Ancestral laws under the Roman rule: The case of Lycia

Submitted for
the confirmation
of D.Phil. status
in Ancient History

Georgy Kantor
Balliol College

I. In 1992 a monument of the Roman imperial period, re-used in a Byzantine building, was by chance discovered in ancient Patara: originally a square column about 5 meters tall, bearing an inscription in honour of the emperor Claudius made by the Lycian League sometime in A.D. 45 or early in A.D. 46 (the fifth year of his tribunicia potestas, but after his eleventh imperatorial acclamation) and a list of the roads built in Lycia according to his orders with distances in stadia. Stones have been re-assembled and photographs and drawings of the monument, together with a majuscule transcription prepared by H. Engelmann, have been subsequently published by the Turkish team working on site. On the basis of that publication, C.P. Jones produced in 2001 a critical edition of the text of honours to Claudius and recently a slightly differing version (including the Stadiasmus) was presented by Turkish epigraphists. 
Claudius is praised by the Lycians, appropriately described as ‘filorw/maioi kai | filok[a]i/sarej’ (ll.14-15)  and, more interestingly for that period, as ‘faithful allies’, ‘pis|toi\ su/mmaxoi’ (ll.15-16), for freeing them by his divine providence from stasis and anomia and brigandage (ll.16-20) and bringing them concord (ll.21-22: ‘o(mo/|[noia]n’) and equality in administration of justice (ll.22-23: ‘th\n i)/shn d[i|kai]o[d]osi/an’). Most strikingly, if, as seems likely to me, the restoration made by the editor is correct, Claudius is praised for the restoration of the ancestral laws (ll.23-24: ‘tou\j | [patri/ou]j no/mouj’). 
This notion is probably substantiated in the next few lines (ll.25-30: ‘th=j politei/aj toi=j | e)c a)ri/stwn e)[p]ilele|gme/noij bouleu|tai=j a)po\ tou= a)kri/tou | plh/qouj p[i]steu|[qei/]shj’) by a reference to the transfer of power from the multitude to the councillors, selected from among the best. However, such a statement is still a cause for some surprise, as what Claudius had in fact done, three years before this inscription was set up, was to reduce Lycia, which until that point was independent (probably with an interlude from the creation of the province of Cilicia in c.101/100 BC to Sulla’s confirmation of free status after the first Mithridatic war), to provincial status. The story is told in most detail by Cassius Dio:  ‘He reduced the Lycians to servitude because they had revolted and slain some Romans (‘Rwmai/ouj tina\j a)poktei=nai), and he incorporated them in the prefecture of Pamphylia (to\n th=j Pamfuli/aj no/mon). During the investigation of this affair, which was conducted in the senate, he put a question in Latin to one of the envoys who had originally been a Lycian, but had been made a Roman citizen; and when the man failed to understand what was said, he took away his citizenship, saying that it was not proper for man to be a Roman who had no knowledge of the Romans’ language’ (Cass. Dio 60.17.3-4; Loeb tr.). The annexation of Lycia is also mentioned by Suetonius: ‘Lycias ob exitiabiles inter se discordias libertatem ademit’ (Suet., Claud. 25.3), who also tells without any connexion to the Lycian events an anecdote about the unsuccessful ambassador. Although Suetonius makes him a native of mainland Greece, both stories certainly should refer to the same event.
It seems, moreover, that the Roman government did introduce a lex provinciae in Lycia, which had some effect on civic institutions as well. There is a mention in the well-known inscription of Iulius Demosthenes from Oenoanda of the rights which priests of the imperial cult have ‘kata\ tou\j peri\ tw=n a)rxairesiw=n no/[mouj]’ (SEG XXXVIII 1462, l.92), and of the new civic offices established ‘met[a\ ta\j] nomoqesi/aj’ (l.111). Michael Wörrle in his 1988 edition of the Demosthenes inscription shows, in my opinion, conclusively that these mentions should refer to the Roman lex provinciae. It is possible now to compare this with the decree in honour of Menodorus, son of Metrodorus from Pergamum (M. Wörrle, SEG L 1211 = AE 2000, no.1377), where there is a mention of ‘th\n   (Rwmaikh\n nomoqesi/an’ (l.13) being established in the first years of the province of Asia.
