Navigating Roman Law and Local Privileges in Pontus-Bithynia

Abstract

The chapter starts from the questions raised by a well-known (but underexplored from this angle) source for Roman governmental practice in provinces, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger as governor of Pontus-Bithynia in c.109–11 CE with the emperor Trajan. It attempts to integrate this correspondence with evidence from the legal and documentary sources on peculiarities of Bithynian law in the High Imperial period. Behind the deceptively straightforward presentation of legal issues in Pliny’s letters to the emperor there can be discovered a much more complex interaction between the interests of individuals, communities, their legal representatives and the governor himself. Particular attention is paid to the continuing role of the lex Pompeia, an uncharacteristically extensive set of Roman regulations for the province, going back to its early years. May a case in fact be made for the decrease in Roman legal interference in the early imperial period?

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