A SOCIAL HISTORY of ROMAN SAGALASSOS* the Most
LOCAL ELITE, EQUESTRIANS AND SENATORS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ROMAN SAGALASSOS* Piae memoriae magistri Edmundi Van ’t Dack The most remarkable feature of the social structure of the Principate was the gradual and progressive integration of the local peripheral elites into the military command and the administration of the immense Roman Empire. Was it this integration, this ‘new blood’, that enabled the Empire to survive for so many centuries? Or was this phenomenon rather also responsible for the desintegration and breakup of the Imperium Romanum? It is beyond the scope of the present inquiry to give a definitive answer to this complex question. But fact is that the Roman social order attained its peak during the first and second centuries AD. The social strata as well as the elevators, the channels, of social promotion were quite strictly defined. Formal legal criteria concerning assets and the attendant social position were rather firmly fixed in the proportions 1:4:12. The decurions and the * Note the following abbreviations: H. DEVIJVER, Neon-Library: The Inscriptions of the Neon-Library of Roman Sagalassos, in M. WAELKENS – J. POBLOME (eds.), Sagalassos II (Acta Archaeologica Lovaniensia, Monographiae 6), Leuven 1993, p. 107-123. H. DEVIJVER, Relations sociales: Les relations sociales des chevaliers romains, in S. DEMOUGIN – H. DEVIJVER – M.-Th. RAEPSAET-CHARLIER (eds.), L’ordre équestre. Histoire d’une aristocratie. Actes du colloque international Bruxelles–Leuven, 5-7 oct. 1995 (Collection de l’École Française de Rome), forthcoming. PME: H. DEVIJVER, Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium quae fuerunt ab Augusto ad Gallienum (Symbolae Facultatis Litterarum et Philosophiae Lovaniensis, Series A/3), Leuven, I 1976, II 1977, III 1980, IV (Suppl.
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