¹ The recruitment of the Senate from A.D. 70–192 is briefly summarized by H. Last in Cambridge Ancient History (hereafter CAH) XI (1936), 418–420Google Scholar. The works listed in the text will hereafter be cited in the notes by author's name only, except that the three articles by Willems will appear as Willems IV V, and VI, and the article and two books by Lambrechts as Lambrechts AC, 1, 11. Dates in the Christian era will appear without A.D.

² Tacitus' exaggerated picture of the ‘tyranny’ of Tiberius, and particularly of how he used the law against treason to persecute the Senate, has generally been rejected; see, for instance, Charlesworth, M. P. in CAH X (1934), 628–631Google Scholar; R. S. Rogers, Criminal Trials and Criminal Legislation under Tiberius, in Am. Philol. Monographs VI (Middletown, Conn., 1935), and any of the modern studies of Tiberius, by Tarver, Marsh, Smith, Ciaceri, or Marañon, not to speak of the still valuable preface by H. Furneaux to his edition of the Annals I (Oxford ed. 2, 1896), especially pp. 140–160. That Tacitus' bitterness may have resulted not only from his own personality but from the effect on him of Domitian's persecution of the Senate is the view of Walker, B., The Annals of Tacitus (Manchester, 1952) 172–182Google Scholar. For Gibbon, see in Bury's smaller ed. 1 (London and New York, 1897), 78–82, a section which begins with the famous statement that there had been no happier period in the world's history than that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus, but which goes on to set against this outward happiness the misery and uncertainty resulting from the tyranny of such emperors as Tiberius (p. 81) and later Commodus (pp. 87–8), Septimius Severus (pp. 120–1, 124), or Caracalla (pp. 134–6).

³ Nilsson, M. P., Imperial Rome (Eng. trans, by Richards, G. C., London, 1926) 320–332Google Scholar, in a chapter on ‘The Population Problem’, paints an exaggerated picture of the connection in the upper classes between immorality, economic individualism, and race suicide. A. E. R. Boak, Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, in Jerome Lectures II (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1955), sees an overall decline of population already begun before 235 (note his summary on pp. 110–2), and collects the figures given by previous authorities for the population of the Roman empire at various times. See also the brief statement in Rostovtzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1926Google Scholar; hereafter SEH) 517, n. 28, to ch. III, p. 99, also p. 107.

⁴ For the survival of Republican patrician gentes under the Empire, see Stech 127–130; De Laet's table on p. 252. It has been suggested that any imperial Cornelii may have descended from Sulla's ten thousand freedmen, not from the old Republican patrician families; for the Sullan Cornelii, see P-W IV (half-vol. 7), 1250, under Cornelii 4. For the Cornelii Scipiones Salvidieni Orfiti, see Heiter, C., De patricis gentibus, etc. (Berlin, 1909) 33Google Scholar; Willems IV, 262; Lambrechts I, 207–8; Barbieri 477–8. Barbieri lists for the early third century besides the C. Scipiones Salvidieni Orfiti eight other ‘noble’ families, taking ‘noble’ in Gelzer's meaning of families descended from senatorial families of the Republic, whether patrician or plebeian. For S. C. Dolabella, etc., as the representative of the last surely identifiable Republican patrician gens, see Lambrechts 1, 207, and 29, no. 41.

⁵ The percentages and numbers for the survival of patrician families are taken from De Laet 253–6, to whose bibliography on pp. 13–16 might be added Ribbeck, O., Senatores Romani qui fuerint Idibus Martiis anni a.u.c. 710 (Berlin, 1899)Google Scholar. See also Stech 128–130, 140–1, and, for the Julio-Claudian period, M. W. H. Lewis, The Official Priests of Rome under the Julio-Claudians, in American Academy in Rome, Papers and Monographs XVI (Rome, 1955), 163–4Google Scholar. For the survival of patrician families of the first century into the second century, see Lambrechts 1, 211, who uses Stech 131–6.

