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Constitutio Antoniniana

Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free men of the empire, and to free women the rights of Roman women, erasing the old divide between citizens and provincials.

Date
212year known
Place
Rometoday: Rome, Italy · Western and Central Europe
Participants
Caracalla, Roman Empire
Threads
Europe in the Roman age (1st–5th c.)
Also known as
Antonine Constitution; Edict of Caracalla; Антонинова конституция

Until 212 Roman citizenship, with its legal privileges, was held by a minority of the empire’s inhabitants. Caracalla’s edict extended it to almost all free people; only the dediticii, a class of freedmen of inferior status, were excluded. Part of its Greek text survives on a papyrus now in Giessen. Cassius Dio claimed that the real motive was money: new citizens became liable to the taxes on inheritances and on the freeing of slaves, which Caracalla had just raised.

Whatever its motive, the edict made Roman law the common law of the provinces and turned the empire from a Roman state ruling subjects into a commonwealth of citizens.

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Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Constitutio Antoniniana
  2. Wikipedia (Russian): Эдикт Каракаллы
  3. Potter D. S. The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395. — London: Routledge, 2004.
  4. Wikidata: Q312584