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Images of Power: the Imperial Senate

In his Life of Caligula (32), Suetonius tells a story about how Caius once burst into sudden laughter during one of his more extravagant banquets. The consuls who were reclining next to him politely asked if they might share the joke. 'What do you think?', Caius answered, 'It occurred to me that I have only to give a nod and both your throats will be cut on the spot.' Images of senators' impotence in the face of powerful emperors are commonplace in the sources. One strength of Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio lies in their dramatic revelation of the terror engendered by the capriciousness and unpredictability which emperors used as tools of control. But this strength is also a weakness. Tacitus in particular stereotypes senators as sycophantic, collaborating with emperors in the day-to-day government only so long as and insofar as emperors allowed. 'Opposition did not exist . . . Slavish obedience was the way to succeed both financially and politically' (Annals 1.2). He paints vignettes of senators fighting to survive, differentiated primarily by their degree of opposition to all-powerful emperors. At one extreme was the Stoic opposition; at the other were members of the Republican nobility; in between most senators were servile: 'This was a tainted, meanly obsequious age' (Annals 365). Whatever their impact on their ancient audiences, these stereotypes have had a powerful influence on modern historians. Since Mommsen, the Senate of the empire has been compared, explicitly or implicitly, with the Senate of the Republic, and to its detriment. The middle Republic, in particular, has been regarded as the heyday of the Senate, its 'golden age', because at that time it seemed to initiate and carry through decisions with little outside influence. On this interpretation, the Senate lost power with the advent of the principate since emperors increasingly controlled the Senate's agenda and prevented senators from having freedom in the decisions that were made. In Syme's view, for example, the emperor was the 'real and ultimate' power behind the 'nominal' power; the Senate's role was to advertise or confirm the decisions of the emperor. The implications of the delegation of authority in the principate have been largely ignored. In addition, many historians have tended to idealize any struggle by senators to attain freedom from imperial control as the only true indication of senatorial independence. Reconciliation to the political order has been equated with lack of spirit and the choice to conform with no choice at all. It is not surprising then that modern historians, accepting the sources' forceful images of the emperors' power and the Senate's powerlessness, have paid little attention to the Senate of the principate. Certainly no one until now has attempted to study the imperial Senate as an organization, with explicit goals and tasks which it pursued in a rational manner. Yet the Senate was in many ways a remarkable institution. It survived as a working organization for close on a thousand years—surely a demonstration of its effectiveness and authority. We take its perpetuation so much for granted that it appears almost unproblematic; but failure to co-operate, disorganization and disintegration of purpose seem to have been as characteristic of the Senate as of most organizations. How then can we explain its resilience and power, especially under the principate?