BMCR 2009.04.60: Sanchez-Moreno Ellart on Rilinger, Ordo und dignitas. Beitrage zur romischen Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte

Rolf Rilinger, Ordo und dignitas. Beitraege zur roemischen Verfassungs-
und Sozialgeschichte.  Stuttgart:  Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007.  Pp.
400.  ISBN 978-3-515-08609-7.  EUR 72.00.

Reviewed by Carlos Sa/nchez-Moreno Ellart, University of Valencia and
CEIPAC (University of Barcelona) ([email protected],
[email protected])
Word count:  2384 words
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This interesting book brings together eleven remarkable papers
published between 1978 and 1997 by the lately deceased Rolf Rilinger
(1942-2003). Now, a few years after his demise, these articles have
been collected in this book--under the significant keywords of ordo und
dignitas, two essential concepts in Rilinger's reconstruction of the
Roman political system[[1]]--and opportunely republished by Tassilo
Schmitt and Aloys Winterling as an homage to Rilinger's memory. In my
opinion this compilation offers an excellent way to review the core of
the author's work and at the same time his main interests, essentially
law and ancient history conceived within the frame of social change. In
their brief introduction the editors outline Rilinger's methodological
approach, which followed and developed ideas expressed by Alfred Heuss,
Joschen Bleicken, and Christian Meier. The core of the book is divided
into two parts: the first includes five papers focusing on the Roman
Republic (11-150); the second (153-374) joins together six articles
related to the Early and the Late Empire.

The first essay (11-76), Die Ausbildung von Amtswechsel und Amtsfristen
als Problem zwischen Machtbesitz und Machtgebrauch in der Mittleren
Republik (342 bis 217 v. Chr) deals with the cursus honorum in the
context of relations of power. Rilinger starts from Bleicken's warning
that conventional views of governance in Rome do not do justice to
their complexity. This fact is particularly evident in the case of the
political behaviour of the Roman aristocracy because of the
indissoluble link between social pre-eminence and the exercise of
power. Furthermore, the key concepts of dignitas and auctoritas and
their influence on the Roman constitution must be understood in the
context of Roman expansion. In this way Rilinger takes into account how
the expansion of Rome affected the term limits the offices of the
cursus honorum and demonstrates at the same time the historicity of the
limits on re-election (342 BC) as well as of the abolition of some
limitations on re-election for the consulship (217 BC), known mainly
from the literary sources.

The second paper (Loca intercessionis und Legalismus in der spaeten
Republik 77-94) studies the rogatio Caecilia de Cn. Pompeio ex Asia
revocando (G. Rotondi, Leges Publicae Populi Romani, Milano 1922 383)
referred to by Plutarch (Cat. min.  26-29). This episode has Pompey as
an indirect protagonist, through Q. Caecilius Mettelus. Essentially,
Metellus moved that Pompey, who was still in Asia, be summoned with his
army, in theory to bring order out of the existing anarchy, but
actually in the hope that Pompey and he himself gain power. The
assembly was about to vote in favour of Metellus' proposition, but Cato
prevented him from reading and then from reciting its text.[[2]]
Rilinger conducts an exhaustive study of this conflict, which involves
both the Senate and the tribunus and reaches a more complex explanation
of the role of the latter in the Roman constitution than the quite
idealized role assigned by Polybius (VI. 16.5). This episode has
traditionally been a problem for understanding the scope of the
intercessio and why it was not possible to invoke it in that case.
Rilinger examines especially the explanations advanced by Joschen
Bleicken and Christian Meier and concludes that the intercessio was not
legally regulated in detail at the end of the Republic, perhaps giving
priority to what Rilinger calls Verhaltennormen.

As I have stated above, the notions of ordo and dignitas are key
starting points for understand Rilinger's approach, and the third
article provides a succinct and clear definition of their implications
(Ordo und dignitas als soziale Kategorien der roemischen Republik
95-104). In this nearly programmatic contribution the author outlines
the difficulties that have sprung from the translation of these terms.
According to him, these terms implied the central concepts of Leistung
and Rankdenken and there was a close link between them. Rilinger starts
from what he calls a truism: since the 19th century scholarship has
been highly indebted to the Greek translations of ordo as taxis or
tagma and Senate as boule or even gerousiawhich led to conceiving the
content of ordo in a way quite far from what the Romans saw in it.[[3]]
Ordo in the common meaning was used during the Republic to designate a
closed group constructed according to specific criteria and gathered in
a register or album based on that membership, and in the later Republic
particular cases (publicans, apparitores. . .) were included under the
same term, also characterized partially as closed groups. But the
evolution of ordo during the Principate led to the inclusion of a list
of slaves secundum ordinem et dignitatem. The author points out this
particular case (D. 7.1.15.1-2, Ulp. XVIII ad Sab.). Dignitas, on the
other hand, is the main term used to express social rank, but there are
also terms such as status, qualitas, gradus and many others. Since
dignitas does not imply rank directly in itself, but only with
reference to the rest of the system, this concept becomes a key for
understanding the complexity of rank in Roman society and in the Roman
constitution. After a precise analysis, Rilinger concludes that both
notions are expressions of the Republic as a political and social
system and that their crisis means also the crisis of that regime. One
clear example of this assertion is that after Sulla's reform the Senate
did not reflect the actual social reality, and that is why Pompey or
Cato the Younger played roles in the society that were not equivalent
to their rank within the Senate.

