idea of this status was derived from Rome's relations with the cities of the Latin league; in her process of absorption, however, she conferred it on towns to which she did not grant the other typically Latin rights; in this way she made of it an independent status. The Etruscan town of Caere is said to have won this right in 353 as a gift for good service to Rome. After the dissolution of the Latin league in 338 B.C. a group of Campanian townships, Capua, Cumae, Atella, and Calatia, were with (the then Latin) Fundi and Formiae brought into this relation with the now dominant city of Latium;[1] others nearer home, such as Arpinum of the Volsci, were similarly rewarded or absorbed (303 B.C.),[2] while the status was imposed as a means of degrading and reducing to impotence rebellious townships such as Anagnia, the leading city of the Hernici.[3] The motive of the conferment, although it might make a difference to the rights of the towns, produced none in the relations of their respective cives to Rome. The civis sine suffragio was known as a municeps, and the state, all of whose full members enjoyed this status, derived from its occupants the name of municipium. The name of this type of citizen—the "taker up of burdens"—aptly expresses his subjection to the chief duties (munera) of Roman citizenship, such as service in the Roman legions, forced labour in raising defences, the payment of the war-tax (tributum), and his exclusion from the usually corresponding rights of suffrage and of office;[4] it emphasises the fact, strange to the early Roman mind, of public duties not balanced by public rights, but it contains no implication of the strangest characteristic of the municeps—one almost unknown in ancient legal systems—the possession of a personality in private which is not the result of a personality in public law. The municeps possesses commercium
- ↑ Liv. viii. 14 "Campanis . . . Fundanisque et Formianis . . . civitas sine suffragio data. Cumanos Suessulanosque ejusdem juris conditionisque, cujus Capuam, esse placuit." For Atella and Calatia see Festus pp. 131, 233.
- ↑ Liv. x. 1.
- ↑ ib. ix. 43, quoted p. 299.
- ↑ Festus p. 131 "municipes erant qui ex aliis civitatibus Romam venissent, quibus non licebat magistratum capere sed tantum muneris partem, ut fuerunt Cumani, Acerrani, Atellani, qui et cives Romani erant et in legione merebant, sed dignitates non capiebant"; cf. p. 127 "participes . . . fuerunt omnium rerum ad munus fungendum una cum Romanis civibus praeterquam de suffragio ferendo aut magistratu capiendo." The words "qui ex aliis civitatibus Romam venissent" in the first definition do not describe the municipes of historical times; they suggest a possible origin for the institution. These rights were first conditioned by domicile in Rome, but the condition was subsequently removed.
