The division in provinces of the Roman Empire

Each year, senators decided the tasks that would be divided among the new consuls and praetors. After the election, the new consuls cast lots to determine the consular assign¬ment each would have, while the new praetors shared out their tasks in the same fashion. Alternatively, the members of each group also had the right to determine assignments by mutual agreement before lots were cast, a process known as com¬paratio. Romans believed the casting of lots to reflect the will of the gods; this method also avoided contentious debates in the senate as rival magistrates sought to convince their fellow senators to give them the most attractive assignments.

Roman officials abroad often had considerable freedom of action to wage war, make alliances, and set the terms of peace perhaps greater freedom than many senators found desirable. In practice, most sanctions took the form of judgments on a magistrate’s actions after he had returned to Rome and left office. Even so, the senate sometimes refused to accept treaties that a commander had negotiated, leaving his successor to establish new arrangements. On several occasions, senatorial decrees sought to force officials to free defeated enemies who had been improperly enslaved, but efforts to remedy such injustices were seldom wholly successful. The most persistent problem, however, concerned charges of extortion and corruption. In the late third and second centuries, prosecutions for official misconduct, such as cowardice, incompetence, and corruption, served as the primary means of controlling an official’s behavior in office.This said, such prosecutions could only take place after an official had returned to Rome and laid down his office.

Engagement beyond Italy grew steadily during the second century, but still this extension of Roman power and influence developed very unevenly and with

much variation, as officials and senate responded to events. The creation of "provinces" was the main vehicle for Roman expansion. In modern English, a province usually denotes a subdivision of a larger state or country with well defined borders and a capital of its own; today, a state’s creation of a province often involves the formal subordination of the territory and its reorganization according to a definite plan. In time, the Latin term provincia would gain this meaning too, but for long it did not denote anything so fixed or definite. In the late third and early second centuries, and probably earlier, the term merely denoted the sphere of operations given to a Roman official, defined by task and location. In theory, colleagues in office all possessed the same powers and functions, but in practice they were usually expected to exercise them separately. Some served at the same place, but had different provinciae: Of the two praetors who usually remained in Rome, one, known as the "urban" praetor, was assigned the supervision of lawsuits between citizens, while the other, called the "peregrine" praetor, handled disputes involving noncitizens. Consuls and praetors who were assigned the command of armies as their provincia typically campaigned in different regions, although in large scale conflicts more than one could be assigned the same region and they then had to share authority somehow.

Provinciae could be short lived and ill defined, although their number at any one time could never exceed the total of available consuls, praetors, and promagistrates. In some cases, officials were assigned provinciae that remained in existence only for a single project, campaign, or war. In others, provinciae remained in existence for some time, receiving new officials as soon as the previous ones left office. Aconsul’s or praetor’s provincia was primarily military in character. Equally, a governor’s actions were largely shaped by his need to command his and his allies’ army against Rome’s enemies, to protect friendly cities from attack, and to obtain the money and supplies needed to support his forces. Gradually, in the longer lasting provinces, governors took on other tasks, such as arbitrating disputes between cities, hearing legal cases, and supervising financial arrangements.

The Roman elite did not believe its leadership to be restricted to the regions more or less well defined where Rome happened to be maintaining provinciae. Whenever a community surrendered or put itself under Rome’s protection, mag-istrates and senate thought that it thereby became part of the imperium of the Ro-man people (imperium populi Romani). Although this word is the root of the English "empire," the Latin term does not denote a clearly delimited territory, nor does it imply any administrative responsibilities by the victors or prescribed duties by the defeated. As was the case with the imperium of magistrates, the Roman leadership considered that it had the right to command the defeated and to be respected by them, even though it did not necessarily make such demands very often.