ABSTRACT
The real government of Rome during the second century was the Senate, the instrument of the nobility, whose power rested on custom and not on law. This chapter focuses on what policy this governing authority pursued in home affairs, towards the old Confederacy; and its foreign policy and provincial administration. It examines the basis of the power of this senatorial oligarchy, its control of all branches of public life, the cliques into which it was divided, and the tendencies which these represented. As tensions with the senatorial order developed, it was the publicani, described by Cicero as the 'flower of the equestrian order', who in the main began to clash with the Senate in the political arena. Thus the Senate was able to curb undue ambition, and any danger to the constitution arising from the practical abolition of collegiality and from the powers of provincial commanders was averted.
