought to limit magistracies to the very wealthy, or perhaps even to the members of a few families; they wished to restrict the powers of citizen assemblies and their freedom of action; and they tried to elevate advisory councils of leading citizens, the local equivalents of the Roman senate, into the chief organ of government.
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