THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

I. The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

CHAPTER VII - The Hegemony of Rome in Latium

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Page 12

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 entertained, doubtless not without reason, by the confederacy with reference to the powerful community taking the lead. The position of Rome not within, but alongside of Latium, is most clearly apparent in the arrangements for warfare.

The fighting force of the league was composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin. The supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals; year by year the Latin contingent had to appear before the gates of Rome, and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its general, after the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council to take the auspices had thereby assured themselves of the contentment of the gods with the choice that had been made.

Whatever land or property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned among its members according to the judgment of the Romans. That the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained. The federal agreement 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 may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well as in the termination of the war.

Practically indeed Rome must have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other, the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.

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