In criticizing the theory that the Roman Republic was controlled by a narrow elite, Millar was able to build upon the investigation by Hopkins and Burton into the rate at which successive generations of the same family reached the consulship. They had established that the number of consuls with consular ancestors was considerable (around 65 percent), but for the first time they had also clearly stressed that a series of families did not succeed in repeating electoral success in the next generation.6 Then, in a painstaking prosopographical study, Ernst Badian presented more exact data on the consuls’ lineage and found that the proportion of consuls who came from families that had already produced at least one consul never fell below 70 percent in all his periods between 179 and 49.65 However, it is possible to draw differing conclusions from the finding (which in principle had long been known already) that many consuls of the Republic, but not all, originated from the nobility (however defined) - that is, that there was obvious continuity of the elite but no complete closure of the office-holding aristocracy, and there were certainly chances of entry for outsiders. Should we, with Hopkins and Burton, give central importance to the concept of social mobility, or, following Burckhardt, the oligarchical tendency? The question to what extent noble descent gave increased prospects for success is in no way secondary; the structural determinants of unequal chances for political success inherent in any political system call for examination, all the more so those of a system with marked democratic features, which after all, according to Millar, the Roman Republic was supposed to have been. Since our fragmentary factual evidence leaves us quite in the dark about a number of important questions - for example, the number of candidates in individual elections, the subsequent paths taken by nobles unsuccessful in their political career, the integration of those climbing the ranks into political networks, and the resources of successful and less successful families - we have no other recourse than to undertake a precise examination of the consular lists marked off in periods defined by external criteria, as Hans Beck has now done anew for the middle Republic.67 If we examine and compare discrete phases, we do not hide the changes that naturally affected entry to the consulate in the course of history behind a single, averaged figure.68 And the conception of ‘‘symbolic capital’’ borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu may actually convey quite well the significance of family distinction in the political system of the Republic: a solid fund of prestige, which, however, could dissipate if the successes of a man’s ancestors lay too far in the past, and which did not determine his own success even if it was fresh and impressive, but instead influenced the competition more or less strongly in relation to other factors.69
Millar attacked the widely held views that the Roman Republic was a kind of aristocracy or oligarchy, that it had been governed in some unusual way by a small elite, and that there had been something like a political group of nobles.70 In fact, however, it is far from self-evident that there would be solidarity among noble families directed against ambitious outsiders, or in pursuit of collective dominance and the preservation or expansion of their competitive advantages, since after all the nobiles were engaged in intense competition with each other. Holkeskamp has now made use of the theory of nobility proposed by the sociologist Georg Simmel to show how competition for office on one hand, and a consensus upon rules for that competition and against rule-breakers on the other, might be reconciled with each other.71 Furthermore, some years ago Nathan Rosenstein persuasively elucidated an element of the collective ethos of the leadership class that had not been clearly discerned. Rosenstein observed that many Roman magistrates who had suffered military defeat while in command during their period of office afterwards continued their careers without a setback. This seemed an astonishing phenomenon in a society so fixated on war and victory as Rome’s. To explain it Rosenstein formulated the illuminating hypothesis that since all the members of the political class were exposed to the risk of military defeat, they cultivated a code of conduct that forbade using such defeats as a political weapon against unsuccessful generals - as long as these had conducted themselves bravely, in accordance with the rule.72 Rosenstein went on in another study to show that this was not a manifestation of solidarity solely limited to or focused on the nobility, but rather that it encompassed all defeated commanders even if they were ‘‘new men’’ from outside the circle of distinguished families.73 The group in which this solidarity operated, that is, was that of all magistrates, who were of course senators. The essential point however is that here we come upon a restriction upon competition that was self-regulating and evidently functioned well - which proves that senators and young politicians striving to enter the Senate were in a position to establish and respect such rules.
Ultimately it is not of great importance whether one describes the nobility, the most esteemed families of the senatorial political class, as an aristocracy. Millar’s objection that it was not a hereditary aristocracy is not especially consequential,74 since on the one hand this is evident and undisputed, but on the other, the conception of aristocracy as a prominent and privileged group is not in fact tied to formal heritability. But above all the element of achievement, which is often seen as a central distinction between the modern meritocracy and the class-based concept of aristocracy, is of course not in itself a decisive criterion, since at the root of every aristocracy lies a claim to achievement, as the name ‘‘rule of the best’’ itself shows, except that one did not give evidence of one’s capacity for achievement as one does today - by such feeble means as grades on examinations at the top universities for aspiring leaders in the economic realm, or among scientists, by the size of their grants, and so on - but by one’s ancestry and the accomplishments of one’s ancestors. The fact therefore that Roman politicians regularly needed to be successful in popular elections and that ‘‘new men’’ could also succeed in them, although the members of the ancient noble families statistically (that is, not unconditionally in every actual individual case) had considerably better chances, justifies completely our continued use of the term ‘‘aristocracy’’ for the core of the leadership class, without thereby necessarily making the claim that the entire political system was aristocratic through and through.
In the end one can make the idea of rule by the nobility concrete only through a two-step investigation of the Senate, first by demonstrating that it was predominant in the Republic, then by making a persuasive case that within the Senate the nobility - represented perhaps by the cadre of ex-consuls, although this was not identical with the nobility - determined policy. It is now generally recognized that neither of these propositions held true in uninterrupted and absolute fashion.75 However it is undeniable that often it was the Senate that set the political course, and that if a threat arose to the system that gave them a privileged position the leading senators might close ranks against it.76
On the whole, therefore, it is beyond dispute that the continuity of the elite was considerable and that senators and Senate exerted wide-ranging influence over political decisions and the form that politics took; on the other hand, however, it is equally clear that members of the elite were obliged regularly to communicate with the People and needed to win popular votes for the advancement of their own career and their other objectives.77 To assess the significance of the democratic features of the Roman Republic the essential questions are therefore those concerning political representation of the People and the scope of decision-making in the popular assemblies.
World History
