Proconsuls, Assizes and the Administration of Justice under the Empire

TLDR

Roman governors and their legates administered justice by touring provinces and holding assizes in selected towns rather than maintaining permanent courts in provincial capitals, a practice that is crucial for understanding the Roman Empire’s administrative system. This article compiles evidence on how the assize system functioned and its effects on provincial litigants, and examines the constraints it imposed on governors in their non‑judicial dealings with subjects.

Abstract

Vespasian, when he was proconsul of Africa, was pelted with turnips during a riot at Hadrumetum; Galba, when he was legate of Hispania Citerior, received the news of the revolt of Vindex while holding assizes in the far south-east of his province at New Carthage; the famous confrontation between Antoninus Pius, when proconsul of Asia, and the sophist Polemo, when the latter returned home and expelled Pius from his lodgings, occurred at Smyrna. Such instances and anecdotes could be easily multiplied, for governors and their legates did not administer justice by permanently holding court in the capital city—be it Carthage, Tarraco or Ephesus—of their province. Instead they toured their area of administration and held judicial sessions at certain privileged towns—assize centres—of the province. This contention is of prime importance for our conception of the administration of the Roman empire. The first purpose of this article is to assemble the evidence for the actual working of the assize system and the dispensation of justice within it, and the consequences for provincial litigants. The problems faced by a provincial litigant, wishing to gain access to the proconsul's tribunal, may provide a further control for our assessment of the practical, rather than theoretical, operation of Roman judicial procedure. Secondly, I hope, if only impressionistically, to suggest the types of constraint which this framework of a peregrinatory system of justice set on any Roman governor in his non-judicial relations with his subjects.