ABSTRACT
The Roman Empire stretched a thousand miles from southern Scotland to the deserts of southern Egypt. The purpose of this chapter is to describe and analyse the administrative mechanisms which served to maintain the political unity of this vast territorial expanse. The Roman government did not pursue many of the goals which, today, are conventionally associated with the exercise of political power by the state, e.g. the control or modification of economic developments, social welfare, education. Its concerns were more limited, above all the regular exaction of taxes and the maintenance of internal order. In the period from the first emperor, Augustus, up to the political and military crisis of the mid-third century, the most striking feature of Roman rule is the stability and persistence of the administrative tasks carried out by the imperial state and of the institutional mechanisms created to achieve them. For that reason this essay concentrates on typical practices and relationships, and eschews tangential discussion of minor variations of practice across time or by region; the governance of the province of Egypt stands as an exception to much of what is said in this chapter. To begin, the personnel of Roman government in the provinces and the internal administrative organization of the provinces are described briefly, before proceeding to examine the three main manifestations of Roman rule, taxation, jurisdiction and the supervision of the local administrative units (the cities; Part 5) of the provinces.
