Classics Roman Patronage
by
Angela Ganter
  • LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0309

Introduction

What provides coherence in societies of enormous social disparity? Dionysos of Halicarnassos answered this question by referring to patronage. According to him, patron-client relationships tied together different strata of the population and different peoples of the empire, so that patronage guaranteed social stability and peace (Dion. Hal. ant. 2.9–11). Modern theories are not that different from his description, as you might expect. Since the 1980s, historians have mainly used the anthropological definition of patronage as a voluntary, personal relationship of some duration, which is asymmetrical and involves the reciprocal interchange of material or immaterial goods. Patronage clearly is a widespread phenomenon permeating many societies. In Rome, it was of extraordinary importance. For many decades already, scholars have tried to understand the historical specifics of Roman patronage, and to describe its changes over the centuries of Roman history. Whether you speak of clientelae or of patron-client relationships, terminology indicates that this is no easy task. Whereas general histories on Roman patronage are rare due to the wide-ranging topic, studies normally focus on certain fields like judicial patronage, civic patronage, or literary patronage. What is more, the scholarly image of Roman patronage depended on the approaches researchers were addicted to. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the origins of patronage and state formation were of primary concern. Afterward, the working of patronage within the sociopolitical framework became the focus of interest. Recently, communication and interaction between patrons and clients have been the most discussed phenomena.

General Overviews and the Discussion of Change

General overviews of Roman patronage bridging the epochs from the earliest times of Roman history to Late Antiquity are rare. Though Fustel de Coulanges 1890 discusses Roman patronage primarily as the background for feudalism in the Merovingian age, the author’s work was groundbreaking. From his interpretation originated the idea that clientelae were most important in the archaic period of Roman history, that they lost importance during the Republic, and that they were hardly visible during Imperial times while they regained importance from the 4th century AD onward. These social bonds were considered to have been of primary importance when the state was weak. Influenced by Fustel de Coulanges, Gelzer 1912 initiated a paradigmatic change to studying the subject as a social phenomenon. Significantly, the author concentrated on the Roman Republic. On the one hand, patronage was soon regarded to be so multifaceted that contributions tended to focus on a certain period of time and on certain aspects of patronage. On the other hand, until the 1980s the debates mainly referred to the Roman Republic because patronage was framed within power politics, until this conviction was prominently questioned in Brunt 1988. Although already von Premerstein 1937 and Syme 1939 expanded the so-far-established concepts to the Imperial era, only from the 1980s onward, when patronage was seen as a widespread social structure pervading almost every kind of society, its existence beyond the princeps and his direct sphere of influence was not denied any longer but became an equally worthwhile subject of interest (cf. Saller 1982, Wallace-Hadrill 1989). Instead of debating change with a view to early Roman history and the development from a society formed by gentes to a sophisticated state (cf. the section Origins of Patronage and State Formation, Meier 1966), it was now discussed with a view to the transition from the Republican to the Imperial system (cf. also Benner 1987). Within the frame of social history, that naturally privileges the notion of persisting social structures, the so-far-unchallenged thesis of a hard rupture between these epochs was questioned. Transformations in Late Antiquity have usually not been integrated into a discourse stemming from the earlier epochs of Roman history. Rouland 1979 and Ganter 2015, however, are certain exceptions.

  • Benner, Herbert. 1987. Die Politik des P. Clodius Pulcher: Untersuchungen zur Denaturierung des Clientelwesens in der ausgehenden römischen Republik. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    This monograph focuses on the demoralization of patron-client relationships in the Late Republic by referring to P. Clodius Pulcher. According to Benner, power depended on military groups consistent of clients whose fides had been bought materially. Benner modified the common thesis that in the long run, the princeps became the one and only patron relying on gifts to the plebs urbana after the former patron-client relationships had died.

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  • Brunt, Peter A. 1988. Clientela. In The fall of the Roman Republic and related essays. Oxford: Clarendon.

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    See pp. 382–442. His evolutionary scheme of Roman patronage resembled that of Fustel de Coulanges 1890, which considered patronage to have been an important factor in Roman history during the earliest time, to have eroded during the Republic, and to have regained force in a different mode during Late Antiquity when the feudal structures of medieval Europe came into being.

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  • Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. 1890. Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France. Vol. 5, Les origines du système féodal: Le bénéfice et le patronat pendant l’époque mérovingienne. Paris: Hachette.

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    See pp. 205–247. By delineating Roman patronage in order to explain the feudal system of the Merovingian age, Fustel de Coulanges deduces the patrocinium prevalent in Late Antiquity from the earliest times of Roman history. In contrast to his German contemporaries, who concentrated on judicial debates, he discovered patronage as a social phenomenon.

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  • Ganter, Angela. 2015. Was die römische Welt zusammenhält: Patron-Klient-Verhältnisse zwischen Cicero und Cyprian. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1515/9783110431230Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The monograph analyzes the habits of patrons and clients between the Roman Republic and the 3rd century CE. Two main eras of transformation stand out: the transition between the Republic and Imperial times, and the transition between traditional patronage and the rising Christian value system. Patronage is shown to be of eminent importance for social coherence throughout. Not patronage, but the way of performing it was questioned by the contemporaries.

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  • Gelzer, Matthias. 1912. Die Nobilität der römischen Republik. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner.

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    See pp. 62–135. In continuation to Fustel de Coulanges 1890, Gelzer initiated a paradigmatic change in studying the subject as a social phenomenon. He concentrated on the Roman Republic. Not the growing Roman state, but the Roman aristocracy was regarded to be the force to spur historical change. Published anew in Vol. 1 of Kleine Schriften (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962), 17–135.

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  • Meier, Christian. 1966. Res publica amissa: Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    In his seminal work on the Late Roman Republic (edited anew in 1980), Meier promotes an evolutionary scheme of Roman clientelae subdivided into three phases (pp. 23–63). During the first and the second, patron-client relationships were hereditary. During the third, from the 4th century BCE onward, they lost their exclusive and long-lasting quality in favor of plural obligations that often contradicted each other.

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  • Rouland, Norbert. 1979. Pouvoir politique et dépendance personnelle dans l’Antiquité romaine: Genèse et rôle des rapports de clientèle. Brussels: Latomus.

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    A monograph that intends to provide a history of Roman patronage from the earliest times to the 3rd century CE dedicating only six pages out of 658 to the second and third centuries CE. Already when being printed, it was outdated because it mirrors the sources without questioning their worldview, because it sticks to discussions on the origins of Roman clientelae, and because it frames patronage within law history.

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  • Saller, Richard P. 1982. Personal patronage under the early empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583612Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The monograph discusses personal patronage in Rome and the provinces from the reign of Augustus to the Severan period. In contrast to von Premerstein 1937, Saller is convinced that the social structures and values hardly changed between the Republic and Imperial times. Though the emperor monopolized important patron-client relationships, the aristocrats were still important as patronal brokers who mediated imperial favors.

