ated the municipal
decree. A formal division of functions probably took place only in
the administration of justice, where the system of pure co-ordination
would have led to the greatest confusion. In criminal procedure
presumably all capital causes, and in civil procedure those more
difficult cases which presumed an independent action on the part
of the directing magistrate, were reserved for the authorities and
jurymen of the capital, and the Italian municipal courts were
restricted to the minor and less complicated lawsuits, or to those
which were very urgent.

Rise of the -Municipium-

The origin of this Italian municipal system has not been recorded
by tradition. It is probable that its germs may be traced to
exceptional regulations for the great burgess-colonies, which were
founded at the end of the sixth century;(43) at least several, in
themselves indifferent, formal differences between burgess-colonies
and burgess--municipia- tend to show that the new burgess-colony,
which at that time practically took the place of the Latin, had
originally a better position in state-law than the far older burgess-
-municipium-, and the advantage doubtless can only have consisted in a
municipal constitution approximating to the Latin, such as afterwards
belonged to all burgess-colonies and burgess--municipia-. The new
organization is first distinctly demonstrable for the revolutionary
colony of Capua;(44) and it admits of no doubt that it was first
fully applied, when all the hitherto sovereign towns of Italy had
to be organized, in consequence of the Social war, as burgess-
communities. Whether it was the Julian law, or the censors of 668,
or Sulla, that first arranged the details, cannot be determined:
the entrusting of the censorial functions to the -duumviri- seems
indeed to have been introduced after the analogy of the Sullan
ordinance superseding the censorship, but may be equally well
referred to the oldest Latin constitution to which also the
censorship was unknown. In any case this municipal constitution--
inserted in, and subordinate to, the state proper--is one of the
most remarkable and momentous products of the Sullan period, and
of the life of the Roman state generally. Antiquity was certainly
as little able to dovetail the city into the state as to develop
of itself representative government and other great principles of
our modern state-life; but it carried its political development
up to those limits