The primary goals of the imperial administration were the maintenance of law and order and the collection of taxes to meet military costs and to provide public buildings, entertainments, and handouts in the city of Rome. To achieve these ends the emperors of the early empire took the Republican system of senatorial administration and expanded it, employing slaves and freedmen of their own familia, as well as increasing numbers of equestrians. Growth of bureaucracy appears as a dominant theme in historical studies of the early empire, one author representing the development from the beginning to the end of our period as a change from a ‘monarchie personelle’ to a ‘monarchie bureaucratique’. A description of the administrative organization of the state followed by a discussion of the main lines of development will enable us to test the accuracy of this characterization. We will want in particular to ask: how complex did the organization become by the early second century, and how was the personnel for administrative posts chosen?