“By around 300 to 100 B.C., they were absorbed into the Roman Empire.”
Pretty good trick considering the Empire was yet to be established.
The Roman Empire was well-established, so what are you talking about? The first conquest was of nearby Ostia (now a tourist attraction, Ostia Antica). Other neighboring settlements got gobbled up during the second half of the last millennium BC. The so-called Roman Republic was a hereditary oligarchy, where a handful of families owned and/or ran everything, and it had an empire that included most of Italy. The title Imper Iter (emperor) was bestowed many a time before Julius Caesar (including upon his colleague and rival, Pompey), but the count is generally begun with Octavian/Augustus, who was the first permanent chief executive, an evolved necessity; if anything the Roman Empire was far more egalitarian and representative than the so-called republic ever was or was intended to be.
It sais “Bush’s Fault”