Giuseppe Valditara - Civis Romanus sum : citizenship and empire in ancient Rome

Giuseppe Valditara

Giuseppe Valditara

Academica Press
Washington - London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Valditara, Giuseppe, author. |

Title: Civis romanus sum : citizenship and empire in ancient Rome / Giuseppe Valditara

Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2020. | Includes references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020935285 | ISBN 9781680531220 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781680531794 (paperback) | ISBN 9781680539745 (ebook) Copyright 2020 Giuseppe Valditara

1.
The Legendary Origins of Rome: A Melting-Pot

2.
The Openness of Roman Society

3.
Archaic Juridical Institutes and Forms of Integration

a. Original Tribes:
The Equal Dignity of Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans

4.
Annexing Defeated Populations, a Logic of Power

5.
Citizenship and Worth: An Utilitarian View of Citizenship

6.
The Edict of Caracalla and the Utilitarian View of Citizenship

7.
Citizenship and utilitas publica

8.
The Prohibition of Dual Citizenship: A Question of Public Interest

9.
Roman Law and Foreigners in Rome: A Question of Sovereignty on the Territory

10.
Losing Citizenship

11.
Citizenship: The Change of the Fourth Century BC

12.
Expelling Immigrants

13.
No More Masters in Their Own Houses: The Romans and Their Policies on Foreigners

14.
Citizenship by Birth and by Manumission: Change in the First Century BC

15.
Citizenship and the Principate: The Restrictive Policy Going on

16.
Defending publica utilitas and Combating Invasions

17.
Granting Citizenship and Popular Support: A Matter of Sovereignty

18.
Conquered Territories: Between Defending the National Interest and Assimilation

19.
A Birthrate Policy to Rule the Empire

20.
Rome Was Born by Building A Wall: At the Origins of the Roman Identity

21.
Mos, an Identitarian Law

22.
Roman Memory, Roots, and Identity

23.
The Importance of the Identitarian Principle

The history of the Roman people drew on ancient legends that were passed down from generation to generation for centuries, already well known in the Greek world from the fifth century BC, and enshrined in the words of the poets and historians of the Augustan age. Rome, in its historical reality, was born in a Latin settlement on the Palatine in a wider dynamic of relationships and alliances, are exemplarily meaningful.

If we look at the legends, one element characterizing early Roman identity is the ethnically mixed aspect of its society. Aeneas.

The tradition identifying the foundation of Rome with Trojan ancestry seems multifarious and very ancient at the same time, as it was already recorded at around the half of the sixth century BC in Tarquinia, where, in the bulls grave, the fight between Etruscans and Romans is metaphorically represented by Achilles assaulting Troilus. also mention this tradition.

The tradition that connects Latium with the ancient Greek world, implying a mixing of varied elements, is even more ancient. Hesiod in the Theogony, recalls Agrios and Latinos, sons of Ulysses and the sorceress Circe, who reigned over all the Tyrrhenians. According to Aristotle,

The origin and the meaning of these legends is not relevant here. and thus wholly and sincerely felt as a part of Romes identity and cultural heritage.

The idea that peoples have of themselves is certainly important to determine their spirit and cultural traits.

Considered from this perspective, the difference with the feeling that other ancient peoples have about their origins - firstly, with what the Greeks thought of themselves - appears very clear. Such differences can be immediately perceived if we just consider three famous texts from Herodotus, Isocrates, and Thucydides:

Such was their answer to Alexander; but to the Spartan envoys they said, It was most human that the Lacedaemonians should fear our making an agreement with the foreigner; but we think you do basely to be afraid, knowing the Athenian temper to be such that there is nowhere on earth such store of gold or such territory of surpassing fairness and excellence that the gift of it should win us to take the Persian part and enslave Hellas. For there are many great reasons why we should not do this, even if we so desired; first and chiefest, the burning and destruction of the adornments and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the uttermost rather than make covenants with the doer of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all which it would ill beseem Athenians to be false. Know this now, if you knew it not before, that as long as one Athenian is left alive, we will make no agreement with Xerxes. Neverless we thank you for your forethought concerning us, in that you have so provided for our wasted state that you offer to nourish our households. For your part, you have given us full measure of kindness; yet for ourselves, we will make shift to endure as best we may, and not be burdensome to you. But now, seeing that this is so, send your army with all speed; for as we guess, the foreigner will be upon us and invading our country in no long time, but as soon as ever the message comes to him that we will do knothing that he requires of us; wherefore, ere he comes into Attica, now is the time for us to march first into Boeotia. At this reply of the Athenians the envoys returned back to Sparta. (Herodotus)

for we did not become dwellers in this land by driving others out of it, nor by finding it uninhabited, nor by coming together here a motley horde composed of many races; but we are of a lineage so noble and so pure that throughout our history we have continued in possession of the very land which gave us birth, since we are sprung from its very soil and are able to address our city by the very names which we apply to our nearest kin (Isocrates)

Firstly, I shall speak first of our ancestors []. For this land of ours, in which the same people have never ceased to dwell in an unbroken line of successive generations, they by their value transmitted to our times a free state. (Thucydides)

The question asked to the young Athenians before including them in a demos is well known: Who is your father and to what deme does he belong, and who is your fathers father, and who your mother, and who her father and what his deme?

The principle of inheritance by which citizenship passed down was not casual.

Dionysus of Halicarnassus (2.17.1-2) correspondingly concluded: if I compare the Greek usages with the Roman ones, I really cannot praise them, not the Spartans ones, nor the Thebans ones, nor the usages of the Athenians, who are so highly proud of their wisdom. These who gave their citizenship to none or few (and it is better not to talk about some of them who drive foreigners off) to save the nobility of their origins, did not obtain anything good from such boastfulness, suffering a worst damage from it instead. The issue was clear also to the Emperor Claudius and to the historian Tacitus: quid aliud exitio Lacedaemoniis et Atheniensibus fuit, quamquam armis pollerent, nisi quod victos pro alienigenis arcebant?,