ABSTRACT
The Roman empire consisted, with a few insignificant exceptions, of cities, that is self-governing communities occupying a territory and almost always possessing an urban centre. Geographically the empire was a mosiac of city territories. All Roman citizens, that is all indigenous free inhabitants of the empire, belonged to some city. Local citizenship went not by residence, or place of birth, but by descent, or in the case of freedmen by their patron’s registration. A man was a citizen of Syracuse or Antioch because his father (or patron) was a Syracusan or Antiochene, and he remained a citizen of Syracuse or Antioch even if he—and his father before him—had established a permanent domicile in Carthage. At Carthage he was a resident alien (incola), and, while he became subject to obligations to the city of his domicile, the city of his origin always retained its claims upon his services.
