Official Power and Local Elites in the Roman Provinces

Presenting a new and revealing overview of the ruling classes of the Roman Empire, this volume explores aspects of the relations between the official state structures of Rome and local provincial elites. The central objective of the volume is to present as complex a picture as possible of the provincial leaderships and their many and varied responses to the official state structures. The perspectives from which issues are approached by the contributors are as multiple as the realities of the Roman world: from historical and epigraphic studies to research of philological and linguistic interpretations, and from architectural analyses to direct interpretations of the material culture. While some local potentates took pride in their relationship with Rome and their use of Latin, exhibiting their allegiances publicly as well as privately, others preferred to keep this display solely for public manifestation. These complex and complementary pieces of research provide an in-depth image of the power mechanisms within the Roman state. The chronological span of the volume is from Rome’s Republican conquest of Greece to the changing world of the fourth and fifth centuries AD, when a new ecclesiastical elite began to emerge.

Rada Varga is Junior Researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania, and holds a PhD in Ancient History (awarded in 2012, summa cum laude). Her scholarly interests are focused on Roman social history, epigraphy and demography. She has a particular interest in digital epigraphy and ancient population reconstruction/prosopography.

Viorica Rusu-Bolindeț is Senior Researcher at the National History Museum of Transylvania, Romania. She holds a PhD in Ancient History (awarded in 2001) and her main scholarly interests are centred on the economic life of the Lower Danube provinces. Her book Ceramica romana de la Napoca received the Romanian Academy’s Excellence Prize in 2007.