itted to
her new citizens. This last conception lay beyond the horizon of Caesar, as
of all ancient statesmen, but his first act on gaining control of Italy was
to enfranchise the Transpadanes, whose claims he had consistently
advocated, and in 45 B.C. he passed the _Lex Julia Municipalis_, an act of
which considerable fragments are inscribed on two bronze tables found at
Heraclea near Tarentum.[4] This law deals _inter alia_ with the police and
the sanitary arrangements of the city of Rome, and hence it has been argued
by Mommsen that it was Caesar's intention to reduce Rome to the level of a
municipal town. But it is not likely that such is the case. Caesar made no
far-reaching modifications in the government of the city, such as were
afterwards carried out by Augustus, and the presence in the _Lex Julia
Municipalis_ of the clauses referred to is an example of the common process
of "tacking" (legislation _per saturam_, as it was called by the Romans).
The law deals with the constitution of the local senates, for whose members
qualifications of age (30 years) and military service are laid down, while
persons who have suffered conviction for various specified offences, or who
are insolvent, or who carry on discreditable or immoral trades are
excluded. It also provides that the local magistrates shall take a census
of the citizens at the same time as the census takes place in Rome, and
send the registers to Rome within sixty days. The existing fragments tell
us little as to the decentralization of the functions of government, but
from the _Lex Rubria_, which applies to the Transpadane districts
enfranchised by Caesar (it must be remembered that Cisalpine Gaul remained
nominally a province until 42 B.C.) we gather that considerable powers of
independent jurisdiction were reserved to the municipal magistrates. But
Caesar was not content with framing a uniform system of local government
[v.04 p.0942] for Italy. He was the first to carry out on a large scale
those plans of transmarine colonization whose inception was due to the
Gracchi. As consul in 59 B.C. Caesar had established colonies [Sidenote:
Colonies.] of veterans in Campania under the _Lex Julia Agraria_, and had
even then laid down rules for the foundation of such communities. As
dictator he planted numerous colonies both in the eastern and western
provinces, notably at Corinth and Carthage. Mommsen interprets this policy
as signifying that "the rule of the urban comm