with all its consequences; he possesses conubium with Rome; he is, from the point of view of private law, in every sense a citizen.
This possession of citizenship carried with it as a necessary consequence his subjection to the praetor's court. His home, the municipium, is therefore, equally with the community of full Roman citizens, a praefectura, and the rules of jurisdiction were the same in both classes of states. To the praefects nominated by the praetor were in course of time added others elected by the comitia tributa, and reckoned amongst the minor magistrates known as the viginti-sex-viri.[1] These latter were the four praefects of Capua, Cumae, and the Campanian coast; but, in regard to the mode of election, there is no difference discernible between the judicial magistrates of the municipia and those of the communities of Roman citizens. Elected praefects visited the municipium of Capua and the Roman colony of Puteoli, while nominated praefects held their court in the colony of Saturnia and the municipal town of Anagnia.[2]
But the praefect was far from representing the higher functions of government in every municipium. These towns fall into two broad divisions, not according to the rights which they receive, but according to the rights which they retain. The civitas sine suffragio might be granted honoris causa to a state which maintained its complete independence or its communal autonomy. It was thus conferred on Capua, Cumae, Formiae, and Fundi,[3] and the gift of the partial citizenship under these conditions was a valued privilege. It enabled a Capuan to own Roman land, to settle on the ager publicus, to marry into the noble houses of Rome, and to serve, not in the auxiliary cohort, but in her army or in the legion raised from the municipes. But meanwhile his own magistrate, the meddix tuticus, administers in the Campanian courts the native Sabellian law,[4] his senate deliberates, and his popular assembly decides. Sometimes, as in the case of Capua, the state is still bound by treaty relations to Rome, and the two conflicting principles of armed alliance and of absorption are for once commingled.[5]*
- ↑ p. 235.
- ↑ Festus p. 233, quoted p. 302.
- ↑ Liv. viii. 14.
- ↑ ib. xxiv. 19; xxvi. 6.
- ↑ The language of Livy makes it doubtful whether he conceives the foedus to have continued after the civitas had been conferred. They are different stages of rights, but he may mean them to be cumulative. In xxxi. 31 we read "cum . . . ipsos (Campanos) foedere primum, deinde conubio atque cognationibus,
