Patronage outranks legal status
Who your patron was mattered more than whether you were legally slave or free. A person's real standing came from the web of clientage they belonged to, not from their formal legal condition.
Longevity comes from bridging levels
A household lasted when its interests tied together several layers of power at once: the rank-and-file military regiment, the provincial ruling elite, and the distant imperial center. Its success in linking these levels arguably explains how long it survived.
Power organized as patron households
The basic unit of political life was not an office or an institution but a household: a head plus everyone who enjoyed his patronage. Struggles for power ran through these networks of patron and client rather than through formal posts.
Households ally into factions
Single households grew stronger by joining with others into factions. They built these ties through marriage alliances, shared business partnerships, and patronage of well-placed insiders at the palace.
Provinces copy the center's model
What looks like a revival of an older local regime can be a regional version of the empire's own way of doing politics. The same household-based political culture ran across the empire, so the imperial household found its power spread out among rival households built on its own pattern.