Civitas
In
Civitas is an abstract formed from civis. Claude Nicolet[2] traces the first word and concept for the citizen at Rome to the first known instance resulting from the synoecism of Romans and Sabines presented in the legends of the Roman Kingdom. According to Livy,[3] the two peoples participated in a ceremony of union after which they were named Quirites after the Sabine town of Cures. The two groups became the first curiae, subordinate assemblies, from co-viria ("fellow assemblymen", where vir is "man", as only men participated in government). The Quirites were the co-viri. The two peoples had acquired one status. The Latin for the Sabine Quirites was cives, which in one analysis came from the Indo-European *kei-, "lie down" in the sense of incumbent, member of the same house. City, civic, and civil all come from this root. Two peoples were now under the same roof, so to speak.[4]
Civitas was a popular and widely used word in ancient Rome, with reflexes in modern times. Over the centuries the usage broadened into a spectrum of meaning cited by the larger Latin dictionaries:[5] it could mean in addition to the citizenship established by the constitution the legal city-state, or res publica, the populus of that res publica (not people as people but people as citizens), any city state either proper or state-like, even ideal, or (mainly under the empire) the physical city, or urbs. Under that last meaning some places took on the name, civitas, or incorporated it into their name, with the later civita or civida as reflexes.
Types of civitates
As the empire grew, inhabitants of the outlying
Prestigious and economically important settlements such as
During the later empire, the term was applied not only to friendly native tribes and their towns but also to local government divisions in peaceful provinces that carried out civil administration. Land destined to become a civitas was officially divided up, some being granted to the locals and some being owned by the civil government. A basic street grid would be surveyed in but the development of the civitas from there was left to the inhabitants although occasional imperial grants for new public buildings would be made.
The civitates differed from the less well-planned
Defensive measures were limited at the civitates, rarely more than
Certain civitates groups survived as distinct tribal groupings even beyond the fall of the Roman Empire, particularly in Britain and northern Spain. [citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ Smith, William (1875). "CIVITAS (ROMAN)". A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: John Murray. pp. 291–293.
- ^ Nicolet, Claude (1980) [1976]. The world of the citizen in republican Rome. P.S. Falla (trans.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 21–23.
- ^ History of Rome I.13.4.
- ^ Partridge, Eric (1983). "city". Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. Now York: Greenwich House.
- ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (2007) [1879]. "Civitas". A Latin Dictionary. Oxford; Medford: Clarendon Press; Perseus Digital Library.