Provincia literally means just "sphere of action of a magistrate", and the sense from which our word province is derived is simply the result of the territorial application of the same idea. A "province" is a sphere of action with territorial limits assigned to a magistrate with imperium, and, as such, is outside Italy, for within Italy there were no such geographical limits on the imperium.
It is the unity of command given to the governor within these limits which really constitutes the unity of the province within which may live people actually governed in different ways and standing in varying relationships to Rome. For all of them the governor represents the authority of the Roman state, whether they are Roman citizens resident in the province, members of Roman or Latin colonies or other inhabitants living in their original communities which might or might not have a considerable measure of self-government. It is this fact which explains how the Romans managed to govern their great empire with so few officials. When they acquired territory they did not incorporate it into a coherent administrative system of their own; they left it as a rule in much the same condition as that in which they found it, but subjected great areas of it to the general supervision of a magistrate holding imperium and thus vested with the supreme authority which imperium gave outside the city. The governorship was, in fact, the military command of the Roman general perpetuated as a system of control in times of peace, and the chief limit on the governor's power was not any legal restriction but the physical impossibility of attention to detail with the very small staff which the state put at his disposal.
The first method by which the Romans provided for magistrates with imperium to govern their provinces was an increase in the number of praetorships, but with the growth of the empire this measure proved insufficient, and resort was had to the prolongation of the power of magistrates after their year of office had elapsed. This was never deemed permissible within the city, but elsewhere the senate frequently used its dispensing power for this purpose. It was also the rule that a military commander outside the city retained his command until relieved by his successor. Prolongation however was of magisterial power, not of the office itself, and the ex-magistrate exercised his imperium pro consule or pro praetore, "in place of the consul or praetor", according to the rank he had held. It must be remembered that, in the period before Sulla, consuls frequently undertook commands overseas and these commands were often prolonged in this way, as were those of praetors whose successors were needed for other purposes. It was thus already common for provinces to be administered by pro-magistrates before the time of Sulla, and Sulla fixed the practice by providing that both consuls and all the praetors should remain in Italy during their year of office and proceed to a province only afterwards. By a law of Pompey's, passed in 52 B.C., this was again altered, and five years were to elapse between the tenure of office at Rome and the provincial governorship, a rule which, though it feel into abeyance during the civil wars, was revived by Augustus.
The governor's staff included only one actual magistrate, the quaestor, of whose duties we have already spoken; there were legati, i.e. senators without office (one usually in a praetorian, three in a consular province), whom he could employ as his delegates in any type of duty, military, administrative or judicial. These men were originally appointed by the senate, but in later times chosen by the governor himself. The governor had also a number of comites (literally "companions") with him, i.e. usually younger men who were being initiated into public life, whom he could use for any purpose he thought fit. Both the legati and the comites have an important later history under the empire.
Rome's first provinces came to her as a result of her struggle with Carthage; Sicily, the first, was created in 241 B.C after the end of the first Punic war, and Sardinia ten years later; the two Spanish provinces were kept at the end of the second war in 201, and Africa was added after the destruction of Carthage had ended the third in 146. Meanwhile, Rome had become involved in the affairs of the Eastern Mediterranean. Macedonia became a province in 148, Asia in 129, and the expansion did not cease during the period of the revolution. By the end of the republic there were in all fifteen provinces: Sicily, Sardinia, Hither and Further Spain, Illyricum, Macedonia, Achaea, Africa, Asia, Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia Cisalpina, Bithynia, Cyrene with Crete, Cilicia and Syria.
In these extra-Italian dominions Rome's policy was partly similar to that adopted in Italy, partly different. Incorporation of provincials as citizens either with or without voting rights, such as had been common in the earlier phases of the conquest of Italy, was unknown, but the policy of alliance by treaties which, in fact, left the other party dependent on Rome was widely adopted. Federations were, as in Italy, usually broken up, though, where they were not considered dangerous, they might be left as religious institutions, or even occasionally created. The treaties which Rome made with her dependent states fell into two classes; either they were "equal", i.e. in form treaties made between two sovereign communities, or they were "unequal", in which case they contained a clause by which the other party acknowledged its inferiority by agreeing, "courteously to respect the dignity of the Roman people" (maiestatem populi Romani comiter conservare). Whichever form was adopted the state was "free and federated". In some cases, as in that of Marseilles, these treaties represented older agreements which had been concluded when the parties were really on an equal footing, and many states retained real self-government in so far as all internal affairs were concerned, including even criminal jurisdiction over Roman citizens within their territory. External relations were, of course, strictly controlled by Rome, or, rather, no external relations were, as a rule, allowed except with Rome herself.
Next in rank to the "free and federated" states come those which are "free" but not "federated", i.e. those whose freedom in guaranteed, not by a treaty but by a unilateral act or Rome herself, which, unlike a treaty sworn to by both parties, could legally be revoked at any moment. One document of this nature, or rather a considerable fragment of it, has survived in an inscription. It is a plebiscite of 71 B.C. and enacts, among other things, that the citizens of Termessus (in Pisidia) are to be "free friends and allies of the Roman people and enjoy their own laws in so far as they are not incompatible with this statute". There is a significant absence of any statement that the Termessians have consented to this arrangement.
