During the crisis that the Hannibalic war provoked, the ‘old guard’ of consulars who had been consuls for the first time in the 230s assumed the leadership role in the military field and in politics. A number of ex-consuls once again held offices with imperium and were placed at the head of the army as consuls, praetors, or promagistrates. The state of emergency in Rome also led to the appointment of dictators, all of them ex-consuls. The military contribution of consulars also took place in intermediate positions, as legates under consuls or consulars, but also under imperatores who had not attained that rank, always with tasks of high responsibility. In 209, we find the last two censors who had not been consuls: from that year onwards, all censors were former consuls, and censorship became the potential culmination of a consular’s political career. From 209, the censors always designated as princeps senatus the man they considered to be the princeps civitatis. As before, the princeps senatus had to be a patrician consular and censorian, but the position was left open to competition. It was very unusual that consulars were co-opted for a priestly college. Two consulars were named triumviri mensarii to face up the economic crisis.

The period between 49 and 31 BCE witnessed a dramatic decline in the political and social influence that consulares had always exercised. The civil war reduced the number of consulars in the Senate to a minimum. The wars that followed Caesar’s death once more decimated the rank of consulars, or else drove them away from Rome for months or years in command of troops stationed in many different territories across Italy and the Mediterranean. Consequently, most consulars actually disappeared from Rome, making it difficult for them to exercise their usual leadership role. The situation did not improve when the number of consulares increased dramatically, as never before, due to the annual appointment of consules ordinarii and consules suffecti. Consuls depended on the Triumvirs for their appointments and were in practice under their control during their months in office. Consulars were likewise overshadowed and diminished by the power of the Triumvirs.

The association of individual lyric poets with precise features and values was active beyond textual knowledge of their poems. Accordingly, this chapter contributes to the reconstruction of the imperial afterlife of lyric by shifting the analysis to material evidence, such as portraits of lyric poets, and to cults and legends concerning real or mythical singers which lived on in the Greek collective memory, especially locally. In the Greek East, where the display of local identities was part of the reaction to imperial globalisation, different lyric traditions had the potential to activate links with specific places. Together with ongoing (re-)performances of lyric at symposia, festivals and within the imperial court, these manifestations give us a glimpse into the wider circulation and creative recasting of song traditions and lyric icons, both within and beyond elite circles. More importantly, they all account for the continued cultural and political purchase of song and music under Rome.

In line with the more civilian and less military role of consuls in the 1st century BCE, a number of consulars renounced any potential military glory through a provincial command and preferred to remain in Rome during and after their consulships. In contrast to what had happened throughout the 2nd century, consulars rarely filled their cursus honorum with regular offices. One of the usual tasks of consulars was to intervene in court, not only for their potential skills as orators but above all for the authority that their consular status conferred on them. Consulars acted as advocates, never as prosecutors. Some consulars, such as Cicero and Hortensius, were true specialists before the courts. Speaking at a popular assembly (contio) was always another way of gaining public visibility. For the period 81–50, we have evidence of a greater number of consulars taking part in assemblies than in earlier periods. However, since consulars as privati were not entitled to convene an assembly, their speeches to the people were always unusual. The Senate remained the great dialectical battleground for consulars. Priority to speak in the Senate always belonged to consulars.

This chapter expands on and completes the analysis of Aristides’ political use of lyric. It argues that both Athens and Rome are depicted by the sophist through lyric and song imagery, and that these musical representations allow for a comparison between the two cities and how Aristides conceived of their role as imperial centres. Among other texts, a close reading of the celebration of past and present Athens in Or. 1 and that of imperial Rome in Or. 26 shows that the ways in which the two capitals ‘make music’ foreground some important similarities between their imperial politics. At the same time, Athenian and Roman ‘music’ point to the difference between Greek and Roman political cultures and approaches. Rather than indicating a critical attitude towards the current Empire, however, Aristides’ musical depiction of Athens and Rome is open to ambiguity and enables different co-existing interpretations, adding complexity and depth to our understanding of the political dimension of Aristides’ corpus.

From this chapter, the discussion moves to Aristides’ lyric reception by focusing on his self-fashioning as a superior and divinely inspired speaker. Besides pointing to his knowledge of a super-elite genre, lyric shaped, and was shaped by, Aristides’ self-presentation agenda. Through a close reading of cornerstone texts of Aristidean self-fashioning (e.g. Platonic Orations, To Sarapis, Sacred Tales), this chapter offers the first comprehensive discussion of Pindar as the perfect lyric counterpart to Aristides’ superior persona. It reveals the role of epinician values and Pindaric metapoetics in Aristides’ negotiation of his rivalry with Plato and with poets of hymns, Pindar included. It also shows how discourses of divine inspiration and patronage fed into his self-positioning in relation to imperial power. Far from engaging only with Pindar, however, Aristides’ self-fashioning also built on other, very different lyric models, if only to reject their voices or to turn them on their heads so that they could fit his exceptional self-portrait.

Given its heightened local significance, lyric poetry could feed into Aristides’ orations addressed to individual imperial communities. This chapter focuses on Or. 46, a speech performed at the Isthmian festival in praise of Poseidon and Corinth. Precisely when it comes to celebrating Corinth, Aristides builds on the praise of this city already found in Pindar’s Ol. 13. Although this lyric precedent was locally relevant, however, the imperial city was as removed as possible from that of Ol. 13: as a result of its destruction and re-foundation by Rome, imperial Corinth was far from a traditionally Greek community. Against this political and cultural background, Aristides’ choice of recalling Pindar’s praise appears as a strategy to create a sense of continuity in response to the rupture caused by Rome. For this strategy to work, however, Aristides had to recast Pindar’s praise so that his own celebration could strike a fine balance between the Greek and Roman elements of New Corinth.