roduced when, as happened
in the Jugurthine war, Latin officers of repute were beheaded by
sentence of the Roman council of war, while the lowest burgess-soldier
had in the like case the right of presenting an appeal to the civil
tribunals of Rome. The proportions in which the burgesses and
Italian allies were to be drawn for military service had, as was fair,
remained undefined by treaty; but, while in earlier times the two had
furnished on an average equal numbers of soldiers,(2) now, although the
proportions of the population had changed probably in favour of the
burgesses rather than to their disadvantage, the demands on the allies
were by degrees increased disproportionately,(3) so that on the one
hand they had the chief burden of the heavier and more costly service
imposed on them, and on the other hand there were two allies now
regularly levied for one burgess. In like manner with this military
supremacy the civil superintendence, which (including the supreme
administrative jurisdiction which could hardly be separated from it)
the Roman government had always and rightly reserved to itself over
the dependent Italian communities, was extended in such a way that
the Italians were hardly less than the provincials abandoned without
protection to the caprice of any one of the numberless Roman
magistrates. In Teanum Sidicinum, one of the most considerable
of the allied towns, a consul had ordered the chief magistrate of
the town to be scourged with rods at the stake in the marketplace,
because, on the consul's wife expressing a desire to bathe in the
men's bath, the municipal officers had not driven forth the bathers
quickly enough, and the bath appeared to her not to be clean.
Similar scenes had taken place in Ferentinum, likewise a town
holding the best position in law, and even in the old and important
Latin colony of Cales. In the Latin colony of Venusia a free peasant
had been seized by a young Roman diplomatist not holding office but
passing through the town, on account of a jest which he had allowed
himself to make on the Roman's litter, had been thrown down, and
whipped to death with the straps of the litter. These occurrences are
incidentally mentioned about the time of the Fregellan insurrection;
it admits of no doubt that similar outrages frequently occurred, and
of as little that no real satisfaction for such misdeeds could anywhere
be obtained, whereas the right of appeal--not lightly violated with
imp