⁶ For the creation of the patrician families by Hadrian and the Antonines, see Lambrechts I, 212. For the disappearance of the patrician families known during the second century, see Lambrechts II, 91; of the forty-three families which he mentions, seventeen survived from before 117, twenty-one can be identified as elevated by specific emperors during the period 117–192, and five others are known but cannot be identified as to date of elevation.

⁷ Heiter, De pat. gent. 73 (above, n. 4), concludes from his identification of patrician families that Augustus and Claudius elevated to the patriciate only old and distinguished families, presumably therefore Italian, but that Vespasian and his successors introduced provincial families. Heiter's conclusions are accepted in CAH XI, 10–11; by W. Weber, ‘Zu der Inschrift des Iulius Quadratus,’ a Beitrag to W. Weigand, Zweiter Bericht über die Ausgrabung in Pergamum 1928–1932: Das Asklepieion, in Abh. der preuss. Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin phil.-hist. Kl. for 1932, no. s, p. 71, n. 56; and by Stech 151, 184, who, however, remarks that among the provincials there were no orientals. Lambrechts 1, 212, emphasizes that the patriciate throughout the second century remained primarily Italian. SHA, Com. 6, 9, comments bitterly that under Commodus: ‘ad cuius (Cleander's) nutum etiam libertini in senatum atque in patricios lecti sunt,’ a passage which Schulz, O. T., Das Kaiserhaus der Antoniner usw. (Leipzig, 1907) 170, 206, 245Google Scholar, accepts as from a good source. According to Lambrechts II, 91, the families which received the patriciate under Septimius or Caracalla all had a very short tradition of membership in the Senate but the patriciate remained above all an Italian aristocracy in which only rarely are provincial families found; compare Barbieri 490–3, 529–530. The patricians enjoyed advantages both in the tenure of office and in rapidity of passage through the cursus honorum and Lambrechts I, 217–19, and II, 91, indicates that these were not disregarded by the Severi or even in the third century, though he tends, I, 211, to accept Groag's view that the patricians were revered but kept out of positions of real importance.

⁸ The figures for the disappearance of Republican plebeian families under the Julio-Claudians are from Willems VI, 135–6; compare De Laet 264–277. Lewis, Official Priests (above, n. 5) 160–174, concentrates on the numbers of patricians and ‘new men’ who obtained priesthoods and does not separate out plebeians as such. For plebeian senatorial families from Vespasian to Trajan, see Stech 142–9. Lambrechts does not give statistics for plebeians during the second and third century comparable to those which he affords for patricians, but in II, 91, he cites, for the ‘new look’ of the Senate after Septimius, Stein, A., Der römische Ritterstand, in Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte X (Munich, 1927), 359Google Scholar; compare generally for the recruitment of the Senate from the equestrian class Stein's ch. IV, pp. 195–362; Barbieri 533–543. For election to the Senate from the equestrian order, see below, pp. 191 ff.

⁹ For the numbers of provincials in the Senate, see De Laet 278–286; Stech 167–181, with the table on p. 176; Lambrechts 1, 183–201; Barbieri 432–473, with the table on p. 459, where the figures are more complete than in Lambrechts 11, 79–80, 83–4, 86. Barbieri's figures are recalculated by Colin, J., ‘Senateurs gaulois à Rome, etc.,’ in Latomus XIII (1954), 223Google Scholar, n. 1. For the unreliability of figures on the composition of the Senate, see Lambrechts AC, 113, n. 1, and 1, 192; Barbieri 460–8. In the third century, inscriptions even of senators are so few and abbreviated as to render conclusions on their places of origin difficult, see Lambrechts 11, 85–7; Barbieri 468–473.

