UCLA

This dissertation studies the exercise of Roman power over provincial subjects as represented in the works of the historian Tacitus. The focus of my study is on Tacitus’s imperialist ideology, rather than on the relationship between the depiction of provincial affairs in his works and historical reality. I examine how Tacitus sets out a hierarchical relationship between the Italian center and the provincial periphery, and ask how this conception of empire could accommodate the growing political power of provincials in the first century CE. The first two chapters of my study trace the comparison which Tacitus’s texts draw between Roman rule over the provinces and enslavement. Examining the Agricola’s account of conquest and administration in Britain, and then the narratives of provincial revolt in the Histories and Annals, I argue that the metaphor of enslavement depicts Roman rule as the imposition of control and civilization over dangerous and wild barbarians and therefore relates to Tacitus’s advocacy of conquest for the overlapping objectives of honor and security. My study then discusses institutions that allowed provincials themselves to exercise power, and considers how the historian reconciles them with the hierarchical conception of Roman rule over the provinces laid out in the first two chapters. My third chapter focuses upon Tacitus’s accounts of trials in which provincials sued their former governors for the recovery of stolen money. I conclude that the historian’s accounts are primarily concerned to defend senatorial jurisdiction over these trials as part of his larger advocacy of the liberty of senators to operate in the provinces without imperial interference. My final chapter examines how Tacitus’s texts depict the contentious process by which men of provincial origin constituted an increasingly large percentage of the Roman senate. I argue that Tacitus advances a restrictive model of provincial assimilation, whereby only a handful of wealthy and Romanized provincials are incorporated into the ruling class, in keeping with his vision of Roman imperialism which sees the great majority of provincial subjects as akin to slaves.