ORGANIZATION OF LATIN CITIES
Latins’ sense of a shared identity also found expression in other ways. In the Greek world, the ideal city-state or polis was a closed community: Few outsiders became citizens, intermarriage with noncitizens was sometimes discouraged, and the right to own land was restricted to citizens. Latin cities were less exclusive at least with other Latins. Later, all Latins possessed the right of conubium, permitting them to make a lawful marriage with a resident of any other Latin city (children of the marriage gained the citizenship status of the father; children born outside marriage received their mother’s status).
Equally, the right of commercium allowed Latins to own land in any of the Latin cities and to make legally enforceable contracts with their citizens. In addition, all Latins had the right (ius migrationis) to take up citizenship in any other Latin city merely by establishing residence there. These rights achieved formal expression no later than the fourth century, although it is likely that they were, in some form, much older. Such shared rights—and the common religious rites too may be relics of the time before the appearance of cities divided the people of Latium into clearly separated communities resulted from the domination of a few centers, and eventually from the leadership of just one, Rome.
Roman authors later thought that their city, under its kings, had led the other Latins. Although the extent of Rome’s power remains uncertain, this claim is to some extent correct. Polybius (Histories 3. 22), a Greek historian of the second century B.C., recorded a treaty between Rome and the North African city of Carthage that he claimed had been preserved in an inscription. In this treaty, probably concluded around 500, the Carthaginians pledged not to injure any Latin city subject to Rome, and not to attack any Latin city that was not subject to Rome. The treaty specifically named some of these subject cities, lying along the coast: Ardea, Antium, Lavinium, Circeii, and Tarracina the last about sixty miles (96 km) south of Rome. This treaty, then, clearly illustrates Rome’s claim to leadership of the Latins, and also shows that its rule was contested or resisted by some Latin cities. As Rome’s fortunes waxed and waned, its ability to control these cities may have tightened or weakened accordingly.