in Rome, and there would be praefects to look after cases for him.
Praeneste has a very large body of inscriptions which extend from the
earliest to the latest times, and which are wider in range than those of
any other town in Latium outside Rome. But no inscription mentions a
praefect and here under the circumstances the argumentum ex silentio is
of real constructive value, and constitutes circumstantial evidence of
great weight.[217] Praeneste had lost her ancient rights one after the
other, but it is sure that she clung the longest to the separate
property right. Now the property in a municipium is not considered as
Roman, a result of the old sovereign state idea, as given by the ius
Quiritium and ius Gabinorum, although Mommsen says this had no real
practical value.[218] So whether Praeneste received Roman citizenship in
90 or in 89 B.C. the spirit of her past history makes it certain that
she demanded a clause which gave specific rights to the old federated
states, such as had always been in her treaty with Rome.[219] There
seems to have been no such clause in the lex Iulia of 90 B.C., and this
fact gives still another reason, in addition to the ones mentioned, to
conclude that Praeneste probably took citizenship in 89 under the lex
Plautia-Papiria. The extreme cruelty which Sulla used toward
Praeneste,[220] and the great amount of its land[221] that he took for
his soldiers when he colonized the place, show that Sulla not only
punished the city because it had sided with Marius, but that the feeling
of a Roman magistrate was uppermost, and that he was now avenging
traditional grievances, as well as punishing recent obstreperousness.

There seems to be, however, very good reasons for saying that Praeneste
never became a municipium in the strict legal sense of the word. First,
the particular officials who belong to a municipium, praefects and
quattuorvirs, are not found at all;[222] second, the use of the word
municipium in literature in connection with Praeneste is general, and