It should be admitted that there is some uncertainty as to the date of the Lycian lex provinciae, which deserves special discussion: Wörrle suggests somewhat hesitantly that it may in fact be Vespasianic, not Claudian, and this is reproduced without any qualification in all subsequent discussions of the problem. The reason for this suggestion is that Suetonius, and of the later authors Eusebius (under AD 74) and Orosius, list Lycia among the territories that were reduced back to provincial status by Vespasian. (Orosius interestingly describes this as ‘redactae in provinciis Romanis iudicibus legibusque paruerunt’, in stark contrast with the sentiments expressed in the Claudian inscription.) It is also mentioned by Tacitus that Pamphylia was under the governor of Galatia in the reign of Galba (there is a statement to the same effect for the reign of Nero in the Silvae of Statius, who appears to say that the power of Rutilius Gallicus, a governor of Galatia under Corbulo, extended to Pamphylia), and it has long been an accepted orthodoxy that Lycia on its own would be too small to receive a senatorial governor. 
However, in 1970 this assertion was called into question by Werner Eck. He used an inscription from Lyde (to which I shall return later in a different context), honouring Sex. Marcius Priscus, a governor of Lycia under Vespasian and ‘under all emperors since Tiberius Caesar’ (that is, apparently, since Nero, who suffered damnatio memoriae), and a building inscription from Patara in which the name and titulature of Nero were replaced by those of Vespasian, to argue that Lycia always remained a province, though a separate one from Pamphylia, in that period and that the ademptio libertatis referred to the loss of some privileges of the Lycian League, probably of a financial character, or less convincingly to the end of separation from Pamphylia only. And, as Ralph Behrwald quite rightly, in my opinion, points out, the lists in Suetonius and Orosius include places like Samos or Byzantium which obviously did not become provinces in their own right. This again points to the idea that the measures taken by Vespasian did not have that much importance. So there is no convincing reason to suppose that the lex provinciae we know about is not Claudian. Doubts expressed by Syme concerning Eck’s theory are, as he himself recognized, ‘inspired … by a prejudice of a general nature’. Namely, that ‘the Roman government had no fancy for small provinces in Asia’.

II. Returning to our main theme, the terminology used in the Patara inscription was usually employed in the Roman period in the context of confirmation of the cities’ free status, rather than of the establishment of Roman rule. Let us look at comparative evidence from Lycia and from other eastern regions of the Roman world.  An inscription from Tlos, dated on the basis of its script to the end of the second century B.C. by E. Kalinka, praises its honorand, whose name is lost, for his military achievements and characterises him as ‘preserving the laws and the ancestral democracy’ (TAM II 582, ll.9-11: ‘diathrh/santa tou/j te no/|mouj kai\ th\n pa/trion dhmokrati/|an’). One may notice here a connexion between the laws and demokratia, a term denoting in the period of Roman conquest independence from the monarchical government and freedom from external occupation rather than actual democratic form of government in the classical sense. Compare an inscription from Cormi in honour of Opramoas, son of Opramoas, who is eulogized for his military activities (connected by E. Kalinka with the Zenicetan war of P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus in 78 BC) as a saviour of democracy (TAM II 900, l.11: ‘[dhm]okrati/a[n] sw/santa’) and in particular a famous bilingual dedication to the goddess Roma made by the Lycian League on the Capitol (CIL I 589; IG XIV 986 [ILS 31; OGIS 551; IGRR I 61; ILLRP 174]; IGUR I 5) where restitution of the ‘ancestral democracy’ (ll.4-5: ‘th\n pa/trion dhm[o]|krati/an’) in the Greek text is paralleled by ‘restitutei in maiorum leibert[atem]’ (l.1) in the Latin. Also comparable to this is a connexion between laws and ‘freedom’ in an inscription from Tlos honouring a member of a successful embassy to Rome ‘u(pe\r th=j e)leuqeri/aj kai\ | tw=n no/mwn’ (IGRR III 563; OGIS 556; TAM II 583; F. Canali de Rossi, Le ambascerie dal mondo greco a Roma in età repubblicana [Roma 1997], no.451, ll.7-8). 
