GOVERNMENT WITHOUT BUREAUCRACY 37him, of whom the most important were also of senatorial status ( legati
Augusti ).
The organization of personnel was somewhat different in those provinces
under the emperor’s control, but the numbers involved were no greater. In
the major provinces, with the exception of Egypt, the emperor appointed a
legate to govern in his stead from among the ex- praetors and ex- consuls,
while the responsibility for fi nance fell to a procurator rather than a quaestor,
an equestrian rather than a senator. Another group of provinces was
governed by equestrian appointees, again responsible directly to the emperor.
Foremost among these was Egypt, controlled by a prefect and lesser
equestrian offi cials, and the only province with legions to be regularly
governed by an equestrian.^5 The other equestrian provinces were small
enough to be run by a procurator, who heard legal cases, managed fi nancial
affairs and commanded auxiliary units of the army, if any were assigned to
the province.
The number of offi cials of senatorial rank employed in the provinces
experienced no signifi cant increase in our period. In the late fi rst century and
early second century we begin to hear of offi cials with judicial responsibilities,
but this was clearly not an empire- wide or a permanent phenomenon. Two
jurists are known to have held the post of iuridicus in Britain in the last
decades of the fi rst century, and one man with no special qualifi cations, the
future emperor Septimius Severus, was apparently iuridicus in one of the
Spanish provinces in about AD 177. Hadrian is said to have appointed four
iudices of consular rank for Italy. In later reigns these were renamed or
superseded by iuridici. Italy, not offi cially a province, was traditionally
controlled by the consuls and the senate, but by the late second century
jurisdiction in Italy as in Rome had been taken over by other offi cials more
closely associated with the emperor. The urban prefect of the city of Rome,
a senior senator, had jurisdiction up to the one hundredth milepost, and
beyond this, the praetorian prefect, a high- placed equestrian offi cial. The
iuridici fi t into the picture as subordinate judicial magistrates; their
emergence in Italy is one of several signs that Italy was losing its special
status and being gradually brought into line with the provinces of the
empire.^6
From the same period, the late fi rst century AD , city curators ( curatores rei
publicae ) begin to be appointed in some cities with fi nancial responsibilities.
Again, the curators are likely to have been employed only to a limited extent,
and the post was far from being the exclusive property of senators.^7
It was in the equestrian administration that the greatest changes took
place, not only growth but also the unifi cation of disparate elements into a
single hierarchy. In the empire at large one development was the appointment
of equestrians to govern Egypt and several minor provinces. In the latter
such offi cials had at fi rst a military title, prefect, and predominantly military
duties. Their appointment and their brief is testimony to the determination
of the emperors to bring to heel hitherto unsubjugated peoples within their