Curials and bureaucrats: converging and conflicting interests in late antiquity (original) (raw)

Abstract

"The late imperial bureaucracy, emerging from the transition between the 3rd and the 4th century, represents one of the fundamental distinguishing factors which define late antiquity and the late Empire as coherent historical formations. Alongside the equally new ecclesiastical elite, the late Roman bureaucracy constitutes one of two additional groups of socio-economic elite joining the traditional landowning elites of the senatorial and curial class. Also like the ecclesiastical elite, the new bureaucratic elite, in its overwhelming majority, is not recruited from sub-landowning elite social strata, but is drawn from the literate and educated segment of imperial population, in other words the curial class. Legislation from the 4th century makes it quite clear that the “disappearance” of curials into the bureaucratic class was perceived by the imperial state as a problem for the functioning of the cities and hence the structural basis of the Empire. Still, emperors never took decisive action to stop the drain of curials and potential curials into the bureaucratic elite – where would alternative recruits have come from? – and neither did the curial class itself; even though it was legally required to prevent its members from leaving their curial obligations. The question this paper is going to ask is why the curial class collaborated quite eagerly in a process of social transformation which at first sight implies its own weakening. After all, the new bureaucrats not only mean missing candidates for council membership, but also strong competitors in the exercise of patronage over rural and urban clients. The model we are going to propose to solve this contradiction will look at curial and bureaucratic elites as constituent members of one integrated urban elite. Political and economic interests of curials and bureaucrats often are conflicting – still probably no more than for instance between principales and ordinary curials – but they are also frequently converging and actually enhance the potential for social advancement and economic enrichment in both groups. An urban elite split into curials and bureaucrats, we are going to argue, is able to control a larger share of economic surplus than the less diversified municipal elites of the high empire did."

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