It is arguable that Rome’s impact on northern Italy was greatest in the southeastern corner, along the segment of the Via Aemilia stretching from Ariminum on the Adriatic to Placentia in the center of the Po Plain. The intervention of the Roman state in this region—in building new canals, moving populations, or reorganizing land use—was frequent and invasive. As the most closely managed Republican-era region of Italy, with the possible exception of Campania, the Aemilia thus serves as an ideal place to examine the nature of the more hands-off administration of the Imperial period, since the contrast in the administration of Italy between the Republic and the Empire is at its starkest here.1
During the early imperial period, imperial magistrates allocated to northern Italy were few, and the types of magistrates assigned to the region suggests that the two major concerns for the imperial state were the maintenance of the most important roads and the collection of the relatively few taxes to which Italy was liable. To maintain the major roads, senatorial curatores viarum (superintendents of the roads) were appointed. This position, in charge of the construction and maintenance of major roads, had been an important political stepping-stone for ambitious Late Republican politicians such as Caesar and in the imperial period continued to be an important senatorial level position at Rome.2 Throughout the imperial period few changes were made to the curatores viarum. Numbers fluctuated slightly in correspondence with the number of imperially sponsored building or restoration projects—there seems to have been a peak under Trajan—but the basic organizational structure remained the same, and actual work on roads seems still to have been overseen by contractors, or mancipes.3 The responsibilities of the imperial curatores viarum did not extend much beyond the major roads, and in Aemilia the construction and upkeep of roads other than the Aemilia, and possibly the Annia and Popilia, were the responsibility of either municipal governments or local landowners.4 Landowners along the Aemilia itself were thus liable for taxes when maintenance needed to be done, but beyond that the upkeep of roads was left to the region’s municipia and to individual landowners.
Residents along the Aemilia were liable to other taxes that fell within a defined Italian tax bracket. The Republican-era vicesima libertatis, a 5% tax on slaves at the time of their manumission, still applied.5 To fund the compensation and settlement of veterans from the civil wars, Augustus had enacted a 5% inheritance tax—the vicesima hereditatium—for Roman citizens, but with exemptions for beneficiaries who were closely related to the deceased and for testators who were poor.6 In addition to the vicesima hereditatium, Augustus instituted two sales taxes, the vicesima quinta venalium mancipiorum, a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, and the centesima rerum venalium, a 1.5% tax on auctionable goods.7 The people of Rome saw the latter as burdensome enough to ask Tiberius for the tax’s remission, to which Tiberius replied that the tax’s revenues were vital for the payment of the army.8 This suggests that the revenues from the tax were fairly substantial and that the tax impacted a large section of society.9 Nevertheless, as an imperial benefaction Tiberius’s successor, Gaius, remitted the tax.10 Until the reign of Nerva, Italians were also liable for the vehiculatio, the compulsion to provide vehicles of transport for state officials; Nerva remitted the vehiculatio for Italy but not for the provinces.11 Additionally, goods passing through provincial borders were subject to customs duties, the portoria.12 Italians were exempt, however, from the tributum capitis and tributum solis and were sometimes given further honorary tax exemptions by the emperors.13 The tax rate for residents along the Via Aemilia and for the rest of Italy in the first century CE will have been roughly equivalent to the rate during the Republican era, as new taxes established in the Early Empire either allowed for substantial loopholes (the vicesima hereditatium) or were eventually remitted (centesima rerum venalium), while others were carryovers from the republican period (vicesima libertatis).
