Civis romanus sum by Giuseppe Valditara

Author:Giuseppe Valditara [Valditara, Giuseppe]
Language: ita
Format: epub
Tags: Legal History, Law
ISBN: 9788892117198
Google: IyjZvwEACAAJ
Publisher: Giappichelli
Published: 2018-01-15T07:22:55+00:00

13.

No More Masters in Their Own Houses: The Romans and Their Policies on Foreigners

In the decades that followed, “the policy of Rome towards the Latini, the Italici and foreigners in general did not fundamentally change.”1 The censuses between those of 169/168 and 131/130 BC show a consistency in the number of people registered, with a slight decrease.2 This suggests that the migrations from Latium had stopped (or at least diminished), or that “the expulsion orders of the Latin immigrants went on, punctual and severe.”3 The census takers probably wanted to be more rigorous about the registrations as there were few large-scale admissions of new citizens.

Limiting the ius migrandi with the duty to leave children in one’s homeland probably discouraged many Latins from migrating to Rome, impeding even those who had no children from settling there and claiming citizenship. It is also probable that the ius migrandi was abolished in the years following 173 BC,4 and the outcomes of the censuses seem to confirm this theory. The ius commercii was preserved, however.5 The underlying philosophy was the same that Cicero would have asserted in de off. 1.126: let the foreigners worry about their negotia and have nothing to do with Roman politics. Rome’s abrogation of the ius migrandi suggests that Rome intended to discourage immigration “to impede other outbreaks of unrest” in the commercial field and that “it did not want to bar itself from the advantages of trading with foreigners, which undoubtedly were a sure way to enrich the business life of the town, with following implications that were however generally profitable for the whole Roman world and economy.”6 The second century BC is thus marked by “an abrupt stop in the process of extention of the civitas through collective granting.” In any case the expulsion orders were certainly useful to “contain the plague of the urban drift, which, as it is well known, was in the last years of the 2nd century BC, one of the main factors of the crisis of the city-state.”7

Nonetheless, Mouristen’s observations8 illuminate the context better, emphasizing the opposition, which was still existent between the second and the first century BC, between Romani on the one hand, Latini and Italici on the other, inside a dicotomic representation where “us” (the Romani) were opposed to “them” (allies and foreigners). The Italici, particularly, were still seen as foreigners. Although they were tightly allied with Rome, they remained politically independent and culturally different.

If we accept these starting points, i.e. that the socii were a separate cathegory, with interests that were distinct in regard to the interests of Rome and of the Romans, it comes out clearly that “the internal balance of manpower between Romans and non-Romans emerges as a real political issue and a likely cause for concern.” The Roman elite was “at all times acutely aware of the relative proportion of Romans to allied manpower, which would have made them even more sensitive to any signs of Roman decline.”9 In other words, it was probably very clear

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