Was there a slave-freedman ‘cursus’ or career structure in the Imperial administration? And if so, on what criteria was advancement within it based? Did promotion depend on seniority or merit or both together? How impersonal and rational was the regulation of the system, i.e. what degree of bureaucratization was reached, or, on the other hand, what was the extent of patronage inside the slave-freedman service? These are all important and difficult, even impossible, questions for the student of the Roman Imperial administration.