[The History of Rome, Book I by Theodor Mommsen]@TWC D-Link bookThe History of Rome, Book I CHAPTER VII 10/30
The fighting force of the league was composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin.
The supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals; year by year the Latin contingent had to appear before the gates of Rome, and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its general, after the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council to take the auspices had thereby assured themselves of the contentment of the gods with the choice that had been made.
Whatever land or property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned among its members according to the judgment of the Romans.
That the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained. The federal agreement did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well as in the termination of the war.
Practically indeed Rome must have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other, the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former. Extension of the Roman Territory after the Fall of Alba--Hernici--Rutulli and Volscii The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome--now mistress of a territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading power in the Latin confederacy--extended still further her direct and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced.
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