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THE IMPERIAL STATE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ROLE AND STATUS OF LOCAL MAGISTRATES AND COUNCILLORS IN THE PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE By G.P.BURTON Introduction This paper is an essay of interpretation. It is interested in typical political and social practices and developments. As such it brings together aseries of substantive topics, namely the spread of Roman citizenship, the acquisition of legal privilege, centrally generated rules for local office-holding, the collection of direct taxes, the maintenance of order and, finally, the local administrative and political role of civic magistrates and councillors, which in modem scholarship are frequently treated in isolation from each other.' The crucial importance of the roles performed by civic magistrates and councillors for the routine functioning and stability of the imperial state is a commonplace of modem scholarship. So Peter Brunt in a characteristically magisterial dictum claimed that "hardly any class of men rendered more important services to the Roman state than those charged with local govemment".2 We need only to itemise these services to see the basic truth of this claim. First, the process of assessing and, above all, collecting direct taxes (however difficult it is in detail to give a systematic account of this process) was dependent on the active cooperation of the local elites. Secondly, the procedures for dispute-resolution and the maintenance of social order were similarly dependent on the active involvement of the local elites. Each city operated its own local jurisdictional system of limited competence, and in each city and its territory local magistrates were often responsible for the apprehension, detention and preliminary interrogation of individuals accused of those serious crimes over which only Roman govemors legitimately exercised jurisdiction. Given the primordial importance of the regular collection of taxes and of the maintenance of order for the routine functioning and stability of the imperial state, the significance of this role played by the local elites can hardly be overstated. Thirdly, some members of the local elites were required occasionally and unquantifiably to act as ambassadors or legal representatives , For these reasons the evidence cited in the text and the footnotes is for the purpose of illusration and is not intended to be exhaustive. 2 P. A. Brunt, 'The Romanization ofthe local Ruling C1asses in the Roman Empire', in Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford 1990), 267 ff. at 270. 202 G.P. BURTON - 9789004401617 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:51:21PM via free access of their cities before emperors and/or provincial governors. Fourthly, a minority of civic magistrates and councillors were able to expand the social and geographical range of their influence to the provinciallevel via membership of the provincial council and/or participation in the organisation of the religious ceremonies and social spectac1es associated with the celebration ofthe imperial cult. Let us assume that this rather crude and simplified overview, which I have just sketched, of the political interrelationship between the imperial state and the civic elites in the provinces is basically correct. What consequences ensued for the character and development of the status and roles of local magistrates and councillors? The rest of this paper raises four problems. First, to what extent in the medium term did the imperial state purposively reward and privilege local magistrates and councillors? Secondly, to what extent were there centrally generated rules which circumscribed and regulated the procedures by which local magistrates and councillors were appointed? Thirdly, to what extent, again in the medium term, did new local institutional mechanisms emerge (or were existing ones reshaped) to mediate the need to collect taxes and to help to maintain order? Fourthly, to what extent did the imperial state and its representatives constrain and influence the exercise by civic magisrates and councillors of their local political and administrative duties? Rewards: Citizenship and Legal Privilege In the republic grants of Roman citizenship had been a c1assic mechanism for rewarding aliens who had performed important services to the Roman state. This notion of reward continued under imperial rule to be one of the criteria for the grant of Roman citizenship as the Tabula Banasitana so strikingly shows.3 It is, of course, one of the many serious deficiencies in our knowledge of the social history of the Roman empire that we can not quantify the dissemination of Roman citizenship during the course of the first and second centuries. Nevertheless we can assert with confidence that members of the local elites were more likely on average to acquire Roman citizenship than the mass of the free population. In the western provinces the widespread grants of Latin status to provincial communities automatically ensured the enfranchisement of families who had gained magisterial office.4 For the cities 3 1. Gascou, Inseriptions antiques du Maroe (Paris 1982), nO.94. 