Law, Status And Agency in the Roman Provinces

Abstract

This article re-introduces the study of law in the Roman provinces into debates on Romanization ‘from the periphery’, bringing together evidence from both the Eastern and Western parts of the empire. The focus is on individuals who used Roman law in their private dealings before the Constitutio Antoniniana (212 CE): how they used Roman law, why they did so, and whether or not their usage can be regarded as the kind of provincial agency that has been emphasized in recent studies of Romanization. The argument is based on documents reflecting private legal practice. Although there are important differences in both the number and type of such documents in the Eastern and Western provinces, the same methodology can fruitfully be applied across the empire. It then becomes apparent that, at least in the first decades after provincialization, individuals’ reactions to the availability of Roman legal instruments were rather similar in the East and West. By employing Roman legal instruments that should have been reserved for Roman citizens, non-citizens in the provinces could assert a higher status than they in fact possessed. Roman law became a tool that locals could and did use to advance their own, individual goals.