For most of the first century, few changes in the basic structure of Italian administration set up by Augustus are discernable. Those few changes that are attested—the remittances of the vehiculatio by Nerva and the centesima rerum venalium by Gaius—are in keeping with a general trend in the Early Empire of granting financial and honorific privileges to Italy.14 It should be remembered, too, that self-government and low taxes were explicitly tied together as Italian privileges. For example, cities in the provinces possessing the prestigious ius Italicum shared Italy’s lenient tax status and were also removed from the jurisdiction of provincial governors.15
With the second century, however, new administrative posts do appear in Italy. But do these new posts signal a change in what had been a fairly hands-off imperial policy? Among these new magistrates were the curatores rei publicae, officials selected by the emperor to oversee a municipium’s finances or local building projects.16 These curatores rei publicae, appearing first under Nerva, appear throughout the empire, in both Italy and the provinces, although they appear more frequently in Italy.17 Typical of the men who held the office was Clodius Sura, a Brixian of equestrian status, who went through the posts of military tribune and, in his hometown, quaestor, pontifex, and duumvir quinquennalis.18 Under Trajan he was curator rei publicae at nearby Bergomum, and under Hadrian he became curator rei publicae at Comum. Sura’s career as curator was exceptionally localized, and this regionalization is typical of the office in the second century.19 Both in Italy and in the provinces these second-century curatores were generally local men, drawn from the same area in which they served as curator.20 The curatores rei publicae were not appointed for every town, and more specialized curatores could be assigned as well, such as the curator operum publicum and curator operis thermarum appointed by Hadrian for the southern Italian towns of Venusia and Beneventum, respectively.21 Just within regio VIII, curatores were appointed for individual towns—in the second century they are attested for Ariminum, Otesia, and Faventia—as well as for the region as a whole.22 The flexibility of the office can be seen in the career of C. Arrius Antononius, a senator who held the offices of curator Ariminiensium and curator civitatum per Aemiliam.23 Arrius’s appointment as curator civitatum per Aemiliam was almost certainly connected with the incursion of the Marcomanni toward the northeastern borders of Italy and preparations made by the emperor Marcus Aurelius for the defense of Italy.24 The curatores seem to have been assigned on a case-by-case basis, with local elites granted imperial approval and recognition for local building projects or reordering municipal finances. This gave the emperors the flexibility to deal with municipal problems and city petitions as they arose by delegating to local elites.
The appointment of the curatores, moreover, may have had as much to do with the rank and honor of individual senators—as well as the emperor’s public image in maintaining the standing of the senate—as with actual problems, such as financial difficulties at Bergomum or the lack of a good public bathhouse at Beneventum. The Historia Augusta claims that “he [the emperor Marcus Aurelius] appointed curatores to many cities, so as to extend senatorial dignitas.25 The appointment of locally connected curatores also suggests that the position was designed to enhance the prestige of local elites within their own regions. Within a senatorial or equestrian career that crossed the empire, the position of curator was unusual in that the location of service corresponded so closely to preexisting local connections.26 That curatores generally did not serve in their home communities but rather in towns close to those communities also suggests that the position helped build or strengthen regional social bonds. Hence C. Cornelius Minicianus, the curator rei publicae of Otesia in Aemilia under Trajan or Hadrian, in addition to his service as military tribune with the legio III Augusta in Africa, also served locally as a quottuorvir, flamen divi Claudii, flamen divi Traiani, and patron of Bergomum and was honored as such by the people of nearby Mediolanum.27 Those local offices, which exist alongside a traditionally wide-ranging—geographically speaking—equestrian career, signal regional social bonds that Minicianus certainly had. Micinianus’s connections in the area around Bergomum and Mediolanum encompassed Comum’s Pliny the Younger as well, who wrote for him a letter of recommendation praising him as “by rank and manners the jewel of my region.”28
To these municipally based curatores, Hadrian added quattuor consulares, who had jurisdiction over four regions of Italy.29 During the reign of Antoninus Pius these men were replaced by the iuridici, who also had jurisdiction over regions of Italy and who rendered judgment in cases brought to their attention.30 Their authority was somewhat fluid, and in a pinch they could be appealed to as a generic imperial magistrate and representative of the emperor. One 177 CE senatorial edict on gladiatorial prices says that the edict is to be enforced in the provinces by governors and in Italy by the prefect of the alimenta (the program for feeding poor children in Italy) or, if he is unavailable, by a curator viarum, iuridicus, or prefect of the fleet.31 Their regional jurisdictions fluctuated over time, and so one iuridicus’s district was Etruria and Aemilia, while another was described as the iuridicus for Aemilia and Liguria, while yet another claimed jurisdiction over Aemilia, Etruria, and Tuscia.32 Like the curatores, the iuridici acted as representatives of imperial authority and, like the curatores, they seem to have had some previous connections to the regions where they held authority. Serving as one of Hadrian’s quattuor consulares, Antoninus had, according to the Historia Augusta, “been chosen to administer the part of Italy in which he had the most properties, as Hadrian took consideration both of the man’s honor and his quiet life.”33 Likewise, C. Arrius Antoninus, the senator who served as curator both for the towns of Aemilia as a whole and for Ariminum in particular, although originally from north Africa, had also served as a iuridicus regionis Transpadanae.34 Nevertheless, the post of iuridicus was not tied to the holder’s place of origin, as was generally the case with the curatores. Hence, one late second-century iuridicus of Aemilia and Liguria seems to have come from north Africa, were he was curator rei publicae at Cirta.35 The second-century iuridici of Italy thus fit more easily with the typical and geographically scattershot posts of senatorial careers than with the locally tied curatores, although some effort seems to have been made by emperors to assign iuridici to places where they had connections, either through previous offices held in the area or through landholdings.
