Colonia (Roman)

A Roman colonia (pl.: coloniae) was originally a settlement of Roman citizens, establishing a Roman outpost in federated or conquered territory, for the purpose of securing it. Eventually, however, the term came to denote the highest status of a Roman city. It is also the origin of the modern term "colony".

Under the Roman Republic, which had no standing army, their own citizens were planted in conquered towns as a kind of garrison. There were two types:

After 133 BC tribunes introduced reforms to support the urban poor to become farmers again in new colonies as agricultural settlements (e.g. Tarentum in 122 BC).^{[citation needed]}

Under Caesar and in the Imperial era starting from Augustus, thousands of Roman legionary veterans were granted lands in many coloniae in the empire and were responsible for the Romanization of many territories (mainly in the spread of Latin language and of Roman laws and customs).^{[citation needed]}

According to Livy, Rome's first colonies were established in about 752 BC at Antemnae and Crustumerium, both in Latium.

Other early colonies were established at Signia in the 6th century BC, Velitrae and Norba in the 5th century BC, and Ostia, Antium, and Tarracina in the late 4th century. In this first period of colonisation, which lasted down to the end of the Punic Wars, colonies were primarily military in purpose, being intended to defend Roman territory.

The first Roman colony outside Italy was probably Italica in Hispania founded in 206 BC by Publius Cornelius Scipio during the Second Carthaginian War.

In the Empire colonies became large centres for the settlement of army veterans, especially in Roman north Africa which had the largest density of Roman colonies per region in the Roman Empire, where the Italic population constituted more than one third of the total population during the second century AD.^{[citation needed]}