page_title: Roman Empire
section_title: Legal status
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Empire / Society / Legal status
caption_attribution_description: English: In Roman Egypt (30 BC-AD 324), artists adapted naturalistic painting styles to the ancient custom of making portrait masks for mummies. The portraits were often painted while the subject was in the prime of life and were hung in the home until the person's death. This practice continued in northern Egypt well into the Early Byzantine period.
context_page_description: The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital. Although fragmented briefly during the military crisis, the empire was forcibly reassembled, then ruled by multiple emperors who shared rule over the Western Roman Empire and over the Eastern Roman Empire. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople, following the capture of Ravenna by the barbarians of Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustus. The fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, conventionally marks the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
  The predecessor state of the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic became severely destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflicts.
context_section_description: According to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman "law of persons" was that all human beings were either free (liberi) or slaves (servi). The legal status of free persons might be further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the ius Latinum, "Latin right"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by those who lacked citizenship. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, held status as peregrini, non-Romans. In 212 AD, by means of the edict known as the Constitutio Antoniniana, the emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism would have required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that had distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.
caption: Citizen of Roman Egypt (Fayum mummy portrait)
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Anonymous (Egyptian). 'Male Portrait Mask,' late 1st century. encaustic (wax, pigments) on wood. Walters Art Museum (32.3): Acquired by Henry Walters, 1913.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "208", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "719", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1379"}