Roman tradition preserved in the first book of Livy presents a very circumstantial account of the several battles by which Rome supposedly razed the Latin cities one after another until she was supreme mistress of the Tiber valley. Needless to say, if the Latin tribe had lived in such civil discord as legend assumes, it would quickly have succumbed to the inroads of the mountain tribes, which were eagerly watching for opportunities to raid. Of course legend had to account somehow for the abandoned shrines and old place names scattered over Latium, and being unable to comprehend the slower processes of civilization, it took a more picturesque route, attached a rumor of war to a hero's name, and made the villages disappear in fire and blood. Before long, when these new cities made up their contingent in the tribal army, they became aware of their own power, and then they began to exert this power in the furtherance of such policies as favored their own interests. Henceforth they acted more and more as individual units, regardless of the wishes of kindred cities…