Examples from outside Lycia also show that both the Roman government and  cities themselves employed this vocabulary in the context of rights coming with the status of a free city. In a famous letter of an Augustan proconsul of Asia confirming the privileges of Chios (CIG 2222; SIG3 785 [EJ2 317]; IGRR IV 943; RDGE 70; SEG XXII 507; tr. R.K. Sherk, TDGR 4, no.108) it is said that ‘the senate specifically confirmed that they were to enjoy the laws and customs and rights which they had when they entered into friendship with the Romans’ (ll.14-16). In the senatus consultum de Aphrodisiensibus it is guaranteed that the community of Plarasa-Aphrodisias ‘should be free and enjoy its own law (t%= dikai/%) [and courts as far as] the Roman people [are concerned]’ (J. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome, no.8, ll.46-47). Even in the third century A.D. Gordian III still could say in a letter to Aurelius Epaphras from Aphrodisias: ‘Any decision about the laws of your native city (th=j patri/doj sou= no/m[wn]) made by the reverend council of the Senate and those of the emperors who have been deified it would be proper for me too to preserve for your native city on the same terms’ (AE 1969, no.599 [K.T. Erim and J. Reynolds]; *J. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome, no.22 [Oliver, Greek Constitutions, no.282], ll.4-8). In the correspondence between Pliny the Younger and Trajan stress is also laid on the use of its own laws being guaranteed by the treaty (and confirmed by Trajan himself) to Amisus in Bithynia. 
In a decree of Maroneia of the time of Claudius, discovered recently on Samothrace, a guarantee of the status of free city by the treaty of 167 B.C., which we know from another inscription (SEG XXXV 823; SEG XXXVII 611; tr. Bagnall and Derow, no.49), is described as ‘their freedom and laws together with the rest of their privileges’ (tr. K. Clinton) and in the second fragment of the same decree the duties of the ambassadors to the emperor are again characterised as to ‘protect for us our freedom and laws’ (fr.II, ll.15-16). M. Wörrle plausibly connects this decree with the creation of the province of Thrace in A.D. 46 and Maroneia’s efforts to maintain its free status in the new settlement. The context is very close to that of the Patara inscription (probably even the year of both inscriptions is the same), but the Maroneians have not lost their old status, and their decree is concerned with attempts to preserve it. 
In a Colophonian decree for Polemaeus from the Claros sanctuary he is praised, among other things, for persuading a proconsul of Asia to annul his sentence in a case of a certain Colophonian (who was convicted contrary to the terms of the treaty), as the person who maintained ‘the courts, the citizen, and the laws’ (I. Claros, Polem. [SEG XXXIX 1243; ISE III 179], col.II, ll.56-58: ‘kai\ ta\ kri/mata | kai\ to\n polei/thn kai\ tou\j no|/mouj’). An especially interesting case is represented by an inscription of the imperial period from Caunus in neighbouring Caria, in which an honorand is characterised, among other things, as ‘being a strategos under the ancestral politeia’. G.E. Bean in the editio princeps plausibly suggested that this should refer to the period  when Caunus was a free city and to the subsequent loss of its freedom. 
All these comparanda inevitably lead us to the question: was there anything specific in the legal status of post-annexation Lycia or was the legal status of subject cities more autonomous than is usually believed or are we dealing here with just another case of the devaluing of political vocabulary?

III. The first problem we need to consider for a proper answer to this question is that of the status of Lycia in relation to Rome before A.D. 43. In this we are now fortunate to have the Greek text of the treaty signed with the Lycian League by Julius Caesar on 24 July 46 B.C. and preserved almost complete on a bronze tablet in the Martin Schøyen collection. If the beginning of the treaty, concerned with the military alliance between Rome and the Lycian League is amply paralleled in other surviving examples of treaties between Rome and Greek cities, its middle part, concerned with the suppression of contraband, with the division of responsibility between Roman and Lycian courts in capital cases and in other kinds of judicial cases, and with hostages and ransomed prisoners of war (ll.26-52), and the territorial clauses in ll.52-64 have no exact parallels. The document provides us with our first ever piece of direct evidence on the division of jurisdiction between Roman provincial administration and free communities in the orbit of Roman power, coming from the treaty itself and not from its later confirmations, usually quite brief and presuming the knowledge of the conditions of a treaty (as is the case with Aphrodisias [J.M. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome, nos.8; 22; SEG L 1196 = AE 2000, no.1441] or with the island of Chios [SIG3 785; RDGE 70]), or from local honours for ambassadors (as with Colophon [SEG XXXIX 1244; ISE III 178]) or Roman oratory (as with Byzantium [Cic., prov. cos. 6-7]), in which the presentation is likely to be distorted. Obviously, the discussion of its clauses on judicial matters will dominate the study of the interplay of Roman and local jurisdictions in the Eastern provinces for years to come.
