ties politically
self-subsisting, and these, with the exception of Tibur and Praeneste,
throughout insignificant. The Latium of the later times of
the republic, on the contrary, consisted almost exclusively of
communities, which from the beginning had honoured Rome as their
capital and parent city; which, settled amidst regions of alien
language and of alien habits, were attached to Rome by community of
language, of law, and of manners; which, as the petty tyrants of the
surrounding districts, were obliged doubtless to lean on Rome for
their very existence, like advanced posts leaning upon the main army;
and which, in fine, in consequence of the increasing material
advantages of Roman citizenship, were ever deriving very considerable
benefit from their equality of rights with the Romans, limited though
it was. A portion of the Roman domain, for instance, was usually
assigned to them for their separate use, and participation in the
state leases and contracts was open to them as to the Roman burgess.
Certainly in their case also the consequences of the self-subsistence
granted to them did not wholly fail to appear. Venusian inscriptions
of the time of the Roman republic, and Beneventane inscriptions
recently brought to light,(33) show that Venusia as well as Rome
had its plebs and its tribunes of the people, and that the chief
magistrates of Beneventum bore the title of consul at least about
the time of the Hannibalic war. Both communities are among the most
recent of the Latin colonies with older rights: we perceive what
pretensions were stirring in them about the middle of the fifth
century. These so-called Latins, issuing from the Roman burgess-body
and feeling themselves in every respect on a level with it, already
began to view with displeasure their subordinate federal rights and to
strive after full equalization. Accordingly the senate had exerted
itself to curtail these Latin communities--however important they were
for Rome--as far as possible, in their rights and privileges, and to
convert their position from that of allies to that of subjects, so far
as this could be done without removing the wall of partition between
them and the non-Latin communities of Italy. We have already
described the abolition of the league of the Latin communities
itself as well as of their former complete equality of rights,
and the loss of the most important political privileges belonging to
them. On the complete subjugation