Doppia cittadinanza e pluralità degli ordinamenti. La Tabula Banasitana e le linee 7-9 del Papiro di Giessen 40 col I

If the Tabula Banasitana text on the Giessen papyrus, in particular on the clause introduced by ménontos, had not been available from the start of the 1960s, it would have made sense to practice the so-called ars ignorandi and agree with Gino Segré’s conclusions dating back to 1925. However, this epigraphic document highlights a new factor that decidedly influenced the subsequent debate. Of fundamental importance are several lines of the third part, which coincide with an extract from the commentarius civitate Romana donatorum, the register kept in Rome containing the name, age and the origo of the cives who had gained that status by viritane grant. These lines (ll. 35-37 … his civitatem Romanam dedimus, salvo iure gentis et sine deminutione tributorum et vectigalium populi et fisci) perhaps fill in the gaps from lines 8 and 9 of the P. Giessen with a radically different theory from that set forth beginning with the 1910 editio princeps. It is necessary to ask oneself if the addition of [de]deitikíōn in P. Giessen 40 is the only one possible in the safeguarding clause of Papyrus Giessen. Another hypothesis is equally, if not more, convincing in light of a comparison with the Tabula Banasitana. Line 9 could be completed with [ad]deitikíōn – a transliteration from the neuter additicia rather than with [de]deitikíōn. Therefore, the clause introduced by ménontos would not define those groups excluded from the benefit of citizenship or the safeguarding of their own legal order; rather, it would confirm all the obligations that existed for the civitates and the other communities of the Roman world (which in turn were obliged to provide certain services to the provincial administration), recognizing the addeitíkia – that is, those supplementary regulations, at times favorable (in the case of the immunity granted to certain categories of veterans), at times unfavorable. A safeguarding clause conceived of in this manner explains why, after 212, the pro capite tax (laographía). was still imposed on those who once were Egyptians. Moreover, before the constitutio Antoniniana, the new Roman citizens couldn’t comply with the body of rules governing, in their pólis or in their civitas, family and inheritance law, but had to conform to the Roman Law.