ABSTRACT
Augustus’ overall control of the provinces was made explicit in 23 BC when he received proconsulare imperium maius. Yet a governor might still see himself as king for a year, and it was in a royal deed that L. Volesus Messalla, proconsul of Asia, exulted as he stalked past the bodies of the men he had condemned. This man held office in the last years of Augustus, but it is usually maintained that there was a marked improvement in the standard of provincial government under the Principate: the Princeps chose many governors himself, supervised them, and made the prosecution of malefactors easier, both by promoting legislation (the senatus consultum Calvisianum of 4 BC offered provincials a new and speedier method of redressing non-capital wrongs) and by making himself accessible to delegations of Rome’s subjects; from his point of view the support of the provincials, or at least of the influential classes among them, was important as a counterpoise to possible senatorial discontent, as it already had been to dynasts of the late Republic, to Marius, Pompey, and Caesar.1
