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DD 9: Authorities

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Descartes said:
Apparently, -anus doesn't necessarily indicate slave ancestry, but also what family you have previously belonged to. Still, I would like to point out that slaves "belonged" to the families they were employed by, which makes it quite probable that they got a cognomen ending with -anus once they were freed.
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Depending on the era, freed slaves took their master's Gens. This was also used on the extension of citizenship by various Roman Emperors, hence a profusion of people with the Gens Aurelius. -anus was used to indicate your old family upon adoption - i.e Scipio Amelianus. Slaves sometimes took their original slave name as a cognomen, sometimes they took no cognomen. Cognomen were generally used only by Patricians until 1st/2nd centuries BC.
 
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First of all, I think that your Authorities are really a great idea with the potential to add a lot to the game. Super!

I would like to ask if a provinve’s preference by whom it would like to be ruled can change over time, as in a conquered tribal society slowly getting used to the political system of the conqueror, coming to terms with it and finally being comfortable with it?

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The “-anus”, and even more commonly the “-ianus” cognomen is one that hints at somebody’s origin. Slaves did use it to reference the family of their former owners, but not exclusively so. It was also used by adoptees, to hint at their former, pre-adotion name (pre-adoption Octavius becoming post-adoption Octavianus), and it could also be used as a cognomen of geographical origin – a family coming to Rome from Tusculum might for example well use the cognomen “Tusculanus”.

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And wealth, of a level we would consider filthy rich, was always a prerequisite of becoming a senator. First an informal one, and later a formal, legal one. During the time of Marius, Sulla, and Cicero, a fortune equal to about almost sixty times a common labourer’s yearly wages was a legal prerequisite, and Augustus later increased this to about 150 yearly wages. Even the earlier amount is easily enough to purchase about 200 common slaves.

So you had to already be rich and belong to the social elites in the first place to become a senator at all. Of course, the opportunities then afforded by the position did not exactly hurt your subsequent income…. :rolleyes:
 
Have you considered using titles to distinguish between families of different political standing? Patrician as an inherited title would be nice.

However, I think it would be interesting to see some distinction between various patrician houses. This could also be done with titles:

Gens Maior - This title would be inherited only by members of Aemilii, Claudii, Cornelii, Fabii, Manlii or Valerii. It can be argued that the early republic was basically a dynasty of the great families, who formed a distinct upper-class among the patricians. To take this idea even further, perhaps you could give the gentes maiores each its own title, e.g. Member of the house of Claudii. The great houses would have a tendency to intermarry (is this possible to mod?).

Later, when offices become open to plebeians, you could introduce the title of Novus homo. A plebeian family could thus become a part of the social elite by reaching consulship.

If you want to make things even more historical, you should keep in mind that during the very early republic (509 - 450) the patricians did not hold an absolute monopoly on offices. For example, Sp. Cassius Vecellinus was of non-patrician (it is unclear if 'plebeian' is the correct term here) origin. Interestingly, he apparently tried to bring monarchy back, for which he was executed. Perhaps non-patricians characters should have 'monarchy' as their authority.
 
Good suggestions, Manfred. Some of them are pretty hard to implement, though. For example, as you suspected, marriage can't be modded. Also, I don't think family = x works as a trigger, which makes the whole thing pretty complicated. The patrician/plebeian relationship will definitely be properly modelled, though, including characters having novus homo as a title.
 
Descartes said:
Also, I don't think family = x works as a trigger, which makes the whole thing pretty complicated.
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I was thinking of modeling the great houses in a similar way as in the Epigoni mod:

Code: 
title_gens_claudius = {
	allow = { 
		is_female = no 
	}

	gain_trigger = {
		father = { 
			has_title = title_gens_claudius
		}
	}

	max_friends = 1
	max_rivals = 1
}

This would open all sorts of interesting possibilities for Roman politics. Mommsen, for example, claimed that only a patrician of a gens maior could hold the position of princeps senatus, which was arguably the most prestigious office open to a Roman noble.
 
Those are some great ideas Mannfred, I'd love to see them implemented, as far as I know, (Guiscard can catch me on this) the consulship was for the most part controlled by the major families of Rome.
 
Descartes said:
Good suggestions, Manfred. Some of them are pretty hard to implement, though. For example, as you suspected, marriage can't be modded. Also, I don't think family = x works as a trigger, which makes the whole thing pretty complicated. The patrician/plebeian relationship will definitely be properly modelled, though, including characters having novus homo as a title.
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I tested the family = x trigger extensively when I first started modding and could not get it to work. That why I ended up using the titles to control them in Epigoni.

As far as controlling marriages, you need to be able to stop the marriage to start with, which is currently imposible as far as I can see. Never wanting to be stopped by the impossible, you need to think of a workaround and I have been thinking:

a) give them an infertile concubine at marriage age;
b) give them an infertile guardian, with your interface modding skills you might be able to create a seperate box for this. Small but next to the spouse box. When the guardian box is full the the character is "married" as far as the game knows.

Its a lot of work though.
 
English Patriot said:
Those are some great ideas Mannfred, I'd love to see them implemented, as far as I know, (Guiscard can catch me on this) the consulship was for the most part controlled by the major families of Rome.
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During the late Republic, definitely. For much of the third century and the early second, there is a marked tendency for quite a respectable number of men from new families to attain the consulate. During this time, almost one quarter of consuls where from families that have not yet had a consular member before. Then, quite suddenly, during the first half of the second century, the great families began to clamp down harder on the consulate, and less than one tenth of the men attaining it from then on are from previously non-consular families. With the advent of popular politics in the wake of the brothers Gracchus (i.e. around 125 BC), the old nobility tightens its exclusive control of the consulate even more; from then on until the end of the Republic, almost no men from previously non-consular families attain this rank.

The great families extend btw almost the same degree of control over the praetorship as well. Consulate and praetorship were the two regular offices with “imperium”, and the Roman high nobility handled them similarly -- only they should hold, in their opinion.

The name the Romans themselves gave to this high nobility was not “gentes maiores”, but “nobilitas”. Am member of the nobilitas was a “nobilis”, plural “nobiles”.

The mark of the nobilitas was the consulate. Any senator who attained the consulate was immediately regarded as a member of the nobilitas, and so were all his male descendants in the male line. The nobiles felt that they – and in the late Republic only they – were entitled to the consulate by birth, and many regarded it as a great and unbearable dishonour to fail to attain it. In the late Republic, most nobiles would much rather see a political enemy who was a nobilis attain the consulate than a political ally who was not a member of the nobilitas; in a pinch, they would rather support the candidacy of former over the latter’s.
 
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