The expansion of the power of the city of Rome through the whole of the Mediterranean world during the last three centuries B.C. led to the establishment of Rome as the predominant military and economic force in the region. It also made it necessary to develop ways of administering so large and diverse an area. The patterns which emerged are now usually referred to as the provincial administration of the empire, and there is no doubt that some such collective title is necessary to describe the various methods used by officials of the state to control the communities and individuals with whom they were in contact. It is important at the outset, however, to recognize that ‘provincial administration’ was not a Roman concept, at least during the period of the Republic, within which the empire took shape.

I. PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE: THE ORIGINS OF THE SYSTEM

Although the English ‘province’ is obviously derived from the Latin provincia, the meaning of the two is by no means identical. A province, whether in a constitutional context, as for example the province of Ulster or of Ontario, or in an ecclesiastical, such as the provinces of Canterbury and York, is an area defined for administrative purposes. The provincia on the other hand seems originally to have been a task assigned to a specified Roman magistrate or promagistrate, in the fulfilment of which he would exercise the imperium granted to him in virtue of his election or appointment. Although his task might well consist of using that imperium, the executive power of the Roman people, in a military command within a particular geographical area, it need not do so. Livy several times describes an Italian tribe as a consul’s provincia, and during his account of the Second Punic War he refers to the provinciae of the fleet and the war against Hannibal in the same way. Similarly the treasury is called the provincia of a quaestor, and the urbana provincia marked the allocation of the civil jurisdiction within the city. When used by Plautus and Terence, writing comedies in the second century, and also in Cicero, the word seems to have a sense rather like the secondary meaning in modern English, of a concern or sphere of influence.