Yet, in spite of their independence, there is every reason to believe that the inevitable praefects visited these states. We must assume, at least in the cases where autonomy reached the grade which is visible in Capua, that a dual system of law prevailed in these communities; the court and the procedure would follow the form of contract, whether Sabellian or Roman, and the parties might appear indifferently before the Capuan meddix or the Roman praefect. In other cases, where a large measure of administrative autonomy is visible, but where no magistrate with a higher rank than that of aedile is found within the state,[1] it is possible that Roman law alone prevailed and that the Roman praefect was the only judge.
The lower class of municipia was represented by states "whose whole commonwealth had been merged in that of Rome."[2] Of this class Anagnia, the degraded town of the Hernici, was a type.[3] Stripped of all the active rights of citizenship, and under the direct government of a Roman praefect, the members of such towns possessed no personality in public law at all. Their position was that of the free Plebeians previous to their admission to the suffragium and the honores.
The second principle in Rome's Italian policy, first projected after the close of the Latin war and carried to its completion after the struggle with Pyrrhus, resulted in a great military hegemony over states, whose treaty relations enabled them to call themselves the "allies" (socii) of Rome. Collective names were soon devised to indicate the closeness of the union thus formed; at first the confederates were "wearers of the toga" (togati), a name that applied equally to the Latin, Sabellian, and Etruscan. But the introduction of the Greek pallium into the league destroyed this basis of classification; and the later term Italici was evolved, a word whose geographical signification emphasises the idea of a territorial limit to certain rights—one which, as we shall see, was not rigorously preserved, but which
- [Footnote: postremo civitate nobis conjunxissemus" (cf. xxiii. 5). The civitas here is probably
the full citizenship conferred on individual Capuans. They are spoken of as socii in 216 B.C. (xxiii. 5), and though the word is sometimes loosely used, it harmonises in its literal sense with the great constitutional privileges of the town.]
