The Romans were not terribly chauvinist. Second class citizenship was available to natives of conquered territories. Rich provincials could buy full citizenship. Even under the Republic full citizenship was available to non-Romans (i.e. people not from the 12 tribes) who had proved their allegiance to Rome by military service. Freed slaves, many of whom were not from the 12 tribes or even Italy, were automatically made citizens. (Cf. Pseudolus' song "Free" in A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To The Forum where he meditates on the possibility of voting -- as usual, Sondheim has done his homework.) Under the early Empire through, say 200 CE the Romans handed out citizenship freely as a reward for various services and as bribes to important provincials. Finally Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, called Caracalla(not to be confused with THE Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the Stoic philosopher emperor) — removed all legal and political distinction between Italians and provincials, enacting the Constitutio Antoniniana in 212 extending. full Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire. (This in part from Wolff's treatise on Roman Law, Mommsen's History of Rome, Acton's History of Freedom in Antiquity, and above all, GEM de Ste. Croix's The Class Struggle in the Ancient World, THE great Marxist study of antiquity.)
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is such variety of knowledge among posters
> here,
> so I thought I would ask y'all:
>
> I was doing a kind of thought comparison of the
> Russian and Ottoman Empires and their internal
> structures, specifically the highly multiethnic
> structure of their elites (which I supposed is to be
> expected of contiguous land empires) as opposed to
> the
> European sea empires. Which leads me to ask:
>
> As far as we know, how multiethnic was the elite of
> the Roman Empire? (What the heck did "Roman" mean
> anyway in the late Empire? Someone of Italian
> birth?)
>
> Thanks! Vale!
>
>
>
>
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