Citizen is someone who is a member of a free society with many families, who shares in the rights of this society, and who benefits from these freedoms. See Society, City, Free Town, Franchise. Someone who resides in a similar type of society for some business, and who must extend his stay after his business has finished is not a citizen of this society at all; he is only a temporary subject. Someone who usually spends his vacation in residence there, but who plays no role whatsoever in these rights and freedoms, is also not a citizen . Someone who has been divested of these rights and freedoms has stopped being a citizen. One accords the title to women, young children, and servants, only as family members of a citizen , in a strict sense, but they are not truly citizens .

One can identify two dominant groups of citizens , the originary and the naturalized . The originary are those who are born citizens . The naturalized are those to whom society allows participation in these rights and freedoms, even though they were not born among them.

The Athenians were very conservative in according the attributes of the citizens of their city to foreigners; they bestowed this title with much more dignity than did the Romans: among them, the title of citizen was never held in contempt; but they did not need high opinion at all to know that perhaps the greatest gain was that of the ascent of all those who had the ambition . There were not many citizens in Athens who were not born to parents who were citizens . When a young man had reached the age of twenty, he was registered in the ληξιαρχικον γραμματειον [1]; the state counted its members. In an adoption ceremony, they made him recite the following sermon, facing the sky: Arma non dehonestabo; nec adstantem, quisquis ille fuerit, socium relinquam; pugnabo quoque pro focis and aris, solus and cum multis; patriam nec turbabo, nec prodam; navigabo contra quamcumque destinatus suero regionem; solemnitates perpetuas observabo; receptis consuetudinibus parebo, and quascumque adhuc populus prudenter statuerit, amplectar; and si quis leges susceptas sustulerit, nisi comprobaverit, non permittam; tuebor denique, solus and cum reliquis omnibus, atque patriasacra colam. Dii Cognitores, Agrauli, Enyalius, Mars, Jupiter, Floreo, Augesco duci. Plut. In peric. [I shall not dishonor my arms, I shall not abandon an ally who is standing by, whoever he is; I shall fight for the hearths and altars, alone and with many; I will not cause disturbance to the fatherland or betray it; I will sail against any region where I shall be assigned; I shall observe recurring rites; I shall obey inherited customs, and whatever the people has sensibly decided to that point, I shall embrace; and if anyone removes laws that have been accepted without approval, I shall not allow it; finally I shall watch over, alone and with everyone else, and care for ancestral shrines.] [2] Here the word prudenter , which, in abandoning judgment on the new laws to each individual, was capable of causing much trouble. The rest of this sermon is very beautiful and very wise.

One however became a citizen of Athens through adoption by a citizen , and through the consent of the people: but this good will was not universal. If one had not been judged a citizen before twenty years of age, one could no longer become one since mature age impeded the occupation of public functions. It was the same for the exiles and the expulsed, if they had not become so through ostracism. Those who had submitted to this judgment were sent away.

To become a true Roman citizen , it was necessary to accomplish three things: to have one's residence in Rome, to be a member of one of thirty-five districts, and to be able to attain the honors of the republic. Those who were, through concession and not through birth, in possession of the rights of a citizen , were in a strict sense only honorary. See City , Jurisprudence .

From the moment that there were more than four million Roman citizens in the enumeration Augustus had carried out, one notices those who actually resided in Rome, and those who had spread out across the Empire were only honorary.

There was a great difference between a citizen and a resident. According to the law de incolis , citizens were created and given all the privileges of the bourgeoisie through birth alone. These privileges could not be acquired through the length of residence. There were only the benefits of the state under the consuls, and under the emperors only their will which could act as a remedy in the case of a deficiency in the former or original.

It was the first privilege of a Roman citizen to be judged only by the people. The law Portia defended the citizen from being put to death. In the provinces, as well, one was not at all submitted to the arbitrary power of a proconsul or a local magistrate. [3] The civis sum stopped these subaltern tyrants in their tracks. In Rome, says M. de Montesquieu, in his book The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI, Chapter XIX , as well as in Lacedemone , liberty for the citizens and servitude for the slaves was extreme. However, in spite of the privileges, the power, and the grandeur of these citizens , of whom Ciceron was enthused to write, (or. pro M. Fonteio) an qui amplissimus Gallia cum infino cive Romano comparandus est?, it seems to me that the government of this republic was of a kind that in Rome one had a less precise idea of a citizen than in the canton of Zurich. In order to convince oneself that this is the case, one needs only to pay attention to what we are going to say in the rest of this article.

