Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/523

Rh decree which granted it to all free men without distinction.

What is remarkable here is, that no one can tell the date of this decree or the name of the prince who is- sued it. The honor is given, with some probability of truth, to Caracalla, — that is to say, to a prince who never had very elevated views ; and this is attributed to him as simply a fiscal measure. We meet in history with few more important decrees than this. It abolished the distinction which had existed since the Roman conquest between the dominant nation and the subject peoples ; it even caused to disappear a much older distinction, which religion and law had made be- tween cities. Still the historians of that time took no note of it, and all we know of it we glean from two vague passages of the jurisconsults and a short notice in Dion Cassius. If this decree did not strike contempo-