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Abstract
Despite numerous studies devoted to the Roman collegia, no systematic examination has been made of their chief magistrates. This dissertation attempts a prosopographical treatment of the magistrates who presided over the professional collegia within Italy, with special attention given to their social standing, occupations, and personal connections with the municipal and imperial administrations.
Each of the 343 magistrates has been examined individually, and all of the information concerning each one has been compiled. In addition, each collegium of which at least one magistrate is known has been given separate treatment, in which the data from all of its magistrates have been analyzed and condensed, and any indications of the internal organization of the collegium which arise from these data are discussed.
The study reaches the following conclusions. The professional collegia can be divided into two categories according to their internal organization; one contains collegia whose plebs is subdivided (into decuriae or centuriae); the other contains collegia whose plebs remains as a single entity. There is a general trend which associates one type of cursus honorum with the magistrates of the collegia in the first category, and a second type with those in the second category. The first cursus honorum consists of promotion from regular member to decurio to magister quinquennalis to honoratus (honorary ex-magistrate); the second, from regular member to quinquennalis to quinquennalis perpetuus (also an honorary ex-magistrate). The study also finds that 26% of the magistrates are known to have been freedmen; only 13% are known to have been freeborn. In regard to their ancestry, 62% are known to have been of servile descent, while not a single discernible case of a magistrate of free Roman descent has been encountered. Surprisingly few (14) magistrates are known to have served in municipal administrations. A chronological distribution of the magistrates indicates that they tended to be of higher status at the end of the second century A.D. than during the first century A.D. This may be a sign of the gradual transformation of the collegia from the free voluntary organizations of the early empire to the obligatory ones of the fourth century A.D.
