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chapter 9
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P RO S O P O G R A P H Y
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werner eck 

The word is, for someone who hears it for the Wrst time, rather hard to pronounce:
prosopography; and it is also, indeed, hardly straightforward to understand.
Derived from the Greek word prosopon, person, it denotes a scholarly discipline
which is concerned with historical personages. Prosopography is, taken literally,
the study of persons.
To be occupied with persons in the context of Roman history and culture is not
something that has emerged only with more recent developments in scholarship.
Even medieval historiography, and, to an ever greater extent, antiquarians since the
time of the Renaissance have constantly been concerned with people from the age
of Rome. That is something they could not by any means avoid, since before
anything else, Roman historiography is to a high degree concerned with persons.
Cato Censorius, in whose historical work, the Origines, only collective and insti-
tutional units act (without individuals being distinguished by name), is more than
untypical for Roman historiography, in which, as a rule, the individual historical
person, identiWed by name, appears as agent. The non-literary tradition too,
indeed, consists almost exclusively of sources which are related to one or more
persons. During the Roman Republic, mints placed the name of the mint-master
on their coins, and beginning with Augustus, we see the name of the ruler. Soon
afterwards, family members of the domus Augusta were included as well. Local
coins from Asia Minor bear the names of the governors and even more frequently
that of municipal magistrates or others who were involved in the process of
minting coins. Almost without exception, inscriptions on durable materials


Translated by James Kierstead.
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prosopography 147

name one or more individuals: for it was one essential goal of epigraphic monu-
ments to preserve the memory of persons for posterity. This purpose was served
above all by funerary inscriptions, the monumenta, which account for the bulk of
the epigraphic evidence, and likewise by building inscriptions which commemor-
ated the beneWcence of a donor or oYcial, and religious dedications which a
particular worshipper oVered to a deity. Finally, papyrological documents, which
dominate the evidence from Roman Egypt, are almost invariably associated with
particular individuals, ranging from oYcials such as praefecti Aegypti, Wnancial
procurators, strategoi of Egyptian nomes or village scribes, to subjects who had to
pay taxes or perform liturgies and received receipts or letters of appointment in
return. In this way, several million individuals from a wide range of social back-
grounds are documented, from all across the Roman realm from Britain to Upper
Egypt and from Gibraltar to the Euphrates.
Many of these personalities are of outstanding historical importance and have
therefore been studied for a long time. This includes the likes of Fabius Maximus
Cunctator, who played an important role organizing Roman resistance after the
crushing defeat of Rome by Hannibal in 216 bc; and also Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar,
who left deep marks on the history of the late Republic. Most of the Roman emperors
belong in this group, as well as some of their wives, such as Livia, Agrippina, and Iulia
Domna. It also includes Parthian kings as partners or enemies of Rome; client rulers
such as Herod the Great or Iuba of Mauretania; generals of the Late Empire such as
Arbogast or Stilicho; Church Fathers such as Augustine or Hieronymus (Jerome);
the inXuential hermit Paula, who founded monasteries in Bethlehem; or Roman
bishops such as Damasus or Gregory the Great, or Athanasius, the bishop of
Alexandria. However, most people, from the perspective of who is to be considered
as a driving force in historical develepmont, were either unimportant, or areand
this is certainly not infrequently the caseunrecognizable (any longer) to us as
driving forces of this sort. Yet at the same time, everyone who was alive then was in
one way or another involved in shaping history; if notas with most of themas
individual agents, then at least as members of a particular category or group of
people. This includes persons who had held certain oYces and military ranks, from
the republican oYcialsconsuls, praetors, or censorsto various kinds of govern-
ors in the Roman provinces from the late third century bc until late antiquity, and
likewise army commanders such as the legionary legates of the Principate or the
ethnically diverse magistri militum of the Later Roman Empire. Individual social
groups also belonged to such formative classes as, for example, the equestrian class,
whose leading personalities, as tax-collectors (publicani), and later as controllers of
the Wscal administration with the oYcial title of procurator, had at their disposal
enormous, though admittedly very diVerently structured, inXuence. Closely linked
to the equestrian class were the decurions of the cities, the empires units of self-
government, who, assembled in the city council, determined, to a considerable
degree, the lives of their municipalities; the great mass of the equestrian class was
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148 werner eck

