The History of Rome. Book II

But the more decided the successes that the league of Romans, Latins, and Hernici achieved against the Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli, the more that league became liable to disunion. The reason lay partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a heavy burden in Latium; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by the leading community. Of this nature was especially the infamous sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea in 308, in which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to themselves; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while the nobility adhered to Rome, these dissensions were still more disgracefully employed as a pretext for the - already mentioned - sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed (312). The main cause however of the internal breaking up of the league was the very subjugation of the common foe; forbearance ceased on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they thought that they had no longer need of each other. The open breach between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory. The former allies soon stood opposed in the field.  Already Latin volunteers in great numbers had taken part in the last despairing struggle of the Antiates: now the most famous of the Latin cities, Lanuvium (371), Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394, 400), and even several of the fortresses established in the Volscian land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to be subdued by force of arms, and the Tiburtines were not afraid even to make common cause against Rome with the once more advancing hordes of the Gauls. No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome mastered the individual towns without much trouble.

Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a subject community (civitas sine suffragio) so that the town retained its walls and an - although limited - self-administration, including magistrates and a burgess-assembly of its own, whereas its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected - the first instance of a whole burgess-body being incorporated as a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth.

Renewal of the Treaties of Alliance

The struggle with the Hernici was more severe (392-396); the first consular commander-in-chief belonging to the plebs, Lucius Genucius, fell in it; but here too the Romans were victorious. The crisis terminated with the renewal of the treaties between Rome and the Latin and Hernican confederacies in 396. The precise contents of these treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman hegemony. The institution which took place in the same year of two new tribes in the Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty advances made by the Roman power.

Closing of the Latin Confederation