=122. The Status of Provincials. The Case of Jesus.=--All freedmen are Roman citizens, albeit citizens under a formal handicap, but in a city like Rome there are always many free persons who are not citizens at all--visiting provincials. Every year the Emperors issue some edict granting the franchise to a new group of non-citizens, but the numbers of the latter in all the provinces of the Empire is still great.[66] At Rome their position is ordinarily comfortable enough, although if arrested, they are liable to a more summary trial than Roman citizens and in case of famine or public disturbance they are liable to sudden expulsion from the city (as Claudius expelled the Jews) without any redress. The real disadvantage which they endure is that they cannot be appointed to any kind of public office under the Roman government. They are also sometimes under a legal handicap in making and enforcing commercial contracts; and last but not least in their own provinces they cannot “appeal to Cæsar” (if in an “Imperial” province) or to the Senate (if in a “Senatorial” province) against the decision, however arbitrary, of the Roman governor. If you search the public records at the great _Tabularium_ (Public Record Office) by the Forum, you can find for example the report of the trial of a certain Jew, one Christus, who was accused of sedition in Judæa, about a hundred years before our visit to Rome. The procurator Pilatus yielding to popular clamor had him executed ignominiously by crucifixion. This was, of course, within Pilatus’s legal authority. Christus was only a provincial and he could take no appeal. The status of the provincials depends much on whether their communities enjoy any treaty with or charter from Rome. Athens and a few other favored places are nominally “equal allies” with full rights of self-government, and their citizens can claim a favored position among the mass of provincials. Other places possess charters giving great privileges but revocable in case of gross abuse. The bulk of the provincials are mere “stipendiaries,” often permitted local self-government, but subject to Roman taxation, and to the complete jurisdiction of the Roman governor. Under the Empire these governors are only by exception corrupt and arbitrary, but their decisions must usually be final. =123. Great Alien Colonies in Rome.=--Apart from the great alien slave population there are inevitably large groups of resident aliens in various parts of the capital. There is a Little Syria, Little Egypt, Little Spain, and a Little Greece as surely as in certain great cities of a later civilization, but the most famous and conspicuous is the great Jewish colony.