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 Italy, once fairly subjugated and laid out by the Romans ( 266), its population may be considered as having been distributed into three political divisions—the Populus Romanus, or citizens of Rome, properly so called; the Socii, or inhabitants of the allied and dependent Italian states; and the Nomen Latinum, or citizens of the 'Latin name.'

The first of these, the Populus Romanus, included the whole body of the free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory strictly so called, together with a considerable number of persons scattered over the other parts of Italy, who were also accounted citizens, either because they were colonists of Roman descent, or because the title had been conferred on them as an honorary distinction. The total number of adult Roman citizens towards the close of the fifth century was under 300,000—a small proportion, evidently, of the vast Italian mass, which consisted, including the slaves, of about 5,000,000. Nor were all these equal in point of civil rights, many of them having the franchise, as it was called, or legal rights of citizens, without the suffrage, or political rights. The citizens with suffrage, those who voted on public questions—the real governing power, therefore, by whose impulses all Italy, with its millions of inhabitants, was swayed, as the body is moved by the beats of the heart—were a mere handful of men, such as might be assembled with ease in any public park or square.

The Italian subjects were the inhabitants of the allied or dependent states. The list of these was a long one, including, as it did, the various communities which made up the populations of Etruria, Umbria, the Sabine territory, Samnium, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, Messapia, and Bruttium. All the allies, however, were not equally subject to Rome: the relations in which they stood to it were determined by the particular treaties which formed the separate alliances, and these, of course, varied according to the circumstances under which they had been concluded. Almost all the allied states, however, were permitted to retain their own laws, their own municipal arrangements, their own judges, etc. Throughout the peninsula, however, care was taken to destroy every vestige of nationality or national legislature among the allies of the same race. Upon the whole, this change from independence to subjection to Rome was beneficial to the Italian nations. Not the least benefit attending it was the total abolition of those wars between neighboring states which, while the peninsula was subdivided into small independent territories, had raged incessantly and fiercely.

The Nomen Latinum, or Latin name, was a fictitious designation applied to a number of colonies scattered through the peninsula, and which, in respect of privileges, stood in an intermediate position between the Roman citizens and the Italians. The name probably originated in the circumstance, that the original colonists of this description were Latins.

It is a curious fact, that even after Rome had attained the supremacy of the peninsula, there did not exist such a thing as even a dawning Roman literature, although the state had now existed nearly five hundred years; so much earlier than their literary faculty did the native talent of the Romans for governing mankind develop itself. It was by their massive character, more than by their powers of speculation or expression, that they were to impress the world.