According to Livy and Dionysius, the Latins, with the exception of Gabii, were induced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and of Tarquin; on the other hand, Cicero in the books _De Republica_ says, _universum Latium bello subegit_. Whether this war was merely passed over by the others, or whether Cicero let fall the expression from carelessness only, cannot now be decided. It is probable that there have always existed discrepancies between the narrations of poetry and history: the tale of Turnus Herdonius has a highly poetical colouring. Whilst under Servius there was an alliance with reciprocity, Latium now entered into that relation in which afterwards the _Socii Italici_ stood, when they bound themselves _ad majestatem populi Romani comiter colendam_. It seems also that the Latins, when there was a change of rulers at Rome, had refused to renew the alliance concluded under the late king. In the alliance between Rome and Carthage, (of which the original treaty was kept among the archives of the ædiles, which also Polybius, as he states himself, not without a great deal of trouble, translated into Greek, since even the Romans themselves could hardly decypher and tell the meaning of the old writing; an alliance which was to be renewed from time to time, as in our days is still the case with those with the Barbary states,) we see the whole coast, not only of the Prisci Latini, but as far as Terracina, which at that time perhaps was still Tyrrhenian and not Volscian, in the possession of Rome; its inhabitants are called in the Greek translation ὑπήκοοι. Rome concludes the alliance for them as well as for herself; it is stipulated that, if the Carthaginians should make conquests in Latium, they were to give them up to the Romans. This treaty is as authentic as any thing can be: it is a strange whim of an otherwise estimable man,[83] to take it for an invention of Polybius. Here, therefore, Latium is still dependent on Rome, to which dependence Livy also bears witness: it was a relation newly established. Afterwards, when all as far as Antium rise up in hostility against Rome, we again recognise a decline of Roman power. The _Feriæ Latinæ_ are an assembly of all the Latin nations, not merely of the Prisci Latini on the Alban Hill, where we know that the Latin authorities must needs have had the presidency. Yet Dionysius tells us that Tarquin had established the festival; that a bullock was killed, of which the delegates of the several towns each received a piece (_carnem Latinis accipere_). The Milanese Scholiast on Cicero’s oration for Plancius[84] says, that with regard to this there had been a different tradition; that some had ascribed the festival to Tarquinius Priscus,--this is a mere falsification for Tarquinius Superbus out of spite against the latter, just as the foundation of the Capitol was referred to the former king,--others to the Prisci Latini, which consequently would place it in the earliest times. The