History Memes

Local recordkeeping was very thorough, and any mistakes would have the imperial government come down on the heads of the local elites - something they would want to avoid at all costs! That being said, both misrepresentations and mistakes were made. Misrepresentations were dealt with... harshly. Falsely claiming to be a citizen was a dangerous business, as it could very well make you actually a slave. Better to be a free provincial than risk that!

Mistakes were usually dealt with leniently. In one notable incident, a city made a mistake ongoing for almost 80 years by the time of its discovery: it had, by poor knowledge of Roman law and a misinterpretation of the grant, given Latin citizenship (which could 'fast-track' to Roman citizenship) to three tribes which were not supposed to have it. The issue was that the tribes, though not part of the city by Roman law, had always associated themselves with it, and both they and local officials had essentially assumed that they 'counted' when they should not have.

Think of it like a border town between the US and Mexico thinking it was part of the US, not Mexico, and having all the kids born there claim they're US citizens, genuinely believing they were.

The issue was resolved simply by granting the people involved actual citizenship, as the fuck-up had gone too long and would've been legally 'hairy' to resolve. But it goes to show how much things were dealt with locally. Your status was very much tied to your local city, and if you moved, you were sure to take any records of imperial privileges with you to present to your new nearest city for their residency records!

That being said, for auxiliaries specifically, their citizenship was (potentially*) recorded in triplicate - a bronze diploma for themselves, one to deposit at their local Roman colony, and their name along with all the other new auxiliary citizens for that year of discharges recorded on a plaque back at Rome.

*There's some debate as to whether the bronze diplomas were routine, or something that were 'opt-in' at the auxiliaries own expense if they wanted something substantial to prove their service, but in either case they would have been recorded in the original retirement plaques in the city of Rome, and would have informed their place of post-military retirement of their status

They were given a bronze plaque that told their story and stated they were citizens.

I doubt the registries needed to be centralized further than at provincial level. No doubt some people might've managed to lie their way into citizenship, up to a point, but I suppose most would get caught for simply not knowing what they're supposed to do as full citizens, or for simply being terrible at speaking latin.