at the same time part of the elites of the countless towns. Below the high oYce-
holders of the empire and of late antiquity a large and ever-increasing number of
subalterns operated, who for the most part were taken from two social groups: slaves
or freedmen of the emperor, but above all from the troops who were stationed in all
the provinces but also in Rome.
What the signiWcance of these and other groups of people was, what they did
exactly, where they came from socially, how such groups changed through time
such questions are hardly ever answered directly in ancient literary sources, except
in statements whose purposes are almost entirely polemical and aim to defame an
entire group by attacking individual people. Thus the emperor Constantine is
accused, by an indiscriminate adoption of Germans into the armed forces, of
having entrusted even the leadership of the armies to enemies of the empire,
made the empire dependent on Germans, and so brought it into danger. There
are repeated complaints about the inXuence of imperial slaves, but above all
freedmen, as a general phenomenon of the Wrst century ad. But such general
statements are altogether rare, and hardly ever of an objective nature.
In order to be able to answer questions such as those introduced above, as well as
numerous others, or assess the historical worth of polemics like that directed at
Constantine, it is generally not enough to examine individual examples; it requires
a more all-encompassing approach. Only an examination of the concrete cases that
have come down to us can in this instance lead to scholarly conclusions, so that
what was genuinely the norm is recognized without outstanding individual
exampleseven those judged to be typicaldistorting our vision.

Mommsen and the Beginnings of

Prosopography in Ancient History
.........................................................................................................................................................................................

It is in such a context that prosopography acquires its particular signiWcance, since

while it primarily examines individual people and studies them from diVerent
points of view, it has above and beyond that the inclination and the capacity to
make more general statements which transcend the individual cases. This so-called
prosopographical method is, however, a more recent development, whichif my
view is correctin its systematic approach goes back to Theodor Mommsen.
On 31 March 1874 Mommsen submitted a proposal to the Royal Prussian Acad-
emy of Sciences in Berlin, in which he requested funding for a project whose goal
was to develop a Proso(po)graphy of the notable persons of the Roman Empire
(Eck 2003: 212). Mommsen intended before anything else to produce a new type of
tool to use with the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), which was in the process
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prosopography 149

of being created. He would accomplish in this way, on the one hand a relatively
complete prosopography of the more notable men of this era, and the other hand a
compilation of chronologically arranged lists of consuls, governors, and magistrates
in general. The result, which was presented to the scholarly public more than twenty
years later, was the Wrst edition of the Prosopographia Imperii Romani, in three
volumes (18979). The work presented, though, only the prosopography, and not
the lists of diVerent oYce-holders that Mommsen had advertised in addition. The
PIR (the abbreviation used in citations), in any case, very consciously did not
represent a comprehensive dictionary of all persons known from the empire, but
rather encompassed only those, as Mommsen expressed it, notable persons of the
Empire, by which on the one hand was meant all those attested in the literary
sourcesindeed, almost all persons known of in this fashion, without limitations.
From the other types of sources, that is, in essence from inscriptions, papyri, or
coins, however, he included only persons who belonged to the Roman governing
classes, in other words, all members of the senatorial class (ordo senatorius) as well as
those from the equestrian class (equester ordo) who had taken on state functions in
some form or other. Also included were all female members of the relevant social
classes. Chronologically the dictionary was dedicated to the early and high Empire,
that is, to the period roughly from the time of Augustus (27 bcad 14) to the
beginning of Diocletians reign in the year ad 284.
These chronological parameters alone make clear that Mommsen saw the
Prosopography as primarily an auxiliary tool, in essence, for the CIL. For the great
mass of the epigraphic material came from the Wrst three centuries of the empire,
which was likewise collected at the behest of Mommsen in the CIL at the Berlin
Academy. The inclusion of all literarily attested persons in the PIR also bears
witness to the intention of supporting the new body of inscriptions; for while
increments to the literary tradition could hardly be expected, the people who
appeared there could easily crop up again in an inscription, on a coin, or in a
papyrus. It was important, though, with regard to new attestations that the
material relevant to a person found in literary sources was systematically collected,
and therefore directly accessible to researchers.
From the beginning, the PIR far exceeded in its possibilities even what Momm-
sen had intended, even ifaccording to the guidelines that had been laid downit
did so only in the form of lists of holders of high oYce. But soon the prosopo-
graphical dictionary became something like a general model, which quickly
inXuenced other Welds of the study of the Greco-Roman world. Only a few years
after the PIR for the early and high Empire, Johannes Kirchners Prosopographia
Attica (19013) appeared, covering the Athenian city-state and a completely diVer-
ent period of ancient history. Not by chance, Kirchners work served a historical
period in which further great bodies of inscriptions, the Corpus Inscriptionum
Graecarum and the Inscriptiones Graecae, had just presented copious quantities of
documentary material, but which needed to be sifted before they could be utilized.
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150 werner eck

