(iii.) The Procurators.—The quasi-magisterial position of the occupants of the higher imperial posts could not be reflected in the lower grades of office. So far as the detailed ministeria principatus[1] were concerned, the Princeps adopted the analogy of the Roman house, not of the Roman state, and employed either general agents (procuratores) or assistants designated by the secretarial or other duty which they performed (ab epistulis, a rationibus, etc.). There was always a distinction between the two classes, which was still preserved now that they had become official. The agent of domestic life might indeed approximate to the condition of a mere bailiff, and might be a slave; but the necessity for representing the absent dominus in courts of law had made it convenient that the procurator should be a free man; and the idea of agency, usually of general agency (procuratio omnium rerum),[2] was closely associated with the word. On the other hand, the slaves and freedmen of the household who copied and kept accounts, were not agents; and, in accordance with this distinction, the officials of the Principate who bear such titles as ab epistulis, a libellis, a rationibus, are not spoken of as procurators, although one of these posts might rise to the dignity of a procuratorship, as that a rationibus did.
Although from the point of view of functions the two classes must be kept distinct, from that of qualification they may be discussed together. In both we observe the tendency for the household to become a bureau, for the freedman and slave to give place to the Roman knight. Tiberius' household consisted mainly of freedmen,[3] and their influence reached its zenith in the reign of Claudius. An Emperor who sought popularity might, like Vitellius, transfer the ministeria of the Principate to Roman knights;[4] but no comprehensive attempt seems to have been made to reorganise the bureaucracy on this footing until the time of Hadrian.[5] Henceforth the higher grades were held as a rule by knights, only the lower being possessed indifferently by equites or freedmen.[6] The procuratorship was the patent of(Plut. Otho 9).]
- ↑ Tac. Hist. i. 58.
- ↑ Cic. pro Caec. 20, 57.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. iv. 6 "intra paucos libertos domus."
- ↑ Tac. Hist. i. 58 "Vitellius ministeria principatus per libertos agi solita in equites Romanos disponit." In Otho's reign we find a mention of Secundus the rhetor [Greek: epi tôn epistolôn genomenos
- ↑ The evidence for Hadrian's change is mainly epigraphic. See Hirschfeld Verwaltungsgesch. i. p. 32. Two instances of it are found in Vita Hadr. 22 "ab epistulis et a libellis primus equites Romanos habuit."
- ↑ Dio Cass. lii. 25.
