it was not long before she began to assume the primacy among the towns
of the Latin league. This assumption of a leadership practically hers
already was disputed by only one city. This was Praeneste, and there can
be no doubt but that if Praeneste had possessed anything approaching the
same commercial facilities in way of communication by water she would
have been Rome's greatest rival. As late as 374 B.C. Praeneste was alone
an opponent worthy of Rome.[159]

As head of a league of nine cities,[160] and allied with Tibur, which
also headed a small confederacy,[161] Praeneste felt herself strong
enough to defy the other cities of the league,[162] and in fact even to
play fast and loose with Rome, as Rome kept or transgressed the
stipulations of their agreements. Rome, however, took advantage of
Praeneste at every opportunity. She assumed control of some of her land
in 338 B.C., on the ground that Praeneste helped the Gauls in 390;[163]
she showed her jealousy of Praeneste by refusing to allow Quintus
Lutatius Cerco to consult the lots there during the first Punic
war.[164] This jealousy manifested itself again in the way the leader of
a contingent from Praeneste was treated by a Roman dictator[165] in 319
B.C. But while these isolated outbursts of jealousy showed the ill
feeling of Rome toward Praeneste, there is yet a stronger evidence of
the fact that Praeneste had been in early times more than Rome's equal,
for through the entire subsequent history of the aggrandizement of Rome
at the expense of every other town in the Latin League, there runs a
bitterness which finds expression in the slurs cast upon Praeneste, an
ever-recurring reminder of the centuries of ancient grudge. Often in
Roman literature Praeneste is mentioned as the typical country town. Her
inhabitants are laughed at because of their bad pronunciation, despised
and pitied because of their characteristic combination of pride and
rusticity. Yet despite the dwindling fortunes of the town she was able