The history of Roman battles can be traced back to 498 BC when Romans defeated the Latins and established their power in the Italian Peninsula. From this point onwards, Romans were constantly engaged in small scale clashes or large scale battles with various other empires and city states. The actual Roman expansion, however, is thought to have been triggered in 396 BC when the Romans besieged and captured Veii, an important Etruscan city. But the expansion was not smooth and Romans had to face various setbacks along with way, such as the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 387 BC and the invasion of Italy by the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal in 218 BC.