The most conspicuous innovation of the second century was the introduction of alimentary projects in Italy. In these schemes, Italian landowners borrowed sums of money from the imperial fiscus (treasury); the landowners then paid the interest on these loans to the local children on the alimentary lists.36 These alimenta are first attested under Nerva, and over the next century various alimentary schemes can be found in more than fifty Italian municipalities.37 The attested schemes are concentrated in central and southern Italy, although it has been rightly noted that such a concentration reflects the epigraphic density of the Italian regions more than it does any preference of the emperors for setting up schemes south of the Apennines.38 That imperial alimentary schemes—as opposed to private schemes—are attested primarily in Italy suggests that the alimenta were yet another means of privileging the Italian peninsula over the provinces.39 Outside of Italy, alimentary schemes were privately run, although these privately run alimentary schemes are also attested in Italy. Pliny the Younger established one at his native Comum.40 Like the appointment of the curatores, the alimentary schemes seem to have been implemented on a case-by-case basis, with some towns receiving imperially sponsored schemes and others establishing their own schemes, and both the dates of their implementation and organization vary considerably.
The question remains: Did these new posts and innovations mark a significant shift in the previously minimalist policy of state intervention practiced in the first century CE? To be certain, there were more imperial magistrates assigned to regions and town in Italy at the end of the second century CE then there were during the Augustan period. Were these new positions a response to a chronic undermanagement of Italy? There was at least one roughly contemporary suggestion that Italy needed more government. Cassius Dio, in an account of the Augustan period, has Maecenas advice Augustus to divide Italy into administrative districts similar to the provinces, since Italy was so heavily populated and since it could not be governed efficiently by the magistrates at Rome.41 While Dio’s account describes the Augustan period and not the second century, at the beginning of the third century Dio was clearly aware of the argument that Italy had an insufficient administrative apparatus. Yet such an argument does not appear in second-century explanations for the introduction of this new administration. Rather, the alimenta are made to aid Italian children, and the iuridici introduced to enhance senatorial dignity.42 It is possible that these official rationales cloaked more pedestrian administrative concerns, but that these developments are presented as imperial beneficence and not as attempts to fix a broken system suggests that the perception of Italy as undergoverned was not widespread. Had that been the case one would expect imperial messages at least to attempt to counteract that perception.
Were these new magistrates instead an attempt to provincialize Italy, to update Italy’s status in keeping with a world in which the provinces had usurped much of Italy’s political and economic dominance? The iuridici had existed on the provincial level previously, and it is possible that their introduction into Italy, where they took on some of the legal responsibilities of their provincial counterparts, suggests an effort to provide Italy with more imperial governance. Yet the overwhelming concentration of the state-sponsored alimentary projects in Italy suggests that Italy continued to be treated as an exceptional, privileged entity within the empire; indeed, the sole certain provincial outlier in distribution of state alimentary schemes, Hadrian’s favored Antinoöpolis in Egypt, confirms the notion that the alimentary projects were strongly linked to imperial favor.43 Likewise, the creation of curatores seems more in line with continuing official privileges for Italy. The position of curator allowed emperors to honor Italian elites and give Italian localities the honor of imperial attention; the phrase dato ab imperatore used in inscriptions underlines this connection between the appointment of curatores and imperial care.44 So the imposition of municipal curatores should not be seen as an erosion of Italy’s privileged status but rather as a confirmation of that status. More importantly, Italy’s tax burden remained roughly the same through the first two centuries CE; a few taxes dating to the Augustan period had even been removed. Should the Antonines have wished to bring Italy’s administration more into line with the provinces, a gradual attenuation of Italy’s tax exemptions would have proved tempting. Rather, Italy was able to maintain its privileged position within the empire despite any political or economic decline vis-à-vis the provinces.
These second century changes in imperial administration in Italy therefore do not signal a substantial change in imperial policy, which continued to emphasize traditional Italian privileges, respect for the senate, and imperial euergetism.45 On the ground along the Aemilia, this stability in policy led to relative continuity in the relationship between state and citizen for most of the first and second centuries CE.
In the region’s largest cities, Ariminum (Rimini) and Bononia, this meant little change in the actual structures of government both over time and between towns.46 At both Ariminum and Bononia, municipal magistrates consisted of aediles, quaestores, decuriones, and duoviri; together these offices created a basic political homogeneity found throughout Italy that allowed and encouraged office-holding in neighboring cities by local elites.47 Similar municipal structures also meant that certain epigraphic abbreviations could be used and understood across the region; the use of abbreviations like L(ocus) D(atum) D(ecreto) D(ecurionum) could become standard only through the existence of standardized municipal magistracies over a broad area and for a long period of time.48 This is not to say that there were no differences in municipal government; Ariminum, for example, was divided into seven urban vici with Roman topographical names, like vicus Aventinus, while there is no evidence for a similar division at Bononia.49 Nevertheless, the basic and most important magistracies, as well as their correlation to the major magistracies at Rome, remained the same. One curator rei publicae is attested for Ariminum and none for Bononia, although as noted above the same curator rei publicae at Ariminum also served as curator for all the towns of Aemilia.50 The curatores viae Aemiliae and their contractors would have responsibility for Bononia’s main road, while within Ariminum’s territory the curatores viae Flaminiae should be added; with both cities the empire’s major concern was the maintenance of the important trunk roads. Taxes, and the relevant tax officials, were the same for both cities.
Nor do there seem to be any major discrepancies in their treatment by the emperor. Both towns received some imperial euergetism. In 53 CE, after a severe fire, a speech made on Bononia’s behalf by a young Nero netted the city a grant of 10 million sesterces, while Ariminum benefited from road work done on the Via Aemilia and the Via Flaminia, which terminated at the city, by Augustus and by Gaius Caesar.51 Smaller benefactions were also made on behalf of Ariminum by Domitian and Marcus Aurelius.52 Imperial benefactions seem to have been infrequent, but they had the potential, as in the case of Bononia, to be a substantial safety net; this latter kind of disaster relief was also given to Cremona after its sacking in 69 CE and the cities around the Bay of Naples after the eruption of Vesvusius.53 Thus while imperial benefactions were not frequent enough to make a substantial impact on daily life, they would be on hand in case of calamity.
More frequent than these forms of disaster relief were the edicts and decrees issued by the senate and emperor at Rome; how much would these decisions affect the local government and populace at Ariminum and Bononia? Claudius, for example, issued one edict banning anyone from traveling through the streets of Italian towns if not on foot, in a sedan, or in a litter.54 For towns like Ariminum and Bononia, both large towns with major roads running through their city centers, the potential impact of this edict, if enforced, would have been great. Other edicts that applied equally to Italy and the provinces had similar potential. For example, the edict preserved on the Tabula Siarensis, a copy of a senatorial decree granting honors to the dead Germanicus, decrees that a day of mourning be observed throughout the empire’s municipia, on which no weddings, shows, sales, or banquets be held.55 Together with civic and military calendars from Praeneste near Rome and Dura-Europos in Mesopotamia, the honors for Germanicus show how much local calendars reacted to honors decreed for the imperial family at Rome.56 Honors decreed at Rome needed to be enacted by local magistrates, and public holidays or days of mourning impacted daily life for people using the market, marrying, conducting business, or producing or enjoying entertainments—this would be nearly everyone in a municipium like Bononia or Ariminum and in their territories. Edicts issued from Rome sometimes came with the proviso that they be inscribed and displayed in visible places in towns in both Italy and the provinces, sometimes for a specified amount of time; this meant that the forums, town gates, and other public, frequently trafficked, highly visible places of Bononia and Ariminum were filled with visual reminders of the decisions of the imperial government, even if personal representatives of that government were few.57
In a different fashion damnationes memoriae also presented visual representations of the decisions of the central government; at Ariminum, Domitian’s name was erased from one building inscription in a negative reminder of state power that outlasted the removal of the late emperor’s statues from the Ariminum’s public areas.58 Actions such as damnatio memoriae were of course not specially mandated to Bononia or Ariminum but were instead meant to apply more broadly to the empire or occasionally just to Italy, but this broadly aimed legislation had the potential of affecting the otherwise undermanaged Bononia and Ariminum both frequently and substantially.
