Pawel Borowski, MA

Ciuitates in Roman scholarship, municipal activities in the western provinces; political landscapes of the early Roman Empire; collective agency; historical sociology in Roman history; Latin provincial epigraphy.

In my doctoral dissertation I study civic communities as actors in the early Roman Empire. There were c. 2,000-2,500 largely autonomous civic communities (ciuitates) in the Roman world in the 1st-3rd c. CE. They acted as local governments and were vital to the success of the imperial project. Yet, their significance as a social phenomenon in the western provinces has been largely overlooked. To address this problem, I reinterpret epigraphic, archaeological and historical evidence for certain actions of communities from the perspective of historical sociology of Andrew Abbott. My project focuses on territorial disputes, economic operations and administrative subordination. I demonstrate that through their interactions with each other and with other entities civic communities emerged as communal actors with high impact on the Roman world.

Borowski, P. (2020). TWO THOUSAND CITIES - (L.) De Ligt, (J.) Bintliff (edd.) Regional Urban Systems in the Roman World, 150 bce – 250 ce. (Mnemosyne Supplements 431.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020. ISBN: 978-90-04-41433-4. The Classical Review, 1-3.