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For three centuries after the death of Augustus, the trend was toward greater autocracy on the part of the emperor together with a decline of the old aristocracy and recruitment to the Senate from an ever-widening circle both geographical and social. The ancient sources attribute the changes in the Senate to the deliberate policy of “bad” emperors like Tiberius, Domitian, Commodus and Septimius Severus. Modern writers tend to stress demographic factors. Thus, Mason Hammond: “The chief and continuing factor which necessitated the introduction of fresh blood into the Senate must have been a failure on the part of the old senatorial families adequately to perpetuate themselves.” (Hammond 1957, p. 75.)

The low level of reproduction of the old senatorial families has probably been exaggerated because we know that it was imperial policy from the start to broaden the scope of recruitment. The Emperor Claudius (r. 41–54), for example, forced the resignation of a number of senators who no longer met the property qualification, and at the same time, he promoted the admission of senators from Gaul. In proposing the admission of Gallic senators in a famous speech to the Senate (preserved in the bronze Lyon Tablet), a different version of which was reported by Tacitus, Claudius made a point of mentioning that both Augustus and Tiberius had encouraged recruitment to the Senate of men of wealth and breeding from the provinces. Interestingly enough, Claudius’s speech was interrupted with cries to the effect that “Italy is not so weak as to be unable to provide its own capital city with a senate.” Yet the Senate nevertheless passed a decree approving the emperor’s policy. (Tacitus, Annals, 11.23; Sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/48claudius.asp.) A number of detailed prosopographical researches were neatly summarised by Mason Hammond, showing that, of those senators whose origin is known, the proportion of provincials (i.e. non-Italians) increased steadily (with a couple of minor blips) as follows:

 Vespasian (r. 69–79)—16.8%

 Domitian (r. 81–96)—23.4%

 Trajan (r. 98–117)—34.2%

 Hadrian (r. 117–138)—43.6%

 Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161)—42.5%

 Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180)—45.6%

 Commodus (r. 180–192)—44.7%

 Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) and Caracalla (r. 198–217)—57.4%

 Elagabalus (r. 218–222) and Severus Alexander (r. 222–235)—52.5%

 Third Century—56%

(Hammond 1957, Ibid.)

Under Vespasian, therefore, provincials made up only one-sixth of senators of known origin. There is a major jump under Trajan, and from the end of the second century provincials made up more than half the senators of known origin.

According to Pierre Lambrechts, (as modified by Syme), in the period between 117 and 192, no fewer than 48 percent of consulares (ex-consuls) and presumably an even higher proportion of senators of lower grades were of non-senatorial and indeed provincial origin. (Pierrre Lambrechts 1936, l; Review by Syme 1937, p. 271 f.) It is important to note that Trajan was himself a provincial, from Spain, and practically all subsequent emperors were also provincials.

The ever-widening circle of senators, from whom most provincial governors were drawn, was an important reason for the stability and general tranquillity of the Roman Empire over a long period. In keeping with this trend, in the year 212, the Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Roman world by means of the so-called Constitutio Antoniniana.

Augustus himself was already clearly the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, as we have seen, although he was anxious not to make this fact too obvious for fear of offending the element which had assassinated his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. Later emperors had no such qualms. The jurist Ulpian (170–228) famously declared, Princeps legibus solutus est (The emperor is exempt from the laws or The emperor is not bound by the laws) although this is sometimes interpreted to refer only to the marriage laws. That narrow interpretation is almost certainly wrong because the historian Cassius Dio (155–235) makes it clear that the phrase legibus solutus exempts the emperor from all laws, but he dates this back to 24 BCE in the reign of Augustus, which, if true, is certainly not mentioned by either Tacitus or Suetonius.

Another similar and equally famous formulation of imperial power, which is attributable to Ulpian, is, “Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem” (What pleases the emperor has the force of law), which is said to derive from the Lex de Imperio (the law defining an emperor’s power on his accession).

