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Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire Author(S): by Ralph W Peregrini , Barbari , and Cives Romani : Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire Author(s): By Ralph W. Mathisen Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 111, No. 4 (October 2006), pp. 1011-1040 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.111.4.1011 . Accessed: 14/03/2014 08:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.117.18.21 on Fri, 14 Mar 2014 08:42:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire RALPH W. MATHISEN IN RECENT YEARS, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, increasing attention has been paid to changing concepts of citizenship in the context of the globalization of the economy, politics, and society.1 The interrelationships among citizenship, na- tionality, ethnicity, and identity have evolved as a consequence of factors such as a renewed role for religious identity and mass migrations that have altered the ethnic composition and influenced the cultural norms of the society of nearly every modern nation.2 Traditionally, in order to become a citizen of an established nation-state, a foreigner has been expected to profess the acceptance of certain moral, cultural, and political views.3 At a 2005 press conference, for example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated, “People who want to be British citizens should share our values and our way of life.”4 In this model, citizens receive certain privileges and are liable to certain obligations.5 A model of citizenship based on geographically delimited nation-states now is sometimes considered to be unsuited to modern multiethnic, multiracial, and su- pranational societies.6 Rather than a formal juridical status based on fixed principles, citizenship also can be viewed as a process of negotiation between established values and the values of newcomers into a society.7 Increasing attention likewise has been This article is based on a paper that was delivered at the Byzantine Studies Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, in October 2004. My thanks to the anonymous referees of the AHR for many helpful sug- gestions. 1 E.g., Ellie Vasta, ed., Citizenship, Community, and Democracy (Basingstoke, 2000), vii: “The no- tion of citizenship is currently under scrutiny both in terms of its theoretical significance as well as its practical application.” 2 Paul J. Weithman, Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship (Cambridge, 2002); Vasta, Citizen- ship, Community, and Democracy, vii; Martha Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (1997): 1–25. 3 Riva Kastoryano, Negotiating Identities (Princeton, N.J., 2002); Alastair Davidson, “Fractured Identities: Citizenship in a Global World,” in Vasta, Citizenship, Community, and Democracy, 3–21, 8. 4 http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page8041.asp (accessed August 5, 2005). 5 Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” 6. 6 Vasta, Citizenship, Community, and Democracy, vii; David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge, 2000), 1; T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices (Washington, D.C., 2001), vii; Peter Herrmann, ed., Citizenship Revisited: Threats or Opportunities of Shifting Boundaries (New York, 2004). 7 Vassoodeven Vuddamalay, “Research on Immigration, Islam and Citizenship in Western Eu- rope,” in Re´my Leveau, Khadija Mohsen-Finan, and Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, eds., New European Identity and Citizenship (Aldershot, 2002), 1–35; Aleinikoff, Citizenship Today, vii. 1011 This content downloaded from 194.117.18.21 on Fri, 14 Mar 2014 08:42:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1012 Ralph W. Mathisen given to metaphorical or philosophical forms of citizenship, and to the “relationship between . citizenship and moral and intellectual integrity.”8 Thus, one can be a citizen not only of a nation, but also of more diffuse and inclusive bodies, such as the European community or even the world. Cosmopolitanism, it has been sug- gested, now denotes a “world community . where relations between individuals transcend state boundaries” and a belief in “basic human rights that all individuals should enjoy.”9 As noted by April Carter, “The idea of world citizenship is fash- ionable again.”10 All of these manifestations of citizenship can supply unifying el- ements that are otherwise lacking in diverse societies, where citizenship “fosters social cooperation and identification that avoid the divisiveness of racial, religious, and ethnic affiliations.”11 Citizenship thus can provide forms of personal identity that are defined either narrowly, by how the population of a nation is defined and treated under the law, or broadly, by the acceptance of a set of philosophical and moral concepts. Similar ideas were discussed or even implemented in antiquity in ways that have much to teach us. Although one must take care not to press apparent parallels too far, the ancient world, and in particular the later Roman Empire, can provide us with a laboratory for investigating what does and does not work in dealing with the in- terlocking issues of citizenship, ethnicity, and identity. It permits us to inform our understanding of emotionally charged phenomena from a more distanced and ob- jective perspective. The concepts of cosmopolitanism and world citizenship go back at least to Hellenistic philosophies of the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. The Cynic Diogenes, for example, stated that he was “a cosmopolite”: “a citizen of the world.”12 The Stoics believed that the whole world constituted the only true city, whose citizens were of necessity “good” people.13 In the Roman Empire, in the early second century C.E., the Stoic philosopher Epictetus likewise spoke of being a “citizen of the world.”14 Even the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180) called himself a “citizen of the world-city,” opining that “under its laws equal treatment is meted out to all.”15 In general, however, universal citizenship that transcends traditional legal, social, or national boundaries, that presupposes that all citizens are “good people,” or that does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens (or between “haves” and “have-nots”) exists only in the mind and spirit, not as a formal juridical status.16 Not 8 Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, N.J., 2001), ix. 9 Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” 2, 11. 10 April Carter, The Political Theory of Global Citizenship (London, 2001), 1; also Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, “European Citizenship and Migration,” in Leveau, Mohsen-Finan, and de Wenden, New European Identity, 79–89; Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, 1995). 11 Aleinikoff, Citizenship Today, vii. 12 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 6.63; see Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Govern- ment: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (Basingstoke, 1996). 13 Diog.Laer. Vit.phil. 7; see Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge, 1991), 24; Anthony Pagden, Stoicism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Legacy of European Imperialism (London, 2000); Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley, Calif., 2000), 341; Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism.” 14 Epictetus, Discourses 2.10.1, cf. 1.9.20. 15 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.36, trans. Charles R. Haines (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 341; also Greg R. Stanton, “The Cosmopolitan Ideas of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius,” Phronesis 13 (1968): 83–95. 16 See Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” 5–7: “the term is at best metaphorical . AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW OCTOBER 2006 This content downloaded from 194.117.18.21 on Fri, 14 Mar 2014 08:42:50 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani 1013 even Marcus Aurelius, fortified with the authority of a Roman emperor, manifested his concept of world citizenship in Roman legislation. And in the modern day, the recent problems with the passage of a European constitution, which states that “ev- ery citizen of a Member State is a citizen of the Union and enjoys dual citizenship, national citizenship, and European citizenship,”17 provide just one example of the practical difficulties inherent in creating forms of citizenship that transcend the bor- ders of traditional nation-states. It may be, in fact, that the closest the world ever came to implementing a form of world citizenship was during the later Roman Empire. Beginning in the early third century, the Roman government worked to maximize the number of persons to whom Roman ius civile, the law of Roman citizens, applied. Emperors and jurists created a practical manifestation of universal citizenship that was rather different from the views
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