The Historians' History of the World 05

The first rank among the allies of Rome belonged to the tribes of the Latin confederation; their treaties with the republic contained generally more favourable conditions than were acquired by the other Italian communities. Thus, for instance, the Latins preserved their territory, their laws, their alliances, under the paramount control of Rome; they were placed, as regarded the payment of tribute, upon a footing of almost complete equality with the citizens of the republic; nor could they justly complain of being required to furnish a military contingent to fight side by side with the legions themselves. They could acquire the rights of Roman citizenship by the exercise of certain magistracies in their own state, or by the transfer of their domicile to Rome, provided they left children behind them in their native place, or by the successful impeachment of a Roman officer for political offences. In respect of property they enjoyed a portion of the Roman privileges. But they were excluded from the rights of Roman matrimony, and of paternal authority; from the faculty of willing in favour of a Roman citizen, or inheriting from one; nor could they claim the immunity from stripes and capital punishment, which was counted the most precious of all privileges by a people who invested their highest magistrate with the terrors of the axe and the rod. The condition of the Latin was far better than that of any other subjects of the republic, but it was decidedly inferior to that of the citizen; its most engaging feature was the capacity it conferred of acquiring completer rights, and changing the first foretaste of freedom into its full enjoyment.

This mass of privileges, peculiar, in the first instance, to the Latin cities, and flowing from the rights conceded to them by treaty, became extended in due time, under the general name of jus Latii, or Latinitas

, both to individuals and to communities which had no connection with Latium at all. As the Roman law admitted, by a fiction, the existence of Romans without the city itself, so it allowed the name and rights of Latium to be claimed by more distant foreigners. These foreign Latins, under the name of New Latins, became, in process of time, a distinct class of citizens, a special subdivision of the second rank of the republic’s favoured children.

Among the allies of the republic, the Italians occupied a rank next to the Latins. The name of Italy was confined at this period to the peninsula, extending from the rivers Isère and Rubicon on the north to the promontories of Rhegium and Iapygia. The Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Samnites, the Marsians, the Greek communities of Campania and Apulia, in submitting to the Roman arms, had generally made treaties with the republic, but had failed to secure for themselves the advantageous terms extorted by the Latins in the period of her greater weakness or moderation. Yet in transferring their swords to the service of their conquerors, they had merited on many a battle-field the amelioration of their political lot. Accordingly the Italians were allowed, for the most part, to preserve their domestic independence, their laws, magistracies, and tribunals, while they were forbidden to form political alliances among one another; and, though free in outward appearance, they received the commands of Rome, which claimed to decide upon their mutual disputes. Together with domestic liberty they enjoyed, like the Latins, immunity from personal and territorial tribute, and shared with them the same guarantees for the acquisition and enjoyment of property. The chief point in which the Italian was inferior to the Latin was his not possessing the same capacity of becoming a Roman. In the natural order of things, it was requisite for the Italian to pass through the stage of Latinitas, or

Latium, to obtain Roman civitas

; nevertheless the privileges peculiarly his own were justly regarded as a boon in comparison with mere provinciality; for even within the barrier of the Alps the Gauls and Ligurians hardly escaped the character of enemies of the republic, and were subjected to military control and the severest exactions under the plenary authority of imperators and proconsuls. Accordingly these privileges became an object of desire to the less fortunate subjects of the empire, and, as in the case of the jus Latii, so also the jus Italicum became extended, in many instances, to individuals and communities beyond the limits of Italy.