There is no reason to believe that the Latin towns took as models for their early municipal officers, the consuls at Rome, rather than to believe that the reverse was the case. In fact, the change in Rome to the name consuls from prætors,[[188]] with the continuance of the name prætor in the towns of the Latin League, would rather go to prove that the Romans had given their two chief magistrates a distinctive name different from that in use in the neighboring towns, because the more rapid growth in Rome of magisterial functions demanded official terminology, as the Romans began their "Progressive Subdivision of the Magistracy."[[189]] Livy says that in 341 B.C. Latium had two prætors,[[190]] and this shows two things: first, that two prætors were better adapted to circumstances than one dictator; second, that the majority of the towns had prætors, and had had them, as chief magistrates, and not dictators,[[191]] and that such an arrangement was more satisfactory. The Latin League had had a dictator[[192]] at its head at some time,[[193]] and the fact that these two prætors are found at the head of the league in 341 B.C. shows the deference to the more progressive and influential cities of the league, where prætors were the regular and well known municipal chief magistrates. Before Præneste was made a colony by Sulla, the governing body was a senate,[[194]] and the municipal officers were prætors,[[195]] ædiles,[[196]] and quæstors,[[197]] as we know certainly from inscriptions. In the literature, a prætor is mentioned in 319 B.C.,[[198]] in 216 B.C.,[[199]] and again in 173 B.C. implicitly, in a statement concerning the magistrates of an allied city.[[200]] In fact nothing in the inscriptions or in the literature gives a hint at any change in the political relations between Præneste and Rome down to 90 B.C., the year in which the lex Iulia was passed. If a dictator was ever at the head of the city government in Præneste, there are none of the proofs remaining, such as are found in the towns of the Alban Hills, in Etruria, and in the medix tuticus of the Sabellians. The fact that no trace of the dictator remains either in Tibur or Præneste seems to imply that these two towns had better opportunities for a more rapid development, and that both had prætors at a very early period.[[201]]
However strongly the weight of probabilities make for proof in the endeavor to find out what the municipal government of Præneste was, there are a certain number of facts that can now be stated positively. Before 90 B.C. the administrative officers of Præneste were two prætors,[[202]] who had the regular ædiles and quæstors as assistants. These officers were elected by the citizens of the place. There was also a senate, but the qualifications and duties of its members are uncertain. Some information, however, is to be derived from the fact that both city officers and senate were composed in the main of the local nobility.[[203]]
An important epoch in the history of Præneste begins with the year 91 B.C. In this year the dispute over the extension of the franchise to Italy began again, and the failure of the measure proposed by the tribune M. Livius Drusus led to an Italian revolt, which soon assumed a serious aspect. To mitigate or to cripple this revolt (the so-called Social or Marsic war), a bill was offered and passed in 90 B.C. This was the famous law (lex Iulia) which applied to all Italian states that had not revolted, or had stopped their revolt, and it offered Roman citizenship (civitas) to all such states, with, however, the remarkable provision, IF THEY DESIRED IT.[[204]] At all events, this law either did not meet the needs of the occasion, or some of the allied states showed no eagerness to accept Rome's offer. Within a few months after the lex Iulia had gone into effect, which was late in the year 90, the lex Plautia Papiria was passed, which offered Roman citizenship to the citizens (cives et incolæ) of the federated cities, provided they handed in their names within sixty days to the city prætor in Rome.[[205]]
There is no unanimity of opinion as to the status of Præneste in 90 B.C. The reason is twofold. It has never been shown whether Præneste at this time belonged technically to the Latins (Latini) or to the allies (foederati), and it is not known under which of the two laws just mentioned she took Roman citizenship. In 338 B.C., after the close of the Latin war, Præneste and Tibur made either a special treaty[[206]] with Rome, as seems most likely, or one in which the old status quo was reaffirmed. In 268 B.C. Præneste lost one right of federated cities, that of coinage,[[207]] but continued to hold the right of a sovereign city, that of exile (ius exilii) in 171 B.C.,[[208]] in common with Tibur and Naples,[[209]] and on down to the year 90 at any rate (see note 9). It is to be remembered too that in the year 216 B.C., after the heroic deeds of the Prænestine cohort at Casilinum, the inhabitants of Præneste were offered Roman citizenship, and that they refused it.[[210]] Now if the citizens of Præneste accepted Roman citizenship in 90 B.C., under the conditions of the Julian law (lex Iulia de civitate sociis danda), then they were still called allies (socii) at that time.[[211]] But that the provision in the law, namely, citizenship, if the allies desired it, did not accomplish its purpose, is clear from the immediate passage in 89 of the lex Plautia-Papiria.[[212]] Probably there was some change of phraseology which was obnoxious in the Iulia. The traditional touchiness and pride of the Prænestines makes it sure that they resisted Roman citizenship as long as they could, and it seems more likely that it was under the provision of the Plautia-Papiria than under those of the Iulia that separate citizenship in Præneste became a thing of the past. Two years later, in 87 B.C., when, because of the troubles between the two consuls Cinna and Octavius, Cinna had been driven from Rome, he went out directly to Præneste and Tibur, which had lately been received into citizenship,[[213]] tried to get them to revolt again from Rome, and collected money for the prosecution of the war. This not only shows that Præneste had lately received Roman citizenship, but implies also that Rome thus far had not dared to assume any control of the city, or the consul would not have felt so sure of his reception.
