y service was more
and more devolved from the burgesses upon them and the other Italian
allies. For instance, in 536, nearly twice as many of the allies were
called out as of the burgesses: after the end of the Hannibalic war
all the burgesses received their discharge, but not all the allies;
the latter were chiefly employed for garrison duty and for the odious
service in Spain; in the triumphal largess of 577 the allies received
not as formerly an equal share with the burgesses, but only the half,
so that amidst the unrestrained rejoicing of that soldiers' carnival
the divisions thus treated as inferior followed the chariot of victory
in sullen silence: in the assignations of land in northern Italy the
burgesses received ten jugera of arable land each, the non-burgesses
three -jugera- each. The unlimited liberty of migration had already
at an earlier period been taken from the Latin communities, and
migration to Rome was only allowed to them in the event of their
leaving behind children of their own and a portion of their estate in
the community which had been their home.(28) But these burdensome
requirements were in various ways evaded or transgressed; and the
crowding of the burgesses of Latin townships to Rome, and the
complaints of their magistrates as to the increasing depopulation
of the cities and the impossibility under such circumstances of
furnishing the fixed contingent, led the Roman government to institute
police-ejections from the capital on a large scale (567, 577). The
measure might be unavoidable, but it was none the less severely felt.
Moreover, the towns laid out by Rome in the interior of Italy began
towards the close of this period to receive instead of Latin rights
the full franchise, which previously had only been given to the
maritime colonies; and the enlargement of the Latin body by the
accession of new communities, which hitherto had gone on so regularly,
thus came to an end. Aquileia, the establishment of which began in
571, was the latest of the Italian colonies of Rome that received
Latin rights; the full franchise was given to the colonies, sent forth
nearly at the same time, of Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and
Luna (570-577). The reason for this evidently lay in the decline of
the Latin as compared with the Roman franchise. The colonists
conducted to the new settlements were always, and now more than ever,
chosen in preponderating number from the Roman burgesses; and even
am