Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Law in the Provinces

if” the parties were citizens. The timing and speed of these developments is unclear, but in 242 bc the Romans created a “peregrine” praetor. The role of this official is disputed, but his title shows that in some way he handled legal disputes involv ing noncitizens. The creation of a whole new office suggests that there were already many such cases. Access to parts of Roman law could also be extended to individuals or communi ties. The Latins had the right of intermarriage with Romans ( conubium ) as well as Roman property rights ( commercium ). Other Roman allies were sometimes awarded the same rights as early as the late third or early second century bc. Finally (if much more rarely), the Romans’ superior political and military position allowed them simply to announce rules binding on their neighbors in matters such as the regulation of “foreign” religious associations and limits on interest rates. The story I have been telling so far in this chapter has largely been set in Italy and was shaped by the peculiar political his tory of the Roman conquest of the rest of the peninsula. Over the course of the Republic, Rome claimed more and more ter ritory throughout Italy and populated it with more and more Roman citizens. At the same time, however, half of Italy was left as more or less independent city-states bound to Rome by treaty rather than by absorption, and this state of affairs con tinued until early in the first century bc. As a result, there Law in the Provinces

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