Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

But citizenship mattered most. To be a citizen of Rome meant, in the deepest sense, freedom. For men it conferred an enviable package of rights and responsibilities: citizens could vote, hold political office, use the law courts to defend themselves and their property, wear the toga on ceremonial occasions, do military service in the legions rather than the auxiliaries, claim immunity from certain taxes, and avoid most forms of corporal and capital punishment, including flogging, torture, and crucifixion. Citizenship was not limited to men: although many of its rights were denied to women, female citizens could pass the status to their children, and their lives were more likely to feature comfort and plenty if they were citizens than if they were not. Citizenship was therefore a prized status, which was why the Roman state dangled it as reward for auxiliaries who served a quarter century in the Roman army, and for enslaved people who served uncomplainingly in the knowledge that if their master freed them, they too could claim the right to limited citizenship as freedmen. To lose one’s citizenship—the punishment imposed for very serious crimes such as homicide or forgery—was a form of legal dismemberment and social death. Rome was not by any means unique in fostering this concept of legal and social privilege—there were citizens in ancient Greece, Carthage, and numerous other Mediterranean states of the era. But Rome was unique in the way that it developed and extended the ...