SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

Yet between the sack of Rome in 390 BCE and the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BCE, the manpower involved in these conflicts increased dramatically. Campaigns were fought further and further from Rome. Whereas Veii was 10 miles up the road, Sentinum was some two hundred miles away, across the Apennines. And the arrangements made between Rome and the defeated had far-reaching consequences for the future. The military impact of Rome by the end of the fourth century BCE was so great that Livy felt it worthwhile to compare Roman prowess with that of the world-conquering Alexander the Great, who between 334 and 323 BCE had led his Macedonian army on a spree of conquest from Greece to India. Livy wondered who would have won, the Romans or the Macedonians, if they had come head to head, a military conundrum that armchair generals still ponder.