Where are all the surviving Roman Senators? DOCUMENTARY

When you look around our world today, it's hard to miss the vestiges of the past. This exists in all kinds of forms, in our language, culture, art, geopolitics, and more. Sometimes, these links to the past even come in human form when we deal with things like royal lineages. Often, these folks have long, illustrious titles and can claim descent from a long list of important figures. As a result, these families often have huge sums of money and influence, which has been accumulated over the years. The British monarchy is one prime example. But I was thinking recently about the fortunes of other, older families from the past, namely the Roman senatorial families. Are there any descendants of these powerful groups still pulling the strings in our world today? Let's find out together in this video. This video was sponsored by MagellanTV. They're an awesome documentary streaming service run by filmmakers with a selection of over 3,000 videos to choose from among the categories of history, science, nature, space, and more. When it comes to history documentaries, MagellanTV has the richest and most varied content anywhere, ancient, modern, current, war, biography, and even related genres like science and crime which are historical in nature. You can learn more about the functioning of the senate through the episode, The Professional Class of Rome, which covers important aspects of Rome's political machinery. MagellanTV is compatible with Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Google Play, and iOS, which means you can watch it anytime, anywhere on your television, laptop, or mobile device. Sign up today to get 30% off an annual membership, which starts with a two-week free trial. That's less than $3.50 a month for access to thousands of documentaries. The offer is available for both new and returning users, so be sure to click the link in the description below or go to try.magellantv.com We can start by tracing the history of the senate from its earliest origins. This began in the very first days of the Roman monarchy. According to legend, the city's first king Romulus appointed 100 of the greatest men of Rome to serve as his advisors. These families and their descendants would become known as the patricians. Over the years, it seems that they would continue to occupy the higher echelons of Roman society, advising the kings and otherwise dominating the social and military life of the settlement. Gradually, their ranks would be expanded as existing families grew or new powerful families were brought into the fold. Who was or was not a member of this in-group was designated by their name, as laid out by the traditions of Rome's tria-nomina. The nomen specifically called out which gens or clan one belonged to. Certain clans or sub-branches of clans were recognized as being patricians, whose descendants would inherit that rank. Some of the famous early families included the gens Julia, Fabia, and Emilia. In 509 BC, the seventh king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, would be expelled from the city. This move would be backed by the patricians, who had become increasingly resentful of their recent treatment by the monarchy. Together, these nobles now supposedly swore an oath to never allow a king to rule Rome again. That power would instead go to them. However, they were wary of any one of them ruling over the rest, and thus chose to split up that power. The king's religious duties, for instance, went to a priest, the Rex Sacrorum, who was exclusively a patrician, while the king's executive power went to a pair of annually elected consuls, who were also exclusively patrician. It's easy to see why this class would back the revolution. During the early years of the Republic, the Senate was mostly an ad hoc collection of patricians, who would be appointed by the consuls to help advise with affairs of state. It's unclear exactly what their official duties were, but they nonetheless wielded huge influence owing to the enduring nature of the body and its incestuous cycling of members through the important positions of government. Around the 4th century BC, however, things began to change. The conflict of the order started to heat up, leading to more power sharing with the plebeians. In addition, it seems that the Senate itself evolved into a more permanent standing committee as the government slowly matured. Around 318 BC, for instance, the Lexavinia revised the mechanism for appointing senators, shifting the responsibility from the consuls to the censors. This magistrate would now control the role of the Senate, being able to add and remove members at five-year intervals. This was typically based on a family's ability to meet the prescribed wealth requirements. Eventually, though, all who managed to become elected magistrates were also enrolled. Admittedly, these two qualifications often went hand-in-hand and were largely monopolized by the patricians who continued to maintain their grip on power. This involved wielding the following abilities. Managing the state's finances, managing foreign affairs, appointing dictators, and regulating its own members. In addition, they also had the unofficial power of their own auctoritas, which allowed the Senate to wield much influence over the consuls, the assemblies, and the rest of government. Relatively early on in the Republic's history, the ranks of the Senate numbered around 300 of the most prominent members of Rome. For centuries, it would largely be the domain of the same powerful families. After all, admission into the Senate required Roman citizenship, which was basically restricted to the city itself. When we look at things like who held the consulship, we see that most of the magistrates were won by just a handful of families. It was truly an old boy's club. However, by the first century BC, things began to change. The political waters of the late Republic became quite tumultuous, rocking the ship of state and causing many families to rise and fall in the churn. The Social War, for instance, saw Roman citizenship expanded to all Italians, whose elites now began to enter the Senate when Sulla expanded its numbers to around 600. These sorts of shake-ups now saw the makeup of the Senate being manipulated to suppress members of the opposition whilst promoting partisan supporters. During the darkest hours of the period, this saw the proscriptions use the old patrician roles to target rich families, killing off their leaders and stealing their wealth. When these internal struggles turned to all-out war, the divisions in the upper ranks of society were torn wide apart. Some of the old senatorial families saw financial ruin, exile, or even death. In the last few decades of the Republic, Julius Caesar further diluted the once highly restrictive and prestigious ranks of the Senate by expanding its numbers from 600 to 900 and inviting in many backers from the newly minted provinces. Thus, by the time that Augustus took control and Republic turned to empire, many of the old families of the Senate had simply faded away, been replaced, or been extinguished. Thus, when Augustus finally won his round of civil wars and began to reconsolidate power, one of his first moves was to reform the Senate. As a means to promote the idea that he was bringing back the tradition and stability of the Republic, Augustus did