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16 Roman Legal Trad. 1 (2020)

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Review


Daniele Mattiangeli*


Civis romanus   sum. By  Giuseppe  Valditara. Turin: Giappichelli.
2018. 232 pp. ISBN  978-8-892-11719-8.


In 2018, the romanist and politician Giuseppe Valditara published
a new and  interesting book on Roman citizenship, an issue that has
recently gained  special relevance. Most other Roman   law  mono-
graphs  deal with citizenship only in a juridical-dogmatic way; this
book takes  also a social, philosophical, and political point of view.
It is therefore of interest not only to Romanists, but also to scholars
of law and history in general, as well as political historians.
    The  work  begins with a standard introductory chapter  on the
origins of the city of Rome as a mixed city, that is, a new political,
social, and juridical entity, formed by the encounter  of different
ethnic groups. Here  Valditara summarizes   the legends, historical
evidence, and  literary texts on the origins of Rome  to show  its
original identity as a multi-ethnic city, including Latins, Sabines,
Italics, and the legendary Trojan and Greek exiles. He summarizes
the identity with (Quintus)  Cicero: civitas ex nationum conventu
constituta (a state created by the coming together of nations).' He
then describes, in Chapter 2, what would  seem to be the original
Roman   identity, defining Roman  society as open and influenced
by various foreign contributions, both Greek and Latin or Italian.2
Examples   for the author  are language,  religion, and the rising
economic  culture.3
    Chapter   3 is strictly the first legal and political one, and
outlines the path from the first genetic Latin tribes with a system
of government  based  on descent. Valditara  applies the term ge-
netic (from genus), following the example  of Greek literature, to

       Lecturer, Department of Private law, University of Salzburg.
    1  Valditara, 4, citing Cic., Comment. pet. 14. See also I. Kajanto,
Minderheiten und ihre Sprachen in der Hauptstadt Rom, in G. Neumann
and J.Untermann, edd., Die Sprachen im romischen Reich der Kaiserzeit
(Cologne 1980), 84.
    2  Valditara, 9.
    a  Valditara, 11-25.
Roman Legal Tradition, 16 (2020), 1-6. ISSN 1943-6483. Published by the Ames Foundation at
the Harvard Law School and the Alan Rodger Endowment at the University of Glasgow. This
work may be reproduced and distributed for all non-commercial purposes. Copyright © 2020 by
Daniele Mattiangeli. All rights reserved apart from those granted above.
ROMANLEGALTRADITION.ORG

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