Civitates stipendiariae

The majority of communities in the western provinces at the time of Augustus were civitates stipendiariae, ‘‘tribute-paying communities.’’ For the most part the inhabitants of these civitates were non-citizens (peregrini, in Roman legal terms), although some members of the local elite on an individual basis gained Roman citizenship as a reward for their loyalty and good services to Rome. This is clear, for example, at Ammaia (Sao Salvador de Aramenha near Portalegre in Portugal), where a statue was set up during the reign of Nero to honor Publius Cornelius Macer, a local magistrate who had been granted Roman citizenship by the emperor Claudius in the years before the community became a municipium (CIL II 159 = ILS 1978). In the interior of Gaul, Spain, and Britain and in the Danubian provinces, these civitates were often somewhat artificial creations, especially where the Roman provincial governor had amalgamated various peoples to form a new civic community. In remoter regions, such as northern Lusitania or the interior of Dalmatia, Rome seems to have allowed native leaders (principes) to retain authority over their own populus for 50 years or more, since the process of creating the civitates could not be completed overnight (Alarcao 1988: 29-32; Wilkes 2003: 235). Tacitus mentions the tireless work that Cn. Domitius Corbulo put in as legate of Germania Inferior under Claudius in organizing the Frisii into civitates: he had to establish a local senate, magistrates, laws, and a territory for each new community (Ann. 11.19). Inscribed boundary markers provide a few glimpses of this carving out of new territories (ILS 5948-81; Campbell 2000: 454-67). A typical example, dated to 5/6 ce by Augustus’ titles, was found at Ledesma near Salamanca in north-eastern Lusitania:

Imperator Caesar Augustus, pontifex maximus, with tribunician power for the twenty-eighth time, consul for the thirteenth time, father of the fatherland: Augustan boundary-stone (terminus Augustal(is)) between Bletisa, Mirobr(iga) and Salm(antica). (CIL II 859 = ILS 5970)

Disputes arose between communities over boundaries and these often required the intervention of the Roman provincial governor. Such occurred, for example, in Dalmatia under Caligula, where the decision reached by the centurion delegated by the governor to settle the dispute was inscribed on a rock-face near Vaganj in Bosnia, presumably where the boundary was established:

Lucius Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, legate with propraetorian power of Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, provided Manius Coelius, centurion of the Legion VII,

As an adjudicator between the Sapuates and the Lamatini. He was charged to define their territories and place boundary-stones. (CILIII 9864a = ILS 5950)

Provincial governors sometimes established a civitas capital at a site that had already been occupied in the later Iron Age; alternatively, a new center was created some distance from the Iron-Age site and often in a more accessible location. Thus in Gallia Lugdunensis the oppidum of Bibracte (Mont Beuvray) in the territory of the Aedui had already developed a number of urban features by the time Augustus began to reorganize the provincial landscape in this area. However, the decision was taken to abandon Bibracte in favor of a lowland site some 20 kilometers away, where the new civitas capital of Augustodunum (Autun) was established (Goudineau and Peyre 1993; Woolf 1998: 7-10). Since many of the names of these new communities were artificial coinages, the name of the people (populus) who occupied the region was often retained - at least in the early imperial period. Thus in his list of communities of the Gallic provinces the elder Pliny gives both the urban toponym and the more traditional ethnic for several cities: for example, Aquae Sextiae of the Salluvii, Avennio of the Cavares, Apta Iulia of the Vulgientes, Alebaece of the Reii Apollinares, Alba of the Helvii (Nat. 3.36). In some areas the ethnonym was never forgotten and re-emerged in late antiquity. So the city of‘‘Paris’’ preferred to recall its origins as the civitas capital of the Parisii rather than retain its Roman toponym, Lutetia, as did Tours, civitas capital of the Turones, which had been given the name Caesarodunum. Indeed the historian Ammianus Marcellinus reveals (15.11.12) that Caesarodunum had already reverted to being called the civitas Turonum by the fourth century ce.