A committee has been set up under the auspices of the British Academy with the object of compiling a prosopography of the later Roman Empire (A.D. 284-641). Its object is to do for the later Empire what the Prosopographia Imperii Romani has done for the Principate, to provide the materials for the study of the governing class of the Empire. The majority of the entries will be persons holding official posts or rank together with their families, and the work will not include clerics except in so far as they come into the above categories.

No abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Roman Studies.The Tabula Hebana already has a bibliography more than six pages long, in which figure the names of most of the eminent scholars of Europe.1 It may seem, therefore, both superfluous and presumptuous to add to it. But very few of the studies hitherto produced have attempted to deal with the political implications of the document, and of these few only one, Professor Tibiletti's monograph, Principe e magistrati repubblicani, has tackled them seriously. As will appear, I owe much to Professor Tibiletti's acute analysis of the procedure laid down in the Tabula, but as I differ profoundly on several points from his interpretation of the political background, I have thought it worth while to propound my views.It is almost accepted doctrine that Augustus throughout his reign systematically gerrymandered the elections, those at any rate for the higher offices, especially the consulate. What I may call the prosopographical school of historians, in particular, assume that the consuls were defacto the nominees of Augustus, and regard the consularfasti as a barometer of his personal policy or that of the narrow group which controlled affairs. I would challenge this view. The liberty of the elections was, I would agree, to some extent limited by the predominant influence of the Princeps, but the evidence, I maintain, strongly suggests that genuine electoral contests continued, not only for the lower offices, but for the praetorship and the consulate, with which alone the Tabula Hebana is concerned.Competition for entry to the Senate was no doubt somewhat reduced by the formal enactment of a property qualification, which was at least once raised. The exact figures are variously given in our authorities. According to Suetonius 2 the qualification was at first 8oo,000, later i,200,000 HS. Dio 3 says that in I8 B.C. Augustus laid down the figure of 400,000 HS, the equestrian census, in fact, which must always have been in practice required, and that this was raised before I3 B.C. to i,ooo,ooo HS.4 He later, however, mentions that Augustus in A.D. 4 made up the census of certain impoverished senators to I,200,ooo HS,5 Suetonius' higher figure. Tacitus,6 on the other hand, speaks of grants of I,000,000 HS in similar cases under Tiberius. Whatever the figure it was hardly likely to prove an impediment to the kind of new men whom Augustus favoured, ' omnem florem ubique coloniarum ac municipiorum, bonorum scilicet virorum et locupletium.' I The census qualification was useful rather in eliminating impoverished and disreputable scions of noble families ; August...