I was just trying something weird, but it worked, to my amazement (vh/vh)
In the first turns, I gathered all my troops and familymembers at the coast. I left one unit of peasants in each city.
The rest of my army sailed to the mainland. There they started their long walk to - Italy.
Once I arrived in Italy, I started besieging an juli city. I quickly captured it and the fun began. Every turn I had to fight at least one large stack of either SPQR, Juli or Gaul.
Gaul was easy to rout, and the romans send their generals allways on suicide missions so those battles were not too difficult.
Then I was lucky a few times when I catched a very small stack next to a city and lured the garrison out that way.
So I captured the two remainung juli cities on the mainland, rome and capua.
Now I am still fighting with gaul, scipi and bruti but I am slowly gaining ground.
I was losing money untill I captured Arretium and Armenium, but sooner or later you will break even.
This is not a very safe way to play, but a very challenging and entertaining one.