goal may have been to increase the number of men able to serve in the legions, as only full citizens could serve as legionaries in the Roman army. In scholarly interpretations that agree with a model of moral degeneration as the reason for the fall of the Roman Empire, most famously the model followed by British historian Edward Gibbon, the edict came at a cost to the auxiliaries, which primarily consisted of non-citizen men. Additionally, before the edict, one of the main ways to acquire Roman citizenship was to enlist in the Roman army, the completion of service in which would give the citizenship to the discharged soldier. The edict may have made enlistment in the army less attractive to most, and perhaps the recruiting difficulties of the Roman army by the end of the 3rd century were related to this . In the analyses of more recent scholars, the Constitutio Antoniniana marks a major milestone in the provincialisation of Roman law, meaning that the gap between private law in the provinces and private law in Italy narrowed. This is because, in granting citizenship to all men in the provinces, much private law had to be re-written to conform with the law that applied to Roman citizens in Rome. To these scholars, it therefore also marks the beginning of a process by which imperial constitutions became the primary source of Roman law. See also Constitution (Roman law) Peregrinus (Roman) References External links The Roman Law Library, incl. Constitutiones principis 212 3rd century in law Roman nationality law Edicts 210s in the Roman Empire Caracalla