Citizenship

Imagine being thrown back in time. The years is 500 BCE and you have to decide if you

will be a citizen of Athens or Rome, which should you choose? Citizenship, or the status given

by a government that involves a balance between individual rights and responsibilities, started

around 500 BCE in the Greek and Italian peninsulas of the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had a

superior system of citizenship when compared to Athens because they granted citizenship more

freely, allowed women to have certain rights and they had more organized ways of going about

their lives.

In Rome, citizenship was granted to both male and female, free native-born adults and

children and to the sons of freed slaves. This was a lot more accepting than Athens who took no

children, no females and no sons of freed slaves as citizens (doc A). Roman citizens were judged

on how they behaved with their family, neighbors and property. They were expected to

participate in local government and to honor and respect the Roman Republic.

Being a women in 500 BCE was far from enjoyable, but being a women in Rome would

definitely guarantee you a better life than that of a woman in Athens. While women in Athens

couldnt even be citizens, as a woman in Rome you could obtain citizenship and own land.

Today there is knowledge of some strong Roman women that influenced history which says a lot

considering the fact that there is almost no examples of influential Athenian women.

Life in Rome was very organized. There was a system for everything that the Romans

did. In their senate they had about 300 men serve for life as opposed to the Athenian senate

which allowed all of their 40,000 citizens to attend (doc E). Trying to conduct official business

and get important things done would be a lot harder and much more chaotic with a large group of

people. Another very organized system that Rome had was their census. All of the Roman
citizens were counted and ranked into classes based on things such as their wealth, marital status

and fitness (doc D). The rank system kept all of the Romans in organized groups and probably

even pushed them to want to be better for the next census to move up.

In conclusion, I believe that Romans system of citizenship was better than Athens

because of the way they granted their citizenship, the rights they gave to women and the way

they organized their lives. If I was given the choice I would definitely choose to be a citizen of

the Roman Republic, would you?