In suggesting that cases not covered by its clauses should be adjudicated according to Roman law, the municipal code of Irni raises a number of problems as fascinating as their solutions are enigmatic (Ando 2000: 73-80, 373-85; Galsterer 1986 and M. H. Crawford 1988 are useful but remain handicapped by narrowly legalistic approaches; for questions raised by the Lex Irnitana see Gonzalez 1986: 148-50 and Galsterer 1988). I single out two. In the first place, the law required that the city’s magistrates display for the better part of each day in legible writing the jurisdictional clauses of the provincial governor’s edict, and that judges rule according to them (Lex Irnitana 85). On the one hand, this requirement echoes a widespread anxiety in Roman law that legal texts be accessible to those bound by them; and yet, in an era of low literacy, this seemingly admirable regard raises as many concerns as it allays (Ando 2000: 96-108).
Second, cities of municipal status were entitled to ‘‘use their own laws,’’ and the emperor Hadrian, at least, thought this level of autonomy desirable: it should have fostered local patriotism (Gel. 16.13.8-9). But the inhabitants of such cities inevitably had a range of legal statuses: quite apart from the legal import of the ‘‘Latin’’ citizenship held by the city’s ‘‘citizens,’’ such a city’s magistrates will have gained
Roman citizenship upon completing their tenure of local office (Burton 2001), and many other individuals will have resided in them who did not hold local citizenship. Under these conditions, it is perhaps not surprising that even local magistrates might turn to the empire’s one overarching body of law as a paradigm or source (Gardner 2001; Stolte 2001): the extraordinary, fragmentary Tablet of Heraclea is but one famous, early example of a city’s refashioning its internal self-governance in response to the political and juridical realities of the Roman Empire (RS 24).
Insofar as the Flavian municipal law was drafted at Rome (Frederiksen 1965; Galsterer 1988: 89), it must be seen within a long tradition by which Roman magistrates assimilated local conditions to Roman habits of thought (cf. Gardner 2001). At Contrebia, this took place under the explicit provision that the disputants resolve their conflict using local laws; elsewhere, Rome gradually expanded the range of cases that magistrates in particular regions should cede to Roman courts (e. g. RS 16, 28, 29-30). All this legislation sits alongside the famous and imperfectly understood right to appeal of Roman citizens who found themselves on trial in the provinces (SEG 9 no. 4; D. 48.6.7, 8; A. H. M. Jones 1960: 51-65, and Oliver 1979).
World History