Its provisions on this matter are as follows. In lines 26-32 those who export prohibited goods to the enemies of Rome or of the Lycian League or of their respective allies are dealt with. If they are caught in flagrante delicto, they are to be accused before the praetor peregrinus at Rome or before the highest official of the League if they are arrested in Lycia and before nobody else (ll.28-31: ‘e)a\n de/ tij e)pilh/mfq$ tou/twn ti pepoihkw\j | e)p ) au)tofw/rwi, tou=ton o( eu)qu/nwn e)pi\ to\n strathgo\n a)ge/twi to\n toi=j ce/noij kai\ po|lei/taij dika<i>odotou=nta: e)a\n de/ tij e)n Luki/ai e)fa/yhtai/ tinoj e)pi\ to\n th\n megi/sthn | a)/rxhn e)/xonta to\n eu)quno/menon a)gage/tw pro\j e(/teron de\ mhde/na’). Interestingly enough, no distinction is made in this clause between Romans and Lycians, and the principle of the forum delicti, rather than that of the forum domicilii is followed, unlike the immediately following provisions for the capital and non-capital cases. No immediate explanation offers itself.
Lines 32 to 37 are concerned with the procedure in capital jurisdiction. The definition of capital cases given is quite cumbersome and tautological: ‘If anyone kills a free man or also knowingly gives him up (for sale) or if anyone does something of this sort with malicious deceit, and if he commits a capital crime, let this be a capital offence’ (ll.32-34: ‘e)a/n tij to\n e)leu/qeron | a)poktei/n$ h)\ kai\ e(kw\n a)podw=tai h)\ ka<i/> tij do/l<%> poner%= tou/twn ti poih/shi, ei)/ te kai\ | pra=gma kefaliko\n e)pitele/shtai tou=to kefaliko\n e)/stw’, tr. S. Mitchell). A trial is guaranteed to Romans in Rome and according to Roman laws and not anywhere else, and to Lycians in Lycia in accordance with Lycian laws and not anywhere else (ll.34-37: ‘peri\ tou/twn tw=n pragma/twn | e)a\n polei/thj  (Rwmai=oj eu)qu/nhtai e)n Luki/# kata\ tou\j i)di/ouj no/mouj e)n  (Rw/m$ krine/sqw, a)l|lax$= de\ mh\ krine/sqw: e)a\n de\ Lu/kioj poli/thj eu)qu/nhtai kata\ tou\j i)di/ouj no/mouj krine/sqw, | a)llax$= de\ mh\ krine/sqw’). 
An arrangement bearing strong resemblance to, but not going so far as the privileges which Menippus secured for Colophon sometime between the establishment of the province and 119 BC, according to a decree in his honour (I. Claros, Menipp. [SEG XXXIX 1244; ISE III 178], col. I, ll.37-48; col.II, ll.1-7), and the privileges granted to Chios by a senatorial decree of 80 BC (SIG3 785 [EJ2 317]; RDGE 70), both of which arguably made Romans subject to local laws not only in private law cases (evidence is, as already said, much less straightforward there). This gives us yet another example of the variability of judicial arrangements for different free cities and peoples of the Roman Empire. 
Finally, in lines 37 to 43 provisions are made for other kinds of legal disputes arising between Roman and Lycian citizens. If a Lycian is a defendant, then he is to be judged in Lycia in accordance with Lycian laws. But if a Roman is a defending party, the court should be set up by whatever Roman magistrate or promagistrate the parties approach (ll.37-41: ‘e)a\n de/ tij peri\ e(te/rwn pragma/twn  (Rwmai=oj meta\ Luki/ou meta|poreu/htai ka<ta\> tou\j Luki/wn no/mouj e)n Luki/# kreine/sqw, a)llaxh=i de\ mh\ kreine/sqw: e)a\n | de\ Lu/k<i>oj para\  (Rwmai/ou metaporeu/htai o(\j a)\n a)/rxwn h)\ a)nta/rxwn tugxa/n$ dikaiodotw=n | pro\j o(\n a)\n au)tw=n prose/lqwsin oi( a)mfisbhtou=ntej ou(=toj au)toi=j dikaiodotei/twi krith/|rion sunistane/tw’). This should be done by him in such a way ‘that the judgment is accomplished as swiftly as possible, in the manner that seems to him just and well-conducted’ (tr. S. Mitchell). 
