The Senate of Imperial Rome

Richard J.A. Talbert

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781400849765
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte der römischen Antike

Richard J. A. Talbert examines the composition, procedure, and functions of the Roman senate during the Principate (30 B.C.-A.D. 238). Although it is of central importance to the period, this great council has not previously received such scholarly treatment. Offering a fresh approach to major ancient authors (Pliny and Tacitus in particular), the book also draws on inscriptions and legal writers never before fully exploited for the study of the senate.

Part One

THE CORPORATE BODY

1

THE SENATE

An understanding of the procedure and functions of the Roman senate during the Principate demands first a knowledge of its members. With such a purpose in mind this opening chapter gives some account of entry to the corporate body, senators’ advancement thereafter, and the social composition of the membership. A short section on withdrawal and restoration is also included. This aspect excepted, the other three are all major topics in their own right. Within the limited compass here, therefore, no attempt can be made to cover certain relevant matters in depth, and a considerable debt throughout is owed to the detailed studies of earlier scholars.

1. Entry¹

At all periods entry to the senate was restricted to Roman citizens of free birth and good standing. Thus, as Marcianus² says, conviction under the Lex Julia de vi privata barred a man from any position of honor or responsibility, including membership of the senate.³ Sound health was also considered important. Ulpian⁴ explains that a man who went blind could retain his senatorial rank, and could continue to hold any magistracy on which he had already entered. But in his view a blind man could not seek any further office, and he claimed to be able to support the point with many examples (none of which he cites). Certainly some, if not all, the members in our period known to have been blind⁵ or deaf⁶ may only have developed such disabilities in the course of their career, while we are told that in 13 B.C. Augustus would not consider anyone who was physically disabled for entry to the senate.⁷

In the Republic military service had been expected, and possession of the equestrian census rating (400,000 HS) also came to be required. Membership was made up of ex-magistrates, all of whom had a seat for life: insofar as a senatorial “order” was ever spoken of during the Republic, it meant simply the members themselves. Octavian evidently did not alter these qualifications in the course of his first review of the senatorial roll (lectio senatus) in 28 B.C. But we may gather that two changes were introduced either at the time of his second review in 18 B.C., or soon afterwards. First, possession of a higher census rating, one million HS, was now required. As Dio says in his first reference to these ratings (18 B.C.): “Augustus allowed all to stand for office who possessed property worth 400,000 HS and were legally eligible to hold office. This was the senatorial rating which he at first established; but later he raised it to one million HS. Upon some of those who lived upright lives, but possessed less than the 400,000 HS in the first instance, or the million in the second, he bestowed the amount lacking.”⁸

Between 18 and 13 B.C. the new requirement evidently contributed to a drastic fall in senatorial recruitment. Dio says in his account of 13 B.C.:

After this there was another examination of senators. At first the rating of senators had been fixed at 400,000 HS, because many of them had been stripped of their ancestral property by the wars, and then, as time went on and men acquired wealth, it had been raised to one million HS. So no one was found any longer who would of his own choice become a senator: rather, even the sons and grandsons of senators, some of them really poor, others brought low by the misfortunes of their ancestors, not only would not lay claim to senatorial dignity, but also if chosen rejected it on oath. For this reason, earlier, while Augustus was still away, a decree had been passed that the so-called Vigintiviri should be appointed from the equites: but still none of them was enrolled in the senate without having held one of the other offices which led to it.⁹

Suetonius’ figures differ from those of Dio. He says that Augustus “increased the senatorial census rating and fixed it at 1,200,000 HS instead of 800,000.”¹⁰ The lower figure here is especially puzzling. It is otherwise unattested, and whether it represents a temporary, interim stage beyond 400,000 HS, or perhaps just a simple error by Suetonius, it is best set aside. The key to understanding the higher figure of 1,200,000 HS may lie in the context—a discussion of Augustus’ generosity. Elsewhere more specifically Dio tells us that in A.D. 4 “since many young men, both of senatorial family and among the rest of the equites, were impoverished through no fault of their own, for most of them he made up the required census, and for eighty of them he increased it to 1,200,000 HS.”¹¹ Having noted this exceptional incident Suetonius has perhaps slipped into claiming that the higher amount was the required senatorial census, rather than one million HS which is almost certainly correct.¹²

Augustus’ second change, probably introduced in 18 B.C. when a senatorial class was defined for the first time,¹³ limited the wearing of the latus clavus (that is, the broad stripe on the tunic). Previously it had been worn not only by members themselves, but also by any young eques who aspired to a senatorial career. The links between senators and the upper range of the equestrian order were always close, and for young men of suitable standing a choice of career would be determined mainly by the degree of involvement in public life which they were prepared to undertake. Now, however, Augustus stipulated that the only non-members who might wear the latus clavus were to be the sons of senators.¹⁴ All other equites were to wear just the narrow stripe. There was no diminution of their freedom to stand for the Vigintivirate and the senatorial magistracies¹⁵—among the latter usually the quaestorship, but sometimes the tribunate or aedileship,¹⁶ and in the exceptional cases of Sejanus, Claudius, and perhaps L. Julius Ursus,¹⁷ the consulship. Yet not until they had been elected to one such magistracy and entered office could they wear the latus clavus.¹⁸

Unlike Augustus’ first change, this second, more formal one, did not last. The restriction imposed upon équités who aspired to a senatorial career was abandoned at the latest by Gaius’ time. From then onwards it was possible for an eques to be granted the latus clavus ...