144 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
subscribed to the dominant social values, as demonstrated by his wealth, his
large retinue of slaves, and his house endowed with a superbly decorated
vestibule ( Flor. 22). The size of slave staffs in the households of the wealthy
became extravagantly large in the pursuit of status. To save money by using
a slave to perform more than one duty was regarded as déclassé. Consequently,
the differentiation of labour on these staffs, made up of hundreds of servants,
became very fi ne, with slaves devoted to such specialties as hairdressing or
folding specifi c types of clothing.^47
Laws were passed prohibiting conspicuous consumption, and moral
philosophers like Seneca preached against measuring a man’s worth by his
ostentatious display of wealth. But the emperors themselves despaired of
enforcing sumptuary legislation against such ardent status- seekers, and
Seneca himself was accused of accumulating incredible wealth, extravagantly
displayed in luxuries like 500 identical citrus wood tables with ivory legs, on
which he served banquets.^48
If rank was displayed predominantly on the public stage in the political
and religious life of the city and in community events such as spectacles
and banquets, the focal point of the parade of status was the private house.
This was the scene of the salutatio , according to which clients and lesser
friends of the great and powerful congregated at the doors of their patrons
in the early morning to pay their respects in return for food, money,
clothing and other favours. From the late second century BC , these morning
callers were classifi ed and received according to their status. The salutatio
offered a visual demonstration of the social hierarchy in two ways. Clients
were classed with reference to their place in the queue, and the patron in
terms of the quality and number of his callers. The ‘crowded house’ was a
barometer of and a metaphor for power and prestige.^49 In addition, private
dinners within the house allowed for the display of distinctions of status.
Just as the seating at public banquets was arranged according to rank,
at private dinners seats, and sometimes the quality of food and drink,
were chosen to correspond to each guest’s status (Martial, Epig. 4.68, 6.11;
Pliny, Ep. 2.6.2).
The high visibility of these displays of rank and status made contradictions
between them embarrassingly obvious. When Sejanus began to fear that his
enormous power and status, excessive in comparison with his second- order
rank, would throw suspicion on him in the eyes of Tiberius, he moved out
of Rome to avoid the crowded salutationes that made his position so
apparent (Tacitus, Ann. 4.41). Again, the presence of the former senatorial
master of the imperial freedman Callistus among his morning callers, and
worse, the rejection of his greeting, were a patent and repugnant inversion
of normal master–slave relationships (Seneca, Ep. 47.9). Such incidents
showed aristocrats to be no better than ‘slaves of slaves’ (Arrian, Epict. Diss.
4.1.148, 3.7.31, 4.7.19). One criterion of a ‘good’ emperor, in the view of
the aristocracy, was his fi rmness in keeping his freedmen ‘in their place’, so
preserving the proper social order (Pliny, Pan. 88.1–2).