Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Level 5 by design analogy (historical synthesis and narrative collection of qualitative essays)
OpenAlex W2762906838 · doi:10.1163/9789004352612
What was done
Authors analyzed ancient literary and epigraphic evidence to examine the formation and transformation of citizen bodies, the integration of foreigners, multiple citizenship-holding, and political-philosophical reflections on citizenship. The volume spans the emergence of citizenship in archaic Greek communities through the period preceding the Antonine Constitution of 212 CE across three thematic sections covering Greek poleis, Roman citizenship dynamics, and philosophical perspectives.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative measurements or statistical data. It describes qualitative historical analyses addressing how citizen bodies were defined in Greek cities, how non-citizens interacted with Roman legal frameworks, and the conceptual evolution leading up to the enfranchisement of free inhabitants under the Antonine Constitution.
Why it matters
The volume provides structured qualitative perspectives on how ancient Greek and Roman societies negotiated civic identity, naturalization, and political theory prior to universal imperial citizenship.
Limits
The abstract explicitly states that the work is not comprehensive and omits broad aspects of ancient citizenship. Findings rely on surviving literary and epigraphic sources subject to preservation bias, with no systematic review methodology or empirical synthesis reported.
Cited by
- supports By the early 3rd century AD prior to Caracalla's edict, at most approximately one-third of the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire held Roman citizenship.
- supports In 212 AD, Emperor Caracalla issued the Constitutio Antoniniana, extending Roman citizenship to virtually all free inhabitants across the empire.