Petitioning for Change in the Republican Empire

This chapter examines some ways in which initiatives on the part of Rome's allies could help to shape the practice of Roman imperial governance. In the second and first centuries bce, allies and provincial communities regularly petitioned Rome for the grant of privileges, redress of grievances, and, sometimes, regulatory change. Petitions and embassies could work indirectly to shape Roman policy, as in 169, when the Senate responded to allied complaints by introducing new general rules on requisitioning by Roman commanders. But allies also took the initiative in seeking specific changes, as in the case of the Hispanian embassy of 171, which sought and obtained new regulations on the collection of the grain tithe, and a Sicilian petition of 71, which proposed new rules on the collection of money for statues and prosecution in absentia. Furthermore, the Hispanian case and a senatus consultum on Stratonikeia of 81 reveal willingness, on the part of the Senate, to effectively ratify proposals presented to it by allied ambassadors. These and other examples suggest a consultative dimension to Roman imperial governance that seems to have gone beyond Hellenistic practice and perhaps gives some substance to the Roman rhetoric of provincials as socii (partners or allies)

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