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Mostly studied from a chronological and prosopographical perspective, the content of senatorial cursus inscriptions from the Republican and Julio-Claudian periods can also help us better understand the phenomenon of territorialization of the Roman Empire. The epigraphic usage whereby the name of the province being governed is not indicated in inscriptions dating from the Republican period means that the determining factor was not the name of the province, but the status on which the intervention of such an official in the province was based. This implies that the imperium was at that time perceived primarily as power, not as space. A change occurred in the Augustan period, when a new epigraphical practice of naming the provinces coexisted with the previous one. This was an effect of the reform of January 27 BC, which helped to make the Empire a well-defined space by creating fixed provinces and establishing a hierarchy among them. The territorialization of the Roman Empire was, however, a long-term process that lasted throughout the first half of the first century AD. The Principate of Claudius brought this transitional period to an end, after which the names of provinces were systematically mentioned in senatorial cursus inscriptions from Rome and Italy.