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  • Syme, Ronald. 1939. The Roman revolution. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

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    A seminal monograph shaping the discussion of the Roman oligarchy from the late 1930s onward. By departing from the Republican aristocracy, Syme discusses patronage on a well-grounded prosopographical fundament to demonstrate that Roman power politics was based on clientelae. In the chapter “The Working of Patronage” (pp. 369–386), Octavianus is characterized as the person who finally monopolized the control of patronage and thus “the access to all positions of honour and emolument in the senatorial career” (p. 369).

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  • von Premerstein, Anton. 1937. Vom Werden und Wesen des augusteischen Prinzipats. Munich: Verlag der Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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    Applies the approach of Gelzer 1912 to Roman Imperial Times by discussing the evolution and definition of imperial power with a reference to the mobilization of clientelae. The princeps is meant to have monopolized patronage. Therefore, the old patron-client relationships of the Roman aristocracy were considered to have become irrelevant.

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  • Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, ed. 1989. Patronage in ancient society. London: Routledge.

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    A volume with a wide-ranging scope of articles from the earliest times to Late Antiquity discussing the main paradigms of research on the topic.

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Overviews of Research

There are several recent research reviews on the topic, often with a focus on the Roman Republic, and mostly combined with the question of how to proceed in discussing the subject, cf. for the explicit discussion of patronage, David 1997, Nippel 2002, Goldbeck 2010, and Rollinger 2014; for the evaluation of Gelzer’s influence, Bleicken, et al. 1977; and for the importance of patronage within a wider context of Roman Republican history, Hölkeskamp 2010 and Jehne 2006.

  • Bleicken, Jochen, Christian Meier, and Hermann Strasburger. 1977. Matthias Gelzer und die römische Geschichte. Kalmünz, Germany: M. Lassleben.

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    A volume evaluating the importance of Gelzer’s studies for the conception of Roman history.

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  • David, Jean-Michel. 1997. La clientèle, d’une forme d’analyse à l’autre. In Die Späte Römische Republik—la fin de la République Romaine: Un débat franco-allemand d’histoire et d’historiographie; Table ronde franco-allemande organisée par l’Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften der Humboldt Universität Berlin, le Centre de recherches historiques de l’École des haute études en sciences sociales (UMR 10 du CNRS) et le Groupe de recherche d’histoire romaine de l’Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg (URA 988 du CNRS), Strasbourg, 10–11 juin 1994. Edited by Hinnerk Bruhns, Jean-Michel David, and Wilfried Nippel, 195–210. Rome: École Française de Rome.

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    A very well-informed summary of approaches to patronage focusing on the differences between French and German research traditions.

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  • Deniaux, Élisabeth. 2006. Patronage. In A companion to the Roman Republic. Edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx, 401–420. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    DOI: 10.1002/9780470996980.ch19Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A reevaluation of patronage in the well-tried manner of the Oxford companions addicted to the questions favored by the generation of the author, thus patronage linked to politics.

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  • Goldbeck, Fabian. 2010. Salutationes: Die Morgenbegrüßungen in Rom in der Republik und der frühen Kaiserzeit. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1524/9783050089515Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A research review on the salutatio is provided on pp. 37–58 and on patronage on pp. 246–262.

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  • Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim. 2010. Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An ancient political culture and modern research. Translated by Henry Heitmann-Gordon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

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    Revised, updated, and augmented by the author. An evaluation of studies on patronage (pp. 33–38, 101–102) within the wider context of a research review on the Roman Republic, provided by one of the leading historians in the field. First published 2004 in German.

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  • Jehne, Martin. 2006. Methods, models, and historiography. In A companion to the Roman Republic. Edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx, 3–28. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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    A very well-informed research overview of the Roman Republic, to be recommended for beginners and specialists alike.

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  • Nippel, Wilfried. 2002. Klientel, Gesellschaftsstruktur und politisches System in der römischen Republik. Humanistische Bildung 22:137–151.

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    In order to discuss the problem of continuation and change, mainly with a view to the transition between Republic and empire, Nippel proposes to distinguish the social and the political dimension when analyzing the subject. While the latter has an affinity to ruptures or rapid change, social structures like patronage are considered to be of high continuity.

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  • Rollinger, Christian. 2014. Amicitia sanctissime colenda: Freundschaft und soziale Netzwerke in der Späten Republik. Heidelberg, Germany: Verlag Antike.

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    Provides a research report on patron-client relationships in the Roman Republic (pp. 17–24).

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Approaches

The Origins of Patronage and State Formation

Apart from the antiquarian studies of the 19th century (Friedländer 1921–1923, Marquardt 1886), scholarship on patronage is divided into two main directions: juridical and sociopolitical questions. The first flourished mainly in the second half of the 19th century. It was rooted in questions of Prussian, or German, state formation and concentrated on questions of how state formation was to be explained by the integration of individuals into communities of different scopes. In search of the origins of the Roman state, clientelae were interpreted as the product of an archaic, pre-state society. Patrician gentes were thought to have founded Rome and to have been accompanied by clientelae dependent on them, the clients being the nucleus of the later plebs (on the bipartite Roman society with patricians and plebeians alias clients, cf. Cic. rep. 2.9[16]; Dion. Hal. ant. 2.9.1; Mommsen 2010, pp. 61–62, 84–88; Mommsen 1887–1888, p. 63 passim; against this interpretation, Niebuhr 1873, pp. 336–337). As patron-client relationships compensated for the juridical functions of the lacking state, patronage itself was interpreted as an institution of legal quality. Accordingly, the inauguration of patron-client relationships was discussed as a juridical act. When the Roman state came into being, patron-client relationships lost their legal character and turned into morally founded relations (cf. Mommsen 1887–1888, pp. 54–88; Mommsen 1864; Mommsen 1907, pp. 10–16; von Premerstein 1900).

  • Friedländer, Ludwig. 1921–1923. Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von Augustus bis zur Zeit der Antonine. 10th ed. 4 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.

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    An antiquarian collection of and short commentary on relevant aspects of the Roman society and institutions in Imperial times, first published in 1862 and reprinted in 1979. On pp. 225–235 of Volume 1, it provides information on Roman patrons and clients.

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  • Marquardt, Joachim. 1886. Das Privatleben der Römer. Vol. 1. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.

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    An antiquarian description of the Roman society, first published in 1879, reprinted several times. On pp. 200–212, it provides information on Roman patrons and clients, mostly referring to Imperial times.

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  • Mommsen, Theodor. 1864. Das römische Gastrecht und die römische Clientel. In Römische Forschungen. Vol. 1. Edited by Theodor Mommsen, 319–390. Berlin: Weidmann.

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    A contribution explicitly dedicated to the discussion of clientelae, first published in Historische Zeitschrift 1 (1859): 332–379. Clients are dependents predating the rising civilian order.

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  • Mommsen, Theodor. 1887–1888. Römisches Staatsrecht, III.1–2. Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer 3.1–2. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.

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    A famous synopsis of the juridical reading of Roman history, also discussing the status of the clients (pp. 54–88).

