Law, Land, and Territories: The Roman Diaspora and the Making of ...

Law, Land, and Territories: The Roman Diaspora and the Making of Provincial Administration

By Lisa Pilar Eberle

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in

Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology in the

Graduate Division of the

University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge: Professor Emily Mackil, Chair

Professor Carlos Nore?a Professor Nikolaos Papazarkadas

Professor Neil Fligstein

Fall 2014

? 2014 Lisa Pilar Eberle

Abstract

Law, Land, and Territories: The Roman Diaspora and the Making of Provincial Administration

by

Lisa Pilar Eberle

Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Emily Mackil, Chair

This dissertation examines the relationship between the institutions of Roman provincialadministration and the economy of the Roman imperial diaspora in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second and first centuries BC. Focusing on the landed estates that many members of the imperial diaspora acquired in the territories of Greek cities, I argue that contestation over the allocation of resources in the provinces among Roman governing classes, the members of the imperial diaspora, and the elites of Greek cities decisively shaped the contours of what we would late recognize as the institutions of provincial administration.

Setting the Roman Empire within a new comparative framework, Chapter One suggests that ancient cities around the Mediterranean, including Rome, often used their imperial power to help their own citizens infringe upon the exclusionary property regimes of other cities, which insisted that--unless they decided otherwise--only their own citizens could acquire this land. Chapter Two combines semantic history with archaeological case-studies to argue that Roman ownership of agricultural resources in the territories of provincial cities was widespread and in fact often underpinned the movement of products for which the members of the diaspora are more commonly known. Chapter Three uses epigraphic documentation and Cicero's writings to examine how provincial governors responded to the economic concerns that Romans brought before them, maintaining that law became the most prominent response because it was able to perform a separation between the empire as state and the potentially problematic actions by members of the diaspora, while at the same time not abandoning these Romans' concerns. Chapter Four investigates the contestation over the terms on which members of the diaspora were able to acquire land in Greek cities and vindicates the contributions that Roman jurists and the elites of Greek cities made to the institutional architecture of provincial administration and the political economy it enshrined.

1

For my parents

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

iii

Introduction

1

1. Land and the Statecraft of Civic Empires

12

2. Land in the Economy of the Roman Diaspora in the Greek East

42

3. The Roman Diaspora and the Origins of Law in Roman Provincial Administration 76

4. Jurists, Greek Elites, and Governors as Architects of Empire

116

Conclusion

158

Bibliography

156

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