PRESERVING ANCESTRAL LAWS AT APHRODISIAS

The key question that arises in this context, which has dominated the scholarly discussion since Mitteis, is whether this change was in any sense a direct conse­quence of the Constitutio Antoniniana, and, if so, what its role was in that process.^[88] It needs to be addressed on a regional basis, and the usual division between the western part of the Empire and the Greek East does not suffice.^[89] The situation in the provinces of Asia Minor, with its patchwork of community privileges, “provin­cial laws” and governors’ edicts, and still-vigorous local law, could be very differ­ent not only from that in the municipalised parts of the Latin West, but also from Egypt with its very recent civic institutions, Sicily with its more systematic ap­proach to the division between Roman and civic jurisdictions, or Palestine, where Jewish communal jurisdiction was put on a level with private arbitration.^[90]

In his recent monumental treatment of jurisdiction and legal procedure in Ro­man Greece and Asia Minor in the Early Empire, Julien Fournier extends his ac­count to AD 235 and takes almost no notice of the Constitutio Antoniniana, which barely gets a mention in the introduction.^[91] While this could be open to some criti­cism on methodological grounds and Fournier’s particular cut-off date is somewhat too arbitrary, there are good reasons for this approach as far as the region he is deal­ing with is concerned.

Modrzejewski in his discussion of Menander of Laodicea’s evidence, referred to above, was first to raise the problem of comparison with a remarkable piece of evidence from Aphrodisias, then only recently uncovered by Joyce Reynolds: a re­sponse of Gordian III to a certain Epaphras (who was likely representing the city, as he does not seem to be the defendant in this legal case, or the defendant’s advocate).^[92] The substantive part of the emperor’s decision is worth quoting in full: “Any deci­sion about the laws of your native city that has been made by the reverend council of the Senate and those of the emperors who have been deified it would be proper for me too to preserve for your native city on the same terms.

The wording is quite unambiguous: not only does Aphrodisias preserve its well-attested right to try its own citizens in its own courts, which is overwhelmingly likely to be the meaning of the emperor’s reference to remitting the case “to the proper court,” we also get a direct reference to “the laws” of Aphrodisias still being valid and endorsed by the highest imperial authority three decades after the grant of citizenship.^[94] What is more, the particular legal case that necessitated this imperial intervention appears to have been taking place in Rome or its near vicinity, as it fell within the jurisdiction of the urban prefect.^[95] It was not simply a case of allowing minor cases in Aphrodisias itself to be tried in the city itself, in the manner of a Ro­man municipium (the direction toward which Mitteis assumed civic jurisdiction developed in the third century).^[96] Nor was it the case that Roman law acted as an enabling mechanism here, and all Aphrodisians, like the privileged individual re­cipients of Roman citizenship in the first century BC, could now make their own choice between Roman and local jurisdiction.^[97] Community privileges still trumped individual preferences at least in some cases (perhaps causae pecuniariae, to which Aphrodisian jurisdiction over non-members of the community was already limited by the reign of Hadrian). Gordian’s boast that he is preserving the city’s rights “on the same terms” as the previous emperors was actually not an empty one.^[98]

The situation envisaged here does not seem to be the one described by Peter Garnsey in his important recent attempt to summarise decades of debate on the impact of the Constitutio Antoniniana, when he suggests that “Roman law did not eliminate Hellenic and other local law, although that law was reduced to the status of custom.”^[99] While such a description can perhaps be applied to the situation in Ephesus as seen through the proconsular letter mentioned above, something more seems to be happening at Aphrodisias: neither Epaphras nor the emperor himself appear to be thinking in terms of mere “customs” which modify minor points of imperial law or apply where the latter is silent.

Nor, it would seem, should we put too much stress on the fact that Polydoros is not given the gentilicium Aurelius, and assume on that basis that Aphrodisias (no­toriously placed “outside the formula prouinciae”) was somehow excluded from Caracalla’s grant.^{[100] [101] The petitioner himself is named in the inscription’s preamble as Aurelius Epaphras, and the emperor’s failure to mention Polydoros' gentilicium need not be attributed to anything beyond shifting chancery practices. Other in­scriptions from Aphrodisias amply testify that the Aphrodisians were in no way excluded from taking up Roman citizenship, certainly not by the reign of Gor­dian III.}

3.