far as
the Italian confederacy extended, there existed no community of
Helots. On that account also Rome from the very first, with a
clear-sightedness and magnanimity perhaps unparalleled in history,
waived the most dangerous of all the rights of government, the right
of taxing her subjects. At the most tribute was perhaps imposed
on the dependent Celtic cantons: so far as the Italian confederacy
extended, there was no tributary community. On that account, lastly,
while the duty of bearing arms was partially devolved on the subjects,
the ruling burgesses were by no means exempt from it; it is probable
that the latter were proportionally far more numerous than the body
of the allies; and in that body, again, probably the Latins as a whole
were liable to far greater demands upon them than the non-Latin
allied communities. There was thus a certain reasonableness in the
appropriation by which Rome ranked first, and the Latins next to her,
in the distribution of the spoil acquired in war.

Intermediate Functionaries--
Valuation of the Empire

The central administration at Rome solved the difficult problem of
preserving its supervision and control over the mass of the Italian
communities liable to furnish contingents, partly by means of the four
Italian quaestorships, partly by the extension of the Roman censorship
over the whole of the dependent communities. The quaestors of the
fleet,(42) along with their more immediate duty, had to raise
the revenues from the newly acquired domains and to control the
contingents of the new allies; they were the first Roman functionaries
to whom a residence and district out of Rome were assigned by law, and
they formed the necessary intermediate authority between the Roman
senate and the Italian communities. Moreover, as is shown by the
later municipal constitution, the chief functionaries in every Italian
community,(43) whatever might be their title, had to undertake a
valuation every fourth or fifth year--an institution, the suggestion
of which must necessarily have emanated from Rome, and which can
only have been intended to furnish the senate with a view of the
resources in men and money of the whole of Italy, corresponding
to the census in Rome.

Italy and the Italians

Lastly, with this military administrative union of the whole peoples
dwelling to the south of the Apennines, as far as the Iapygian
promontory and the straits of Rhegium, was connected the rise of a
new na