Latin colony

“ After the Latin war, the territory previously won from the Volsci and Aurunci was largely occupied by settlements of Roman citizens or by Latin colonies, for even after the dissolution of the Latin league the Romans made use of this type of colony to secure their conquests, as well as to relieve the surplus population of Rome and Latium. ”

“ They were intended to keep in check a conquered people, and also to repress hostile incursions. Many were founded to provide for veteran soldiers; a practice which was begun by Sulla, and continued under the Emperors.
No colony was established without a lex, plebiscítum, or senatus consultum. Religious ceremonies always accompanied their foundation, and the anniversary was observed.
The colonies were divided into two classes, viz. Roman, and Latin or military. Members of the former class had all the rights of Roman citizens; those of the latter could not vote in the Comitia at Rome. ”

“ The Romans were now masters of all southern Gaul, except Massalia, and organized it as a province. In 118 B. C. a Roman colony was established at Narbo, which was with the exception of the abandoned settlement of Junonia, the first colony of Roman citizens sent beyond the Italian peninsula, although colonies with Latin rights had been founded in Spain long before. To link Italy with Spain there was constructed the via Domitia, a military road traversing the new province. ”

“ It was finally decided that the colony should consist of Latin settlers. The commissioners for superintending the settlement were P. Scipio Nasica, C. Flaminius and L. Manlius Acidinus. Mutina and Parma were also colonised this year by Roman citizens. Two thousand men were settled in each colony on land which had recently belonged to the Boii, formerly to the Tuscans. Those at Parma received eight jugera each, those at Mutina, five. The allocation of the land was carried out by M. Aemilius Lepidus, T. Aebutius Carus and L. Quinctius Crispinus. ”

“ Roman citizens, who chose to join such colonies, gave up their civic rights for the more solid advantage of a grant of land, and became Latini. [Civitas.] Such colonies were subject to, and part of, the Roman state; but they did not possess the Roman franchise, and had no political bond among themselves.—The lex Julia, passed B.C. 90, gave the Roman franchise to the members of the Latin colonies and the Socii; and such Latin colonies and states of the Socii were then called municipia, and became complete members of the Roman state. ”

“ We must bear in mind the origin of the colonies; how a portion of the territory was set apart, and allotted to the coloni, while the rest remained to the old inhabitants; and how the colony then became, either the representative of the sovereign state, or, should it get emancipated, itself a sovereign power. The Romans always bound their colonies closely to themselves; the same appears to have been done by the Latins. There is scarcely anything similar to this in the Greek colonies. ”

“ They must be distinguished into two classes—the colonies of Roman citizens and the Latin colonies. The colonies of Roman citizens consisted usually of three hundred men of approved military experience, who went forth with their families to occupy conquered cities of no great magnitude, but which were important as military positions, being usually on the sea-coast. These three hundred families formed a sort of patrician caste, while the old inhabitants sank into the condition formerly occupied by the plebeians at Rome. ”

“ Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, Gaul, Germany, were full of people, but they greatly diminished under Roman occupation. Her maxims were capable of being realized with facility through her military organization, particularly that of the legion. In some nations [251] colonies are founded for commercial purposes, in others for getting rid of an excess of population: the Roman colony implies the idea of a garrison and an active military intent. ”

“ The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forced to yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws and magistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them, and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Roman citizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or voting for them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had been before they acquired any rights. ”

“ Harmony was indeed an absolute necessity of existence, since the tribe was small, possessed land much coveted, and was surrounded by hungry hill tribes ready at any moment to take advantage of civil jealousies in Latium. If we keep this fact in mind, we shall understand the import of the so-called Latin league. This league,10 according to the Roman historians, was based upon a compact formed by the Latian city-states for mutual protection. ”

“ Even in the founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the colonists were Romans; and although by the transference they were converted from Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted township in all probability frequently retained a preponderant—and for the confederacy dangerous—attachment to the real mother-city. ”

“ But while leaving the conquered cities in possession of their ancient laws and government, Rome introduced in the midst of every province Latin and Roman franchises, which were given sometimes to old, sometimes to newly-founded cities. Each of these colonies afforded many steps, by which the members of the conquered countries might ascend, more or less completely, to the privileges of the Roman citizen, and thus the ambition of becoming Romans quickly supplanted the aspirations after political independence, which could hardly fail to remain among a newly-conquered people. ”

“ The case of Potidaea, to which the Corinthians sent annually the chief magistrates (δημιουργοί) , appears to have been an exception to the general rule.— (2) Roman. A kind of colonisation seems to have existed among the oldest Italian nations, who, on certain occasions, sent out their superfluous male population, with arms in their hands, to seek for a new home. But these were apparently mere bands of adventurers, and such colonies rather resembled the old Greek colonies, than those by which Rome extended her dominion and her name. ”

“ The progress of Romanization in the provinces is clearly marked by the participation of provincials in the literary life of Rome. From the Cisalpine, from Narbonese Gaul, and from Spain, men with literary instincts and ability had been drawn to the capital as the sole place where their talents would find recognition. But gradually some of the provinces developed a Latin culture of their own. The first evidences of this change came from the age of the Antonines, when a Latin literature made its appearance in the province of Africa. ”