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  • Mommsen, Theodor. 1907. Abriss des römischen Staatsrechts. Systematisches Handbuch der Deutschen Rechtswissenschaft, Abt. 1 Teil 3. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

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    See pp. 10–16. A summary of Mommsen’s thesis, first published in 1893, the second edition from 1907 reprinted in 1982. In contrast to the structural reading in the “Staatsrecht,” this contribution places relatively more emphasis on the evolution of clientelae from legally to morally defined entities (p. 16).

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  • Mommsen, Theodor. 2010. Römische Geschichte. Vol. 1, Mit einer Einleitung von S. Rebenich. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

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    In his famous narration of Roman history, which was first published in 1854–1856 (the volume cited here is the reprint of the 9th edition from 1902) and that won the Nobel Prize, Mommsen introduces clients later constituting the plebs as dependents of the patrician gentes (pp. 61–62, 84–88).

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  • Niebuhr, Barthold Georg. 1873. Römische Geschichte. Vol. 1. Berlin: S. Calvary.

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    A founding father of scholarly historiography, Niebuhr was the leading German-writing historian of ancient Rome at his time. First published in 1811 (the volume cited here is the reprint of the third edition from 1828), the first volume of his history also touches the problem of the clients and the origins of the plebs (e.g., pp. 336–337).

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  • von Premerstein, Anton. 1900. Clientes. Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 4.1:23–55.

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    An article rooted in the discussions of law history of the epoch that concentrates on the origins of Roman clientelae during the archaic periods of Roman history and on the juridical question of how patron-client relationships were formally initiated.

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The Functioning of Patronage within the Sociopolitical Framework

With Fustel de Coulanges 1890 and Gelzer 1912 (pp. 62–135), the focus of studies shifted from the investigation of the origins of patronage and its judicial frame to its sociopolitical framework. Scholars wanted to understand how patronage functioned. Until the 1980s, clientelae were first and foremost seen as a means of political success (Gelzer 1912; Meier 1966; Deniaux 1993; for various judgments on the electoral importance of clients, Nicolet 1980; Millar 1998; Yakobson 1999; cf. the deconstruction in Brunt 1988). Afterward, social aspects of patronage became important on their own behalf. Scholars wanted to know in which way patronage contributed to the coherence of the Roman society, and in which way it facilitated social control as well as social integration (Saller 1982; Wallace-Hadrill 1989).

  • Brunt, Peter A. 1988. Clientela. In The fall of the Roman Republic and related essays. By Peter A. Brunt, 382–442. Oxford: Clarendon.

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    Brunt deconstructed the former conviction that political success depended on the mobilization of clientelae during the voting process. By proving patron-client relationships to be flexible and less inherited than changing, he destroyed the one-sided political reading of Roman patronage and strengthened the tendency to discuss the subject in a wider social context.

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  • Deniaux, Élisabeth. 1993. Clientèles et pouvoir à l’époque de Cicéron. Rome: École Française de Rome.

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    An extensive prosopographical study on suffragium and patron-client relationships as the fundament of power politics in the Late Republic that analyzes Cicero’s letters of recommendation.

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  • Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. 1890. Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France. Vol. 5, Les origines du système féodal: Le bénéfice et le patronat pendant l’époque mérovingienne. Paris: Hachette.

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    See pp. 205–247. Fustel de Coulanges was convinced that you can only understand a state when understanding the corresponding society. In this sense, clientelae were not defined legally or by military purposes, but by concepts like, for example, se commendare and fides as defining the conduct of patrons and clients alike. From this point of view, Roman habits demonstrate a remarkable continuity between the earliest times and Late Antiquity.

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  • Gelzer, Matthias. 1912. Die Nobilität der römischen Republik. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner.

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    See pp. 62–135. In continuation to Fustel de Coulanges 1890, Gelzer initiated a paradigmatic change in studying the subject by propagating his main thesis that political power in the Roman Republic was practiced on the base of “Nah- und Treuverhältnisse,” thus on relations of proximity and fidelity that permeated Roman society: the most powerful is the person able to activate the maximum quantity of clients and friends as electors (p. 134).

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  • Meier, Christian. 1966. Res publica amissa: Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    Meier considers the Roman aristocracy to be the driving force of history, and history is power politics.

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  • Millar, Fergus. 1998. The crowd in Rome in the late Republic. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.

    DOI: 10.3998/mpub.15678Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    According to his thesis that the Roman Republic resembled a democracy, the institutional importance of the people in elections has not to be explained by clientelae any more.

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  • Nicolet, Claude. 1980. The world of the citizen in Republican Rome. Translated by Paul S. Falla. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.

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    A portrait of the Roman Republic from the perspective of the citizen, his ways of acting, and the institutions enabling him to do so. Groundbreaking for discussing forms of communication between the elite and the masses. Communication and interaction are seen as a clue to sociopolitical integration. Clients are regarded to be of eminent importance in elections. First edition in French, 1976.

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  • Saller, Richard P. 1982. Personal patronage under the early empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583612Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    This monograph established the anthropological definition of patronage in classical studies. It is a contribution to social history interested in the functioning, and importance, of patronage in contrast to other political, economic, and social institutions.

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  • Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, ed. 1989. Patronage in ancient society. London: Routledge.

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    The main interest of the volume is social history. It is bound to the new paradigm introduced in Saller 1982 that reads patronage from an anthropological, or ethnological, point of view.

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  • Yakobson, Alexander. 1999. Elections and electioneering in Rome: A study in the political system of the late Republic. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    The main monograph on the topic. Yakobson argues against clientelae in the sense of firm corporations. He stresses the flexible character of these social relations that could also transform the patron into an applicant of support (e.g., pp. 72–73) though the mental and moral obligations of the clients toward their patrons should not be denied (pp. 112–123). Patron-client relationships are not the only factor deciding elections, but an important one.

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Patronage, Interaction, and Communication

The instrumental view on patronage looking for the connections between clientelae and political success, or patronage and social integration, was questioned from the 1990s onward. As a consequence of the cultural turn, historians changed the focus from the bird’s-eye view that verified structures and systems, to the behavior of individual people and their interpretations of the world. Performative, symbolic, and emotional aspects of patron-client relationships widened the field of investigation (Winterling 2008). The analysis of communication acts between patrons and clients became the basic way to explain social coherence, or disintegration, in the Roman world (Goldbeck 2010, Rollinger 2014, Ganter 2015). Like that, recent studies bridge the gap between French approaches that traditionally concentrated on mentalities, communication, and interaction, and German approaches that were traditionally interested in the political anthropology of the Roman state. These new ways of conceptualizing patronage also opens the former elitist scope on behalf of the clients and their ways of seeing the world (cf. Damon 1997, Hartmann 2009, Hartmann 2016).

  • Damon, Cynthia. 1997. The mask of the parasite: A pathology of Roman patronage. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.

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    A monograph dedicated to the clients’ perspective on patronage by analyzing its negative image as present in the type of the parasite from Plautus to Horace, Martial, and Juvenal.

