A MEDITERRANEAN EMPIRE 23fi rst century. Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were of Spanish stock,
the family of Antoninus Pius was Gallic in origin, and the Severan dynasty
had its roots in the local aristocracy of Lepcis Magna on the coast of
Libya. Nevertheless, Italians held more than their share of important posts
throughout our period. Moreover, it was the Mediterranean regions not the
northern provinces that shared with Italy the direction of the empire.
The Roman and Italian elite only slowly and reluctantly opened its ranks
to provincials, and remained very selective in the areas allowed representation.
Only Latin- speaking western provincials were received into the senate until
late in the fi rst century; thereafter individual Greek- speakers, mainly from
the coastal and riverine areas of Greece and Asia Minor, were admitted, but
most provincial senators were from the West, especially from the
Mediterranean regions of the Iberian peninsula, France and the north
African provinces.
The progressive but eccentric emperor Claudius gave encouragement to
the politically ambitious leaders of the Aedui of Autun, traditionally the
most loyal of the tribes within the Three Gauls (that part of Gaul conquered
by Julius Caesar in the 50s BC , as distinct from the Gallic province fashioned
out of Provence and the Rhône valley in the 120s BC ). Claudius ruled that
the Aedui and their fellow countrymen were eligible for membership of the
Roman senate, and he pressed his view on the senate itself. If we wish, we
can credit Claudius with a concept of the unity of the Roman world, a world
in which the conquered, whatever their race, profi ted as much as the
conquerors from the Roman peace. It is not in fact easy to extract this vision
from the exceedingly tentative and engagingly pedantic speech that survives
in part on the so- called Lyon tablet and also in summary form in Tacitus
( ILS 212; Tacitus, Ann. 11.24–5.1). Claudius’ conceptions were certainly
much more advanced than those of the majority of senators, who, to judge
from the speech itself, were disinclined to accept non-Italians of any kind
into their ranks. But his intervention had very little effect on the composition
of the senatorial order. Apart from Iulius Vindex who as governor of Gallia
Lugdunensis rebelled against Nero in AD 68, and perhaps his father, there are
no known senators from the Three Gauls in the Julio-Claudian era (Augustus
to Nero).
In this same period a few Gallic chieftains, men like C. Iulius Victor (who
advertised his Celtic origins on inscriptions: son of Congonnetodunus,
grandson of Acedomopas), are known to have served in or around their own
province as army offi cers of equestrian rank. From the Roman point of view
this was a limited reward for loyalty. Such men had typically held the post
of provincial high priest of the imperial cult.^9 Their employment in positions
of authority in the army was evidently considered a relatively safe gamble.
It must also have seemed logical to make use of Gauls as leaders as well as
rank- and-fi le soldiers in the native, ‘auxiliary’, regiments. However, Gauls
did not command the troops of fi rst rank, the legions. Nor did army offi cers
move on to imperial administrative posts; the Gallic fi nancial offi cial