Can such sweeping powers be traced back to the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani, the law defining the powers of Vespasian, on his accession in the year 69? Unfortunately, only the latter part of the inscription promulgating this law has survived. This law provides that any candidate for a magistracy or other position of importance who is “commended” by the emperor shall be given “special consideration”. There is also a blanket clause giving the emperor the “right and power” to execute anything that he considers to be “…in accordance with the public advantage and the dignity of divine and human and public and private interests” just as Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius had done. The exact scope of this power is not clear, but it is significant that it is said to have belonged to Augustus as well, and it would presumably have been granted to all subsequent emperors. (Ancient Roman Statutes, 1961, p. 149 f.)

The well-known story about how Claudius became emperor is instructive. On the assassination of Claudius’s nephew, the Emperor Gaius (Caligula) in the year 41, Claudius was cowering behind a curtain, when a common soldier, seeing Claudius’s feet protruding below the curtain, pulled him out and recognized him. Claudius, fearing the worst, fell at his feet in supplication only to find himself hailed as emperor. This shows the deference and strong sense of loyalty of the ordinary people for their “betters” and for heredity, which was one of the reasons for the longevity of the Roman Empire. When the Julio-Claudian line ended with Nero, after a three-fold hiccup a new dynasty of the Flavians was briefly established by Vespasian and then from the accession of Nerva in 96 until the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 a succession of “good emperors” was attainable thanks to adoption. None of these “good emperors” had sons of their own, but Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his son Commodus, who unfortunately was not in his father’s mould. Commodus’s assassination in 192 was followed, after two more brief hiccups, by the Severan dynasty, which remained in power until 235. The next half century saw a large number of emperors taking power until the accession of Diocletian in 284, which introduced what modern historians call the “Dominate.”

Here is a bird’s-eye view of some major developments leading from the Principate to the Dominate (See Arnheim 1972, p. 21 ff.):

 Before long, consuls appear to have been directly appointed by the emperor. (Tacitus, Histories, 1.772, 2.71.3);

 Starting in the early Principate, the Senate’s financial control was gradually eliminated. As an institution, the Senate was a mere cipher, happy to humor the emperor’s every whim. But the same does not apply to senators as individuals. For, though some important posts were now held by equestrians or even by freedmen (especially under Claudius), the great majority of high imperial appointments continued to be reserved for senators until the second half of the third century. But senatorial status was in the emperor’s gift, and emperors continually brought new blood into the Senate as we have seen. So the fact that most provincial governors were senators did not mean that these posts were reserved for the scions of old families;

 In the course of the third century, the old traditional framework was gradually abandoned, until by the end of the century, only very few posts of importance were open to senators. The tendency now was to bypass the Senate by appointing non-senators directly to a governorship without bothering to make them senators first;

 An ambiguous passage in Aurelius Victor has given rise to the belief that senators were deprived of military commands from the reign of Gallienus (260–68) onward (Aurelius Victor, 33 f., 37.5–6);

 Be that as it may, a number of non-military provinces also experienced a change from senatorial to equestrian governors;

 But while equestrians moved into the erstwhile preserves of senators, there was no movement the other way to produce Lambrechts’s fabled “fusion” of the two orders (Lambrechts 1937, 107ff);

 This process culminated in the reign of Diocletian, who may justifiably lay claim to the title “Hammer of the Aristocracy”, as I dubbed him in my book, The Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman Empire (Arnheim 1972);

 The powers of the emperor are neatly summarised by Cassius Dio, who agrees with Ulpian that the emperor was above the law (Cassius Dio, 53.17.1, 18.1);

 Imperial trappings became increasingly grand. Nero was shown in his lifetime wearing the radiate crown of the sun, a symbol of divinity, on some of his coins. In the late third century, this gave way to the jewelled diadem of the sun-god;

 By the third century, an oath by the emperor’s genius was considered more binding than one by the gods;

 Everything connected with the emperor was given the epithet sacrum (sacred or holy); and

 Under Diocletian, the imperial court was well and truly decked out in Oriental trappings and an aura of cool aloofness on the one hand and abject self-abasement on the other pervaded everything.