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 Praeneste became a municipium of the type which kept its own citizenship (ut municipes essent suae cuiusque civitatis).[216] But if this were true, then Praeneste would have come under the jurisdiction of the city praetor (praetor urbanus) in Rome, and there would be praefects to look after cases for him.  Praeneste 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 praefect and here under the circumstances the argumentum ex silentio is of real constructive value, and constitutes circumstantial evidence of great weight.[217] Praeneste 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 Praeneste 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 Praeneste probably took citizenship in 89 under the lex Plautia-Papiria.  The extreme cruelty which Sulla used toward Praeneste,[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 Praeneste never became a municipium in the strict legal sense of the word.  First, the particular officials who belong to a municipium, praefects and quattuorvirs, are not found at all;[222] second, the use of the word municipium in literature in connection with Praeneste is general, and means simply “town";[223] third, the fact that Praeneste, along with Tibur, had clung so jealously to the title of federated state