The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
and thus it was a term of contrast to those communities which possessed full Roman citizenship. But when in the course of time the civitates sine suffragio received political rights and the Roman states received full Roman citizenship, and thus the municipium proper disappeared from Italy, the word was still applied to those communities of Roman citizens which had originally been either Latin municipia or independent federate states. And it also, of course, continued to be applied to cities outside Italy which possessed ius Latinum. It is clear that originally municipium andcolonia were not incompatible ideas. For a colony founded with ius Latinum was both a municipium and a colonia. But a certain opposition arose between them, and became stronger whenmunicipium came to be used in a new sense. Municipium is only used of communities which existed as independent states before they received Roman citizenship, whether by the deduction of a colony or not. Colonia is generally confined to those communities which were settled for the first time as Roman cities, and were never states before. Thus municipium involves a reference to previous autonomy.
(c). Besides Roman cities, there were also Latin cities in the provinces. Originally there were two kinds of ius Latinum, one better and the other inferior. The old Latin colonies possessed the better kind. The inferior kind was known as the ius of Ariminum, and it alone was extended to provincial communities. When Italy received Roman citizenship after the Social war, the better kind of ius Latinum vanished for ever, and the lesser kind only existed outside Italy. The most important privilege which distinguished the Latin from peregrine communities was that the member of a Latin city had a prospect of obtaining full Roman citizenship by holding magistracies in his own community. The Latin communities are of course autonomous and are not controlled by the provincial governor; but like Roman communities they have to pay tribute for their land, which is the property of the Roman people, unless they possess immunity or ius Italicum as well as ius Latinum.
(d). Outside Roman territory and, formally, independent allies of Rome, though really her subjects, are the free states, civitates liberae, whether single republics, like Athens, or a league of cities, like Lycia. Constitutionally they fall into two classes, (1) civitates liberae et foederatae, or simply foederatae, (2) civitates (sine foedere) liberae (et immunes). States of the first class were connected with Rome by a foedus, which guaranteed them perpetual autonomy. In the case of the second class no such foedus existed, and their autonomy, which was granted by a lex or senatus consultum, could at any moment be recalled. Otherwise the position of the two classes did not differ. The sovran rights of these free states were limited in the following ways by their relation to Rome. They were not permitted to have subject allies standing to themselves in the same relation in which they stood to Rome. They could not declare war on their own account; whereas every declaration of war and every treaty of peace made by Rome was valid for them also, without even a formal expression of consent on their part. Some of the free states, such as Athens, Sparta, Massilia—seem to have been exempted by the treaty from the burden of furnishing military contingents, both under the Republic and under the Empire. Others, on the other hand, were bound by treaty to perform service of this kind; thus Rhodes contributed a number of ships every year to the Roman fleet. It is probable that the communities which were established as federate or Latin states under the Principate, were subject to conscription. Theoretically, all the autonomous states should have been exempt from tribute, as their land was not Roman; but there were exceptions to this rule, and some free cities—for example, Byzantium,— paid under the Principate a yearly tributum.
(e). The position of the client kingdoms was in some respects like that of the free autonomous states, but in other respects different. Both were allied with Rome, but independent of Roman governors. Both the free peoples who managed their own affairs, and the kings who ruled their kingdoms, were socii of the Roman people; and the land of both was outside the boundaries of Roman territory. But whereas, in the case of the civitates foederatae, the Roman people entered into a permanent relation with a permanent community, in the case of kingdoms the relation was only a personal treaty with the king, and came to an end at his death. Thus, when a client king died, Rome might either renew the same relation with his successor, or else, without any formal violation of a treaty, convert the kingdom into a province. This last policy was constantly adopted under the Principate, so that by degrees all the chief client principalities disappeared, and the provincial territory increased in corresponding measure. Even under the Republic the dependent princes paid fixed annual tributes to Rome.
(f). The treatment of Egypt by Augustus formed a new departure in the organization of the subject lands of Rome. It was, as we have seen, united with the Roman Empire by a sort of “personal union”, like that by which Luxemburg was till recently united with Holland. The sovran of the Roman state was also sovran of Egypt. He did not, indeed, designate himself as king of Egypt, any more than as king of Rome; but practically he was the successor of the Ptolemies. This principle was applied to dependent kingdoms which were afterwards annexed to the Empire, such as Noricum and Judea. Such provinces were governed by knights (instead of senators, as in the provinces proper), and these knights, who were entitled prefects or procurators, represented the Emperor personally. It is clear that this form of government was not possible until the republic had become a monarchy, and there was one man to represent the state.
(g). To make the picture of the manifold modes in which Rome governed her subjects complete, there must still be mentioned the unimportant class of attributed places. This was the technical name for small peoples or places, which counted as neither states nor districts (pagi), and were placed under or attributed to a neighboring community. Only foederate towns, or towns possessing cither Roman citizenship or ius Latinum, had attributed places. This attribution was especially employed in the Alpine districts; small mountain tribes being placed under the control of cities like Tergeste or Brixia. The inhabitants of the attributed places often possessed ius Latinum, and as they had no magistrates of their own, they were permitted to be candidates for magistracies in the states to which they were attributed. They could thus become Roman citizens.
It is to be carefully observed, that while the subjects of Rome fell into the two general classes of autonomous and not autonomous, the not autonomous communities possessed municipal self-government. The provinces, like Italy, were organized on the principle of local self-government. In those lands where the town system was already developed, the Roman conqueror gladly left to the cities their constitutions, and allowed them to manage their local affairs just as of old, only taking care that they should govern themselves on aristocratic principles. Rome even went further, and based her administration everywhere on the system of self-governing communities, introducing it in those provinces where it did not already exist, and founding towns on the Italian model. The local authorities in each provincial community had to levy the taxes and deliver them to the proper Roman officers. Representatives of each community met yearly in a provincial concilium. For judicial purposes, districts of communities existed in which the governor of the province dealt out justice. These districts were called conventus.
It thus appears that the stipendiary communities also enjoyed autonomy—a “tolerated autonomy”, of a more limited kind than that of the free and the federate communities. The Roman governors did not interfere in the affairs of any community in their provinces, where merely municipal matters, not affecting imperial interests, were concerned. It also appears that those not autonomous communities which had obtained exemption from tribute practically approximated to the autonomous, whereas those nominally independent states, in which tribute was nevertheless levied, approximated to the dependent.
Here we touch upon one of the great tendencies which marked the policy of Augustus and his successors in the administration of the Empire. This was the gradual abolition of that variety which at the end of the Republic existed in the relations between Rome and her subjects. There was (1) the great distinction between Italy and the provinces; and there were (2) the various distinctions between the provincial communities themselves. From the time of the first Princeps onward, we can trace the gradual wiping out of these distinctions, until the whole Empire becomes uniform. (1) The provinces receive favors which raise them towards the level of Italy, while Italy’s privileges are diminished and she is depressed towards the level of the provinces. But this change takes place more gradually than (2) the working out of uniformity among the other parts of the Empire, which can be traced even under Augustus, who promoted this end by (a) limiting the autonomy of free and federate states, (b) increasing the autonomy