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 lette ...

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 ...

or Latin citizenship, a province was largely formed by self-governing communities of natives ('' peregrini''), 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 ''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 ...

''). 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 Ju ...

, like the ''

commercium A commercium is a traditional academic feast known at universities in most Central and Northern European countries. In German it is called a or . Today it is still organised by student fraternities in Germanic and Baltic countries, as well as Po ...

'' and the '' conubium''. In the

Greek East Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world and of Medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the ''lingua franca'' (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, the ...

, many of the Greek city-states (''

poleis ''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...

'') 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