This clause can be paralleled by provisions for the choice of different courts made for some provincials getting individual grants of Roman citizenship and also for some amici populi Romani, which seem to be first attested as a privilege for successful prosecutors of provincial governors for extortion, rewarded with Roman citizenship under the lex repetundarum (RS 1, l.86: ‘---s]ei petetur, de ea re eius [optio est]o, utrum uelit uel in sua ceiuitat[e uel Romae---’; cf. RS 8, ll.5-7). These provisions are best preserved in the so-called senatus consultum de Asclepiade of 78 BC (IG XIV 951 [Bruns7, no.41; IGRR I 118; FIRA I 38]; ILLRP 513; RDGE, no.22; IGUR I 1; CIL VI 40890; SEG LI 1427 for recent bibliography), concerning a grant of various privileges to the naval captains Asclepiades of Clazomenae, Polystratus of Caristus, and Meniscus of Miletus, who distinguished themselves in the Social War (none of them, incidentally, a citizen of a free city). They were granted among other things a choice between the courts of their native cities, Roman courts in Italy, and courts of those free cities who had uninterrupted alliance with Rome (ll.18-20: ‘e)a/n te e)n tai=j pa|tri/sin kata\ tou\j i)di/ouj no/mouj bou/lwntai kri/nesqai h)/ e)<p>i\ tw=n h(mete/rwn a)rxo/ntwn e)pi\  )Italikw=n kritw=n, e)a/n te e)pi/ po/lewj e)leuqe/ra[j] tw=n dia\ te/louj | e)n th=i fili/ai tou= dh/mou tou=  (Rwmai/wn memenhkuiw=n, ou(= a)\n proairw=ntai, o(/pwj e)kei= to\ kr[i]th/rion peri\ tou/twn tw={i}n pragma/twn gi/nhtai’). Analogous grants (together with the grant of citizenship) were made by Mark Antony to some Coans in the lex Fonteia (RS 36, fragm.a+b+c, face ii, ll.6-11) and by Octavian under the lex Munatia Aemilia to yet another naval captain, Seleucus of Rhosus in Syria, in 30 B.C. (Raggi 2004, ll.53-59 for the best text), which shows that such provisions became a common practice during the late Republic. It is noteworthy that the right to choose between different courts was still granted, not necessarily in connexion with the grant of Roman citizenship, in the Flavian period, as attested by the famous edict of Vespasian on the privileges of doctors and teachers  (AE 1936, no.128; FIRA I 77; MW, no.458), which provided that they can sue against its breaches in any court they choose (ll.13-14). 
However, there is an important difference: if in the grants to provincial citizens and amici populi Romani listed above they were given the right to choose the court in private law cases regardless of whether they were defendants or plaintiffs, the Lycian treaty strictly follows the principle of the forum domicilii, protecting Lycians from summons to the court of the Roman governor. It is inconceivable that Lycians awarded Roman citizenship would be in a privileged position in comparison with Roman citizens by descent. Furthermore, it is conceivable that some communities secured the right of hearing of the private law cases even when the defendant was a Roman citizen (this appears to be the case at Chios [see above], whether this privilege was extended to jurisdiction in capital cases or not). I cannot, therefore, agree with the opinion of S. Mitchell in his commentary, that ‘the treaty can reasonably be accepted as defining the normal legal relationship between Rome and her free allies’. A special privilege for the Lycian League is much more likely to be the case.

IV. The treaty presumably continued to be in force at the time of the Claudian annexation. Lycia suffered badly at the hands of Brutus less than four years after the treaty was signed, but its freedom was again confirmed by Antony soon after the battle of Philippi, and it is unlikely that he would have dropped the treaty signed by Julius Caesar. This raises a question whether the official reason for the annexation, as reported by Cassius Dio, that the Lycians had ‘slain some Romans’ (Cass. Dio 60.17.3: ‘Rwmai/ouj tina\j a)poktei=nai’) has something to do with a breach of this treaty. Could this killing of the Roman citizens be in fact a death sentence passed by some Lycian court? If so, actions of Claudius could with a certain amount of spin be represented as a return to the old agreement, and, therefore, to the ‘ancestral laws’ of the Patara inscription. 
