Personal Patronage under the Early Empire

232 Pages·1982·5.8 MB·English

by  Richard P. Saller

PERSONAL PATRONAGE UNDER THE EARLY EMPIRE
PERSONAL PATRONAGE
UNDER THE
EARLY EMPIRE
RICHARD P. SALLER
Assistant Professor of Classics
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON NEW YORK ROCHELLE
MELBOURNE SYDNEY
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© Cambridge University Press 1982
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1982
First paperback edition 2002
A catalogue recordf or this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Sailer, Richard P.
Personal patronage under the early empire
1. Patron and client
I. Title
937'.04 DG83.3 80-42226
ISBN 0 52123300 3 hardback
ISBN 0 52189392 5 paperback
Contents
List of tables vi
Preface vi
Abreviations ix
Introduction 1
1 The language and ideology of patronage 7
2 The emperor and his court 41
3 vSeniority and merit: alternatives to patronage? 79
Appendix 3 A Comparative evidence from the Chinese
bureaucracy 1
Appendix 3B The proportion of procurators advancing from the
centenariate to the ducenariate level 116
4 The Roman imperial aristocracy 119
5 Patronage and provincials: the case of North Africa 145
Appendix 5 The epigraphic evidence from North Africa 194
Conclusion 205
Bibliography 209
Index 217
Tables
I Procuratorial carers 87
II Career paterns of procurators reaching Palatine oficia 91
I North African patronage inscriptions 195
Map of North Africa 146
VI
Preface
Patronage is a social practice of considerable importance in most
Mediterranean societies today. Few historians of ancient Rome would deny its
existence during the early Empire: patronage of communities has been studied
in a full-scale work, and in its personal form it is mentioned frequently in
political and social histories. But patron-client relations between individuals
have not yet received the systematic treatment that this study aims to provide
for the period from Augustus to the Severan emperors. As the title indicates,
municipal patronage falls outside the scope of this work, and patronage of
freedmen is also excluded on the ground that, in being subject to legal
regulation, it differed fundamentally from voluntary associations between
freeborn men. Further, owing to the nature of the evidence, the aristocracies of
Rome and the provinces will claim the greatest part of our attention; patrons
and clients lower on the social ladder certainly existed, but they left little
record of their activities (except perhaps in the special case of Egypt). No
attempt has been made to examine all provinces comprehensively, since it
seemed that much could be learned from an intensive study of a single area of
special significance, the North African provinces.
This volume originated as a doctoral dissertation written at the University of
Cambridge, where I received help and encouragement in an environment
made stimulating by Professor Sir Moses Finley and by teachers and fellow
students too numerous to list. I wish to thank those who read and commented
on various chapters: Mr D. Cohen, Dr R. Duncan-Jones, Professor Sir Moses
Finley, Professor F. Millar, Professor M. Ostwald, Mr S. Price, Miss J. M.
Reynolds, Dr B. D. Shaw, Mr W. Turpin, and Mr C. R. Whittaker. A special
acknowledgement of gratitude is due Professor John Crook, who was kind and
patient enough to read three drafts of my work — when submitted as a
fellowship thesis, as a doctoral dissertation, and finally as a manuscript for
publication. I have followed much of his advice, and where it has seemed better
to accept alternative suggestions, I have done so only after serious
consideration. My deepest appreciation is reserved for my dissertation
supervisor, Dr Peter Garnsey, without whose guidance and criticism at all
vii
viii Preface
stages of research and composition this book would not have been written.
Needless to say, these generous readers are not to be blamed for errors which
remain in the text. Most of the research and writing was done while I was a
member of Jesus College, Cambridge, whose years of financial assistance,
including a research fellowship, made it possible for an American to profit
from the special Cambridge environment. Finally, Swarthmore College is to be
thanked for a grant to prepare the typescript.
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania R.P.S.
July 1980
TO CAROL
IX
Abbreviations
The abbreviations used here for journals are the standard ones found in
L'Annee Philologique. The following abbreviations are used for standard
reference works.
AE Annee Epigraphique
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
ILAfr. Inscriptions latines d'Afrique, ed. R. Cagnat, A. Merlin, L.
Chatelain (1923)
ILAlg. Inscriptions latines de l'Algerie, ed. S. Gsell, H. -G. Pflaum (1922
and 1957- )
ILLRP Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Reipublicae, ed. A. Degrassi
(1957-65)
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau (1892-1916)
ILTun. Inscriptions latines de la Tunisie, ed. A. Merlin (1944)
PIR Prosopographia Imperii Romani
RE Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Alter-
tumswissenschaft (1894- )
TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae