Patrie d'origine et patries électives : les citoyennetés multiples dans le monde grec d'époque romaine

During the Hellenistic period, social and political changes led to an evolution of the Greek concept of citizenship, which lost some of its exclusiveness. In the Imperial times, this long-term reshaping of the politeia continued and resulted in a practice which, although not entirely a new one, seems to develop: the possession of several local citizenships. 

The international conference held at Tours in November 2009 aimed at evaluating the scale of this phenomenon and at examining its practical and symbolic consequences, in the cultural and political context of the Roman East, from the late Hellenistic period to the end of the Early Empire. In Greece, Asia Minor and the regions of the Black Sea, the variations in expressing multiple citizenship – sometimes duly recorded as an honorific title, sometimes kept under silence – raise methodological questions. They also suggest to consider the reasons for multiple citizenship – the identity and social position of the persons concerned (traders, athletes and artists, sophists, great and small notables), regional traditions and the role of the koina – as well as the legal and political issues at stake.