Roman province
During the republic and early empire, provinces were generally governed by politicians of senatorial rank, usually former consuls or former praetors.
[1][better source needed] A later exception was the province of Egypt, which was incorporated by Augustus after the death of Cleopatra and was ruled by a governor of only equestrian rank, perhaps as a discouragement to senatorial ambition.
[1] That exception was unique but not contrary to Roman law, as Egypt was considered Augustus's personal property, following the tradition of the kings of the earlier Hellenistic period.
[7] In the middle republic, the administration of a territory – whether taxation or jurisdiction – had basically no relationship with whether that place was assigned as a provincia by the senate.
Regardless, the change likely reflected Roman unease about Carthaginian power: quaestors could not command armies or fleets; praetors could and initially seem to have held largely garrison duties.
[10] Only around 180 BC did provinces take on a more geographically defined position when a border was established to separate the two commanders assigned to Hispania on the river Baetis.
However, the presence of the commander with forces sufficient to coerce compliance made him an obvious place to seek final judgement.
[19] The law had the effect of, over time, abolishing the temporary provinciae, as it was not always realistic for the senate to anticipate the theatres of war some six months in advance.
[26] The increasing practices of prorogation and statutorily-defined "super commands" driven by popularis political tactics[27] undermined the republican constitutional principle of annually-elected magistracies.
[33] The senate, which had long acted as a check on aristocratic ambitions, was unable to stop these immense commands, which culminated eventually with the reduction of the number of meaningfully-independent governors during the triumviral period to three men and, with the end of the republic, to one man.
That year, in his "first settlement", he ostentatiously returned his control of them and their attached armies to the senate, likely by declaring that the task assigned to him either by the lex Titia creating the Triumvirate or that the war on Cleopatra and Antony was complete.
[37] Because no one man could command in practically all the border-regions of the empire at once, Augustus appointed subordinate legates for each of the provinces with the title legatus Augusti pro praetore.
These lieutenant legati probably held imperium but, due to their lack of an independent command, were unable to triumph and could be replaced by their superior (Augustus) at any time.
[38] These arrangements were likely based on the precedent of Pompey's proconsulship over the Spanish provinces after 55 BC entirely through legates, while he stayed in the vicinity of Rome.
[42] In Augustus' "second settlement" of 23 BC, he gave up his continual holding of the consulship in exchange for a general proconsulship – with a special dispensation from the law that nullified imperium within the city of Rome – over the imperial provinces.
[1] Although the Caesars were soon eliminated from the picture, the four administrative resorts were restored in 318 by Emperor Constantine I, in the form of praetorian prefectures, whose holders generally rotated frequently, as in the usual magistracies but without a colleague.
[48] Detailed information on the arrangements during this period is contained in the Notitia Dignitatum (Record of Offices), a document dating from the early 5th century.
[49] Justinian I made the next changes in 534–536 by abolishing, in some provinces, the strict separation of civil and military authority that Diocletian had established.
[1] This process was continued on a larger scale with the creation of Exarchates in the 580s and culminated with the adoption of the military theme system in the 640s, which replaced the older administrative arrangements entirely.
It was legally merged into the administrative unit of Roman Italy in 42 BC by the triumvir Augustus as a ratification of Caesar's unpublished acts (Acta Caesaris).