From these beginnings there developed a broad programme of research, which

in the course of the twentieth century spread to all the major scholarly cultures,
many diVerent subdivisions of classical scholarship, and beyond that to broader
studies of Roman history and culture, and which sought to encompass a great
variety of groups of persons. For the broad spectrum of such research within the
study of Roman history and culture one is referred to works such as the Prosop-
ography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE, 3 vols., 197192), or the Prosopographie
chretienne du Bas-Empire for Africa and Italy (2 vols. so far, 1982, 1992). The former
work, in recording inXuential social circles, essentially followed the PIR, whose
second edition had progressed to the letter L by 1971 (in 2009 vol. 8.1, for the letter
T, was published); chronologically the PLRE began where the PIR left oV, collecting
the prosopographical material from the time of Diocletian to the middle of the
seventh century ad. However, persons who had inXuence only within the Church
hierarchy were excluded from the PLRE. In contrast, the Prosopographie chretienne
strove to include all persons whose adherence to Christianity between the Wrst and
the seventh centuries is attested, independent of the concrete social or functional
position of the individuals. Other works took aim from the beginning at more
precisely deWned groups: the authors of some of these adopted a more narrowly
political perspective, like T. R. S. Broughton, who set out in annalistic fashion all
the magistrates of the Roman Republic, or H.-G. PXaum, who analysed all the
careers of the procurators of the empire (PXaum 19601). Other authors focused
rather on the social divisions of Roman society, like C. Nicolet, who dealt with the
equestrian class of the Republican era (Nicolet 196674); or M.-T. Raespaet-Char-
lier, with her collection of female members of the senatorial class during the Wrst
two centuries ad (Raepsaet-Charlier 1987); or H. Devijer, who has presented a
comprehensive catalogue of all equestrian oYcers from Augustus to Gallienus,
which come down to us in inscriptions, but also partly in papyri, and only rarely in
literary works (Devijver 19762001). Finally, numerous prosopographical cata-
logues were dedicated to more narrow geographical districts, above all to the
greater self-governing units, like Macedonian Beroea or northern Italian Brixia;
but the inhabitants of the bigger villages, like, for example, Theadelphia in the
Fayyum in Egypt, here on the basis of numerous papyrus texts, were also prosopo-
graphically recorded.
Most of the works named hereas well as many othersfulWlled, then, for some
time similar functions in their sub-Welds as Paulys Realenzyclopadie der Classischen
Altertumswissenschaft (RE), which was completed in the year 1978 and included in
its aims the presentation of the prosopographical material of Greco-Roman anti-
quity. For the Republican period this was for the most part accomplished, above all
through the contributions of Friedrich Munzer and Matthias Gelzer, a task called
for by the state of the sources; for prosopographical knowledge for this period
depends to a great extent on literary evidence, to which we can expect hardly any
additions. For the subsequent eras, however, the source material grewand grows
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prosopography 151

stillunremittingly, through new inscriptions, papyri, and coins, because of which

many articles on individual persons quickly go out of date, and not a few recently
discovered persons are lacking entirely. But even more importantly, in the concep-
tion of the RE the classical ages of Greece and the Roman Republic had centre-
stage, while the Hellenistic era, the Empire, and late antiquity were not treated with
the same thoroughness; additionally, many social groups lay outside the historical
Weld of vision of the RE. Because of this, this comprehensive encyclopedia for the
whole of Greco-Roman antiquity could provide no general basis for prosopograph-
ical work. Into its place stepped other works, such as those mentioned above, which
became the basic lexica of prosopography.
All these works, whose number could easily be increased, have a single common
goal: to include in a lexicon (and therefore make more accessible) the individual
groups of people from a certain time and a deWnite area; to document them
precisely with source material; and to make as complete a catalogue of them as
possible, all the time employing consistent criteria of inclusion. From which it is
immediately clear that prosopography was even by then no longer concerned
primarily with individual historical people, but with historical phenomena,
which, due to the state of the sources that has already been described, could be
discovered only through the examination of a variety of individuals. Friedrich
Munzers work is a classic example of this approach. First of all, in countless articles
in the RE, he described all the foremost people of the Republic known from literary
sources, in particular members of the Senate. On this basis, he wanted to show how
these people were inXuenced to a great degree in their politics by their family ties,
and in this way he was able to lay bare many lines of continuity in the Roman
Republic (Munzer 1920). Although not many today would follow him very far in
his conclusions, it was by these means that he made this supremely personal factor
in the politics of the Republic, the link and connection of the individual member of
the ruling class with his background, with the history of his family, into one of the
fundamental insights about this period of Roman history.
Equally impressive is what Hans-Georg PXaum has brought to light with regard
to the administrative tasks of equestrian functionaries, above all the so-called
procurators, in imperial service, from the time of Augustus till the late third
century ad, and equally with regard to their geographical and social background
and the consequences that these had for the development of a widespread imperial
aristocracy. In his Carrieres equestres PXaum discussed each individual person who
belonged in this category, their career, and their social environment. In his Procur-
ateurs (which appeared some time before the former work), he integrated all that
could be discovered from his data on individual people, as far as this was relevant
to the equestrian functionaries (PXaum 1950).
On these foundations laid by PXaum it has been possible, in the last few decades,
to describe more precisely the development of the administration, to the extent
that it has left traces in the prosopographical record. In general, though, only the
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152 werner eck

