Abstract

The ancient sources frequently mention heated debates during meetings of the Roman senate under the early empire. Such debates could become so intense they might even threaten to impede the Senate’s decision-making abilities. Nevertheless, senatorial debate in the curia was not necessarily dysfunctional: in fact, it had a crucial instrumental function. Potential dissent among members of the senate could be discussed and settled before voting began, taking it out of the decision-making process proper. The symbolic dimensions of senatorial altercationes were if possible even more important, because the existence of communicative dissent showed that discussions still happened in the curia: proof that the Senate was still a functioning political entity. A combined agent-centred and institutional-historical methodological approach allows us to track not only individual practices of dispute, competition, and raising one’s profile, but to perceive more clearly the impact and the function disputes had for the Senate’s debating culture as a whole.