The _dediticii_ were still worse treated. Delivered by victory to the discretion of the Senate, they had been obliged to surrender their arms and give hostages, to throw down their walls or receive a garrison within them, to pay a tax, and to furnish a determinate contingent. With the exclusion of these last, the towns which had not obtained for their inhabitants the complete rights of Roman citizens belonged to the class of allies (_fœderati socii_). Their condition differed according to the nature of their engagements. Simple treaties of friendship,[170] or of commerce,[171] or of offensive alliance, or offensive and defensive,[172] concluded on the footing of equality, were called _fœdera æqua_. On the contrary, when one of the contracting parties (and it was never the Romans) submitted to onerous obligations from which the other was exempted, these treaties were called _fœdera non æqua_. They consisted almost always in the cession of a part of the territory of the vanquished, and in the obligation to undertake no war of their own. A certain independence, it is true, was left to them; they received the right of exchange and free establishment in the capital, but they were bound to the interests of Rome by an alliance offensive and defensive. The only clause establishing the preponderance of Rome was conceived in these terms: _Majestatem populi Romani comiter conservanto_;[173] that is, “They shall loyally acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman people.” It is a remarkable circumstance that, dating from the reign of Augustus, the freedmen were divided in categories similar to those which existed for the inhabitants of Italy.[174] As to the colonies, they were established for the purpose of preserving the possessions acquired, of securing the new frontiers, and of guarding the important passes; and even for the sake of getting rid of the turbulent class.[175] They were of two sorts: the Roman colonies and the Latin colonies. The former differed little from the municipia of the first degree, the others from the municipia of the second degree. The first were formed of Roman citizens, taken with their families from the classes subjected to military service, and even, in their origin, solely among the patricians. The _coloni_ preserved the privileges attached to the title of citizen,[176] and were bound by the same obligations, and the interior administration of the colony was an image of that of Rome.[177] The Latin colonies differed from the others in having been founded by the confederacy of the Latins on different points of Latium. Emanating from a league of independent cities, they were not, like the Roman colonies, tied by close bonds to the metropolis.[178] But the confederacy once dissolved, these colonies were placed in the rank of allied towns (_socii Latini_). The act (_formula_) which instituted them was a sort of _treaty_ guaranteeing their franchise.[179]