Section III. Institutions of government in Rome and the Empire

The walls entitled “Consuls, magistrates, offices” contain inscriptions honouring or commemorating members of the Roman ruling class and representatives of the city community administrations, primarily as promoters of interventions in the public interest. This enables us to know (sometimes indirectly) not only the names of prominent families, but also the biographical profile of individual characters, condensed into a sequence of offices forming the so-called cursus honorum, divided during the imperial age into the following types (considered in hierarchical order): “municipal” or local; equestrian, of the class of officials belonging to the category of “knights”; and senatorial, typical of the highest levels of State government.