Such persons received, instead, the lowest Latin rights which did
not even imply membership in any community and rendered them destitute of
civic constitution and the right of making a testament.[3] This latter
treatment applied only to those whose land was confiscated. Thus Sulla
vindicated the majesty of the Republic and at the time avoided furnishing
his enemies with a nucleus in Italian communities. In Campania, the
democratic colony established at Capua by Cinna[4] was done away with and
the domain given back to the state, thus becoming _ager publicus_. The
whole territory of Praeneste and Norba in Latium, and Spoletium in Umbria
was confiscated. The town of Sulmo in Pelignium was razed. But more direful
than all this was the punishment which fell upon Etruria[5] and Samnium.
These people had marched upon Rome and, with the avowed determination of
exterminating the Roman people, had engaged in battle at the Colline gate.
They were utterly destroyed and their country left desolate. The territory
of Samnium was not even opened up for settlement, but left as a lair for
wild beasts. Henceforth from the Rubicon to the Straits of Sicily there
were to be none but Romans; the laws and the language of the whole
peninsula were to be the laws[6] and the language of Rome.
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