UC Berkeley

In this dissertation, I make the case that a suite of social institutions—bonds within and between families, for instance, and especially amicitia, which is the focus of this project—played a defining role in the nature of the regime. This framework allowed a diverse “aristocratic community”—not only senatorial families in the city of Rome, but also wealthy proprietors throughout Italy, in conversation with an array of “sub-elites,” such as freedmen and Greek intellectuals—to act together. As is widely acknowledged, elite culture under the Republic was notably agonistic. Amicitia helped compensate for competition, counterbalancing rivalry with a potent thread of collective action. In addition, scholars regularly highlight the steep hierarchies that characterized Roman society at all levels. But amicitia again furnished a counterforce, often diminishing hierarchies in practice and helping to institute an ethic of what we might describe as “aspirational parity.” All hierarchies could at least in theory melt away, and even the society’s most rarified circles were open to recruitment of new members. The aristocratic community’s “Republic” was a system of power in which collective action could outperform competition, and stratification and exclusivity might yield to equalization and permeability.

The chapters are divided into two sections, which investigate respectively the dynamics and the institutional function of “peer” and “asymmetric” amicitia bonds. In the first section, I discuss the function of friendships between the society’s principes and their importance as organizing forces within the system of power in the 50s. Chapter 1 engages with bonds between Cicero and three of his consular “peers”—Lentulus Spinther, Metellus Nepos, and Appius Claudius. These provide case studies of highly intentional amicitia, helping us delineate the nature of the institution in its most idealizing form and to understand the role of high-level friendship ties in the aristocratic community’s social framework. I suggest, moreover, that, as a response to their growing fear that the collective social weight of the dynasts might overbalance the system, Cicero and his fellow principes took special care to invest in their peer bonds, even cultivating bonds with fellow consulares with whom they might otherwise have remained at odds. In Chapter 2, I turn to Cicero’s bonds with the Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus. Although the three magnates threatened to undermine the traditional parity in the permeable circle of the community’s top men, Cicero nonetheless went out of his way to cultivate amicitia bonds with each of them. This was partly an attempt to protect himself and to thrive as much as possible within restrictive limitations. But I argue that Cicero also tried to use the rhetoric of parity—the sense that amici were one another’s “second selves”—to subtly encourage the dynasts to play by the traditional “rules of the game.” An investigation of Cicero’s relationships with these outstanding figures provides clues as to the nature of the regime change beginning in the 50s, which would come to fruition under Caesar in the 40s and would ultimately resolve itself into a monarchic Principate.

The second section focuses on the dynamic of asymmetry within amicitia, both in friendships between aristocrats at different ages and career stages and as exemplified in the recommendation process. Chapter 3 presents two case studies of Cicero’s asymmetric friendships with rising junior aristocrats: Sestius and Caelius Rufus. As I seek to demonstrate, these bonds assisted the rise of the younger friend; they created reliable power resources for the senior partner; and they brought the interests and voices of people at a variety of levels of influence and status into the conversation that defined the society’s broader agendas, policies, and priorities. In Chapter 4, I treat the dynamics of recommendation. I analyze recommendations between senior aristocrats and rising members of the successor generation, using Cicero’s recommendation of Trebatius to Caesar—a highly intentional process, extending across multiple letters—as a window. Then, I undertake a broad exploration of the dynamics of recommendations between elites and sub-elites from different backgrounds and circumstances. This investigation of commendationes showcases interchange between senators, equites, freedmen, and Greek intellectuals, bringing the breadth and diversity of the aristocratic community to the fore. With the second section, I endeavor to show how vertical bonds could facilitate a degree of coherence within a multi-generational, Italy-wide elite, helping it operate, in its assorted subgroups, as an agenda-setting ruling “class” (or, more precisely an interlocking collection of networks) for the imperial Republic.

In the conclusion, I address directly the question of regime change. I attend to continuities and transformations in the institution of amicitia. By locating shifts in its function—both as ideal and as social practice—we can better understand what it meant for a “Republic” to become a “Principate.”