Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The civis sine suffragio was known as a municeps, and the state, all of whose full members enjoyed this status, derived from its occupants the name of municipium. The name of this type of citizen—the “taker up of burdens”—aptly expresses his subjection to the chief duties (munera) of Roman citizenship, such as service in the Roman legions, forced labour in raising defences, the payment of the war-tax (tributum), and his exclusion from the usually corresponding rights of suffrage and of office;[1423] it emphasises the fact, strange to the early Roman mind, of public duties not balanced by public rights, but it contains no implication of the strangest characteristic of the municeps—one almost unknown in ancient legal systems—the possession of a personality in private which is not the result of a personality in public law. The municeps possesses commercium with all its consequences; he possesses conubium with Rome; he is, from the point of view of private law, in every sense a citizen.

This possession of citizenship carried with it as a necessary consequence his subjection to the praetor’s court. His home, the municipium, is therefore, equally with the community of full Roman citizens, a praefectura, and the rules of jurisdiction were the same in both classes of states. To the praefects nominated by the praetor were in course of time added others elected by the comitia tributa, and reckoned amongst the minor magistrates known as the viginti-sex-viri.[1424] These latter were the four praefects of Capua, Cumae, and the Campanian coast; but, in regard to the mode of election, there is no difference discernible between the judicial magistrates of the municipia and those of the communities of Roman citizens. Elected praefects visited the municipium of Capua and the Roman colony of Puteoli, while nominated praefects held their court in the colony of Saturnia and the municipal town of Anagnia.[1425]

But the praefect was far from representing the higher functions of government in every municipium. These towns fall into two broad divisions, not according to the rights which they receive, but according to the rights which they retain. The civitas sine suffragio might be granted honoris causa to a state which maintained its complete independence or its communal autonomy. It was thus conferred on Capua, Cumae, Formiae, and Fundi,[1426] and the gift of the partial citizenship under these conditions was a valued privilege. It enabled a Capuan to own Roman land, to settle on the ager publicus, to marry into the noble houses of Rome, and to serve, not in the auxiliary cohort, but in her army or in the legion raised from the municipes. But meanwhile his own magistrate, the meddix tuticus, administers in the Campanian courts the native Sabellian law,[1427] his senate deliberates, and his popular assembly decides. Sometimes, as in the case of Capua, the state is still bound by treaty relations to Rome, and the two conflicting principles of armed alliance and of absorption are for once commingled.[1428]

Yet, in spite of their independence, there is every reason to believe that the inevitable praefects visited these states. We must assume, at least in the cases where autonomy reached the grade which is visible in Capua, that a dual system of law prevailed in these communities; the court and the procedure would follow the form of contract, whether Sabellian or Roman, and the parties might appear indifferently before the Capuan meddix or the Roman praefect. In other cases, where a large measure of administrative autonomy is visible, but where no magistrate with a higher rank than that of aedile is found within the state,[1429] it is possible that Roman law alone prevailed and that the Roman praefect was the only judge.

The lower class of municipia was represented by states “whose whole commonwealth had been merged in that of Rome.”[1430] Of this class Anagnia, the degraded town of the Hernici, was a type.[1431] Stripped of all the active rights of citizenship, and under the direct government of a Roman praefect, the members of such towns possessed no personality in public law at all. Their position was that of the free Plebeians previous to their admission to the suffragium and the honores.

The second principle in Rome’s Italian policy, first projected after the close of the Latin war and carried to its completion after the struggle with Pyrrhus, resulted in a great military hegemony over states, whose treaty relations enabled them to call themselves the “allies” (socii) of Rome. Collective names were soon devised to indicate the closeness of the union thus formed; at first the confederates were “wearers of the toga” (togati), a name that applied equally to the Latin, Sabellian, and Etruscan. But the introduction of the Greek pallium into the league destroyed this basis of classification; and the later term Italici was evolved, a word whose geographical signification emphasises the idea of a territorial limit to certain rights—one which, as we shall see, was not rigorously preserved, but which marks the distinction, valid alike for the Republic and the Principate, between Italy as the privileged and the provinces as the unprivileged world.

The condition of a conquered town, whether in Italy or the provinces, before its alliance with Rome, is described by the word deditio, a term which implies absolute surrender to the power (ditio, potestas)[1432] or to the honour (fides)[1433] of the Roman people, the two latter expressions being to the Roman mind legally equivalent.[1434] Such a dediticia civitas is in the negative condition of an absolute suspension of rights, and remains in this case until some are given back by Rome with a guarantee of their permanence. Deditio is, therefore, a temporary status, although it might be occasionally prolonged as a penal measure, as it was in the case of the revolted Bruttii after the Hannibalic war.[1435] In Italy, as a rule, the terms that Rome dictated were those of a military alliance, the conditions for membership of this being, firstly, external sovereignty (libertas), as conditioned by the terms and objects of the league;[1436] secondly, internal independence—a condition which the Greek cities called αὐτονομία, and which, in a Latin charter to a provincial town, appears in the form of the permit suis legibus uti;[1437] thirdly, a basis for these rights, as also for the obligations which these states owed to Rome. In dealings, with the extra-Italian world this basis was either a charter (lex data), given by the Roman people and revocable by them, or a treaty (foedus), equally sanctioned by the people but irrevocable, as being sworn to by the two contracting parties; its revocation could only be the consequence of a genuine casus belli. In the first case the state is a libera civitas, in the second a libera et foederata civitas,[1438] or, in its more general and briefer designation, a foederata civitas.[1439] In Italy positive evidence furnishes us only with the foederatae, but the existence of the liberae civitates must be assumed, since, immediately on the beginning of provincial organisation in Sicily, this status is adopted.

In Italy also there was doubtless the distinction between the higher and the lower kind of foedus—the foedus aequum and the foedus iniquum. In all treaties concluded between Rome and cities in her symmachy there was a recognition of partial dependence in the latter; but some of these treaties contained a “suzerainty” clause to the effect that the state in question should “in a friendly spirit respect the majesty of the Roman people.” This clause did not diminish the libertas of the state accepting it, but merely strengthened the position of Rome.[1440] It was a characteristic of the iniquum foedus.[1441]