136 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
comparative studies suggest that peasants can be surprisingly resilient, and
the conditions of the Principate – prolonged peace and relatively light taxation
in many regions – were not wholly adverse to them. The heavy taxation and
demands for services that made rural patronage so prominent in the later
empire and gave rise to the tied colonate had yet to arrive.
Orders
Orders are those social categories defi ned by the state through statutory or
customary rules. Augustus restored the Republican system of orders ( ordo ,
rank), but with sharper defi nition.^15 The senatorial order remained the most
prestigious, a small circle of several hundred families perceived to be worthy
by the traditional standards of birth, wealth and moral excellence. Augustus
set out to rebuild the senate and revive its shattered morale by purging it of
members of dubious standing who had infi ltrated the order during the civil
wars – a series of revisions brought the senate down from about 1,200 to
600 – and by accentuating the difference between senators and those of
lower rank. During the late Republic, senators had had to meet a census
requirement of 400,000 sesterces, which was no different from that set for
equestrians. Augustus fi xed a substantially higher qualifi cation for senators,
one million sesterces.^16 In addition, the wearing of the toga with the broad
purple stripe ( latus clavus ) was restricted to senators and their sons and
to equestrians who had been given permission to stand for offi ce.^17 The
recruitment of new senatorial families now lay with the emperor. Moreover,
prohibitions on unworthy behaviour were formally legislated and not left to
the whim of censors as in the past. Augustus disallowed legitimate marriage
between senators and freedwomen. A later senatorial decree of AD 19 banned
senators and their families (and equestrians) from disgracing themselves by
performing in public spectacles.^18
The senatorial order was emphatically not a hereditary aristocracy. Yet
the prestige ascribed to high birth led Augustus to promote the hereditary
principle in order to raise the senate’s stature. Thus, sons of senators were
encouraged to follow in their father’s footsteps, not only by wearing the
latus clavus , but also by attending meetings of the senate with their fathers
(Suetonius, Aug. 38). Furthermore, senatorial distinction was recognized as
extending to descendants of senators for three generations ( Digest 23.2.44
pref.), and the order was offered incentives to reproduce itself.^19
The second, equestrian, order was also characterized by an aristocratic,
not a professional, ethos. In the view of the historian Cassius Dio (52.19.4),
the equestrian order resembled the senatorial in possessing similar criteria
for membership – high birth, excellence and wealth – but in the second
degree. In terms of wealth, the Republican census requirement of 400,000
sesterces remained in force. To that was added in the reign of Tiberius a
requirement of two previous generations of free birth – another effort to