1980/11/01 by Richard Saller · 5 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Classical Studies and Legal History
paper · doi:10.2307/299555
openalex publication_date 1980/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
In general histories of the Principate a prominent place is often given to the growth of bureaucracy, characterized especially by the equestrian procuratorial service. Along with a growth in size, it is said, came the development of an organization regulated by guidelines—the ‘formation of the rigid framework of a civil service, one that was to a certain extent more and more impersonal’. Thus, with regard to promotion, ‘the procurator's career had a precise promotion ladder, on which the scale of remuneration conferred a surprisingly modern character’. This view carries with it wide-ranging general and specific implications. It suggests that Roman government of the early empire reached a fairly sophisticated level of rational organization in which friendship and patronage, so vital to the workings of Republican politics, declined in importance, as bureaucratic rules played an increasingly decisive role in the appointment and promotion of procurators. More specifically, it has been thought that once the rules have been discovered, missing steps in individual careers can be interpolated with confidence.