¹⁰ De Laet, 278–286, finds the change in attitude towards admitting provincials to the Senate under Nero, not under Claudius. Despite Claudius' wellknown speech to the Senate urging that the Aeduan chiefs be admitted to the Senate (or to candidacy for office?), for which see Hardy, E.G., Roman Laws and Charters 11 (Oxford, 1912), 133–146Google Scholar, De Laet notes on p. 283 that no Aeduan is attested before Trajan, and in his table on p. 281 he finds in all only fifteen senators of provincial origin under Claudius as against forty-two under Nero. He attributes the change of attitude under Nero both to the impoverishment of Italian senators by the social and economic crisis in Italy in his reign and to the philosophic influence of Seneca. See also Stech 177–8.

¹¹ The wealth of provincials was already a sore point in the minds of Italian senators in the debate which preceded Claudius' speech, see Tac., Ann. XI, 23, 5: ‘… aut si quis pauper e Latio senator foret? oppleturos omnia diuites illos, etc.’ Walton, 62, rates wealth as third after efficiency and good birth in the reasons for the introduction of easterners. Last, CAH XI, 419, thinks that it was not so much their wealth as their knowledge of public opinion in the provinces which brought provincial and particularly eastern senators forward. As the table shows, it was not until Trajan that Stech's figures for senators of known origin show an almost equal number of Italians and provincials introduced in any given reign; previously the Italians predominate heavily. And the total of senators known to be of Italian origin does not fall below half until the Severi.

¹² Walton, 46–7, laid considerable emphasis on the introduction of eastern provincials into the Senate under the Flavians, whereas Stech, 179, thinks that the four noble easterners introduced under Vespasian did not constitute any marked change of policy from the Julio-Claudians; one further easterner is known to have been held over from Nero's reign, L. Servenius Cornutus from Phrygia, Stech 50, no. 370, compare p. 180, n. 3, and De Laet 202, no. 1538. De Laet, in his table on p. 281, indicates that the Julio-Claudian emperors admitted the following numbers of identifiably eastern senators: Augustus five, Tiberius perhaps two, Claudius one, and Nero five or six. Thus, Vespasian was not out of line with his predecessors in admitting easterners with caution. For Domitian's eastern senators, see Stech's table on p. 176.

¹³ Stech, p. 180, followed Liebenam, W., Fasti Consulares Imperii Romani in Kleine Texte usw. 41/43 (Bonn, 1909), 17Google Scholar, in dating Lollius and Quadratus in 93 since they appear in a diploma CIL XVI, 38, of 13th July in Domitian's trib. pot. XII, which presumably began on 14th September, 92, see Hammond, M., ‘The Tribunician Day during the Early Empire,’ in Memoirs of the Am. Acad. in Rome XV, (1938), 37Google Scholar. However, the Fasti of Ostia have shown that they were consuls in 94, see Degrassi, A., Fasti Consulares et Triumphales in Inscriptiones Italiae XIII, fasc. 1 (Rome, 1947), 195Google Scholar, with comment on p. 222, and compare his I Fasti Consolari dell'Impero romano, etc. in Sussidi Eruditi III (Rome, 1952), 28, under year 94; Hammond, M., ‘The Tribunician Day … a Re-examination’ in Memoirs of the Am. Acad. in Rome XIX (1949), 42–4Google Scholar. Degrassi suggests, following Nesselhauf, H., Diplomata Militaria in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XVI (Berlin, 1936), 152Google Scholar, that military diplomas were occasionally prepared in advance and then issued at a later date, with the appropriate consuls but without change of the imperial titles; compare Hammond, ‘Trib. Day … Re-ex.’ 40. For the number of known provincials who became consuls under the Flavians and Trajan, see Stech 182–3.

¹⁴ For the Roman prejudice against easterners and its disappearance during the second century, see Walton 38–41; Stech 178; Lambrechts 1, 193. For the emergence of one such family, the Domitii of Bithynia, see Gabba, E., ‘Epigrafe di un console del III sec. D.C.,’ in Athenaeum n.s. XXXIV (1956), 280–3Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Stech, p. 180, gives twenty-eight as the number of provincials introduced into the Senate by Trajan, see his table on p. 176. Walton, pp. 48–9, does not think that Trajan was exceptionally favourable to easterners but Lambrechts AC, 105–114, 1, 190–1, 195, 201, argues that Trajan, not Hadrian, really opened the door to the easterners; compare Rostevtzeff, SEH 518, n. 9, to ch. IV.

