In the introduction to this volume, Potter offered an account of the typical senatorial career. This is largely based upon inscriptions, with some admixture of textual evidence that has been used to create an image of the typical progression of an aspiring senator. Although there will remain some areas of debate - especially around the question of whether some men who were recognized as being particularly good soldiers gained an advantage over their peers - the picture is well enough established by the combination of evidentiary categories to be regarded as essentially secure. We are on somewhat different ground when it comes to the other major governmental institution, the equestrian bureaucracy, especially that which includes the fiscal administration of the empire.
In the early Julio-Claudian period there were three kinds of procurators, the praesidial (governors of minor provinces), fiscal (charged with the administration of various tax revenues and infrastructure), and personal (charged with tasks necessary for the maintenance of the emperor’s patrimonium) (Brunt 1966: 461-5). Atop all of these were the ‘‘secretariats’’ in the palace and the great prefectures. The four great prefectures were Egypt, the annona, the vigiles, and the praetorian. The secretarial positions, in the second century, included the a libellis, in charge of legal appeals to the emperor, the ab epistulis, a post usually divided between officials charged with either Greek or Latin letters, and the a rationibus, the official in overall charge of the revenues of the imperial properties. In general terms the secretarial positions could be defined as equestrian assistants to the emperor in hearing legal cases, receiving and responding to the letters and decrees of cities and petitions of individuals, and in handling other matters connected with the administration of the empire (Dio 52.35.5, with Millar 1977: 105).
How did people move from one position to another and was there any sense of a prescribed sequence in an equestrian career? We know that there was a career that could be specifically chosen as early as the first century because, aside from the epigraphic evidence of equestrian officeholders, Tacitus tells us that men could chose between equestrian and senatorial careers - but he does not tell us more than that. In 1950 Pflaum attempted to fill in the missing information when he essayed to update Otto Hirschfeld’s fundamental study of Roman administration (Hirschfeld 1905). Pflaum felt that Hirschfeld’s book suffered from a number of faults, not the least being that ‘‘there was an absence of precise classification of the different posts in the procuratorial career, a task rendered impossible, Hirschfeld thought, by the fact that there was not a fixed hierarchy’’ (Pflaum 1950: 1). There was good reason for Hirschfeld to think as much. For one thing, there was no fixed order of promotion into the lower ranks of the procuratorial career - men could enter either of the two first levels (those with salaries set at 60,000 or 100,000 sesterces) from military commands such as the command of an auxiliary cohort, or service as a military tribune or chief centurion of a legion (primus pilus). If there was no fixed entry point, it might stand to reason that there would be a certain amount of fluidity in the system all the way along.
Even admitting that movement from the lower into the upper ranks of the procuratorial administration was fluid, Pflaum detected general patterns in the order that posts were held in the three main grades of procurator: the sexagenarii, centenarii, and ducenarii (men with salaries of 60,000, 100,000 and 200,000 sesterces). He noted, for instance, that most of the posts held by sexagenarii were as assistants to other officials (Pflaum 1950: 231), that centenarii never went from holding a provincial post to holding a position such as procurator ad bona damnatorum, or procurator in charge of the property of the condemned (that is to say property that was confiscated to the fiscus), and that people never went from higher salary grades to lower. He was also able to establish that the fixed ranking system of procurators was established under the Flavians, and that there was a steady increase in the number of procurators in the course of the second century CE, with 62 posts attested, as of when he was writing in 1950, under Domitian, 127 under Marcus Aurelius, and a massive upsurge under Septimius Severus, in whose reign 174 posts are attested (Pflaum 1950: 105).
Having established that people did hold certain posts after they had held other ones. Pflaum attempted to reduce the scheme of promotion within the different salary grades to a fixed pattern, especially for the ducenarii. The first post held was usually a minor provincial governorship, a provincial procuratorship (see Ando, this volume) or an urban post such as prefect of the inheritance tax. It is with the second and subsequent posts that Pflaum’s analysis begins to falter amid the complexity of the evidence. There is no obvious difference between many of the second, third, and even fourth posts, and no obvious, or guaranteed, promotion from procuratorial posts to the imperial secretariat or the imperial prefectures. When too great regularity is sought, there is simply not enough evidence in the inscriptions to allow for answers to the questions that Pflaum asked.
Although part of Pflaum’s project did not succeed, taken as a whole it nevertheless achieved important results. Pflaum’s collection of the evidence remains splendidly valuable work, and the observation that the equestrian bureaucracy expanded in ways that the senatorial did not, is arguably a point of enormous significance.
Although Pflaum’s question about promotion was thoroughly reasonable, his predisposition to find a positive answer led him to over-interpret the evidence. It also distracted attention away from other issues. The notion that there could be promotion from one position to another necessitated the view that there was a specific point at which officials were reviewed. If this were the case, and we know in fact that it was, then one might reasonably ask, What were the criteria for appointment, reappointment, or promotion? What was the relative balance between demonstrated ability and friendship with other important people? We simply do not know for certain, but there are some facts that are suggestive. One thing we know is that there was a specific point in each year at which the emperor evaluated people for equestrian jobs. Another is that letters Pliny sends in connection with equestrian promotion (see the Introduction to this volume) stress previous accomplishment, suggesting that there was a feeling that equestrians, like senators, were expected to build a track record of achievement. A third is that even senior administrative officials in Egypt tended to have little or no previous experience in the province (Brunt 1975: 141-2, and p. 164 below), but they all had track records in administration. What Brunt did not consider was the extent to which their appointments were always as the heads of the departments where long-serving officials did the bulk of the day-to-day work. It is notorious that managers learn how to handle situations rather than specific circumstances. Experience and training gives them the ability to manage (in theory) whatever situation they find themselves in, and to work with specialists in those areas. Without examining the evidence for the interaction between senior officials and the professionals who worked for them, we cannot really understand how the administrative system worked. At issue here is the central problem of finding an intersection between different forms of evidence. Inscriptions show us what a man wanted people to know about him: they reflect the status that he attained through the performance of his duties. The career inscriptions upon which our knowledge of the equestrian career are based cannot tell us how people carried out their jobs, and how the administration that they were part of actually functioned. If we want to see what equestrian officials actually did, we need to look instead at the papyri.
World History