However, killing of Roman citizens was a stock explanation of annexation and there is no evidence that any proper judicial procedure had been followed in these ‘killings’. In 20 BC Cyzicus temporarily lost its freedom because Roman citizens were scourged and killed there in time of civil unrest (Cass. Dio 54.7.6: ‘e)n sta/sei’) and in A.D. 25, under Tiberius, the Cyzicenes were again charged with ‘incuria caerimoniarum divi Augusti, additis violentiae criminibus adversum cives Romanos’ (Tac., Ann. 4.36.2; cf. Suet., Tib. 37.2-3; Cass. Dio 57.24.6), which does not sound like normal judicial proceedings, and that resulted in a new loss of freedom. The same reason is attested by Cassius Dio for the annexation of Rhodes by Claudius in A.D. 44 (60.24.4), again without much clarification. 
And, indeed, the Patara inscription mentions that Claudius stopped the stasis in Lycia (AE 2001, no.1931, ll.17-18). C.P. Jones in his edition suggests that this may really mean some serious disturbances. This is supported by an inscription made near Corinth by the Lycian League and its constituent cities of Myra, Patara and Telmessus in honour of a certain Iunia Theodora, who had, among other benefactions to the Lycians, given shelter to Lycian exiles during a recent discord (SEG XVIII 143, l.58), dated by Louis Robert in a magisterial paper to the period immediately preceding the Claudian annexation. Quintus Veranius, the first governor of the province, was able to gain certain military repute in his five campaigning seasons and probably, if Ronald Syme’s conjecture in the inscription with his cursus honorum is correct, proudly proclaimed that he ‘[totam provinciam a latroni]b[us] pacavit’ (AE 1953, no.251, l.6), which seems to confirm a picture of the genuine trouble. Chr. Kokkinia is surely right, however, in drawing attention to the possibility of branding political opposition as bandits, and one needs to exercise strong caution here. 
Of specific interest to our topic is a long inscription with a letter of Quintus Veranius to the city of Tlos, found in Myra (published in 1975 by Michael Wörrle), concerned with proper upkeep of the public archives of the city. Among the kinds of documents which he wishes to keep in order he lists various sorts of contracts and ‘a legal challenge or a disclosure about a legal situation or a decision of arbitrators or judges (diaithtw=n h)/ d[ikas]tw=n)’ (ll.32-34; tr. R.K. Sherk). Again it would probably be rash to draw too far-reaching conclusions from this document, but it offers an interesting Roman perspective on the actions actually involved in the process of the re-establishment of law and order described in grandiloquent terms in the Patara inscription. It is also noteworthy that in this inscription we have a governor exercising his judicial powers in a formally not very serious case (but one particularly interesting to him), for he orders a certain Tryphon, public slave of the city of Tlos, to be flogged for the neglected state of the archive and mentions in passing that other public slaves, presumably in other cities, have been punished earlier in the same way (ll.5-19). This draws our attention to the place of the governor in the judicial system of the new province and to some of the possible reasons for which he may select the case for his personal decision, instead of leaving it to his subordinates or to the local judges. It is obvious that the dividing line here is not one between ‘serious crimes’ and lesser offences, but has more to do with the governor’s goals in ruling the province.

V.  Before we start to analyse the post-annexation judicial system(s) it is necessary to say a few words about the judicial system of the independent Lycian League, those courts and laws guaranteed to it by the treaty of 46 B.C. The classic testimony is in Book XIV of Strabo’s Geography, based presumably on the account of Artemidorus (floruit in 104-100 B.C.), telling us about the federal courts of the Lycian League elected in proportion to their voting rights in the federal council by the member cities. These are probably the courts which we see in function in a famous decree from Araxa in honour of Orthagoras, son of Demetrius, dated variously to the first half of the second century B.C., where it is mentioned that a territorial dispute between Araxa and another city, presumably also a Lycian League member (for some reason it is not named in the inscription), over the territory of Soasa was decided before the koinon (SEG XVIII 570, ll.49-54). 
It is not, however, clear in what relation the federal courts stand to the judicial magistrates mentioned in the treaty of 46 B.C. or to yet another kind of court, attested only epigraphically, namely the meta/pempta dikasth/ria. Two honorific inscriptions of the pre-annexation period, the already mentioned TAM II 583 (=OGIS 556) from Tlos and TAM II 420 (=IGRR III 680) of the time of the emperor Tiberius from Patara, mention among the offices of their honorands the position of epistates of these courts (in plural). It is difficult with evidence so scarce to establish undisputably their actual nature. One position is that the meta/pempta dikasthri/a is yet another name for a well-established Hellenistic judicial institution, foreign judges. It is not universally accepted and is sometimes rejected in quite vehement terms. However, on the whole the arguments of the proponents of this view seem more plausible to me: even though the epistates is admittedly always a local citizen in Lycian inscriptions, there is no other sufficient explanation for the title of the court. The idea that these are the regular federal courts seems to be refuted by the fact that it is not possible to assign to the position of epistates any definite place in the federal cursus honorum of Lycia. 

