Hot answers tagged ancient-rome
8
According to The Dawn of European Civilization by G. Hartwell Jones (1903), slaves in Rome were "looked upon as fit for nothing but the cross, the stake, or the arena" [for gladiatorial combat]. In Rome, the "principle that the slave was destitute of legal rights" applied. Improvements in their status were slow to come.
The position of the home-born ...
8
I don't have a good citation for this - the wikipedia article provided by @kubanczyk is relatively decent, and highlights the role of the censor, which is probably the state oriented solution to the question.
I think the question relies on modern assumptions. Roman citizens would never have needed to prove their identity. Set aside for the moment the urban ...
7
The most common document identifying a person in Ancient Rome was diploma. Diploma identified the powers of magistrates and other office holders, including the consuls.
Regarding the asked question, Roman citizenship of discharged soldiers if they had no citizenship before service was identified by a so-called military diploma
The diploma was a notarially ...
6
As far as I know, the Vandals never established themselves in Rome. They settled in Iberia first, and were later driven away to modern Maghreb by the Visigoths.
They set up a fleet, which was instrumental to their attacks in the Western Mediterranean Sea, culminating with the sack of Rome of 455 CE. After pillaging the city for two weeks, Genseric and his ...
5
Most probably, if an official wanted to make sure what is the man's name, they asked them. Honest man has no reason to lie in this case.
The list of citizens was maintained, mainly for tax purposes. It was updated during a census, an event when each father of family had to appear in person and provide all the details under an oath and before witnesses. ...
5
For a slave-owner if he felt sympathy to his slaves it was natural to improve their conditions and not to abuse them.
Freeing the slaves was also very widespread, because it became a powerful means of political manipulation: a rich slave-owner would free a mass of slaves before an election so that they could vote for him. This led to a state prohibition of ...
4
I visited Rome and also Pompeii last week. According to our tour guide and the evidence left by the protection provided to the ruins of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, citizens of Pompeii in 79 AD did have street names and house numbers. Some even had signs in the entry way to their home warning “Cave Canem” or “Beware of Dog”.
3
Although all the above answers are relevant, there is one facet that has been overlooked concerning the provincial citizens. As Roman citizenship was granted to non-Romans in the provinces, the provincials had to reaffirm their citizenship every five years.This was simply a stating of their name and of the type of citizenship they had. (Rome had several ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
