WHO ARE YOU? Proving your identity in antiquity? DOCUMENTARY

in modern times we take for granted the ability to easily prove our own identity with things like driver's licenses social security numbers birth certificates and all kinds of other products of our bureaucratic states yet even still there are plenty of scams out there for falsifying one's own information stealing other's people information and impersonating them for malicious means this all got me thinking how on earth did people in the past prove their identity and just how common was the issue of identity theft let's find out it takes a lot of reading to make these documentaries this leaves me with very little time to actually get through my growing library or explore other subjects of interest i'm sure in your own busy life it could be tough to do all the reading you'd like to thankfully our sponsor blinkist has a solution blinkist is an app that takes thousands of non-fiction books and uses experts to distill them down to their most essential ideas for you to easily digest with 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interactions with folks they were already well acquainted with rather they were constantly interacting with folks they didn't know well and often doing so from great distances such social activities therefore required some foundation on which both parties could come to terms this might merely be a matter of trust but more often than not involved some degree of certification common ideas necessitating some proof of one's identity involve property claims debts business transactions the managing of affairs remotely partaking in legal activities claiming an inheritance adopting a family member getting married the list goes on and on but perhaps one of the most important reasons why you would want to prove your identity was to claim the benefits of citizenship for many many groups across antiquity the definition of who could be a citizen was paramount to the maintenance of the social order as it dictated the rights and responsibilities of individuals throughout society really the bedrock of just about any civilization let's now focus in on this concept before moving on perhaps the best illustration of the stakes at play here is to look at the highly stratified spartan society where its citizens lorded over its non-citizens in an extremely authoritarian manner these spartates were assigned an allotment of public lands and helits could participate in politics and were granted all kinds of legal protections at the same time though they had to pay dues of food and drink were barred from taking up a trade and were subject to a variety of military obligations athenian citizens were similarly given the right to own land own slaves vote and enter government they were also subject to various civil and military duties we see this sort of thing repeat itself across the ancient world almost universally being a part of this citizenship club meant being a free adult male with citizen parentage carthage for instance seems to have had a two-tiered citizenship the higher tier made up of those descended from existing citizens had full rights while the second tier probably made up of the newly enfranchised like former slaves had restricted rights it's interesting to note here that genealogically speaking these full punic citizens appear to have only had to trace their descent from a single citizen parent who might have otherwise married a foreigner this is to be contrasted with other communities that require dissent from parents who both had citizenship the specific mechanisms which governed who was or was not a citizen had a huge impact on the development of a society over time keep too hard and you could find that pool of citizens rapidly depleted as would happen in sparta it's for this reason that many communities would evolve their citizenship requirements over time perhaps the best example of this is ancient rome originally rome functioned much like the other small city-states at the time with a closed citizen group that could trace dissent from the original inhabitants of the city over the years however as rome expanded it was forced to revise this idea early on during the republican period for instance when rome absorbed members of the latin league and began to establish colonies further afield they developed a legal separation between roman and latin citizenship the former enjoyed the following key rights the right to hold property make legal contracts marry lawfully act as the pata familias vote in the assemblies run for office go to trial and appeal to sue or to be sued to gain protection from certain laws to be exempted from some taxes and the list goes on as you can see it's quite the enticing benefits package latin citizens meanwhile had rights within their own communities but when it came to matters with rome they could access only a subset of rights which might vary from place to place based upon the deal that had been struck upon their absorption into the roman conglomerate these often included the right to trade to legally marry to vote if they moved to rome to maintain rights if they relocated within italy and more the benefits of full citizenship was clear to all and was actually used as a carrot by romans to bring others into the fold of their growing empire citizenship for example could be granted to individuals a local aristocracy a city a series of communities and entire regions but for some these rights were doled out far too sparingly rome's italian allies for instance were constantly clamoring for expanded citizenship since they often bore the brunt of its military obligations without receiving the