Roman citizenship

“ A jealous solicitude for the rights of the average citizen is a marked trait of the Roman character. A clear understanding of what the rights of the common man were and an ingrained purpose to protect him in the exercise of them determine the development of judicial procedure in Rome, of law, and of political organizations. Perhaps the Romans have bequeathed to us no greater heritage than their conception of citizenship. ”

“ In other words, could Rome in the early day have seen the desirability—as here and there a far-sighted statesman did perhaps see—of granting Roman citizenship to the large-bodied and fertile-minded races of the north, removing thus a prominent barrier to racial intermingling, the result might have been something quite different. We have noted again and again that it is the mixed races that build the great civilisations and crowd forward on the road of human progress. ”

“ Finally, full Roman citizenship was possessed by the maritime or burgess colonies which had been instituted for the protection of the coast....
"Thus the title of Roman citizen in its fullest sense was possessed by men dwelling as far north as Lake Sabatinus, as far east as the Apennines, and as far south as Formiæ. But within those limits isolated communities such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and Norba, were without the Roman franchise; while beyond them other communities, such as Sena, possessed it. ”

“ The “free” as well as the “federate” city has the right to accept or decline a legislative proposal put before it by the Roman government. [1449]
Closest of all to Rome were the Latins. As members of federate cities they were amongst the socii, [1450] and it is only as a class with special privileges that they are distinguished from the latter. [1451] Latinitas had, through the efforts of colonisation, long lost its geographical and ethnic significance. It was the name for a status often accepted by Roman citizens, which combined the anomalies of sovereignty and a partial Roman citizenship. ”

“ The real governing power in Rome was the Roman people,—populus Romanus,—that is to say, the body of free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory proper, together with a considerable number of persons in other parts of Italy who, either from being colonists of Roman descent or from having had Roman citizenship conferred on them, had the privilege of going to Rome and voting at the Comitia, or Assembly. ”

“ Rome regarded them as allies, exempted them from certain taxes, and in many instances gave them Roman citizenship. It did not seem possible to extend this wise policy to remote and often barbarous lands beyond the borders of Italy. Rome adopted, instead, much the same system of imperial rule that had been previously followed by Persia and by Athens. [12] She treated the foreign peoples from Spain to Asia as subjects and made her conquered territories into provinces. [13] Their inhabitants were compelled to pay tribute and to accept the oversight of Roman officials. ”

“ Some of the Italian tribes held with Rome, and these were rewarded with the citizenship; and after all, though the consul Lucius Julius Cæsar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained some victories, the revolt was so widespread, that the Senate felt it wisest, on the first sign of peace, to offer citizenship to such Italians as would come within sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought a man under Roman law, freed him from taxation, and gave him many advantages and openings to a rise in life. ”

“ The Romans were everywhere successful. The consul Pompeius practically pacified the north, and the legatus Sulla broke the power of the allies in south Italy. A second franchise law, the lex Plautia Papiria, helped thin the ranks of the allies by offering Roman citizenship to all citizens of Italian federate communities who would claim it within sixty days. A third, the Pompeian Law, gave the franchise to all non-Romans in Gaul south of the Po, and Latin rights to those north of the Po river. ”

“ The People. In early Rome the population was divided into three classes, as in Greece, which comprised citizens with full rights and privileges, aliens with no rights of their own, and slaves who were regarded as mere property. But Rome, unlike Greece, did not remain a small territory, but extended its realm to include the parts of Italy about it and then all Italy and then the land about the Mediterranean, and then expanded to other parts of the earth, making a vast territory. Roman citizenship was gradually extended till it reached out into this territory. ”

“ In 266, the Roman sway was established over the whole peninsula proper, from the Rubicon and the Macra to the southern extremity of Calabria.
CITIZENSHIP.—In order to understand Roman history, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the Roman system in respect to citizenship. All burgesses of Rome enjoyed the same rights. These were both Public and Private. The private rights of a Roman citizen were (1) the power of legal marriage with the families of all other citizens ”

“ Romans gradually extended the privileges of citizenship till the unit was no longer a city, but a nation, and finally it became the civilized world. Aliens make no prominent figure in Rome, as they did in Athens, unless we consider the plebeians as aliens, and in the process of time the plebeians became citizens, and every civil distinction between them and the original citizens vanished. Besides, the Censor had the right to put the name of an alien on the list of citizens, and no doubt many foreigners became Roman citizens in this way. ”

“ All the villages or cities in the island are put on the same legal basis, no matter what the state of civilization of the different towns may be. The Romans would have granted the full rights of citizenship to one or two of them, and advanced the others from their more lowly state as they became more civilized and prosperous. ”

“ In fact, the majority of the colonies planted by Rome were of this kind, the Roman citizens who took part in them voluntarily resigning their citizenship, in consideration of the grants of land which they obtained. But the citizen of any Latin colony might emigrate to Rome, and be enrolled in one of the Roman tribes, provided he had held a magistracy in his native town. These Latin colonies—the Nomen Latinum—were some of the most flourishing towns in Italy. ”

