The ancient sources frequently mention heated debates during meetings of the Roman senate under the early empire. Such debates could become so intense they might even threaten to impede the Senate’s decision-making abilities. Nevertheless, senatorial debate in the curia was not necessarily dysfunctional: in fact, it had a crucial instrumental function. Potential dissent among members of the senate could be discussed and settled before voting began, taking it out of the decision-making process proper. The symbolic dimensions of senatorial altercationes were (...) if possible even more important, because the existence of communicative dissent showed that discussions still happened in the curia: proof that the Senate was still a functioning political entity. A combined agent-centred and institutional-historical methodological approach allows us to track not only individual practices of dispute, competition, and raising one’s profile, but to perceive more clearly the impact and the function disputes had for the Senate’s debating culture as a whole. (shrink)

There is a large body of extant examples from the Imperial period of competitive relationships between a successful general of senatorial rank and the current emperor. An analysis of such cases shows that this type of confrontation tends to result under a particular set of conditions and shared structural characteristics. It would usually occur either when an emperor’s military profile was insufficiently distinctive, or when the emperor’s behaviour did not meet soldiers’ and officers’ expectations to a sufficient degree, i. e. (...) when a leader was unable or unwilling to achieve the charismatic power that resulted from military victory. It was this resource of victoriousness that could elevate a member of the senatorial aristocracy above the ranks of his militarily accomplished peers and invest him with the unique quality that could make him the primus inter pares. (shrink)