Gelzer Matthias. The Roman Nobility

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969. — 164 p.This book contains two different but nicely complementary works by Gelzer, "The Nobility of the Roman Republic" and "The Nobility of the Principate". The first was originally written in 1912, the second in 1915, both of them in German. This English translation dates back to 1969. Gelzer is important, and this work is often quoted, because it inaugurates a line of research which continues down with Munzer, Syme, Scullard and a number of more specialized others, which is centered on the who is who and who was allied with whom in the politickings of the Roman Republic (esp. Middle and Late Republic, as earlier we do not have that much information). Gelzer does not try to trace all the lines between the whos but is the one who sets in motion the important idea that there were political factions, that these factions were mutable and that their influence can be traced through elections and political decisions. However, that is only one chapter in the Nobility of the Roman Republic. The first part of it deals with the concept of nobility and how nobility was conferred and transmitted down the generations (surely it is not a spoiler to say it: nobles were those who had attained the consulship and their descendants). The second part of Nobility in the Republic deals with how one managed to get elected consul, and studies the concepts of patronage, clientelae, amicitia, fides, financial ties and, within that context, the factions and how they tried to trip each other up. The financial aspect becomes particularly important as electoral bribery and province stripping became standard political behaviour. The Nobility of the Principate, on the other hand, explains how the concept of nobility becomes locked, fossilized even, by the arrival of Augustus and upheaval of the system. Only descendants of Republican consuls were nobles (and it was best if you could prove nobility from both the father and the mother side, which sometimes resulted in rather outlandish names for offspring as names of the different lines combined haphazardly). The consulship under the imperial regime was still considered an honour, but not a basis for nobility. Noble families had already been culled by the civil wars and the century or two after Augustus saw their genteel decline and extinction from political long knifes and financial starvation, as senatorial families were supposed to live off rents and not have any useful employment other than imperial service (where robbing the provinces blind was no longer an option).