Early in the republic, all power was concentrated into the hands of the patricians, aristocratic, wealthy land holders.  Plebians were anyone who was not a patrician (the equestrian class would come later), and many were just as wealthy as the patricians.  These "aristocratic" plebians came to fight what has been called the "War of the Orders" with the aristocrats in charge over the next 200 years.  During this time period, during the early 5th century, a tribune of Plebians was elected to protect their class's rights, and reserved the power to veo movement by the artocratic Senate.  By 367 BC, the first plebian had been elected consul, and in 450 BC, the twelve tabls were published, providing the first written, fair laws in the Roman world.  Despite all of these things, power still depended on wealth in Ancient Rome, and even a Plebian would have to have access to financial resources to be elected to the magistracy.

The forum, originally a marshy valley between the Quirinal and Esquiline Hills, became the focus of public and political life.  It was divided down the middle by the cloaca maxima, probably originially meant to be a storm sewer or drainage ditch.  By the 6th century BC it was covered, and by the 2nd century BC it was Rome's chief sewer.  Shops and houses lined the forum on the northeast and southwest sides.   People assembled in the Comitium, a rectangular enclosure oriented to the four points of the compass.  The Senate House (curia) was built into the north end of the Comitium, as was a speaker's platform, the rostra.  On the southeast end of the forum stood the regia, the former kings' palace.  It was now occupied by the Pontifex Maximus and Vestal Virgins. 

A great combined effort by the Latins and Greeks at the colony of Cumae overthrew the Etruscans from power south of the Tiber.  Rome then became a member - and eventually leader - of a lose alliance of nations developing along the Tiber called the Latin League.  Soon, however, disaster struck.  Gallic tribes, who had been slowly infiltrating across the Alps into Northern Italy, crosse the Apennines and sacked Rome in 390 BC.  Legend has it that only the fortified capital survived the destruction.  Rome did not withstand such losses until 476 AD at the hand of Alaric the Goth.

Rome survived, however, and quickly recovered to begin the conquest of Italy.  Taking ove the Latin League, each Estruscan city slowly fell; the hill peoples followes suit.  The Samnites built up the most resistance, but by 290 BC all of central Italy was under Roman rule.  The Romans continued their campaign by driving the Gallic sackers out of Italy in 283 BC, and then turned south to the Greek city/states.  Despite intervention by King Pyrrhus of Epirius, they were subsequently conquered in 275 BC. 

Then Rome fought some its moxt taxing years in its long history - the Punic Wars against the people of Carthage in North Africa (now the city of Tunis in Tunisia).  The first was waged over the possession of Sicily (264-241 BC), and then against the great general Hannibal (218-201 BC).  Invading Italy out of a Spanish power base in 218 BC, he won three great victories, such as that at Cannae in Apulia, 216 BC, and managed to detach much of southern Italy from Rome before his defeat by the Scipios compaigning in North Africa

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