Roman colony

“ Each colony had its own administration, usually modelled upon that of Rome, and enjoyed the rights of commercium and connubium both with Rome and with the other Latin colonies. These settlements were towns of considerable size, having 2,500, 4,000 or 6,000 colonists, each of whom received a grant of 30 or 50 iugera (20 or 34 acres) of land. Founded at strategic points on conquered territory, they formed one of the strongest supports of the Roman authority: at the same time colonization of this character served to relieve over-population and satisfy land-hunger in Rome and Latium. ”

“ 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 inhabitants retained the rest of their lands, and lived together with the new settlers, who alone composed the proper colony. The conquered people must at first have been quite a distinct class from, and inferior to, the colonists. No colonia was established without a lex, plebiscitum, or senatusconsultum; a fact which shows that a Roman colony was never a mere body of adventurers, but had a regular organisation by the parent state. ”

“ The Romans were now masters of all southern Gaul, except Massalia, and organized it as a province. In 118 B. C. a Roman colony was established at Narbo, which was with the exception of the abandoned settlement of Junonia, the first colony of Roman citizens sent beyond the Italian peninsula, although colonies with Latin rights had been founded in Spain long before. To link Italy with Spain there was constructed the via Domitia, a military road traversing the new province. ”

“ After the Latin war, the territory previously won from the Volsci and Aurunci was largely occupied by settlements of Roman citizens or by Latin colonies, for even after the dissolution of the Latin league the Romans made use of this type of colony to secure their conquests, as well as to relieve the surplus population of Rome and Latium. ”

“ Four hundred years would suffice to create a high state of civilization from mere savagery, and that is what the Romans accomplished here in that space of time. They not only conquered, but they eventually pacified, the fierce and fearless Britons; and they established export and import trades that rendered Britain the most prosperous colony of the Roman Empire, and the Romano-British merchants and people the wealthiest colonists of those times. ”

“ Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Cámulodúne,
Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful?
Shall we deal with it as an infant? shall we dandle it amorously?
'Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant! ”

“ A healthy site, an orderly plan, a water supply, strong walls, housing, provision for political and religious needs: the basic necessities are all here, at Cosa, and all as early as the founding of the colony. By hard work, painstaking accuracy, and intelligent inference, Brown and Richardson, the excavators of Cosa, have given us the clearest possible108 picture of the physical structure of a Roman colony well on in the first intense period of history in the planting of advanced bases. ”

“ During the period of the Roman dominion it resembled a distant colony exposed to the incursions of frontier tribes whom no treaties could bind and no defeats subjugate, requiring a large military force for its protection, the accounts of whose proceedings reached Rome at distant intervals, and only attracted more than a passing attention when a crisis occurred in her affairs, which must have been considered rather as a vexatious interruption in matters of nearer and more engrossing interest than a subject of general attention. ”

“ As a Greek mercantile colony Marseilles flourished, and sent forth other colonies, that formed settlements along the Ligurian coast, as a Literal crown from Ampurias and Rhodé in Catalonia to the confines of Etruria. Free, rich, protected by the Roman legions, these Greek settlements cultivated the arts and sciences with ardour, as well as carrying on the trade of the Mediterranean. ”

“ It has no magistrates, no common council. Some of the more public-spirited [Pg 130] citizens gradually band themselves together to preserve order and dispense a rude justice. In time a municipal government is organized. The Roman method of occupying a new territory was far different from this. It consisted primarily in the establishment of colonies in the new region. The most desirable locations for strategic and commercial reasons were picked out, and a law was passed in the popular assembly authorizing the establishment of a colony, and providing for commissioners to found it. ”

“ The ancient Firmum Picenum was founded as a Latin colony in 264 B.C., after the conquest of the Picentes, as the local headquarters of the Roman power, to which it remained faithful. It was originally governed by five quaestors. It was made a colony with full rights after the battle of Philippi, the 4th legion being settled there. ”

“ No mention of it is found in history prior to the Roman conquest; and it appears to have first risen to be a place of importance under the Roman Empire. The period at which it became a colony is uncertain: Pliny calls it only an "oppidum," but it appears from the Liber de Coloniis that it must have received a colony previous to his time, probably as early as the second T Triumvirate ”

“ In the Twelve Tables heredium has the meaning of hortus, “garden;” Pliny, N. H. xix. 4. 50. It was a praedium parvulum consisting of two iugera; Fest. ep. 99.
[267] In the earliest colonies this was the amount assigned to each man; cf. Livy iv. 47. 6 (Labici) ; vi. 16. 6 (Satricum) ; viii. 21. 11 (Tarracina, founded 329) . The first two are not so distinctly historical as the third; Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. 24, n. 1. Supposing Rome to have been a colony, the historians infer that Romulus made a similar distribution among its earliest settlers; cf. Varro, R. R. i. 10. 2 ”

“ These military colonies, of which the Romans subsequently planted many, were outposts established to protect conquered territory. A band of Roman citizens was armed and equipped, as if for military purposes. They took with them their wives and children, slaves and followers, and established a local government similar to that of Rome. These colonists relinquished their rights as Roman citizens and became Latins ”

