e vicissitudes of that war remained steadfastly on the Roman
side, and therefore retained their former rights as allies unaltered;
by far the greater portion were obliged in consequence of having
changed sides to acquiesce in a revision of the existing treaties to
their disadvantage. The reduced position of the non-Latin allies is
attested by the emigration from their communities into the Latin:
when in 577 the Samnites and Paelignians applied to the senate for a
reduction of their contingents, their request was based on the ground
that during late years 4000 Samnite and Paelignian families had
migrated to the Latin colony of Fregellae.
Latins
That the Latins--which term now denoted the few towns in old Latium
that were not included in the Roman burgess-union, such as Tibur and
Praeneste, the allied cities placed in law on the same footing with
them, such as several of the Hernican towns, and the Latin colonies
dispersed throughout Italy--were still at this time in a better
position, is implied in their very name; but they too had, in
proportion, hardly less deteriorated. The burdens imposed on them
were unjustly increased, and the pressure of military service was more
and more devolved from the burgesses upon them and the other Italian
allies. For instance, in 536, nearly twice as many of the allies were
called out as of the burgesses: after the end of the Hannibalic war
all the burgesses received their discharge, but not all the allies;
the latter were chiefly employed for garrison duty and for the odious
service in Spain; in the triumphal largess of 577 the allies received
not as formerly an equal share with the burgesses, but only the half,
so that amidst the unrestrained rejoicing of that soldiers' carnival
the divisions thus treated as inferior followed the chariot of victory
in sullen silence: in the assignations of land in northern Italy the
burgesses received ten jugera of arable land each, the non-burgesses
three -jugera- each. The unlimited liberty of migration had already
at an earlier period been taken from the Latin communities, and
migration to Rome was only allowed to them in the event of their
leaving behind children of their own and a portion of their estate in
the community which had been their home.(28) But these burdensome
requirements were in various ways evaded or transgressed; and the
crowding of the burgesses of Latin townships to Rome, and the
complaints of their magistrates as to the
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