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  • Ganter, Angela. 2015. Was die römische Welt zusammenhält: Patron-Klient-Verhältnisse zwischen Cicero und Cyprian. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1515/9783110431230Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The study focuses on personal patronage to explain changes and continuity of the related habits and the value system as apparent in the interaction and communication between patrons and clients.

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  • Goldbeck, Fabian. 2010. Salutationes: Die Morgenbegrüßungen in Rom in der Republik und der frühen Kaiserzeit. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1524/9783050089515Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Applies the categories claimed in Winterling 2008, mainly the performative and symbolic dimension of interacting patrons and clients, to the specific social ritual of the salutatio during the Republic and the early Imperial era. The monograph not only provides a concise discussion of all the sources available but also departs from the specific topic to open a wider discussion of Roman patronage.

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  • Hartmann, Elke. 2009. “Eurer Purpur hat unsere Togen aus dem Dienst entlassen”—Zum Wandel des städtischen Klientelwesens in Rom in der frühen Kaiserzeit. Millennium 6:1–37.

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    An important contribution to Roman clientelae in the early Imperial Age that rightly claims not to describe patronage by looking exclusively at the patrons, but by taking into account the clients’ perspective also.

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  • Hartmann, Elke. 2016. Die Instrumentalisierung der Klientelrolle. In Ordnung in Unordnung: Kommunikation, Konsum und Konkurrenz in der stadtrömischen Gesellschaft der frühen Kaiserzeit. Edited by Elke Hartmann, 89–121. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    A revised version of the contribution from 2009.

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  • Rollinger, Christian. 2014. Amicitia sanctissime colenda: Freundschaft und soziale Netzwerke in der Späten Republik. Heidelberg, Germany: Verlag Antike.

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    After an intensive interpretation of the literal sources, Rollinger is the first to apply the method of network analysis systematically to patron-client relationships in the Late Roman Republic. His careful analysis demonstrates that network analysis can explain the quantity of contacts within the Roman elite, whereas only the established reading of the sources depicts the quality of the relations.

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  • Winterling, Aloys. 2008. Freundschaft und Klientel im kaiserzeitlichen Rom. Historia 57:298–316.

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    An important contribution that proposes to amplify the discussion of patronage by taking into account not only instrumental, but also performative, symbolic, and emotional aspects. His research focuses on the interactions between the princeps and the elite in the 1st century CE.

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Lexical and Semantic Approaches to Patronage

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, scholars discovered lexical and semantic studies as a method of investigating Roman concepts of, for example, fides underlying patron-client relationships in order to better understand the functioning of the Roman society (cf. for a genuinely historical approach, Fustel de Coulanges 1890; Gelzer 1912, pp. 71–73; for a more Latinist approach, Fraenkel 1916; Heinze 1929; Hellegouarc’h 1963; Freyburger 1986).

  • Fraenkel, Eduard. 1916. Zur Geschichte des Wortes fides. Rheinisches Museum 71:187–199.

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    A groundbreaking Latinist study of the word fides, laying the fundament for decades of study to come. Republished in Vol. 1 of Kleine Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1964), 15–26.

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  • Freyburger, Gérard. 1986. Fides. Étude sémantique et religieuse depuis les origines jusqu’à l’époque augustéenne. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

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    A monograph on fides resuming the lexical and semantic work, but standing a bit apart concerning the major debates on the social framework of patronage.

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  • Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. 1890. Histoire des institutions politiques de l’ancienne France. Vol. 5, Les origines du système féodal: Le bénéfice et le patronat pendant l’époque mérovingienne. Paris: Hachette.

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    See pp. 205–247. Fustel de Coulanges was convinced that clientelae were defined by concepts like, for example, se commendare and fides as directing the conduct of patrons and clients alike.

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  • Gelzer, Matthias. 1912. Die Nobilität der römischen Republik. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner.

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    See pp. 62–135. In continuation to Fustel de Coulanges 1890, which had considered fides to be the fundament of Roman patron-client relationships, Gelzer, a pupil of Heinze’s, systematically applied the semantic studies on terms like fides and gratia to argue for his groundbreaking new approach to patronage as social history.

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  • Heinze, Richard. 1929. Fides. Hermes 64:140–166.

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    The first semantic approach to the history of the word fides with a view to the Roman value system and thus the social importance of language. Republished in Erich Burck, ed., Vom Geist des Römertums: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 59–81.

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  • Hellegouarc’h, Joseph. 1963. Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la république. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

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    An important survey on concepts defining Roman politics in the Republican era.

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Formal and Informal Relations

Generally speaking, patronage in the Roman world was an informal institution. The reciprocal expectations were neither legally defined nor to be reclaimed judicially. However, there were two areas in which patronage had a legal basis. First, municipal charters regulated the initiation of, or the formal agreement on, civic patronage. In these cases, epigraphy is the clue to understanding the contracts between patron and client community. Various tabulae patronatus remember the establishment of the relationship by specifying the conditions and describing the procedure of how a patron was coopted (Nicols 1980, Nicols 2014, cf. Balbín Chamorro 2006). However, we also know of patronage on communities by ascription, thus relations not relying on formal agreements. What is more, the legal evidence “is primarily concerned with the procedures surrounding initiation of relationship, not with the exercise of officium” (Nicols 2014, p. 14). Second, the relationship between liberti and their former masters, who were also called patroni, relied on a legal act, the manumission (Treggiari 1969, Fabre 1981). However, liberti are usually excluded from studies on patronage because their ties to the patron do not fit within the pattern of voluntary connections, one of the fundamental criteria for patron-client relationships according to ancient (e.g., Dion. Hal. ant. 2.9.2) and modern beholders alike (cf. the Introduction). Though many aspects of these relationships may evoke habits of patronage in other fields, this relationship is traditionally regarded as a topic to be studied apart and cannot be treated in this article.

  • Balbín Chamorro, Paloma. 2006. Hospitalidad y Patronato en la Península Ibérica durante la Antigüedad. León, Spain: Junta de Castilla y León.

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    A study on tesserae and tabulae, giving information on the institutions of hospitium and patrocinium on the Iberian Peninsula in Roman times. Inter alia, it discusses the relation between ius hospitium and ius civitatis. The second part of the book provides a very useful and beautifully presented compilation of the epigraphic material with translations, rich comments, and nice photographs.

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  • Fabre, Georges. 1981. Libertus: Recherches sur les rapports patron-affranchi à la fin de la république romaine. Rome: École Française de Rome.

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    The chapter “La creation du lien: Aspects juridiques et humains” (pp. 1–40) is dedicated to the juridical dimension of the relationship between patrons and their liberti.

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  • Nicols, John. 1980. Tabulae patronatus: A study of the agreement between patron and client-community. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.13: 535–561.

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    The contribution presents the genre of the tabulae patronatus by focusing on their legal implications, but also by investigating their geographical distribution and their varieties across regions and decades.

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  • Nicols, John. 2014. Civic patronage in the Roman Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

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    The monograph has a chapter on “Civic Patronage in Roman Law” (pp. 207–237) that tackles regulations by the central government trying to manage the award of honors and that tackles municipal charters alike.

