Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

and ad hoc collections of any of these. Roman government was much flatter. Originally, Rome was a typical Mediterranean city-state. That is, the city plus its immediately surrounding territory comprised the whole “nation,” so there was no differ ence between local and national government. As Rome’s impe rial territory grew, that original unified government was not much revised. It remained both the city government of Rome and that of the empire as a whole. As Rome absorbed other communities, it tended to swallow them whole, leaving their governments intact. This left a level of local government, but not as part of the Roman apparatus. Most importantly for pres ent purposes, much of Roman law did not apply to them; they were left to their own local systems (see Chapter 21). And there was even less government at middle levels. Most conquered land was divided up into provinces, each with a Roman gov ernor. The governor’s main task, however, was to look out for Rome’s interests (tax revenues, peace and stability), and even in these matters the real work was often outsourced to contractors called publicani . The governor’s office was not really a general central government for the province (see further in Chapter 21). Moreover, Italy itself was not a province and did not even have a governor. Roman government was also small because for the most part it lacked a permanent bureaucracy. A description of the American federal government might start out with the presi dent, Congress, and the Supreme Court, but beneath these lead ing figures are something like two million employees (not even counting the military and the postal service), spread out over

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