Did Caracalla Make Everyone a Citizen?

Caracalla is famous for a couple of things, with the best scowl in Roman iconography being one of them. He also had his own brother murdered as he cowered in their mother's arms and then refused to allow her to mourn or even acknowledge that one son had just had the other hacked to death. He was stabbed to death, taking a piss behind a tent on campaign in Turkey, by a centurion who was grumpy about being given the worst shifts in that week's rota.

He also, perhaps most famously, issued an edict known as the Constitutio Antoniniana, or the Edict of Caracalla, which supposedly made 'all free men' citizens of the Roman Empire. But did it? What was the edict for, and what effect did it have?

In the Imperial period, citizenship spread gradually across the provinces as the Empire slowly trundled towards a unified cultural identity. Julius Caesar granted citizenship and Senatorial status to a number of influential and wealthy Gallic tribal leaders, an unpopular move which led to Augustus not so much reversing the policy as putting the brakes on it. Claudius then adopted a more liberal policy of granting citizenship to urban communities in the provinces, thus putting in place the process, extended under the Flavians, which saw men such as Trajan and Hadrian, born of Roman families in Spain, become emperor.

Roman citizenship could be conferred by the emperors on entire communities by the granting of colonial or municipal status, and on worthy individuals. There was also the reward of citizenship in return for military service.

Newly enfranchised Roman citizens would normally adopt the name of the emperor who granted the right, hence a boom in the number of people named Claudius and Flavius, for example, in the first two centuries AD. The Jewish historian Yosef ben Matityahu, on being released from his capture by Vespasian and granted citizenship, becomes known by the name Flavius Josephus.

The long history of enfranchisement reached its peak in AD 212 when the inhabitants of the Empire were granted, en masse, Roman citizenship. This sweeping absorption of everyone into a philosophical ideal of a unified community of equals is sometimes portrayed as a dissemination of democratic idealism - that all men are created equal. But in reality, what it marked was perhaps just the end of a process and is instead just the point at which the Roman state sees it has no other option but to grant universal enfranchisement.

For something that is so often talked about, the Edict seems to have made very little difference at the time. Grand edicts such as this were often celebrated by those who made them, but this one left hardly any traces in the coinage, for example. Contemporaries don't seem particularly animated about it, and, as such, the precise motives behind it aren't clear.

In the words of Cassius Dio:

"This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honoring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, in as much as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes."

(Roman History, 78.9)

The problem with this is that almost everyone who actually had any money was already a citizen or already paying taxes, so the people the edict granted citizenship to were either too poor for it to make any marked difference in the Roman economy or they didn't give a hoot about being 'Roman' anyway.

One thing it did do was instantly sweep away a whole lot of administrative nonsense, unify judicial and financial administrative practices, and present all the municipal communities with the same set of rights and, hence, obligations to the state. The 'raising more money' idea would make more sense if it is applied to communities and the cutting of imperial waste than to the taxation of indiviuduals.

There's also the thought that Caracalla, a military-minded sort of chap, liked the idea of having the whole Empire arranged along military lines where everyone knew their role and place. The edict might have been as much about cutting the bullshit as raising more money.

The best piece of evidence for the Edict of Caracalla is an incomplete papyrus from Egypt which has the patchy text written in Greek.

"The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus [Caracalla] declares ... I may show my gratitude to the immortal gods for preserving me in such ...[*] Therefore I consider that in this way I can ... render proper service to their majesty ... by bringing with me to the worship of the gods all who enter into the number of my people. Accordingly, I grant Roman citizenship to all aliens throughout the world, with no one remaining outside the citizen bodies except the Edificio. For it is proper that the multitude should not only help carry all the burdens but should also now be included in my victory. This edict shall ... the majesty of the Roman people ..."

(Giessen Papyrus No.40, col I)

*This might be a reference to the supposed plot by his brother Geta, whom he had murdered earlier that same year

The term dediticii has caused much head-scratching over the years. They were people who were technically free but were either foreigners who had surrendered and were under a treaty or former slaves who had been denied citizenship on manumission for legal reasons, normally because they were criminals. It is normally accepted that the dediticii in this exclusion clause refers to the latter.

What is certain, though, is that even after the issuing of the edict, there were many in the Empire who remained non-citizens, despite the famous statement by Ulpian:

"... all living in the Roman world were made Roman citizens by a constitution of the Emperor Caracalla."

(Justinian, Digest, I.v.17)

After the edict was passed, there was a marked increase in the number of people taking the name Aurelius, just as those of earlier enfranchisements had taken the names of their patrons.

The pre-212 and post-212 Roman world can, on reflection, be seen as almost two separate versions of the Empire. In the pre-212 world, the granting of citizenship was something that was aspired to and had to be gained either by deed or merit. It required military service or huge amounts of cash. It was politically and socially significant, and the privileges and duties of civis Romanus came with great reward. It was a badge of honour. In the post-212 world, the extension of citizenship becomes less an admission into an exclusive club and more a sign of belonging to a society with a shared set of values, laws and principles. The point at which, if you like, the Empire stopped expanding into the world, and the world just became Roman.

Sherwin-White. A.N. (1973) The Roman Citizenship, Oxford, Clarendon Press

Bowman, A., Cameron, A., & Garnsey, P. (2005). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XII: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193–337. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

References

Sherwin-White. A.N. (1973) The Roman Citizenship, Oxford, Clarendon Press

Bowman, A., Cameron, A., & Garnsey, P. (2005). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XII: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193–337. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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