Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/131

Rh could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds; or, to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by side with the special burgess-rights of the individual communities, a general right of settlement co-extensive with the confederacy. It is easy to understand how this should have turned substantially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban enjoyments, and how the number of metœci in Rome should have increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to live in perpetual peace with Rome.

The constitution and administration of the several communities not only remained independent and sovereign, in so far as their federal obligations were not concerned, but, what was of more importance, the league of the thirty communities retained its autonomy as distinguished from Rome. When we are assured that the position of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities attained autonomy, this may indeed have been the case, in so far as Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the league than of a member included in it; but just as the states of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba probably was in reality an honorary right (P. 43) like that of the German emperors, the protectorate of Rome was probably from the first a supremacy like that of Napoleon. In fact Alba appears to have exersed the right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves, under the presidency, as it appears, of an officer selected from their own number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium, and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome, the temple of Diana on the Aventine, so that thenceforth sacrifice was offered on the one hand on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, on the other on Latin soil for Latium and Rome. With equal deference to the interests of the league, the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community—a stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions