It is today widely agreed that the ancient Greek world was not only the cradle of democracy, but also of the idea of citizenship, political participation, civic rights and obligations. Such ideas form the base of our understanding of political and democratic life. These values have for a long time been considered only in relation to one single political horizon, that of the polis in the ancient Greek world, and the national state in the modern world. However, both in the ancient world and today, one can be a citizen of two or more countries at the same time. In antiquity, individuals could hold citizenship in more than one polis and, since the consolidation of Roman rule in the Greek East, one could be a local (Greek) citizen and a Roman citizen at the same time.
This project aims at reconsidering our understanding of ancient Greek citizenship in the Roman Empire by exploring multiple citizenship—namely, the practice of holding citizenship in several cities, often in addition to Roman citizenship—which spread in the Greek world since the Late Classical and Hellenistic period and became frequent in the cities of western Asia Minor during the Imperial period.
In general, Roman Asia Minor was a cosmopolitan world, in which the political horizon of the polis was no longer the only border citizens knew. By the second century CE, epigraphic and literary sources suggest that an increasing number of Greek citizens in the East held citizenship in several poleis. Holders of multiple citizenships were mainly members of the elites,1 but there is also evidence for several categories of professionals, such as physicians, architects, artisans, and athletes. 2 Citizenship grants could be conferred as a reward for benefactions to the city (this is the case for wealthy benefactors, euergetai) or to professionals, as a means of integrating them into a new civic community. One could also hold “federal citizenship” within leagues of cities (koina). Moreover, during the first two centuries of Empire, the Greek elites became increasingly integrated in the provincial administration, often receiving grants of Roman citizenship. Greek local citizenship, thus, overlapped with Roman “global” citizenship. In a way, the Roman Empire compelled the Greek cities to renegotiate their idea and practice of citizenship. These aspects urge us to reconsider Greek citizenship in the context of the Roman empire. Despite recent work,3 a systematic collection and analysis of the evidence for multiple citizenship in the Roman period remain still a desideratum. Above all, questions regarding the overlapping and intersections of different citizenships still need to be properly addressed. For a long time, in fact, acquired Greek citizenships have been regarded merely as honorific titles, which were devoid of any practical implications and irrelevant to questions of identity and political discourse.4 But a closer consideration of the problem reveals that this understanding overlooks the impact that acquired citizenship had on individual careers in several sectors (administration, commerce, sport) and, most importantly, it downplays the impact of citizenship in defining membership in several communities (Greek poleis) and in a cosmopolitan space (the Empire). We the need to overcome the idea that Greek citizenship can be defined only as a form of active status of sharing in the polis and taking part in the polis institutions, which is mostly of Aristotelian origin, and the assumption that local citizenship is an exclusive status defining individual identity.5 At the same time, we are still far from understanding the impact of multiple citizenship on the sphere of jurisdiction, specifically, in the case of conflicts and legal disputes.6 In general, the juridical status of multiple citizenship holders is unclear, and the project will explore both the juridical status of holders of multiple Greek citizenships and the legal pos