Hobbes does not differentiate between the subject and the citizen , taking the term subject in its strict sense, and that of citizen in its more extensive sense; and considering that the former is to laws alone what the latter is to a sovereign. They are equally commanded, but one by a moral being, and the other by a physical person. The name citizen corresponds neither to those who live subjugated, nor to those who live isolated; from which it follows that those who live absolutely in the state of nature, as do sovereigns, and those who have completely renounced themselves to this state, as do slaves, cannot at all be regarded as citizens ; at least, one affirms that there is not at all a rational society where there has been an immutable moral being and above a physical sovereign person. Puffendorf, without regard to this limitation, divided his collected works into two parts, one the works of man, the other the works of the citizen .

Since the laws of free societies of families are not the same everywhere, and as there is in most societies a hierarchical order made up of dignitaries, the citizen can also be considered in it, and relatively according to the laws of his society, and relatively according to the rank that he occupies in the hierarchical order. In the second case, there will be some difference between the magistrate citizen and the bourgeois citizen ; and in the first, between the citizen of Amsterdam and and that of Bale.

Aristotle, in acknowledging the distinctions of civil societies and the order of citizens in each society, however, identified true citizens as those who participate in the profession of the judge, and those who could be assured of passing from the state of the simple bourgeois to the first ranks of the magistrate, that which conforms only to pure democracies. It is necessary to state that it was almost always someone who followed these prerogatives, who was truly a public man, and one who had no distinctive trait whatsoever of the subject or the citizen ; except that the latter must be a public man, and that the role of the former could never be anything but that of the private, de quidam .

Puffendorf, in restricting the name of citizen to those who, through the first reunion of families, had founded the state, and to the successors of their fathers and sons, introduced a thoughtless distinction that to this day circulates a little in his collected works, and that can cause much trouble in a civil society, by separating the originary from the naturalized citizens, for a misunderstood idea of nobility. The citizens in their capacity as citizens , that is to say in their societies, are all equally noble; the nobility comes not from ancestry but from the common right that honors the primary principles of the magistrate.

The moral, sovereign being is to the citizen what the physical despot is to the subject, and the most perfect slave does not give all of this being to his sovereign; a more compelling rationale lies in the question: does the citizen have rights that he guards, and never renounces? There are occasions in which he finds himself in line, I do not mean with his fellow citizens , but with the moral being who commands them in every sense. This being has two characteristics: one private, and the other public: the former necessarily finds no resistance at all, while the latter can perceive the private side, and also succumb to the antagonism. Since this moral being has some properties, investments, farms, farmers, etc. it is also necessary to distinguish in him the sovereign and the subject of sovereignty. He is in these cases both judge and plaintiff. It is without doubt inconvenient, but it is as such in government in general, making him for or against, only by rarity or frequency, and not by himself. It is certain that the subjects or citizens will be even less exposed to injustices, for the reason that the sovereign being, physical or moral, will more rarely be both judge and plaintiff, in the cases where he will be attacked for being private.

In times of trouble, the citizen will take the side of the party who supports the established system; during the dissolution of a system, he will follow the party of his city if it is unanimous; and if there is a division in the city, he will embrace the one who will support the equality of its members and the liberty of all.

The more the citizens approach equality in ambition and in wealth, the more the state will be peaceful: this prerogative manifests itself in the pure democracy, exclusive of all other governments; but even in the most perfect democracy, full equality among the members is a chimerical thing, and it might set the foundation for the dissolution of this government, to the point that it is remedied by all the injustices of ostracism. It is in government in general, as it is in animal life: each step in life is a step towards death. The best government is not the one that is immortal, but the one that lasts the longest and is the most peaceful.

Notes

1. [ Lexiarchikon grammateion ].

2. [A Latin translation of the Athenian ephebic oath; English translation courtesy of Ruth Scodel.]

3. [ Preteur : Ancient magistrate to whom was often charged the interpretation and execution of the law of a province (See p.1775. Le Nouveau Petit Robert , under the direction of Josette Rey-Debove and Alain Rey. PETIT ROBERT directed by Paul Robert. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1993).]