Roman Citizenship

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

Saul of Tarsus(Paul), a Jew, was also a Roman citizen, and as I understand it, that was a special status ensuring no matter what, you don’t mess with a citizen or you might have a Roman legion at your doorstep.** How did Saul attain that status and if not known, were there some particular deeds or behaviors that Rome recognized for citizenship? Also, did Saul carry a piece of paper with his name on it?**

[Kimstu]

Plenty of subjects of the Empire were granted Roman citizenship even if they were of foreign birth and/or breeding; take a look at this site for some more details. In particular, it notes:

Throughout the principate the custom of extending Roman citizenship went on through grants both to entire communities and to individuals, until in A.D. 212 Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to the entire freeborn population of the empire. In the process the concept of Roman citizenship had greatly changed. It no longer had anything to do with either Latin culture or participation in the political institutions of the city of Rome. Instead, “Rome” now signified not the city on the Tiber but the area ruled by the Roman emperor.

Awards of citizenship were not so much a rare reward for outstandingly admirable behavior as a shrewd tool of statecraft. After all, if you go on adding to your population by leaps and bounds every time you conquer a new chunk of land, you don’t want to end up with a tiny nucleus of free citizens who are the “real” Romans surrounded by a disgruntled mass of defeated foreigners. Expanding citizenship was a way to increase the pool of stakeholders who identified with the political leaders of the empire. Sometimes citizenship was granted to individuals and sometimes to whole communities, and I believe it was always heritable. I don’t know the details of how some ancestor of Paul’s gained citizenship (he was born a citizen), but I doubt he had to carry his papers with him.

Some other notes from that site:

Under the Republic foreigners could be granted Roman citizenship, but ususally only for military service. Under the Empire, the emperor himself came to be the man who bestowed citizenship and a record was kept in Rome of those to whom it had been granted. Important Romans could petition for citizenship for others (e.g., Pliny’s request that Trajan enfranchise his doctor). (Here “important” is only comparative–for instance, the poet Martial successfully petitioned that Domtiain give a friend citizenship.) There is constant anecdotal evidence for the granting of citizenship to important foreign leaders (both kings in the east and tribal leaders along the borders).

Tacitus once compares unfavorably the attitude toward granting citizenship under the Empire with that of the Republic, when it was granted only seldom and only for courage. Basically, by the late first century, being a Roman citizen was not inherently so important. Although there were still some privileges in the law, these became less significant as more and more lower-class people became citizens, either through the grant of citizenship to entire communities or through honorable discharge after military service. The invocation of his protection as a citizen by the tent maker known as St. Paul illustrates the incongruity of such a person having a privileged position compared to a wealthy peregrine.