Provincial and out-of-town advocates

Not all the advocates found in the courtrooms of Rome were residents of the city. Above, we have discussed possible occasions when litigants from out of town may have employed an advocate upon reaching the city.

The evidence unsurprisingly places advocates from the provinces most often in the court of the emperor or the senate.¹⁶⁵ The problem when examin­ing the participation of provincial advocates in the emperor's court is that it is often difficult to determine the advocate's exact role. Was he present merely as a member of a delegation or embassy, chosen by the provincials solely because he was an articulate speaker? Or does his presence prove that the hearing was not an embassy, but an actual legal hearing in which he had been chosen to represent the province or community?¹⁶⁶

Advocates came from numerous locations to argue cases in the emperor's court. In an honorific inscription, M. Gavius Gallicus of Attaleia is lauded for arguing a number of cases for his city, as well as others, before the court of the emperor.¹⁶⁷ An Ephesian advocate, of unknown name, acted as both delegate and advocate before the emperors Severus and Caracalla at Rome on several occasions, and on one occasion represented the whole ethnos of Asia.¹⁶⁸ Both of these individuals apparently travelled to Rome to undertake specific cases on behalf of their clients. That both also made repeat appearances is of further interest. Does this mean that cities or provincial councils had advocates “on the payroll” whom they would send, or only that these advocates were the leading practitioners at home and thus were repeatedly approached to under­take cases of importance to the whole community?¹⁶⁹ Since we find advocates working for the treasury, it is not a great leap to suggest that provincial coun­cils or large communities also kept advocates on staff.¹⁷⁰

The above examples provide convincing evidence of provincials serving as advocates in Rome.

From such information, what conclusions can we draw? The problems encountered here perhaps indicate the unique nature of the courtroom of the emperor. He was not bound to follow specific rules of law or a mandate given to him by an overseeing praetor. In addition, his court could deal with practi­cally every issue. Also, the environment may have been less formal and structured than that found in the other courts of Rome. That advocates appeared in this court on behalf of their cities and provinces suggests that the litigants or petitioners realised the importance of having a forceful speaker present their case; whether the matter took the actual form of a legal hearing per se is perhaps of little importance.¹⁷⁵ Conversely, the repercussions of not employing capable public speakers to present one's case or petition before the emperor could be disastrous.

We can perhaps identify one occasion when an advocate considered taking a case for a litigant and going to Rome to argue it. Martial protests to a liti­gant, who has appeared early one morning at the doorway of his house in Spain, that he will not take his case. Since he had left Rome to get away from the hustle and bustle, he was not about to resume advocacy at that time.¹⁷⁸ While the epigram does not spell out that the case was in Rome, Martial's ref­erence to the city twice suggests that the litigant wished him to take a case that had to be heard there. From the litigant's point of view, Martial was a prudent choice: he had argued at least one case before; he likely was a good public speaker, since he had obvious control of the Latin language and per­haps had given public readings; perhaps most importantly, he was comfortable with Rome, having lived there for many years, and would not have been disconcerted by arguing a case in the city's courts. Martial appar­ently was not so convinced.

As if our lack of information concerning provincial advocates were not frustrating enough, we know still less of advocates who came to Rome from other locations in Italy for specific cases. The vadimonia tablets surviving from Puteoli and Herculaneum show us only a small sample of the cases that must have been pouring into Rome from all over the peninsula, in addition to all the cases, year after year, from the empire as a whole.¹⁷⁹ Yet we do not hear of any advocates from out of town. Above I proposed that litigants hired advocates once they arrived in the city, but I did not suggest this was the only option. We tend to forget that many members of the upper classes spent time in the country at estates near their hometowns; thus, advocates in Rome had connections through family, friends, even others who lived in the same town. The cost of travel, as well as the time involved in both travelling and possibly awaiting the actual hearing date, probably discouraged most litigants, even those of substantial means, from bringing their own represen­tation from home. Perhaps these alternative methods of acquiring advocates in the city, in addition to the chance survival of our sources, help to account for this disappointing omission.