Latin League

An alliance of Latin-speaking towns that Rome joined, led and then dissolved into itself. The league was a religious and defensive association of some thirty communities in Latium, bound by shared cults at the Alban Mount and at Aricia and by rights that let their citizens marry, trade and move between member towns - the ius Latii, which Rome later turned into a tool of empire. Rome was one member among several and not initially the strongest. The battle of Lake Regillus around 496 BCE ended with the Treaty of Cassius, which made Rome and the league equal partners sharing command and plunder. Two centuries of joint campaigns against Aequi, Volsci and Etruscans followed, during which Roman dominance grew steadily until the allies revolted in the Latin War of 340 to 338 BCE. Rome won and then did something unusual: instead of destroying the towns it dissolved the league and absorbed them individually, granting some full citizenship and others Latin rights. That settlement became the template for how Rome expanded across Italy and eventually the Mediterranean. The league's shared festivals continued long afterwards. Almost everything known about it comes from Roman writers centuries later. Its member towns lay within about fifty kilometres of Rome. The Latin rights it created were still being granted to provincial communities centuries later. Alba Longa was traditionally its senior member and was destroyed by Rome early. The Feriae Latinae festival on the Alban Mount continued into the imperial period. Latin itself was one of several related languages in the region.

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