07-22-2010, 02:17 PM
Quote:I beg to differ. We cannot have a municipal law if municipium is not something more than a name.But that's not at issue. Imagine an easy scenario: the Flavians want to give all towns and tribes the same basic rights. They use the word "municipium", where earlier generations would have used "civitas". There is indeed something more than a name - nobody denies that there was a political/organizatorial level lower than province. But there is no need to assume that a name change ("Noviomagus" becoming "Ulpia Noviomagus") meant that all citizens received Latin rights. Nor can this juridical change be connected to the introduction of the word "municipium". A bureaucratic attempt to create unity may explain the rise of the title "municipium" as well.
To return to the main problem: in this thread, we have seen arguments pro and contra the existence of something like a legal rank called "municipium", which might or might not be granted. There is a debate. The Nijmegen archaeologists - which I sincerely admire - seem to be unaware that this debate exists. That is a bit strange, but there may be good reasons for that. The discipline has become very complex, and an archaeologist cannot always know what historians are doing, even though he should.
What I object to, is that the Nijmegen archaeologists have allowed the debate about the antiquity of the city to be taken over by the commercial interests of the tourist information. This debate is old (it started in 1955). It ought to have been solved, not left to journalists and, ahem, "municipal" politicians.
