II. The Senate, the Equestrians and the Plebs
The three orders. The social classification of the Romans into the senatorial, equestrian and plebeian orders passed, with sharper definitions, from the republic into the principate. For each class a distinct field of opportunity and public service was opened; for senators, the magistracies and the chief military posts; for the equites a [pg 209]new career in the civil and military service of the princeps, and for the plebs service as privates and subaltern officers in the professional army. However, these orders were by no means closed castes; the way lay open to able and successful men for advancement from the lower to the higher grades, and for the consequent infusion of fresh vitality into the ranks of the latter.
The Senate and the senatorial order. The senatorial order was composed of the members of the Senate and their families. Its distinctive emblem was the broad purple stripe worn on the toga. Sons of senators assumed this badge of the order by right of birth; equestrians, by grant of the princeps. However, of the former those who failed to qualify for the Senate were reduced to the rank of equestrians. The possession of property valued at 1,000,000 sesterces ($50,000) was made a requirement for admission to the Senate.
The prospective senator was obliged to fill one of the minor city magistracies known as the board of twenty (viginti-virate), next to serve as a legionary tribune and then, at the age of twenty-five, to become a candidate for the quaestorship, which gave admission to the Senate. From the quaestorship the official career of the senator led through the regular magistracies, the aedileship or tribunate, and the praetorship, to the consulship. As an ex-praetor and ex-consul a senator might be appointed a promagistrate to govern a senatorial province; a legate to command a legion or administer an imperial province; or a curator in charge of some administrative commission in Rome or Italy.
During the republic the Senate had been the actual center of the administration and Augustus intended that it should continue to be so for the greater part of the empire. Through the ordinary magistrates it should govern Rome and Italy, and through the promagistrates the senatorial provinces. Furthermore, the state treasury, the aerarium saturni, supported by the revenues from Italy and the Senate’s provinces, remained under the authority of that body. However, to render it capable of fulfilling its task and to reëstablish its prestige, the Senate which now numbered over one thousand had to be purged of many undesirable members who had been admitted to its roll during the recent civil wars. Therefore, in 28 B. C., Augustus in his consular capacity supervised a revision of the senatorial list whereby two hundred unworthy persons were excluded. On that occasion his name was placed at the head of the new roll as the princeps senatus. [pg 210]A second recension ten years later reduced the total membership to six hundred. A third, in 4 A. D., commenced through a specially chosen committee of three with the object of further reducing their number was not carried out. The Senate was automatically recruited by the annual admission of the twenty quaestors, but in addition the princeps enjoyed the right of appointing new members who might be entered upon the roll of the Senate among the past holders of any magistracy. In this way many prominent equestrians were admitted to the senatorial order.
The equestrian order. For the conduct of his share of the public administration the princeps required a great number of assistants in his personal employ. For his legates to command the legions or his provinces with delegated military authority Augustus could draw upon the senators, but both custom and the prestige of the Senate forbade their entering his service in other capacities. On the other hand, freedmen and slaves, who might well be employed in a clerical position, obviously could not be made the sole civil servants of the princeps. Therefore, Augustus drew into his service the equestrian order whose business interests and traditional connection with the public finances seemed to mark them out as peculiarly fitted to be his agents in the financial administration of the provinces.
The equestrian order in general was open to all Roman citizens in Italy and the provinces who were eighteen years of age, of free birth and good character, and possessed a census rating of 400,000 sesterces ($20,000). Admission to the order was in the control of the princeps, and carried the right to wear a narrow purple stripe on the toga and to receive a public horse, the possession of which qualified an equestrian for the imperial civil and military service. With the bestowal of the public horse Augustus revived the long neglected annual parade and inspection of the equites.
Like the career of the senators, that of the equestrians included both military and civil appointments. At the outset of his cursus honorum the equestrian held several military appointments, which somewhat later came regularly to include a prefecture of a corps of auxiliary infantry, a tribunate of a legionary cohort, and a prefecture of an auxiliary cavalry corps. Thereupon he was eligible for a procuratorship, that is, a post in the imperial civil service, usually in connection with the administration of the finances. After filling several of these procuratorships, of which there were a great number of [pg 211]varying importance, an equestrian might finally attain one of the great prefectures, as commander of the city watch, administrator of the corn supply of Rome, commander of the imperial guards, or governor of Egypt. At the end of his equestrian career he might be enrolled in the senatorial order. Thus through the imperial service the equestrian order was bound closely to the princeps and from its ranks there gradually developed a nobility thoroughly loyal to the new régime.
The Comitia and the plebs. The comitia, which had so long voiced the will of the sovereign Roman people was not abolished, although it could no longer claim to speak in the name of the Roman citizens as a whole. It still kept up the form of electing magistrates and enacting legislation, but its action was largely determined by the recommendations of the princeps and his tribunician authority.
While the city plebs, accustomed to receive its free distributions of grain, and to be entertained at costly public spectacles, was a heavy drain upon the resources of the state, the vigorous third estate in the Italian municipalities supplied the subaltern officers of the legions. These were the centurions, who were the mainstay of the discipline and efficiency of the troops, and from whose ranks many advanced to an equestrian career.