“ The Social War, following close upon the murder of Livius Drusus, compelled the Romans to grant the citizenship to the Italians. This result was brought about by a succession of statutes. A law of the consul L. Julius Caesar, 90, bestowed the citizenship upon the Latins [2499] and on all the Italians who had not taken arms against Rome [2500] and who were willing to accept the gift. [2501] The same statute probably regulated the assignment [402] of these new citizens to the tribes. ”

“ It will be recalled that the military policy of Augustus aimed at securing the supremacy of the Roman element in the empire by restricting admission to the legions to Roman citizens or to freeborn inhabitants of provincial municipalities who received a grant of citizenship upon entering the service. ”

“ But by a skilful device Rome opened a door which, narrow as it was, permitted subjects to enter the Roman city. It granted to every Latin who had been a magistrate in his native city the right to become a Roman citizen at the expiration of his term of office. This time the gift of this right was complete and without reserve; suffrage, magistracies, census, marriage, private law, all were included. ... By being a citizen of Rome, a man gained honor, wealth, and security. ”

“ That a city-state with the old and narrow local social and political traditions which Rome had could adapt herself to the government of a world-empire composed of such diverse elements as made up the Roman Empire is one of the marvels of history, and a study of the methods which she followed can not fail to throw light on political questions which we have to meet today. The range of social and economic conditions through which Rome went is equally wide. The Romans come on the stage of history as a primitive pastoral people with strongholds on the hills. ”

“ The election of consuls, of generals, and of magistrates, however it had been recently usurped by the senate, was the ancient and undoubted right of the Roman people. But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. ”

“ He delighted to honor, with titles and emoluments, his generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons of their wives and children. But in the eye of the law, all Roman citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome. ”

“ Of all Rome’s achievements in the field of politics none was so far-reaching in its influence and so lasting in its effects as her conquest of the world and her successful government of it for five hundred years or more. ”

“ A city-state could not rule, with justice and efficiency, an empire.
THE PROFITS OF CONQUEST In the old days, before Rome entered on a career of foreign conquest, her citizens were famous among men for their love of country, their simple lives, and their conservative, old-fashioned ways. They worked hard on their little farms, fought bravely in the legions, and kept up with careful piety all the ceremonies of their religion. But now the Roman republic was an imperial power with all the privileges of universal rule. ”

“ In the history of the ancient world the Romans played the part that men of our race have played in the history of the modern world. They knew, as we claim to know, how to govern: how to govern themselves, and how to govern other people. To this day much in our laws and in our system of government bears a Roman stamp. They were great soldiers and could conquer: they could also hold and keep their conquests and impress the Roman stamp on all the peoples over whom they ruled. ”

“ Under the latter head we consider the Roman as a citizen, and we examine the several classes of citizens, their obligations and their privileges; we study the form of their government, its officers and machinery, its legislative, judicial, and executive procedure, its revenues and expenditures, etc. It is evident that no hard and fast line can be drawn between the two branches of the subject: they cross each other at every turn. One scarcely knows, for example, under which head to put the religion of the Romans or their games in the circus. ”

“ The history of Rome is the narrative of the building up of a single City, whose dominion gradually spread until it comprised all the countries about the Mediterranean, or what were then the civilized nations. "In this great empire was gathered up the sum total that remained of the religions, laws, customs, languages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of antiquity which had successively held sway or predominance." Under the system of Roman government and Roman law they were combined in one ordered community. ”

“ We should perceive their occupations and amusements, their material surroundings, their various dress and manners, their methods of travel, the degree of their personal safety and liberty. Then we should descend to earth in the middle of Rome itself, and become for the time being inhabitants of that city, privileged to take part in its public business and its public pleasures, to enter the houses of what may be called its representative citizens, to share in the various elements of its social day, and to estimate the moral, intellectual, and artistic cultivation of Roman society. ”

“ Establishing the city of Rome as a stable, defensible center of merchandising and commerce, transport, finance, population, wealth and power with a hinterland of associates and dependencies. As it turns out, the city of Rome has outlived both the Roman Empire and Roman Civilization. ”

“ Rome at her greatest dominated a population of one hundred and twenty millions. [17-1] In these seven nations more than one hundred and forty-one millions are white people, [17-2] nearly all speaking the same language, and all enjoying individual liberty of substantial equality. They govern themselves and they govern other peoples of other languages, colours, and ideals, to a total of nearly four times the entire Roman Empire. ”

“ Appius Claudius, afterward named Cæcus, or the Blind, introduced a dangerous innovation in the constitution during the Second Samnite War. Slavery existed at Rome, as among the other nations of antiquity; and as many slaves, from various causes, acquired their liberty, there gradually sprung up at Rome a large and indigent population of servile origin. These Freedmen were Roman citizens, but they could only be enrolled in the four city-tribes, so that, however numerous they might become, they could influence only the votes [Pg 67] of four tribes. ”

“ The presence of barbarians at the gate created not so much consternation and despair among the citizens of Rome, as did the news of the mutiny of the soldiers of Germanicus on the Rhine. What the legion was to the body, the law was to the soul of Rome—the highest expression of its sanctity and majesty. And when her physical body that once extended from Scotland to Judea, and from Dacia to Abyssinia was dead, in the year 476 A.D., her soul rose triumphant in her laws and established a second Roman Empire over the minds and consciences of men. ”