Abstract
Paulus, who was a lawyer in the Severan Age, states that Imperial Procurators are absents rei publicae causa, and he explains that they as well as other public officials can get the relief measure called restitutio in integrum, when they are legally at a disadvantage (Dig., IV, 6, 35, 2). Clearly what Paulus really intends to do is apply this relief measure even to the procurators who are dispatched to the provinces and are engaged in the imperial financial service called fiscus, which included the management of patrimonium, or reconfirm the actual state that this measure was already given to them. At present, with only the probable exception of F. Millar, fiscus is generally understood to be the whole financial administration controlled by the emperor that has a mutual and compensational relationship in the State finance to aerarium, which is a so-called "public" financial administration under the senate. But as for a duality of the State finance such as we could find in the form of aerarium and fiscus from the middle of the first century, it was dissolved as the latter (fiscus) was changed into the only "State chest" while the former (aerarium) as a "State chest" actually disappeared by the Severan Age. This proves to be true because the confusion of the terms, "aerarium" and "fiscus", is found in the text of the law at that time. The various official posts which perform the administration and management of fiscus are known generically as procurator Caesar is or procurator Augusti(only in inscriptions), the title with the term "procurator", which is the technical term in Roman private law originally meaning a personal agent of individuals. As is commonly known, they became the nucleus in the official posts' system of Equestrian Order equivalent to the one of Senatorial Order through the Principate. Therefore, when the duality of the State finance was dissolved in such a way, this also means the dissolution of the dual official posts' system which characterized the Principate by means of the "coexistence" of Senatorial Order and Equestrian Order. And this is what Paulus' legal theory-Imperial Procurators are absents owing to the service of the State-really means, when it is located in the context of the Imperial constitutional history in the Principate.
