Ronald Syme: Showing How Power Worked in Ancient Rome

Vatican Museums reconstruction of the Augustus of Prima Porta in its original colours. The image captures the political presentation of Augustus that Ronald Syme helped historians to read more critically.

Who really held authority over the Roman Empire? Who dominated and shaped Roman politics, and how can the surviving sources tell us? Historians of the ancient world rarely have the luxury of complete archives or continuous biographies. What survives instead is fragmentary: a name on an inscription, a list of offices, or a passing reference to a relationship. From these scattered bits of information, historians piece together relationships and careers. Prosopography is a vital tool that helps historians do just that.

The evidence itself presents numerous difficulties. Inscriptions usually record careers in formal, even idealised terms, while surviving texts are often shaped by political perspectives or written long after the events they describe. Even basic details such as dates, offices, and family connections can be uncertain. The method therefore depends on comparing inscriptions, texts, and other material side by side to see where they match or contradict one another. This is especially important when historians try to understand how power worked under Augustus and across the Roman Empire more broadly.

The surviving evidence largely talks about people in positions of power and the upper levels of society, ignoring much of the population. But by following careers, marriages, patronage, and shared offices, individuals begin to appear as part of political groups and powerful families. So prosopography allows historians to explain how power worked and how it changed.

A lot of the surviving evidence details public life. An inscription records what offices were held, any honours received, and even if public buildings were built and paid for by the person the inscription talks about. Funerary monuments can provide the names of family members and social status. The surviving histories and biographies that most historians of ancient Rome study, for example, those written by Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius, describe and name individuals involved in political rivalries, alliances, and conspiracies.

Geography is also important. Inscriptions found in different regions tell us where individuals held authority and where families had connections. If the same name or names are found in different provinces, it can reveal changing roles, promotions and opportunities. When the sources are put together, it can show not only personal careers but also the wider political circles in which those careers developed.

What might the process look like? A historian may begin by examining a man’s career from various inscriptions and noting who his colleagues were. Then a funerary text may show who he married and any shared family names. Historians or biographers might give the above information but also describe any political groups he was involved with. Therefore, each source is valuable in its own way, and brought together they can tell a story.

One man who mastered this method was Ronald Syme, a highly respected Roman historian of the 20^th century whose work on ancient Rome is still very much used to this day. He wrote a book called The Roman Revolution, published in 1939, that re-investigated the rise of Emperor Augustus. It was a book that forced historians to think politically, not just about emperors and events, but about power. Syme demonstrated how power was gained, how it was disguised, and how it was made to look acceptable. The impact of the book was not widely recognised at the time, but after the Second World War it came to be regarded as one of the most important works of Roman political and social history since the writings of the German classical scholar Theodore Mommsen (1817–1903).

The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme

Before Augustus, Rome called itself a republic, but power was not evenly shared among the population. Even though Roman citizens could vote in the Forum, the main political area of Rome, or the Campus Martius, real authority was in the hands of a relatively small group of wealthy senatorial families. These families competed with one another using influence, alliances, patronage, and sometimes violence to gain important positions such as consulships and commands of provinces. No individual was meant to hold authority permanently. The system depended on ongoing competition between members of this aristocratic elite group, so power went from one group to another over time. Therefore, although access to power was limited, there was still a genuine struggle to dominate.

The way the Roman Republic worked became increasingly unstable in its final decades. Rivalries between leading figures led to a series of civil wars. The fates of Julius Caesar and Pompey provide an example of how the system broke down, using armies loyal to them to pursue power. These wars weakened the republican system and gradually reduced the number of powerful competitors. When Julius Caesar was assassinated, a new power struggle emerged, between Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian (the future Augustus), and Mark Antony. When Octavian defeated Antony at the battle of Actium, he became the dominant figure in Roman politics because by that point many potential rivals who might have challenged him had died through the years of conflict.

Under Augustus, the republican system was not abolished entirely; however, he did reshape it. He presented himself as the restorer of the traditional Republic, but actually shifted power away from public institutions and into the imperial household. By keeping the appearance of the republican system in place, he was able to keep fears of one-man rule under control and present his position as a continuation of tradition rather than a break from it. Authority was now centred on him, and although voting continued in the same places, their importance declined and the outcomes were increasingly controlled by Augustus and his household behind the scenes.

He also controlled Rome’s governance (tribunician power), legal power, and commanded all provinces with armed forces, holding authority over all other officials (proconsular imperium) so he could overrule them. This gave him control over the entire military. The Senate kept the senatorial provinces, peaceful ones without troops, but these lacked any political control because they had no military support. The reality of the situation was that no one could realistically oppose him.

This changed how the elite operated. The Senate and public offices remained and Rome continued to be governed by a small circle of elite families, closely tied by blood, marriage, and shared interests. But how their careers advanced depended on Augustus’s approval. They could achieve success but could not challenge the system or reach a position of ultimate authority. Most members of the elite accepted this system because it offered a better alternative to continued civil war. The Senate officially granted him his powers and titles, including ‘Augustus’, helping to present his authority as legitimate rather than forced. When Augustus died, the new way of doing things, which became known as the principate, continued through his successors, who either came from his own family or very close circle. Over time a clearly monarchical system developed.

How Ronald Syme Explained Power in Ancient Rome

It was not because he showed that an oligarchy controlled Rome, which had always been the case, but because his book showed how that oligarchy changed. New family names took powerful positions alongside older ones, yet power remained within a small circle. In the Republic, power shifted more often between competing families. Ronald Syme followed the careers of senators across several generations, making note of who gained office, who was promoted, and who suddenly disappeared from political life.

He focused on those who held power, not just the way it was described in sources such as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a carefully written presentation of Augustus’s rule.

Printed illustration of the inscription of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Augustus’s account of his own achievements. Ronald Syme’s work looked beyond official presentations such as this to the men and families who actually held power.

As he put it in The Roman Revolution:

“In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, the diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the government of the New State.” (p.7)

Syme saw that the change in elites under Julius Caesar and Augustus, which he described as a ‘revolution’, helped to shape the character of the principate. Some of the ‘new’ elites had only been local aristocrats, but by bringing in new elites, Augustus widened the ruling group and tied their careers, status, and influence to his system, helping secure loyalty across the empire.

Before Syme, Augustus had often been described as restoring the Roman Republic and bringing order to chaos. He showed that Augustus moved carefully and quietly, keeping the language, rituals, and outward appearance of the Republic intact, while making sure that real power could no longer be challenged. Ancient authors such as Velleius Paterculus and Tacitus provide different pictures, the former more favourable, the latter more critical.

In Select Correspondence of Ronald Syme, 1927–1939, a private letter written by Syme to a colleague is included. In it he wrote that his book was rather shocking and that nobody will like it.

What prosopography allowed Syme to do was read between the lines of official stories and show what had actually happened. Some families joined Augustus and rose, whilst those against him fell. Alliances were made through marriage, and families within Augustus’s oligarchy supported each other. Success was not random and Syme’s strength was his attention to what happened time and again across different careers. He knew how important names were and how Roman naming practices preserved family history. For example, adoption could lead to a change in name but also keep a hint of an old one. If a man was adopted into another household he would often take on the name of his adoptive father, but retain part of his original family name.

Adoption was common among the Roman elite, sometimes a family lacked a male heir, other times it was done for political reasons. These recorded adoptions are further pieces of evidence that allow historians to connect family ties using prosopography. But in some cases elite individuals adopted names associated with successful families to show their loyalty. These details are small, but when examined across many cases, they create a clearer picture of how elite society operated.

Although Ronald Syme showed to great effect how prosopography can be used, the method requires patience and careful interpretation. Many elite families used the same names over generations, and similar names can lead to confusion, especially in large families. A name may suggest an individual belonged to a particular family, but confirming a relationship may not always be possible, sometimes what is thought to be a connection is simply a coincidence of name. It is the historian’s job to decide how far the available evidence supports a conclusion, and many times what is missing has to be considered as well as what survives.

The Prosopographia Imperii Romani

One of the main tools used in this work is the reference collection Prosopographia Imperii Romani, which Syme used extensively. It is a multi-volume work that collected information from inscriptions and literary sources about Roman citizens and officials. Each entry gives what is known about an individual, including official positions and family details. The material is arranged in such a way that many individuals can be compared and put together more quickly, making it possible to piece together relationships that would otherwise be difficult to see.

The project was begun in late 19th-century Germany by scholars such as Elimar Klebs, Hermann Dessau, Paul von Rohden, Edmund Groag, and Friedrich Münzer. They wanted to collect and organise the scattered evidence for Roman officials and elites. Working through inscriptions and literary sources piece by piece, they compiled thousands of entries, each based on surviving evidence. It was an immense project that took decades, and progress was disrupted by the realities of the time, including war, with the second edition only being completed in 2015.

The sheer scale of this work demonstrates how big the problem is. Thousands of elite individuals were named across the Roman Empire and in the histories and biographies that were preserved, many only recorded very briefly. If there were no clear way to organise such information, seeing how these individuals relate to one another would be very difficult. But the details for each entry were not simply placed inside this reference work. Each named person required careful interpretation to be identified. Where the sources are unclear or incomplete, different conclusions are still being made. It is the historian’s job to decide how to best use the evidence.

Prosopography remains a vital tool in the study of not just Roman but ancient history as a whole. It allows us to work with limited evidence and see past the formal descriptions and understand the realities behind political power.

Birley, Anthony, ed. Select Correspondence of Ronald Syme, 1927–1939. History of Classical Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 167

García, Gustavo Alberto Vivas, “Géza Alföldy and Ronald Syme: A Case Study.” Studia Europaea Gnesnensia 16 (2017): pages 529–551.

Horster, Marietta, Richard Flower, Frédéric Hurlet, and Ralph W. Mathisen, eds. Brill’s Companion to Roman Prosopography. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2026.

Prosopographia Imperii Romani. 2nd ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933–.

Stone, Lawrence, “Prosopography.” Daedalus 100, no. 1 (1971): pages 46–79.

Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939.

Verboven, Koenraad, Myriam Carlier, and Jan Dumolyn. “A Short Manual of the Art of Prosopography.” In Prosopography Approaches and Applications: A Handbook, edited by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, 35–69. Oxford: Unit for Prosopographical Research (Linacre College), 2007.

Tacitus, The Annals, Volume 2, Book 1, pages 242-45. Translated by John Jackson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931.

Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History, Book 2, pages 237-44. Translated by Frederick W. Shipley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924.