structures of the administration can be approached by this method (as far as is at

all possible through the study of individual people), while execution of state
functions and the general modus operandi must be investigated primarily by
other means. Similarly, it is scarcely possible to discover motives, for example,
for what reason a person was allocated a certain task by the emperor, on a purely
prosopographical basis. Just consider what Tacitus biography of his father-in-law
Iulius Agricola reveals in this respect; if we had only a record of Agricolas cursus
honorum, we would have only the Xeshless skeleton of his career, and could at best
make guesses as to the reasons why Agricola held these individual oYces (Birley
2005: 7195; Eck 2005: 71 f.). Still less do prosopographical sources, as a rule, reveal
anything about politics and its internal workings and forces. And yet occasionally
prosopography does allow us insights of this sort. One example will suYce.

Nerva and the Adoption of Trajan:

A Prosopographical Case Study
.........................................................................................................................................................................................

After the assassination of the emperor Domitian (ad 96), the senator Cocceius
Nerva, already advanced in years, was acclaimed as the new ruler. Very soon he was
under considerable pressure, because the praetorian guard was still enraged about
the assassination of Domitian, and also because he could die at any moment
because of his age, and there was no clear successor since he had no son. On
account of this Cornelius Nigrinus, the governor of Syria, the biggest military
province of the East, invoking his military power, made it known that he con-
sidered himself a suitable candidate to succeed Nerva. Nerva, we are told, reacted to
this in October 97 with a surprising decision. During a sacriWce on the Capitol in
Rome he unexpectedly received an inspiration (so the story goes) from the highest
god of the Roman state, Jupiter, to adopt the senator Marcus Ulpius Traianus as his
son and so to make him his successor. Trajan was at that time the governor of
Germania Superior, another big military province which bordered directly on
northern Italy. The only contemporary record of Nervas divine message is given
to us by the senator Plinius Secundus in a speech which he gave a few years later in
the Senate. We can be sure that he did not deviate from the oYcial version of events
that had been spread abroad in Rome.
That this version of the events of October 97 cannot have represented reality
requires no demonstration. Yet how can we get any closer to what really happened?
Who came to the decision to adopt Trajan? How was the oYcial account spread
abroad? Was Trajan himself unaware of what it was that Nerva was going to do in
Rome? Plinys account might suggest this, if we wanted to go along with the literal
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prosopography 153

