Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Law in the Provinces

generally than these few clear examples show. The nature of the Roman system would certainly lend itself to this. The governor could appoint a judge and give a (typically vague) formula in good Roman fashion, and the local iudex could then easily apply local law in the particular trial, and we might never be the wiser. We will see one possible case in the last section of this chapter, but most of the time the evi dence does not really tell us whether procedure and sub stance went together. • Individual judgment . The judgment (or the mere whim) of the Roman governor may have been the single most important factor in deciding how issues were resolved in his province. The desire to help personal friends (especially, but not nec essarily, Romans) could draw him into a case; the desire to stay out of and above local squabbles might keep him out, as would a desire to limit his own workload. He might even have principled reasons to accept or avoid jurisdiction. If we can give a general rule, it might be this: While there was probably no circumstance in which a Roman governor felt he had no right to intervene in a case within his province, he ordinarily saw no need to do so, at least in cases without obvious political implications. Nonetheless, there was a clear trend over time (beyond the move toward greater standardization), and this was in the direc tion of the increasing Romanization of all legal processes. This occurred for at least four reasons. First, as noted in Chapter 2, significant grants of Roman citizenship (and of the “halfway”

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