This chapter argues that there was significant competition for junior senatorial positions during the early-imperial period. The number of eligible candidates in Italy alone exceeded the available positions with a wide margin. Moreover, the inclusion of increasing numbers of provincials further intensified the competition. Selection occurred across several stages—the latus clavus, vigintivirates, and quaestorship—mitigating potential friction that could arise among competing candidates and their supporters.

This chapter investigates the variation in the governing bodies (the curial councils) of the Italian civitates. It focuses on two aspects: the number of decurions and the census qualification for council entry. The evidence reveals a similar pattern for both of these aspects: medium-sized and larger civitates adhered to ‘canonical’ values (a hundred decurions with at least HS 100,000, likely inspired by Roman tradition), while smaller civitates deviated from this canon, probably due to local economic constraints.

This chapter recapitulates the main findings of this study, relating them to the concepts of ‘oligarchy’, the boni and different forms of social power.

Not all persons sui iuris with the requisite wealth for municipal office were represented in the local municipal councils. This chapter assesses the prevalence of four different groups of such individuals in early-imperial Italy: the Augustales, male minors and women sui iuris, and persons lacking local citizenship (incolae and attributi).

This chapter contends that Italy was exceptionally wealthy during the Early Empire, both in real and nominal terms. Italy’s prosperity stemmed from several sources: substantial booty, taxes, and rents were diverted from the provinces to the empire’s core; provincial elites engaged in imperial politics were expected to spend lavishly in Rome and its environs; and returns on Italian land were relatively high. Additionally, high prices in Italy for both real estate and commodities augmented Italy’s wealth in nominal terms.

This chapter argues that men with the requisite wealth for political office outside the political orders contributed to the stability of the Roman timocratic political system by serving as a reserve pool from which new magistrates and councillors were recruited. Correspondences between the surpluses of wealthy households at the senatorial, equestrian, and curial levels of the political system, and evidence of shortages of candidates at these levels, substantiate this argument.

This chapter examines the development of the Italian economy over the first two centuries CE. It re-evaluates two prevalent narratives– declining economic performance and increasing inequality– using proxy data. The evidence indicates that both trends were relatively modest, began only towards the end of this period, and were marked by significant regional and local variation.

This chapter shows that Italian households with sufficient wealth for political office outnumbered the men actually holding these offices by a wide margin. It achieves this by estimating the number of Italian households that satisfied the senatorial or equestrian census minimum. A new reconstruction of the distribution of elite wealth in Roman Italy is presented, which is based on an economic (power-law) model combined with a bottom-up (‘tessellated’) approach that expressly takes the heterogeneity of the Italian civitates into account.

This chapter outlines the methodological approach for reconstructing the top of the wealth distribution of early-imperial Italy. Traditional social-table models are deemed inadequate for this purpose. Instead, I advocate for an economic model that assumes the top of the Italian wealth distribution can be represented by a simple mathematical function– a power law.

This chapter assesses wealth inequality among the elites of the Italian civitates, using four sets of wealth proxy data. The analysis reveals significant variation in the implied inequalities, which nonetheless fall within the same range as those implied by other premodern datasets. Interestingly, these levels of inequality do not appear to correlate with the size of the civitas.

The Introduction sets out the theme of the book. It discusses the census qualifications (wealth minimum requirements) that prevailed in the Roman timocratic political system.