The fourth paper (Domus und res publica. Die politisch-soziales
Bedeutung des aristokratischen Hauses in der spaeten roemischen
Republik 91-122) deals with a subject more related to constitutional
consequences than one might initially think. Rilinger demonstrates that
in the later Republic the political system had lost its capacity to
integrate the principal patrons of the domus, as evident in the
progressive separation between familia and domus, a fact that can
easily be noticed through studying the architectural development of the
latter. Here the author resorts, among others, to the study by R. P.
Saller ("Familia, Domus, and the Roman conception of the Family", in
Phoenix 38 (1984) 336ff.) and argues that the role of the paterfamilias
was directly related to the house conceived as a social unity. An
especially significant case is that mentioned by Cicero in Ad
Familiares (6.10.2; 6.12.2; 6.13.3): Julius Caesar after his victory in
the civil war established in his own house the typisch hoefischer
Komunikationformen (90) and that fact doubtless had some influence for
the Principate and its political conception of the emperor and his
family.

The last essay devoted to the Roman republic is Die Interpretation des
Niedergangs der roemischen Republik durch Revolution und Krise ohne
Alternative (123-150). Rilinger starts from the classical book by Sir
Roland Syme The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939) and analyzes its
significance for the use of concepts like crisis and revolution as
standards for interpreting Roman history. As the author points out, to
use these categories to judge the Roman background is at least as old
as Montesquieu. In fact, Rilinger reminds us that Mommsen himself had
employed those anachronistic comparisons and that makes the valuable
approaches of Heuss and Meier easier to understand. The author
addresses both Heuss's and Meier's interpretations of crisis and
revolution, and underlines some characteristics of the change of
regime, such as the transformation of the princeps from the patron and
chief of the army to a military monarch. This explanation takes into
account meanings of the clientela or the urban plebs that have been not
fully understood.

Moderne und zeitgenoessische Vorstellungen von der Gesellschaftsordnung
der roemischen Kaiserzeit (153-179), constitutes the sixth essay of
this compilation and the first dedicated to the imperial age. Tackling
the subject of social stratification, Rilinger rightly starts from the
fundamental work of Geza Alfoeldy (Roemische Sozialgeschichte,
Wiesbaden 1975) since it is a key work for the study of Roman society.
At the same time he clarifies some matters about Alfoedy's famous
Sozialpyramide (301). In scholarship it is easy to discover an
imprecise use of Alfoedy's  terminology even among the most important
exponents, especially terminology related to sociology or political
science. The author rightly states that this phenomenon happens even in
Mommsen, who had recourse to terms such as Kapitalismus, Proletariat
or, astonishingly, to Junkertum (cf. 153 n. 5). In his analysis of
Alfoeldy's contribution Rilinger insists on ideas that he had dealt
with in the preceding articles, such as the structural analogy (176)
between auctoritas and dignitas of the magistrates and the emperor with
the correlative value of these concepts as applied to the paterfamilias
and the patronus.  To sum up, Rilinger completes the 'Sozialpyramide'
proposed by Alfoeldy with a structural analysis that emphasizes the
relationship between the political institutions and the familia and
that at the same time makes possible a deeper comprehension of social
change.

Zum Kaiserzeitlichen Leistungs-und Rangdenken in Staat und Kirche
(181-222) starts with a quotation of John Chrysostom (ad Mathaeum 1.8)
which describes heavenly society according to the model of earthly
society. In the context of celestial and earthly hierarchy, the author
also interprets, among other patristic sources, a significant text by
Pseudo-Dionysius,[[4]] which stresses hierarchic dependence and at the
same time opens the door to an upward mobility and presupposes a
particular Christian interpretation of the ordo-dignitas scheme that
emphasizes the concepts of virtue, self-perfection, and promotion
conceived as ascent to God.

Zeugenbeweis und Sozialstruktur in der roemischen Kaiserzeit (223-232)
is an article on proof and the right of the judge to decide whether
testimony is reliable or not according to the social standards of a
given moment. Rilinger shows how the rules for evaluating the
declarations of the testimonies were more flexible than the rigid
contraposition that humiliores / honestiores present, for example, in
the Pauli Sententiae or the Codex Theodosianus.

