Law, Status And Agency in the Roman Provinces*
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Level 5 by design analogy, not clinical CEBM; qualitative historical documentary analysis.
OpenAlex W2752716277 · doi:10.1093/pastj/gty015
What was done
The author analyzed historical documents reflecting private legal practice across both the Eastern and Western provinces of the Roman Empire prior to the Constitutio Antoniniana (212 CE) to evaluate how non-citizens used Roman legal instruments.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative metrics or document counts. Qualitatively, it was found that in the initial decades after provincialization, individuals in both the East and West similarly utilized Roman legal instruments reserved for citizens to assert higher status and advance personal goals.
Why it matters
This study demonstrates that Roman law served as a tool for provincial agency from below, integrating legal practice into broader debates on Romanization across both halves of the empire.
Limits
No document counts or sample sizes are provided in the abstract. The surviving documentary record is acknowledged to differ substantially in both quantity and type between the Eastern and Western provinces.
Cited by
- supports By the early 3rd century AD prior to Caracalla's edict, at most approximately one-third of the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire held Roman citizenship.