“ The case of Potidaea, to which the Corinthians sent annually the chief magistrates (δημιουργοί) , appears to have been an exception to the general rule.— (2) Roman. A kind of colonisation seems to have existed among the oldest Italian nations, who, on certain occasions, sent out their superfluous male population, with arms in their hands, to seek for a new home. But these were apparently mere bands of adventurers, and such colonies rather resembled the old Greek colonies, than those by which Rome extended her dominion and her name. ”

“ They must be distinguished into two classes—the colonies of Roman citizens and the Latin colonies. The colonies of Roman citizens consisted usually of three hundred men of approved military experience, who went forth with their families to occupy conquered cities of no great magnitude, but which were important as military positions, being usually on the sea-coast. These three hundred families formed a sort of patrician caste, while the old inhabitants sank into the condition formerly occupied by the plebeians at Rome. ”

“ War, managed in this way, and with these results, became to Rome what commerce or rural industry is to other countries, viz. the only hopeful and general way for making a fortune. Fourthly, by means of colonies it was that Rome delivered herself from her surplus population. Prosperous and well-governed, the Roman citizens of each generation outnumbered those of the generation preceding. ”

“ In the course of that long period during which our records of the Roman Empire are most incomplete, the slave-gangs of the great Roman families became transformed into the coloni, whose origin and situation constitute one of the obscurest questions in all history. We may suspect that they were formed partly by the elevation of the slaves, and partly by the degradation of the free farmers; and that they prove the richer classes of the Roman Empire to have become aware of the increased value which landed property obtains when the cultivator had an interest in the produce of the land. ”

“ Britain, with all her virgin wealth unmined, furnished Rome with enormous food supplies; sent many thousand men to serve with Roman armies on the continent; and received the colonists, called auxiliaries, brought thither in accordance with Rome's invariable policy of transplanting to the land of one nation captives from another. Thus the population of Britain, composed of people from nearly every race or tribe which has been subdued by Rome, was strangely heterogeneous, yet as strangely fused. ”

“ The history of the Roman colonies is by no means so brilliant. Some of them, indeed, such as Florence, have in the course of many ages, and after the fall of the mother city, grown up to be considerable States. ”

“ As soon as the conquests of the Romans in Britain assumed the form of a province of the empire, all that they possessed in the island was termed ‘Britannia Romana,’ all that was still hostile to them, ‘Britannia Barbara.’ The conquered tribes became the inhabitants of a Roman province, subject to her laws, and sharing in some of her privileges. ”

“ Roman citizens, who chose to join such colonies, gave up their civic rights for the more solid advantage of a grant of land, and became Latini. [Civitas.] Such colonies were subject to, and part of, the Roman state; but they did not possess the Roman franchise, and had no political bond among themselves.—The lex Julia, passed B.C. 90, gave the Roman franchise to the members of the Latin colonies and the Socii; and such Latin colonies and states of the Socii were then called municipia, and became complete members of the Roman state. ”

“ They thus drew the pomerium of the state, only staying the furrow where the gates of the city were to be. [1415] The greater number of these settlements of Roman citizens were for the protection of the Italian coasts, and the members of the [301] maritime colonies (coloniae maritimae) were allowed exemption from active military service. [1416] Few in numbers (often but a handful of 300 men) , and settled in an already existing political society, the colonists formed a privileged patriciate amongst its older members. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But while leaving the conquered cities in possession of their ancient laws and government, Rome introduced in the midst of every province Latin and Roman franchises, which were given sometimes to old, sometimes to newly-founded cities. Each of these colonies afforded many steps, by which the members of the conquered countries might ascend, more or less completely, to the privileges of the Roman citizen, and thus the ambition of becoming Romans quickly supplanted the aspirations after political independence, which could hardly fail to remain among a newly-conquered people. ”

“ Neither step need be ascribed to any idealism on the part of the rulers. Coloniae served as instruments of repression as well as of culture, at least in the first century of the Empire. When Cicero [2] describes a colonia, founded under the Republic in southern Gaul, as 'a watch-tower of the Roman people and an outpost planted to confront the Gaulish tribes', he states an aspect of such a town which obtained during the earlier Empire no less than in the Republican age. Civilized men, again, are always more easily ruled than savages. ”

“ The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forced to yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws and magistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them, and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Roman citizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or voting for them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had been before they acquired any rights. ”

“ The Romans surrounded themselves with colonies, as their border strongholds. A [Pg 453] district was given over to several thousand men with the obligation to keep it; there were added to them from Rome as many as liked to join them, and others from Latium and other nations. The laws were established; the old inhabitants remained as a commonalty,—the mass of the tradesmen certainly consisted of them; they amalgamated before long with the coloni, and this germ grew up to be a stately tree. Rome first planted these colonies on the Liris, and in Campania ”

“ Even in the founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the colonists were Romans; and although by the transference they were converted from Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted township in all probability frequently retained a preponderant—and for the confederacy dangerous—attachment to the real mother-city. ”