An inevitable consequence of the conquest of the Hellenistic world by Rome, the provincialisation of Macedonia, Asia, then Achaea, led in these regions to the permanent presence of a higher authority, combined with the development of an administration copied from the Roman model. Far from destroying the local civic institutions, this authority relied on them. In the legal domaine, a comparative study of the epigraphical, literary and juridical sources dating from the end of the second century BC to the middle of the third century AD, brings to light the installation and development of a complex structure of superposed Greek and Roman legal and procedural elements. While the provincial jurisdiction was organised around the central figure of the governor, the cities conserved the judiciary institutions inherited in the main from the Hellenistic period, even if popular participation tended to decline at the profit of elitist organs. This cohabitation imposed, during the Republic and the Principate, the definition of criteria for the sharing of competences dictated by the hegemonic power according to its interests. Seen through the judicial prism, the Empire presents the image of a pragmatic power, reserving for its tribunals the supreme jurisdiction in penal matters, while granting the cities an important degree of autonomy.