Just what relation Præneste bore to Rome between 90 or 89 B.C., when she accepted Roman citizenship, and 82 B.C. when Sulla made her a colony, is still an unsettled question. Was Præneste made a municipium by Rome, did Præneste call herself a municipium, or, because the rights which she enjoyed and guarded as an ally (civitas foederata) had been so restricted and curtailed, was she called and considered a municipium by Rome, but allowed to keep the empty substance of the name of an allied state?
During the development which followed the gradual extension of Roman citizenship to the inhabitants of Italy, because of the increase of the rights of autonomy in the colonies, and the limitation of the rights formerly enjoyed by the cities which had belonged to the old confederation or league (foederati), there came to be small difference between a colonia and a municipium. While the nominal difference seems to have still held in legal parlance, in the literature the two names are often interchanged.[[214]] Mommsen-Marquardt say[[215]] that in 90 B.C. under the conditions of the lex Iulia Præneste became a municipium of the type which kept its own citizenship (ut municipes essent suæ cuiusque civitatis).[[216]] But if this were true, then Præneste would have come under the jurisdiction of the city prætor (prætor urbanus) in Rome, and there would be præfects to look after cases for him. Præneste has a very large body of inscriptions which extend from the earliest to the latest times, and which are wider in range than those of any other town in Latium outside Rome. But no inscription mentions a præfect and here under the circumstances the argumentum ex silentio is of real constructive value, and constitutes circumstantial evidence of great weight.[[217]] Præneste had lost her ancient rights one after the other, but it is sure that she clung the longest to the separate property right. Now the property in a municipium is not considered as Roman, a result of the old sovereign state idea, as given by the ius Quiritium and ius Gabinorum, although Mommsen says this had no real practical value.[[218]] So whether Præneste received Roman citizenship in 90 or in 89 B.C. the spirit of her past history makes it certain that she demanded a clause which gave specific rights to the old federated states, such as had always been in her treaty with Rome.[[219]] There seems to have been no such clause in the lex Iulia of 90 B.C., and this fact gives still another reason, in addition to the ones mentioned, to conclude that Præneste probably took citizenship in 89 under the lex Plautia-Papiria. The extreme cruelty which Sulla used toward Præneste,[[220]] and the great amount of its land[[221]] that he took for his soldiers when he colonized the place, show that Sulla not only punished the city because it had sided with Marius, but that the feeling of a Roman magistrate was uppermost, and that he was now avenging traditional grievances, as well as punishing recent obstreperousness.
There seems to be, however, very good reasons for saying that Præneste never became a municipium in the strict legal sense of the word. First, the particular officials who belong to a municipium, præfects and quattuorvirs, are not found at all;[[222]] second, the use of the word municipium in literature in connection with Præneste is general, and means simply "town";[[223]] third, the fact that Præneste, along with Tibur, had clung so jealously to the title of federated state (civitas foederata) from some uncertain date to the time of the Latin rebellion, and more proudly than ever from 338 to 90 B.C., makes it very unlikely that so great a downfall of a city's pride would be passed over in silence; fourth and last, the fact that the Prænestines asked the emperor Tiberius to give them the status of a municipium,[[224]] which he did,[[225]] but it seems (see note 60) with no change from the regular city officials of a colony,[[226]] shows clearly that the Prænestines simply took advantage of the fact that Tiberius had just recovered from a severe illness at Præneste[[227]] to ask him for what was merely an empty honor. It only salved the pride of the Prænestines, for it gave them a name which showed a former sovereign federated state, and not the name of a colony planted by the Romans.[[228]] The cogency of this fourth reason will bear elaboration. Præneste would never have asked for a return to the name municipium if it had not meant something. At the very best she could not have been a real municipium with Roman citizenship longer than seven years, 89 to 82 B.C., and that at a very unsettled time, nor would an enforced taking of the status of a municipium, not to mention the ridiculously short period which it would have lasted, have been anything to look back to with such pride that the inhabitants would ask the emperor Tiberius for it again. What they did ask for was the name municipium as they used and understood it, for it meant to them everything or anything but colonia.
Let us now sum up the municipal history of Præneste down to 82 B.C. when she was made a Roman colony by Sulla. Præneste, from the earliest times, like Rome, Tusculum, and Aricia, was one of the chief cities in the territory known as Ancient Latium. Like these other cities, Præneste made herself head of a small league,[[229]] but unlike the others, offers nothing but comparative probability that she was ever ruled by kings or dictators. So of prime importance not only in the study of the municipal officers of Præneste, but also in the question of Præneste's relationship to Rome, is the fact that the evidence from first to last is for prætors as the chief executive officers of the Prænestine state (respublica), with their regular attendant officers, ædiles and quæstors; all of whom probably stood for office in the regular succession (cursus honorum). Above these officers was a senate, an administrative or advisory body. But although Præneste took Roman citizenship either in 90 or 89 B.C.,[[213]] it seems most likely that she was not legally termed a municipium, but that she came in under some special clause, or with some particular understanding, whereby she kept her autonomy, at least in name. Præneste certainly considered herself a federate city, on the old terms of equality with Rome, she demanded and partially retained control of her own land, and preserved her freedom from Rome in the matter of city elections and magistrates.