ABSTRACT
One would be hard pressed to find a better or more significant example of an informant under the Roman Empire than Judas Iscariot. By denouncing Jesus before the local authorities in Jerusalem, Judas unwittingly planted a seed that was fundamentally to change western society. Yet Judas was only part of a much larger phenomenon, for it was during Tiberius’ reign (A D 14-37), according to our sources, that informants and accusers – delatores and accusatores – began to ply their trade as they viciously attacked those suspected of disloyalty towards their emperor. If Roman authors portray the Early Principate as the establishment of the repressive rule of one man, then delatores were the instruments through which Rome and the emperors actively implemented that suppression. The primary aim of the present study is to examine the function and role of delatores and accusatores under the Early Principate from Tiberius to Domitian. Our sources depict them as a phenomenon unique to the Early Principate, an important part of the terror and despotism Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian imposed. Yet scholars, with few exceptions, have neglected to undertake any closer examination of this phenomenon, and no work, to date, has subjected the oft-distorted picture our sources draw of delatores and accusatores to a close and general scrutiny. Nor have they thought to place them in their larger historical, social, and political context.
