Cities within the Roman Empire depended on landed-owning decuriones, later referred to as curiales, in order to oversee cities as town councillors. Decurions were elites; perhaps the top 2–3% of men in around 1,000 cities during the high empire. Hundreds of these local civic elites populated the bouleutic or curial orders in larger Roman cities, whereas smaller municipalities might have only a few dozen within their ranks. These men performed pivotal patronage and tax collection services for their cities, but in the fourth century c.e. in particular, the grumbles of this privileged group began to escalate and grow louder. The law codes assembled in the fifth and sixth centuries c.e. suggest both that an increasing number of decurions attempted to flee from their civic and financial obligation to serve on their town councils (e.g. through enrolment in the clergy or by moving to a different town) and that, in a reactive move, imperial legislation attempted to bind decurions to their local duties by closing them off from such professional and geographic escapism. A central question is then whether this legislation effectively enslaved decurions of the later empire within a type of curial prison.

After rightfully recognising that the legal designations of slave, freedman and freeborn person are insufficient to describe the complicated relationships between numerous individuals and the state in late-antique society, B. aims to locate where late-antique decurions fell on the nuanced spectrum between freedom and unfreedom. This study stems from his 2012–2013 dissertation presented to the Faculty of Law at the University of Trier. The book is separated into seven sections: Section 1 provides an introduction that establishes the importance of municipal councils and defines the terms decuriones and curiales. Although it is true that, as B. alleges, the later term ‘decurio’ is largely synonymous with ‘curialis’ in legal terms, A.J.B. Sirks (‘Die Nomination für die städtischen Ämter im römischen Reich’ [2003], pp. 13–22) has convincingly argued that the term came about as a way of describing the increased preference for the sons of decurions to be enrolled within the decurial orders. This preference later evolved into an obligatory system. Section 2 provides an abstract outline that helpfully discusses the vocation, recruitment and compulsory enrolment of town councillors in Late Antiquity. There was an income requirement for enrolment in the curia, moreover, although the decurions were elected by popular vote during the early empire, by the second century c.e., co-option was the standard system for filling curial positions. However, this does not seem to have been the case in some parts of Roman Africa. In 325 c.e., Constantine remarks to the comes Africae, Tiberianus, that duumvirs should not be allowed by the customary popular election if they did not meet the proper qualifications (CTh. 12.5.1). As this law indicates, there was variation and nuance from province to province and in the East versus the West, a fact that can sometimes get lost when characterising the town councils of Late Antiquity en masse.

Section 3 thoroughly examines the rights and the heavy munera (‘obligations’) placed on decurions. B. examines the central role of decurial tax collections performed for the state, looking specifically at the roles of the exactor and susceptor. Discussion of the board of dekaprotoi (‘ten first men’) is important, but in need of weaving in more of the papyrologyical evidence from Egypt during the third century c.e. The central questions of unfreedom and decurions are then posed prominently in Sections 4 and 5. These are pivotal parts that examine departures from the decurionate – intended as a lifetime appointment – and the restrictions placed on the order in terms of legal abilities and leaving the towns they were bound to serve. It is in this section that B. hits his stride and employs his clear legal expertise by exploring the ways in which legislation created limits on the physical and occupational movements of decurions (in regard to the imperial administration, equestrian orders, military service, clergy, professional collegia and the legal profession); there were also laws concerning curial property, as well as constraints on the family and succession. As such, the decurionate did not enslave decurions (i.e. decurions were not chattel), but these laws did bind them to an existence somewhere between freedom and serfdom, which also occurred among many of the professional associations that supplied the state. The laws certainly conjure this idea, although the continued question of the ability of the state to enforce these laws uniformly within the Roman Empire must loom large in our assessment of their possible (or probable) efficacy.

In Section 6, B. looks at the decline of the decurionate in Late Antiquity and explores the possible effect of decurions seeking immunity from their duties. Regularised flight would logically have placed an intensified financial burden on the remaining curiales, who would then be expected to pick up the slack for their missing comrades if proper replacements could not be found. The specific cause of the economic decline experienced in some cities within the later empire is not always clear and certainly varied, but absent decurions would have exasperated the situation. B. rightfully concludes in his final section, Section 7, that Constantine and other late Roman emperors only intensified, built upon and then codified a curial system in existence since the first century a.d., all in an attempt to keep the late-antique municipal nervous system constituted by town councils functioning. The institution itself continued to exist only until the sixth century, but we see the echoes of the system even in early medieval legal documents such as the Frankish formularies. The decurionate left a civic and legal imprint even in the ‘barbarian’ kingdoms of the late Latin West.

In terms of the evidence used in arguing his thesis, B. heavily privileges the legal evidence of the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes over literary, papyrological and epigraphic evidence, which are only sparingly explored or cited. Yet the accusations, penalties and threats collected in the late-antique law codes focused on by B. must be weighed along with the grievances of the decurions transmitted in the literature of the fourth century and the decurial dedications that persist in the epigraphic record. All these voices contributed to what J. Harries has termed the rampant ‘culture of criticism’ in the writings of the fourth and fifth centuries (Law and Empire in Late Antiquity [1999], p. 5). While Libanius gets a limited mention, his Antiochene counterpart, Ammianus Marcellinus, is missing, and Augustine is relegated to a single footnote (p. 105) – despite being the son of a decurion from Thagaste. Why not, for instance, discuss the evidence for the continued degradation of the corporal protections enjoyed by curials in the Theodosian Code alongside the literary examples? For instance, the case of Ingentius, a decurion of the town of Ziqua in 314 c.e., who famously used his curial status as protection from torture when brought before the proconsul of Africa, Aelianus (cf. Aug. Ep. 88.4). Literature, law and material culture all play a part in the historian's interpretation of the social reality.

That being said, B. provides a learned introduction to the legal status and function of town councillors in Late Antiquity. The book is a valuable resource and also contributes to a larger movement among scholars to understand the degrees of unfreedom that existed in the later Roman Empire and the early medieval Mediterranean. What becomes clear is that discussions of what constitutes servitude can be a matter of perception: a legal definition of a servus can differ from the literary depiction of one, and these definitions were not always consistent through time and place. Just as many members of professional collegia did, decurions in the later empire experienced checks on their legal and social capabilities, but they never experienced the social death inflicted on servi.