The Latins were the inhabitants of Latium, the region bounded roughly by the Tiber, the Apennines, and the Liris valley. The city of Rome, then, occupied (and still does) a position on the northern end of the Latin plain, the volcanic plain that extends to the south of the city. The tradition is that under their eponymous king, Latinus, whose name goes back as far as Hesiod, the aborigines intermarried with Aeneas' Trojans, who settled at Lanuvium. The Latin settlements throughout the plain show descent from the Villanovan culture. The tradition holds that Alba Longa, a traditionally Trojan site around...oh, maybe 25 km south of Rome, initially held hegemony over the Latins, who were slow to develop a political identity. Alba's destruction transferred leadership of the Latins to Rome, where a Latin population had politically unified with a Sabine one, with Etruscan influence entering the city in enormous quantities sometime later. The Romans formed a Latin League by the early fifth century at the latest, and traditionally earlier than that under the leadership of the Etruscan kings--certainly by the late sixth century the Romans held certain hegemony over the other Latins, and the earliest known Roman treaty, the sixth century treaty with the Carthaginians, has Rome negotiate for all the Latins. The Latin League remained in existence until the mid fourth century, when the other Latins revolted and allied themselves with the Samnites. They were defeated and the league dissolved, with individual cities becoming municipia, being granted the ius Quiritum, or maintaining strictly Latin rights until integration later. Additionally the Romans planted citizen colonies throughout Latium, such as the one at Antium, and a few cities (e.g. Praeneste) remained allies until quite late.

The Romans spoke Latin because they were Latins. Their case was slightly unusual in that the early city was something of a melting-pot and also included Sabines and soon after Etruscans, and the influence of their languages can be seen quite strongly on Roman Latin, but the Romans always identified most closely with their kindred to the south. Latin cult centers at Alba and Nemi were among the most important political points for the early city, and even during the period of Etruscan kingship the tradition holds that the Romans continued to turn most of their attention to the south