meaning of his text. But this hypothesis is ruled out even on general grounds of
rational action, and still more by power-political considerations. In this case,
though, it can actually be demonstrated, with the aid of prosopographical sources
and their analysis, that we must imagine an entirely diVerent scenario.
Every new emperor, shortly after coming to power, imparted special honours to
those who had supported him on his path to power. Trajan could not have done
any diVerently. One of the ways in which a leaders closest helpers were distin-
guished was by the bestowal of a consulship, and above all the bestowal of a second
or even a third consulship. For this magistracy still represented the summit of the
hierarchy of prestige in Roman society. Since Trajan was adopted by Nerva in
October 97, reactions to this event can be identiWed at the earliest in 98. As a matter
of fact, we can identify an unusually large number of consuls in 98 who held the
oYce for the second time, as the following list shows:
1 January Nerva IIII, Trajan II
13 January Traian II, Cn. Domitius Tullus II
1 February Traian II, Sex. Iulius Frontinus II
1 March Traian II, L. Iulius Ursus II
1 April Traian II, T. Vestricius Spurinna II
1 May Traian II, C. Pomponius Pius
Nerva assumed the consulship together with Trajan on 1 January, but stepped down
on 13 January, while Trajan held on to the oYce until the end of June. Four senators
then appear as his colleagues until the end of April, all of whom held the oYce of
consul for the second time. Four consules iterum in one year is very unusual, but no
conclusions can yet be drawn from this as to whether some (or even all) of these
men were involved in some way in the adoption and succession of Trajan. For
Nerva too, who had not come to power until September 96, could not have
honoured his four fellow senators in an appropriate way until the beginning of
the year 98 without depriving other senators who had just been designated for the
consulship in 97, for reasons which dated back to the year 96 and which depended
on him personally. While the year 99 in the consul-lists is not a very unusual one,
the year 100 reveals with greater certainty something of what had really happened
in the year 97. For the list shows the following consuls for the Wrst months of the
year 100:
1 January Traian III, Sex. Iulius Frontinus III
1 March Traian III, L. Iulius Ursus III
1 April M. Marcius Macer, C. Cilnius Proculus
On 1 January Trajan assumed the consulship once again, on this occasion for the
third time; his colleague is Sextus Julius Frontinus, who also holds the oYce for the
third time. He steps down at the end of February, while Trajan stays in oYce; at this
point one Lucius Iulius Ursus appears as his colleague, he too as consul for a third
time. What is highly peculiar is that Trajan himself is holding the consulship for
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154 werner eck

only the third time, while rulers normally made sure that they surpassed fellow
members of the elite even in such ceremonial distinctions, and so had usually been
consul on at least one more occasion than their colleagues in the oYce. In the year
100 this is not the case. Even more important, and more revealing politically as well,
is that Frontinus and Ursus too had already held the fasces with Trajan in the year
98, at that point for the second time. Both senators were named consul twice, then,
within the space of only two years, and both times together with Trajan. This is an
absolutely exceptional occurrence. First of all, a third consulship was in any case
more than rare; only thirteen other senators in total had reached such a level of
honour in the 130 years or so between the reign of Augustus and the end of the Wrst
century ad. In all these cases, the men in question are the closest and most trusted
accomplices of the ruler in power at the time. Only once before this occasion,
however, had a senator been exalted in such a way above all his other senatorial
colleagues in the space of only two years, and this was Licinius Mucianus, who
secured the throne for Vespasian in 69/70 ad. Licinius Mucianus example shows
that also in the case of Frontinus and Ursus only absolutely exceptional services to
the new emperor could have led to such a distinction, and that means that they
were involved in Trajans adoption by Nerva. In fact even Pliny, in the speech we
have already mentioned, talks about two senators who had served Trajan in the
toga, that is, in Rome itself and not as leaders of an army. Everyone in the Senate,
where the speech was given, knew who was meant. Once we have advanced thus far
in the analysis of the events of the year 97, it becomes clear through further
prosopographical details how Frontinus and Ursus, together with others (and
above all Trajan himself), so arranged matters that Nerva really had no choice
but to adopt Trajan, if he wanted to defend himself against the praetorian guard in
Rome and against Cornelius Nigrinus in the East. Trajan had deliberately obtained
the governorship of Upper Germany, and so of the military province that was
closest to Italy. At the same time, senators who had been initiated into the plans of
the group of Trajan, Frontinus, and Ursus were placed as governors in other
provinces, for instance, in the province Belgica or in Pannonia. One of these
initiates, a certain Sosius Senecio, governor of the province Belgica in the year 97,
was the son-in-law of Frontinus. In the same province in the same period,
moreover, one Attius Suburanus was serving as Wnancial procurator, who con-
trolled the provision of funds to the military in Upper and Lower Germany. He
therefore secured Trajans position in Upper Germany. But Attius Suburanus was
not just anyone from the great mass of procurators of equestrian rank; on the
contrary, he had worked for many years as a close associate of Iulius Ursus.
Personal relationships had been converted into political capital.
What reveals itself after a synthesis of the evidence as a deliberate political
strategy of the year 97 is never explicitly formulated as such in our literary
tradition. The evidence is composed almost exclusively of dry facts, that is, the
oYces held by a few senators or knights in certain years, relationships of kinship or
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prosopography 155

familiarity formed from previous formal contexts, and then the exceptional
honours accorded to Frontinus and Ursus. These facts are concerned primarily
with individuals, but when we draw them together they reveal certain relationships
and in this way even lead to the reconstruction of a certain political strategy, which
for understandable reasons has not entered into the historiographical tradition.
For if Nerva, who was then in power, was not involved (as seems to have been the
case), then the whole aVair was a sort of coup detat, conceived, planned, and
carried out by a small group of senators because they wanted to obstruct the
adoption of Cornelius Nigrinus, who was attempting to force the issue of the
succession. If we did not have these many facts concerned with individuals, then all
that would remain for us to do would be to have our doubts about the oYcial
account proVered by Pliny, hardly a satisfactory situation (Eck 2002b).

