Law in the Roman Provinces
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198844082 |
| Open Library | OL21670299W |
| Total publications | 13 |
| Coverage period | 2020 - 2020 |
| Language | EN |
| Impact factor | 0.615 |
The study of the Roman empire has changed dramatically in the last century. Emphasis is now placed on understanding the experiences of subject populations, rather than focusing solely on the Roman imperial elites. Local experiences, and interactions between periphery and centre are an intrinsic component in our picture of the empire’s function over and against the earlier, top-down model. But where does law fit in to this new, decentralized picture of empire? This volume brings together internationally renowned scholars from legal and historical backgrounds to study the operation of law in each region of the empire from the first century BCE to the end of the third century CE. Regional variation and specificity is explored alongside the emergence of common themes and activities by historical agents. When brought together, a new understanding of law in the Roman empire emerges that balances the practicalities of regional variation with the ideological construct of law and empire.
Lesbos in the Roman Empire
This chapter presents a synthesis of the information available on law in Roman Lesbos, starting with the integration of the island into the Roman Empire through a combination of war and/or alliance treaties between Rome and the cities of Mytilene and Methymna. The terms of these treaties that are related to the legal realm will be examined, as well as senatus consulta , edicts, and letters by Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus granting or confir…
Aequum et iustum
The relationship of Roman judges to native law has recently been discussed extensively by Alonso (2013) from a juristic perspective. This chapter explores the subject from a more historical viewpoint: What were the underlying principles of Roman legal administration in the provinces, and what place was assigned to pre-Roman legal traditions? The province of Egypt, extensively documented through papyri, can serve to illustrate the general conditio…
Latin Law in Greek Cities
Starting from the so-called ‘sacrae litterae’ from the Severan era, which specifically addresses the lack of legal knowledge of the addressees, this article examines a number of examples of how Latin legal terminology (e.g. peculium ) was spread in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Comparative collections of data, although continually in need of revision and updating, make it fairly easy to see which Greek terms were usually used to translate Latin…
Local Understandings of Roman Criminal Law and Procedure in Asia Minor
This chapter deals with the knowledge provincials had, and the use they made, of Roman criminal procedure in the provinces of Asia Minor during the imperial period. This will be examined through two main categories of evidence: (1) petitions to emperors complaining about Roman soldiers or functionaries’ abuses against local population, (2) funerary inscriptions including provisions claiming that fines should be paid to the imperial treasury in ca…
Order and Chaos in Roman Administrative Terminology
This chapter examines one of the mechanisms used by the Roman administration in Egypt to organize data: ‘all-embracing’ categories, and the manner in which the imperial government divided and categorized the provincial population. The concentration is on taxes and registration. Differences are found in the categorizations most commonly employed in different parts of the province and in different types of document, meaning that individuals could b…
Law, Empire, and Identity between West and East
Compared to the rich material from Egypt, evidence for law and legal practice in the Danubian provinces is rather slim. Still, inscriptions offer some insights into how Roman law was received, applied, and transformed in the second and early third centuries CE. Moving from West to East, the article will discuss three case studies and their wider implications. The rescript of Septimius Severus regarding membership in a collegium centonariorum at S…
The Integration and Perception of the Rule of Law in Roman Crete
The contrast between Rome’s difficult and bloody conquest of Crete on the one hand and the absence of any conflicts after the island’s integration into the Roman imperium on the other has not escaped the notice of modern scholars. It has often led to the suspicion that the conquerors had, from the start, disempowered the institutional idiosyncrasies of the conquered. However, careful scrutiny of the literary and epigraphic sources allows for the …
Perspectives
This chapter reflects on the change in perspective that characterizes recent studies of law in the Roman provinces. Taking into account both the history of scholarship and the contributions assembled in this volume, it seeks to strike a conceptual balance between provincial agency and Roman mechanisms of control by understanding law as communication. Case studies from the Euphrates papyri are used to demonstrate that this perspective is appropria…
Nutricula causidicorum
The Roman imperial system of law, courts and jurisdiction was a sphere in which the Roman empire exercised a profound impact on the society and culture of its provinces. In Roman Africa, law and courts were central to what it meant to be and become ‘Roman’. This was the case both in the sense of adopting Roman legal forms and institutions, and also in the sense of adopting a Roman model of elite education, where training in forensic rhetoric and …
Navigating Roman Law and Local Privileges in Pontus-Bithynia
The chapter starts from the questions raised by a well-known (but underexplored from this angle) source for Roman governmental practice in provinces, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger as governor of Pontus-Bithynia in c .109–11 CE with the emperor Trajan. It attempts to integrate this correspondence with evidence from the legal and documentary sources on peculiarities of Bithynian law in the High Imperial period. Behind the deceptively stra…
An Outline of Legal Norms and Practices in Roman Macedonia (167 BCE–212 CE)
In the last three decades our knowledge about ancient Macedonia, classical, Hellenistic and Roman, has been boosted thanks to archaeological discoveries and editions of epigraphic corpora or reassessment of individual documents. The study of legal norms and practices in Roman Macedonia will unavoidably rely on the epigraphic material published or re-edited over this period. Inscriptions tend to cluster around three main themes: a) the public doma…
Law and Citizenship in Roman Achaia
This chapter addresses the interrelated topics of law and citizenship in Roman Achaia. The epigraphic evidence for cohabitation of Greek and resident Roman communities since the second century BCE, as well as the consequences of Roman military involvement—namely the creation of citizen colonies, administrative and political restructuring, transfers of land, and displacement of populations—inevitably raise questions of juridical gradation between …
Law in the Roman Provinces
No prominent publications on this page.
