ABSTRACT
Meanwhile another rival had risen to power across the Mediterranean: Rome. By the middle of the fifth century BC, when Carthage had temporarily withdrawn from the Mediterranean, Rome had become the leading city of central Italy In the fourth, when Carthage was once more at war in Sicily, many other towns of central Italy yielded to Rome the right to control their foreign policy and call on them for military help; this was in return for protection against the Gauls to the north, or other enemies, and for the right of their people to Roman citizenship if they chose to live in Rome—and in some cases even if they did not. Liberal treatment of defeated neighbours was something quite new in Mediterranean history; the Romans were to be rewarded for it. The rest of Italy soon joined their confederacy, or was brought under the Roman yoke, and by the third century they controlled almost the whole of the Italian peninsula south of the Po valley, including all but one of the Greek city states of southern Italy. It was to give them a commanding advantage in manpower during the wars with Carthage.
