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Procurator (plural: Procuratores [1] ) was a title of certain officials (not magistrates) in ancient Rome who were in charge of the financial affairs of a province, or imperial governor of a minor province. [2]
A fiscal procurator (procurator Augusti) was the chief financial officer of a province during the Principate (30 BC – AD 284). A fiscal procurator worked alongside the legatus Augusti pro praetore (imperial governor) of his province but was not subordinate to him, reporting directly to the emperor. The governor headed the civil and judicial administration of the province and was the commander-in-chief of all military units deployed there. The procurator, with his own staff and agents, was in charge of the province's financial affairs, including the following primary responsibilities: [3]
The office of fiscal procurator was always held by an equestrian, unlike the office of governor, which was reserved for members of the higher senatorial order. [5] The reason for the dual administrative structure was to prevent excessive concentration of power in the hands of the governor, as well as to limit his opportunities for peculation. It was not unknown for friction to arise between governors and procurators over matters of jurisdiction and finance. [6]
A procurator Augusti (often called the Praesidial Procurator, i.e., a garrison- or troop-commanding procurator), however, might also be the governor of the smaller imperial provinces (i.e., those provinces whose governor was appointed by the emperor, rather than the Roman Senate). The same title was held by the fiscal procurators, who assisted governors of the senatorial provinces, who were always senators.
In addition, procurator was the title given to various other officials in Rome and Italy. [7]
After the mid-first century, as a result of the Pax Romana, the provinces previously governed by prefects, who were military men, were gradually moved into the hands of procurators, who were essentially civilian fiscal officials. Egypt, as the special private domain of the emperor, which was administered by a Praefectus Augustalis, remained the exception. [8] This transfer created some confusion among scholars dealing with Pontius Pilate, governor of Judaea, who was often thought to have been a procurator, until the excavation of the inscribed so-called Pilate Stone, which proved his title was prefect. [9]
The Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals, book 15, chapter 44.
Sextus Varius Marcellus was a Roman aristocrat and politician from the province of Syria. He was father of the emperor Elagabalus.
The Roman provinces were the administrative regions of Ancient Rome outside Roman Italy that were controlled by the Romans under the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. Each province was ruled by a Roman appointed as governor.
Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the northern, eastern and central territories of modern Spain along with modern northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia, was the province of Hispania Baetica. On the Atlantic west lay the province of Lusitania, partially coincident with modern-day Portugal.
A legate was a high-ranking Roman military officer in the Roman army, equivalent to a high-ranking general officer of modern times. Initially used to delegate power, the term became formalised under Augustus as the officer in command of a Roman legion.
The equites constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. A member of the equestrian order was known as an eques.
Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 641. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, later Arabia Petraea, to the East.
The Dominate, also known as the late Roman Empire, is the despotic form of imperial government of the late Roman Empire. It followed the earlier period known as the Principate. Until the empire was reunited in 313, this phase is more often called the Tetrarchy.
Fiscus was the treasury of the Roman Empire. It was initially the personal wealth of the emperors, funded by taxation on the imperial provinces, assumption of estates and other privileges. By the third century it was understood as a state fund rather than a personal one, albeit under the emperor's control. It is the origin of the English term "fiscal."
The practices of ancient Roman finance, while originally rooted in Greek models, evolved in the second century BC with the expansion of Roman monetization. Roman elites engaged in private lending for various purposes, and various banking models arose to serve different lending needs.
Judaea was a Roman province from 6 to 132 AD, which incorporated the Levantine regions of Idumea, Philistia, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, extending over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Judea. The name Judaea was derived from the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah, that was centered predominantly in Judea.
Praefectus, often with a further qualification, was the formal title of many, fairly low to high-ranking, military or civil officials in the Roman Empire, whose authority was not embodied in their person but conferred by delegation from a higher authority. They did have some authority in their prefecture, such as controlling prisons and in civil administration.
A Roman governor was an official either elected or appointed to be the chief administrator of Roman law throughout one or more of the many provinces constituting the Roman Empire.
In the Late Roman Empire, usually dated 284 AD to 641 AD, the regional governance district known as the Roman or civil diocese was made up of a grouping of provinces each headed by a Vicarius, who were the representatives of praetorian prefects. There were initially twelve dioceses, rising to fourteen by the end of the 4th century.
Gaius Furius Sabinius Aquila Timesitheus was an officer of the Roman Imperial government in the first half of the 3rd century. Most likely of Oriental-Greek origins, he was a Roman citizen, probably of equestrian rank.
In the early Roman Empire, from 30 BC to AD 212, a peregrinus was a free provincial subject of the Empire who was not a Roman citizen. Peregrini constituted the vast majority of the Empire's inhabitants in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In AD 212, all free inhabitants of the Empire were granted citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana, with the exception of the dediticii, people who had become subject to Rome through surrender in war, and freed slaves.
Lucius Petronius Taurus Volusianus was a Roman citizen, apparently of equestrian origins, whose career in the Imperial Service in the mid-Third Century AD carried him from a relatively modest station in life to the highest public offices and senatorial status in a very few years. He may have secured his first appointments before the Licinian Dynasty – – acceded to the Empire in 253 AD, but it was in the course of their reign that his upward progress achieved an almost unprecedented momentum and the second factor seems to have been a consequence of the first. The nature of his relationship to the Licinii is uncertain, but it seems likely that a common origin in the Etruscan region of central Italy at least predisposed Gallienus in his favour and he seems to have been that emperor's most trusted servant and adviser during the period of his sole reign - 260(?)-268 AD.
The constitution of the late Roman Empire was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down, mainly through precedent, which defined the manner in which the late Roman Empire was governed. As a matter of historical convention, the late Roman Empire emerged from the Roman Principate, with the accession of Diocletian in AD 284, his reign marking the beginning of the Tetrarchy. The constitution of the Dominate outrightly recognized monarchy as the true source of power, and thus ended the facade of dyarchy, in which emperor and Senate governed the empire together.
Publius Aelius Aelianus was a senior officer in the Imperial Roman army in the mid-3rd century AD who rose from lowly origins to become the prefect of a legion under Emperor Gallienus. He was one of the earliest beneficiaries of Gallienus's policy that effectively excluded senators from army commands in favour of career-soldiers of equestrian rank. His later life is obscure.
A legatus Augusti pro praetore was the official title of the governor or general of some Imperial provinces of the Roman Empire during the Principate era, normally the larger ones or those where legions were based. Provinces were denoted imperial if their governor was selected by the emperor, in contrast to senatorial provinces, whose governors were elected by the Roman Senate.
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