Rome constructs its first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, in 312.

Only about 0.7 feet (0.2 meters) of its total ten-mile (sixteen-kilometer) length runs aboveground; most of the rest is simply a stone-lined ditch.

Construction begins on the Via Appia (Appian Way) in 312 across the malarial and unhealthful Pontine Marshes in south central Italy, representing the first attempt at artificially draining the region, barred by sand dunes from natural drainage into the Tyrrhenian Sea and bordered on the west by the Albani Hills and the Lepini Mountains.

Built at the instigation of Appius Claudius Caecus, who pays for part of the work himself, the Via Appia—constructed of stones, rubble, and concrete—is laid on an alternative route from Rome to …

…Capua, a city recently crushed in the Samnite War.

When complete, the Via Appia will ensure communications even in the rainy season.

The expansionist Roman Republic, on the ascendant in the early third century BCE, has spent the 280s suppressing unrest in northern Italy, but Roman attention is soon directed to the far south as well by a quarrel between the Greek city of Thurii and a Samnite tribe.

Thurii calls upon the assistance of Rome, whose naval operations in the area provoke a war with …

…the Greek city of Tarentum in Apulia.

Rome had violated a treaty by sending ships into the Gulf of Tarentum, only to have them sunk by the Tarantine fleet.

As in previous conflicts with Italian peoples, Tarentum summons military aid from mainland Greece, calling upon Pyrrhus of Epirus, an able general who has consolidated the Epirote monarchy and warred successfully with his eastern neighbor, Macedonia.

Cineas, a Thessalian who serves as chief adviser to Pyrrhus, attempts, without success, to dissuade Pyrrhus from crossing to Italy in 281 BCE with twenty elephants and about twenty-five thousand highly trained soldiers.

In the first meeting of Roman and Greek armies, Pyrrhus wins a complete, if costly, victory in 280 BCE over a Roman army at Heraclea.

After stirring up revolt among the Samnites, he sends Cineas to Rome to negotiate a peace.

Pyrrhus offers peace terms that— according to the Greek historian Appian, writing in the second century CE—would confine Roman power to central Italy, demanding that the Romans halt their aggression against the Greeks of southern Italy and restore the lands they have taken from the Bruttii, Apulians, and Samnites.

When the Senate wavers, Appius Claudius, an aged blind senator, rouses their courage and persuades them to continue fighting.

The Romans, together with Umbrians, Samnites, and Gauls, conquer the Etruscan city of Caere in 273 BCE.