ABSTRACT
By the time of the Second Punic War the Romans had obtained a reputation among the Greeks for generosity with their citizenship, sufficient for Philip V of Macedon to commend their example to the Thessalian city of Larissa. 1 There were at that point two main forms of this generosity. One was the manumission of slaves into a condition of citizenship (even if there were some political and legal disadvantages in being an ex-slave). This will not be our concern here, but it is worth remarking that the Romans were concerned at more than one time in the Republic with foreigners who fraudulently took on the status of slaves for a short time in order to use manumission as a route into Roman citizenship. 2 The second was the full enfranchisement of whole Italian communities after a period in which they were citizens without the vote. These mass enfranchisements seem to have ceased in the first half of the second century bc (we hear of Fundi, Formiae and Arpinum getting full citizenship in 188), and there was then a lull (not without abortive proposals) until citizenship was offered to all Italians south of the river Po by the lex lulia of 90 bc, passed at the end of the first year of the Social War. 3 The Romans also gave some communities and individuals Latin rights, which in effect meant having the private rights of a Roman citizen – including intermarriage with Romans, inheritance from them and the right to own Roman land – but no political rights except symbolic participation in Roman assemblies when present in Rome. 4 Originally these included the right to migrate to Rome and take up Roman citizenship at the expense of losing that of their original community, but this privilege was suppressed early in the second century bc at the request of the Latins themselves, concerned at their depopulation. If we believe Asconius, by 89 bc they had obtained the privilege of full Roman citizenship for their ex-magistrates. 5
