Ulpian may have urged that ‘‘it befits a good and wise governor to take care that the province he rules be peaceful and orderly’’ (’’On the Duties of the Proconsul’’ bk. 7 = D. 1.18.13.pr.), but the mechanisms available to a governor for achieving quietude were rudimentary at best. The astonishing popularity of Roman means for settling disputes is, therefore, an historical problem of the first rank (but cf. Galsterer 1986: 18, asserting the importance of municipal codes and municipal courts, and Millar 1981: 68-72: the world of the Golden Ass is ‘‘one wholly without policing by any Imperial forces’’).
The history of this problem was shaped by two, interrelated forces. First, Roman law had long established two parallel systems of adjudication, one for disputes between citizens and another for those between citizens and aliens. Second, demographic changes in the formative period of the empire necessarily brought Roman scrutiny to the conduct of local courts: the late republic brought a staggering increase in Roman emigration to the provinces, particularly those in the east (Errington 1988); the civil wars created large numbers of veterans, whom Roman dynasts settled in colonies throughout the empire (Brunt 1987: 589-601); and the emperors of the early prin-cipate routinely - and sometimes systematically - granted citizenship to individuals in provincial cities (Millar 1977: 479-83; Sherwin-White 1973: 221-87). The presence ofRoman citizens in such numbers in communities ofvarying status created enormous pressure on local magistrates and Roman governors alike (cf. B. D. Shaw 2000: 36273). The former sometimes responded by accommodating local systems of government to Roman ideals, as they were locally understood; the latter often responded by adjudging according to Roman ideals, as they understood them.
World History