not abolish the body, choosing instead to mold it to his liking and to lead it as a mere princeps, or first citizen, certainly no monarch. Thus, many troublemakers, foreigners, and men of low birth were expelled from the Senate, and its numbers were reduced to a more manageable 600. During this time, the members of the Senate were those who managed to make it through the transition in government with their title intact. From then on, to become a senator, you basically already had to be from one of the senatorial families or have the emperor appoint you to the position. In the early years, these members had some power, but mostly served as a conduit for the big man behind the curtains, who didn't want to come out and say he was king. However, after a few generations of the Principate, there was certainly no use in hiding it, and the emperors were able to come out in the open with their authority. Once unmasked, they quickly usurped most powers of the Senate. However, the body still helped perform a lot of the day-to-day governance of the empire and had a variety of legislative and judicial roles to fulfill. Its powers would wax and wane over the years, with its members mostly finding themselves more focused on lucrative interests like trade and commerce. For instance, we know that much of North Africa was dominated by a few key senators, while elsewhere they had much sway over local politics and economies. Yet their self-aggrandizement was always kept in check by wary or jealous eyes of the emperors. One of the ways this manifested was by keeping senators out of military positions, be it holding office as a commander or governing one of the border provinces with a legionary presence. Thus, over time, they were replaced by nobility from the equestrian ranks or their bureaucracy which formed around the political and military structures of the late empire. When the western empire fell into decline, this inevitably impacted the senators residing within these territories. Some chose to flee to the east, while others remained to watch over their landlocked holdings and adapt to the new masters of the land. It's a quite fascinating period of time, with some dramatic realignments in power. A great window into these changes at hand come from the writings of Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gallo-Roman aristocrat from the late 5th century AD. His letters start off by talking about his dinners with emperors and his service as a prefect of Rome. By the end of his records, though, he writes of how the empire had collapsed and how he and his fellow aristocrats were now serving as advisors to barbarian kings. This sort of thing was happening across the west as power reverted to the local level and new management took over. The Gothic wars, for instance, saw various tribes set up shop within the borders of the Roman empire. The Ostrogoths ended up establishing a kingdom based around Italy. During the invasion, they are said to have negotiated with the senate of Rome and later co-opted them as part of their government. In the ensuing wars of reconquest, many of these western senators either fled, turned traitor, or were killed. Emperor Justinian officially abolished the senatorial offices in Italy and passed legislation to coax the remaining members to join him in the east. We still hear of the Roman senate taking some actions in the early 7th century, but then fades into obscurity. Meanwhile in the east, the Roman empire would continue to live on with its own senatorial body and associated noble families. There was perhaps some continuity in terms of members from the western senate, but by and large it was a new stock of individuals. After all, the eastern empire had an eastern focus with different social forces that drove people to its top ranks. One of these factors was a more meritocratic system that meant it wasn't just your lineage that ensured your children would keep the senatorial title. Thus we could expect a greater degree of turnover among the elite, which might make it harder to trace a clear line of lineage among the elite as might have been the case in the early republic. This was made even worse by the decline in the tria-nomina naming system that further eroded our modern ability to trace families through the years. It's certain that Rome's patricians were still around, but from our perspective it becomes very hard to tell who is who. Heading into the medieval period, we therefore lose our ability to see where the families of all the senators and emperors went. In fact, this was just as true for many of the people at the time, but that didn't really stop them from trying anyways. After all, the legacy of the Roman empire loomed quite large after its fall, with many eager to draw a connection to the fallen power. Many European rulers were more than happy to claim descent from the Romans and sponsored all kinds of highly dubious genealogical proofs of their claims. Some didn't even really bother to prove it and just merely asserted the right of inheritance by virtue of their power. Charlemagne for instance crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor and did much to try and drape himself in the trappings of the ancient empire. There have been some attempts to trace his lineage back to Rome's senatorial families in southern Gaul, but these efforts have proven quite difficult to make with much accuracy. It seems that in the past, some claims to nobility just became a matter of tradition and stretched so far back that centuries of repetition came to establish an air of authority on their own. For instance, the princely house of Massimo, with members still alive today, is often regarded as one of the oldest noble families in Europe. According to the 16th century historian Onofrio Penvinio, its male line goes all the way back to the Roman Republican Gens Fabia. When Napoleon inquired about this claim during negotiations of the Treaty of Tolentino around 1800, the answer he got from Prince Massimo went as follows, quote, I cannot actually prove it. It's a rumor that's run in the family for 1200 years. Looking elsewhere across Europe, one can find other families with similarly tenuous links to the powerful families of ancient Rome. The Cantacuzino family is one such example that has drawn the interest of researchers through its potential links to the Byzantine imperial house. There are surely many other examples out there, but unfortunately none can be verified. This leaves us to conclude that no one can positively prove to be descended from the ancient powers of Rome, and that there are no secret cabals from antiquity still pulling the strings of modern society. Yet at the same time, it is undeniable that these ancient families did in fact have offsprings, many of whom must inevitably be still alive today. Should I be offered three wishes today, I'd be tempted to use one of them to learn about the true genealogical record. Who knows which of us has an ancestor that once ruled Rome? Statistics actually says that a lot of us likely do, we just don't know it. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this episode, which frankly sprang out of one of my shower thoughts the other day. It's a deeply fascinating subject that I hope resonates with you. Let me know if you have any of your own shower thoughts that you'd like me to investigate. Thanks for watching, and see you in the next one!