Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

, the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

term (; plural ), according to

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

in the time of the late

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

, was the social body of the , or

citizen Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationality ...

s, united by

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

(). 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 traces the first word and concept for the citizen at Rome to the first known instance resulting from the

synoecism Synoecism or synecism ( ; , ''sunoikismos'', ), also spelled synoikism ( ), was originally the amalgamation of villages in Ancient Greece into ''poleis'', or city-states. Etymologically, the word means "dwelling together (''syn'') in the same h ...

of Romans and

Sabines The Sabines (, , , ; ) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains (see Sabina) of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divided int ...

presented in the legends of the

Roman Kingdom The Roman Kingdom, also known as the Roman monarchy and the regal period of ancient Rome, was the earliest period of Ancient Rome, Roman history when the city and its territory were King of Rome, ruled by kings. According to tradition, the Roma ...

. 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 i ...

, 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 northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

*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 plant organ, 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 bel ...

. 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 (, pl. ) 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 ruled by a Roman appointed as Roman g ...

s would either be classed as '' dediticii'', meaning "capitulants", or be treated as

client state A client state in the context of international relations is a State (polity), state that is economically, politically, and militarily subordinated to a more powerful controlling state. Alternative terms for a ''client state'' are satellite state, ...

s 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

. The island of

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

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 Punic Wars, three wars fought between Ancient Carthage, Carthage and Roman Republic, Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For ...

. 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 Cirencester ( , ; see #Pronunciation, below for more variations) is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames. It is the List of ...

, 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 governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

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. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

describes how the Romano-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 rura ...

s complete with a

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...

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 row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymo ...

d earthworks in times of trouble, if even that. Towards the end of the empire, the ''civitates own local

militia A militia ( ) is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military personnel. Militias may be raised in times of need to support regular troops or se ...

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.

Notes

{{Reflist Roman law Roman towns types

Types of civitates

See also

Notes