Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/132

112 not without reason felt by the confederacy with reference to the powerful community at their head. The position of Rome not so much within as alongside of Latium, and the footing of formal equality subsisting between the city on the one side and the confederacy on the other, are most clearly discernible in their military system. The federal army was composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly shows, of a Roman and a Latin force of equal strength. The supreme command was to alternate between Rome and Latium, and on those years only when Rome appointed the commander the Latin contingent was to appear before the gates of Rome, and to salute at the gate by acclamation the elected commander as its general, when once the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council to take the auspices had assured themselves of the satisfaction of the gods with the choice that had been made. In like manner the land and other property acquired in the wars of the league were equally divided between Rome and Latium. While thus in all internal relations the most complete equality of rights and duties was adhered to with jealous strictness, the Romano-Latin federation can hardly have been at this period represented in its external relations merely by Rome. The treaty of alliance did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council must have had a right to take part in the conduct as well as in the termination of the war. Practically indeed Rome in all probability possessed the hegemony even then, for wherever a single state and a federation enter into permanent connections with each other, the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.

The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome, now mistress of a territory comparatively considerable, and, we may venture to say, the leading power in the Latin confederacy, extended still further her direct and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced. There were numerous feuds with the Etruscans and the Veientes, chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenæ; but it does not appear that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in expelling the