‘‘Senatorial’’ Provinces:
An Institutionalized Ghost
*InMemoriamRonaldSyme
As the fiftieth anniversary of the publication ofThe Roman Revolutionap-
proaches, a renewed interest has been felt in the very profound ‘‘revolu-
tion’’referredto,whichwithextraordinaryspeedtransformedtheexercise
ofpower,thefunctionsoftheorgansoftheres publica(allofwhich,insome
senseatleast,survived),thenatureandaccessibilityoftheRomancitizen-
ship,andtheperceptiononthepartofthepeoplesoftheEmpireastowhat
was the nature of the political system within which they lived.Thevivid,
but nonetheless ambivalent, reflection of the new order in what we label
‘‘Augustan’’ literature also remains a fruitful, if treacherous, field of study.
Butthemostimportantnewlightonthisgreattransformationhascertainly
comefromthedemonstrationofthewhollynew‘‘language’’ofRomanart
andarchitectureprovidedbythemajorbookof PaulZanker,Augustus und
die Macht der Bilder(),theJeromeLecturesof–,translatedasThe
Power of Images in the Age of Augustus().WecansafelysaythatAugustan
Romewillneverlookthesameagain.
In the face of this other Roman ‘‘revolution,’’ it may seem perverse to
gobacktooneofthosedryandtediousquestionsofconstitutionaltermi-
nology which are calculated to recall all too clearly the sterile debates on
thenicetiesof‘‘theAugustanconstitution,’’whichusedtobesocommonin
learnedjournals.Nonetheless,Ihopethatitcanbeprovedthattheexercise
isilluminating.Foritshows,firstly,howmodernscholarshaveimposedon
theancientevidenceanitemofterminology,‘‘thesenatorialprovinces’’(‘‘die
senatorischenProvinzen’’)forwhichtheancientsourcesthemselvesoffernot
theslightestjustification.Secondly,wemayrecallthatithaslongsincebeen
demonstrated that the supposed division into ‘‘Imperial’’ and ‘‘Senatorial’’
*FirstpublishedinAncient World():–.