Capua, the capital, fell in 330; and the Tuscan population there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by the Samnites.

It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion: Cumae itself was conquered by the Sabellians in 334.

But the Hellenes maintained their ground at Neapolis especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans, while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history -- excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged a pitiful and forlorn existence there.
Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in Northern Italy.

A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps: it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.
The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters.

With various solid qualities and still more that were brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great in human development.