A ''civitas foederata'', meaning "allied state/community", was the most elevated type of autonomous cities 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 lett ...

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 or '' municipia'', 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 origin ...

, 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 lowest were the ''

civitates stipendariae A ''civitas stipendaria'' or ''stipendiaria'', meaning "tributary state/community", was the lowest and most common type of towns and local communities under Roman rule. Each Roman province comprised a number of communities of different status. Al ...

'' ("tributary states"), followed by 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 th ...

'' ("free states"), which had been granted specific privileges. Unlike the latter, the ''civitates foederatae'' were individually bound to Rome by formal treaty ('' foedus''). Although they remained formally independent, the ''civitates foederatae'' in effect surrendered their foreign relation to Rome, to which they were bound by perpetual alliance. Nevertheless, the citizens of these cities enjoyed certain rights under

Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...

, like the '' commercium'' and the ''

conubium Marriage in ancient Rome () was strictly a monogamous institution: a Roman citizen by law could have only one spouse at a time. The practice of monogamy distinguished the Greeks and Romans from other ancient civilizations, in which elite males typ ...

''. In the Greek East, many of the Greek city-states ('' poleis'') were formally liberated and granted some form of formal guarantee of their autonomy. As they had a long history and tradition of their own, most of these communities were content with this status, unlike in the Latin West, where, with their progressive

Romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

, many communities sought a gradual advancement to the status of a ''municipium'' or even a ''colonia''.

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