SOCIAL RELATIONS 177a sealskin and jewellery ( CIL XIII 3162).^11 The advertisement of all these
details on a public monument demonstrates that the exercise of patronage in
government was not considered dishonourable or corrupt.
As the provincialization of the Roman aristocracy progressed in the late
fi rst and second centuries, a steadily increasing number of provincials had
fellow townsmen well placed in Rome to serve as patronal mediators
between themselves and the Roman rulers. This gave them alternative means
of access to the benefi ts distributed from Rome, and also a means of
infl uencing the administrators sent out to rule them. No longer were they
governed by foreign conquerors, but by friends of friends. The increasing
integration into the patronal networks centred on Rome was naturally most
advantageous to the well- connected – that is, the local elites. The plight of
the tenants on the imperial estates of the saltus Burunitanus illustrates how
the patronal links between local magnates and imperial offi cials could result
in collusion whereby the former drew on the force of the latter to reinforce
their own ability to exploit the humiliores (see above, p. 135).
Patrons and protégés
The relationship between patron and protégé, or superior and inferior
friends, falls between that of friendship on equal terms and that of patron
and humble client. Because the label cliens was regarded as demeaning,
considerate patrons generally avoided using it in references to their junior or
less powerful friends.^12 Since the extant Latin literature was written largely
by the ‘superior friends’, the word cliens rarely appears in descriptions of
protégés, with the consequence that some historians have argued that the
Romans did not consider these relationships to be patronal nor should we
analyse them as such. But if we defi ne patronage as ‘a reciprocal exchange
relationship between men of unequal status and resources’, then bonds
between patrons and protégés clearly qualify. Further, the contrary argument
minimizing the dependence of ‘lesser friends’ on their ‘superiors’ goes astray
by taking the polite language of the superiors at face value. Young and
ambitious men behaved in ways typical of clientes in their search for
powerful supporters: Plutarch refers to aristocrats in search of high offi ce as
those who ‘grow old haunting the doors of other men’s houses’, a reference
to attendance at morning salutationes ( Mor. 814D). Finally, the argument
from the absence of the particular words patronus and cliens in descriptions
of these relationships fails to take account of all the evidence. While
courteous patrons generally did not wish to highlight the inferior social
position of their protégés by calling them clientes , the latter did use patronus
in dedications to their benefactors. For example, C. Vibius Maximus, starting
out in his equestrian career, honoured his patronus , the senior equestrian
governor of Numidia, L. Titinius Clodianus, for his support in securing
offi ce ( Ann. Epigr. 1917–18, 85).