Free city (antiquity)

Free city (civitas libera, urbs liberae condicionis; ) was a self-governed city during the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial eras. The status was given by the king or emperor, who nevertheless supervised the city's affairs through his epistates or curator (Greek: epimeletes) respectively. Several autonomous cities had also the right to issue civic coinage bearing the name of the city.

Examples of free cities: Amphipolis after 357 BC remained permanently a free and autonomous city inside the Macedonian kingdom ; probably also Cassandreia and Philippi. Under Seleucid rule, numerous cities enjoyed autonomy and issued coins; some of them, like Seleucia and Tarsus continued to be free cities, even after the conquest by Pompey. Nicopolis was also constituted a free city by Augustus, its founder. Thessalonica after the battle of Philippi, was made a free city in 42 BC, when it had fortunately sided with the victors Athens, a free city with its own laws, appealed to Hadrian to devise new laws which he modelled on those given by Draco and Solon.