CENTRE/PERIPHERY?

How the Roman Empire is seen depends on the viewpoint one adopts. In recent studies the options regarding this issue have tended to be reduced to a centre/periphery dichotomy. To illustrate this I would like to present some examples from the more balanced judgments found in the scholarship.

In a similar vein, Michael Peachin describes the effects of the appoint­ment of deputy emperors: “For no longer would the person of the emperor seem to matter so much as would the position, the institution itself. What our judges made clear is that the emperor had become no longer so important to the daily routine as an emperor.”³ In essence, he is outlining a bureaucratic system in the Weberian sense, a separation of person and position, a hierar­chical administrative structure.

In contrast, to represent the viewpoint of the periphery, I have selected Stolte and Woolf. In a recent article, Bernard Stolte described the scene of Emperor Caracalla accompanied by the praetorian prefects and the whole imperial entourage, adjudicating a case involving some villagers from rural Syria: “The emperor has to be accessible to his subjects, who may approach him for the purpose of arbitration and adjudication and for whom he is the ultimate authority. Jurisdiction, in other words, is to them a representation of his power.”⁴ The emperor here plays the part of “the good king”, and the

2 S Corcoran, The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government, ad 284­324, 2nd edn (2000) 293, 295.

3 M Peachin, ludex vice Caesaris: Deputy Emperors and the Administration of Justice during the Principate (1996) 203.

4 B Stolte, “Jurisdiction and representation of power, or, the emperor on circuit”, in L de Blois, P Erdkamp, O Hekster, G de Kleijn and S Mols (eds), The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power: Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the International Network Impact act of adjudication is a display of his sovereign power instead of business as usual.

In his book on provincial Gaul, Becoming Roman, Greg Woolf described how the Roman way of life was actively sponsored and readily accepted by provincials in a sort of civilising process: “The governor's role was probably more to promote and guide the efforts of locals to civilize themselves and perhaps also to provide models for their civilizing projects.”^{[69] [70] The Romans exported a humanitas of learning, culture, institutions and laws; Roman laws followed after the Roman identity in a voluntary process of assimilation.}

These examples highlight the contradiction between the ambitions of the centre and the experience of the periphery. The machinery of administration is juxtaposed with the elusive transmissions of culture, and the bureaucratic literary communication is contrasted with the personal and oral unofficial communication.

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