Seneca und Nero (253-280) is a keen overview of the reasons that
motivated the use of the image of Nero as an artist emperor in order to
legitimize political power in the early Principate. This approach is
quite critical of the traditional view, which constitutes almost a
commonplace, that the use of the artist emperor image was a consequence
of Nero's insanity. Seneca's role in this process of underlining the
virtues of the prince is, as the author shows, particularly remarkable.
Although during the early Principate the Leistungsethik of the Roman
aristocracy was still invoked, it was in reality only a trace of the
past. In the late Republic, for example, we can see in the case of Q.
Caecilius Metellus (cf. Plin. Nat. Hist. VII 139-140) that auctoritas
and rank in theory derived from dynamic virtues (255), but in the new
regime the emperor played an ambiguous role that subverted the
functionality of these concepts: on one hand he himself was integrated
into the senatorial order, but on the other he dominated that order and
his person is endowed with remarkable virtues. At the same time, as a
result of the Marcus Antonius episode, Hellenistic monarchy was not the
most suitable option to define the new model, and consequently the
imperial rulers had to look for other sources of legitimacy. This
situation leads the emperor to act through indirect means, i.e. by
enforcing his economic and juristic position and by reserving military
glory only for himself. Little by little, the ideological use by
official propaganda of certain moral virtues (such as clementia,
iustitia, and liberalitas) offers a way of legitimizing the regime.
Rilinger explains how Seneca, not by chance an homo novus, played a
remarkable role in this process.

Das politische Denken der Roemer: vom Prinzipat zum Dominat (281-353)
is a sharp didactic text about political theory that was originally
integrated into a general handbook.[[5]] The author starts from the
Augustan age and underlines how the monarchic forms were inserted into
the old constitution. Then he divides the rest of the Principate into
two periods: Prinzipat und Tyrannis and Der beste Princeps. In the
first section, which covers the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the author
studies the problem of the legitimacy of the new regime, based in
theory on the pre-eminence of the Senate and at the same time on the
succession, a concept that originally belonged to private law. Rilinger
stresses the political thought of Seneca and also of Petronius and
Persius in this context. In the second section, the author underlines
the part played by the Lex de imperio Vespasiani in the consolidation
of the dynastic component of the new system and points out the
political implications of authors such as Suetonius, Pliny the Younger,
and Tacitus. The last section is devoted to the late Empire, and
Rilinger, after evaluating the most important aspects of Diocletian?s
and Constantine's reforms, comments on the political implications of
authors like Eusebius of Caesarea, Julian, Symmacus and Ammianus
Marcellinus. A general overview of the political thought during the
Empire (in which the author insist on its lack of theoretical
discussion as a principal characteristic) and about the nature of the
imperial regime closes the article.

Die Interpretation des spaeten Imperium Romanum als Zwangsstaat
(355-374) closes the selection. The term Zwangsstaat is widely used by
historians, jurists, or philologists to allude to the late Empire. The
author investigates in this paper its origin and points out the authors
who have created and used the notion as a framework to study this
period. It is significant that the origin of this concept in the field
of Ancient History starts from the work of a medievalist, H.
Aubin.[[6]] According to this conception, power was concentrated among
fewer people, the population became poorer and in the long term they
became attached to the glebe. Commerce was clearly affected by this
process, so that the economy functioned in general terms of exchange
rather than with money. This conception, of late Antiquity is
ideological in many respects, and has influenced social, cultural and
economic analysis.

The best way of concluding this review is to thank the editors for the
accurate gathering of this collection, which clearly displays the
richness and the originality of Rilinger's approach to social change in
Roman history. It remains to add only that the book is carefully edited
and that it offers a source index and also an index of names and
topics. The pagination includes both the numbers of the old
contributions and that of the present book.


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Notes:


1.   Rilinger characterizes (95) them as "die zentralen Begriffe des
roemischen Leistungs- und Rangdenkens".

2.   About Metellus Nepos cf. T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of
the Roman Republic, Chicago 1952 (reprint 1984)  II 174. About this
episode (also dealt with by Cicero Pro Sex 62 and by Dio Cassius,
37.4.43.3) vid. e. g. Ch. Meier, Res publica amissa, Frankfurt 1980,
270 ff., discussed by the author, and T. Duff, Plutarch's Lives.
Exploring Virtue and Vice, Oxford 1999, 152 ff.

3.   cf. e.g. H. Mason, Greek Terms for Roman Institutions, Toronto
1974.

4.   Rilinger (262 ff.) quotes from G. Heil's edition (Stuttgart 1986
1-28).

5.   I. Fetscher and H. Muenkler (edd.) Pipers Handbuch der politischen
Ideen I, Munich 1988, 521-593.

6.   H. Aubin, "Mass und Bedeutung der roemisch-germanischen
Kulturzusammenhaenge im Rheinland", in P. E. Huebiger (ed.),
Kulturbruch oder Kulturkontinuitaet im Uebergang von der Antike zum
Mittelalter, 1921, 47 ff.





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