Page:Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire (1926, Abbot and Johnson, municipaladminis00abbo).pdf/19



ONG before the republic came to an end Rome had placed the different communities which had been brought under her control in five or six well defined categories, according to their political status. But these distinctions do not hold for the earliest settlements of acquisitions of territory outside the physical limits of the city. The little market-towns which sprang up in early days on Roman territory had no separate political existence, and those who lived in them enjoyed no political rights or privileges because of their residence in them. Even Ostia had no local magistrates at the outset It was a part of the city-state of Rome. In other words Rome did not recognize the possibility of local self-government in any community dependent upon her or under her suzerainty.

This policy was violated when Rome took certain communities under her control, but allowed them to retain some part of their previous sovereignty. She adopted the new practice for the first time, according to tradition, in the case of Antium, whose people were made up partly of Roman colonists and partly of earlier settlers. Livy tells Rh