Law in the Roman Provinces (LRP) has no subtitle. This is an admirable act of restraint, but also an indication of the aspirations of the volume’s editors. Legal histories of the Roman Empire (at least ones that aspire to be more than superficial) tend to operate at the level of the local, the regional, or the provincial. The fragmentary and intractable nature of the evidence means that, to be adequately contextualized, many complicating factors demand to be taken into account: language, ethnicity, status (social, legal, political), urbanization, colonization – to say nothing of the particular historical entanglement of individual people or localities with Rome. Recognizing diversity and fragmentation has been productive: mastery of local detail, geography, and documentary culture has allowed scholars to make tremendous advances in understanding how precisely institutions worked (or didn’t), who peopled such institutions, how they changed, and where they sat in relation to other contexts of socialization. But regionalism and particularity offer temptations: they allow us to resist acts of synthesis. All becomes particular; similarity becomes contingency; fragments become their own reward, rather than demands upon a master narrative.