The Empire: Government by Petition

Sources

Special Requests. The Republican government was not a particularly proactive one. Its weak systems of information-gathering and administration and short terms of office made planning and anticipation difficult. Still, individuals might sometimes try to adopt farseeing policies to increase their own domestic patronage or military glory. The incentives for such individual innovations dropped under the Empire, without much growth in the state apparatus. The emperor could make new laws by various devices including direct decree. Yet, most imperial decrees came in the form of decisions on appeals or other such petitions. It has been argued that this situation illustrates the basic operation of the imperial government in general: the emperor (and his staff) received requests, from both subordinates and private citizens, and responded to them. Sometimes the decisions were broader than absolutely necessary to settle the issue presented, but most imperial action was in reaction to a specific outside request. The most famous instance of public policy being set this way is probably Pliny’s correspondence with the emperor Trajan in the early second century c.e. on the treatment of Christians in Pliny’s province in Asia Minor (Letters 10.96–7). Trajan directed him to take a “moderate” course on the persecution of Christians, but the important point is that Pliny had to ask. The policy did not begin in Rome, but on the periphery.

Sources

Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome, 31 B.C.-A.D. 476 (New York: Scribners, 1985).

Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 B.C.-A.D. 337) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).