4 But only in those rare communities which acquired the greater Latin status did all civic councillors also automaticaUy gain Roman citizenship. 203 G.P. BURTON - 9789004401617 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:51:21PM via free access of the eastem provinces a selection of illustrative data can serve to give some indication both of the extent of the spread of Roman citizenship within civic elites and ofthe variation ofits incidence. For example at Sparta about 20% of ephors were Roman citizens in the first quarter of the second century, about 40% later. 5 At Ephesus unusually detailed lists ofmembership ofthe board of kouretes (whom I will here treat as a rough proxy for the Ephesian elite in general) survive.6 During the first century forty-nine out of one hundred known members were Roman citizens; in the second century (excluding the reign of Commodus) the proportion rises to sixty out of eighty-nine and for the reign of Commodus alone to sixty-one out of eighty-three. Yet during the same reign at Sidyma in Lycia scarcely any members ofthe newly established gerousia were Roman citizens, although many were of councillor status. 7 These figures serve also to emphasise the possible limits of the dissemination of citizenship. Indeed we have only to remember the example of the Lycian millionaire Opramoas, whose social and political influence extended during the first half ofthe second century far beyond the confines of his native city, to see that there was no automatie corre1ation between Roman citizenship and political and social power.8 Analogously we should note that province by province the geographie distribution of citizenship was seriously uneven. So arecent analysis has emphasised the very restricted spread of citizenship in the provinces of Syria and Arabia. 9 In short however widespread the dissemination of Roman citizenship became among provincial elites, it never came to function as a status which systematically and generically demarcated them from the mass of the provincial population. In the context of this paper much more striking than the spread of citizenship were the evolution and elaboration of mIes concerning criminal jurisdiction and penalties which generically privileged local councillors and magistrates. 1O For example decurions and their children were exempt from beating;" decurions (and their parents and children) could not be sentenced to 5 C.Hoet-Van Cauwenberghe, 'Diffusion de 1a eitoyennete romaine: notes sur 1es gentiliees imperiaux en Laeonie et en Messenie', in A. Chastagno1, S. Demougin and C.Lepelley (edd.), Splendidissima Civitas (Paris, 1996), 133 ff. 6 D. Knibbe, Forschungen in Ephesos 9.1.1. (Vienna 1981), espeeially 95-100. 7 TAM II 175-6. 8 For Opramoas see above all TAM II 905. 9 M. Sartre in A. D. Rizakis (ed.), Roman Onomastics in the Greek East (Athens 1996),239-50. 10 For this topie the c1assie presentation of P. Gamsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1970), esp. eh. 10 remains fundamental. 11 CJ 2.11.5. andDig. 48.19.28.2. 204 G.P. BURTON - 9789004401617 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 05:51:21PM via free access the mines or the fork or to be burned alive;12 decurions could not be executed for homicide, with the exception of parricide, according to a ruling of Hadrian;13 or again by the Severan period, ifnot before, it was enshrined in the mandala that provincial governors were obliged to write to the emperor for confirmation ofthe sentence ofrelegation ifimposed on "decurions or leading citizens".14 As Garnsey pointed out, the juristic texts which provide the evidence for such legal privileges do not normaly identify their precise chronological origins nor explicitly explain the reasons for them. However two aspects of these privileges suggest that their bestowal should be seen as purposive rational acts of poliey by the Roman state. First, I would stress their normative character. All decurions in all cities in the provinces in principle acquired these privileges which were expected to be upheld by the competent Roman officials. These privileges thus clearly demarcated civic councillors from the mass of the free population of the provinces. Secondly, besides of course the two aristocratc orders of senators and equestrians, there was one other relatively large and homogeneous category of persons who possessed an analogous array of legal privilege, namely veterans. Nobody, I assume, would deny the contention that the legal and other privileges bestowed on veterans were devised as areward for their essential services to the security and stability ofthe imperial state. By analogy the legal privileges oflocal councillors should also be understood as areward for their services to the imperial state. Central Rules for the Appointment of Civic Magistrates and Councillors In this section I wish to suggest that, although the routine processes of appointing civic magistrates and councillors normally lay in the hands of each community, there is good evidence that throughout the first and second centuries these processes occurred often, if not always, within frameworks laid down by the Roman state.

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