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  • Treggiari, Susan. 1969. Roman freedmen during the late Republic. Oxford: Clarendon.

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    The monograph has a chapter on the legal position of freedmen in relation to their patrons (pp. 68–81).

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Terminology

Generally speaking, during the 20th century, scholars slowly substituted the term “clientelae” by “patronage” to signify the subject treated in this context. This development went along with the tendency to substitute the traditional mode of discussing clientelae with the anthropological model. While the first relies on the Roman evidence, that is, sources that use the words patronus and cliens directly, scholars addicted to the anthropological model look for signs of patronage also, if the sources do not use these words explicitly. Both approaches can be problematic. On the one hand, research should not reproduce the Latin vocabulary and thus the Roman worldview. If we apply the Latin words directly, a patronus would mainly be a man defending his client in court or a Roman honored to be the patron of a community. And clientes would hardly exist because the word was considered to be humiliating and thus used rarely, whereas amici were omnipresent. Recent studies tend to analyze the usage of the Latin terms in order to know how the relations between patrons and clients were shaped by interaction and communication (cf. Williams 2012, pp. 44–46, 53; Rollinger 2014, pp. 24–52). This is one way of coping with the notorious problem of drawing a line between patronage and friendship, patron-client relationships, and amicitia (cf. Konstan 1995, Konstan 1997, and Konstan 2005). On the other hand, modern sociological terms like “patronage” can be equally problematic because they are of such a universal character that the specifics of the Roman phenomenon might get lost. Consequently, some works like Eilers 2002 (pp. 5–8) repudiate it absolutely, whereas others have tried to establish alternative designations like “Nah- und Treuverhältnisse” (Gelzer 1912, p. 49) or “Bindungswesen” (Meier 1966, pp. 30–31), or they prefer speaking of modern constructs like “patron-client relationships” in order to lay emphasis on the actors instead of privileging the social system (cf., e.g., Goldbeck 2010). Yet, the socio-anthropological definition of patronage that was introduced in Saller 1982 (p. 1) into classical studies still is the most widely spread definition and a useful starting point for discussing the subject. It defines patronage as a voluntary, personal relationship of some duration, which is asymmetrical and involves the reciprocal interchange of material or immaterial goods.

  • Eilers, Claude. 2002. Roman patrons of Greek cities. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248483.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Eilers argues against the sociological approach. Instead, he opts for using the terminology of the Romans, thus to identify patroni and clientes only where they were named as such (cf. especially pp. 5–8).

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  • Gelzer, Matthias. 1912. Die Nobilität der römischen Republik. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner.

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    See pp. 62–135. By speaking of “Nah- und Treuverhältnisse” (“relations of proximity and fidelity,” e.g., p. 49), Gelzer also terminologically underlined the paradigmatic change of research from constitutional and juridical questions to sociological ones constituted by proximity and reciprocal fides.

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  • Goldbeck, Fabian. 2010. Salutationes: Die Morgenbegrüßungen in Rom in der Republik und der frühen Kaiserzeit. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1524/9783050089515Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    He opts for “persönliche Nahbeziehungen” in order to designate the topic as a modern construct (pp. 24–25). The disadvantage is that the term is very unspecific because it includes, for example, cognation.

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  • Konstan, David. 1995. Patrons and friends. Classical Philology 90:328–342.

    DOI: 10.1086/367478Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Konstan rightly contradicts a mere definition of amicitia in the sense of political alliances but follows too strictly Roman ideals as presented in the Laelius by Cicero. Cf. the following statement: “to be a friend meant to engage in an elective and mutual relationship based on altruistic generosity that transcended differences of status” (pp. 340–341).

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  • Konstan, David. 1997. Friendship in the classical world. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511612152Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A conception of Roman amicitia in contrast to patron-client relations comparable to Konstan 1995. Cf. the following definition: “friendship in the classical world is understood centrally as a personal relationship predicated on affection and generosity rather than on obligatory reciprocity” (p. 5).

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  • Konstan, David. 2005. Friendship and patronage. In A companion to Latin literature. Edited by Stephen Harrison, 345–359. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    DOI: 10.1002/9780470996683.ch25Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Provides a less essentialist and strict definition of amicitia than his former publications did.

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  • Meier, Christian. 1966. Res publica amissa: Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    Introduces the term “Bindungswesen” for Roman patronage (pp. 30–31) in order to strengthen the looser ties between patrons and clients from the 4th century BCE onward in contrast to earlier times, when he thought clientelae in the sense of strictly defined fealties had dominated social realities.

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  • Rollinger, Christian. 2014. Amicitia sanctissime colenda: Freundschaft und soziale Netzwerke in der Späten Republik. Heidelberg, Germany: Verlag Antike.

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    Provides a research report on terminology and opts for analyzing the usage of the Latin terms in the sources (pp. 24–52).

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  • Saller, Richard P. 1982. Personal patronage under the early empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583612Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Established the anthropological definition of patronage in classical studies.

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  • Williams, Craig A. 2012. Reading Roman friendship. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511777134Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A study arguing against the conception of clientelae and amicitia as essential phenomena. Instead, the usage of language shapes social relations. He concludes: “Any reading of amicitia must also read clientela” (p. 46).

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Fields

This section is not meant to give a complete collection of contributions to specific fields discussed in the context of patronage. According to the approaches, patronage is normally studied by referring to several fields mentioned here; the divisions are artificial. Therefore, only some benchmarks can be mentioned that decidedly focus on a certain aspect.

Judicial Patronage

The defensor of someone else in court is the embodiment of the patron. It is to this function the Latin term patronus refers. Accordingly, this institution has sometimes been considered as a phenomenon apart. While Neuhauser 1958 presents a monograph that tries to define the terms patronus and orator, David 1992 provides a profound study of the historical phenomenon by reviewing it in the context of the social and political history of the Roman Republic. The author places emphasis on the norms and values directing the conduct of the parties in contexts of judicial patronage.

  • David, Jean-Michel. 1992. Le patronat judiciaire au dernier siècle de la république romaine. Rome: École Française de Rome.

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    The decisive study on judicial patronage. David bases his analysis on intensive prosopographical studies, and also uses linguistic skills to understand the communicative acts taking place in this context. Judicial patronage in the Late Republic is seen as an important instrument of elite competition because it should prove the orator to be morally founded in the mos maiorum and rhetorically apt to stand for the res publica as a whole.

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  • Neuhauser, Walter. 1958. Patronus und Orator: Eine Geschichte ihrer Begriffe von ihren Anfängen bis in die augusteische Zeit. Innsbruck, Austria: Wagner.

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    The monograph concentrates on the definition of the two terms mentioned in the title, leading to a definition of the social institution of judicial patronage.

