Two Oaths and a Cry: Sourcing Citizenship

Citizens and Their Promises

1In ancient Athens, in Rome and in the United States today, citizens hold rights that other residents do not, and they owe duties in return. Each place drew the line around its citizens in its own way.

2After a law of 451 BCE, an Athenian was a citizen only if both parents came from citizen families. At 18, a young man was added to the citizen list of his district. By the 330s BCE, young citizen men then spent two years in military training and swore an oath (Source A). Citizen men could speak and vote in the Assembly. Women of citizen families could not vote, and foreign residents and enslaved people had no say at all. An outsider became a citizen only by a rare special vote of the Assembly.

3Roman citizenship belonged to a person, not to a place, so a citizen kept his rights when he traveled or lived far from Rome. After about 88 BCE, most free people in Italy were citizens. Citizen men could vote in Rome's assemblies and owed service in the army. Laws passed in the 100s BCE protected citizens from being beaten with rods by an official without a trial. Many free people in Rome's provinces, such as the island of Sicily, were not citizens and did not have this protection.

4In the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) says that people born or naturalized in the country are citizens. An immigrant who becomes a citizen through naturalization passes a test and takes the Oath of Allegiance (Source C). Since the Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971), citizens 18 and older, women and men, may vote. Citizens are expected to obey the laws, pay taxes and serve on a jury when called. Some protections reach beyond citizens: the Fifth Amendment says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Source A: The oath of young Athenian men (adapted from a translation)

I will not bring shame on my sacred weapons, and I will not desert the man beside me wherever I stand in the line. I will defend what is sacred. I will not hand on my homeland smaller, but greater and better, as far as I am able, by myself and together with the others. I will obey those who govern wisely and the laws now in force, and any laws the people wisely make in the future. If anyone tries to overthrow the laws, I will not allow it. The gods are witnesses to this oath.

Source B: adapted from a translation of Cicero's Against Verres

In the middle of the marketplace of Messana, judges, a Roman citizen was beaten with rods. Through all the pain, no cry was heard from him except these words: "I am a Roman citizen." He believed that by naming his citizenship he could stop the beating. Yet Verres did not stop it. O sweet name of liberty! O rights of our citizenship! Romans who travel to distant lands, among strangers, have always felt safe because they could say, "I am a Roman citizen."

Source C: from the U.S. Oath of Allegiance

"...that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law..."