J. S. Richardson

Imperium Romanum : Empire and the Language of Power

The vocabulary of empire, as it has developed in European contexts since the period of the Roman empire, reveals clearly enough the significance of the inheritance of Rome for the regimes which have followed it. From Charlemagne to the Tsars, from British imperialism to Italian Fascism, the language and symbols of the Roman republic and the Roman emperors have been essential elements in the self-expression of imperial powers. Such communality of language, by creating a sense of familiarity in the mind of a modern observer of the Roman empire, may hinder a proper understanding of antiquity, because the importance of the after life of these words and symbols tends to obscure the nature of the contexts from which they originated. An obvious parallel instance can be seen in the case of the word ‘democracy’, where the adoption of the Athenian term to describe a series of political developments in the modern world which claim some connection with the Greek notion of demokratia has tended to make more difficult the modern understanding of what happened at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

The administration of the empire

The expansion of the power of the city of Rome through the whole of the Mediterranean world during the last three centuries b.c. led to the establishment of Rome as the predominant military and economic force in the region. It also made it necessary to develop ways of administering so large and diverse an area. The patterns which emerged are now usually referred to as the provincial administration of the empire, and there is no doubt that some such collective title is necessary to describe the various methods used by officials of the state to control the communities and individuals with whom they were in contact. It is important at the outset, however, to recognize that ‘provincial administration’ was not a Roman concept, at least during the period of the Republic, within which the empire took shape. PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE : THE ORIGINS OF THE SYSTEM Although the English ‘province’ is obviously derived from the Latin provincia , the meaning of the two is by no means identical. A province, whether in a constitutional context, as for example the province of Ulster or of Ontario, or in an ecclesiastical, such as the provinces of Canterbury and York, is an area defined for administrative purposes. The provincia on the other hand seems originally to have been a task assigned to a specified Roman magistrate or promagistrate, in the fulfilment of which he would exercise the imperium granted to him in virtue of his election or appointment. Although his task might well consist of using that imperium , the executive power of the Roman people, in a military command within a particular geographical area, it need not do so.

The Purpose of the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis

In 149 B.C. the tribune L. Calpurnius Piso proposed a law which was to have momentous consequences for the legal, political and administrative history of the Roman republic. It was his lex de rebus repetundis which first established the practice of trial before a quaestio perpetua , a jury, drawn from a panel of jurors who had always to be available, which became the standard procedure for criminal cases in the late republic. For over fifty years, from the first tribunate of C. Gracchus in 123 to the passing of the Lex Aurelia in 70, such courts were to provide a political storm-centre as various political figures attempted for their own ends to alter the criteria for the selection of the iudices who manned the juries. Moreover, from the late second century B.C. down to at least the second century A.D., the process de repetundis formed the most important means that was available to Romes provincial subjects of bringing an action against a provincial governor for maladministration.

The Triumph of Metellus Scipio and the Dramatic Date of Varro, RR 3

‘sed ad hunc bolum ut pervenias, opus erit tibi aut epulum aut triumphus alicuius, ut tune fuit Scipionis Metelli, aut collegiorum cenae, quae nunc innumerabiles excandefaciunt annonam macelli.’ Varro, RR 3. 2. 16. (‘But to make such a haul as this, you will need a public banquet, or somebodys triumph, like Metellus Scipios then, or the dinners of the collegia , which are innumerable just now and send the price of provisions in the market blazing up.’)