A. Etymologie and Definition
It is possible that the Latin term municipes predates that of municipium. In the view of historians such as Varro (Ling. 5,179), the former is derived from munia (or respectively munera) capere, ‘the undertaking of duties’; the explanation ‘the receiving of gifts’ in [7. 26] has to be rejected in the same way as the ancient interpretation by Gellius (16,13,7) that mu…