A ''civitas stipendaria'' or ''stipendiaria'', meaning "tributary state/community", was the lowest and most common type of towns and local communities under

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

rule. Each

Roman province The Roman provinces (Latin: ''provincia'', pl. ''provinciae'') were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was rule ...

comprised a number of communities of different status. Alongside

Roman colonies Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city (its "metropolis"), not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained often close, and took specific forms during the period of classic ...

or ''

municipia In ancient Rome, the Latin term (pl. ) referred to a town or city. Etymologically, the was a social contract among ("duty holders"), or citizens of the town. The duties () were a communal obligation assumed by the in exchange for the privil ...

'', whose residents held the

Roman citizenship Citizenship in ancient Rome (Latin: ''civitas'') was a privileged political and legal status afforded to free individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance. Citizenship in Ancient Rome was complex and based upon many different laws, t ...

Latin citizenship Latin rights (also Latin citizenship, Latin: ''ius Latii'' or ''ius latinum'') were a set of legal rights that were originally granted to the Latins (Latin: "Latini", the People of Latium, the land of the Latins) under Roman law in their origi ...

, a province was largely formed by self-governing communities of natives (''

peregrini In the early Roman Empire, from 30 BC to AD 212, a ''peregrinus'' (Latin: ) was a free provincial subject of the Empire who was not a Roman citizen. ''Peregrini'' constituted the vast majority of the Empire's inhabitants in the 1st and 2nd centur ...

''), which were distinguished according to the level of autonomy they had: the ''civitates stipendariae'' were the lowest grade, after the ''

civitates foederatae A ''civitas foederata'', meaning "allied state/community", was the most elevated type of autonomous cities and local communities under Roman rule. Each Roman province comprised a number of communities of different status. Alongside Roman colonies o ...

'' ("allied states") which were bound to Rome by formal treaty (''

foedus ''Foederati'' (, singular: ''foederatus'' ) were peoples and cities bound by a treaty, known as ''foedus'', with Rome. During the Roman Republic, the term identified the ''socii'', but during the Roman Empire, it was used to describe foreign stat ...

''), and the ''

civitates liberae In Ancient Rome, the Latin term (; plural ), according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the , or citizens, united by law (). It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities () on the ...

'' ("free states"), which were granted specific privileges. The ''civitates stipendariae'' were by far the most common of the three—for example, in 70 BC in

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

there were 65 such cities, as opposed to only five ''civitates liberae'' and two ''foederatae''—and furnished the bulk of a province's revenue.

References

Sources

* * {{cite book , last = Mousourakis , first = George , title = A Legal History of Rome , publisher = Routledge , year = 2007 , isbn = 9780415408936 Roman law Subdivisions of ancient Rome Roman towns types