Empire of Law: Legal Culture and Imperial Rule in the Roman Province of Egypt

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to shed light on the administration of justice in the provinces of the Roman empire, arguably the most prominent public interface between the Empire and its subjects, as well as the sphere in which Rome left its most far-reaching and lasting legacy in the Mediterranean world. In order to do so, this study integrates, for the first time, the voluminous and underexploited evidence of documentary papyri from Roman Egypt into a broader investigation of judicial administration in the Roman provinces, from its origins under the Republic to the threshold of late Antiquity at the end of the third century CE. This study examines the sphere of law and courts in the Roman empire from several perspectives: first, by considering the institutional framework within which Roman courts administered justice to provincials, then by considering the significance of Roman record-keeping and archival institutions for the imperial legal order, then by examining how Roman provincial courts dealt with local laws and traditions. Finally, the study examines the agency of legal practitioners in the development of the Roman imperial legal sphere, as well as the significance of the adoption of distinctly Roman models of legal culture by civic elites in Roman Egypt and elsewhere in the Roman empire. By systematically bringing the rich papyrological material from Egypt to bear on broader questions of law and legal culture in the Roman provinces, this dissertation seeks to open new horizons for the study of Roman legal history and to develop new perspectives on the institutional and cultural impact of Roman imperial rule.