The Methodology and Hazards of

Prosopography
.........................................................................................................................................................................................

Nonetheless, prosopographical arguments often entail methodological risks which

are not always easy to recognize. This is true in particular when the sources in
question are used as direct evidence, without considering whether they are repre-
sentative of past realities, or when an argumentum e silentio is employed as a
decisive method of demonstration. In general it can be said that the higher people
stood socio-politically, the more often they are named in the sources. This means in
the Roman context that those who attained the consulship, and thereby achieved
consular rank, are far more frequently attested than others who only made it to
praetor or even lowlier oYces, except when we have a complete listing of all the
magistrates of a given year (as in Livy). But this is the case for only a relatively brief
part of the Roman Republic, and later such listings are no longer found apart from
some exceptional and short cases. Otherwise, though, this observation applies to
the Republic no less than to the Empire or to late antiquity, as long as such oYces
were awarded. During the early and high Empire this observation is especially to
the point, because most senators from these periods are known only through
epigraphic evidence. But the longer a persons career lasted, and the higher the
oYces undertaken by him were, the greater the chances that he would be men-
tioned in an inscription (and this was true of senators, knights, and members of the
army like tribunes, auxiliary prefects, and centurions). He would be mentioned
either because he himself had commissioned an inscription, or because others had
honoured him, for example, with a statue under which a text was inscribed,
identifying the honorand. Once we have recognized this principle it becomes
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156 werner eck

clear that we cannot simply compare numbers of holders of various oYces but also
have to consider the question of whether the sources are representative. This is
especially important when we are comparing careers, since people who have
progressed far are necessarily mentioned more often (since they have Wlled more
oYces and acquired more power) than those who have ascended less far. This
would not be important, at least as regards senators, if their past socio-economic
conditions did not inXuence the later course of peoples careers. But because they
did, certain oYces awarded only within a socio-economic group (as, for example,
senators or knights) do not appear in our sources in a representative way. This is
clear in the so-called Vigintivirate, an oYce that served as an entry-point to the
senatorial cursus honorum, and was divided into four diVerent functions: three
triumviri monetales for the minting of coins, ten decemviri stlitibus iudicandis for
the judiciary, four quattuorviri viarum curandarum with responsibility for the
streets of Rome, and Wnally three triumviri capitales, who were responsible for
executions (at least in theory). We know about these oYces almost exclusively via
inscriptions in which the entire cursus of a senator appears. If our sources were
representative, the percentages of all senators who held one of these positions
would therefore be 15, 50, 20, and 15 per cent. But the percentages obtained from the
sources such as we have them are c.19, 53, 18, and 10 per cent. The deviation is
conspicuous above all in the last instance: this is a clear under-representation. That
would not be so signiWcant if we did not know from recorded instances that those
who served as triumviri capitales were people who had been newly appointed to the
senatorial class by the emperor. This shows that this group within the senate is
distinctly under-represented in our sources, even in inscriptions recording a full
cursus honorum. And as a result of this, all statements about additions to the Senate
from new families (and that means to an increasing extent from provincial
families) are somewhat problematic.
There are similar problems with regard to the determination of the regional
provenance of recruits to the Roman army, that is, for a very diVerent kind of
socio-political group. In general it is assumed that the further provision of
recruits from the Wrst century ad onwards came increasingly from the area in
which troops were stationed. This is thought to apply to units composed of
Roman citizens, the legions, but still more to auxiliary units, who were drawn
from the populations of subjugated peoples and tribes. These troops, however, as
a rule did not yet have the rights of Roman citizenship. From the reign of the
emperor Claudius at the latest (ad 4154), Roman citizenship was granted to the
soldiers of these auxiliary units, for the most part at the end of their period of
service. This legal recognition was granted, or so it seems, to individual soldiers
or veterans more and more through so-called military diplomas. These were
documents which contained a copy of the imperial constitution, and besides the
name of the recipient also included that of the city or of the tribe that the soldier
came from. The number of these diplomas has sharply increased in the last two
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prosopography 157

