How to use the search pages

The database can be accessed through three separate search pages which have different functions:

 The Person Search Page gives access to all individuals in the database. To distinguish them each person has been given a unique identification number. The conventional numbering found in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopädie is also retained as part of the person’s name (where none exists that is also indicated). Persons can be searched by dates, to which end each individual has been given ‘era-dates’, either based on broadly estimated life-spans or known life dates. Persons with very uncertain dates are listed at the end of the results. The box at the bottom for text searches allows the user to explore the text of Broughton.

 The Fasti Search Page allows users to search annual offices by dates or date spans with the results listed in chronological order. Only offices that can be dated with reasonable certainty within two to three years are included in the results (those with less secure dates can be found via the Person page). Posts with extended tenures, such as priests and the principes senatus, are not included. 

 The Senate Search Page enables users to analyse the composition of the senate in a given year between the reform of 180 and our terminus of 31. For each year four lists of senators are available, reflecting differences in certainty. Senators indicated as Certain include those who held an office that admitted them to the senate prior to the search date and who are also attested after. It is assumed (conservatively) that quaestors would have entered the senate the year following their office, tribunes in their year of office and that aediles and praetors would have been admitted a minimum of two years earlier. The corresponding figure for consuls is five years. Those who may have been senators in a given year are listed as Uncertain. Under Attested Before are those who held office before the search date but remain unattested afterwards and therefore may have died before the date in question. They are listed in descending order. Similarly those known to have held office after the search date but whose entry into the senate is uncertain are listed under Attested After, again with results organised in chronological order. 

 Clicking on the name of a person on the results pages opens the Person Details Page which contains a summary of the information we have on each individual, divided into four sections: status, life dates, relationships and career. Clicking the ‘expand’ button to the right-hand side displays further details about each piece of information, including the relevant passages from Broughton. Zmeskal’s Adfinitas provides the main source for relationships. Inferred relationships, primarily those between siblings, have been added by the DPRR team and are displayed as uncertain.

 To print results or person details or save them to a PDF file, press the relevant buttons at the top of the pages.