and on Latin soil
for Latium and Rome. With equal deference to the interests of
the league the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves
not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community--a
stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions entertained,
doubtless not without reason, by the confederacy with reference to
the powerful community taking the lead. The position of Rome not
within, but alongside of Latium, is most clearly apparent in the
arrangements for warfare. The fighting force of the league was
composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly
shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin. The
supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals; year by
year the Latin contingent had to appear before the gates of Rome,
and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its
general, after the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council
to take the auspices had thereby assured themselves of the contentment
of the gods with the choice that had been made. Whatever land or
property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned
among its members according to the judgment of the Romans. That
the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external
relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained.
The federal agreement did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from
undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war
was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its
own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council
may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well
as in the termination of the war. Practically indeed Rome must
have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state
and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other,
the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.

Extension of the Roman Territory after the Fall of Alba--Hernici--Rutulli
and Volscii

The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome--now mistress of a
territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading
power in the Latin confederacy--extended still further her direct
and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced. There was no lack
of feuds with the Etruscans and with the Veientes in particular,
chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenae; but it does not appear
that the Romans were successful in acquiring