Constitutio Antoniniana and Its Impact on Roman Citizenship
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In the times of the Roman Empire the definition of what is was to be Roman was changing; in fact, the idea of what was “Latin” was becoming, as one historian expressed, less ethnic and more political. By 212 CE the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Caracalla, took steps to make all male residents of the empire full citizens, this proposal was called the Constitutio Antoniniana. Many historians question the rationale for this sudden benevolent act. Systematic studies of what it meant to be a citizen in the Roman world almost everytime stop at this point, on the assumption that once everyone who was eligible had Roman citizenship, citizen status ceased to be a meaningful component of personal or legal identity in the Roman world. A close examination of evidence, however, challenges the prevailing opinion and suggests that concepts of citizenship, from the personal, legal, and metaphorical perspectives, continued to play a vital role in defining personal and legal identity after 212 AD. In particular, Roman citizenship continued not only to be a factor in how people perceived themselves, but also to entail legal rights that were available only to persons identified as Roman citizens. The Antonine Constitution did not put an end to distinctions created by differences in citizenship status, but it rather ancompassed various manifestations of citizenship – civic, provincial, religious and ethnic – that could create a different kinds of personal and legal identities and interact in different ways. This paper researches the various questions concerning the topic of Roman citizenship, especially during the time of the Roman Empire. The focus of the paper will be on the concepts of the citizenship and the Roman identity from the historical point of view. |
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