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Foreign Clientelae or Civic Patronage and the Patronage of Collectivities

Patronage is also seen as a model for the control and administration of the empire. Three monographs dedicated to the patronage of Roman individuals and families over cities and kingdoms appeared in a short period of time: Harmand 1957 mainly investigated the Roman East, and Engesser 1957 the Western provinces. The most influential study has been Badian 1958, which concentrated on the Roman Republic. While Krause 1987 and Nicols 2014 replaced former studies on the western provinces, Canali de Rossi 2001 and Eilers 2002 jumped into the gap to discuss the Roman East. For the debate on Roman imperialism during the Republic from the point of view of patronage, see Burton 2011 and Jehne and Pina Polo 2015, which offer a deconstruction, and reevaluation, of Badian 1958. Due to the amount of literature on the topic, overviews are usually produced in the form of conference volumes, for example, Coşkun 2008 and Lomas and Cornell 2003. The term “foreign clientelae” is equally discussable as clientelae in the context of personal patronage, but alternatives like patrocinium publicum or “civic patronage” have not totally replaced the term. Apart from patronage of whole communities, patronage of other collectivities like collegia is also attested in numerous inscriptions (Clemente 1972).

  • Badian, Ernst. 1958. Foreign clientelae (264–70 B.C.). Oxford: Clarendon.

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    The groundbreaking study in the field. His emphasis on personal relations between Roman senators and the provincial elites has dominated the perception of the control and administration of the Roman Empire. At the same time, foreign clientelae were considered to define the influence of Roman senators at home.

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  • Burton, Paul J. 2011. Friendship and empire: Roman diplomacy and imperialism in the middle Republic (353–146 BC). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139035590Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A constructivist view on international relations that stresses the importance of language and ideals in shaping the Roman Empire. According to Burton, discursive practices on amicitia created the Roman Empire as much as military actions did. Consequently, Burton favors the label of amicitia in contrast to clientelae in describing the phenomenon.

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  • Canali de Rossi, Filippo. 2001. Il ruolo dei patroni nelle relazioni politiche fra il mondo Greco e Roma in età repubblicana ed augustea. Munich and Leipzig: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1515/9783110977035Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Discusses civic patronage with a focus on Greek inscriptions that are all presented with their full text and a translation in Italian, with a preceding evaluation of their formula. What is more, the author gives an overview of the provinces in the East and West, where civic patronage is manifest, on its functions in politics, and on the identity of the patrons.

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  • Clemente, Guido. 1972. Il patronato nei collegia dell’impero romano. Studi Classici e Orientali 21:142–229.

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    The contribution provides a dense compilation of the relevant inscriptions; discusses their geographical and chronological allocation; analyzes the social background of the patroni, the social significance of the relations between patrons, and collegia for urban life; and adds concluding remarks on the evolution of patronage of collegia in the Roman Empire.

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  • Coşkun, Altay, ed. 2008. Freundschaft und Gefolgschaft in den auswärtigen Beziehungen der Römer (2. Jahrhundert v. Chr.–1. Jahrhundert n. Chr.). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

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    A review of the ongoing discussion on Roman external relations that presents theoretical contributions and various case studies.

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  • Eilers, Claude. 2002. Roman patrons of Greek cities. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248483.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A monograph on the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Whereas inscriptions from the western provinces depict the continuous importance of patronage on cities, Eilers asserts a “decline of patronage” for the eastern ones. He therefore doubts that foreign clientelae were the dominant mode of relations between the Roman and the municipal elites.

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  • Engesser, Franz. 1957. Der Stadtpatronat in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Römischen Reiches bis Diokletian. PhD diss., University of Freiburg.

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    A monograph on civic patronage in Italy and the western provinces.

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  • Harmand, Louis. 1957. Le patronat sur les collectivités publiques des origines au Bas-Empire: Un aspect social et politique du monde romain. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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    A history of Roman civic patronage from the Republic to Late Antiquity that places emphasis on institutions in Roman Imperial times and on testimonies from the East.

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  • Jehne, Martin, and Francisco Pina Polo, eds. 2015. Foreign clientelae in the Roman Empire: A reconsideration. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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    An appreciation and critique of Badian’s groundbreaking study from 1958 with contributions on a wide scope of topics by leading experts in the field. Comparable to reevaluations of Roman personal patronage, for example, with a view to the importance for electoral success, the authors come to the conclusion that the importance of foreign clientelae for the organization of the empire and the prestige of the elite in Rome has been overestimated.

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  • Krause, Jens-Uwe. 1987. Spätantike Patronatsformen im Westen des Römischen Reiches. Munich: Beck.

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    The monograph discusses patronage with a view to the debate on the loosening of Roman state power and the rise of feudalism in Late Antiquity.

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  • Lomas, Kathryn, and Tim Cornell, eds. 2003. “Bread and circuses”: Euergetism and municipal patronage in Roman Italy. London: Routledge.

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    The volume contains three papers focusing on late Republican to early Imperial times, two on the high empire, and three on Late Antiquity. It highlights changes of municipal patronage throughout these periods.

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  • Nicols, John. 2014. Civic patronage in the Roman Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

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    A synthesis on the patrocinium publicum mainly in the Latin West from the Roman Republic to the 3rd century CE, at the same time a synthesis of his lifework on the subject including chapters on methodology, law, and the importance of epigraphy for the subject; chapters with a chronological focus that expose the role of civic patronage in the Republic, in the Augustan era, and in the Principate; and case studies on the Ciceronian Verrines and the Patrons of Canusium. It concludes with reflections on the evolution of civic patronage.

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Economy

Economic aspects of patron-client relationships reaching from invitations to supper over loans to legacies underlie most discussions of the subject. However, contributions exclusively dedicated to the topic have been rare so far. Verboven 2002 is the most important. The monograph investigates the allocation and circulation of scarce resources and the organization of economic activities and strategies in the frame of patronage. Wilson and Flohr 2016, in contrast, focuses less explicitly on patronage than on social networks that constituted the world of urban craftsmen and traders.

  • Verboven, Koenraad. 2002. The economy of friends: Economic aspects of amicitia and patronage in the late Roman Republic. Brussels: Latomus.

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    Addicted to a functional approach, Verboven asks in “what way the obligations that were expected from friends, patrons and clients [were] economically useful” (p. 10). As he is convinced that the rupture between the Republic and the Principate was of a political character and that the social realities remained more or less stable, he also applies sources stemming from Imperial times to answer his main questions.

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  • Wilson, Andrew, and Miko Flohr, eds. 2016. Urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

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    The relevant section in the present context is the one entitled “People” (pp. 183–298), whose contributions describe the social environment of craftsmen and traders with a view to households and to professional associations. The networks of these groups were crucial for the social dynamics and provided contacts to important men of superior rank operating in the background.

