e several communities at the neighbouring
Latin seat of justice at the source of the Ferentina (near Marino).
Indeed such a confederacy cannot be conceived to exist without
having a certain power of superintendence over the associated body,
and without possessing a system of law binding on all. Tradition
records, and we may well believe, that the league exercised
jurisdiction in reference to violations of federal law, and that
it could in such cases pronounce even sentence of death. The later
communion of legal rights and, in some sense, of marriage that
subsisted among the Latin communities may perhaps be regarded as
an integral part of the primitive law of the league, so that any
Latin man could beget lawful children with any Latin woman and
acquire landed property and carry on trade in any part of Latium.
The league may have also provided a federal tribunal of arbitration
for the mutual disputes of the cantons; on the other hand, there
is no proof that the league imposed any limitation on the sovereign
right of each community to make peace or war. In like manner
there can be no doubt that the constitution of the league implied
the possibility of its waging defensive or even aggressive war
in its own name; in which case, of course, it would be necessary
to have a federal commander-in-chief. But we have no reason to
suppose that in such an event each community was compelled by law
to furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any
one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even
against a member of the league. There are, however, indications
that during the Latin festival, just as was the case during the
festivals of the Hellenic leagues, "a truce of God" was observed
throughout all Latium;(5) and probably on that occasion even tribes
at feud granted safe-conducts to each other.

It is still less in our power to define the range of the privileges
of the presiding canton; only we may safely affirm that there is
no reason for recognizing in the Alban presidency a real political
hegemony over Latium, and that possibly, nay probably, it had no
more significance in Latium than the honorary presidency of Elis
had in Greece.(6) On the whole it is probable that the extent of
this Latin league, and the amount of its jurisdiction, were somewhat
unsettled and fluctuating; yet it remained throughout not an
accidental aggregate of various communities more or less alien to
each other, but the ju