Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

This gift of citizenship was, in the Republic, conferred exclusively by a decree of the people (jussu populi). Such decrees might be either of a standing or a particular character; they might confer the gift immediately on the recipients or through intermediary delegates. Standing rules are mainly such as governed the condition of the dependencies of Rome. We shall find that the rights of Latin colonies provided facilities for the attainment of citizenship; the criminal laws sometimes gave a foreigner the gift of civitas as a reward for successful prosecution;[514] and, after the fall of the Republic, the enlistment of legionaries from the provinces was one of the most fertile sources from which the citizen body was recruited. Particular conferments, if not made directly by the people, might be effected through the Senate acting as its delegate,[515] or through commissioners charged with the founding of colonies. These were generally the specially-appointed IIIviri coloniae deducendae; and in all such cases of delegation the power was conferred by a lex.[516] In the last century of the Republic we find the custom growing up of permitting by special enactment such powers to generals in the field. Marius in the Cimbric war had the gift of citizenship in his hands, and a lex Cornelia Gellia granted a similar power to Pompeius during his Spanish campaigns.[517] This was the stepping stone to the right possessed by the sole commander-in-chief, the Princeps, to confer the citizenship at his pleasure.

(ii.) Any perfectly valid form of manumission conferred citizenship on slaves. Every form was undertaken at the initiative of the master, but for it to be perfectly sound (manumissio justa)[518] he must observe certain rules of law. The most usual form was the manumissio vindicta. It was one of the many fictitious forms of the old capture of property (vindicatio), the primitive Roman method of recovery. A man of straw, called the adsertor in libertatem, appeared before any magistrate, who could claim the conduct of the legis actio[519] declared the slave to be free, and touched his head with a staff (vindicta).[520] The master yielded, and this cession of his rights (in jure cessio) was followed by the declaration of the magistrate that the slave was free.[521]

The second form was the enrolment on the register of citizens by the censor, when the census was in progress, at the request of the master (manumissio censu). It was the false declaration of the master that the man was free which gave validity to this form.[522]

The third and later form was manumission by testament (manumissio testamento), by which the master either commanded the freedom of the slave in his will, or left it as a trust to his heir.[523]

The comparative inconvenience of these forms had led to other simpler modes of manumission—by announcement of the freedom before friends (inter amicos), or through a letter to the slave bidding him live as a freeman (per epistolam), or even by inviting him to dine as a freeman at his master’s table (per mensam).[524] Manumission effected in this informal way, though protected by the civil courts, did not confer the political rights of citizenship.

The citizen who was made such by manumission was a libertinus; all others were, at the close of the Republic, free-born (ingenui). The distinction conferred by ingenuitas was, as we shall see, an important one, since this condition was a requisite for the army, the magistracy, and the higher orders (ordines) of the state. But the conception of “free birth,” though a simple one at the end of the Republic, is one that has had a history, and ingenuitas did not at all times bear the same meaning. At the end of the fourth century B.C. an ingenuus was one who was sprung, not merely from free but from free-born ancestors, for the term libertinus—always its antithesis—was used to cover, not merely the manumitted slave, but his descendant in the first degree.[525] Before the close of the Republic the son of a freedman or of a freed-woman was ingenuus, the only condition being “birth in a state of freedom.”[526] The status of the mother alone was taken into consideration, that of the father being neglected, and the condition of marriage, which could not be taken into account if one of the parents was unfree, was necessarily not required.

Legal marriage must in early times have been a condition of ingenuitas in the plebeian, as it certainly was in the ancient patrician community. But before the close of the Republic this condition too was disregarded, and illegitimate children (spurii filii) were placed on a level, as regards honours and offices, with those born from wedlock.[527] It was one of the many triumphs of the law of nature over the law of the state.

The rights (jura) of the citizen in the developed Republic were those which we have enumerated as belonging to the free Plebeian of the monarchy,[528] with most of the exclusively patrician privileges added. They included the rights of marriage and of commerce, with their consequences, the patria potestas and the right of making testaments, and in addition, the power of occupying domain land and the rights of suffrage and of office. The Patricians still possessed some minor privileges,[529] and the old theory was still upheld which reserved the auspicia for the patres. But, with Plebeians in possession of the imperium, this doctrine was maintained by the fiction which gave the occupant of a “popular” and, as it still continued to be called, “patrician” magistracy the patrician auspicatio.

The duties of the citizen are certain services which he owes to the state, which are paid either by his personal labour or by his property.

The name for these duties (moenera, munera, connected with munire, to “fortify”) shows that they were connected with the military defence of the city. Originally most of such burdens were probably defrayed by the personal labour of the citizens.[530] Even the financial burdens which afterwards pressed on property (munera patrimonii) were largely defrayed by their enforced toil (operae).[531] In the municipal legislation of the close of the Republic we find the services of the citizens demanded for imposts such as the repair of roads and walls (munitio), which are in modern times covered by rates.[532] But the tributum, at whatever time it was first imposed, came to satisfy most of the necessities formerly met by this enforced labour. Other public needs were, in the Republic, met by contracts concluded by the censor, of which we shall speak in connexion with that office. A clear distinction could now be drawn between the great burden on property—the tribute—and the great burden on the person—military service.[533]