Senate, Byzantium

Abstract

From the fourth until the seventh centuries ce , the Senate was notable more for the accumulated wealth, prestige, and experience of its members than for any specific institutional or administrative role within the Roman state. The period witnessed the establishment in Constantinople of a body equivalent to the Senate of the city of Rome and the vast expansion of the senatorial order, in the course of which it was transformed, especially in the east, into a service elite based upon the holding of military and civilian offices dispensed by the imperial court.