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Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...
, the
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
term (; plural ), according to
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
in the time of the late
Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Ki ...
, was the social body of the , or
citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
s, united by law (). It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities () on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other. The agreement () has a life of its own, creating a or "public entity" (synonymous with ), into which individuals are born or accepted, and from which they die or are ejected. The is not just the collective body of all the citizens, it is the contract binding them all together, because each of them is a . is an abstract formed from .
Claude Nicolet Claude Nicolet (15 September 1930 – 24 December 2010) was a 20th-21st century French historian, a specialist of the institutions and political ideas of ancient Rome. Biography Career A former student of the École normale supérieure, ...
traces the first word and concept for the citizen at Rome to the first known instance resulting from the synoecism of Romans and
Sabines The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines di ...
presented in the legends of the
Roman Kingdom The Roman Kingdom (also referred to as the Roman monarchy, or the regal period of ancient Rome) was the earliest period of Roman history when the city and its territory were ruled by kings. According to oral accounts, the Roman Kingdom began wi ...
. According to
Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...
, the two peoples participated in a ceremony of union after which they were named Quirites after the Sabine town of Cures. The two groups became the first , subordinate assemblies, from ("fellow assemblymen," where is "man", as only men participated in government). The Quirites were the . The two peoples had acquired one status. The Latin for the Sabine Quirites was , which in one analysis came from the
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
*kei-, "lie down" in the sense of incumbent, member of the same house. ''City'', ''civic'', and ''civil'' all come from this
root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
. Two peoples were now under the same roof, so to speak. was a popular and widely used word in ancient Rome, with reflexes in modern times. Over the centuries the usage broadened into a spectrum of meaning cited by the larger Latin dictionaries: it could mean in addition to the citizenship established by the constitution the legal city-state, or res publica, the populus of that res publica (not people as people but people as citizens), any city state either proper or state-like, even ideal, or (mainly under the empire) the physical city, or urbs. Under that last meaning some places took on the name, civitas, or incorporated it into their name, with the later civita or civida as reflexes.


Types of civitates

As the empire grew, inhabitants of the outlying
Roman province The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was rule ...
s would either be classed as '' dediticii'', meaning "capitulants", or be treated as client kingdoms with some independence guaranteed through treaties. There were three categories of autonomous native communities under Roman rule: the highest, '' civitates foederatae'' ("allied states"), were formed with formally independent and equal cities, and sealed by a common treaty ('' foedus''); next came the '' civitates liberae'' ("free cities"), which indicated communities that had been granted specific privileges by Rome, often in the form of tax immunity (hence ''liberae et immunes''); the final, and by far most common group, were the '' civitates stipendariae'' ("tributary states"), which while retaining their internal legal autonomy were obliged to pay tax. Prestigious and economically important settlements such as Massilia and Messana are examples of occupied regions granted semi-autonomy during the
Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Ki ...
. The island of
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
was granted this status as a reward for loyalty to Rome during the
Second Punic War The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Ital ...
. The new Romanised urban settlements of these client tribes were also called ''civitates'' and were usually re-founded close to the site of an old, pre-Roman capital. At Cirencester, for example, the Romans made use of the army base that originally oversaw the nearby tribal '' oppidum'' to create a ''civitas''. During the later empire, the term was applied not only to friendly native tribes and their towns but also to
local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loc ...
divisions in peaceful provinces that carried out civil administration. Land destined to become a ''civitas'' was officially divided up, some being granted to the locals and some being owned by the civil government. A basic street grid would be surveyed in but the development of the ''civitas'' from there was left to the inhabitants although occasional imperial grants for new public buildings would be made.
Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
describes how the Romanised Britons embraced the new urban centres:
They spoke of such novelties as 'civilisation', when this was really only a feature of their slavery (Agricola, 21)
The ''civitates'' differed from the less well-planned '' vici'' that grew up haphazardly around military garrisons; '' coloniae'', which were settlements of retired troops; and municipia, formal political entities created from existing settlements. The ''civitates'' were regional
market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...
s complete with a
basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its nam ...
and forum complex providing an administrative and economic focus. ''Civitates'' had a primary purpose of stimulating the local economy in order to raise taxes and produce raw materials. All this activity was administered by an ''ordo'' or ''curia'', a ''civitas'' council consisting of men of sufficient social rank to be able to stand for public office. Defensive measures were limited at the ''civitates'', rarely more than
palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade ...
d earthworks in times of trouble, if even that. Towards the end of the empire, the ''civitates own local
militia A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
s, led by a decurion, likely served as the only defensive force in outlying Romanised areas threatened by barbarians. There is evidence that some civitates maintained some degree of Romanisation and served as population centres beyond the official Roman withdrawal, albeit with limited resources. Certain ''civitates'' groups survived as distinct tribal groupings even beyond the fall of the Roman Empire, particularly in Britain and northern Spain.


See also

* Civitas sine suffragio * Quirites


Notes

{{Reflist Roman law Roman towns types