Administration of Cities

Local administration was done by the citizens themselves, by way of an honorific function (honor, honores) or a public duty (munus, munera).

Contemporary texts classify duties into those burdening the patrimony, those requiring personal exertion, and those demanding both. The first had to be done by all; the others could only be executed by men. A citizen was domiciled in his home-town and could be summoned for public duties there. Those who were merely resident (incolae), such as immigrant German barbarians, other foreigners, and citizens of other towns could be called for duties in the town of their residence as well as in their home-town. The major posts were reserved for the decurions. Being a duovir (mayor), quaestor, or quinquennalis was an honour, while other tasks were considered duties without status, such as being curator operisfaciendi, in charge of a public work, or guardianship. Sometimes there was a small municipal staff to assist, usually of scribes. Some duties were considered ‘dirty’ (sordidus) and probably only executed by the plebs. The same applied to all other duties, of which there were many. Local organization depended on citizens executing all kinds of tasks, done nowadays by specialized local services or contracted out by the community. For example, local landowners had to maintain the roads (munus sternendae viae). There were menial duties like cleaning irrigation channels or acting as night watchman (nuktophylax). By the beginning of the fourth century the levying of taxation had been added to the local administrative tasks. But honour or not, it had to be done and if there were not enough volunteers, it was imposed. This explains why as early as the second century we find rules on the imposition of these duties by the council or (presumably indirectly) by the governor.²⁹

Charges were assigned according to a finely tuned system of rules.

A citizen could offer himself voluntarily for a charge; often the retiring official nominated a candidate who could raise objections, such as not being rich enough to sustain the burden or the potential deficits or claims it involved, or propose a more suitable candidate. In the end the council would elect him (in which case he could appeal to the governor) or acknowledge his objection. The elected official would then either accept his duty or appeal to the provincial governor. Usually personal surety was required as well. At the end of his term there was a year within which claims against him on account of mismanagement could be raised. Completion of the duty brought a period of immunity from new charges. The lower duties were imposed in a similar procedure.

In the late third century in Oxyrhynchus a certain Ptolemaeus, son of a chief priest, was proposed for a second office, that of public banker. Previously another person, Pasion, had been nominated, but he was not rich enough. Ptolemaeus opposed his own nomination, saying: ‘I entreat you, I cannot serve. I am a man of moderate means. I live in my father’s house.’ And he said that two offices at the same time were too much. But the councillors said: ‘Upright, faithful Ptolemaeus’; and the result was that the exegetes said: ‘You elected him on account of his good faith.’³⁰ But was a son of a chief priest really of modest means? Was Ptolemaeus really pressed? Or did he merely feign modesty? Was it part of a ritual? And was there really no one else who could do the job? That could indeed have been the case, but if so it might have been coincidental and does not prove that it became difficult to fill posts.

Nevertheless, we do see a shift in the third and fourth centuries AD towards more pressure to perform duties. The cause is not clear. It is often assumed that enthusiasm for local public administration dwindled in these centuries.

The reality may have been more complicated. First, the situation will have differed from place to place. The welfare of one town may have declined, causing problems in its administration, while that of another increased. The towns of Africa, for instance, seem to have prospered well into the third century. In the second century AD, however, we already find imperial admonitions to replenish the councils with plebeians and illegitimate sons. That may indicate a shortage in candidates; but it may also indicate that councils tended to become oligarchies, like the senate, raising the standards for admission. So we find elaborate rules on such things as whether a son born to a decurion after his banishment counts as a decurion’s son: he is, if conceived before that; but if conceived afterwards, he is not.³¹ Other rules concern immunities, liability for other duties, and so on. The possibility of joining the imperial service, the army or (from the fourth century) the Church, with their immunity from civic charges, threatened the administration of towns. Rules were issued to counter the negative effects of this.

Much legislation, particularly in the late empire and transmitted in the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian, is about imposition of duties. Councillorship itself was now a duty that could be imposed. But this still does not exclude the possibility that there was a continuing public spirit: legislation of this kind would still be necessary if a minimal number of towns had used up their reserves. We may assume that normally the number of councillors would have been sufficient to ensure that the duties continued to be performed, with a reserve. Problems arise when the reserve is insufficient, although that still means that a proportion of public obligations is performed without difficulty. But we do not have numbers. As early as the second century a system of exemptions (excusationes), vacancies (vacationes), and immunities (immunitates) applied. A person who was called for a personal public office or duty could raise an exemption such as age or number of children and would be exempt for the period for which this exemption was applicable.

