Religious Intolerance in the Later Roman Empire - Bad request ...

than, for instance, the opinions and verdicts of historians and other contemporary
writers with whatever agendas and predilections they may have had. They speak
directly and immediately, without extraneous influences, from the very heart of the
government.
Whenever the evidence permits, and especially in the case of laws that
appear to be particularly intolerant, an attempt is made to explain the nature of the
law and to suggest reasons why such intolerance appears. Various explanations are
suggested including external political considerations and at times the influence of
the addressee of the law. In many cases, the addressee does appear to have been the
suggeren s and therefore to have affected the nature, subject matter and the degree of
intolerance of a particular law. These considerations naturally impinge on an
assessment of how intolerant a particular law actually was at the time of issue and
indeed the degree to which such intolerance may be reflective of an individual
emperor’s character. 10
It should be remembered however, that the addressee may not always have
been the suggeren s. A proposal for a new law probably passed from local governor,
(then possibly through the vicar) to the praetorian prefect to the emperor and his
consistory and advisors for consideration; its issuance would, of course, have been
in reverse. 11 As such, the commissioners may have taken laws from prefectorial,
provincial or other archives with the consequence that the addressee, especially if it
is the prefect, may have been only one link on the administrative ladder back to the
original proposer. 12 Equally however, in cases in which laws have survived as being
addressed to a provincial governor, the argument that he was also the suggeren s can
be more persuasively proposed. Although the possibility that the law may have
been distributed more widely than within the jurisdiction of the original proposer
10 On this see especially Harries (1993) 8-15; (1999a) 47-53; Honoré (1998) 133-136; Matthews (2000)
133-145, 171-172; Ammianus Marcellinus 28.6.8-9 gives an example of how to extract a constitution
from an emperor; on this particular example see Matthews (1989) 208. The clearest and most direct
example of this in the laws discussed below is probably Sirm . Const. 1
11 Matthews (2000) 67-68; see also Honoré (1986) 135-145 for the potential stages which a law went
through and at which points amendments and revisions would have been made.
12 Harries (1999a) 21-24 esp. 23 on the business of travelling around the empire (or not) to collect the
laws.
6