full benefits enjoyed by the minority of rome this tension eventually came to a head in 91 bc during the social war when huge numbers of italian cities rose up in rebellion it was a bloody affair and though rome eventually won it conceded citizenship rights to the entire peninsula moving forward you would see additional provinces be granted citizenship like sis alpine gaul in 49 bc the franchise was being rolled out further and further with a major path to citizenship being tied to military service in the ranks of the auxiliary eventually in 212 a.d the edict of caracalla went all the way in on the idea of universal citizenship extending roman citizenship to all freeborn men throughout the empire while also granting all freeborn women the same rights as roman women i could go on and on about this topic but for now i think we've sufficiently illustrated why being able to prove your identity would be so critical in accessing the benefits of citizenship so now let's move on to how you would actually go about proving your identity at the most basic level this would be built merely on trust you could just declare it and hope others believed you for instance the apostle paul is said to have claimed citizenship several times to get he and his fellow travelers out of sticky situations here's a relevant passage from axe quote but when they had stretched him out for the whips paul said to the centurion who was standing by is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a roman citizen and uncondemned when the centurion heard this he went to the tribune and said to him what are you about to do for this man is a roman citizen so the tribune came and said to him tell me are you a roman citizen and he said yes the tribune answered i bought this citizenship for a large sum paul said but i am a citizen by birth so those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately and the tribune was also afraid for he realized that paul was a roman citizen and that he had bound him now it seems a bit absurd to think that all of this took place on a single man's word however we should keep in mind that there were likely other social clues to back up such claims like the ability to speak latin the use of the trionomina naming convention or other displays of wealth or status there is also the principle at work here that the level of evidence required was generally proportional to the claims being made want some overly aggressive guards to back off a bit no problem confidence can do the trick want to bring matters to court though and you'd have to do better than that this next level of proof might involve having people vouch for you of course i'm paul the roman citizen here's my friend who says so too understandably this still might not be convincing enough and so you'd have to bring better ammunition in the form of higher quantity or quality of backers obviously the more prestigious the advocate the more trusted their word we see this sort of thing play out a lot in the roman world when it came to using letters of recommendation for career advancement one interesting transcript we have from ancient egypt records how a flavius longus was able to bring several witnesses including a veteran to swear to his status as a free citizen in order to serve in the third legionaica another layer of information that could be used to prove one's identity would be to produce a physical object known to be associated with you one of the most common types of objects would be that of an official seal this was used by magistrates and business folk for millennia in fact some of our earliest evidence dates back to ancient sumeria the way this worked is that you would basically have a custom design that was tied to your identity and which was difficult to replicate the seal itself might be shown or more likely its imprint shown this could be used to leave a mark directly on a document to authenticate it or it might be stamped on wax or clay that helped encapsulate a container in this way the recipient could not only be sure who it came from but also observed that the contents had not been altered the same sort of thing seems to have been achieved with other forms of markings like fingerprints handprints and signatures we even have some documents where the signers are physically described within including age sex physical features and all another physical proof of id would be the citizenship roles maintained by ancient governments for instance in greece we know that these lists were important for the regulation of citizenship and the summoning of levy forces in sparta this was extremely important given the quite strict approach to citizenship we discussed previously unfortunately we don't know much of what this actually looked like some insight though can be gleaned by turning to athens here we learned that the reforms of class denise in 508 bc required each deimos basically the equivalent of a suburb to maintain its own citizen roles parents living in these areas likely had to register their child with the local denmark shortly after birth later when male children turned 18 they would return to have them officially registered as citizens should the documents be lost or other problems arise the matter would pass through the courts to have the citizen roles properly corrected a similar process occurred in rome here the citizens were enrolled on the tribal lists with information concerning their full name their father's name and the name of their voting tribe such lists were updated and revised every five years under the direction of the elected censor it's at this point the individuals might be stricken from the record or added to it