C ULTURA, POLÍTICAS Y PRÁCTICAS INCLUSIVAS

Clearly, something happened here. But what, exactly? P. Giss. 40 raises a number of technical questions about the scope of the CA’s citizenship grant, both in terms of legal categories and raw numbers. As a categorical matter, damage to the papyrus hides a key limiting condition at line 9; while Meyer’s original reconstruction of the text read it as excluding dedicitii,61 which was taken variously as cutting out inhabitants of the empire who had been forcibly resettled from outside its borders62 or limiting the grant to members of existing civic organizations,63 later emendations— working by analogy with the citizenship formula contained within the tabula Banasitana and its explicit preservation of pre-existing local structures and provincial/metropolitan relations64— have taken line 9 as simply “without addicitia” and thus as protecting earlier legal relationships that might otherwise be threatened by the grant.65

Similarly, the raw numerical impact of the CA has been difficult to capture. Given the “commonplace of Roman history” that Rome was unusually willing to bestow citizenship rights

60 _{Oliver 1989: 500. For the Greek text of P. Giss. 40 as reconstructed by Oliver, see Appendix I.} 61 _{Meyer 1920: 1-2 (referring to the CA as containing “der Erteilung des Bürgerrechts an die} peregrini mit Ausnahme der dedicitii” and reconstructing the limiting clause on line 9 as χωρ[ὶς] τῶν [δε]δειτιχίων).

62 _{Bickerman 1926: 22-23 (following Mommsen 1881: 247 n. 87).} 63 _{See, for example, Schönbauer 1963: 75-81.}

64 _{First published in full at Euzennat & Seston 1971: 468-90.} 65 _{See, for example, Oliver 1989: 504.}

on subject peoples throughout its period of expansion,66 _{a number of scholars (most notably Adrian} Sherwin-White) have claimed that the CA was more lagging indicator than progressive revolution: that citizenship rights by the early third century were already sufficiently broadly distributed that the CA would have simply made formal a conception of citizenship that was already present in Roman imperial life.67 Recent onomastic work, however, suggests otherwise—the explosive growth of the nomen Aurelius, taken by those who had received their citizenship (and thus access to the tria nomina) from Caracalla’s grant, suggests that large numbers were, in fact, enfranchised by the law.68 Another strand of recent scholarship, particularly including the work of Clifford Ando, has traced the increased legal standardization of the third century to the sudden expansion of citizenship (and accompanying Roman jurisdiction) throughout the empire.69 Most recently, Myles Lavan has employed a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate citizenship rates within the empire immediately prior to the CA (and thus, building on modern interpretations of the grant as universal, the proportion of imperial inhabitants whom it would affect), finding with 95% confidence that somewhere between 66% and 85% of inhabitants would have only gained citizenship with Caracalla’s edict.70

66 _{Lavan 2016: 3.}

67 _{Sherwin-White 1973: 279 (“There can be no doubt that every province of the empire was} scattered with multitudes of men, organized into every possible type of community, who possessed the citizenship, while some provinces such as Baetica, Narbonensis, or Africa were now very solidly Latin or Roman.”).

68 _{Some of the earliest onomastic work related to the CA focused on army rosters, and the increase} in Aurelii beginning in approximately 214 C.E. See Gilliam 1965: 83. More recent work has focused on a broader variety of sources; see Kracker & Scholz 2012: 67-77 (employing a pan- Mediterranean body of inscriptions), Rizakis 2011: 253-62 (noting regional variations in naming practices throughout the Mediterranean, with particular attention to the varied adoption rates of the praenomen Marcus).

69 _{Ando 2012: 93-99; de Giovanni 2006: 487-505.}

70 _{Lavan 2016: 27 (explaining Monte Carlo modelling), 27-28 & fig. 3 (discussing his confidence} interval and his results within that probability band).

A related question in scholarship on the CA concerns its actual impact on those people to whom it did grant citizenship. Adrian Sherwin-White described the CA as “a completion or assimilation or unification . . . of the personal status of the individual members of the empire, but only in the narrowest sense.”71 Ramsay MacMullen makes a stronger version of the same argument, claiming that the CA was a largely ceremonial change.72 These arguments rest on two different historical phenomena; the relative silence of contemporary sources for the constitutio itself, and the concurrent (or almost immediately subsequent) development of finely tuned gradations of citizenship as evidenced in juristic texts and trial records, reproducing citizen/noncitizen distinctions in a cosmetically altered form.73

It is beyond dispute that citizenship became less visible as a token of imperial esteem after 212; it would be shocking were that not the case, at least within those communities affected by the grant. After all, the value of a token depends on its scarcity; if we understand grants of citizenship prior to the CA as meaningful—at least partially—based on their placing the recipient into a specific legal category to which friends, neighbors and other status competitors might not belong, then universal citizenship would strip the category of this particular relational significance. However, the most pessimistic accounts of this change are nevertheless overdrawn. First, the legal consequences of citizenship remained enormous; the ius civile’s reach was vastly expanded by the

71 _{Sherwin-White 1973: 280 (emphasis added).}

72 _{MacMullen 1984: 167 n. 16 (“Despite the emphasis laid on the Constitutio Antoniniana in} modern accounts, the argumentum e silentio certainly suggests that it was of no great importance or interest.”).

73 _{For the relatively sparse contemporary records of the CA, see supra Section II.A. For the} increasing salience of distinctions between citizens, see Garnsey 1970b (still the authoritative text on increasing legal differentiation between honestiores and humiliores in the early third century), Hagedorn 1979 (arguing more directly for the preservation, immediately following the CA, of a class of “Ältburger” who had received citizenship prior to the grant, and whose status could have been meaningfully distinct from that of the unwashed masses of Aurelii).

