te detachments of horse and foot.

*The Italian allies.* The rest of the peoples of Italy, Italian, Greek,
Illyrian and Etruscan, formed the federate allies of Rome--the _socii
Italici_. These constituted some 150 separate communities, city or tribal,
each bound to Rome by a special treaty (_foedus_), whereby its specific
relations to Rome were determined. In all these treaties, however, there
was one common feature, namely, the obligation to lend military aid to
Rome and to surrender to Rome the control over their diplomatic relations
with other states. Their troops were not incorporated in the legions, but
were organized as separate infantry and cavalry units (_cohortes_ and
_alae_), raised, equipped and officered by the communities themselves.
However, they were under the orders of the Roman generals, and if several
allied detachments were combined in one corps the whole was under a Roman
officer. The allied troops, moreover, received their subsistence from Rome
and shared equally with the Romans in the spoils of war. In the case of
the seaboard towns, especially the Greek cities, this military obligation
took the form of supplying ships and their crews, whence these towns were
called naval allies (_socii navales_). All the federate allies had
_commercium_, and the majority _connubium_ also, with Rome. Apart from the
foregoing obligations towards Rome, each of the allied communities was
autonomous, having its own language, laws and political institutions.

However, a strong bond of sympathy existed between the local aristocracies
of many of the Italian towns and the senatorial order at Rome. As we have
seen, the foreign relations of Rome were directed by the Senate, which
represented the views of the wealthier landed proprietors, and it was only
natural that the senators should have sought to ally themselves with the
corresponding social class in other states. This class represented the
more conservative, and, from the Roman point of view, more dependable
element, while the support of Rome assured to the local aristocracies the
control within their own communities. Consequently there developed a
community of interest between the Senate and the propertied classes among
the Roman allies.

Thus Rome was at the head of a military and diplomatic alliance of many
separate states, whose sole point of contact was that each was in alliance
with Rome. As yet there was no such thing as an Italian nation. Still it
was from the