INTRODUCTION

In the western half of the Roman empire, the foundation of towns and the introduction of a system of civic self-administration constitute the most important changes of the Roman era, alongside the rise of villas. The precise organisation of the new administration differed from civitas to civitas as in most cases it was partly built upon existing indigenous structures. However, as a result of a process of political integration, referred to in the recent literature as ‘municipalisation’, the institutional organisation of the local communities developed along much the same lines and finally became fairly uniform across the Gallic and Germanic provinces. Everywhere the old tribal senate of elders was transformed into a Roman-style city council, variously referred to as senatus, curia or, most often, ordo decurionum. The tribal pagus lost its political autonomy and was subordinated to the civitas, its significance in the Roman period being largely restricted to the religious domain. And single magisterial positions rooted in local tradition, such as the vergobretus and praetor in Central Gaul or the summus magistratus among the Batavi, quickly disappeared and were replaced by the archetypical collegial pairs of duumviri, aediles and quaestores. It is these municipal magistrates, together with the members of the city council with whom they were closely connected, which are the focus of this paper. They are referred to here as the ‘ruling elite’. Who were these men? How many of them were there? What evidence do we have to substantiate the general claim that they may be identified with the wealthy owners of the greatest and most luxurious villas in the countryside? How much of their time did they have to spend on exercising their political power? How did they manage to run an agrarian enterprise and at the same time be politically active in town? Should we imagine them constantly commuting between their estate in the countryside and the political arena in the town? Or were they absentee landlords who, like their peers in Italy, lived in town and relied on a bailiff?