In theory the actions of the emperor and senate at Rome, even without a large support structure of imperial magistrates on the ground in municipalities like Bononia and Ariminum, could easily and often affect local governments and citizens. Yet how could these decisions be enforced? How well did the potential impact of imperial legislation correspond to actual impact? Petitioning imperial magistrates will have been one method; it was through complaint to various imperial officials that an imperial freedman having difficulty with the magistrates of Saepinum obtained redress.59 Accused of abusing the lessees of imperial flocks, the magistrates of Saepinum were sent a strongly worded letter by a prefect in Rome, who had been petitioned by imperial freedmen. The letter threatened investigation and then possible punishment if the magistrates did not desist from abusing the lessees.
The letter sent to the magistrates of Saepinum seems to have been sufficient, but what if threatening letters were not enough? Prosecution initiated by private individuals might then be in order. In 21 CE Cn. Domitius Corbulo complained that the mancipes of the curatores viarum were swindling the state and that some of Italy’s roads had been so neglected that they were now impassable; during the next eighteen years Corbulo initiated prosecutions against both the curatores viarum and the mancipes.60 The potential for prosecution by local rivals may have encouraged a town’s magistrates to enforce centrally issued regulations more rigorously. Although the number of imperial officials effectively prevented their active prosecution of decrees and edicts, these same decrees and edicts may have been self-policing, and at Ariminum and Bononia local magistrates could chose not to enforce imperial edicts only at risk of prosecution by others in their communities or at Rome. As such a magistrate at Ariminum under Claudius might be more responsive to complaints to people riding through the streets of Ariminum in wagons.
So at Ariminum and Bononia under the Early and High Empire we find a combination of consistently low number of imperial magistrates, a slate of imperial edicts enforced by complaints and prosecutions initiated not by officials but by private individuals, infrequent but potentially city-saving imperial benefactions, and a relative uniformity of political structures between towns. Yet Ariminum and Bononia were large towns, and their experience with the state might be claimed as exceptional, so an examination of smaller towns is thus in order.
For Faventia (Faenza) and Caesena (Cesena), two moderately sized towns on the Via Aemilia about halfway between Ariminum and Bononia, the relationship between town and government in Rome was remarkably similar.61 Like their neighbors at Bononia and Ariminum, both towns saw the same lack of imperial oversight and administration. Caesena had a curator later in the third century, and both were presumably overseen briefly by C. Arrius Antononius, the curator civitatum per Aemiliam under Marcus Aurelius.62 At the same time Antononius was overseeing the towns along the Aemilia, the Marcomanni were approaching the borders of northeastern Italy, both emperors were stationing themselves at Aquileia, and the future emperor Pertinax was made procurator of the alimenta in the Aemilia.63 The year 168 CE was anomalous, and Caesena and Faventia—along with their neighbors at Ariminum and Bononia—were in less exciting years left with strikingly little imperial administration. The curatores of the Via Aemilia minded the main road, and the procurators for the handful of taxes saw that their contractors brought in money from the sale of slaves and from inheritances. Both towns were also subject to the same tax rates as Bononia and Ariminum.