¹⁶ For the introduction of provincials into the Senate under Hadrian and the Antonines, see generally Lambrechts I, 187–201.

¹⁷ The policy of Septimius towards Italians in the Senate has been re-examined by Barbieri, G., ‘Aspetti della politica di Settimo Severe,’ in Epigraphica XIV (1952, publ. 1954), 3–48Google Scholar, in general agreement with the views expressed above. Lambrechts II, 196, criticizes von Domaszewski and Sintenis for placing the major influx of provincials into the Senate under him and in 11, 83–5, he holds that though the reigns of Septimius and Caracalla saw an increase of easterners and of Africans in the Senate, this was not, as von Domaszewski and Bihlmeyer said, a ‘barbarization’ since the easterners represented the old Hellenistic culture and the Africans were by then thoroughly Romanized, if not of emigrant Italian descent. Hammond, M., ‘Septimius Severus, Roman Bureaucrat,’ in Harvard Studies in Class. Philol. LI (1940), 137–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Septimius himself was just such a person, whose family had close connections in Italy and, on pp. 168–9, feels that the ‘anti-Italian’ policy of Septimius was the result not of a sudden reaction by Septimius but of trends operative throughout the second century. Similarly, he suggests on p. 170 that Septimius' shift in recruitment for the Praetorian Guard from Italian to provincials, for which see Durry, M., Les Cohortes Prétoriennes in Bibl. des Écoles franç. d'Ath. et de Rome CXLVI (Paris, 1938), 247–9, 384–5Google Scholar, may have been a move necessitated by the corruption and inefficiency of the Italianate guard. The uncertainties of the surviving evidence for the origin of senators under the Severi and in the third century is shown by the fact that Barbieri has not only greatly increased the number of listed senators over those given by Lambrechts II but has also found among them a higher percentage of Italians. Lambrechts calculated that among senators of known origin, the Italians dropped under Septimius by nearly 20 per cent, while Barbieri indicates a drop of only 12 per cent.

¹⁸ The first senator to be admitted from Egypt is mentioned bitterly by Dio LXXVI (LXXVII), 5, 5; compare Lambrechts 11, 13, nos. 5 and 6, and p. 84; Barbieri 11–12, nos. 6 and 7, and p. 440. As Lambrechts II, 84, n. 2, points out, Greeks from Alexandria had already become senators during the second century. But Dio implies that Coeranus was indeed a native Egyptian. That Septimius was particularly favourable towards Egypt seems uncertain. Abbott, F. F. and Johnson, A. C., Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1926) 113Google Scholar, state that he granted a municipal Senate to the capital of each nome, but this was to assist the collection of taxes. In any case, the statement seems uncertain, see Platnauer, M., The Life and Reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus (Oxford, 1918) 197Google Scholar, n. 6; Rostovtzeff, SEH 272–3.

¹⁹ Lambrechts 11, 82, n. 1, points out that of sixty seven senators (see p. 79) under Septimius and Caracalla who were possibly of Italian origin, fifty nine are certain and of these fifty-nine, twenty-three are known to have been ordinary consuls and twenty to have been suffects; the rest are uncertain. Of 116 (this number, not 114, are listed in his table on p. 79) senators possibly of provincial origin, 102 (not 100) are certainly so, and of these only ten are known to have been ordinary consuls while forty-one were surely suffects; the rest are uncertain. This disparity indicates that Septimius respected the traditional prestige of the Italians, as he also did that of the patricians, above, p. 76, n. 7.

