Rome during the Republic and the early Empire (Principate) can be considered a model of slave-owning democracy. The state offered and guaranteed citizens a wide range of political and civil legal opportunities (rights), unavailable to non-citizens. Moreover, all citizens got access to those material goods (primarily the land fund) that the Roman state has been receiving during the process of expansion. On the other hand, the citizen was required to strictly observe the laws and the so-called decent behavior, which meant a wide range of requirements of a moral nature. Violation of the requirements established for a citizen was (strictly but regulated) punished, from the prohibition to further acting as a witness of civil legal agreements (for intestabilis) to the deprivation of citizenship and the state of freedom, i.e. sale into slavery. The proposed scheme of a civil (although slave-owning) society proved to be quite effective at the stage of expanding the borders of the state – initially to the geographical boundaries of the Apennine Peninsula, and later to the provinces outside Italy (Gallia, Asia, Africa, Germany, etc.). The slaveholding system of managing required a constant influx of slaves, on the one hand, and the introduction of incentives for their effective work (the institution of release to freedom through self-redemption or through the provision of outstanding services to their slave owner), on the other. The influx of slaves was to be ensured by an army, larger and better than that of a potential opponent. Therefore, a kind of a «division table» had to be learned, and the status of a citizen to all new groups of the population (Italians and residents of the provinces) had to be disseminated. In 212 AD all the free population of the Empire received the status of citizens. This, in turn, led to the decay of the former high demands for citizen morality. Citizenship status has been extended to such a wide range of individuals that it has lost its former attractiveness. This was one of the indirect reasons for the decline and eventual demise of the Roman state.
Drawing on the historical experience of Rome during the Republic and Empire, the author claims that the rights of a person and a citizen are fundamentally inseparable from their duties. Moreover, the misunderstanding of this connection poses a threat to the very existence of the state and society
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