A civitas foederata, meaning "allied state/community", was the most elevated type of autonomous cities and local communities under Roman rule.
Each Roman province comprised a number of communities of different status. Alongside Roman colonies or municipia, whose residents held the Roman citizenship or Latin citizenship, a province was largely formed by self-governing communities of natives (peregrini), which were distinguished according to the level of autonomy they had: the lowest were the civitates stipendariae ("tributary states"), followed by the civitates liberae ("free states"), which had been granted specific privileges.
