A free city (; )IG II² 3301 - Pale city (of Paleans) (modern Paliki) on Kefalonia honours Trajan. was a self-governed city during the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial eras. The status was given by the king or emperor, who nevertheless supervised the city's affairs through his or (Greek: epimeletes) respectively. Several autonomous cities had also the right to issue civic coinage bearing the name of the city.
History Examples of free cities include Amphipolis, which after 357 BC remained permanently a free and autonomous city inside the Macedonian kingdom;Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, Guy Thompson Griffith, and Frank William Walbank. A History of Macedonia: Volume II: 550-336 B.C. Clarendon Press, 1979, Page 351, and probably also Cassandreia and Philippi.
Under Seleucid rule, numerous cities enjoyed autonomy and issued coins; some of them, like Seleucia and Tarsus, continued to be free cities, even after the Roman conquest by Pompey. Nicopolis was also constituted a free city by Augustus, its founder.The Greek city from Alexander to Justinian By Arnold Hugh Martin Jones. p. 129 (1940) Thessalonica after the battle of Philippi, was made a free city in 42 BC, when it had sided with the victors.The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians By George Gillanders Findlay Page 10 (2008) Athens, a free city with its own laws, appealed to Hadrian to devise new laws which he modelled on those given by Draco and Solon.Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire By Frank Frost Abbott Page 412 (2007)
Autonomi or rather Autonomoi was the name given by the Greeks to those states which were governed by their own laws, and were not subject to any foreign power.(Thuc. v. 18, 27; Xen. Hell. v. 1. § 31.) This name was also given to those cities subject to the Romans, which were permitted to enjoy their own laws, and elect their own magistrates.(Omnes suis legibus et judiciis usae autonomian adeptae, revixerunt. Cicero. Ad Atticum . vi. 2) This permission was regarded as a great privilege, and mark of honour; and it is accordingly found recorded on coins and medals (e.g. Metropolis of the Antiochians autonomous).Ezechiel Spanheim. Dissertationes de praestantia et usu numismatum . p. 789. Amst. 1671.)
References
Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire By Mary T Boatwright
See also Panhellenion Free imperial city of the German Holy Roman Empire