Let us examine the conditions of these various categories:
The right of city, in its plenitude (jus civitatis optimo jure), comprised the political privileges peculiar to the Romans, and assured for civil life certain advantages, of which the concession might be made separately and by degrees. First came the commercium, that is, the right of possessing and transmitting according to the Roman law; next the connubium, or the right of contracting marriage with the advantages established by Roman legislation.[165] The commercium and connubium united formed the Quiritary law (jus quiritium).
There were three sorts of municipia:[166] first, the municipia of which the inhabitants, inscribed in the tribes, exercised all the rights and were subjected to all the obligations of the Roman citizens; secondly, the municipia sine suffragio, the inhabitants of which enjoyed in totality or in part the Quiritary law, and might obtain the complete right of Roman citizens on certain conditions;[167] it is what constituted the jus Latii; these first two categories preserved their autonomy and their magistrates; third, the towns which had lost all independence in exchange for the civil laws of Rome, but without enjoyment, for the inhabitants, of the most important political rights; it was the law of the Cærites, because Cære was the first town which had been thus treated.[168]
Below the municipia, which had their own magistrates, came, in this social hierarchy, the prefectures,[169] so called because a prefect was sent there every year to administer justice.
The dediticii were still worse treated. Delivered by victory to the discretion of the Senate, they had been obliged to surrender their arms and give hostages, to throw down their walls or receive a garrison within them, to pay a tax, and to furnish a determinate contingent. With the exclusion of these last, the towns which had not obtained for their inhabitants the complete rights of Roman citizens belonged to the class of allies (fœderati socii). Their condition differed according to the nature of their engagements. Simple treaties of friendship,[170] or of commerce,[171] or of offensive alliance, or offensive and defensive,[172] concluded on the footing of equality, were called fœdera æqua. On the contrary, when one of the contracting parties (and it was never the Romans) submitted to onerous obligations from which the other was exempted, these treaties were called fœdera non æqua. They consisted almost always in the cession of a part of the territory of the vanquished, and in the obligation to undertake no war of their own. A certain independence, it is true, was left to them; they received the right of exchange and free establishment in the capital, but they were bound to the interests of Rome by an alliance offensive and defensive. The only clause establishing the preponderance of Rome was conceived in these terms: Majestatem populi Romani comiter conservanto;[173] that is, “They shall loyally acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman people.” It is a remarkable circumstance that, dating from the reign of Augustus, the freedmen were divided in categories similar to those which existed for the inhabitants of Italy.[174]
As to the colonies, they were established for the purpose of preserving the possessions acquired, of securing the new frontiers, and of guarding the important passes; and even for the sake of getting rid of the turbulent class.[175] They were of two sorts: the Roman colonies and the Latin colonies. The former differed little from the municipia of the first degree, the others from the municipia of the second degree. The first were formed of Roman citizens, taken with their families from the classes subjected to military service, and even, in their origin, solely among the patricians. The coloni preserved the privileges attached to the title of citizen,[176] and were bound by the same obligations, and the interior administration of the colony was an image of that of Rome.[177]
The Latin colonies differed from the others in having been founded by the confederacy of the Latins on different points of Latium. Emanating from a league of independent cities, they were not, like the Roman colonies, tied by close bonds to the metropolis.[178] But the confederacy once dissolved, these colonies were placed in the rank of allied towns (socii Latini). The act (formula) which instituted them was a sort of treaty guaranteeing their franchise.[179]
Peopled at first by Latins, it was not long before these colonies received Roman citizens who were induced by their poverty to exchange their title and rights for the advantages assured to the colonists. These did not figure on the lists of the censors. The formula fixed simply the tribute to pay and the number of soldiers to furnish. What the colony lost in privileges it gained in independence.[180]