Tacitus, Annals, 15.20­-23, 33­-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary, 2013a

the Roman aristocracy remained a highly competitive body: senators who
pursued a public career vied for prestigious appointments, acted as patrons
for others with like ambitions, and desired glory. In contrast to republican
times, however, success and effectivness in these roles and undertakings
depended in large part on being in favour (or at least not on bad terms) with
the emperor – though, as we shall see in Section 6, defying the emperor could
also yield a type of fame.
The mutual reliance of princeps and ruling élite in governing the empire
and the fact that inner-aristocratic competition over posts and honors now
inevitably revolved around the figure of the princeps promoted novel forms
of behaviour among the senators. Rituals of consensus, in which senators
demonstrated their proximity and loyalty to the princeps, became important;
senators vied with each other for recognition by the emperor; some tried
to get ahead by charging others with disloyalty: the figure of the informer
(delator) who broke with group-solidarity and tried to get others charged
with treason (maiestas) – an extreme form of aristocratic rivalry to acquire
a position of influence close to the princeps – populates Tacitus’ historical
narratives; 16 others endeavoured to make a name for themselves by pursuing
a collision course with the emperor – often much to the chagrin of their
senatorial peers (see Section 6 below on Thrasea Paetus). Observers with a
literary bent (such as Tacitus or Pliny) are often as scathing about their fellowsenators
as they are about the behaviour of specific emperors, evaluating
senatorial conduct on a moralizing scale that ranges from servility on the one
hand to a defiant embrace of republican libertas on the other: ‘The instances
of servile behaviour that Tacitus chronicles are legion, and all readers will
have their favourites; any selection that is not copious is false to the tone of
his writing.’ 17 This is for sure an accurate description of what Tacitus does in
his narrative, but we shouldn’t assume that his categorical grid of servitus
vs. libertas yields an accurate interpretation of senatorial conduct in imperial
Rome – however tempting this may be. As Egon Flaig asks, (as he means it)
rhetorically: ‘Were the 600 highest ranking persons of an enormous empire
of 60-80 million inhabitants really slaves at heart?’ 18
For members of the senatorial aristocracy, the emperor would ideally
conform to the image of the civilis princeps – a ruler in other words who
16 See e.g. Lintott (2001–2003) (including discussion of the republican background) and
Rutledge (2001).
17 Oakley (2012a) 188.
18 Flaig (1992) 123 n. 98.