Dear Historians,
The last few decades of the Roman Republic witnessed the rise of the equestrian class: their rank, their wealth increased exponentially through the acquisition and integration of territory.
Some suggests that the equestrians play an active role in undermining the power of the patrician, and the senate. However, I find little evidence supporting this.
I would really appreciate it if you can recommend me some reading on the topic, together with your opinion on this matter.
Thanks, have a nice day!
Some suggests that the equestrians play an active role in undermining the power of the patrician, and the senate.
Who are these "some?" I've never heard of this argument from any scholar that I can think of. Between Badian's argument in Foreign Clientelae that the integration of the Italian nobility as an expanded equestrian order and Gelzer's identification that by the 70s the status of the equites had been pretty thoroughly ironed out--both of which are, if not necessarily accepted wholesale anymore, nevertheless the foundations for many discussions of the equites--I'm not sure I really see the logic in the statement. The equites vied with the senate of Marius' and Sulla's day over control over the courts and lowered obstacles for entry into the senate. Sulla transferred the courts back from the equites to the senate but he also transferred many equites to the senate, the result of which is not necessarily so straightforward. Moreover, the lex Aurelia of 70 firmly reestablished the right of the equites to sit in the law courts and further established a balanced set of three classes of jurors, from the senate, equites, and propertied below the level required of senatorial status. By the 60s the civil disruption caused in equestrian circles in the 90s and 80s had pretty firmly settled down, and Cicero (a novus homo of equestrian origin) could proudly boast that the equites Romani had stood firmly behind him during the Catilinarian crisis. Concordia between the equites and senate had been reaffirmed by the 60s; what undermining do you think we see from this body? The only thing that spreads readily to mind is Heaton's rather absurd and very old (1939) argument that Italian immigrants into the city diluted the "true" Roman stock, both among the plebs and all the way up into the senatorial class, from which cause Heaton bizarrely believed all political violence in the city derived
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