acknowledged in Rome as a burgess, this right became converted as regards Rome into full freedom of settlement.  It is easy to understand how this should have turned materially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban enjoyments; and how the number of —­metoeci—­ in Rome should have increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to live in perpetual peace with Rome.

In constitution and administration the several communities not only remained independent and sovereign, so far as the federal obligations did not interfere, but, what was of more importance, the league of the thirty communities as such retained its autonomy in contradistinction to Rome.  When we are assured that the position of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities attained autonomy, this may well have been the case, in so far as Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the league than of a member included in it; but, just as the states of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba may have been in reality an honorary right(9) like that of the German emperors, and the protectorate of Rome from the first a supremacy like that of Napoleon.  In fact Alba appears to have exercised the right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves under the guidance, as it appears, of a president selected from their own number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium, and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome—­the temple of Diana on the Aventine—­so that thenceforth sacrifice was offered both on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, and on Latin soil for Latium and Rome.  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