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bufo_viridis' suggestion that the Roman Republic must be seen as more aggressive than the Empire was not exactly what I meant either. So let me give you an overview of how I see early Roman history up to and including the Second Punic War; this, apart from anything else, will help to clear my own head with respect to subjects in which I am doing research, and provide a basis for future writings.
The first thing we have to remember is Mommsen's important discovery that practically everything that passes, on Roman testimony, for Roman history, until the fourth century, was in effect fabricated by Roman, probably patrician, writers, between 390BC and 275BC. Such is the fascination that Roman pseudo-history exerts on historians, that neither Mommsen himself, nor anyone - or almost anyone - since, has really drawn all the necessary conclusions from this shattering revelation; and to this day, we have historians seriously discussing the Etruscan and - even worse - Sabine presence in early monarchic Rome, although Dumezil has long since shown that the whole story of Etruscans and Sabines is not only a legend but a myth. All these things must, as a matter of sound method, be dumped; as must all the stirring stories of conflict between patricians and plebeians - all conveniently located before 275BC - and even, after Carandini's earth-shaking archaeological discoveries of the last twenty years, the famous story of the destructive Gaulish siege of 387BC.
Let us, instead, consider Italy as a whole. Rome, after all, only becomes important in Mediterranean and Western history when she becomes important in Italy.
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