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But although Praeneste took Roman citizenship either in 90 or 89 B.C., it seems most likely that she was not legally termed a municipium, but that she came in under some special clause, or with some particular understanding, whereby she kept her autonomy, at least in name.
The municipal funds were managed by two quaestors. Religious functions primarily devolved on the two colleges of men of priestly lore alone known to the earliest Latin constitution, the municipal pontifices and augurs. Relation of the -Municipium- to the State
The first was that by which Antoninus had taken away the distinctions of the municipium, province, and colony, communicating to every part of the Empire those privileges which had formerly distinguished a citizen of Rome. Thus the whole government was cast into a more uniform and simple frame, and every mark of conquest was finally effaced.
The forms maximus, optimus, municipium, &c. which he introduced, seem to have been accepted on his authority, and to have established themselves finally in the language. As chief pontifex he interested himself with a digest of the Auspices, which he carried as far as sixteen books. The Auguralia, which are mentioned by Priscian, are perhaps a second part of the same treatise.
When you have done that, take care to have in your mind a chart of all Italy laid out according to the tribe of each town, and learn it by heart, so that you may not allow any municipium, colony, prefecture, or, in a word, any spot in Italy to exist, in which you have not a sufficient foothold.
When we came to the village that was a municipium under Augustus and a colonia under Hadrian, we found it indeed scanty and poor, but very neat and self-respectful-looking, and not unworthy to have been founded by Scipio Africanus two hundred years before Christ.
In the Sullan constitution the primary assembly and the urban character of the commonwealth of Rome, on the one hand, vanished almost into a meaningless form; the community subsisting within the state on the other hand was already completely developed in the Italian -municipium-. Down to the name, which in such cases no doubt is the half of the matter, this last constitution of the free republic carried out the representative system and the idea of the state built upon the basis of the municipalities.
It fell to pieces here, as in Gaul, when that power was withdrawn. It resolved itself into a number of local governments without any principle of cohesion. The vicar of the municipium became an independent ruler and head of a little republic; and that his authority was contested by some who had partaken of his delegated dignity may be reasonably inferred.
The question whether or not Praeneste was ever a municipium in the technical and constitutional sense of the word is apart from the present discussion, and will be taken up later. As a colony, Praeneste has a different history from that of any other of the colonies founded by Sulla.
The first, freely speaking, were those who had in a manner succeeded in detaching themselves from the interests of the municipium to which they belonged; such were the members of the Senate, including all with the indefinite title of clarissimi, the soldiers, the clergy, the public magistrates as distinguished from the municipal officers.
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