ctly known. The leading ideas on which the structure was
based, on the other hand, are so obvious that it is scarcely necessary
specially to set them forth. First of all, as we have already said,
the immediate circle of the ruling community was extended--partly
by the settlement of full burgesses, partly by the conferring of
passive burgess-rights--as far as was possible without completely
decentralizing the Roman community, which was an urban one and was
intended to remain so. When the system of incorporation was extended
up to and perhaps even beyond its natural limits, the communities that
were subsequently added had to submit to a position of subjection; for
a pure hegemony as a permanent relation was intrinsically impossible.
Thus not through any arbitrary monopolizing of sovereignty, but
through the inevitable force of circumstances, by the side of the
class of ruling burgesses a second class of subjects took its place.
It was one of the primary expedients of Roman rule to subdivide the
governed by breaking up the Italian confederacies and instituting as
large a number as possible of comparatively small communities, and
to graduate the pressure of that rule according to the different
categories of subjects. As Cato in the government of his household
took care that the slaves should not be on too good terms with one
another, and designedly fomented variances and factions among them,
so the Roman community acted on a great scale. The expedient was not
generous, but it was effectual.

Aristocratic Remodelling of the Constitutions of the Italian
Communities

It was but a wider application of the same expedient, when in each
dependent community the constitution was remodelled after the Roman
pattern and a government of the wealthy and respectable families was
installed, which was naturally more or less keenly opposed to the
multitude and was induced by its material interests and by its wish
for local power to lean on Roman support. The most remarkable
instance of this sort is furnished by the treatment of Capua, which
appears to have been from the first treated with suspicious precaution
as the only Italian city that could come into possible rivalry with
Rome. The Campanian nobility received a privileged jurisdiction,
separate places of assembly, and in every respect a distinctive
position; indeed they even obtained not inconsiderable pensions
--sixteen hundred of them at 450 -stateres- (about 30 pounds)
annu