[173] Cicero, Oration for Balbus, xvi.
[174] The freedmen were, in fact, either Roman citizens, or Latins, or ranged in the number of the dediticii; slaves who had, while they were in servitude, undergone a grave chastisement, if they arrived at freedom, obtained only the assimilation to the dediticii. If, on the contrary, the slave had undergone no punishment, if he was more than thirty years of age, if, at the same time, he belonged to his master according to the law of the quirites, and if the formalities of manumission or affranchisement exacted by the Roman law had been observed, he was a Roman citizen. He was only Latin if one of these circumstances failed. (Institutes of Gaius, I. § 12, 13, 15, 16, 17.)
[175] “Valerius sent upon the lands conquered from the Volsci a colony of a certain number of citizens chosen from among the poor, both to serve as a garrison against the enemies, and to diminish at Rome the party of the seditious.” (Year of Rome 260.) (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, VI. 43.)—This great number of colonies, by clearing the population of Rome of a multitude of indigent citizens, had maintained tranquillity (452). (Titus Livius, X. 6.)
[176] Modern authors are not agreed on this point, which would require a long discussion; but we may consider the question as solved in the sense of our text by Madvig, Opuscula, I. pp. 244-254.
[177] “There the people (populus) named their magistrates; the duumviri performed the functions of consuls or prætors, whose title they sometimes took (Corpus Inscriptionum Latin., passim); the quinquennales corresponded to the censors. Finally, there were questors and ediles. The Senate, as at Rome, was composed of members, elected for life, to the number of a hundred; the number was filled up every five years (lectio senatus).” (Tabula Heracleensis, cap. x. et seq.)
[178] A certain number of colonies figure in the list given by Dionysius of Halicarnassus of the members of the confederacy (V. 61).
[179] Pliny, Natural History, III. iv. § 7.
[180] Because it named its magistrates, struck money (Mommsen, Münzwesen, p. 317), privileges refused to the Roman colonies, and preserved its own peculiar laws according to the principle: “Nulla populi Romani lege adstricti, nisi in quam populus eorum fundus factus est.” (Aulus Gellius, XVI. xiii. 6.—Compare Cicero, Oration for Balbus, viii. 21.)
[181] Cicero, Oration on the Agrarian Law, ii. 27.
[182] Titus Livius, XXVII. 9.