“ This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend,—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies: when we come to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence. ”

“ He sought to reverse the jealous and narrow policy of Rome in the past, and to this end rebuilt both Carthage and Corinth, and founded numerous colonies in all the different provinces, in which he settled about one hundred thousand of the poorer citizens of the capital. Upon some of the provincials he conferred full Roman citizenship, and upon others Latin rights (see p. 246, note) , and thus strove to blend the varied peoples and races within the boundaries of the empire in a real nationality, with community of interests and sympathies. ”

“ The origin of this Latin-speaking nation is still shrouded in mystery. Are they the descendants of the Getae and Latinised Dacians? Or does the blood of Italian colonists brought thither by Emperor Trajan (98-117 A.D.) predominate among them? ”

“ This colonisation was at once a military and social measure, and the means by which the league extended its geographical and political limits. The custom of war, which permitted the Italian tribes to annex a third of all conquered land, had ever been used as a means of expansion by the powerful league. And this expansion was a very real one; for the Latin colonies (coloniae Latinae) , as they were called, were full members of the society that gave them birth. Such towns as Suessa Pometia, Cora, and Velitrae had been military outposts in the territory of the Volsci ”

“ When the Roman Empire broke up, there arose a number of Latin-speaking nations,—among these, the French, Spaniards, and Portuguese. During the modern age these Romanized nations, through conquest and colonization, have spread their Latin speech and civilization over a great part of the New World. ”

“ These military colonies, of which the Romans subsequently planted many, were outposts established to protect conquered territory. A band of Roman citizens was armed and equipped, as if for military purposes. They took with them their wives and children, slaves and followers, and established a local government similar to that of Rome. These colonists relinquished their rights as Roman citizens and became Latins ”

“ The history of the Roman colonies is by no means so brilliant. Some of them, indeed, such as Florence, have, in the course of many ages, and after the fall of the mother city, grown up to be considerable states. ”

“ As a Greek mercantile colony Marseilles flourished, and sent forth other colonies, that formed settlements along the Ligurian coast, as a Literal crown from Ampurias and Rhodé in Catalonia to the confines of Etruria. Free, rich, protected by the Roman legions, these Greek settlements cultivated the arts and sciences with ardour, as well as carrying on the trade of the Mediterranean. ”

“ Neither step need be ascribed to any idealism on the part of the rulers. Coloniae served as instruments of repression as well as of culture, at least in the first century of the Empire. When Cicero [2] describes a colonia, founded under the Republic in southern Gaul, as 'a watch-tower of the Roman people and an outpost planted to confront the Gaulish tribes', he states an aspect of such a town which obtained during the earlier Empire no less than in the Republican age. Civilized men, again, are always more easily ruled than savages. ”

“ Among the German tribes of the time of Tacitus, "a people loyal to Rome. Consequently they, alone of the Germans, trade not merely on the banks of the river, but far inland, and in the most flourishing colony of the province of Rætia. Everywhere they are allowed to pass without a guard; and while to the other tribes we display only our arms and our camps, to them we have thrown open our houses and country-seats, which they do not covet." ”

“ This strategic motive no longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, which looked to the present, not to the future, to men of the existing generation and not to their sons, may easily have held that a colony, which was not needed for the protection of the district in which it was settled, injuriously affected the fighting-strength of Rome. ”

“ Latin had become the language of the country, and the best of the later Latin authors, Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quinctilian and others, were natives of the Peninsula. The Romans had planted sixty-seven colonies there, and in the time of Vespasian could enumerate 360 cities inhabited by them. ”

“ I have never been out of this colony of Africa, not even into Mauretania. A man as rich as I and of equestrian rank can afford to travel, to visit all the interesting parts of the Empire, to live where he likes, anywhere in Italy or even in Rome. ”

“ Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Cámulodúne,
Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful?
Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?
'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! ”

“ Municipia of different degrees, maritime colonies, Latin colonies, Roman colonies, prefectures, allied towns, free towns, all isolated by the difference of their condition, all united by their equal dependence on the Senate, they will form, as it were, a vast network which will entangle the Italian peoples, until the day when, without new struggles, they will awake subjects of Rome. ”

“ From what has been said above, it is evident that a law for sending out a colony was virtually an agrarian law, since lands were invariably assigned to those who were thus induced to abandon their homes. ”

“ It was built during the consulship of Tiberius Sempronius and Publius Cornelius, at the time when Hannibal threatened an irruption into Italy, as a bulwark against the Gauls inhabiting beyond the Po, or any other power that might break in over the Alps. The colony, as might be expected, grew and flourished in the number of its settlers, from the contiguity of rivers, the fertility of its soil, from alliances and intermarriages with the [212] neighboring people; never having suffered from foreign wars, but a sad sufferer from civil dissensions. ”

“ A healthy site, an orderly plan, a water supply, strong walls, housing, provision for political and religious needs: the basic necessities are all here, at Cosa, and all as early as the founding of the colony. By hard work, painstaking accuracy, and intelligent inference, Brown and Richardson, the excavators of Cosa, have given us the clearest possible108 picture of the physical structure of a Roman colony well on in the first intense period of history in the planting of advanced bases. ”