Performance of a duty itself gave rise to a ‘vacancy’, so that one was free of this and other personal duties for a certain period. Some were fortunate enough to avoid all such claims by virtue of an immunity granted as a privilege. (In practice, the distinction between these terms is not always strict.) So, for instance, Diocletian and Maximian granted students an exemption until their twenty-fifth birthday:

To Severinus and other law students from Arabia. Since you state that you are occupied in studying the liberal arts and especially law, while you are staying in the city of Berytus in the province of Phoenicia, we direct, taking into consideration the public good as well as your hopes, that none of you shall be called away from your studies until the age of twenty-five.³²

Understandably, immunities were sought after.

Mixed obligations, such as the decurionate, required both personal performance and capital. In this case lack of capital could provide an exemption. Women were by virtue of their sex unfit for public offices, with the exception of certain priesthoods. For public obligations which encumbered only patrimonies, on the other hand, there was no escape, whether for men or women, young or old: they had always to be per- formed,³³ unless another patrimonial duty excluded this, as in the case of those who had to run ships for the transportation of public goods, who did not have to be decurions.

Many tried to evade nominations, either because they were too burdensome or out of self-interest. All kinds of tricks were used. Thus registering as a colonus (that is, a subjected person) would - so it was hoped - make one unfit for the decurionate, which had to be exercised by unsubjected persons. But the emperors did not accept this and ordered the recall of the registration (‘every frustrative action based on privilege or birth status...

shall be barred’).³⁴ A curious way to escape was to cohabit with a slave woman: ‘Therefore, if... any man shall be found to have alienated his patrimony and have consigned it to the master of the slave woman, the municipal senate shall be permitted to make a diligent investigation.’³⁵ The precise scheme is unknown, but the decurion made himself financially ineligible by transferring his assets in trust to another (this will have involved sham sales and transfers) and his eventual future offspring ineligible owing to their birth status (assuming that the arrangement involved ultimately transferring his children to him, after which he could free them). The fact that the decurion transferred his assets to the slave’s master strongly suggests that it was not just a scheme for love affairs.

Another cause of shortage was the immunity provided by the Christian church. Some might want to become bishops, clerics, or lead a secluded life as monks. Joining the Church was of course not reprehensible, but some may simply have viewed it as an alternative but more agreeable career. The emperors tried to remedy this drain by providing that a decurion or curial who became a cleric had to surrender a quarter of his assets to the town council. The council could then make this property over to a curial who was otherwise too poor to become a decurion and to carry out duties. Still, the number of available people must have dwindled, and this in turn will have raised the burden for the others. Yet there will still have been people eager to fulfil these offices spontaneously, since they gave their incumbents the status of decurions and so provided a social ladder.

We find the same tendency with other public bodies which were set up during the second and early third centuries to ensure a steady supply of public distributions in the capitals (see Section 6). As with the town administrations, these bodies were supposed to run themselves with a great measure of independence.

As with the public charges mentioned already, most of the rules were concerned with keeping up the numbers of the public bodies and with conflicts with other public duties assigned to their members. But as membership of one body gave immunity from other duties, since the imperial service in both its civil and military branches likewise gave immunity, and since the decurions formed a reservoir of educated and moneyed people, it is possible that the drain on a common fund of human and financial capital grew too big, reserves became too thin, and that these problems were in the end generated by the system itself. The real challenge was the public duties system. One has therefore to read the texts in the Codes with care: they deal with problematic situations; the unproblematic ones are rarely mentioned, if at all.

Other charges such as cleaning channels or keeping watch at night, which were executed by the city plebs, were not coveted and a drain occurred here too. In the fourth century we find the formation of groups (collegia) of plebeians responsible for such ‘dirty’ tasks. These groups were replenished by the children of members (collegiati) according to the origo principle. Membership of such a group was a munus and it was enforced.

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Source: Johnson David (ed). The Cambridge companion to Roman Law. Cambridge University Press,2015. — 554 p.. 2015

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