Latin rights

The Lex Pompeia de Transpadanis of 89 BC granted the ius Latii to the communities of Transpadania, a region north of the Po, which had sided with Rome during the Social War.

Cicero used this term in relation to Julius Caesar's grant of Latin rights to the Sicilians in 44 BC.

In 122 BC, the plebeian tribune Gaius Gracchus introduced a law which extended the ius Latii to all other residents of Italy.

[8] Following the great spate of colonial settlements under Julius Caesar and Augustus, the ius Latii was used more as a political instrument that aimed at integration of provincial communities via their local leadership.

Latin status included the acquisition of Roman citizenship upon the holding of municipal magistracy (ius adipiscendae civitatis per magistratum), which presumed a trajectory of development that would carry at least the local magistrates along the path to the institution of a Roman-style community.

This beneficence could span the whole range from grants to individuals to awards made to whole towns, and could even be applied to an entire population, as when Emperor Vespasian gave the ius Latii to all of Hispania in AD 74.

Although this decree could encompass whole cities, it is important to note that it did not necessarily entail the establishment of a municipium (self-governing town).