Abstract
The introduction of citizenship of the European Union in 1992 is mirrored by a famous grant of ‘universal’ citizenship by the Roman Emperor Caracalla in 212 AD. The similarity even extends to the 1997 clarification that European citizenship is complementary to national citizenship, an idea that is also found in earlier grants of Roman citizenship. Caracalla's grant is often held to cover (nearly) all inhabitants of the Roman world with the exception of slaves. However, there are reasons to believe it merely gave limited citizenship to a certain class of freedmen, the Junian Latins, who remained in a state of dependency vis-à-vis their former masters. In previous grants of citizenship or of other honorifics, Roman Emperors had been careful to safeguard existing rights and local identities, and it is quite likely that Caracalla's chancery followed legal precedent in drafting the ‘universal’ grant. This paper argues that the Constitutio Antoniniana could only succeed as an integrative force, uniting the Roman world under a common citizenship, by not upsetting the framework of Roman society.
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