THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY 137increase the social distance between the privileged orders and those of
servile origin (Pliny, HN 33.32). Like senators, equestrians were the
subject of attempts to legislate moral respectability, as in the senatus
consultum mentioned above banning members of the two leading orders
from performing in public spectacles.
The equestrian order was much larger than the senatorial order,
numbering in the thousands, and was correspondingly more amorphous.
Historians differ on precisely what constituted membership in the order –
property at the required level and free birth, or possession of the ‘public
horse’ by imperial grant.^20 The decree of AD 19 identifi ed the order vaguely
as ‘those who have the right of sitting in equestrian places’ at public
spectacles. According to Pliny the elder ( HN 33.32), Tiberius later brought
the order ‘into unity’, but nothing is said of the administrative procedures
introduced to accomplish this.
The ‘unity’ did not preclude diversity. Under the Republic, some equestrians
had had only modest fortunes and no political ambitions beyond their home
towns, while others, particularly the leading public contractors ( publicani )
referred to by Cicero as the ‘fl ower of the order’, had enjoyed wealth and
political infl uence comparable to senators’ (Cicero, Planc. 23). Under the
Principate, the emperors began to give administrative as well as military
responsibilities to equestrians; as the number of equestrian offi ces increased
and their hierarchy developed, the offi ce- holding minority of the order came
to resemble senators insofar as they derived honour from the rank of their
offi ce.^21 By the end of the Principate, the leading equestrian, the praetorian
prefect, actually took precedence in court protocol over senators. The rank-
conscious Romans would not allow the vast social gap between the greatest
and humblest equestrian to go unmarked, and so by the late second century
a new hierarchy of epithets was invented to designate the offi ce- holding
equestrians ( egregius or ‘excellent’ for procurators, perfectissimus or ‘most
accomplished’ for senior prefects, and eminentissimus or ‘most renowned’
for praetorian prefects).^22 These several hundred specially distinguished
equestrians were the minority of the order belonging to the imperial elite
centred in Rome; the majority were essentially local notables, marked out by
a golden ring and a narrow purple stripe on the toga ( angustus clavus ).
The decurions or councillors of the towns across the empire constituted
the third of the aristocratic orders – ‘aristocratic’ insofar as decurions, like
senators and equestrians, were expected to possess respectable birth, wealth
and moral worth. The defi nition of respectable birth was less stringent for
decurions than equestrians; sons of freedmen – not, ordinarily, freedmen
themselves – were admitted to town councils. Just as the size of towns
varied, so did the wealth of its leading citizens; in the major cities the
wealth of some decurions exceeded that required of senators. The census
qualifi cation of the unexceptional town of Comum in northern Italy was set
at 100,000 sesterces, or a quarter of the equestrian census (Pliny, Ep. 1.19).
Moral excellence was more diffi cult to guarantee, but at least men with a