Bradley Jordan

The magister equitum, a subordinate to the Roman dictator during the Roman Republic, has been little studied to-date, in part due to the scattered and antiquarian nature of the evidence. This book addresses this gap by providing a definitive description and analysis of the office, focusing on three core questions: first, and most importantly, what were the powers and role of the office?; second, what senatorial rank did the magister equitum have?; finally, how did the magister equitum evolve under the first century BCE dictators, Sulla and Caesar? The book engages with recent advances in understanding the constitutional foundations and development of the Republican state to re-assess the role played by the office and its occupants in crucial moments of Roman history. It argues that the magister equitum was, and was understood by Romans to be, a central and significant part of the Roman Republican constitution.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111339979/html

What ambitions lay behind Roman provincial governance? How did these change over time and in response to local conditions? To what extent did local agents facilitate and contribute to the creation of imperial administrative institutions? The answers to these questions shape our understanding of how the Roman empire established and maintained hegemony within its provinces. This issue of imperial hegemony is particularly acute for the period during which the political apparatus of the Roman Republic was itself in crisis and flux—precisely the period during which many provinces first came under Roman control.

Imperial Power, Provincial Government, and the Emergence of Roman Asia, 133 BCE-14 CE uses a case study of the province of Asia to focus closely on the formation and evolution of the Roman empire's administrative institutions. Comparatively well-excavated, Asia's rich epigraphy lends itself to this detailed study, while the region's long history of autonomous civic diplomacy and engagement with a range of Roman actors provide vital evidence for assessing the ways in which Roman empire and hegemony affected conditions on the ground in the province. Asia's unique history, moving from allied kingdom to regularly assigned provincia to a reconquered and reorganized territory, offers an insight into the complex workings of institutional formation.

From an investigation of the institutions which emerged in the province over a long first century (133 BCE-14 CE), Bradley Jordan considers the discursive power of official utterances of the Roman state, and the strategies employed by local actors to negotiate a favourable relationship with the empire.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/imperial-power-provincial-government-and-the-emergence-of-roman-asia-133-bce-14-ce-9780198887065?prevNumResPerPage=20&prevSortField=1&sortField=8&resultsPerPage=20&start=0&lang=en&cc=no#

The magister equitum was an irregular magistrate, integrally linked to the dictator, during the Roman Republic. It was a subordinate position but one which entailed representing the most powerful magistrate in the Republican framework, as well as playing a key role at critical moments for the Roman state. The sources stress the position’s origins as the commander of the archaic Roman cavalry, first attested in the consular year 501 bce, and in Republican historiography magistri equitum are attested as subordinate commanders in the field and as lieutenants in absence of the dictator. The magister equitum held imperium and likely auspicium and played an important role in Republican historiography and the history of the late Republic.

This paper reassesses the early administration of provincia Asia, investigating the extent to which exploitation by the res publica and magistrates was ‘institutionalised’ during the Late Republic. I question the degree to which the initial organisation of the new province was based on principles of revenue maximisation, suggesting that the tax burden on cities was originally light. I suggest that the creation of the Asian tax-farm, as famously described by Cicero, and the institution of systemic exploitation in the province were the incidental by-products of Sulla’s personal concerns in the aftermath of the First Mithridatic war. Finally, I explore how this transformation reflected back onto the Roman practice of government during the late Republic.

This paper investigates how, during the late Republic, discourses of Roman administration impacted the agency of poleis in western Asia Minor and how these communities responded to Roman hegemony. I argue that the diversity of Roman administrative languages hindered the development of a single framework for managing relations with cities. In response, poleis innovated: while honorific decrees remained an important means of establishing reciprocal relationships with individual Romans, managing local attitudes became more significant as Roman rule developed. Local agents helped to construct empire by framing Roman discourses for internal audiences.

This paper aims to show how local civic communities, nominally subject to the Seleucid dynasts, integrated Roman magistrates into an existing framework of authority during the late second and early first centuries BCE. I argue that as Roman magistrates played an increasingly significant role in the region, cities initially framed them in quasi-regal terms, which their interlocutors consciously accepted. Through a close reading of two Roman letters to the Cilician city of Mopsuestia, dated to 87 BCE (SEG 44.1227), and analysis of literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence for the final collapse of Seleucid authority in the early 60s BCE, I reveal that this was a locally driven process. Consequently, local agents played a critical role in both legitimising Roman hegemony in local contexts and encouraging Roman intervention within the region.

Available OA at: https://brill.com/view/journals/mnem/75/3/article-p483_6.xml

This paper examines the developments in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BCE in the context of developments concerning the allocation of the consular provinciae of that year. It argues that the consuls, M. Antonius and P. Cornelius Dolabella, initially sought compromise with the conspirators, and the passage of the lex de permutatione provinciarum on the Kalends of June represents a genuine turning point. The historical implications of its provisions led to increasing hostility, and ultimately the Mutinian War. Last, but not least, this paper seeks to demonstrate the integral role of C. Octavius in prompting this consequential change in attitude.

The designation of C. Octavius as magister equitum by C. Iulius Caesar (cos. 59, 48–44) is an event which is surprisingly, given its significance, often overlooked by scholars. Ronald Syme’s monumental treatment of the transition from Republic to Principate, The Roman Revolution, failed to comment on the issue; Christian Meier only noted the event in his 5th edition, after a review by Ernst Badian highlighted what the latter thought a notable omission. Remarkably few scholars have concerned themselves with rejecting the reconstruction of the fasti consulares Capitolini by Carolus Sigonius, and retained by Attilio Degrassi, which inserts this office into a lacuna in the stone for the consular year 44. However, this tentative restoration is on the basis of three contradictory accounts, those of Appian, Dio and Pliny the Elder: there is more than a little doubt over the veracity of the tradition. There are substantial implications for our understanding Caesar’s relationship with Octavius, and vice versa, in either instance, a full reassessment of this issue seems necessary. As such, this article seeks to answer two distinct but related questions: was Octavius
designated magister equitum in 44, and did his name appear on the fasti Capitolini for that year?