Emperors, Court and Travelling Retinue

[Nathan Ross]

Any recommended reading?

The classic work on this subject is Fergus Millar's The Emperor in the Roman World. A more accessible popular study is Michael Sommer's The Complete Roman Emperor.

I'm not so familiar with the situation in the earlier Principiate, but the imperial entourage in later times would have included all the major offices of state, allowing the emperor to conduct the business of empire on the move. So, along with the emperor's lictors and a bodyguard of praetorians, under the command of the Praetorian Prefect, there would be the principal imperial secretaries (a memoria, ab epistulis, etc) and their own officia of secretaries and clerks, the Quaestor and his staff, a travelling imperial mint so the emperor could issue coinage en route, quite possibly a selection of senators with their own entourages, and a complete household of slaves to attend the emperor and his ministers: everything from chamberlains to cooks and barbers.

Together with carriage and wagon drivers, slaves belonging to the bodyguards and the imperial offices, and assorted hangers-on (from petitioners to merchants and prostitutes), the travelling retinue could easily have numbered thousands of people. This is supported by documents from across the empire showing the lengthy preparations needed for an imperial visit, which often began months in advance of the emperor's arrival, even if he was only passing through!