Migranti e rifugiati in Roma antica

Roman policy towards migrants, refugees and foreigners in general, as the more or less legendary tradition of the origins of Rome already reveals, was always characterized by a great openness and indeed by a completely unique ability not only to welcome and integrate foreigners in the civic body (unlike what happened in the Greek world, in which citizens could essentially only be born such), as much as to make them feel fully Roman and proud of it in a short time. All this, however, not for humanitarian reasons, but in a perspective of pragmatic utilitarianism which saw foreigners as a precious resource for demographic strengthening and for the acquisition of new behavioral models, ideas, knowledge, skills and competences to be valorised and exploited.