VI. It is a well-known fact that the Lycian League continued to exist after the annexation, in line with the usual Roman policy towards commonalties in the Eastern provinces of the Empire. It is a more complicated problem to establish in what way the old judicial institutions of the League (and, presumably, of the cities) interacted with the governor’s court. 
The activities of the latter are amply attested in the province of Lycia-Pamphylia. Strikingly, governors in Lycian inscriptions often receive a title of dikaiodo/thj or a(gno\j dikaiodo/thj, and in honorific inscriptions to the members of their families this title is sometimes used alone as a designation of their office, a usage paralleled elsewhere only in three inscriptions from the province of Asia and in one place in Strabo. C.P. Jones plausibly connects to this usage a mention of the restoration ‘th\n i)/shn d[i|kai]o[d]osi/an’ by Claudius through the governor Quintus Veranius in the inscription from Patara (AE 2001, no.1931, ll.23-24). For the Pamphylian part of the province we have some evidence about the conventus-districts, but unfortunately there is no information for Lycia, apart from a mention of Tlos in an extremely fragmentary inscription as a place where a governor gave judgement (though I would not lay too much stress on this absence of evidence). Pliny the Elder’s account of Lycia (NH 5.100-102) though belonging to the post-annexation period was based on the data of Agrippa and so he does not provide us with any details on the conventus organization of Lycia, as he does, e.g., for the province of Asia.
But alongside evidence for the governor’s court we continue to get evidence for the continuing existence of the meta/pempta dikasth/ria, attested in the honorific decrees for Opramoas of Rhodiapolis, who counted the position of the epistates of these courts among his numerous honours. Unambigous foreign judges from Lycia and Pamphylia are also attested in a series of early second century A.D. inscriptions from the sanctuary of Zeus Osogos in Mylasa, providing one of our latest pieces of straithforward evidence for their existence anywhere. Even more interestingly, we get some important, though hard to interpret evidence for the actual activities of the meta/pempta dikasth/ria and their interaction with the Roman governor. An extremely fragmentary inscription from the Letoon in Xanthus, published by A. Balland (Fouilles de Xanthos VII, 260-66 no.86 [AE 1981, no.839; bibliogr. lemma in SEG XXXI 1316]), provides us with some documents concerned with a prolonged dispute between Calynda in Lycia and Caunus in the province of Asia over fiscal and territorial issues in the 130-140s AD. In one of the decisions delivered in this law-suit the meta/pempta, apparently dikasth/ria, were somehow involved (bl.H, l.5: ‘[met]ape/mptwn’). This, in my view, almost conclusively proves that these were not federal courts of the League of the kind described by Strabo, since Caunus certainly was not a member, and to give one of the sides in a conflict the power to arbitrate in it does not seem a likely option. Foreign judges would suit the context much better. Interestingly, it also shows the importance of the use of the plural in the title of the court. Magie’s expanation that it was used in career inscriptions because the honorand served as e)pista/thj many times, no longer suits all the available facts. Due to the fragmentary state of the inscription it is difficult to say exactly whether the meta/pempta dikasth/ria were delivering their sentence on the governor’s mandate, as was the case with the arbitrating party in the famous decision of Q. Mucius Scaevola the Pontifex in the dispute between Ephesus and Sardis (I. Pergamon 2.268; IGRR IV 297; OGIS 437; IK 11.1 [Ephesos 1a], no.7;  RDGE, no.47; Ager, Interstate Arbitrations, no.170) or with the conflict between Metropolis and Cierium arbitrated by the Thessalian League on the mandate of the legate Poppaeus Sabinus in the time of Tiberius (IG IX.ii 261 [EJ2 321];  J.-L. Decourt, Inscriptions de Thessalie I. Les cités de la vallée de l’Enipeus [Paris 1995], no.13 with B. Helly, Bull. ép. 1997, no.298), but this remains a tempting opportunity. 