One difference in these smaller towns is that imperial benefactions seem to have been rarer in Caesena and Faventia than in their larger counterparts at Ariminum and Bononia. Towns like Faventia, especially those which—unlike a handful of other smallish towns, like Ilium—had no major claims of historical merit, were not large or important enough to attract a great imperial benefaction. In the case of a major disaster, these towns might, like those around the Bay of Naples after Vesuvius, have received some aid. Faventia also benefited from the general upkeep done by the central government on the Via Aemilia, which in the imperial period, as in the Republican, was the town’s main artery. Caesena received some imperial benefaction—the restoration of one structure by Hadrian is attested—although almost certainly not as much as its larger neighbors.64 That a town like Caesena received any benefactions at all is perhaps a sign of well-placed connections. The similarly sized town of Vicetia in Venetia had representatives or patrons in Rome able to oppose a local landowner’s request for a market, so it is not unreasonable to suppose the closer Caesena had similar connections at Rome.65 In this manner even a smaller town like Caesena still had some access to the infrequent imperial largesse bestowed on Italian towns, and in terms of their administration and overall treatment by the emperor and the imperial government, these moderately sized municipia had essentially the same relationship with the state as did Bononia and Ariminum. Here what mattered in their treatment by the state was their status as Italian towns; from this fact they received preferential treatment—in comparison with provincial communities—by the emperor, and this preferential treatment was shared fairly equally among Italian municipia.
Flaventia and Caesena also demonstrate well how much impact the state could have on the individual inhabitants of towns in which its representatives were largely absent. At Caesena the tomb of one Iunia Thallia and her husband bears a warning that anyone who should open the tomb should pay into the imperial treasury 60,000 sesterces.66 Such warnings were typical of the ancient Mediterranean, but the stipulation that the tomb violator pay to the fiscus implies that fines could be and were collected and sent; if this were not the case, then the threat would have been empty, and Iunia Thallia would have had better luck with the usual threats of divine retribution.67 This would mean that anyone wishing to punish the violator of a familial burial plot would have to know who to take their case to—a local magistrate, a patron, or any available imperial magistrate all might be tried—and that person had to have either the authority or connections to a person with sufficient authority to resolve the matter, collect the money, and have the money delivered to the imperial treasury. The efficacy of Iunia Thallia’s funerary imprecation thus relied on a system of personal and official connections between local authorities and the fiscus at Rome. For Iunia Thallia, the authority and perceived efficacy of the state were tools that could be used to protect the burial space of her familia; in this case the relationship between state and subject was at least partially reciprocal, for although Iunia Thallia was subject to imperial legislation like Claudius’s edict on wagons and paid inheritance taxes, she could also manipulate the local perception of the state to her own advantage.
For the young men of Faventia, the state also offered opportunities, especially in the form of the military. The army formed the main means of mobility across the empire as a whole, and veterans and soldiers from Faventia can be found buried at Viroconium in Britain, in Mogontiacum in Germany, Carnuntum in Pannonia, at Scardona in Dalmatia, and at Rome, where they served in the prestigious and lucrative Praetorian Guard.68 In contrast, Faventians abroad not associated with the state are rarer, even allowing for a more pronounced epigraphic habit in the army. Those Faventians not explicitly tied with the army still might have taken advantage of economic opportunities offered by military communities along the borders; this is probably the case with the fifty-year-old Faventian doctor commemorated in Moesia at Troesmis, a legionary base.69 Service in the legions under the empire was no small commitment; Titus Flaminius, the Faventian buried at Viroconium, served roughly half of his life in the legions. The C. Pomponius Severus, a veteran commemorated at Flaventia, had held a decurionate in Luceria in Apulia and a sevirate at Flaventia.70 Likewise, taking advantage of economic opportunities, as T. Rascanius Fortunatus the doctor at Troesmis did, also required serious life changes. Fortunatus was commemorated by two heirs, Rascania Phoebe and T. Rascanius Eutychus, which suggests either that his family accompanied him to Moesia or that he started a family there. Migration in the other direction was possible, too; one funerary marker at Caesena commemorates a Syrian veteran of the Ravenna fleet and his Syrian wife; the sole significant concentration of Roman troops in northern Italy, Ravenna was near enough to the southeastern Aemilia that men stationed there could and did develop connections with local towns.71 Even excluding atypical Ravenna, it is clear that the military, and the opportunities that Roman military communities provided, directly influenced the lives of those along the Via Aemilia; for Caesenan Iunia Thallia and Faventians Pomponius Severus and Rascanius Fortunatus, in particular, an absent Roman state was never entirely so.
This was the case for nearly all of northern Italy, since earlier distinctions between Italy north and south of the Po and between peninsular and continental Italy had disappeared with the Republic. The imperial administration of northern Italy, and indeed most of Italy outside of Rome, was both uniform and minimal. The next three chapters will explore further the effects of that system.