Second, Rome in that period might be understood as an aristocratic empire: it worked through the cooptation of local elites; it shaped local institutions so as to conduce their formation and stability; and it left the conduct of local politics, jurisdiction, and often tax collection in their hands.
Over time, however, Rome became something altogether different. This came about in part through the universal extension of citizenship: this impelled the taking up of civil law actions throughout the empire and the reorientation of social conduct around Roman norms. That said, the universalization of the political and legal cultures of the metropole in fact commenced much earlier, through practical efforts--faltering perhaps, and certainly underconceptualized--to extend the institutions of governance uniformly throughout the empire. For although the maintenance of local cultures was understood to conduce order immediately post-conquest, it promoted numerous efficiencies for all to standardize around some limited Roman norms: minimally, weights and measures, money, and forms of contract, but also legal forms and principles.
These two processes are generally rehearsed separately, even within different disciplines, relying as they do on different bodies of evidence. The ambition of my paper is to describe them in historical relation, in terms that will promote the comparative discussion envisioned for the panel at large.
See more of: AHA Sessions