From the earliest times, when the overland trade between Upper Etruria, Magna Graecia, and Lower Etruria came up the Liris valley, and touching Praeneste and Tibur crossed the river Tiber miles above Rome, that energetic little settlement looked with longing on the city that commanded the splendid valley between the Sabine and Volscian mountains.  Rome turned her conquests in the direction of her longings, but could get no further than Gabii.  Praeneste and Tibur were too strongly situated, and too closely connected with the fierce mountaineers of the interior,[158] and Rome was glad to make treaties with them on equal terms.

Rome, however, made the most of her opportunities.  Her trade up and down the river increased, and at the same time brought her in touch with other nations more and more.  Her political importance grew rapidly, and it was not long before she began to assume the primacy among the towns of the Latin league.  This assumption of a leadership practically hers already was disputed by only one city.  This was Praeneste, and there can be no doubt but that if Praeneste had possessed anything approaching the same commercial facilities in way of communication by water she would have been Rome’s greatest rival.  As late as 374 B.C.  Praeneste was alone an opponent worthy of Rome.[159]

As head of a league of nine cities,[160] and allied with Tibur, which also headed a small confederacy,[161] Praeneste felt herself strong enough to defy the other cities of the league,[162] and in fact even to play fast and loose with Rome, as Rome kept or transgressed the stipulations of their agreements.  Rome, however, took advantage of Praeneste at every opportunity.  She assumed control of some of her land in 338 B.C., on the ground that Praeneste helped the Gauls in 390;[163] she showed her jealousy of Praeneste by refusing to allow Quintus Lutatius Cerco to consult the lots there during the first Punic war.[164] This jealousy manifested itself again in the way the leader of a contingent from Praeneste was treated by a Roman dictator[165] in 319 B.C.  But while these isolated outbursts of jealousy showed the ill feeling of Rome toward Praeneste, there is yet a stronger evidence of the fact that Praeneste had been in early times more than Rome’s equal, for through the entire subsequent history of the aggrandizement of Rome at the expense of every other town in the Latin League, there runs a bitterness which finds expression in the slurs cast upon Praeneste, an ever-recurring reminder of the centuries of ancient grudge.  Often in Roman literature Praeneste is mentioned as the typical country town.  Her inhabitants are laughed at because of their bad pronunciation, despised and pitied because of their characteristic combination of pride and rusticity.  Yet despite the dwindling fortunes of the town she was able to keep a treaty with Rome on nearly equal terms until 90 B.C., the year in which the Julian law was passed.[166] Praeneste scornfully refused