Reading for Week 7, May 16, Augustus and the New Order of the State

Senate, Equestrians, ....

Ancient Sources:

RC1, 194, 196,(Horace), 197, 198, 199, 201, 202 (v), 204, 207 (Narbo honors …), 208, Coins ( in the back of the book ) from 29 B.C. on

RC2, 12, 13, 17, 21, 32, 37, 40

Dio 54.17.3 3He permitted all to stand for office who possessed property worth four hundred thousand sesterces and were eligible by the laws to hold office. This was the senatorial rating which he at first established; but later he raised it to one million sesterces. Upon some of those who lived upright lives but possessed less than the four hundred thousand sesterces in the first instance, or the million in the second, he bestowed the amount lacking.

Dio 26.3-5 After this there was another purging of the lists of the senate. At first, as we have seen, the rating of senators had been fixed at four hundred thousand sesterces, because many of them had been stripped of their ancestral estates by the wars, and then, as time went on and men acquired wealth, it had been raised to one million sesterces. Consequently no one was any longer found who would of his own choice become a senator; 4on the contrary, sons and grandsons of senators, some of them really poor and others reduced to humble station by the misfortunes of their ancestors, not only would not lay claim to the senatorial dignity, but also, when already entered on the lists, swore that they were ineligible. 5Therefore, previous to that time, while Augustus was still absent from the city, a decree had been passed that the Vigintiviri, as they were called, should be appointed from the knights; and thus none of these men eligible to be senators was any longer enrolled in the senate without having also held one of the other offices that led to it.

Questions:

1) How did the role of the senate change under the Augustan principate? What means did Augustus employ to institute these changes and to insure their long term success?

2) What distinguished members of the equestrian order from the senatorial families? How and why did their relationship to the princeps differ from that of the senators?

3) How did the princeps interact with the rest of the population?