Latin League

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so I guess when you were mentioning just like you know they had that autonomy it kind of just hugged back to me of the early days of the Roman Republic where they would be raising their own legions and the allied states of them from the Latin League would be contributing an equal number.

Felt a bit similar to me.

We'll have more similar things to that as the Empire grows and you get more of these non-steppe peoples brought in in relationships a bit more akin to that.

So-

So, in ga- I guess when you were mentioning just like, you know, they had that autonomy, it kind of just harked back to me of the early days of the Roman Republic, where they would be raising their own legions, and the allied states of them from the Latin League would be contributing an equal number.

Um.

Felt a bit similar to me.

That said, on a per capita basis, Carthage was likely far better off civilizationally than the Etruscans.

The Latin League, including Rome itself, may have totaled three to four hundred thousand at this point.

Rome was still a minor city of perhaps 30,000, only a few years removed from the expulsion of its last king, and still well within the orbit of its larger Etruscan neighbors.

The Samnites, Oscans, and other inland Italic peoples added perhaps another million.

Rome eventually became something of a client kingdom to the Etruscans, but continued to expand their own power in Latium, the region of the Latins.

By the mid-6th century, the 15 major cities of Latium allied into a Latin League, similar to their contemporaries in Greece, which was of course led by Rome.

Then came Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the king of Rome from 534 to 509 BCE.

While the Persians far to their east were settling into ruling the largest empire the world had yet seen, Rome was just the mightiest of a number of squabbling city-states in Latium.

At this point in time, the legions would only assemble in full for major battles.

But the majority of Roman warfare was still minor raids and skirmishes on the Canturii levels.

Generally, that was enough for any conflict Rome was likely to face in their little chunk of Italy, but if needed, they could call on their allies in the Latin League to almost double the full size of the army.

To give you a sense of the extremely small scale of early Roman warfare, their first two true conquests, Phaedinae in 435 BCE and Veii in 394, were both within 10 kilometers of Rome itself and are part of the modern city.