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Literary Patronage

Literary patronage was common from Republican times onward; basic are White 1993, Gold 1982, and Gold 1987. For example, the parasites of Plautus’s comedies offer their patrons poems as a compensation for the goods they receive from their benefactors (Damon 1997). The best-known example is the relationship between Horace and Maecenas (Bowditch 2001; Bowditch 2010; le Doze 2014; Ganter 2015, pp. 143–185). Sociologically, literary patronage can be studied within the frame of patron-client relationships because the main difference to other patron-client relations is the gift itself that was interchanged between the two parties. While the poet wanted to make known his poetry by the contacts and resources of the patron, the poetry was the gift the poet had to offer, or, to say it differently, to make known his patron by praising him in his verses (cf. White 1978, pp. 76–78, 92; White 1993, p. 34; Damon 1997, p. 128; Nauta 2002, p. 26). This gift of immortality provided by famous verses could even be considered to be of such a value that some of the most established poets like Horace regarded themselves to be in an equal, if not higher position than their benefactors regarding the gifts they had to offer (Bowditch 2001).

  • Bowditch, Phebe Lowell. 2001. Horace and the gift economy of patronage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of Carolina Press.

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    An important monograph that analyzes literary patronage within the frame of gift giving.

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  • Bowditch, Phebe Lowell. 2010. Horace and imperial patronage. In A companion to Horace. Edited by Gregson Davis, 53–74. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    DOI: 10.1002/9781444319187.ch3Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    An abbreviated version of the author’s important monograph.

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  • Damon, Cynthia. 1997. The mask of the parasite: A pathology of Roman patronage. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.

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    By analyzing the client type of the parasite, Damon sensitizes for the perspective on patron-client relations from below and describes the bad social image of the client labeled a parasite. She departs from different genres exposing the habits of parasites: comedies, satires, and oratory, and thus shows that the parasite is literarily shaped according to the social constellations and the historical circumstances creating its image.

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  • Ganter, Angela. 2015. Was die römische Welt zusammenhält: Patron-Klient-Verhältnisse zwischen Cicero und Cyprian. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    DOI: 10.1515/9783110431230Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Studies the changing relationship between Horace and his patron Maecenas, but also the Panegyricus Messallae, the Elegiae in Maecenatem, and the Laus Pisonis, by relating it to the general discussion of personal patronage (pp. 143–202).

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  • Gold, Barbara K. 1987. Literary patronage in Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill and London: Univ. of North Carolina Press.

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    An essential monograph on the subject that centers on the question of how the patron shaped the literature by the poets he supported.

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  • Gold, Barbara K., ed. 1982. Literary and artistic patronage in ancient Rome. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.

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    An important volume uniting papers of leading experts in the field.

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  • le Doze, Philippe. 2014. Mécène: Ombres et flamboyances. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

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    This biography of Maecenas also has a chapter decidedly discussing his role as a literary patron (pp. 113–189).

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  • Nauta, Ruurd R. 2002. Poetry for patrons: Literary communication in the age of Domitian. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.

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    A detailed monograph on literary patronage that not only analyzes the relationship between poets and patrons but also the reception of the literature in question here. Two chapters tackle Martial and Statius, the third is on Domitian, each of them looking for aspects of patron-client relationships, that is to say, asymmetry, duration, reciprocity, and initiative for modes of receptions and for functions of the literature produced in this context.

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  • White, Peter. 1978. Amicitia and the profession of poetry in early imperial Rome. Journal of Roman Studies 68:74–92.

    DOI: 10.2307/299627Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    One of the key articles by one of the leading experts on the topic.

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  • White, Peter. 1993. Promised verse: Poets in the society of Augustan Rome. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674437302Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    This monograph resumes White’s intensive research on the subject. The scope of the book ranges from chapters considering the relations between poets and patrons, or the poets and the princeps, to a prosopographical database on the networks of Augustan poets and a database on the social status of poets from the 3rd century BCE to 140 CE.

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“Heeresklientel”

“Heeresklientel,” or military clientela, is a modern term that was introduced to describe the armies of the Late Republic. Traditionally, the military reforms by Marius, who began to recruit capite censi, were seen as a turning point in converting the former civic army into a professional one firmly bound to its commanders. As many of the soldiers lacked property qualification, they depended on their leaders to get parts of the booty and to be allotted with land, when military service ended. Vice versa, the commanders used the strong ties to the soldiers in order to deploy their armies for their own political aims (von Premerstein 1937, pp. 22–26; Syme 1939, p. 15). Current research, however, has modified this picture in several ways and refrains from regarding the relation between commander and soldier as a patron-client relationship. The main counterargument relevant here is that the soldiers of the regular armies were recruited by the res publica, and their loyalty was primarily directed toward the commander in his function as a magistrate (e.g., Brunt 1988, Keaveney 2007, de Blois 2011).

  • Brunt, Peter A. 1988. Clientela. In The fall of the Roman Republic and related essays. By Peter A. Brunt, 382–442. Oxford: Clarendon.

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    Within the frame of his general deconstruction of the former thesis that clientelae dominated Roman power politics, Brunt also contradicts the opinion that patrons were able “to raise troops from their clients or converted their soldiers into clients by the benefits they bestowed on them” (pp. 435–438; quotation on p. 435). According to Brunt, the normal mode of recruitment was conscription, or coercion. Instead of being clients following their patrons to war, volunteers primarily longed for booty, and the generals argued that they were acting rei publicae causa.

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  • de Blois, Lucas. 2011. Army and general in the late Roman Republic. In A companion to the Roman army. Edited by Paul Erdkamp, 164–179. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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    Representative for many contemporary scholars, the author argues that “the post-Marian armies were not automatically clientelae of leaders who were to enrich them” (p. 176). Instead, the interaction between commanders and soldiers depended on many factors.

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  • Keaveney, Arthur. 2007. The army in the Roman revolution. London and New York: Routledge.

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    The problem of military clientela is exposed in the second chapter, “The Leaders and the Led” (pp. 9–35).

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  • Syme, Ronald. 1939. The Roman revolution. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

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    Syme dedicates only one explicit paragraph to the essence of military clientela in the Late Republic (p. 15). Due to the seminal reception of the monograph as a whole, it also contributed to consolidating the concept.

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  • von Premerstein, Anton. 1937. Vom Werden und Wesen des augusteischen Prinzipats. Munich: Verlag der Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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    The author discusses military clientela (Heeresgefolgschaft) to explain the sociological background for the rising imperial system (pp. 22–26).

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Patronage and Religion

There are two main areas that are discussed: on the one hand, bishops acting as patrons of their communities, and on the other hand, saints who are regarded as advocates of believers on earth and in heaven. The position and habits of church leaders as patrons have been studied intensely (Lepelley 1998, Rapp 2005), not only with a view to Late Antiquity, but also to the first Christian communities (Kirner 2002 and Kirner 2003). Cyprian of Carthage in his capacity as a person stemming from the local elite of Carthage, who turned into a bishop and a martyr, might be considered as a paradigmatic figure. His acting demonstrates the continuity of long-established Roman aristocratic behavior and values on the one hand (Bobertz 1988) while promulgating new values, mainly caritas including the poor in contrast to aristocratic liberalitas, on the other hand (Dunn 2004). The discussion of saints, martyrs, or holy men as advocates of the believers clearly goes beyond what can be treated in this article. Again, Cyprian’s letters reveal the liveliness of these ideas already in the 3rd century CE (cf., as starting points, Rebenich 2001 and Busch, et al. 2015; Brown 1971 for the holy men in the East).

