Colony

Colony - (Easton's Bible Dictionary)

The city of Philippi was a Roman colony (Acts 16:12), i.e., a military settlement of Roman soldiers and citizens, planted there to keep in subjection a newly-conquered district. A colony was Rome in miniature, under Roman municipal law, but governed by military officers (praetors and lictors), not by proconsuls. It had an independent internal government, the jus Italicum; i.e., the privileges of Italian citizens.

Colony - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

COLONY, n.

1. A company or body of people transplanted from their mother country to a remote province or country to cultivate and inhabit it, and remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the parent state; as the British colonies in America or the Indies; the Spanish colonies in South America. When such settlements cease to be subject to the parent state, they are no longer denominated colonies.

The first settles of New England were the best of Englishmen, well educated, devout Christians, and zealous lovers of liberty. There was never a colony formed of better materials.

2. The country planted or colonized; a plantation; also, the body of inhabitants in a territory colonized, including the descendants of the first planters. The people, though born in the territory, retain the name of colonists, till they cease to be subjects of the parent state.

3. A collection of animals; as colonies of shell-fish.

kol'-o-ni (kolonia, Greek transliteration of Latin colonia, from the root, col, "cultivate"): The word occurs but once (Ac 16:12) in reference to Philippi in Macedonia. Roman colonies were of three kinds and of three periods:

(1) Those of the early republic, in which the colonists, established in conquered towns to serve the state as guardians of the frontier, were exempt from ordinary military service. They were distinguished as

(a) c. civium Romanorum, wherein the colonists retained Roman citizenship, also called c. maritumae, because situated on the coast, and

(b) c. Latinae, situated inland among the allies (socii), wherein the colonists possessed the ius Latinum, entitling them to invoke the Roman law of property (commercium), but not that of the family (connubium), and received Roman citizenship only when elected to magistracies.

(2) The colonies of the Gracchan period, established in pursuance of the scheme of agrarian reforms, to provide land for the poorer citizens.

(3) After the time of Sulla colonies were founded in Italy by the Republic as a device for granting lands to retiring veterans, who of course retained citizenship. This privilege was appropriated by Caesar and the emperors, who employed it to establish military colonies, chiefly in the provinces, with various rights and internal organizations. To this class belonged Philippi. Partly organized after the great battle of 42 BC, fought in the neighboring plain by Brutus and Cassius, the champions of the fated Republic, and Antonius and Octavian, it was fully established as a colony by Octavian (afterward styled Augustus) after the battle of Actium (31 BC), under the name Colonia Aug. Iul. Philippi or Philippensis. It received the ius Italicum, whereby provincial cities acquired the same status as Italian cities, which possessed municipal self-government and exemption from poll and land taxes.

See CITIZENSHIP; PHILIPPI; ROMAN.

William Arthur Heidel