Imperial Power, Provincial Government, and the Emergence of Roman Asia, 133 BCE-14 CE

What ambitions lay behind Roman provincial governance? How did these change over time and in response to local conditions? To what extent did local agents facilitate and contribute to the creation of imperial administrative institutions? The answers to these questions shape our understanding of how the Roman empire established and maintained hegemony within its provinces. This issue of imperial hegemony is particularly acute for the period during which the political apparatus of the Roman Republic was itself in crisis and flux--precisely the period during which many provinces first came under Roman control.

Imperial Power, Provincial Government, and the Emergence of Roman Asia, 133 BCE-14 CE uses a case study of the province of Asia to focus closely on the formation and evolution of the Roman empire's administrative institutions. Comparatively well-excavated, Asia's rich epigraphy lends itself to this detailed study, while the region's long history of autonomous civic diplomacy and engagement with a range of Roman actors provide vital evidence for assessing the ways in which Roman empire and hegemony affected conditions on the ground in the province. Asia's unique history, moving from allied kingdom to regularly assigned provincia to a reconquered and reorganized territory, offers an insight into the complex workings of institutional formation.

From an investigation of the institutions which emerged in the province over a long first century (133 BCE-14 CE), Bradley Jordan considers the discursive power of official utterances of the Roman state, and the strategies employed by local actors to negotiate a favourable relationship with the empire.

Bradley Jordan, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oslo

Bradley Jordan is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo. He undertook his undergraduate studies at the University of Western Australia, postgraduate study at the University of Melbourne, and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford (2019). He has previously held research positions at the British Institute at Ankara and University of Cologne.

Abbreviations
Introduction
I: The Institutions of Roman Government
1. From the Attalids to Proconsular Administration, 133-88 BCE
2. The Government of Asia during the Late Republic, 81-49 BCE
3. Change in a Time of Civil War, 49-30 BCE
4. Provincia Asia and the Advent of the Principate, 30 BCE-14 CE
II: Roman Hegemony, Power, and Local Agency
5. Hegemony and the Discourse(s) of Power in Roman Asia
6. The 'Politics of Honour': Learning a New Set of Rules
7. Speaking to Roman Power: Diplomacy and Civic Privilege
8. Local Displays of Imperial Documents
Conclusions
Reference List
Index