A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

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ROMAN ORGANIZATION;
CHAPTER XXXII
I. MuNiciPiA AND Colonies
PROGRESS IN CULTURE
The words municipes and municipia are very easily and
very commonly uttered, and you never meet with a man
who uses them but he supposes that he clearly knows their
meaning. Yet in truth one thing is meant and another
expressed; for how many of us are there who, coming from
any Roman colony, do not call ourselves municipes, and
our countrymen municipes, which is very far from reason
and the truth. So we are in the same manner ignorant of
what and how great a diiJerence there is between municipia
and coloniae; and we are apt to suppose that colonies are
more privileged than municipal towns. . . . The
municipes
in fact are persons who from the municipal towns
are, in right of their municipality, Roman citizens, governed
by their own laws, and partakers of only privileges
and offices with the Roman people. They appear to be socalled
a niunere capessendo ("from taking honors"); and
they are bound by no compulsion or law of the Romans,
except that they had placed themselves under the power
of the latter.
The Cserites, we learn, were the first who were made a
municipal body without the power of voting;
371
they were
Gellius xvi
Municipia
and colonies
distingtiished.
13-
Ancient
World, 361 f.
Municipes
without the
right to vote.
permitted the honor of being called Roman citizens, but The position
were exonerated from ofiSces and burdens, on account of
was in fact
one of inferiority,
their having recovered and protected sacred things in the
Gallic war; hence those were called "Lists of the Caerites,"
of honor.
not