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 marks the distinction, valid alike for the Republic and the Principate, between Italy as the privileged and the provinces as the unprivileged world.

The condition of a conquered town, whether in Italy or the provinces, before its alliance with Rome, is described by the word deditio, a term which implies absolute surrender to the power (ditio, potestas) or to the honour (fides) of the Roman people, the two latter expressions being to the Roman mind legally equivalent. Such a dediticia civitas is in the negative condition of an absolute suspension of rights, and remains in this case until some are given back by Rome with a guarantee of their permanence. Deditio is, therefore, a temporary status, although it might be occasionally prolonged as a penal measure, as it was in the case of the revolted Bruttii after the Hannibalic war. In Italy, as a rule, the terms that Rome dictated were those of a military alliance, the conditions for membership of this being, firstly, external sovereignty (libertas), as conditioned by the terms and objects of the league; secondly, internal independence—a condition which the Greek cities called [Greek: autonomia], and which, in a Latin charter to a provincial town, appears in the form of the permit suis legibus uti; thirdly, a basis for these rights, as also for the obligations which these states owed to Rome. In dealings, with the extra-Italian world this basis was either a charter (lex data), given by the Roman people and revocable by them, or a treaty (foedus), equally sanctioned by the people but irrevocable, as being sworn to by the two contracting parties; its revocation could only be the consequence of a genuine casus belli. In the first case the state is a libera civitas, in the second a libera et foederata civitas, or, in its more general and briefer designation, a foederata civitas. In Italy positive evidence furnishes us only with the foederatae, but the existence of the liberae civitates must be assumed, since, immediately on the beginning of provincial organisation in Sicily, this status is adopted..]).]