A , meaning "allied state/community", was the most elevated type of autonomous cities and local communities under

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

rule. Each

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 ...

comprised a number of communities of different status. Alongside

Roman colonies Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city or metropolis rather than from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis often remained close, and took specific forms during the period of clas ...

or , whose residents held the

Roman citizenship Citizenship in ancient Rome () was a privileged political and legal status afforded to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance. Citizenship in ancient Rome was complex and based upon many different laws, traditions, and cu ...

Latin citizenship Latin rights or Latin citizenship ( or ) were a set of legal rights that were originally granted to the Latins and therefore in their colonies ( Latium adiectum). ''Latinitas'' was commonly used by Roman jurists to denote this status. With the ...

, a province was largely formed by self-governing communities of natives (), which were distinguished according to the level of autonomy they had: the lowest were the ("tributary states"), followed by the ("free states"), which had been granted specific privileges. Unlike the latter, the were individually bound to Rome by formal treaty (). Although they remained formally independent, the in effect surrendered their foreign relation to Rome, to which they were bound by perpetual alliance. Nevertheless, the citizens of these cities enjoyed certain rights under

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

, like the and the . In the

Greek East Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world and of medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the ''lingua franca'' (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, t ...

, many of the Greek city-states () were formally liberated and granted some form of formal guarantee of their autonomy. As they had a long history and tradition of their own, most of these communities were content with this status, unlike in the

Latin West Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world and of medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the ''lingua franca'' (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, t ...

, where, with their progressive

Romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

, many communities sought a gradual advancement to the status of a or even a .

References

Sources

* * {{cite book , last = Mousourakis , first = George , title = A Legal History of Rome , publisher = Routledge , year = 2007 , isbn = 9780415408936 Roman law Subdivisions of ancient Rome Roman towns types .