the
other, but it is sure that she clung the longest to the separate
property right. Now the property in a municipium is not considered as
Roman, a result of the old sovereign state idea, as given by the ius
Quiritium and ius Gabinorum, although Mommsen says this had no real
practical value.[218] So whether Praeneste received Roman citizenship in
90 or in 89 B.C. the spirit of her past history makes it certain that
she demanded a clause which gave specific rights to the old federated
states, such as had always been in her treaty with Rome.[219] There
seems to have been no such clause in the lex Iulia of 90 B.C., and this
fact gives still another reason, in addition to the ones mentioned, to
conclude that Praeneste probably took citizenship in 89 under the lex
Plautia-Papiria. The extreme cruelty which Sulla used toward
Praeneste,[220] and the great amount of its land[221] that he took for
his soldiers when he colonized the place, show that Sulla not only
punished the city because it had sided with Marius, but that the feeling
of a Roman magistrate was uppermost, and that he was now avenging
traditional grievances, as well as punishing recent obstreperousness.

There seems to be, however, very good reasons for saying that Praeneste
never became a municipium in the strict legal sense of the word. First,
the particular officials who belong to a municipium, praefects and
quattuorvirs, are not found at all;[222] second, the use of the word
municipium in literature in connection with Praeneste is general, and
means simply "town";[223] third, the fact that Praeneste, along with
Tibur, had clung so jealously to the title of federated state (civitas
foederata) from some uncertain date to the time of the Latin rebellion,
and more proudly than ever from 338 to 90 B.C., makes it very unlikely
that so great a downfall of a city's pride would be passed over in
silence; fourth and last, the fact that the Praenestines asked the
emperor Tiberius to give them the status of a municipium,[224] which he
did,[225] but it seems (see note 60) with no change from the regular
city officials of a colony,[226] shows clearly that the Praenestines
simply took advantage of the fact that Tiberius had just recovered from
a severe illness at Praeneste[227] to ask him for what was merely an
empty honor. It only salved the pride of the Praenestines, for it gave
them a name which showed a former sovereign federated state, and not the
name of a colony plan