Argument and methods

This book is about death and social renewal. It is about the social institutions which regulated the transfer of power and property in the Roman political elite. Every death created a vacancy, a gap in the social order, a place to be filled. One of the book's central problems is the degree to which the Roman senatorial aristocracy reproduced itself biologically and socially between the third century bc and the third century ad. One of our main findings is that the senatorial aristocracy achieved a surprisingly low rate of social reproduction; surprising, that is, relative to Roman ideals of hereditary succession and modern scholarly views; and low, relative to aristocracies in other societies.

The late Republic

Explanation is elusive. But several factors seem important. In the Republic (before 31 bc), a highly competitive political culture stressed not merely high birth, but also success in military leadership, wealth, ostentatious consumption, rhetorical skills and victory in successive popular elections. Capacity to succeed in most of these did not necessarily follow biological lines, or not in each generation. The inheritance of property, split equally between all surviving sons and daughters, diffused wealth away from agnates to relatives by marriage, and away from narrow lines of political succession. High death-rates left some aristocrats with no direct descendant, while others had more surviving heirs than they could afford. The fall in the birth-rate among aristocrats, which occurred probably from the last century bc onwards, increased the proportion without a single surviving son.