High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! From its origin as a city-state in Italy in the 8th century BC, to its rise as an empire covering much of Southern Europe, Western Europe, Near East and North Africa and fall in the 5th century AD, the political history of Ancient Rome was typically closely entwined with its military history. The core of the campaign history of the Roman military is an aggregate of different accounts of the Roman military`s land battles, from its initial defence against and subsequent conquest of the city`s hilltop neighbours in the Italian peninsula, to the ultimate struggle of the Western Roman Empire for its existence against invading Huns, Vandals and Germanic tribes after the empire`s split into East and West. These accounts were written by various authors throughout and after the history of the Empire. Despite the later Empire`s encompassing of lands around the periphery of the Mediterranean Sea, naval battles were typically less significant than land battles to the military history of Rome, due to its largely unchallenged dominance of the sea following fierce naval fighting during the First Punic War.