In the Roman provinces a civitas was a self-governing community, usually a native tribe or city with its capital town. The same Latin word also means citizenship, so context matters. A civitas is not the same as a colonia or a municipium.
Key takeaways
- In the provinces, civitas usually meant a community or unit of government, not a person's legal status [1].
- Native communities fell into three tiers: allied states bound by treaty, free cities, and the most common tributary states that paid tax [1].
- The same word also means citizenship, which is why the Roman citizenship page is separate.
- Britannia, annexed in AD 43, was run through such local communities, but our map does not draw them.
How a civitas worked
Roman provinces were big, and Rome had few officials to run them. A governor could not manage every farm and village, so much of the daily work was left to local communities. The word for these communities was civitas (plural civitates). In the provinces it usually meant a community or unit of government, not legal membership of the Roman state [1].
Autonomous native communities fell into three tiers [1]:
- Civitates foederatae, "allied states", bound to Rome by treaty.
- Civitates liberae, "free cities", which often had tax immunity.
- Civitates stipendariae, "tributary states", the most common kind, which kept their own internal law but paid tax.
The word was also used for the town at the centre. Romanised urban settlements of client tribes were called civitates too, often refounded near an old pre-Roman capital [1]. At Cirencester in Britain, for example, an army base that had overseen a nearby tribal settlement was used to create a civitas [1]. In the later empire the term applied to local government divisions in peaceful provinces, each run by a council of men of enough rank to hold public office [1].
So a civitas was a tribe, its territory and its main town, all in one. That is why local historians often talk of "the civitas of the" followed by a tribal name, and why a civitas could contain a municipium or even a colonia inside its borders.
An example from our data
Britannia was annexed in AD 43, and its outline covers 170,292 km². Rome ruled it from Londinium, but the daily running of local affairs depended on tribal communities. The map shows only the province and the Roman places inside it: the United Kingdom has 173 on our cities layer.
Across the Channel, Gallia Lugdunensis was also made of many tribal communities. Our map shows it as one province outline, as the AD 200 provinces are drawn at that level only. To see how many provinces the empire held at its peak, open AD 117, with 41 provinces held.
The thing people get wrong
Because civitas also means citizenship, people sometimes read "civitas" on an inscription and assume the town's people were Roman citizens. In provincial usage the word more often names the community, and its members might hold only local status. Citizenship is covered on its own page: see Roman citizenship [2].
Civitas vs colonia vs municipium
| Civitas | Colonia | Municipium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usual meaning | Native community and its capital | Town of citizens | Self-governing chartered town |
| Where | Provinces | Italy and provinces | Italy and provinces |
| Rank | Varies by tier | Highest | Middle |
Frequently asked questions
Is civitas the same as citizenship?
The Latin word covers both. In legal texts it can mean citizenship, but in the provinces it more often meant a community or unit of local government.
What is a civitas capital?
The main town of a native community, often refounded near an old pre-Roman capital and given Roman-style public buildings.
Does the map show civitates?
No. The map shows provinces, cities, roads and modern borders, not the smaller communities inside provinces.
Sources
- Civitas, Wikipedia.
- Roman citizenship, Wikipedia.
- Every figure from our own map is worked out from the datasets on the data sources page (checked against Ancient World Mapping Center outlines and Pleiades).