There is no doubt that in this they did the wisest thing which could be done; not however because, compelled by the immediate force of arms, they could not avoid acquiescing in disadvantageous conditions, but because the subject-matter of dispute - the perpetuation of the political precedence of the Romans over the other Italians - was injurious rather than beneficial to the commonwealth itself.

It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another; in this case cowardice in some measure remedied the mischief which obstinacy had incurred.

The year 664 had begun with a most abrupt rejection of the compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession.

On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered on his office on the 10th of December of the same year, carried a law which took the commission of high treason out of the hands of the capitalist jurymen, and entrusted it to other jurymen who were nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class - qualification; the effect of which was, that this commission was converted from a scourge of the moderate party into a scourge of the ultras, and sent into exile among others its own author, Quintus Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst democratic outrages - the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.

Of greater importance than this singularly candid political recantation, was the change in the course of their policy toward the Italians. Exactly three hundred years had passed since Rome had last been obliged to submit to the dictation of peace; Rome was now worsted once more, and the peace which she desired could only be got by yielding in part at least to the terms of her antagonists. With the communities, doubtless, which had already risen in arms to subdue and to destroy Rome, the feud had become too bitter for the Romans to prevail on themselves to make the required concessions; and, had they done so, these terms would now perhaps have been rejected by the other side. But, if the original demands were conceded under certain limitations to the communities that had hitherto remained faithful, such a course would on the one hand preserve the semblance of voluntary concession, while on the other hand it would prevent the otherwise inevitable consolidation of the confederacy and thereby pave the way for its subjugation. Accordingly the gates of Roman citizenship, which had so long remained closed against entreaty, now suddenly opened when the sword knocked at them; yet even now not fully and wholly, but in a manner reluctant and annoying even for those admitted. A law carried by the consul Lucius Caesar[16] conferred the Roman franchise on the burgesses of all those communities of Italian allies which had not up to that time openly declared against Rome; a second, emanating from the tribunes of the people Marcus Plautius Silvanus and Gaius Papirius Carbo, laid down for every man who had citizenship and domicile in Italy a term of two months, within which he was to be allowed to acquire the Roman franchise by presenting himself before a Roman magistrate.

But these new burgesses were to be restricted as to the right of voting in a way similar to the freedmen, inasmuch as they could only be enrolled in eight, as the freedmen only in four, of the thirty-five tribes; whether the restriction was personal or, as it would seem, hereditary, cannot be determined with certainty.

This measure related primarily to Italy proper, which at that time extended northward little beyond Ancona and Florence. In Cisalpine Gaul, which was in the eye of the law a foreign country, but in administration and colonization had long passed as part of Italy, all the Latin colonies were treated like the Italian communities. Otherwise on the south side of the Po the greatest portion of the soil was, after the dissolution of the old Celtic tribal communities, not organized according to the municipal system, but remained withal in the ownership of Roman burgesses mostly dwelling together in market-villages (fora). The not numerous allied townships to the south of the Po, particularly Ravenna, as well as the whole country between the Po and the Alps was, in consequence of a law brought in by the consul Strabo in 665, organized after the Italian urban constitution, so that the communities not adapted for this, more especially the townships in the Alpine valleys, were assigned to particular towns as dependent and tributary villages. These new town-communities, however, were not presented with the Roman franchise, but, by means of the legal fiction that they were Latin colonies, were invested with those rights which had hitherto belonged to the Latin towns of inferior legal position.

Thus Italy at that time ended practically at the Po, while the Transpadane country was treated as an outlying dependency. Here to the north of the Po, with the exception of Cremona, Eporedia and Aquileia, there were no burgess or Latin colonies, and even the native tribes here had been by no means dislodged as they were to the south of the Po. The abolition of the Celtic cantonal, and the introduction of the Italian urban, constitution paved the way for the Romanizing of the rich and important territory; this was the first step in the long and momentous transformation of the Gallic stock - which once stood contrasted with Italy, and the assaults of which Italy had rallied to repel - into comrades of their Italian masters.

Considerable as these concessions were, if we compare them with the rigid exclusiveness which the Roman burgess-body had retained for more than a hundred and fifty years, they were far from involving a capitulation with the actual insurgents; they were on the contrary intended partly to retain the communities that were wavering and threatening to revolt, partly to draw over as many deserters as possible from the ranks of the enemy. To what extent these laws and especially the most important of them - that of Caesar - were applied, cannot be accurately stated, as we are only able to specify in general terms the extent of the insurrection at the time when the law was issued. The main matter at any rate was that the communities hitherto Latin - not only the survivors of the old Latin confederacy, such as Tibur and Praeneste, but more especially the Latin colonies, with the exception of the few that passed over to the insurgents - were thereby admitted to Roman citizenship. Besides, the law was applied to the allied cities that remained faithful in Etruria and especially in Southern Italy, such as Nuceria and Neapolis. It was natural that individual communities, hitherto specially privileged, should hesitate as to the acceptance of the franchise; that Neapolis, for example, should scruple to give up its former treaty with Rome - which guaranteed to its citizens exemption from land-service and their Greek constitution, and perhaps domanial advantages besides - for the restricted rights of new burgesses. It was probably in virtue of conventions concluded on account of these scruples that this city, as well as Rhegium and perhaps other Greek communities in Italy, even after their admission to Roman citizenship retained unchanged their former communal constitution and Greek as their official language.