of the Republic (509 B.C.). These rights and privileges included a fair public trial for a citizen accused of any crime, exemption from certain ignominious forms of punishment, and protection against summary execution. To none of these privileges could a non-citizen subject of Rome lay legal claim. But when a man claimed his citizen rights—when he said ciuis Romanus sum (“I am a Roman citizen”), or its equivalent in Greek—how did he prove his claim? In the absence of any provision