Now that Italy was a single civic community and the civic territory reached from the Arnus and Rubico down to the Sicilian Straits,( 41) it was necessary to consent to the formation of smaller civic communities within that larger unit.

So Italy was organized into communities of full burgesses; on which occasion also the larger cantons that were dangerous from their size were probably broken up, so far as this had not been done already, into several smaller town-districts.( 42) The position of these new communities of full burgesses was a compromise between that which had belonged to them hitherto as allied states, and that which by the earlier law would have belonged to them as integral parts of the Roman community.

Their basis was in general the constitution of the former formally sovereign Latin community, or, so far as their constitution in its principles resembled the Roman, that of the Roman old-patrician-consular community; only care was taken to apply to the same institutions in the -municipium- names different from, and inferior to, those used in the capital, or, in other words, in the state.

A burgess-assembly was placed at the head, with the prerogative of issuing municipal statutes and nominating the municipal magistrates.

A municipal council of a hundred members acted the part of the Roman senate.