Mary Beard

There's no career progression.

It's not like the British Civil Service.

But there is a sense that there are more people in one place, the Imperial Palace, as it grows, thinking about the government of the empire, how actively they're canvassing some of these provincial bigwigs to come on the inside.

We don't know, but that's certainly what's happening.

I think for 200 years, there's not much change.

One modern ancient historical joke is to say that if you'd fallen asleep in 1 CE, towards the end of Augustus's reign, and you'd woken up,

150 years later, towards the end of the second century CE, you'd have seen a world around you that was quite recognizable.

I mean, there would be changes, but you're in the same world.

If you then went back to sleep for another 150 years, and you're now not in 175, but 300 and something, the world would look dramatically different.

Again, some of the institutions were still there.

People were still being consuls.

The Senate still existed.

But the power structure is looking different.

And the role of the elite, of the traditional elite...

looks as if it's changed.

It looks as if there's much more power going to a military class by that stage rather than the old senatorial elite.

Now, the period of change that people usually fix on is the third century CE, and they talk about the third century crisis, which is another way of saying things are changing.

It's marked by all kinds of different things.

One is that there is a

for whatever reason, a real problem about imperial succession.