CA, and a large proportion of the empire would have gained access to radically different methods of dispute resolution and contract enforcement.74 That’s not nothing. Secondly—and more importantly in the context of a dissertation on imperial representation and perception—this change appears to have been freighted with subjective meaning for those it affected. Recent work on citizenship has increasingly understood the status not merely as granting legal privileges that can be easily tracked or indexed, but also as impacting individuals’ own felt relationship to their state, or their sense of belonging in a political or social community;75 even in the modern world, individual reactions to citizenship are rarely as straightforward as simple relief at an irrevocable guarantee against deportation, anticipation of simplified federal taxes, or excitement at the prospect of voting. Citizenship is instead understood as an important component of personal identity, one formed in relationship with a broader civic community and with that community’s own representations of itself.

Kostas Buraselis has argued for this meaning of the CA in recent work, focusing in particular on the concept of universal citizenship in later writings on Rome’s relationship with its provinces.76 For example, Herodian describes Roman embassies garnering provincial support for a revolt against Maximinus Thrax in 238 by claiming that such an action would benefit τῇ κοινῇ πατρίδι, and Augustine later praised Rome’s universal citizenship grant in de civitate Dei:

. . . is it not true that the Romans and other peoples would be in the same condition? Especially if that which was later done, most kindly and humanely, were done at that time, specifically that all those who were under Roman imperium accepted

74 _{See De Giovanni 2006: 496-504 (focusing on the effects of this greater standardization on} juristic texts, and in particular on the greater emphasis on now-universally-applicable public laws in the juristic writings of Aelius Marcianus).

75 _{See Lister 2004 (discussing the concept of “de facto citizenship” as a way to refer to individuals’} subjective experiences of belong in a state). For a useful summary of theoretical work on community membership as a felt component of citizenship, see Demaine & Entwhistle1996: 6-30. 76 _{Buraselis 2007: 155-57, Buraselis 2001: 192.}

partnership in the state and were Roman citizens, so that what had before belonged to a few might belong to all . . . .77

Further, if somewhat more circumstantial, evidence of this desire for membership in a communal project can be found in the Christian apologist Tertullian’s letter to the proconsul Scapula. Tertullian, writing around the time of the CA,78 explicitly positions the Christians on whose behalf he writes as members of a broader community of Roman subjects who participate, as much as is possible, in the larger project of imperial support:

A Christian is an enemy of no one, least of all the emperor, whom he knows to have been installed in that role by the Christian God; it is necessary that the Christian care for him and revere him and honor him and wish him good health, together with the entire Roman Empire, for so long as the world shall stand; for so long shall the Empire stand. Therefore we cherish the Emperor as well, as much both as is permitted for us and is beneficial for him, as a man second only to God; for whatever follows from God is lesser than God alone.79

Tertullian should not necessarily be taken at face value in this text—he is writing an explicit apologetic, defending Christians against persistent claims of divided loyalties, barbarism or other forms of social othering.80 It should perhaps not be surprising that he would cast Christian religious activity as supportive of broader Roman projects. Nevertheless Tertullian’s argument is remarkable for defining normative acceptability in political terms, arguing that Christians deserve

77 _{Hdn. 7.7.5, August. de Civ. D. 5.17: nonne Romanis et ceteris gentibus una esset eademque} condicio? praesertim si mox fieret, quod postea gratissime atque humanissime factum est, ut omnes ad Romanum imperium pertinentes societatem acciperent ciuitatis et Romani ciues essent, ac sic esset omnium, quod erat ante paucorum . . . .

78 _{The exact dating of ad Scapulam is open to question, but the letter clearly dates to Caracalla’s} period of sole rule, i.e. between 211 and 217. See Tert. Ad Scap. 4.5: Ipse etiam Severus, pater Antonini, Christianorum memor fuit.

79 _{Ibid. 2.6-8: Christianus nullius est hostis, nedum imperatoris, quem sciens a Deo suo constitui,} necesse est ut et ipsum diligat et reuereatur et honoret et saluum uelit, cum toto Romano imperio, quousque saeculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit. Colimus ergo et imperatorem sic quomodo et nobis licet et ipsi expedit, ut hominem a Deo secundum; et quicquid est a Deo consecutum est, solo tamen Deo minorem.

toleration specifically because they identify as Roman and are invested in Rome’s continued success. For an audience anxious to portray themselves as “Roman,” the grant of universal citizenship could be highly meaningful; Augustine suggests that this meaning persisted, and Herodian’s discussion of the fall of Maximinus Thrax shows that Roman political elites could deploy this language of universal membership in a political community in order to achieve their own ends. Not only did provincial audiences understand citizenship as a subjective desideratum, but fairly soon after the CA elite audiences were aware of this understanding and could successfully cast their engagements with the provinces as participation in a communal project.

The onomastic evidence briefly described above also suggests that the CA radically altered individuals’ subjective relationships to their state. Consider the Dura army rosters, which have been used as evidence for a rapid expansion in the proportion of citizens soon after 212; notably, the rosters do not show all new recruits employing the tria nomina, but simply a large majority. This document suggests that individuals were still free to employ older, patronymic names, and that some did; the rosters for the year 216 contain 5 patronymic names on a roster of 96 total (of which 83 include Aurelius).81 Most individuals, however, adopted the nomenclature of citizenship almost as soon as it became available. If that were a choice, it would be a significant one. Names matter. If newly minted citizens began en masse to refer to themselves in language that reflected their newfound civic status, that suggests that that status was important enough to justify changing one’s public presence, adopting the naming customs of an “external” power and employing the tria nomina in the place of traditional or indigenous naming conventions.

81 _{Gilliam 1965: 83.}