decades; today almost 1,000 such documents are known. Since they turn up for
the most part on the antiquities market, we only know for sure the provenance of
some of the newly discovered diplomas. Still, origin can usually be determined
by other criteria, and we can usually conclude that a veteran settled down in the
same region as his diploma was found in.
The numerous newly discovered diplomas can now tell us quite a diVerent
story about the recruitment of new soldiers. For the vast majority come from the
eastern Balkans, the ancient provinces of Lower and Upper Moesia, Thracia, and
Pannonia, and in part also from the southernmost regions of todays Turkey. And
yet the auxiliary units for which the recruits were enrolled and enlisted are
located in all parts of the empire. For instance, in August ad 127 three veterans
were discharged who had been recruited twenty-Wve years earlier from the Daci
and Eravisci, tribes from Pannonia and Thracia (Dacian-Thracian linguistic
region); none of these men had ever served in a unit stationed in their home
province. Instead, they had served in the provinces of Lower Moesia, Lower
Germania, and Britannia. When thousands of recruits were needed in the year
ad 133/4 for the Xeet at Misenum, they were all brought in from the regions of
Thracia and Moesia. Something similar occurred, to all appearances, in the year
ad 128, in the recruitment of troops for Mauretania Tingetana; since of the six
recipients of military diplomas who obtained Roman citizenship twenty-Wve
years later in this province, all of themor at least all of them whose diplomas
are in a good enough state for us to tellcame from this region. In all these
instances, and in many others besides, no local or regional recruitment took
place at all; instead, new soldiers were brought in from distant regions, to which
they returned, for the most part, after their discharge. The new documentation,
then, with its prosopographical content, can be seen to correct previous research
in a fundamental way. Of course, it is not to be taken as completely unassailable
proof. A unique context for the transmission of these epigraphical texts in the
eastern Balkans may lie behind this, which would nonetheless make necessary a
revision of our assumptions about army recruitment; but even this revision
would only apply to certain units in the Roman army and to certain periods of
the second and third centuries ad, and would not necessarily aVect the general
drift of the earlier research.
Prosopography is a method of research which, perhaps more than any other,
requires us to reXect on the meaning and validity of our sources, and especially on
the question of how far missing sources inXuence our perception of historical
realities. And yet it is also a method of research whose strengths we cannot do
without if we want to open up broad swathes of Roman history and culture in a
scientiWc way. The dictum of Sir Ronald Syme, the historian who more than most
of his colleagues employed prosopography to the beneWt of Roman history,
still stands today: One uses what one has and there is work to be done (Syme
1979: 711).
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158 werner eck

References and further reading

Prosopographical Dictionaries
EpigraWa e ordine senatorio, ed. S. Panciera, Rome, 1982 [1984].
Prosopographia Imperii Romani (PIR), ed. E. Klebs, H. Dessau, and P. von Rohden, 3 vols.,
Berlin, 18978.
Prosopographia Imperii Romani saeculi I, II et III (PIR2), ed. E. Groag, A. Stein, L. Petersen,
K. Wachtel, M. Heil, W. Eck, and J. Heinrichs, Berlin, 19332009 (8 vols. so far, up to
letter T).
Prosopographie chretienne du Bas-Empire. I. Prosopographie de lAfrique chretienne (303533),
ed. A. Mandouze, Paris, 1982.
Prosopographie chretienne du Bas-Empire. II 1. Prosopographie de lItalie chretienne, 313604,
ed. Ch. Pietri, L. Pietri, J. Desmulliez, and Ch. Fraisse-Coue, Rome, 2000.
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. I. A.D. 260395 ; II. A.D. 395527, ed. A. H. M.
Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, Cambridge, 197180.
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. III. A.D. 527641, ed. J. R. Martindale, 2 vols.,
Cambridge, 1992.

