Battle of Vesuvius

Significance

The Battle of Vesuvius was the opening engagement of the Second Latin War, fought near Mount Vesuvius in 340 BCE between Rome and its Samnite allies on one side and a coalition of Latins, Campanians, Volsci, Sidicini, and Aurunci on the other. As the first recorded battle of the war, it marked the beginning of the armed contest that would determine Rome's relationship with the Latin peoples and its standing in central Italy. The surviving sources concentrate almost entirely on the Roman and Latin participants, leaving the roles of the broader coalition largely unrecorded and the battle's outcome unattested in the extant record.