Idem ius municipi flavi Irntiani esto, quod esset, si municipi Italae libertus esset:
In outlining the juridical conditions of freedmen, the Lex Irnitana establishes a precise parallel between the status of the former slaves who were registered in communities concerned by the application of the Lex Flavia municipalis and those living in centres of ancient Italy: it accordingly arises that the relevant rules applied in the former must be also considered applicable in the latter. In few lines, the text of the law condenses what, on the other hand, emerges in the modern scholarship of the institutions of the local communities of the Roman Empire: Rome, in regulating and organizing the administrative life of the provincial centres, also resorted to institutions and magistracies that had already been adopted in shaping colonies and municipia on the Italian soil, to suggest the existence of a set administrative structures which were implemented regardless of the juridical difference between Italy and provinces. The existence of several analogies between the institutions of Italian centres and provincial communities points to the necessity to adopt a comparative perspective when one explores the local institutions of Italian and provincial centres, by considering the former as possible (indirect) models for the latter.
In the light of these considerations, an approach aiming to stress similarities and analogies between the administrative structures of the communities both from a provincial context such as Roman Baetica and from Roman Italy will result in a better comprehension not only of the mechanisms of the respective local institutions, but also, on a more generic level, of the process by which Rome designed the administrative structures of the local centres of her Empire.
