Romulus' Asylum: the Character of the Roman Citizenship

Abstract Citizenship was the primary means of defining what it was to be specifically Roman, and the peculiar permeability of the citizenship was worked out as an essential and permanent feature of Roman identity through the medium of myths of Rome's beginnings. In addition, the incorporation of individuals and peoples within the citizenship, and even the broader idea of migration to the city of Rome, came to serve as an important metaphor for the incorporative character of Roman culture, for religion, and for language. At the end of the Republic and in the imperial period, the Roman citizenship became an increasingly extraordinary conceit within the classical world. For citizenship was traditionally imagined to be first and foremost all about the active participation in the obligations and privileges of one relatively small community, rather than a marker of social and juridical privilege wherever the citizen might travel within the Roman world.