THE EXTENSION: THE QUESTION OF SPACE

Under the Republic, the dominant discourse links res publica to two constellations: in the first, which associates it to civitas and to populus, the three notions show, from different points of view, the civic community both in its internal functioning and in its relations with the outside world; the other associates it to ius and leges.^[137] Thus, what qualifies the res publica as res populi, in Cicero’s definition (de rep.

This original association between res publica and civitas, understood as the whole of the cives, explains the frequent slippage from one to the other in antiquity, and the translation that has been made of the two by modern authors: Rousseau said that what was in the past called the city-state was in contemporary times the Repub- lic.^[140] And this explains why one of the great political problems of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will relate to the size of states: how to run a large state as a republic (read: “as a city-state”)? And which practice of citizenship should be adapted for it? Posed thus, the question seemed almost unsolvable.

If we keep these ancient constellations in mind, we understand that the begin­ning of the principate did not mark a radical change in this history: not only were the centrality of the civitas and Urbs¹ⁱ and the sovereignty of the populus Romanus in foreign relations maintained in official documents,¹⁶ but the addition to these constellations of the concept of salus principis, the health of the emperor, from the beginning of the principate (whose first official attestation is the second edict from Cyrene from 7 BC) does not call it into question.

On the other hand, it is from this link that res publica frees itself little by little over the course of the third century in a certain number of sources, while, to a point, populus loses its legal dimension,¹⁷ taking on instead a sociological dimension (it then refers to the people of Rome¹⁸ or the people in opposition to the elite) or even an ethnic one (a people of the empire¹⁹), whereas civitas still has a local meaning. We subsequently see four shifts, which we do not always perceive in the Greek

15 Thus, the jurist Paul justifies the creation by Augustus of the cohortes vigilum in Rome (D.1.15.1): nam salutem reipublicae tueri nulli magis credidit [Augustus] convenire nec alium sufficere ei rei quam Casesarem. Is Paul citing a phrase from Augustus or employing traditional language that associates res publica and the Urbs?

16 Augustus' decisions are presented as though made with the consent of the Roman people: see JosephusAJ 16.162-165; Tacitus, Ann. 4.30; see also Jospheus AJ 19.287-291 (Claudius): “in all the empire of the Romans: εν πασηr τηr υπo 'Pωμαrοις ηγεμονrαr." Maxime Lemosse 1967, 69-70, has clearly shown the permanence of the people as an actor in diplomatic relations. In the notion of amicitia, it is the people who give their friendship, and the emperor is only he who acts for the people, as Augustus himself emphasizes (RG 27). Sometimes we find friendship with the emperor, but it is not to be confused with the other. Client peoples thus swear alle­giance both to the emperor and to the Roman people (we find philokaisar and philoromaios in the inscriptions). See also Millar 2004, 217.

17 In the Severans' era, the legal notion of populus is still present, for example in Ulpian (D.5.1.82; D.11.1.4: magistratus populi Romani); D.1.3.32 (the mos is quae sine scripto populus proba­vit); we also find senator populi romani (Vat.

18 A few examples will suffice here: Herodian 8.3.4 (where the people of Rome is opposed to the Italians); Dio 79.1 (after the death of Macrinus, Avitus addresses “the Senate and the People of Rome” by letter); Historia Augusta Firmus 5: letter of Aurelius amantissimo sui populo Ro­mano; cf. Historia Augusta Tac. 2; allusion to the commoda populi in D.5.1.53 (Hermogenia- nus). The same thing in the later imperial consitutions (Constantine, C.11.58.1; C.Th. 1.2.2 [Brev. 1.2.1]; C.10.53.9). In the fourth century, the process has been completely realized: an interesting constitution from 365 (Valens, Valentinian, Gratian) speaks of the sacer ac venera­bilis Populus to refer to the people of Rome (C. Th.1.6.4, 9 March 365). It is also the ancient meaning of populus that is recalled in this constitution from 286 (C.8.47.1.1. Diocletian and Maximian to Timotheus): adrogatio entenim ex indulgentia principali facta proinde valet apud praetorem vel praesidem intimata, ac si per populum iure antiquo facta esset [...].

19 Example: C.2.11.21 (Diocletian and Maximian). We will also find populi in the plural to desig­nate “the peoples of the Empire” (C.1.14.3; 1.17.1). terminology, where res publica continues to be translated in a rather traditional way by ta demosia pragmata or demosion pragma²⁰, or else to demosion²¹ or by ta koina pragmata or even ta koina²² - we find politeia more rarely at this time.²³ These shifts pertain to a new ideology and drawing them out allows us to also dis­cern sources of resistance to these changes.

A preliminary remark is necessary, however: the expression, so present in de­crees of the Senate up until the beginning of the principate²4 and again in imperial correspondence and edicts until the second century,²⁵ is almost totally absent from the official documents transmitted by epigraphy or by papyrology, correspondence and rescripts, and even from the coins of the time, except where it used to refer to the local res publicae or the notion of public mission (an action is taken rei publicae causa)²⁶ The emperors speak in their own name or in the name of the succession of the emperors that have preceded them, in the name of their domus, in the name of the imperium (or arche) that they have received²⁷ and only rarely invoke the res publica. From res publica, there only remains, so to speak, the second part, publica, up against salus, securitas, quies, utilitas, etc., whereas the res itself seems to have disappeared. Or rather, it has become so obvious from emperor’s point of view that it can be evoked metonymically. By contrast, the term does appear in literary texts, in other words, in the works of the historians and the rhetors, and in some jurispru-

20 It is the customary translation of the Roman decrees. We find it in the Roman jurists (Modesti­nus D.27.1.10.pr., 2) and also in the historians, Cassius Dio, Herodian, and later Eusebius (VC 2.64-72; HE 7.42).

21 For example, Dio 59.3.4; 53.21.3.

22 Already in the Greek translation of the Res Gestae of Augustus, § 1; cf. Dio 41.1.2: Oliver 1989, no. 211 (letter of Commodus to the Aphrodisians, 189 CE); Eusebius, in his translations into Greek of Constantine’s letters, VC 17-20; see also Silli 1987, texts 5, 16, 19; some epi­graphic examples examples in Mason 1974. Let us also note that publicus is rendered some­times aspolitikos (see D.27.1.6.3 (Modestinus)).

23 Politeia most often translates civitas in the sense of citizenship (Polybius 6.11a.7; Plut.

24 With the phrase e re publicafideque sua (as we see in many decrees of the Senate, for example, the senatus consultum of Thisbensibus = FIRA I, 31). The expression is also present in the honorific decrees: for example the Augustan decree in honor of Seleucus of Rhosos, AE 2007, 1582.

25 Augustus, Cyrene Edicts 2.45, 48; Claudius’ letter to the corporation of the athletes of Hera­clea: P.Lond. 1178.14-15 (W.Chr. 156): εγω καr της 'Pωμαrων π[ολrτεrας]; ILS 292 on the subject of Trajan: optime de republica merito domo forisque.

26 Among the very numerous examples, see especially C.11.30; 31; 32; 33: C.10.68.1; on the ab­sence of reipublicae causa: C.5.64; 2.50; 2.51; 2.20.3. The same thing applies in the jurispru­dential literature.

27 The edict of Severus Alexander on the coronal gold (P.Fay. 20 = Sel. Pap. II 216, l.21) is a good example of it: the emperor evokes the administration of the empire under the expression τ⅛ της βασrλεrας, right where we would precisely expect τ⅛ δημοσrα πρaγματα. This is to be com­pared with the stance that Herodian has Pupian take before Aquileia, where he evokes the role of the emperor as administrator of τ⅛ της αρχης (Herodian 8.19.6). dential interpretations; we will come back to them. A return to the phrase in official texts took place during the brief “constitutional restoration” of Pupienus and Balbi- nus, and especially starting from Diocletian and Maximian - the Tetrarchic Price Edict begins, after the long sequence of imperial titulature, with Fortuna rei publi­cae nostrae...^[141] - and Constantine.^[142] We can conclude from all this that res publica retains at least an imaginary and symbolic dimension that is very strong, that the term was used persistently, or that it signified something by its very absence.

Four preliminary points follow.

(i) In the discursive texts from the third century, res publica is the most often associated with four other terms: orbis/imperium/mundus/genus humanum - and this alignment explains in part the eclipse of res publica in imperial texts that privi­lege words expressing the extension of power. Without a doubt, certain of these associations existed beforehand, notably with imperium or orbis, but their meaning was different. In this last case, it was a matter of a trope, a synecdoche (or general­izing metonymy) by which the extension of the Empire was signified,^[143] its assimi­lation to the world: to conceive of the empire, one conceived of the extension of the civitas to the ends of the earth, to the orbis terrarum.^[144] But in those times, the link of the res publica with the populus Romanus and the civitas remained essential, as one can see in this passage from Velleius Paterculus, writing under Tiberius (2.89.2; trans. Shipley):

Nihil deinde potare a dis homines, nihil dii hominibus praestare possunt, nihil voto concipi, nihil felicitate consummari, quod non Augustus post reditum in urbem rei publicae populoque Romano terrarumque orbi repraesentaverit.

There is nothing that humans can desire from the gods, nothing that the gods can grant to a per­son, nothing that wish can conceive or good fortune bring to pass, that Augustus on his return to the city did not bestow on the republic, the Roman people, and the world.

The same idea is found in the Augustan inscribed epitaph now called the Laudatio Turiae: “The world having been pacified; the res publica having been restored.”^[145]

This is no longer the case in the texts of the third century^[146]: the orbis is no longer terrarum but Romanus - in orbe Romano, qui sunt ex constitutione impera­toris Antonini cives Romani effecti sunt, Ulpian writes, referring to the Antonine Constitution.^[147] We find the same thing in an imperial constitution of the third cen­tury addressed to the citizens of Tymandus in Pisidia, where the emperor, who is unidentified, explains that he wishes that the number of municipalities would in­crease per universum orbem nostrum?^[148]

The same displacement characterizes imperium, called Romanum, as is the case in this fragment where Ulpian explains that the city of Tyre received the status of Italic law ob egregriam in rempublicam imperiumque Romanum insignem fidem, “because of its outstanding and notable loyalty to the res publica and Roman em­pire” (Dig. 50.15.1), an association that we also find in the Latin panegyrics from the end of the third century, where Romano imperio seems the equivalent of Ro­mana res publica (Pan. Lat. 7(6).13.2 and 5).^[149]

The Panegyric addressed to Maximian on 21 April 289 especially illustrates this new constellation: if the emperor enjoys a certain number of prerogatives, what are his duties? the rhetor asks (10(2).3.1; trans. Nixon and Rodgers)^[150]:

Admittere in animum tantae rei publicae curam, et totius orbis fata suscipere et oblitum quo­dammodo sui gentibus vivere et in tam arduo humanarum rerum stare fastigio, ex quo veluti terras omnes et maria despicias, vicissimeque oculis ac mente collustres ubi sit certa serenitas, ubi dubia tempestas, qui iustitiam vestram iudices aemulentur, qui virtutis vestrae gloriam duces servent, accipere innumerabiles undique nuntios, totidem mandata dimittere, de tot urbi­bus, et nationibus et provinciis cogitere, noctes omnes diesque perpeti sollicitudine pro omnium salute transigere.

To admit into your heart the care of such a great state, and to take upon your shoulders the des­tin of the whole world; to forget yourself, to speak and live for the people; to stand on such a lofty summit of human affairs as to gaze down, as it were, on every land and sea, and to survey in turn with eyes and mind where calm weather is assured, where storms threaten, to observe which governors emulate your justice, which commanders maintain the glory of your courage, to receive countless messengers from every quarter, to send out just as many dispatches, to worry about so many cities and nations and provinces, to spend all one's nights and days in perpetual concern for the safety of all.

What does the constellation say? That Rome forms a world (totius orbis), a com­mon-world, and an empire (it is moreover thus that we can translate res publica here), with its nations, its cities and its provinces, its lands and its seas. And in this world united by imperial victories and represented on a portico in Autun, as the rhetor Eumenius will say in the fourth century, there is no longer anything foreign.^[151]

This idea of a common world is also expressed in the usage of the word mun­dus, which in Roman vocabulary refers to a world composed of local communi­ties.^[152] The image is well known in the third century, as Tertullian suggests, who in a way turns the image around: “Nothing is more foreign to us than the res publica. The only one that we knew, is the world” (Apol. 25: nec ulla magis res aliena quam publica; unam omnium rem publicam agnoscimus mundum).^[153] In Tertullian's works, it is not the res publica that is a world; it is the world that is a res publica. Tertullian's image comes from a long tradition, itself inherited from Judaism and Hellenism, according to which the Christian is a stranger in the human city,^[154] and in that way it highlights the necessity for Christians to mark both their limited mem­bership in the world here below, where they are only foreign residents, and their radical alterity.^[155] But unlike these previous periods, when the Christian was said to be peregrinus in opposition to the civic framework, here it is to the whole of the Roman empire, of the res publica as mundus, that Tertullian opposes his cosmo­politanism. He thus sheds light on a very contemporary vision of the empire. The res publica is enclosed in a delimited space; Christians, not belonging to any nation, define themselves simply as Christians and locate themselves in the world without limits.^[156] Here below, the only community of Christians is the paroikia, also called peregrinatio^[157] - in other words, the de-territorialized community of foreign resi­dents, wherever they may be. It is now an inverted model of the local res publica.

Thus the forms of the Christian community are different from the two extensions, local and imperial, of the res publica.45

(ii) The imperial extension of the res publica Romana is borne out in its rela­tionship to Roma. If Rome remained the civitas regia,^{[158] [159] if it had a particular status just like the people of Rome,[160] as place of legitimation of the emperors, res publica is no longer related to the space of the Urbs. That means that the empire is no longer conceived of as the city extended to the world, but as an empire made up of multiple local communities or res publicae, so many small homelands. Thus, whereas Rome is at the same time the homeland of those who have their origo and their residence there,[161] and the patria communis of all the citizens - in other words, the place where the citizens of the empire are “as if they were in their city”[162]-res publica is separated from this notion of patria. This is profoundly contrary to the image that Cicero’s contemporaries had of the matter.}

At the same time as res publica or res publica Romana or res Romana, other notions develop: imperium populi Romani (which means the domination of the Ro­man people) is replaced, as I have said, by imperium Romanum (the Roman empire, which explains the appearance of the expression solum Romanum), just as ius Ro­manum replaces iura populi Romani^[163] Res publica is thus always associated with the idea of law, but not in the generic sense of legality (as had been the case in Cicero) but in the specified sense of Roman law.^[164]

Over the course of the third century, this extension of the res publica is also marked by the development of the general edicts, which prevailed over the rescripts. Even if, for a long time, the feeling remained of the multiplicity and variety of local traditions,^[165] there is now very clearly a will to legislate on an imperial scale.^[166] Thus, constitutions addressed to and intended for all citizens multiply from Cara­calla to Constantine, including Severus Alexander, Gordian, Decius, and Diocle­tian. The designations used to name their addressees are variable: omnes,^[167] nostri or nostri provinciales,^[168] and, starting from the fourth century, imperio nostro sub­jecti.^[169] The rarest of all: omnes cives.^[170]

We can now see what the “globalization” of the notion of res publica brings: it concerns the highly problematic question of the capacity of the Roman empire to be a world among other worlds, and to coexist with others: a very new question whose answer is neither simple nor evident from a linear history. We understand the impor­tance of the idea of unity in this ideology: political unity behind the emperor, but also cultural unity.

(iii) The concept of res publica Romana acquired a cultural dimension in the third century. Most likely, the res publica was always associated with the origin of Rome and with its traditions. But at this time, while res publica sometimes refers to what remained of the former form of the state, alongside which new institutions had developed (such as the princeps or, on another level, the fiscus^[171]), the preservation of values takes on a new meaning. Unlike references to the indeterminate mos maiorum, invoked in times past to punish an act or to justify a policy,^[172] tradition (the institutions, the cults of the gods) henceforth defined “the” Roman civilization in opposition to mores considered “uncivilized”⁶⁰: culture and law meet absolutely. Well before Diocletian based the opposition between Romani and barbari, Romans and barbarians on the refusal of incestuous marriages,⁶¹ as well as on the rejection of bigamy,⁶² and made the defense of Roman traditions and the “immortal gods” into a foundational principle of the Tetrarchy,⁶³ well before Decius, who forced the citizens to display their devotion to the civil and religious traditions before the pub­lic authorities,⁶⁴ Caracalla appealed to the unity of all Roman citizens around the worship of the gods. With him, swearing allegiance to the gods became the first act of the new citizen.

The association of the res publica with the gods was not new,⁶⁵ of course, nor was the political role of religion, nor even the religious dimension of citizenship.⁶⁶ But before the third century, religio was open, like citizenship, hence the integration of new gods, as well as the possibility for the citizens to devote themselves to their own personal religions alongside obligations to official religion. All individuals be­ing endowed with multiple personae,⁶⁷ “those who do not honor the Roman gods

60 In that way, there again, the hostility with regard to certain cultures is very different from the debate of the second and first centuries BCE on the influence of Greece on Rome.

61 Coll. 6.5.1; 6.7. On this subject, see also Sherwin-White 1984; later Justinian will oppose the Roman politeia to the Persians' hetera politeia (N.86.pr; 105.pr; 21; 31); in a Novel, he in­scribes its acts into the history of the res publica Romanorum dicimus (N.18.pr.); elsewhere (N.28.pr.), he opposes the Persians to nobis Romanis.

62 C.9.9.18: bigamy is not to be the practice of our citizens (Valerian and Gallienus); C.5.5.2 (Diocletian and Maximian): neminem qui sub dicione sit nominis Romani, binas uxores habere posse vulgo patet.

63 Coll. 6.4.1: Diocletian also recalls that the religion of the traditional gods is part of these tradi­tions (ipsos deos immortales). Such is indeed “the charter” of the Tetrarchy, against the Mani- cheans (Coll. 15.3; Coll. 6.4.1), or against the Christians as Lactantius emphasizes, de mortibus persecutorum, 34.1: the measures against the Christians had the safety of the State as their goal because the Christians no longer wanted to adhere to the institutions of the ancestors (veterum instituta). It is thus this “old” Roman res publica that they tried to protect against the attacks of the Manicheans or the Christians - and whose glorious history the pagan historians tell, against the negative accounts of the Christian historians.

64 On Decius as restitutor sacrorum, see AE 1973, 235 and the commentary in Duval 2000.

65 As the original link between Rome and Jupiter, the religious dimension of the imperium, the definition of the ius publicum as that which relates to sacra, sacerdotes et magistratus and af­fects the status rei romanae show. See Aricu Anselmo 1983.

66 We will indeed recall the importance of the pietas, one of the cardinal virtues of the emperors, by which they maintained the pax deorum, as well as the political role of the imperial cult and of the oath sworn to the emperor pro salute principis upon a new emperor's accession to the empire, and to the celebration of the dies imperii. Cf. D.50.16.233.1 (Gaius): Post kalendas Ianuarias die tertio pro salute principis vota suscipiuntur; see also Pliny Ep. 10.52; 53; 102. On the vota in favor of the prince, first pronounced on the occasion of the emperor's accession to power, and then, starting from Caligula, pronounced each year, in each part of the empire, at the beginning of the month of January, see Hermann 1968: 50ff., together with Marotta, 2000, 1:139, as well as Cancik 2003 and Scheid 1998. On the city as a cultural community, see most recently Scheid 2010.

67 On the contrary, Tertullian writes, Christians only have one persona (de corona 3.11: Numquam christianus aliud est.

must [however] recognize the official cult of the Romans.”^[173] Furthermore, although religion (in other words, the rituals, the sacra) had elevated magistrates and priests and so contributed to the functioning of the city, the precise duties of private citi­zens had not been spelled out.^[174] To the extent that the citizen had to participate in the rituals of the city, integration into the Roman city had never been subjected to religious conditions.

But with the Edict of Caracalla, the cult of the gods (who are, incidentally, not named) is expected of new citizens^[175]: “I esteem that I can satisfy the majesty of the gods, with magnificence and piety, if I bring to their worship the peregrini, each time that ([oσ]ακις εαν) they will enter into the number of my men.”^[176] The expres­sion has not received sufficient commentary. Now, if we take it literally, it is not a question of a collective act, of everyone at the same time, but of individual acts, and even of an act of allegiance of each new citizen. Whereas under the Republic, the first act of the new citizen was his declaration to the census, with Caracalla, it was his sacrifice to the gods. The “maiestas of the Roman people” (1.12) - in other words, his power - must as a result be increased. Here, Caracalla acts in accord with longstanding tradition, according to which Rome drew strength from the integra­tion of foreigners, but implicates the legitimacy of the emperor, too: the salus prin­cipis is truly at the heart of this edict, since the emperor sought to thank the gods for having saved him by this victory (1.1.3).^[177]

The Edict of Caracalla therefore constitutes a turning point in the relationship between religion and citizenship. The Edict of Decius in 249, by which the emperor compelled all the citizens to sacrifice to the gods, to taste meat, and to take an oath, observes the same logic.^[178] For James B. Rives, the edict from 249 presents numer­ous new aspects: while the traditional practice was always collective and local, in­cluding the carrying out of the yearly vota pro salute principis^[179] with this decree, Rives explains, the act of sacrifice became an act that was more individual, manda­tory, and universal.^[180] Another innovation: in imitation of the census procedures, a libellus, a certificate, was to be issued to the person performing the sacrifice. If we read the text of the P.Giss. 40 carefully, I think we find this double dimension start­ing with Caracalla: individual supplication is the first act of the citizen. In both cases, also, the gods to which reference had been made are not named; the act, rather, suffices to define the religion of the empire.^[181] In refusing the sacrifice to the gods, the Christians therefore appeared as enemies of the State (or, perhaps, as bad citizens) and justified an accusation of lese-majesty.^[182] In any case, the summa divi­sio is no longer, so to speak, between free men and slaves, nor even between citi­zens and peregrini, but between those who adhered to Roman rituals and the other citizens (Christians, before long Manicheans, etc.). The other, we see, is not defined by statutes: it is above all practice that identifies him as such. The conception of crime toward the res publica is necessarily therein expanded and the distinction between the external and internal enemy loses its preeminence.

(iv) These last remarks shed light on the reference to humankind that we find in numerous texts, especially commencing from the end of the third century. In the Price Edict, for example, the Tetrarchs, legitimized by the fortuna rei publicae, also name themselves the parentes generis humani, an attribute foreign to the official titulature of the prince and rare even in the panegyrics. On milestones we also find at this time phrases such as bono generis humani natus, just as bono reipublicae natus.^[183]8 Other examples: the rescript of Constantine to Hispellum from 326 (ILS 705; trans. ASW): “We encompass with our untiring attention and care everything, indeed, the benefits human society” (humani generis societatem). We find the same thing in the Edict of Galerius and Constantius on the Caesariani (CIL V 2781): it intends to protect the world from “the slander that the desperate audacity of the Caesariani provoked against the whole of humankind”^[184]; and likewise, this pas­sage from the Panegyric 7(6).2.3 (trans. Nixon and Rodgers):

This is true piety, this the joy in preserving the human race (haec voluptas conservandi generis humani), to give an example to the nations (gentibus) to seek marriage (matrimonium) more eagerly, and to rear children, so that in the replacement of successions of individuals it should disadvantage us nothing that each single person is mortal, since the State is immortal through the offspring of all.^[185]

One could respond that these declarations fall under a universalist vision that is both ancient and commonplace and that, in the words of Francesco Grelle, the respublica is simply “the institutional projection of humankind.”^[186] It seems to me on the contrary that, if we accept the idea of a cultural definition of the res publica, it is the opposite that occurs: humanitas has become a political concept, a concept of combat, in Koselleck’s expression,^[187] which can therefore take on a legal dimen­sion, as we see in the edict on the Manicheans or in the edict of Galerius on the Caesariani.^[188] Humanus, the concept of the human, can now generate Persians, Man- icheans, barbari, but also insurrectionaries, etc., as antonyms. And these antonyms give rise not only to declarations, but to normative claims applicable everywhere in the empire. It is a conception in opposition to the doctrine of natural law that runs throughout a part of the jurisprudential literature of the day, and which, by contrast, appears to be inspired by a cosmopolitan philosophy.^[189] There is a real tension be­tween the affirmation of one’s humanity and the politics of inclusion, on the one hand, and the definition of a culturally unified res publica that acts to exclude, which does not want to subsume the human but represent him, on the other.

To conclude on this point: in the third century, res publica became the best way to describe the empire as a political and cultural unity. To be sure, the res publica Romana had always had an imperial dimension: its body, wrote Cicero, is Rome, but also the soldiers, the allies (de inv 2.168). But in its association to civitas, res publica had been linked to a practice of citizenship. Following the Antonine Constitution, res publica aimed to refer to the organization of the whole of imperial territory, just as the oikoumene referred not to the inhabited world, but to the world organized by Roman laws.^[190] Doubtless, the empire remained heterogeneous, but the sources attest to an undeniable movement toward administrative unification.^[191] The expansion of the notion of res publicae to refer to all kinds of local civitates is a good example of this: just as, in the first century BC, after having assigned Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of Italy, Rome created a system of municipia, self-governing mu­nicipalities, res publicae that were the official representatives of the central authority (and which embraced earlier as well as smaller entities: cities, vici,pagi, etc.); by the same token, the notion of res publica served in the later period to unify the status of newly and wholly Roman cities into an empire of citizens. It is at this moment that a ius rei publicae appears, an imperial status governing all the cities in the empire.^{[192] [193]}

Universality is, we see, no longer that of the world, but that of the Roman world; it is a civilizational and political universalism. The institution of citizenship, once generalized to all the free inhabitants of the Empire, not only freed the res publica Romana from civic practice and its relationship to the populus, but institu­tionalized the exclusion of the radical other, the foreigner to the Roman order.

3.