Digitising the Prosopography of the Roman Republic

The history of the Roman Republic (c. 509 to 31 BCE) was shaped by a highly competitive aristocratic elite, which oversaw Rome's remarkable transformation from middling Italian city-state to ruler of a Mediterranean empire. This project seeks to enhance our understanding of the structure and dynamics of this elite through prosopographical study of its attested individuals, including its familial composition, office-holding patterns, internal hierarchies and property and wealth. The importance of these questions has long been recognised and much basic information for the prosopography of the Roman elite has already been collated in scholarly works. However, because of the sheer scale and complexity of the material (Broughton's index lists 3,299 individuals), it has not previously been practicable to subject it to a comprehensive analysis that integrates multiple factors such as individual 'career' patterns, family continuity, cross-familial links, and connections with elite families outside the office-holding group. Now digital technology, drawing on the experience, flair and success in this area of the Department of Digital Humanities at KCL, enables us to create an open-access searchable digital database comprising all known members of the republican elite, which will open up radically new opportunities for revisiting old questions as well as asking entirely new ones that have not been considered on grounds of feasibility. To speed our work, we have permission, and the technical expertise from DDH, to build our database through a semi-automated inputting of the data in Broughton, which will then be checked, updated and expanded as required.
There are two significant novelties to this project. First, the application of a more holistic approach to the Roman elite. Whereas the 'nobility', that is the holders of political office, have naturally attracted most scholarly attention, it is impossible to understand the constantly shifting nature and workings of the elite without taking into account not only the lower ranks of the senate but also the wealthy non-senators who, in the last century of the Republic, became the equestrian order, and the growing municipal elite of Italy. These groups were closely integrated socially, and for the first time the project seeks to map systematically the links of blood, marriage, origin, business or friendship, that bound them together and the movements that happened between them. Second, in contrast to most previous prosopographical work on the Roman Republic, the project will locate its findings in the wider context of sociological studies of ruling groups, and a direct comparison is envisaged with the Venetian republic with which it shared essential characteristics.
The old and new issues which this database will enable us to examine include the composition, role and numerical decline of the patriciate; the extent to which status, rather than just office-holding, was hereditary; the reasons for phases of apparent dominance by particular family groups and, conversely, the disappearance of some families in some periods; the distribution and changing levels and nature of wealth among the elite; the influence on the Roman annalistic tradition of family traditions and histories. The issue with special historical impact, however, will be the extent, location and speed of integration of the local Italian elites into the elite of Rome after the Social War. Although Italian-born consuls did not appear until Augustan times, we will argue that entry to the lower senatorial levels was more rapid, and the infiltration of the political system by so many new families who had previously had no investment in the traditional republican system played a major role in destabilising that system. Our prosopographical study will thus provide a vital new perspective on the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Principate.

The direct and immediate impact of the project will be principally on academic researchers working on the political and social history of the Roman Republic. Its impact on the interested general public will inevitably be gradual and long-term, because it will take time for the outcomes of this nuts-and-bolts type of research to feed through to revised general accounts of Roman politics and society. Nevertheless, we intend to ensure that the database and first research results of this project are advertised and made available to all interested in Roman history, and especially school teachers and pupils.
The web application which will provide a public searching and browsing component for our online resource is a very important part of the entire project. Users will be able to explore and query the information held in the database using a simple to use public web interface which will allow interactive searches and queries via a facetted browsing framework. We will maintain a webpage to report news about the project and its progress.
Our database and research outcomes will have fairly immediate potential impact for the teaching and study of the relevant AS- and A-level options, such as the OCR's 'Cicero and political life in the late Roman Republic' and 'Roman history: the use and abuse of power (81 BC - AD 96)'. It will provide a resource for teachers and pupils to research for themselves the personal details and links of chosen individuals to enrich their understanding of and enhance their work on these topics. We will promote use of the website through bodies such as the Society for Roman Studies (on their website), which will also reach the interested public beyond schools, the Joint Association of Classical Teachers (an article in their Journal), and the LACTOR team (link on their website).
To promote wider awareness of the project we have two major events planned. The first is a launch event which will be held early in the first year. This will also be used as a formal user engagement exercise to provide an opportunity for the potential user constituency of the finished digital output to feed into the initial design and development. It will consist of an afternoon public lecture in combination with a small focus group selected from the attendees. The collated, formative feedback from this will form the basis of an outline functional specification which will be a useful working document throughout the project's life. By inviting a large group to attend the public lecture, there will be many good candidates for the focus group. We will ask those who choose to be involved in this user engagement exercise to form a voluntary informal user group who can be invited to provide feedback throughout the life of the project.
The second is a National Study Event to be held in the final year in conjunction with the Roman Society and the Institute of Classical Studies. The first day of this event will be an academic conference focusing on the project's statistical findings. The second day will consist of public lectures given by members of the project team together with discussion sessions and will be aimed at the wider interested public.