of ladies of the second and third century. Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, and Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, were both designated "mothers of the camp" (mater castrorum). One important and disastrous result of this elevation of the imperial house was that its members were protected, like its head, against all the attacks of laesa majestas. As even the most indirect reflection on the Princeps was treason, because he represented the state, a similar view was taken of constructive wrongs to members of the imperial family, because they were one with the Princeps. This view was too purely Roman to need time to develop. Even in the reign of the second Princeps we find that a poet has to expiate by death the folly of an obituary poem on the Emperor's living son.[1]
As the Princeps was not a king he had no court, and "Augustus or Trajan would have blushed at employing the meanest of the Romans in those menial offices which, in the household and bedchamber of a limited monarch, are so eagerly solicited by the proudest nobles of Britain."[2] Yet, although the entourage of the early Principes was simplicity itself, the stately life of the Republican noble had already furnished precedents for distinguishing the grades and privileges of those who sought the Emperor's presence. The younger Gracchus and Livius Drusus had, at the daily salutatio, drawn distinctions amongst their numerous adherents; at the morning audience some were received singly, others in larger or in smaller groups;[3] and it is not surprising that this distinction should have been revived for the great throng of callers who filled the hall of the imperial palace. The amici of the Princeps were those "received at court," and were divided into friends of the first and second "audience."[4] From this body were selected the judicial and administrative advisers of the Emperor (consilium) as well as the comrades (comites) whom he took with him when he quitted Italy on business of state. From the latter, who
- ↑ Tac. Ann. iii. 49-51.
- ↑ Gibbon ch. iii.
- ↑ Seneca de Ben. vi. 34, 2 "Apud nos primi omnium Gracchus et mox Livius Drusus instituerunt segregare turbam suam et alios in secretum recipere, alios cum pluribus, alios universos. Habuerunt itaque isti amicos primos, habuerunt secundos, numquam veros."
- ↑ Seneca de Clem. i. 10 "cohortem primae admissionis"; Vita Alex. 20 "moderationis tantae fuit . . . ut amicos non solum primi aut secundi loci sed etiam inferioris aegrotantes viseret."