Prosopographical Studies
G. Alfldy, Fasti Hispanienses. Senatorische Reichsbeamte und OYziere in den spanischen
Provinzen des romischen Reiches von Augustus bis Diokletian, Wiesbaden, 1969.
Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter den Antoninen. Prosopographische Untersuchungen
zur senatorischen Fuhrungsschicht, Bonn, 1977.
G. Barbieri, Lalbo senatorio da Settimio Severo a Carino (193285), Rome, 1952.
A. R. Birley, Onomasticon to the Younger Pliny: Letters and Panegyric, Munich, 2000.
The Roman Government of Britain, Oxford, 2005.
T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, New York, 196886.
A. Caballos Rufino, Los senadores hispanorromanos y la romanizacion de Hispania (siglos
IIII), Ecija, 1990.
M. Christol, Essai sur levolution des carrieres senatoriales dans la seconde moitie du IIIe
siecle ap. J.-C., Paris, 1986.
R. Delmaire, Les responsables des Wnances imperiales au Bas-Empire romain (IVeVIe s.),
Brussels, 1989.
S. Demougin, Prosopographie des chevaliers romains julio-claudiens (43 av. J.-C.70 ap.
J.-C.), Rome, 1992.
H. Devijver, Prosopographia Militiarum Equestrium quae fuerunt ab Augusto ad Gallienum,
6 vols., Leuver, 19762001.
W. Eck, Senatoren von Vespasian bis Hadrian. Prosopographische Untersuchungen mit Ein-
schluss der Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der Statthalter, Munich, 1970.
Imperial Administration and Epigraphy: In Defence of Prosopography, in A. K.
Bowman, H. M. Cotton, M. Goodman, and S. Price (eds.), Representations of Empire:
Rome and the Mediterranean World, Oxford, 2002 (a): 13152.
An Emperor is Made: Senatorial Politics and Trajans Adoption by Nerva in 97, in
G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds.), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in
Honour of Miriam GriYn, Oxford, 2002 (b): 21126.
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prosopography 159

The Prosopographia Imperii Romani and the Prosopographical Method, in A.

Cameron (ed.), Fifty Years of Prosopography: The Later Roman Empire, Byzantium and
Beyond, Oxford, 2003, 1122.
Auf der Suche nach Personen und Personlichkeiten: Cursus honorum und Biographie,
in K. Vossing (ed.), Biographie und Prosopographie. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von
A. R. Birley, Stuttgart, 2005: 5372.
M. Gelzer, Die Nobilitat der romischen Republik, Leipzig, 1912.
H. Halfmann, Die Senatoren aus dem ostlichen Teil des Imperium Romanum bis zum Ende
des 2. Jh. n. Chr., Gottingen, 1979.
P. M. M. Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus
Alexander (180235 n. Chr.), Amsterdam, 1989.
LOrdre equestre. Histoire dune aristocratie (IIe siecle av. J.-C.IIIe siecle ap. J.-C.), ed. S.
Demougin, H. Devijver, and M.-Th. Raepsaet-Charlier, Rome, 1999.
F. Mnzer, Romische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien, Stuttgart, 1920.
C. Nicolet, Lordre equestre a lepoque republicaine (31243 av. J.-C.). I. DeWnitions juri-
diques et structures sociales; II. Prosopographie des chevaliers romains, 2 vols., Paris,
196674.
P. Petit, Les fonctionnaires dans loeuvre de Libanius. Analyse prosopographique, Paris, 1994.
H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrieres procuratoriennes equestres sous le Haut-Empire romain, 3 vols.,
Paris, 1950, 19601; Supplement 1982.
Les procurateurs equestres sous le Haut-Empire romain, Paris, 1950.
I. Piso, Fasti Prouinciae Daciae. I. Die senatorischen Amtstrager, Bonn, 1993.
Prosopographie und Sozialgeschichte. Studien zur Methodik und Erkenntnismoglichkeit der
kaiserzeitlichen Prosopographie, ed. W. Eck, Cologne, 1993.
M.-T. Raepsaet-Charlier, Prosopographie des femmes de lordre senatorial (IerIIe siecles),
2 vols., Louvain, 1987.
J. Rpke, Fasti sacerdotum. Die Mitglieder der Priesterschaften und das sakrale Funktions-
personal romischer, griechischer, orientalischer und judisch-christlicher Kulte in der Stadt
Rom von 300 v. Chr. bis 499 n. Chr., 3 vols., Stuttgart, 2005. Translated as Fasti sacerdotum:
A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Religious OYcials in the City of Rome, 300
BC to AD 499, Oxford, 2009.
J. Scheid, Les Freres Arvales. Recrutement et origine sociale sous les empereurs Julio-Clau-
diens, Rome, 1975.
Le college des Freres Arvales. Etude prosopographique du recrutement (69304), Rome,
1990.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Onomasticon to Ciceros Speeches, Norman, Okla., 1988.
Onomasticon to Ciceros Letters, Stuttgart, 1995.
Onomasticon to Ciceros Treatises, Stuttgart, 1996.
R. Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford, 1939.
Tacitus, 2 vols., Oxford, 1958.
Roman Papers IVII, Oxford, 197991.
B. E. Thomasson, Fasti Africani. Senatorische und ritterliche Amtstrager in den romischen
Provinzen Nordafrikas von Augustus bis Diokletian, Stockholm, 1996.