To an extent that seems incredible nowadays, Rome practiced government with minimal bureaucracy. There was only one governor per province (though provinces were subdivided in the later empire and thus the number of officials increased). The emperor also sent out agents (procuratores) to administer his own land-holdings and assist in the collection of special taxes. These individuals operated independently of the governor, as did the special commissioners appointed by the emperor to take charge of the finances of individual cities when municipal mismanagement had produced a crisis (see Ando, this volume). In Ephesus, for example, in the second century, an imperial commissioner was authorized to audit the accounts of municipal officials going back 20 years and render decisions that were beyond appeal (Eck 2000: 280). Sometimes the cities of an entire province or region - even nominally ‘‘free’’ cities - might be subjected to the financial supervision of a senatorial commissioner responsible only to the emperor. Such interventions may have been designed to save the cities’ pride in that they obviated intervention by the governor, but they must in practice have subjected local aristocrats to a painful degree of arbitrary decision-making.
In some provinces, the governor was chosen by the emperor (legatus Augusti); in others he was an ex-magistrate (proconsul) chosen from the Senate. There were relatively few legions in the eastern provinces, except during wars with Parthia and rebellions in Judea. In provinces with only one legion, the governor might command it; otherwise there was a separate commander (legatus legionis). The governor went out to his province with a group of unofficial advisors, mostly his friends, and with a staff of quaestors and legates to whom he could delegate financial and judicial authority. (These junior officials were usually senatorial or equestrian Romans learning the ropes of imperial administration). From his friends and local resident Romans he would constitute his consilium, an advisory panel. It was important for provincials to gain access and influence through these semi-official channels since the governor’s decisions could not be legally challenged during his period of office, and only with difficulty after that.
The governor took up residence in the chief city of his province, but from there he traveled to hold judicial sessions in the cities on his official assizes circuit (Burton 1975). People from all walks of life, not just wealthy litigants like Aristides, would flock to town when the assizes were being held: ‘‘an innumerable crowd of plaintiffs, jurors, lawyers, officials, underlings, slaves, pimps, mule-drivers, peddlers, prostitutes, and laborers... ’’ (D. Chr. 35. 15). People who lived in smaller cities or the countryside might never see the governor, unless they had the misfortune to be embroiled in a lawsuit or to live along one of the province’s main roads, where they could be forced to provide food, fodder, or transport for the governor’s retinue as he passed by (Mitchell 1976).
How did the governor regard those he governed? Cicero, former governor of Cilicia, wrote a letter of advice to his younger brother Quintus who was then governor of Asia (Q. fr. 1.1). It reveals the complexity of a governor’s attitudes to those he governed. Quintus is to be commended for passing up so many opportunities to help himself to the abundance of artwork, luxury goods, and financial opportunities in his province (8). He is to beware of resident Romans in his consilium who may abuse his trust: such individuals have, ‘‘unlike us,’’ left Italy out of a lust to make money abroad (15). Friendships with the Greek elite call for caution too: most of these persons are not worthy of Ancient Greece. They are ‘‘deceptive, inconstant, and schooled by long servitude to ingratiating ways’’ (16). Quintus has nonetheless taken pains to see that city government is in the hands of the ‘‘best people’’ - that is, the wealthy (25). Of course, Cicero says, governors are always obliged to seek the welfare of the governed, and the Greeks of Asia are not, after all, like the barbarians of Africa, Spain, or Gaul, but a civilized race - the race, in fact, from which civilization ( humanitas) has spread to others. Therefore it behooves Romans to return the gift in kind (27).
In another letter, presumably not meant for wider circulation, Cicero enumerates a whole catalogue of Greeks who have come to Rome with complaints about Quintus. Cicero says he has tried to neutralize them by feigning friendly overtures. The group from Dionysopolis, initially quite hostile, he has softened up by treating their leader like an intimate friend. ‘‘Megaristus of Antandros - that incredible lightweight, Nicias of Smyrna, and those total non-entities - even Nympho of Colophon, I have embraced these people with all my cordiality. I did all this [for your sake and] not because I like these individuals or their tribe in general. I’m sick of their triviality and obsequiousness, of how they’re always keeping an eye on the main chance rather than on their duty’’ (Q. fr. 1. 2. 4). In fact, the ingratiating hypocrisy that Cicero deplores in the Greeks seems not much different from the sham friendliness that he feels constrained to exhibit himself. Yet he would have been very offended by the insolence of any provincial who failed to be obsequious, spoke to him too frankly, or presumed to question his own sincerity.
Mutual suspicion and the power imbalance tended to poison relations between the governors and the governed, even the local elites whose supremacy in the cities the
Romans supported. Unlike Cicero, however, most governors did not leave a corpus of private letters. So in most cases we can only infer a governor’s attitudes from his behavior, and often we only hear about a governor’s behavior when it became so oppressive that the afflicted provincials ventured to send a delegation to Rome. It was possible in principle to file a criminal indictment against a former governor for extortion (res repetundae), and such prosecutions, if successful, could deprive the offending governor of his civil rights (infamia), and force him to disgorge his ill-gotten gains (Brunt 1990). But success was uncertain, not least because senators on the juries tended to sympathize with the accused, who were their social equals.
When his friend Flaccus was indicted for maladministration in Asia, Cicero spoke in his defense. Flaccus had assessed a special tax to build a fleet to defend his province from pirates, but it seems no ships were ever built. He was also accused of appropriating for himself monies that the cities had contributed to fund games in honor of his own father, who had been governor a generation before (Flac. 55). Furthermore, Flaccus failed to send the poll tax collected by the Jews to Jerusalem (67). Cicero plays upon the prejudices of his audience as he attacks the character of the provincial witnesses. He sets up a contrast between good Greeks, who are honorable, educated, and self-controlled, and the bad Greeks (shameless, uneducated, and shifty) who are trying to incriminate his client (9). He concedes to Greeks in general their literature and learning, but reserves for Romans the moral qualities offides, mores, and disciplina (9, 11). Asiatic Greeks (as opposed to the Greeks from Old Greece whom Cicero introduces as character witnesses for the defense) are characterized in general by levitas, inconstan-tia, and cupiditas: unreliability, inconstancy, and greed (66). Some witnesses, present in the courtroom, are attacked by name, like Menandrius of Tralles: ‘‘impecunious, squalid, without rank, reputation, or property’’ (52). Thus provincials who took their city’s case to the Roman Senate risked personal humiliation as well as the failure oftheir suit. They might also be undercut by rival embassies appearing in the governor’s support (100). Since a Roman trial was more of a contest between reputations than an investigation into facts, it did not matter that the Greeks who testified in support of Flaccus did not actually come from the province he governed.
World History
