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The Establishment of the Equester Ordo*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

M. I. Henderson
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Extract

A new moneyed class, thrusting rapidly to public estate in an ancient society, needed the enhancement of symbols and titles. Most Roman titles were military in origin, and it was natural to borrow the name of the old Roman cavalry, with its associations of high rank and property-census, antique tradition, and decorative imagery. Not less naturally, the military metaphors of the new civil equites concealed change and misled some secondary authors into anachronism. Modern historians too have been apt to assume the perpetuity of forms or conditions appropriate to the Servian Army, and long afterwards retailed in antiquarian descriptions of the ‘exercitus urbanus’. In general outline, indeed, the comitia centuriata may have retained its archaic structure; nevertheless, both Dionysius and Livy warn us plainly enough that changes had taken place. However modern hypotheses may attempt to reconcile the difference, the stark fact remains that two discrepant versions of the Servian system were current in the first century B.C. Such institutions were perhaps not as static as the terminology which attached to them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1-2 , November 1963 , pp. 61 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © M. I. Henderson 1963. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

Members of the Oxford Philological Society, to which an earlier version of this paper was read, are collectively thanked for useful criticisms. To P. A. Brunt, who read the present version in proof, I owe many apt suggestions.

References

1 e.g., A. Stein, Röm. Ritterstand, ch. 1 (on the Republic). No full bibliography of the subject is attempted in this or the following notes.

2 See Additional Note (below, p. 71).

3 Strachan-Davidson, , Problems of Roman Criminal Law II, 85 ff.Google Scholar; Hill, Roman Middle Class, 26.

4 Cato, ORF2, fr. 85 (see below, p. 110 f., n. 64).

5 Cic. De r.p. IV, 2 (see below, pp. 70 ff.).

6 Cf. Phil. VII, 16. The truth of the accusation is of course irrelevant.

7 Cic. Pro. Sull. 34.

8 Cic. Pro Mur. 73.

9 Cic. Phil. II, 44.

10 Born late in 110 (Nepos, Att. 21–22).

11 Epp. ad Quintum fratrem, etc., ed. Watt, W. S. (Oxford, 1958), 179 ff.Google Scholar; Nisbet, R. G. M., JRS 1961, 84 ff.Google Scholar Both refer correctly to the textual transmission with the spurious epistula ad Octavianum, which I missed by error in JRS 1950, 8 ff. J. P. V. D. Balsdon has kindly shown me his article (forthcoming in CQ) concluding that no proof is established for or against authenticity.

12 Caes. 8.

13 Pomp. 22. Pompeius had been consul and a senator for eight months.

14 Cic. Pro Mur. 73; Pro Sull. 34; Phil. II, 16 and 44; Mommsen, , Sr. III, 483 ff.Google Scholar

15 Mommsen, , Sr. III, 488 ff.Google Scholar; see also below, p. 67.

16 o.c. (n. 3), II, 86, quoting Cic. Pro Rosc. com. 42 and Ad Q.F. I, 2 VI.

17 Cic. Phil. II, 44; Suet. DA 40.

18 Cic. II Verr, III, 181–187. A. Stein (o.c, n. I, 36, 47 ff.) misinterprets Republican data by disregarding the impropriety of certain viritim grants. The mere fact that the gold ring was granted by Verres shows that it did not automatically ensue from equestrian census.

19 Cic. Pro Flacc. 4; Pro Rab. Post. 14–15.

20 Lange, , Röm. Alt. I, 435Google Scholar; Zumpt, , Criminalr. II ii, 194Google Scholar (inferring the unattested Republican census equester from the Principate—a possible bet, but unsafe, since Augustus was given to reviewing census levels).

21 Asc. 15.

22 Compare Cic. Ad Alt. I, 16 iii with In Clod, et Cur. fr. 31. Cicero, a rich and great man, did not want to serve (In Pis. 94). For the low social level of the Aurelian iudices generally, see Pro Cluent. 97 ff. (their names); together with all Cicero's polite expositions of law to the ignorant, and below, p. 66.

23 Perhaps not prescribed for senatorial iudices, but assumed for senators before Augustus, since they began as equites (Cic. Pro Sest. 97; Phil. II, 44; Gelzer, Nobilität, = Kl. Schr. I, 20, 2), and could be demoted for bankruptcy (Asc. 74). In Pro Sest. 137, industria and virtus connote wealth and officer's rank.

24 Cic. In Caec. 8; CAH IX, 336 ff.

25 Cic. Phil. 1, 20 (cf. Denniston, p. 179).

26 Whether or not this is (as I believe) the meaning of Dion. Hal. IV 21: τῆς κλήσεως [τῶν λόχων] οὐκέτι τὴν ἀρχαίαν ἀκρίβειαν φυλαττούσης. κλῆσις should mean classis, as in IV, 20: see Brunt, P. A., JRS 1961, 82Google Scholar (with Additional Note below, p. 71).

27 See below, pp. 70 f.

28 In Cat. IV, 15.

29 cf. Dio XLIII, 26 (inaccurately formulated, but referring to the abolition of the third decuria). I cannot here agree with Brunt, , JRS 1961, 76Google Scholar, n. 29.

30 Cic. Phil. II, 94.Google Scholar Faeneratores: Ad. fam. VIII, 17 ii. On social classes of business men P. A. Brunt has kindly shown me a forthcoming paper.

