The Lex Julia applied specifically to communities. Each Italian city had to convene a meeting and formally pass a decree announcing that it was now Roman. This showed careful forethought. A city could not become Roman willy-nilly by default. The people had to stand up and explicitly declare themselves. And every time a city declared itself Roman, it put more pressure on neighbouring cities to do the same. In short, the Romans leveraged the desire for the citizenship in most cities against a minority of Etrurians who wanted to be shot of Rome altogether. Thus the Lex Julia had the different
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