Consuls of the Roman Empire

The Consuls of the Roman Republic to 27 BC are given on the separate page devoted to the history of the Republic. Discussion of the office and the meaning of the abbreviations for names can be found there. Here is the continuation of the line of Consuls, which under the Empire usually represents little more than figureheads, although it was part of the system of Augustus to nominate multiple suffecti, since anyone who had held the Consulate was eligible to be a Proconsul and hold high administrative posts. This practice reached a high of 25 suffecti in 190 AD. But, indeed, it is often the Emperor, or members of his family, who holds the office. Also, later suffecti were used to attend ritual events in Rome, when the ordinary Consul(s) was installed attending the Court at one of the later capitals of the Empire, like Milan, Trier, etc. Thus, there would be many suffecti in the list here, but given their nominal importance, I have generally not included them. Because of this, many Consuls are marked as in their second, third, or higher Consulships, when no earlier ones can be found for them. Usually this means that they were previously suffecti. Or, Consuls may appear to skip a Consulship because an earlier one was ruled illegitimate, in a usurpation or dynastic conflict, and the office was retroactively reassigned.

From several sources I had heard that there were separate Consuls for Rome and for Constantinople after the foundation of the latter in 330. Apart from the list here, however, I have never seen what should be the corresponding list for Constantinople; and the Consuls listed here are often personages, or Emperors, from the Eastern Capital. My suspicion, therefore, was that there wasn't a separate list for Constantinople and that, often informally, the notion was that one Consul would be for the West (Rome), the other for the East (Constantinople). Recent lists, indeed, posted at Wikipedia have begun to distinguish Western from Eastern Consuls, especially after 500. This doesn't always look right, as when Boethius is identified as the Eastern Consul in 510 -- a man, who, as far as I know, only lived in Italy. When there is only one Consul in a year, it is hard to know if the designation, usually for the East, is correct.

The full story is covered in detail in Consuls of the Later Roman Empire, by Roger S. Bagnall, Alan Cameron, Seth R. Schwartz, and Klass A. Worp [The American Philological Association, the Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1987]. There were in fact not separate Consuls for Constantinople, but in the 4th century the practice did emerge of the Western Emperor nominating one Consul and the Eastern Emperor the other. There were irregularities in this; and sometimes one Court or the other nominated both Consuls, for political or personal reasons that may now be lost. And an undoubtedly Western figure, like Aëtius, may be nominated by the Eastern Emperor. What is happening and why is often a matter now of uncertainty and debate, as is the process by which this became the custom. As problems began to plague the Western Empire, and then Odoacer and the Ostrogoths succeeded to rule in Italy, agreement between Constantinople and the Germans in Italy was fragile and a matter of negotiation. The Western Consulate in those years began to reflect the power of various aristocratic families in the City of Rome, whose support the Kings in Ravenna could cultivate by a continuation of the Consular institution. Also, with the loss of full, or any, Roman administration in the West, the process of even disseminating the names of the Consuls became slow and uncertain. Thus, even when Consuls were nominated, local officials might nevertheless use a "postconsulate," i.e. use the Consul of the previous year post consulatum, sometimes for two or three years. This also allowed unambiguous dating when Consuls might not be nominated at all. After a vacant year in 477 (with the end of the Western Emperors and the usurpation of Basiliscus in the East), we often only get one Consul, and sometimes none -- leaving many areas, or all, dependant on postconsulates.

Several Consuls are noteworthy. We see the Consulship of the historian Cassius Dio, a Greek from Bithynia, in 229. He is also said to have been Consul in 205 or 206 -- the Consulship of 229 is marked as his second -- but his name is not on the list, so he presumably was a suffectus -- although he is not given as such in the available lists, which could explain the uncertainty about the dates. Aspar is Consul in 434. He was an Alan Master of Soldiers who came close in Constantinople to the kingmaking powers of the Masters of Soldiers in the West -- before he was assassinated. His contemporary, the actual Master of Soldiers in the West, Aëtius, may be seen to enjoy multiple Consulships, including one in 454, the year he was personally stabbed to death by the Emperor Valentinian III. The Consul of 510, Boethius, and of 514, Cassiodorus, are significant literary figures of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy. Manlius Boethius, Consul of 487, was the father of the later Boethius; and both Consuls of 522 are Boethius's sons. This is a case where both Consuls are Western, as noted above.

Before the Internet, I was content to rely on the Chronology of the Ancient World, by E.J. Bickerman [Cornell University Press, 1968, 1982]. But Bickerman did not list any Consuls after 337, and I found some of his more general statements confusing:

From 534 in the West and after 541 in the East, only the emperors held the consulship. [p.69]

This confirmed the nature of the division between Western and Eastern Consuls, without explaining it or accounting for the history or irregularities of it. When we see Belisarius, Justinian's great general, as Consul for 535, even as he was actually in Italy at the time, taking Rome, the institution of the Western Consulate has now lapsed -- both because the legitimacy of the Ostrogothic government is denied by Justinian and because the Roman aristocracy, their status and wealth shaken by the war, are no longer in a position to sustain the financial requirements of the Consulship. When Justinian begin dating in Regal Years in 537, the very mechanism of dating by Consuls received a death-blow. Contrary to Bickerman's statement, no one really "held the consulship" after 541 in its ancient meaning of office, powers, and obligations.

Cases of the full traditional Roman tria nomina names, and more, seem to persist longer among the Consuls than they do with the Emperors. Consuls in Rome are often going to be Roman aristocrats, many of whom were pagans, or recently so, and retaining Roman customs longer. Even Christian Emperors, like Justin and Justinian, here at least have a "Flavius" praenômen -- although this now looks like a pro forma name adopted by anyone, a device that goes back to Constantine (as part of his claims for hereditary legitimacy). Full names are often not used or given in standard Byzantine histories.

This list derived first of all from Bickerman, then from several websites, all of which were the first hits for "Late Roman Consuls" at Google, and now with some additional data from Bagnall et al. -- who are presumably behind much of the information on the Internet.

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Copyright (c) 2005, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 Kelley L. Ross
Ph.D. All Rights Reserved