Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/514

 508 MUNICIPAL REGIME DISAPPEAES. HOOK V. quered nations succeefled in establishing themselves as an organized body only by conquering in their turn the rights and institutions which Rome was inclined to keep for itself. In order to this they had to enter the Roman city, make a place for themselves there, press forward, and transform that city also, in order to make of themselves and Rome one body. This was a long and difficult task. 5. The Conquered N'ations, successivehj enter tJie Horaan City. We have seen how deplorable was the condition of the Roman subject, and how the condition of the citi- zen was to be envied. Not vanity alone, but the most real and dearest interests had to suffer. Whoever was not a Roman citizen was not reputed to be either a husband or a father; legally he could be neither pro- prietor nor heir. Such was the value of the title of Roman citizen, that without it one was outside the law, and with it he entered regular society. It hap- pened, therefore, that this title became the object of the most lively desires of men. The Latin, the Italian, the Greek, and, later, the Spaniard and the Gaul, aspired to be Roman citizens — the single means of having rights and of counting for something. All, one after another, nearly in the order in which they entered the Roman empire, labored to enter the Roman city, and, after long efforts, succeeded. This slow introduction into the Roman state is the last act in the long history of the social transformations of the ancients. To ob- serve this great event in all its successive phases, we must examine its commencement, in the fourth century before our era.