From the second half of the 2nd century to the first half of the 3rd century, many petitionary inscriptions, which complain of the arrogance by soldiers and officials to the emperor or provincial governors, appeared mainly in Asia Minor These inscriptions may enable us to give an answer to the question how the change on the administration in the 3rd century, the process called the militarization of administration, was recognized by provincial society In this paper, we investigate first the process in which soldiers penetrate into provincial administration This process was not necessarily made by soldiers' arrogance, but was based on the officia of soldiers which were formed under the governor after the second half of the 2nd century Since the most of petitionary inscriptions originates in Asia which was a public province, we should pay attention to the process in such a province While in the imperial provinces the governor's officia which were formed with legionary soldiers played an important role in provincial administration, in the public provinces it does not appear that such ordinary officia existed under proconsul In my view, the officiates in a public province were formed under the procurator, which means that the process of the penetration of the officiates into the administration of the province corresponded with that of the procurator According to G P Burton, even in a public province, the procurator even not only managed emperor's property but also encroached on the field considered as a domain of proconsul so far In its background, since the proconsul could not fill the various administrative demands from provincial society, the society also asked the procurator for many further When the procurator who was the senior official of officiates expanded his authority in response to the administrative demand of provincial society, it may mean that the demand from provincial society was an important factor in the process in which officiales exercised great influence over the provincial administration This aspect should appear in the petitionary inscriptions which we use second as historical records When officiates appear as an assailant in some of the petitionary inscriptions in Asia Minor (Table 1), we can recognize that they were not a mere rowdy, but carrying out some administrative duty Execution of this administrative duty might have caused friction with provincial society The research which is aimed to understand soldiers' administrative position from petitionary inscriptions has been hardly made until now However, the overlooked point in the relation between soldiers and society becomes clear by setting up the framework that the soldiers penetrated into provincial administration as the staff of the procurator These inscriptions show that the soldiers who were working as officiales of procurator might have been needed by the provincial society because of their compulsive power derived from their senior official Individuals and communities were forced a still severer struggle for their own existence in a violent social situation of those days In order to gain advantage for themselves, various members of provincial society tried to use the compulsive power which officiates had Therefore, we can recognize the soldiers who appear in petitionary inscriptions as existence with "duality" Because of their compulsive power, provincial society might have occasionally asked them for help, and might have occasionally avoided them on the contrary
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