Weixia Wang

Iniustitia in Transition: Reconfiguration of Jurisdictional Space in the Roman Provinces from Cicero to Pliny the Younger

This dissertation traces the structural transformation of provincial jurisdiction through a systematic comparison of the two richest surviving gubernatorial letter corpora: Cicero's correspondence from Cilicia (51–50 B.C.E.) and Pliny the Younger's letters from Pontus-Bithynia (c. 110–112 C.E.). The Republican governor exercised autonomous jurisdiction within a provincial arena shaped by aristocratic networks and personal imperium. Pliny's tribunal, a century and a half later, operated within vertical chains of imperial authority. The study asks how this spatial transformation altered the mechanisms through which provincial iniustitia was produced and legitimised. Four case studies examine the governor's source of authority, the reconfiguration of legal pluralism, the political economy of provincial debt, and the routinisation of administrative procedure.