A particularly difficult case is provided by a much-discussed honorific inscription from Pinara (IGRR III 681; TAM II 508). The first problem is the date of the inscription. Among other courts which the honorand, whose name is lost, successfully addressed as an advocate, is the court ‘[tou= se]|mnota/tou dikaiodo/tou’ (ll.25-26), which would naturally be taken to mean the court of the proconsul. However, Kalinka dated the inscription on palaeographical grounds to the first century B.C., where this usage is more difficult to explain. Larsen’s attempt to translate dikaiodo/thj as epistates is not really a translation and does not make the matter any clearer. A re-examination of the stone is a necessity. 
The second difficulty is the nature of the court of cenokri/tai, which is mentioned in ll.21-22 (honorand gave 5,000 drachmas to each of its four divisions) and 26-27 (as another court where he successfully practised). A traditional view, first put forward at length by J.A.O. Larsen, connects them with peregrini iudices of Cicero’s letters from Cilicia and with cenika\ dikasth/ria, a natural suggestion in the light of closeness of the terms. However, there are two more possible interpretations. First, there is the possibility that they are not ‘foreign judges’, but rather ‘judges for foreigners’, of the type of the kri/tai of the fourth Cyrene edict. Second, there is a suggestion, vigorously put forward by D. Nörr, that cenokri/tai, and hence the peregrini iudices of Cicero, are recuperatores. There are, indeed, some important arguments in favour of this view. Not only is the translation iudicium recuperatorium provided alongside the iudicium peregrinum for krith/rion ce/non in the late glossary (CGL 336,45), but we also have documents (none of them, though, originally from Asia Minor) in which it clearly has this sense: the lex de provinciis praetoriis (RS 12, col.IV, ln.35), and several papyri of the second century AD — a report of the judicial proceedings from Egypt, AD 148 (P.Oxy. XLII 3016) and the formula of the actio tutelae preserved in the Babatha archive (P.Babatha 28-30). Nörr argues also that peregrini iudices, as opposed to iudices peregrini, cannot be a technical term, and refers simply to the inclusion of peregrines among the number of recuperatores (for the possibility of that cf. Gaius, Inst. 4.105; 109). Nevertheless, the attempts of Nörr to read the meaning recuperatores in all the inscriptions which mention cenokri/tai in my opinion overstretch our evidence. It is unsafe to draw too far-reaching conclusions from the fact that a certain word was rendered in a different province in a different way when our evidence is so scarce and each case has to be judged on its own merit. It does not seem that interpreting ‘cenokri/thj | ei)j  )Ala/banta’ (SEG XI 491, ll.4-5) in the career inscription of Eudocimus, son of Damocrates, from Sparta, our only other inscription mentioning cenokri/tai (incidentally, in a neighbouring region), as ‘recuperator at Alabanda’ is entirely convincing. It is hard to explain such an arrangement, if it existed, and it would in fact equate to being a ‘foreign judge’. The continuing activities of the Lycian foreign judges in Caria in this period (see above), also speak for the explanation of cenokri/tai as another term for this institution. Nörr also attempts to expain a problematic hapax in ll.26-27, the word diala/xesij, by analogy with two Latin inscriptions from the province of Asia which provide us with some evidence on the selection of Roman judges in this province and suggests that it is just a clumsy translation of the Latin sortitio iudicum, an institution absent from the Greek law of that time. However, it is probably possible to compare this with the selection of judges by lot, which apparently continued to exist on Rhodes in the time of Julius Caesar, if not later.

VII. To conclude. The system of jurisdiction which functioned in Lycia after the annexation seems to bear a certain resemblance to the pre-annexation system, though scarcity of our evidence for both periods naturally makes full analysis impossible. This to a certain extent substantiates the praise to Claudius in the Patara inscription and makes it possible that his actions could with some adulatory imagination be represented as reverting to the old status guaranteed by Caesar. Indeed, Claudius’ first governor in Lycia takes some care to preserve records of court decisions, which should, in his time, still be decisions of the courts of the independence period. As Lycia arguably did not have free status after Claudius (and certainly after Vespasian) this is important evidence on the possible continuance of local jurisdiction even in subject communities. Perhaps the ‘free city/subject city’ dichotomy should in this regard be replaced by some more subtle definitions. It is hard to say at this stage whether the Lycian situation was unique or typical. However, the activities of foreign judges from Lycia in Mylasa and the use of metapempta [dikastēria] to resolve a conflict with Caunus should be noted as possible hints pointing to the latter.

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