Lesbos in the Roman Empire
This chapter presents a synthesis of the information available on law in Roman Lesbos, starting with the integration of the island into the Roman Empire through a combination of war and/or alliance treaties between Rome and the cities of Mytilene and Methymna. The terms of these treaties that are related to the legal realm will be examined, as well as senatus consulta , edicts, and letters by Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus granting or confir…
Aequum et iustum
The relationship of Roman judges to native law has recently been discussed extensively by Alonso (2013) from a juristic perspective. This chapter explores the subject from a more historical viewpoint: What were the underlying principles of Roman legal administration in the provinces, and what place was assigned to pre-Roman legal traditions? The province of Egypt, extensively documented through papyri, can serve to illustrate the general conditio…
Latin Law in Greek Cities
Starting from the so-called ‘sacrae litterae’ from the Severan era, which specifically addresses the lack of legal knowledge of the addressees, this article examines a number of examples of how Latin legal terminology (e.g. peculium ) was spread in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Comparative collections of data, although continually in need of revision and updating, make it fairly easy to see which Greek terms were usually used to translate Latin…
Local Understandings of Roman Criminal Law and Procedure in Asia Minor
This chapter deals with the knowledge provincials had, and the use they made, of Roman criminal procedure in the provinces of Asia Minor during the imperial period. This will be examined through two main categories of evidence: (1) petitions to emperors complaining about Roman soldiers or functionaries’ abuses against local population, (2) funerary inscriptions including provisions claiming that fines should be paid to the imperial treasury in ca…
Order and Chaos in Roman Administrative Terminology
This chapter examines one of the mechanisms used by the Roman administration in Egypt to organize data: ‘all-embracing’ categories, and the manner in which the imperial government divided and categorized the provincial population. The concentration is on taxes and registration. Differences are found in the categorizations most commonly employed in different parts of the province and in different types of document, meaning that individuals could b…
Law, Empire, and Identity between West and East
Compared to the rich material from Egypt, evidence for law and legal practice in the Danubian provinces is rather slim. Still, inscriptions offer some insights into how Roman law was received, applied, and transformed in the second and early third centuries CE. Moving from West to East, the article will discuss three case studies and their wider implications. The rescript of Septimius Severus regarding membership in a collegium centonariorum at S…
The Integration and Perception of the Rule of Law in Roman Crete
The contrast between Rome’s difficult and bloody conquest of Crete on the one hand and the absence of any conflicts after the island’s integration into the Roman imperium on the other has not escaped the notice of modern scholars. It has often led to the suspicion that the conquerors had, from the start, disempowered the institutional idiosyncrasies of the conquered. However, careful scrutiny of the literary and epigraphic sources allows for the …
Perspectives
This chapter reflects on the change in perspective that characterizes recent studies of law in the Roman provinces. Taking into account both the history of scholarship and the contributions assembled in this volume, it seeks to strike a conceptual balance between provincial agency and Roman mechanisms of control by understanding law as communication. Case studies from the Euphrates papyri are used to demonstrate that this perspective is appropria…
Nutricula causidicorum
The Roman imperial system of law, courts and jurisdiction was a sphere in which the Roman empire exercised a profound impact on the society and culture of its provinces. In Roman Africa, law and courts were central to what it meant to be and become ‘Roman’. This was the case both in the sense of adopting Roman legal forms and institutions, and also in the sense of adopting a Roman model of elite education, where training in forensic rhetoric and …
Navigating Roman Law and Local Privileges in Pontus-Bithynia
The chapter starts from the questions raised by a well-known (but underexplored from this angle) source for Roman governmental practice in provinces, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger as governor of Pontus-Bithynia in c .109–11 CE with the emperor Trajan. It attempts to integrate this correspondence with evidence from the legal and documentary sources on peculiarities of Bithynian law in the High Imperial period. Behind the deceptively stra…
An Outline of Legal Norms and Practices in Roman Macedonia (167 BCE–212 CE)
In the last three decades our knowledge about ancient Macedonia, classical, Hellenistic and Roman, has been boosted thanks to archaeological discoveries and editions of epigraphic corpora or reassessment of individual documents. The study of legal norms and practices in Roman Macedonia will unavoidably rely on the epigraphic material published or re-edited over this period. Inscriptions tend to cluster around three main themes: a) the public doma…
Law and Citizenship in Roman Achaia
This chapter addresses the interrelated topics of law and citizenship in Roman Achaia. The epigraphic evidence for cohabitation of Greek and resident Roman communities since the second century BCE, as well as the consequences of Roman military involvement—namely the creation of citizen colonies, administrative and political restructuring, transfers of land, and displacement of populations—inevitably raise questions of juridical gradation between …
Law in the Roman Provinces