ABSTRACT
The principal venues of a governor's assizes were the basilica and the agora. In both, the governor was almost invariably seated in the immediate vicinity of a statue or statues of the emperor(s), and beside the local notables who served as his legal advisors. Governors assumed that this arrangement confirmed their personal prestige and the dignity of their court. To a certain extent, it probably did have this effect on members of the (mostly local) audience, who associated the governor's court – via the process of “frame bridging” – with other displays of loyalty to Rome. But the setting, and the presence of civic notables, also evoked an image of Roman authority implicit in the cityscape, which presented the distant emperor as the embodiment of justice and public virtue – and governors as pale reflections of his glory.
