Princeps and Equites

Abstract

From the first Augustus employed Equites in military and civil posts (Dio LIII 15). The number of such posts multiplied in the course of time, and finally in the third century Equites supplanted senators in positions of the highest responsibility. In general ancient authors almost ignore the inception and development of the equestrian service. Dio makes Maecenas advocate the use of Equites by arguing that the emperor needed numerous assistants and that it was advisable that as many persons as possible, evidently from the higher classes, should feel that they had a share in the government (LII 19; 25). Modern scholars offer various explanations. It is clear that there were too few senators to fill the army commissions that went to Equites. Some equestrian posts were also below senatorial dignity. But others equalled or surpassed in importance those still reserved to senators. On one view the emperors, aiming at greater efficiency, found among the Equites more professional expertise; on another, they could better rely on the political loyalty of the lower order. Stein combined these theories: Augustus ‘called to life an admirable profession of officials (Beamtenstand) which performed its functions with distinction and which could at the same time unlike the senate never threaten the Princeps’; it was ‘an efficient and willing instrument of the autocrat’. For Hirschfeld its triumph in the third century marked the culmination of ‘the three hundred years’ long struggle between senate and emperor’. Individual emperors to whom the creation of particular posts is assigned (often with little justification) are supposed to have deliberately furthered this process. I can find no deep design nor overall plan, either in the arrangements made by Augustus (some of which were suggested by practices of the previous generation), or in those of his successors, but only a series of expedients to meet varying needs and the development of precedents, which ultimately produced the appearance of a system.