Читать книгу Why Rome Fell - Michael Arnheim - Страница 42

But the fact that the Republic was dominated by a small elite is not in doubt. In rejecting this position, Millar was flying in the face of the evidence and opposing not only the Gelzer school of German scholars but also his own supervisor in Oxford, Sir Ronald Syme. (Syme 1939, p. 124.)

Gary Forsythe provides evidence of “…multiple offices shared by the same two individuals”, one patrician and the other plebeian, between 366 and 264 BCE, the century before the First Punic War. Forsythe lists no fewer than 16 such pairs, plus three further “…instances in which one person held two consulships with two brothers or members of the same family.” In addition, Forsythe notes the high frequency of repeat consulates in the twenty-five years after the reorganisation of 367 BCE. It is easy to pooh-pooh the Consular Fasti, the official list of consuls as recorded in the so-called Fasti Capitolini, as Millar does because they date only from the time of Augustus, but Forsyth based his observations on Livy’s history as well, which was also written during the reign of Augustus.

On the basis of detailed prosopographical evidence, Ernst Badian found that “…the proportion of consuls who came from families that had already produced at least one consul never fell below 70 percent in the whole period between 179 and 49 BCE.” (Badian 1990, pp. 371–413.)