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Citizenship in the time of Ancient Rome was a privileged status afforded to certain individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance.

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Slaves were considered property and had only certain very limited rights as granted by statute. They could essentially be sold, tortured, maimed, raped and killed at the whim of their owners. It was the exceptional feature of ancient Rome that almost all slaves freed by Roman owners (freedman) automatically received Roman citizenship.

The natives who lived in territories conquered by Rome, citizens of Roman client states and Roman allies could be given a limited form of Roman citizenship such as the Latin Right. This amounted essentially to a second-class citizenship within the Roman state. The Latin Right is the most widely known but there were many other of such Rights.

A Roman citizen enjoyed the full range of benefits that flowed from his status. A citizen could, under certain exceptional circumstances, be deprived of his citizenship.

Women were a class apart whose status in Roman society varied over time. While Roman citizen women would come to enjoy some of the rights accorded to male citizens, Roman women could not vote or stand for office, and were, at least in theory, subject to the almost complete power of their paterfamilias, in many legal areas being just a little better than slaves. Inside of Republican high society the marriages were used to cement political alliances and therefore combined by the paterfamilias. The paterfamilias could even force a divorce and then remarry his daughter to another politician.

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Roman citizenship was granted automatically to every child born in a legal marriage of a Roman citizen.

People who were from the Latin states were gradually granted citizenship.

The children of freed slaves became citizens.

A Roman legionary could not legally marry, therefore all his children were denied citizenship, unless and until the legionary married their mother after his release from service.

Some individuals received citizenship because of their outstanding service to the Roman republic (later, the empire).

One could also buy citizenship, but at a very high price.

Auxilia were rewarded with Roman citizenship after their term of service. Their children also became citizens and could join the Roman legions.

Rome gradually granted citizenship to whole provinces; the third-century Constitutio Antoniniana granted it to all free male inhabitants of the Empire.

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The right to vote, however this was only in the Republic.

The right to make legal contracts.

The right to have a lawful marriage.

The right to stand for public office.

The right to sue (and be sued) in the courts.

The right to appeal from the decisions of magistrates.

The right to have a trial (to appear before a proper court and to defend oneself).

The right not to be subjected to torture.

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