The Senate at Rome in Ostrogothic Italy 143
a class, even though individuals were able to survive.142 The personal losses
caused by several punitive actions against the senatorial elite under Witigis,
Totila, and Teia143 irreversibly fractured the social structure of the Senate,
which had been relatively solid up to that point.144 This was accompanied
by the incremental destruction of the economic and social structures on which
the senators had based their position and life. Both the Gothic and Byzantine
parties liberated a great number of the slaves and coloni, on which senatorial
estates depended. Additionally, according to Procopius, the war provoked a
rural exodus, leaving few left to cultivate the soil. Without these estates, the
senatorial elite was deprived of the economic basis for status and competition.
One of the lamentable results of the Gothic War was an inability on the part
of the senators to play the social and political roles that had been expected of
them. An unmistakable sign of this impotency is the fact that unlike Justinian’s
previous policy to use western senators in the Italian administration (for
example, the two western illustres initially appointed to praefectus praetorio
of Italy),145 the eastern Roman government later showed a preference for east-
ern senators. This might express the eastern Roman government’s feeling of
unease with western senators or, even worse, a feeling of superiority that made
it unnecessary even to consider involving the western elite. So, the years of the
Gothic War were clearly a decisive and unmistakable caesura: the influence
and standing which the senatorial elite had maintained during the Ostrogothic
period was gone forever.
Conclusion
The Roman Senate played a strong legitimizing role under Odovacer and the
Ostrogoths, which can be seen as the peak of a development engendered by
the general crisis of Roman rule in the western empire during the 5th century.
Even though the Senate as legislative body lacked actual power, its members
were involved in fields of political, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic importance.
The senatorial elite based its power on a strong economic foundation (prop-
erty) distributed over the whole peninsula, which made it indispensable for
142 On this see Brown, Gentlemen, pp. 21ff.
143 Procopius, De Bellis Libri 1.26.1f.; 4.34.5f.; 4.34.7f, ed. Haury/Wirth; Schäfer, Der weströ-
mische Senat, p. 283.
144 Bulgarella, “Il senato”, p. 159.
145 The two senators were Fidelis (PLRE II, p. 496f.) and Reparatus (PLRE IIIb, p. 1083),
Schäfer, Der weströmische Senat, p. 284.