Mari P

“Pomponius’ revealing choice of words (D. 1.6.9.1): ‘In public matters, the son in power is regarded as equivalent to a paterfamilias.’ The Romans knew perfectly well that a magistrate with a living father was not really a paterfamilias. This resort to a legal fiction to justify his exercise of authority seems to reveal an underlying, probably ancient, concept of citizenship in which the citizens, in the fullest sense of the word, were those who alone were entitled to transact independently and on a basis of equality in matters both public and private with other citizens—in other words, the patres, heads of household.”
― Jane F. Gardner, Being a Roman Citizen

“The implications, however, were again revolutionary. In extending citizenship to people who had no direct territorial connections with the city of Rome, they broke the link, which most people in the classical world took for granted, between citizenship and a single city. In a systematic way that was then unparalleled, they made it possible not just to become Roman but also to be a citizen of two places at once:”
― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

“hostis (a ‘foreigner’ or an ‘enemy’; the same Latin word, significantly, can mean both)”
― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

“in early Rome and for much of the Republic, women were commonly married with manus; that is, they passed from the power of their fathers into that of their husbands (who certainly could not be held liable for obligations contracted while a woman was under another’s power), or even, if unmarried at their fathers’ death, became briefly sui iuris and then passed into power again; remarriage of widows was also regular.”
― Jane F. Gardner, Being a Roman Citizen