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AUTONOMIA - (autouamia) - Autonomy - the power, right, or liberty, possessed by any people, of living in their own accustomed way, and according to their own laws. It was a privilege of this kind which many cities, though tributary to Rome, still enjoyed, and by which they were authorised to elect their own magistrates, who administered justice to them, in exclusion of the Roman judges. Antioch in Syria purchased this mark of honour from Pompeius Magnus. Augustus granted the same permission to the inhabitants of Patrae; Nero, to all Achaia. The Arabians and Armenians, whom Trajan had subdued, recovered this token of independence, under Hadrian. The Athenians, the Lacedaemonians, even the Carthaginians, were thus allowed to preserve at least a shadow of ostensible self-government. It would appear, in short, that throughout the vast extent of territories comprised within the limits of the empire, there were few communities entirely subjected to the Roman form of laws. Autonomia was also identified with, and distinguished by, that right of coining money, the exercise of which every nation of antiquity considered to be an act of sovereignty. The different cities and states of Greece, who were the first to have a coinage, inscribed their respective names on their medals, to impart a legalised value to such money. The Romans followed this example, and some of their earliest coins bear the word ROMA. In later aeras, the portraits of princes were placed on the money issued under their authority. Indeed, with those who aquired the supreme power, one of the first objects was to have coins stamped with their effigies. Even those ambitious aspirants to the purple, who, in different provinces, from time to time, raised the standard of revolt and usurpation against the reigning emperors, hastened, if they had sufficient time and means, to circulate some pieces bearing their likenesses, names and assumed titles. See the remarks of M. Hennin (i. 25), sur le droit de frapper monnaie.