Download Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor's Freedmen by P. R. C. Weaver PDF

By P. R. C. Weaver
The slave and freed slave sessions are of the 1st significance for any research of the social constitution of the Roman global within the first and moment centuries advert. between them the emperor's personal slaves and freedmen, the Familia Caesaris, deserve unique recognition: this was once an important in prestige and the main cellular socially of the entire teams in slave-born sessions; it additionally had the best continuity of improvement and the people who comprised it may be pointed out and dated in adequate numbers for major statistical comparisons to be made from their family-relationships and occupations. the first assets for this examine are inscriptions - over 4 thousand of them - as a rule sepulchral, short, stereotyped and undated. certainly one of Professor Weaver's major achievements has been to set up standards for relationship and studying this intractable fabric in order that it may well yield the social historian trustworthy statistical info. He indicates how the Familia Caesaris differed from different sections of the slave and freedman periods and the way even inside it there has been a substantial measure of social differentiation.
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Fronto, Epist. ii. 16) and was also certainly a freedman of Pius. Another, xiv 2104: T. Aurelius Aug. lib. Aphrodisius, was 'proc. Aug. a rationibus' and received a dedication from the Senate and People of Lanuvium under aediles whose year of office is not known. It is to be noted that three of the seven held positions of importance and influence, most likely all under Antoninus Pius, and that none of the seven has the status indication 'Augg. ' They would have been manumitted by him before his adoption but their inscriptions were put up after his accession.
Lib. (vi 8608), Martialis A[ug. ] (vi 8515), Acastus Aug. lib. (x 6081), Paean Aug. lib. (xiv 2932), and many others who raise chronological problems that are important because of the importance of their careers in tracing the history of the senior administrative service. 1 The reasons for the omission of the nomen are not so clear, nor do they matter very much. g. m 2097: C. Iulius Sceptus Admeti Aug. lib. ; xiv 2780: Ti. Claudius Oniri Aug. 1. Domesticus; 51: P. Aelius Trophimi Aug. 1. l i b .
The influence of individual emperors on the general development of the Familia Caesaris, both in its administrative and in its domestic services, can only be felt within quite narrowly defined limits. On special issues or for particular appointments the workings of the system of patronage give the emperor a decisive voice. By virtue of his position in the state he was required to deal personally with an incredible amount of detailed, day-to-day business. But, with the exception perhaps of Augustus, even the emperors who were most important in the history of the administration, Vespasian, Hadrian, M.