²⁰ Lambrechts 11, 85–6, calculates that from 217–235 about the same numbers of Italians (eleven) and easterners (nineteen) were admitted to the Senate; Barbieri 447 gives only totals of 115 Italians and seventy-four easterners in the Senate. More easterners appear under Septimius and Caracalla and more Italians under Alexander, but this was not due to any basic change of policy. Septimius drew on the rich eastern provincials in default of qualified Italians to make good the losses sustained by the Senate under Commodus and during the civil wars of 193–6; under Alexander there was a more normal recruitment and the traditional prestige of the Italians reasserted itself.

²¹ For the career of Septimius, see Hammond, ‘Septimius Severus, etc.’ (above, n. 18). Lambrechts 11, 87–8, notes the scarcity of Illyrian senators in the third century, which he thinks was due to the fact that the Danubian provinces never really became romanized, and he sees the Illyrian emperors as products of the army, not the Senate. Barbieri, 459, thinks that Lambrechts perhaps underestimated the Illyrian element in the Senate and refers to Stein, Röm. Ritterstand (above, n. 8) 416 for their entrance into the equestrian class in this period. The exclusion of senators from military commands by Gallienus which is twice reported by Victor in Caes. 33, 34, and 37, 5–6, is generally regarded as the result of two processes: the separation of military and civilian careers and the substitution of equestrian for senatorial officials. These had been going on at least since the Severi and may have begun as early as Hadrian, see Stein, Röm. Ritterstand 449–457; Lambrechts II, 96–104; Petersen, H., ‘Senatorial and Equestrian Governors in the Third Century A.D.,’ in JRS XLV (1955), 47–57Google Scholar, where will be found references to earlier literature, especially to Keyes, C. W., The Rise of the Equites in the Third Century of the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1915)Google Scholar.

²² Barbieri summarizes his statistics for membership in the Senate on pp. 458–9. If he is correct in his conclusion on p. 431 that the effective number of senators at the opening of the third century rose to 800 or 900, this increase must have been composed largely of provincials and thus would account for their increased percentage. Such an increase also helps to explain the Senate's loss of effectiveness as a corporate legislative body.

²³ Recruiting of legionaries in the provinces probably began during the civil wars at the end of the Republic. Italians remained in the majority until Claudius and Nero and by the end of the first century Italians constituted a small minority. The requirement of Roman citizenship was technically maintained but it was apparently easy for a likely recruit to receive or purchase this. See the summary statement by Parker, H. M. D., The Roman Legions (Oxford, 1928) 169–186Google Scholar; the fuller statement by Forni, G., Il Reclutamento delle Legioni da Augusta a Diocleziano in Pubbl. della Fac. di Fil. e Lett, della Univ. di Pavia 5 (Milan, 1953)Google Scholar, especially ch. V, pp. 65–75: ‘La provincializzazione delle legioni e la questione della “esclusione” degli italiani’; also some remarks by W. Seston in a review of Lambrechts 1, in Rev. Ét. Anc. XXXIX (1937), 160–2Google Scholar. For the ‘provincialization of the population of Italy, see Frank, T., ‘Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,’ in American Hist. Rev. XXI (1916), 689–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as corrected by Gordon, M. L., ‘The Nationality of Slaves under the Early Roman Empire,’ in JRS XIV (1924), 93–111Google Scholar. Johnson, J., Excavations at Minturnae 11, 1 (Rome and Philadelphia, 1933), 83–6, 109–113Google Scholar, shows how far the ‘provincialization’ had gone in the early first century B.C. in a small community, on the sea but far from Rome.

²⁴ Walton, 60–3, gives a good summary of the various reasons which may have induced emperors to introduce easterners into the Senate. See also Lambrechts 1, 192–201; Last in CAH XI, 419. The question of how far easterners were used as governors or commanders in their native provinces lies outside the present discussion.

²⁵ It is hoped that the conclusions expressed in this paper may eventually become part of a general study of the constitutional aspects of the Antonine monarchy.