Dio Lv.26.2; 31.4.
Nicolet 1976(0 j 3); Chastagnol 1973 (d 31) and 1975 (d 33). Both Mommsen and Willemshad, in their day, pointed this out.
Suet. Aug. 38.2; Suetonius docs not necessarily imply that (for example, owing to a 'crisis of recruitment') they were forced to enter the Senate.
Dio liv.i7.3; Suet. Aug. 41.1, with Carter's note. 44 As in 36 b.c., Dio xlix. 16.1.
nuisance. Hence the changes that had to be made in the rules of senatorial procedure.45 The 'acts of the Senate' ceased to be published,46 and it is possible that that was intended actually to encourage freedom of oral debate; but principally the changes were by way of securing proper levels of attendance:47 increased fines for absence, fixing of regular sessions of the Senate fortnighdy on specified days, and - in capitulation, really - lowering of the quorum needed to pass valid senatus consulta.
Recently, in line with the general theme of 'opting out' whose repercussions on the 'divine family' were seen in chapter 2 above, historians have discerned a 'crisis of recruitment' in the governing class, especially in the Senate. In 13 b.c. the Senate itself, in Augustus' absence, alarmed at the situation, appointed men from the equestrian order to the lowest set of senatorial posts, the 'vigintivirate' (allowing them to remain equites), and obliged ex-quaestors over forty to draw lots for the tribunate; and on his return Augustus compelled some people with the requisite census to enter the Senate. In the following year there was again a shortage for the tribunate, and equites were forced into it, with a choice, at the end, which order to stay in. In a.d. 5 (and often, says Dio) people were unwilling to be aediles, and compulsion was used. Suetonius alleges that the additional decuria was necessitated by avoidance of jury- service, and Dio records the difficulty of getting people to offer their daughters as Vestal Virgins.48 We can, then, agree as to the phenomenon, provided that a careful distinction be made. For the people at the lower end of the elite group, the sort who in the Republic would not have got beyond quaestorian rank and would have remained senatores pedarii, in the new dispensation the rank was not worth the trouble and expenditure. But the top was unaffected; praetorships and consulships were sdll sought after and fought over, hence Augustus' need to pass a lex de ambitu and make a rule, in 8 B.C., requiring deposits from candidates for office.49 In 23 B.C. he had declared that only ten praetors were needed annually, and the figure was kept at that for a few years; but there was pressure, and they were restored to twelve. And in a.d. ii, there being sixteen candidates, all were let in.50 As for the consulship, both its relinquishment by Augustus from 23 B.C. and the introduction of a second pair each year, which was regular from 5 B.C., must be seen as a response to the number of men eagerly surging up through the system and wanting the social reward: the age at which nobiles might reach the consulship was actually lowered.51 So it is no wonder that in the Augustan marriage-laws one of the privileges achieved by the possession of children was priority in the candidature for office.
45 Talbert 1984 (d 77) 122-4, following Rotondi, posits a lex lulia de senatu babendo of 9 b.c.
44 Suet. Aug. 36.1. 47 Dio Liv.18.5 and 35.1; lv.3. 48 Suet. Aug. 32; Dio lv.22.j.
4' DioLV.5.3. M Dio lvi.23.4. 51 Syme 1986 (a 95) j 1-3
The election to magistracies was plainly not intended by Augustus to go simply by his fiat. There was insistence on giving people the vote, as in the arrangements for the decurions of the twenty-eight Italian coloniae to have a kind of 'postal vote';[260] and Agrippa's new Saepta and Diribitorium must have been intended and used for actual voting and vote-counting, even if also for exhibitions. That might not be very significant: by Pliny's time, elections by the people in the Campus, though they still happened, were just a piece of pageantry. But to the extent to which, in Augustus' day, the ruler still needed to influence them, that state had not yet arrived. We are told how he gave presents to his own tribes and canvassed personally for his preferred candidates.[261]One of his privileges was that of 'commendation' of candidates for the higher offices, who were then 'candidates of Caesar' and automatically elected: Augustus seems to have used it sparingly, and not at all (as far as we know) for the consulship. He did not 'give' consulships to people, though we have seen in chapter 2 how he caused special arrangements to be made for the young hopefuls of the 'divine family'. Dio asserts that Augustus often chose the urban praetor himself[262] (not, it appears, the peregrine praetor, who shared the civil jurisdiction, which shows that this is nothing to do with a 'grip on the law'); doubtless what that means is that he decided which of the annually elected praetors should have the hierarchically senior position.55 As for governors of provinces, those of Augustus' own provincia were, properly, his to choose: it was an immense hold on promotion to the really significant jobs. The proconsulships of the 'provinces of the Roman people', were, in principle, still determined by the lot. Some scholars are minded to show that they were somehow picked with an eye to particular talent or suitability or experience.56 The attempt results in very little, but some manipulation of the lot is plausible, for ensuring, for example, that Africa got a soldier when needed, and we know that the lot was abandoned in at least one period of emergency.
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