With regard to M. and P. Valerius the ancients are in great perplexity; for, Marcus soon afterwards appears again as dictator, and Publius was already dead before it happened. Both of them are stated to have been sons of Poplicola; yet this also is awkward, since a P. Valerius occurs as his son once more in the Fasti. The poem takes no heed of Fasti and annals, and the sons of Poplicola are not to be thought of: they are the old heroes Maximus and Poplicola, who fight here, and meet with their death. The tradition also certainly related that Tarquin and his sons fell:--the reason why he was said to have been wounded only, is that men had read in the annals, that he had died at Cuma. And surely the dictator Postumius is likewise a mere interpolation; in the poem it was Sp. Lartius, who could not have been left out, or M. Valerius. The reward offered by the dictator refers to the legend of the Dioscuri, as in the war against the Lucanians under Fabricius, in which a youth brought the ladder and was no more seen afterwards, when the mural crown had been awarded to him. With this battle ends the lay of the Tarquins, as that of the Nibelungen does with the doom of all the heroes. The old era is concluded by it, and a new one is ushered in. There is no fixed date for the battle: some assume 255, others 258; some make Postumius a consul, others a dictator, and this is the very proof that the account is not historical; if it were so, the Fasti must in any case have marked such an event with some exactness. It is credible that in 259 the peace with the Latins was restored; if this notice be taken literally, the victory at the Regillus is confirmed by it. We may well believe that the Latins had been beaten at the Regillus, and had been obliged to content themselves with the position which Tarquin had assigned them, but that the senate had afterwards from other reasons restored to them the constitution of Servius Tullius. However this may be, there was peace already between the Romans and the Latins before the secession of the Plebes. For years after the battle at the Regillus, Livy has nothing to tell of the Latins; whilst, on the other hand, Dionysius gives various accounts of exchanges, armistices, &c., which, however, are invented at pleasure, until the first decree of the people that their prisoners should be restored to them; yet we know nothing of the whole affair, except that under Sp. Cassius Rome concluded a treaty with the Latins by which isopolity, or _jus municipii_, was granted them. The meaning of the term isopolity changes in the course of ages, but in ancient times its nature was as follows. There existed between Romans and Latins, and between Romans and Cærites, this right, that whosoever wanted to emigrate into the other state, might at once claim the privileges of citizenship therein. This was called ἰσοπολιτεία, an expression which is first met with in the days of Philip, when it became desirable to combine into larger states.