What held Rome’s provincial empire together through political revolution, civil wars, and crises of succession? This module focuses on the administration...

Mechanisms of Power: Running the Roman Empire (c. 70BC - AD275) (HIST0093)

What held Rome’s provincial empire together through political revolution, civil wars, and crises of succession? This module focuses on the administration and management of this international empire of the pre-industrial age. Past interpretations of the functioning of the Roman imperial state favoured constitutional analysis or viewed it as a thin façade to mask subjection by military force; more recent scholarship has tended to seek explanation for the relative longevity and stability of Rome’s imperial dominion in the late republic and principate in less tangible phenomena: e.g. ‘honour’ (Ted Lendon) and the establishment of ‘legitimacy’, reinforced by ‘charisma’ (Clifford Ando). These and other interpretations are tested against an in-depth analysis of the workings of the organs of the city of Rome as they were adapted to imperial responsibilities, both in terms of the formal administrative structures and their functioning in practice.
While the Roman imperial system has been likened to the Thatcherite ideal of ‘government without bureaucracy’, it was certainly not a government without paperwork. The core of this module comprises the study of selections from the considerable volume of surviving documents produced in the dialogue between the central government, its provincial representatives, citizens, and subjects. Deliberately eschewing the position of Augustus and his successors as the sole reference point for the system by which Rome governed her empire, the starting point for the investigation is placed in the post-Sullan period. The end is drawn with the provincialisation of Italy, which heralded the beginning of the establishment of a new order in which urbs Roma was now part of rather than mistress over her empire. All source material will be read in translation but in parallel with the original language so that, although Latin or Greek for Beginners is not a prerequisite for this module, those with these skills will be encouraged to exercise them.