  • Bobertz, Charles Arnold. 1988. Cyprian of Carthage as patron: A social historical study of the role of bishop in the ancient Christian community of North Africa. PhD diss., University of Michigan.

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    The dissertation exposes the function of patronage and patron-client relationships in the episcopal career of Cyprian of Carthage and discusses his authority as based on continued acts of spiritual and material patronage. In close parallels to Saller’s model, the focus is on functional reciprocity between the bishop and his community. Accordingly, the continuity to Roman civic patronage is emphasized, whereas differences that were caused by the spiritual ideas of the bishop are described less.

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  • Brown, Peter. 1971. The rise and function of the holy man in Late Antiquity. Journal of Roman Studies 61:80–101.

    DOI: 10.2307/300008Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    In this seminal article, Brown analyzes the role of ascetics in the Eastern parts of the Roman Empire, who acted as mediators between their communities and the imperial administration, and who demonstrated their transcendental connections by working wonders.

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  • Busch, Anja, John Nicols, and Franceso Zanella. 2015. Patronage. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 26:1109–1138.

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    The article gives an overview on patronage in Antiquity with sections on Jewish and Christian contexts.

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  • Dunn, Geoffrey D. 2004. The white crown of works: Cyprian’s early pastoral ministry of almsgiving in Carthage. Church History 73:715–740.

    DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700073029Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A response to the arguments in Bobertz 1988 stressing discontinuities to patronal behavior in the Roman world, for example, the care for the poor.

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  • Kirner, Guido O. 2002. Apostolat und Patronage. 1, Methodischer Teil und Forschungsdiskussion. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 6:3–37.

    DOI: 10.1515/zach.2002.010Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The contribution discusses the methodology and research traditions to study the authority of church leaders in early Christian communities, mainly Paulus’s position in the community of Corinth, with a view to Roman patronage.

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  • Kirner, Guido O. 2003. Apostolat und Patronage. 2, Darstellungsteil: Weisheit, Rhetorik und Ruhm im Konflikt um die apostolische Praxis des Paulus in der frühchristlichen Gemeinde Korinth (1 Kor 1–4 u. 9; 2 Kor 10–13). Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 7:27–72.

    DOI: 10.1515/zach.2003.011Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The second part of Kirner 2002.

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  • Lepelley, Claude. 1998. Le patronat episcopal aux 4ème et 5ème siècles: Continuités et ruptures avec le patronat classique. In L’évêque dans la cite du 4ème au 5ème siècle: Image et autorité. Edited by Éric Rebillard and Claire Sotinel, 17–33. Rome: Publications de l’École Française de Rome.

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    Stresses the point that the social function of the bishop adjusted more and more to the former role of mundane civic patrons.

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  • Rapp, Claudia. 2005. Holy bishops in Late Antiquity: The nature of Christian leadership in an age of transition. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

    DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520242968.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Instead of dividing the power of bishops into a mundane and a religious sphere, Rapp speaks of their spiritual, ascetic, and pragmatic authority. From her point of view, bishops acted more and more like civic leaders, for example, as patrons who mediated between their communities and the emperor.

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  • Rebenich, Stefan. 2001. Viri nobiles, Viri diserti, Viri locupletes: Von der heidnischen zur christlichen Patronage im 4. Jahrhundert. Paper presented at a colloquium held 26–28 November 1998 in Heidelberg, Germany. In Christen und Nichtchristen in Spätantike, Neuzeit und Gegenwart: Beginn und Ende des Konstantinischen Zeitalters; Internationales Kolloquium aus Anlaß des 65. Geburtstages von Adolf Martin Ritter. Edited by Angelika Dörflein-Dierken, Wolfram Kinzig, and Markus Vinzent, 61–80. Mandelbachtal, Germany: Edition Cicero.

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    A dense article describing the transformation in the 4th century by relying on two processes: the Christianization of Roman patronage on the one hand and the patronization of the veneration of martyrs and saints on the other hand. While the first process refers to the patrocinium exercised by clerics, the second demonstrates the omnipresence of patronage in Late Antiquity applied to transcendental social hierarchies.

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Gift Giving and Reciprocity

At the latest from the early 1980s onward, when Saller 1982 had applied the anthropological definition of patronage to studies in ancient history, reciprocity and gift giving have been regarded of fundamental value to understand the mechanics and values connected with the interaction of two hierarchically asymmetric partners as patrons and clients were. Groundbreaking was Mauss 1923–1924. Boissevain 1966 was the reference point for Saller 1982. Among the many recent studies that have a decisive impact on theoretical discussions with a clear relation to Roman society, might be mentioned Satlow 2013; Bowditch 2001 on Horace in his relation to Maecenas; Wilcox 2012 on the Roman habit of letter writing; and Wolkenhauer 2014, which historicizes Seneca’s De Beneficiis (cf. also Griffin 2013).

  • Boissevain, Jeremy. 1966. Patronage in Sicily. Man n.s. 1:18–33.

    DOI: 10.2307/2795898Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The main article that inspired Saller 1982 to apply the anthropological definition of patronage to ancient history.

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  • Bowditch, Phebe Lowell. 2001. Horace and the gift economy of patronage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of Carolina Press.

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    A monograph analyzing the relation of Horace to his patron Maecenas with a regard to theories of gift giving.

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  • Griffin, Miriam T. 2013. Seneca on society: A guide to De Beneficiis. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199245482.book.1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    A commentary on De Beneficiis and a book discussing its philosophical, historical, and sociological context. The sum of a researcher’s lifelong work on Seneca.

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  • Mauss, Marcel. 1923–1924. Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques. Année Sociologique 2d Série 1:30–186.

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    The basic anthropological contribution on reciprocity and gift giving. Mauss gets to the conviction that archaic societies are constituted by gift giving. The interchange of material and immaterial goods initiates a circuit of giving, receiving, and responding that corroborates social relations. As these processes include religious, moral, economic, aesthetic, and social aspects alike, gift giving is regarded as a holistic social phenomenon that enables the observer to describe the dynamic networks of a society.

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  • Saller, Richard P. 1982. Personal patronage under the early empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511583612Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The groundbreaking study that applied the anthropological definition of patronage to ancient history.

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  • Satlow, Michael, ed. 2013. The gift in Antiquity. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

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    A volume uniting different theoretical and historical contributions alike, among them several on Roman patronage.

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  • Wilcox, Amanda. 2012. The gift of correspondence in classical Rome: Friendship in Cicero’s “Ad Familiares” and Seneca’s “Moral Epistles.” Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.

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    On the Roman habit of letter writing as a practice of gift giving.

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  • Wolkenhauer, Jan. 2014. Senecas Schrift “Über die Wohltaten” und der Wandel im römischen Benefizienwesen. Göttingen, Germany: V&R unipress.

    DOI: 10.14220/9783737002585Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Departing from a close reading of Seneca’s De Beneficiis, Wolkenhauer describes the changes of the Roman gift giving society in Imperial Times.

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