We have already mentioned the policy of transforming rural communities into organized municipalities. How rapidly this transformation took place may be gathered from the fact that in Tarraconesis (Hither Spain) the number of rural districts sunk from one hundred and fourteen to twenty-seven between the time of Vespasian and that of Hadrian. A parallel movement was the conversion of the native towns into Roman colonies and municipalities, often through the [pg 281]transitional stage of Latin communities, a status that now existed in the provinces only. The acquirement of Roman or Latin status brought exemption from the poll-tax, while the former opened the way to all the civil and military offices of the empire. An added advantage was won with the charter of a Roman colony, for this usually involved immunity from the land tax also. The last step in the Romanization of the provincial towns was Caracalla’s edict of 212 A. D. which conferred Roman citizenship upon all non-Roman municipalities throughout the empire.
The three Gauls and Egypt. From this municipalization of the provinces two districts were at first excluded on grounds of public policy. These districts were the three Gauls (Aquitania, Lugdunensis and Belgica) and Egypt. At the time of its conquest Gaul was a rich agricultural country, with sharply defined tribal communities, but little or no city development. This condition Augustus judged well adapted, under strict imperial control, to furnishing recruits and supplies of money and kind for the great army of the Rhine. Therefore he continued the division of Gaul in tribal units (civitates), sixty-four in number, each controlled by its native nobility. His policy was in general adhered to for about two hundred years, but in the course of the third century the municipal system was introduced by converting the chief town of each civitas into a municipality with the rest of the civitas as its territorium or district under its administrative control.
In Egypt Augustus by right of conquest was the heir of the Ptolemies and was recognized by the Egyptians proper as “king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, autocrator, son of the Sun.” For the Greek residents he was an absolute deified ruler of the Hellenistic type. Thus Egypt, although a part of the Roman empire, was looked upon as subject to the rule of the princeps alone. And, as in the theory of government, so in the political institutions of the country the Romans adapted to their purposes existing conditions in place of introducing radical changes.
In the time of Augustus there were three Greek towns in Egypt, Alexandria the capital, Ptolemais and Naucratis. To these Hadrian added a third, Antinoopolis. Ptolemais, Naucratis and Antinoopolis enjoyed municipal institutions, but Alexandria because of the turbulence of its population was ruled by imperial officials following the [pg 282]Ptolemaic practice. The rest of the population of the country lived in villages throughout the Nile Valley, which was divided for administrative purposes into thirty-six districts called nomes (nomoi). The bulk of the land of Egypt was imperial or public domain land, and the great majority of the Egyptian population were tenants on the imperial domain. For the collection of the land tax, poll tax, professional and other taxes, for the supervision of irrigation, and for the maintenance of the public records of the cultivated acreage and the population (for which a census was taken every fourteen years) there had been developed a highly organized bureaucracy with central offices at Alexandria and agents in each of the nomes. This system of government was maintained by the Romans, and profoundly influenced the organization of the imperial civil service. At the head of the administration of Egypt stood the prefect, an equestrian because of his position as a personal employee of the princeps, and because the power concentrated in his hands would have proved a dangerous temptation to a senator. The chief burden laid upon Egypt was to supply one third of the grain consumed at Rome, or about 5,000,000 bushels annually. This amount was drawn partly from the land tax which was paid in kind and partly from grain purchased by the government.
The first step towards spreading municipal government throughout all Egypt was taken in 202 A. D., when Septimius Severus organized a boule, or senate of the Greek type, in Alexandria and in the metropolis or seat of administration of each nome. His object was to create in each metropolis a body which could be made to assume definite responsibilities in connection with the administration. However, it was not until after Diocletian that these villages received a full municipal organization.
The principate’s greatest service to the provinces was the gift of two and a half centuries of orderly government, which led in many quarters to a material development unequalled in these regions before or since. It is in these centuries that the history of Rome becomes the history of the provinces. At the opening of the period the Italians occupied a privileged position within the empire, at its close they and their one-time subjects were on the same level. The army and the senatorial and equestrian orders had been thoroughly provincialized, and the emperors had come to be as a rule of provincial birth. Rome was still the seat of the administration, but this and the corn dole to [pg 283]the city proletariat were the only things that distinguished it from a provincial city.
The imperial government of Rome had crushed out all vestiges of national loyalty among the peoples it had absorbed, and had failed to create any political institutions which would have permitted the provincials, as such, to have participated in the government of the empire. With the gradual decline of municipal autonomy the great mass of the provincials were deprived of the last traces of an independent political life. The provincial councils established for the maintenance of the imperial cult did indeed occasionally voice the complaints of the provincials but never acquired active political powers. And that the Roman administration proved a heavy burden is attested by the numerous complaints against the weight of taxation and the necessity which many emperors felt of remitting the arrears of tribute.
V. Municipal Life
The Roman empire was at bottom an aggregate of locally self-governing communities, which served as units for conscription, taxation and jurisdiction. They were held together by the army and the civil service, and were united by the bonds of a common Graeco-Roman civilization. These municipalities were of two general types, the Hellenic in the East and the Latin in the West.