In accordance with its directions the burgesses selected from the men of senatorial rank two consuls and twelve praetors, who, just like the two consuls and six praetors of Rome, were invested with the supreme authority in war and peace.
The Latin language, which was even then the prevailing language among the Marsians and Picentes, continued in official use, but the Samnite language which predominated in Southern Italy was placed side by side with it on a footing of equality; and the two were made use of alternately on the silver pieces which the new Italian state began to coin in its own name after Roman models and after the Roman standard, thus appropriating likewise the monopoly of coinage which Rome had exercised for two centuries.

It is evident from these arrangements-- and was, indeed a matter of course-that the Italians now no longer thought of wresting equality of rights from the Romans, but purposed to annihilate or subdue them and to form a new state.

But it is also obvious that their constitution was nothing but a pure copy of that of Rome or, in other words, was the ancient polity handed down by tradition among the Italian nations from time immemorial:--the organization of a city instead of the constitution of a state, with primary assemblies as unwieldy and useless as the Roman comitia, with a governing corporation which contained within it the same elements of oligarchy as the Roman senate, with an executive administered in like manner by a plurality of coordinate supreme magistrates.

This imitation descended to the minutest details; for instance, the title of consul or praetor held by the magistrate in chief command was after a victory exchanged by the general of the Italians also for the title of Imperator.

Nothing in fact was changed but the name; on the coins of the insurgents the same image of the gods appears, the inscription only being changed from Roma to Italia.