In Cisalpine Gaul, which was in the eye of the law a foreign country, but in administration and colonization had long passed as part of Italy, all the Latin colonies were treated like the Italian communities.
Otherwise on the south side of the Po the greatest portion of the soil was, after the dissolution of the old Celtic tribal communities, not organized according to the municipal system, but remained withal in the ownership of Roman burgesses mostly dwelling together in market- villages (-fora-).

The not numerous allied townships to the south of the Po, particularly Ravenna, as well as the whole country between the Po and the Alps was, in consequence of a law brought in by the consul Strabo in 665, organized after the Italian urban constitution, so that the communities not adapted for this, more especially the townships in the Alpine valleys, were assigned to particular towns as dependent and tributary villages.

These new town-communities, however, were not presented with the Roman franchise, but, by means of the legal fiction that they were Latin colonies, were invested with those rights which had hitherto belonged to the Latin towns of inferior legal position.
Thus Italy at that time ended practically at the Po, while the Transpadane country was treated as an outlying dependency.

Here to the north of the Po, with the exception of Cremona, Eporedia and Aquileia, there were no burgess or Latin colonies, and even the native tribes here had been by no means dislodged as they were to the south of the Po.

The abolition of the Celtic cantonal, and the introduction of the Italian urban, constitution paved the way for the Romanizing of the rich and important territory; this was the first step in the long and momentous transformation of the Gallic stock-- which once stood contrasted with Italy, and the assaults of which Italy had rallied to repel--into comrades of their Italian masters.
Considerable as these concessions were, if we compare them with the rigid exclusiveness which the Roman burgess-body had retained for more than a hundred and fifty years, they were far from involving a capitulation with the actual insurgents; they were on the contrary intended partly to retain the communities that were wavering and threatening to revolt, partly to draw over as many deserters as possible from the ranks of the enemy.