The rest of the provincials who did not belong to either class of favoured state were mere subjects, and, although they are included in the general term socii (allies), it is difficult to fin any legal formula which will distinguish them from the dediticii. There were, however, important variations in the actual treatment of different classes. Where, as in Sicily and the Hellenised East, there were city-states and a high standar of civilisation in existence before the coming of the Romans, these city-states were left with a considerable amount of local self-government and the use of their own law, but it must be remembered that, even in these countries, there were large numbers of people who were not citizens of the city-states but subject to them, as well as others who had no connection with any city-state at all but lived in villages and cultivated the soil. In the East, especially in the province of Asia, these last had in many cases been serfs attached to royal estates, and though Roman law itself did not at this time recognise serfdom (as opposed to slavery) their position does not appear to have bettered by the Roman occupation. Nor, indeed, was that of the subjects of the cities who continued, in the Roman phrase, to be "attributed" to those cities. It is difficult however, with the small amount of evidence we have, to know how far the depressed condition of these classes was due to burdens imposed on them by general rules of law, and how far it was due simply to their poverty in comparison with the wealthier city-dwellers and Roman landowners whose tenants they became.
The organisation of a province, once it was acquired, was usually laid down in a lex data of charter, generally the work of the conquering general himself with the assistance of a senatorial commission of ten legati, or at least submitted to the senate for ratification. Of this nature was the lex Rupilia governing conditions in Sicily, of which we know a good deal from Cicero's Verrine orations. Such a lex data would, among other things, define the status of the different classes of inhabitants, establish principles of taxation, regulate local government and lay down rules for the administration of justice. Of the lex Rupilia, for instance, we know that it provided that where one member of a state had a dispute with another member the matter was to be decided in the court of that state and by the law of that state; only where members of different states were concerned did the case come into the governor's court. Similar rules no doubt applied elsewhere. Much, however, was left undetermined by the lex of the province and had to be supplied by the edict of the governor. These edicts which the governor, like every other Roman magistrate, was empowered to make at the beginning of his term of office, laid down the principles which he intended to apply during his tenure of power. As happened with other magistrates, especially the two urban praetors, each governor usually took over the bulk of his predecessor's edict and added only a comparatively small amount of his own, with the result that these provincial edicts, like urban edicts, grew into an important and permanent body of law. The power of issuing edicts, which no court or other body could disallow, is in itself sufficient to show how little the powers of the governor were fettered even by the law of the province. It was, in fact, the great weakness of Roman provincial government under the republic that there was no one to control the governor, the only check provided being under the laws against extortion, which enabled him to be prosecuted after his term of office had come to an end. This was a safeguard which the corruption of the criminal courts at the end of the republic often made illusory.
The fact is that the Romans of republican times regarded the provinces from a purely selfish point of view and chiefly as sources of income. The "federated" cities and some others were immune from taxation, but on the bulk of the provincials the burden was very heavy. Not only had they to pay taxes to the Roman state, but these taxes were generally farmed out. Roman companies paid an agreed sum for the right to collect them during a specified period, with the result that a great number of Roman private citizens were able to enrich themselves at the expense of the provincials. The governor too and his staff, it must be remembered, received no salary and expected to find opportunities of making money out of their position.
So far as military service was concerned the position of the provincials differed radically from that of the Italians. The treaties with the "federated" states stipulated for military support and the maritime Greeks had from time to time to furnish ships, but the mass of the population was not called upon, and this policy shows clearly the difference between Italy, which the Romans regarded as a military confederacy under their leadership, and the subject world whose business it was to pay taxes.
The leading ideas of Roman provincial government in the republic are thus: (I) The subjection of great areas to the autocratic authority of a single magistrate whose duties are military, administrative and judicial. Individual states of the "free and federated" or "free" class, where geographically within the province, are not strictly subject to the governor, but his influence in fact extends to them. Where, as often happens, such a city is the chief one in a province he may make it his residence and the local authorities will have to let him have his way. (2) Retention in a large measure of the existing territorial organisation, especially when this is of the city-state type. (3) Exclusion of the provincials from the citizenship (and from Latinity) as well as from the military burdens which fall on the Italian allies, in place of which they have to pay heavy taxation. The vast majority of Roman subjects are, so far as her law is concerned, peregrini, "foreigners", outside the pale of the strict Roman law and only entitled to such rights as all free persons have under the ius gentium. The word peregrinus in fact comes to mean, not a foreigner who belongs to an independent state, for of such, by the end of the republic, there were few in the known world, but a subject of Rome who is not a Roman because he is not a citizen.
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Source:
Historical introduction to the study of Roman law, H. F. Jolowicz, pages 66 - 71.
