Statistical Method and Inheritance of the Consulate under the Early Roman Empire

Abstract

A SENATOR'S LIFE under the early Empire certainly offered its comforts, but will hardly have been without perils. The history of this period, on record mainly from the pens of senators, is replete with accounts of political trials, exiles, executions, and forced suicides, all by imperial fiat. Still, the cases explicitly mentioned must represent only a portion of the politically motivated persecution of senators, for an emperor's saevitia was preferably adumbrated by the deaths of a few luminaries, leaving both the full extent and the exact circumstances of such persecution unclear. It is thus difficult to gauge accurately the degree to which emperors were responsible for political oppression of the senate. Only for the reign of Claudius do we have exact figures. Suetonius and Seneca both report that 35 senators and (respectively) 300 or 221 equites lost their lives, either by command of or with the subsequent consent of the emperor.1 Based on these numbers a rather interesting, albeit hypothetical, estimate of imperial persecution of members of the senate in the period from Tiberius through Domitian might be offered. Let us first assume that the measures taken by Claudius are representative for this period.2 We

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