Reading the Roman Revolution 25: The Working of Patronage

In our contemporary political landscape, patronage appears to play an ever greater role in securing and expanding political power. Friends, family, and foreign benefactors gain favor through networks of patronage that their position firmly to those with political authority. As in Ancient Rome, so in modern society, prosopography, Syme’s preferred method, reveals connections and these connections reveal the grift.

In Augustan Rome, Augustus’s party not only supported patronage, but also represented the network through which it functioned. Syme’s Roman Revolution demonstrated how the new working of Augustan patronage subverted the aristocratic system to the Roman Republic and reoriented political authority around the Princeps. Among the new men (the novi homines), Augustus used his patronage to create an ultra loyal inner circle. Among the lesser nobility and the equestrian order, Augustus secured allies through promotion and high office. Among those families of consular rank, he could offer marriage and connections to the dynasty, priesthoods, and wealth. This, in turn, allowed them to dispense patronage of their own.

Syme being Syme summarized it as this:

“Such were the ways that led to wealth and honours in the imperial system, implicit in the Principate of Augustus, but not always clearly discernible in their working. Political competition was sterilized and regulated through a pervasive system of patronage and nepotism. Hence and at this price a well ordered state such as Sulla and Caesar might have desired but could never have created. Thepower ofthe Peoplewasbroken. No place was left any more for those political pests, the demagogue and the military adventurer. That did not mean that the direction of the government now rested in the hands of Senate and magistrates not for that, but for another purpose, the solemn and ostensible restoration of their ancient dignity.”

oOo

The short essay is part of my Reading The Roman Revolution at 80 project. It’s so awesome that I have two hashtags: #ReadingRomanRevolution and #ReadingRonaldat80. I explain the project here. You can read the rest of the entries here.