The Augustan Empire 43 BC

In any case, it is a merit of recent scholarship to have pointed out that, in the Empire just as in the Republic, public responsibilities were not specialized (not even, by and large, the military ones, for every gentleman had to do some soldiering). Provided candidates seemed loyal and ordinarily competent, it did not greatly matter who received which office, and there was little need to gerrymander the system in detail, except, perhaps, negatively, to exclude men not competent enough — or too competent. The great, overriding campaign commands were just put, unashamedly, in the hands of members of the 'divine family';

otherwise, the important criteria were, really, social, and it is best to view the whole as an honours system, positions of distinction graded in a traditional ladder up which the socially ambitious could move. Its other importance was as a 'brokerage' system in the distribution of the ruler's beneficia, because it was those who rose in the order whose recommenda­tions carried weight, and who could obtain favours for the people or cities who were their clientes.⁵¹

The only other 'order' that mattered was that of the equites, and to them Augustus looked for some administrative personnel, without whom he would have had to expand the traditional magistracies and so dilute the senatorial crime de la creme. The wealthy class of newly united Italy was ready to be brought into the scheme of things. We have learnt better, however, than to see Augustus as 'inventing the Roman civil service' or harnessing to his regime the skills of a 'business class'. He used individuals of different kinds and skills and backgrounds, and did not create for them a cursus honorum in imitation of that of the senators: that was a later development. He did take steps to give the order a stronger collective image, with a formal 'entrance examination' and an annual equestrian parade, and, when Gaius and Lucius Caesar were old enough, making them its honorary presidents. From the funeral honours for Germanicus⁵⁸ we learn of a Lex Valeria Cornelia of a.d. 5, by which a new electoral committee of senators and select equites was interposed between candidature for office and the comitia, choosing a list of persons destinati, to be added, probably, to any commendati, to be put before the assembly of the people. It was allowed for that there might still be more candidates presenting themselves independently, but maybe from then on the assembly was virtually a rubber stamp. The significance of the new committee has been variously assessed; one view is that it had a political purpose, to encourage, by allowing some equites a say in the process, the rise to office of 'new men' favourable to Tiberius. But the more sober, and now prevailing, view is that it was an 'honour', a further special mark of distinction for the equestrian order.⁵⁹

When it came to the offices opened to the equites, there was, in Augustus' conception, no 'ladder'.⁶⁰ The order maintained, in any case, its traditional role as a principal source for the manning of the standard jury-courts and the filling of junior army officerships. The most significant of the new functions were for experienced military equites: the prefectures of small provinces and of the naval squadrons, and the census

^s7 Sailer 1981 (p 59) 94-111 and 7)-8.

^и The rogatio Valeria Auretia of a.d. 19. Sources: Tabula Hebana, EJ² 94a; Tabula Siarensis, J. Gonzalez 1984 (в 234); Rome fragment, C1L vi 31199; perhaps also the Tabula I/ieitaiu, EJ² 94b (or the latter may come from similar honours for Drusus in a.d. 23). ^w Brunt 1961 (c 47).

⁶⁰ Dismantling of the 'ladder' began with Sherwin-White 1939 (d 65).

officerships in the provinces. Above all, of course, stood the prefecture of Egypt and Alexandria itself. The first three prefects performed important military tasks; quite a number of other prefects are known by name from Augustus' reign, but we hear little of their activities, they had short terms of office, and they were socially not of high consequence.⁶¹ Equites were also employed in new procuratorial, that is financial, offices (though such offices might go to freedmen, such as the notorious Julius Licinus).⁶² The equestrian offices in the capital arose only relatively late, in the process of experimentation: the two praetorian prefects first in 2 b.c., thepraefectus vigilum in a.d. 6, thepraefectus annonae not before a.d. 7.⁶³ The stimulus may not have been so much growing confidence in the equestrians as dissatisfaction with experiments using senatorial committees.⁶⁴