The increased strength of the Roman community within its own borders after the catastrophe of the Gauls is vouched for by the multiplication of municipal districts in spite of heavy losses in the field, the number and importance of the colonies, the gradual expansion of commerce and augmentation of the mercantile marine, the introduction of coined money (about 360 B.C.) in place of the clumsy bars of copper, and lastly, the increasingly active relations of Rome with foreign powers. About the year 360 B.C. the Romans sent votive offerings to Delphi, and made efforts both before and after to introduce Greek cults into their own country. But the strongest evidence of the extension of Roman trade and the esteem in which Rome was held as the contract-making capital of the commercial cities of middle Italy is furnished by her treaties with Carthage (probably 348 and 343 B.C.). The provisions (the text of which has come down to us) that Roman vessels should not sail westwards beyond a certain line in north Africa or in Spain, prove conclusively that the Carthaginians thought Italico-Roman competition a thing worth taking into account. The internal development of the Roman state during this period (509-367 B.C.) is a matter of greater moment than many wars and military successes. The constitutional struggles which took place in an inland town in Italy are in themselves of small account in the history of the world. But the forms into which civil life and civil law were cast in Rome were subsequently (though in a much modified form) of great consequence to the whole Roman Empire. The division into _curiæ_ obtained not only in Rome itself but in the remotest colonies of the empire in its day. The _tribus_, _i.e._, the districts occupied by Roman citizens enjoying full civil rights, afterward included all the citizens of the empire. Moreover, a particular interest attaches to the history of civil and private law among the Romans from the fact that its evolution has exercised a controlling influence on the juridical systems of the most diverse civilised peoples to this day. The legal and constitutional changes which took place at Rome during this period were rendered imperatively necessary (in spite of the conservative character of the Roman people) by the changed status of the city. During the earlier half of the monarchy all civil institutions had been arranged with an eye to municipal conditions. But the Rome of the Tarquins (in the sixth century B.C.) had hardly become the capital of a domain of nearly a thousand square kilometres before she found herself under the necessity of admitting her new citizens, first into the companies (_centuriæ_) of the army, and presently (after 509 B.C.) into the popular assemblies which voted by centuries. The old sacral ordinances, which were unsuited to any but municipal conditions, were superseded by the _jus Quiritium_, or Law of the Spearman, an ordinance of civil law.