early on this list was kept in rome but as more communities came into the fold these two would be expected to maintain their own lists when it came to the provinces roman governors or local administrators took on this responsibility these lists were important sources of id verification but suffered the problem of being rather inaccessible and being often out of date it's for this reason that the whole process of becoming a citizen not only involved a list but also the issuing of an official document sort of like a modern birth certificate roman parents for instance who had accepted a newborn would register the child with officials within 30 days of the birth proof of their own identity as a citizen was brought and seven witnesses were summoned once everything was checked out the birth certificate was created it was a wooden diptych with wax surfaces in it would be written the date of birth the names of the witnesses and an abbreviation indicating the possession of roman citizenship you didn't necessarily have to have one of these to be a citizen but it was certainly quite handy a similar process occurred in the provinces where parents would register a child by making a profession providing witnesses and getting added to the register of declarations they too would also be issued a birth certificate in the form of a diptych another type of identification was issued to auxiliaries when they were granted their citizenship at the end of the required service period this would take the form of a bronze military diploma fraud prevention was included that involved the signing of seven witnesses and the use of a special seal the bearer would then have to take the diploma to a roman official who would authenticate it and enroll the new citizen on their lists taken together you can hopefully see how one might go about layering types of evidence to prove one's identity however just as today there were always ways to cheat the system in order to falsify one's identity let's now explore this idea the simplest way to try and cheat the system would be to prey off people's trust as we stated for a lot of low stakes activities you could get away with proving your identity with just your own word or that of a few others lying confidently could therefore be one way to bluff your way through to discourage such practices though many communities imposed heavy penalties on anyone who had been found to have lied about things like citizenship the romans in particular might have even executed you for such a transgression in addition to the threat of punishment there would also be layers of verification required for more important matters to improve security as we mentioned this might include providing testimony seals records birth certificates and more these of course were not foolproof and could be hacked for example we know that in the second punic war hannibal actually stole the seals of roman officials and used these to cause all kinds of chaos with falsified letters it might also be possible to just bribe your way into things like the citizenship roles this seems to have been a problem in rome as we know that in 95 bc the lex licinia muchia was specifically passed to remove people from the roman and latin citizenship roles who had falsely claimed their status another way to achieve false identification would be to do so by getting a lawyer to advocate your case while we don't have explicit evidence of this happening as a way to lie we do know that roman attorneys were often arguing on behalf of clients seeking to prove their cases for citizenship in court cicero famously took the stand for the poet aulis lesinius archaeas who had recently moved to rome in court it was shown that prior to the move archaeas had been a citizen of heraclia in southern italy by way of witnesses testaments of an ambassador and public documents this in turn allowed cicero to argue that because heracleia was a roman ally the lex platia papilla meant its citizens were now roman citizens too after all this legalese he then basically went on to state that even if none of this were the case arceus should be allowed to be a citizen anyway because he was such a great poet and rome was lucky to have him as for any crazy cases of identity theft where someone literally swooped in and stole an individual's life out from under them i could not find records of this from antiquity i did however find some instances from the later medieval period that get close to this but such stories will have to be shared in another video for now i wanted to wrap up by admiring just how much more sophisticated the ancient world was than i gave it credit for when i first started the research for this episode i hope that this video has proven both entertaining and educational in this regard a big thanks to the patrons for sponsoring the channel and to the researchers writers and artists who made this episode possible be sure to like and subscribe for more content and check out these related videos see you in the next one

Channel: Invicta

Views: 548,130

Keywords: ancient rome, history, documentary, rome, invicta, roman citizen, proving your identity, roman government, how they did it, roman censor, paul the apostle, roman birth certificates, rome documentary, daily life in rome, history of rome, history of sparta, history of carthage, carthage, sparta, athens, spartan government, athenian government, invicta history

Id: alpKlV_MKgE

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/jediben001]

I want that passport

[u/Icy-Inspection6428]

The"How they did it" series is what I love about Invicta. It's always interesting and provides insight into Daily Roman lives