31 Ad fam. X, 32 iii (cf. ib. XII 18 ii; Gell. XVII, 14; Macrob. Sat. II, 7Google Scholar).

32 Cic. Ad Att. II, 19 iii. It is probable that the Lex Roscia referred to equites in the stricter sense of the day. Imperial references (e.g. Hor. Epod. IV 16) do not necessarily retain the earlier historical connotation.

33 See Appendix (below, p. 72). Since few inscriptions can safely be dated to the early Principate, chronological limits are here impracticable.

34 Dion. Hal. VI, 13; Plin. NH XXIII, 30–31 (four decuriae with barely 1,000 in each, but the fourth was composed of members of the other three).

35 Suet. DA 32.

36 Suet. DA 38.

37 Am. III, 15, 5–6. Cf. Suet. DA 40 (heredity). ILS 6640, though later, is typical. The idea that equites equo publico valued posts in the early Imperial service (Duff, Freedmen, 218) is illusory: for their class it was an ambitio praepostera.

38 ‘Mox reddendi equi gratiam fecit eis qui maiores annorum quinque et triginta retinere eum nollent’ (mallent em.: Mommsen, taking gratiam fecit to mean ‘excused’).

39 A lower age-limit presumably did operate to divide the adult equites from the turmae of the iuventus. But why did Augustus create these equites iuniores if their seniors were also a iuventus under 35? Neither body had any practical purpose to account for it.

40 Cic. Pro Mur. 73: Natta makes an acte de présence on the special occasion of a relative's election. The centuriate group-vote made nonattendance easy, and July was hot. By A.D. 14 even the plebs cared little for elections (Tac. A. 1, 15).

41 Dion. Hal. VI, 13; ILS, I, 314. Whether the eighteen centuries still survived in the comitia we do not know. The turmae, with their VI viri centuriarum equitum, seem to correspond to the sex suffragia, whose relation to the total of eighteen is also uncertain.

42 Cic. 1 Verr. 49; contrast the consilium of the iudicium Iunianum (named in Pro Cluentio, passim). On the social level of iudices after 70, see above, p. 63, n. 22.

43 E silentio, but the silence is too long and portentous to be negative. Augustus made amends for C. Gracchus by restoring the crucial quaestio de repetundis for the Senate to judge its peers; it was logical to leave common crimes to equestrian iudices.

44 Dio, LVI, 42 (cf. LV, 2). Tab. Heb. ll. 55–7, restored to include equites without the equus publicus by Ehrenberg and Jones (Documents, no. 94a) and more convincingly to include the senators by Oliver and Palmer (AJP 1954, 225 ff.).

45 NH XXXIII, 34 (see also below, p. 70), and 29 (‘quod antea’, etc.).

46 i.e. through the regular and corporate channels: Pliny ignores viritim grants, which were capricious. (above, p. 63 and n. 18).

47 i.e. 3,000 in all (p. 66, n. 34).

48 Pliny implies that some indices (not maior pars) had it before—presumably because they were also equo publico, as in group (ii) of the inscriptions classified above (p. 65). On the question of subequestrian decuriae see below, pp. 68 f.

49 Equites equo publico certainly sat in the XIV Rows (Suet. DA 40). On the iron ring, ibid. 100; Pliny NH XXXIII, 21 (Republican senators). In Pliny's own day (ibid. 23; Petron. Sat. 32; younger Pliny Epp. VIII 6 iv) it was worn by rich liberti—but perhaps not before A.D. 23.

50 ‘Garbled information’ (A. H. M. Jones, JRS 1955, 16) would be too mild in this particular instance. I do not follow E. S. Staveley's attempt to defend it (Rhein. Mus. 1953, 203); and he interprets the clause as if it read ‘… esse intellegebantur’.

51 ILS 5016, 6862; see opp. citt. above (n. 50). I fully accept their view that ‘iudex selectus’ = iudex of the iudicia publica (which implies equestrian census at least), but I would apply the term to all the v decuriae.

52 CIL II, 4275, IX 5567.

53 Equestris hereditas too had unofficial snob-value (Sen. De ben. III, 7 VII). The fifth decuria was polluted by newcomers, the fourth was drawn by lot: the first three were (by these standards) socially pure.

54 Tab. Heb. II. 11–14 (referring back to Lex Valeria Cornelia).

55 (a) See above, (p. 66, n. 43); (b) Augustus could barely fill the present decuriae (above pp. 66 f.).

56 Tab. Heb. 11. 13–15.

57 Suet. DJ 39 (Laberius); Hor. Epod. IV (the reward of fighting for Octavian).

58 Jones, A. H. M., JRS 1955, 16.Google Scholar

59 Pro Rosc. Am. 140. The choice of date is immaterial.

60 Pro. Rab. perd. 27.

61 l.c., c. 34. As Pliny explains, the equester ordo was then inserted beside Senatus Populusque—presumably in some SC concerning Catiline's conspiracy or the concordia ordinum of 63.

62 Trossulus, an obscure word, is clearly a diminutive of contempt. The town of Trossulum, linked by Gracchanus (ibid. c. 35–6) with some ancient or legendary exploit of the cavalry, is mentioned only by the antiquarians.

63 De r.p. IV, 2. Stein (o.c, n. I, 2) oddly imagines that the senators wanted this plebiscitum; but largitio refers, as often, to a popularis measure (cf. C. Gracchus in De off. II, 72 and Tusc. III, 48).

64 It is not necessary to determine exactly when the old cavalry disappeared from the army, since it may before that time have lost connection with the political comitia centuriata. Its survival ‘ultra C. Gracchum’ seems, however, to be merely Pliny's own tentative inference from Gracchanus (ibid., c 36).