non-burgess

Updated: June 10, 2025

In these and all similar cases the king could not act with legal effect without the cooperation of the community; the man whom the king alone declared a patrician remained as before a non-burgess, and the invalid act could only carry consequences possibly -de facto-, not -de jure-. Thus far the assembly of the community, however restricted and bound at its emergence, was yet from antiquity a constituent element of the Roman commonwealth, and was in law superior to, rather than co-ordinate with, the king.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

The admittance of a non-burgess to a religious ceremony of the citizens could not indeed but appear sinful to the orthodox Roman; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book II : From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy