Hence the magister libellorum is
described
in the Digest by the fuller
title magister scrinii libellorum et sacrarum cognitionum.
title magister scrinii libellorum et sacrarum cognitionum.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
The Empire followed the
course it had taken from the beginning. The dynastic principle strove
time after time to establish itself, but dynasties were ever threatened with
catastrophe, such as had ensued on the deaths of Nero, of Commodus,
and of Severus Alexander. But new emperors frequently did homage to
over-
CH. 11.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
Personal authority of the Emperor
9
29
heredity by a process of posthumous and fictitious adoption, whereby
they grafted themselves on to the line of their predecessors. Apparently
even this phantom of legitimacy had some value for the effect it produced
on the public mind.
The theory of government now became, as has been said, frankly
autocratic. Even Aurelian, a man of simple and soldierly life, had
thought well to take to himself officially the title of " lord and god”
which private flattery had bestowed upon Domitian. The lawyers
established a fiction that the Roman people had voluntarily resigned
all authority into the hands of the monarch. The fable was as baseless
and as serviceable as that of the “social compact,” received in the
eighteenth century. No person or class held any rights against the
emperor. The revenues were his private property. All payments from
the treasury were “sacred largesses” conceded by the divine ruler. So
far as the State was concerned, the distinction between the senatorial
exchequer (aerarium) and the imperial exchequer (fiscus) disappeared.
Certain revenues, as for instance those derived from the confiscated
estates of unsuccessful pretenders, were labelled as the emperor's private
property (res privata), and others as belonging to his “family estate
(patrimonium). But these designations were merely formal and ad-
ministrative. The emperor was the sole ultimate source of all law and
authority. The personnel by which he was immediately surrounded in
his capital was of vast extent, and the palace was often a hotbed of
intrigue. Even in the time of the Severi the “Caesareans ” (Kawoápeloi)
as Dio Cassius names them, were numerous enough to imperil often the
public peace. Another class of imperial servants, the workers at the
mint, had, in the reign of Aurelian, raised an insurrection which led to a
shedding of blood in Rome such as had not been witnessed since the age
of Sulla. The military basis of imperial power, partly concealed by the
earlier emperors, stood fully revealed. Septimius Severus had been the
first to wear regularly in the capital the full insignia of military
command, previously seen there only on days of triumph. Now every
department of the public service was regarded as “militia,” and “ camp
(castra) is the official name for the court. All high officers, with the
exception of the praefectus urbi, wore the military garb. It is needless
to say that officials who were nominally the emperor's domestic servants
easily gathered power into their own hands and often became the real
rulers of the Empire. The line between domestic offices and those which
were political and military was never strictly drawn. All higher functions
whose exercise required close attention on the emperor's person were
covered by the description dignitates palatinae. Under the early
emperors the great ministers of state were largely freedmen, whose
status was rather that of court servants than of public administrators.
The great departments of the imperial service were gradually freed from
their close attachment to the emperor's person. The natural result was
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
Officers attached to the Emperor's person
29
that direct personal influence over the ruler often passed into the hands
of men whose duties were in name connected only with the daily life of
the palace. From the third century onwards the Eastern custom of
choosing eunuchs as the most trusted servants prevailed in the imperial
household as in the private households of the wealthy. The greatest of
these was the praepositus sacri cubiculi. or Great Chamberlain. This
officer often wielded the power which had been enjoyed by such men
as Parthenius had been under Domitian. The office grew in importance,
as measured by dignity and precedence, until in the time of Theo-
dosius the Great it was one of four high offices which conferred on
their holders membership of the Imperial Council (Consistorium), and
a little later was made equal in honour to the other three. The
"Palatine" servants, high and low, formed a mighty host, which re-
quired a special department for their provisioning and another for their
tendance in sickness. But exactly how many of them were under the
immediate direction (sub dispositione) of the praepositus sacri cubiculi
cannot be determined. Some duties fell to him which are hardly
suggested by his title. He was in control of the emperor's select and
intimate bodyguard, which bore the name of silentiarii, thirty in number,
with three decuriones for officers. Curiously, he superintended one
division of the vast imperial domains, that considerable portion of them
which lay within the province of Cappadocia. Dependent probably on
the praepositus sacri cubiculi was the primicerius sacri cubiculi
, who
appears in the Notitia Dignitatum as possessing the quality of a pro-
consular. Whether the castrensis sacri palatii was independent or
subordinate, cannot be determined. Under his rule were a host of pages
and lower menials of many kinds, and he had to care for the fabric of
the imperial palaces. Also he had charge of the private archives of the
imperial family.
The service of the officers described was rather personal to the
emperor than public in character. We now turn to the civil and
military administration as it was refashioned under the new monarchy.
The chaos of the period preceding Diocletian's supremacy had finally
effaced some of the leading features of the Augustan Principate which
had become fainter and fainter as the Empire ran its course. The Senate
lost the last remnant of real power. Such of its surviving privileges and
dignities as might carry back the mind to the days of its glory were
mere shadows without substance. All provinces had become imperial.
All functionaries of every class owed obedience to the autocrat alone,
and looked to him for their career. The old state-treasury, the aerarium,
retained its name, but became in practice the municipal exchequer of
Rome, which ceased to be the capital of the Empire and was merely the
first of its municipalities. The army and the civil service alike were
filled with officers whose titles and duties would have seemed strange to
a Roman of the second century of the Empire.
CH, II.
## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################
30
The forms of Provincial Government
The aspect of the provincial government, as ordered by the new
monarchy, differed profoundly from that which it had worn in the age
of the early Principate. To diminish the danger of military revolutions
Diocletian carried to a conclusion a policy which had been adopted in
part by his predecessors. The great military commands in the provinces
which had often enabled their holders to destroy or to imperil dynasties
or rulers were broken up; and the old provinces were severed into
fragments. Spain, for example, now comprised six divisions, and Gaul
fifteen. Within these fragments, still named provinces, the civil power
and the military authority were, as a rule, not placed in the same hands.
The divisions of the Empire now numbered about a hundred and twenty,
as against forty-five which existed at the end of Trajan's reign. Twelve
of the new sections lay within the boundaries of Italy, and of the old
contrast between Italy and the provinces of the Principate, few traces
remained. Egypt, hitherto treated as a land apart, was brought within
the new organisation. The titles of the civil administrators were various,
Three, who ruled regions bearing the ancient provincial names of Asia,
Africa, and Achaia were distinguished by the title of proconsul, which
had once belonged to all administrators of senatorial provinces. About
thirty-six were known as consulares. This designation ceased to indicate,
as of old, the men who had passed the consulship: it was merely con-
nected with the government of provinces. The consularis became
technically a member of the Roman Senate, though he ranked below
the ex-consul. So also with the provincial governors who bore the
common title of praeses, and the rarer name of corrector. This last
appellation belonged, in the fourth century, to the chiefs of two districts
in Italy, Apulia and Lucania, and of three outside. It denoted originally
officers who began to be appointed in Trajan's reign to reform the
condition of municipalities. The precedence of the correctores among
the governors seems to have placed them, in the West, after the
consulares, in the East after the praesides. Sometimes the title of
proconsul was for personal reasons bestowed on a governor whose
province was ordinarily ruled by an officer of lower dignity. But such
an arrangement was teniporary. The old expressions legatus pro praetore
or procurator, in its application to provincial rulers, went out of use.
After the age of Constantine new and fanciful descriptions of the pro-
vincial governors, as of other officers, tended to spring into existence.
A few frontier districts were treated (as was the case under the
Principate) in an exceptional manner. Their chiefs were allowed to
exercise civil as well as military functions and were naturally described
by the ordinary name for an army commander (dux).
The proconsuls possessed some privileges of their own. Two of them,
the proconsul of Africa and the proconsul of Asia, were alone among
provincial governors entitled to receive their orders from the emperor
himself; and the Asian proconsul was distinguished by having under him
## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################
The new divisions of the Empire
31
two deputies, who directed a region known as Hellespontus and the
Insulae or islands lying near the Asiatic coast. All other adminis-
trators communicated with the emperor through one or other of four
great officers of state, the Praefecti Praetorio. Their title had been
originally invented to designate the commander of the Praetorian
Cohorts, whom Augustus called into existence. The control of these
was usually vested in two men. Now and then three commanders were
appointed. Some emperors, disregarding the danger to themselves,
allowed a single officer to hold command. Men like Sejanus under
Tiberius and Plautianus under Septimius Severus were practically vice-
emperors. As time went on, the office gradually lost its military
character. Sometimes one of the commanders was a soldier and the
other a civilian. During the reign of Severus Alexander the great
lawyer Ulpian was in sole charge, being the first senator who had been
permitted to hold the post. The legal duties of the Praefect continued
to grow in importance. When the Praetorian Cohorts brought destruc-
tion on themselves by their support of Maxentius against Constantine,
the Praefectus Praetorio became a purely civil functionary. The four
Praefecti were distinguished as Praefectus Praetorio, Galliarum, Italiae,
Illyrici and Orientis respectively. The first administered not only the
ancient Gaul, but also the Rhine frontier and Britain, Spain, Sardinia,
Corsica and Sicily. The second in addition to Italy had under him
Rhaetia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and some regions on the upper
Danube, also most of Roman Africa; the third Dacia, Achaia, and
districts near the lower Danube besides Illyricum, properly so called; the
fourth all Asia Minor, in so far as it was not subjected to the proconsul
of Asia, with Egypt and Thrace, and some lands by the mouth of the
Danube. It will be seen that three out of the four had the direction of
provinces lying on or near the Danube. Probably on their first institu-
tion and for some time afterwards all the Praefecti retained in their own
hands the administration of some portions of the great territories
mitted to their charge. Later the Illyrian praefect alone had a district,
a portion of Dacia, under his own immediate control. Apart from this
exception, the Praefecti conducted their government through officials
subordinated to them.
Each praefectal region was divided into great sections called dioeceses.
Each of these was formed by combination of a certain number of pro-
vinces; and each was comparable to the more important of the old
provinces of the age of the Republic and early Principate. The word
dioecesis had passed through a long history before the time of Diocletian.
The Romans found it existent in their Asiatic dominions, where it had
been applied by earlier rulers to an administrative district, especially in
relation to legal affairs. The Roman government extended the employ-
ment of the term both in the East and in the West and connected it
with other sides of administration besides the legal. Diocletian marked
CH. II.
## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################
32
The Status of Functionaries
successors.
out ten great divisions of the Empire to be designated by this title. The
number of the divisions and their limits were somewhat altered by his
At the head of each Dioecesis was placed an officer who bore
the name vicarius, excepting in the Eastern praefecture. Here the
Vicarius was after a while replaced by a comes Orientis, to whom the
governor of Egypt was at first subject, though he acquired independent
authority later. The treatment of Italy (in the new and extended sense)
was peculiar. It constituted a single Dioecesis, but possessed two vicarii,
one of whom had his seat at Milan, the other at Rome. This bisection
of the Italian praefecture depended on differences in taxation, to which
we must recur later. In the Dioecesis Asiana, and the Dioecesis Africae,
the Vicarius was of course responsible not to the Praefectus, but to the
proconsul.
Such were, in broad outline, the features which the civil administra-
tion of the Empire wore after Diocletian's reforms. Some rough idea
must be conveyed of the mode in which the scheme was applied to the
practical work of government. It must be premised that now, as hereto-
fore, there was no point in the vast and complex machinery of bureaucracy
at which the direct interposition of the emperor might not be at any
moment brought into play. There was therefore no mechanical sub-
ordination of officer to officer, such as would produce an unbroken official
chain, passing down from the emperor to the lowest official. And even
apart from imperial intervention we must not conceive of the different
grades of functionaries as arranged in absolutely systematic subjection,
one grade to another. This would have interfered with one principal
purpose of the new organisation, which aimed at providing the emperor
with information about the whole state of his dominions, through officers
immediately in touch with him at the centre of the government. The
emperor could not afford to restrict himself to such reports as might
reach him through a Praefectus Praetorio or a proconsul. Thus the
Vicarii were never regarded as mere agents or deputies of the Praefecti,
and the same may be said of other officials. All might be called on to
leave the beaten track. The Praefecti Praetorio, though each had his
allotted sphere, were still in some sense colleagues, and were required on
occasion to take cominon action. One great aim of the new system was
to prevent administrators from accumulating influence by long con-
tinuance in the same post, or in any other way. Therefore functionaries
were passed on rapidly from one position to another. Therefore, also,
except in rare instances, no man was allowed to hold office in the
province of his birth. All offices were now paid and the importance of
many was discernible from the amount of the stipend received by the
holder. As in earlier times, certain offices conferred on their incumbents
what may be regarded as patents of nobility. The nobiliary status
arising from office was not hereditary as in an earlier age; yet the halo
of the title to some extent covered the official's family. New appellations
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
11
The Praefecti Praetorio
33
were invented to decorate the higher offices, whose tenants were graded
as illustres, spectabiles, and clarissimi, To the last designation all
senators were entitled. Other expressions as comes, patricius, were less
closely bound up with office. The use of these titles spread gradually.
Before the end of the first century vir clarissimus (v. c. on inscriptions)
began to denote the senator. The employment of distinctive titles for
high officers of equestrian rank, vir eminentissimus, vir perfectissimus, vir
egregius, began with Hadrian, and developed in the time of Marcus
Aurelius. The designation vir egregius fell out of use during or soon
after Constantine's reign. The tendency of the new organisation was to
detach many offices from their old connexion with the equestrian body,
whose importance in the State diminished and then rapidly died away.
Many changes in the application of these titles to the different offices
took place from time to time.
The Praefectus Praetorio was the most exalted civil officer in the new
Empire. His duties were executive, legal, financial, of every description
in fact excepting the military. His only service for the army lay in
the supply of its material requirements in pay, food, and equipment.
He became in the end one of the highest of the viri illustres. The
Praefectus in whose district the emperor resided was for the time being
of enhanced importance, and was denoted as Praefectus Praetorio praesens.
The office had even before the time of Diocletian attracted to itself a
good deal of criminal jurisdiction. The Praefectus was now not a judge
of first instance, but heard appeals from the courts below, within his
sphere of action, with the exception of the court of the Vicarius, from
whom the appeal went straight to the emperor. On the other hand,
after 331 there was in the ordinary way no appeal against a sentence
passed by the Praefectus, who was held to sit as the alter ego of the
emperor (vice sacra iudicans). No other official possessed this privilege.
The whole administration of the regions committed to him was passed
under review by the Praefectus. His supervision of the provincial
governors was of the most general kind. Each was compelled to send
in twice a year a report on the administration of his province, and
particularly on his exercise of jurisdiction. In the selection of governors
the Praefectus had a large share, and he exercised disciplinary power over
them. Erring functionaries both military and civil could be suspended
by him till the emperor's pleasure was known. He usually advised
the emperor concerning appointments. His control of finance both on
the side of receipts and on that of expenditure formed a most important
part of his duties. All difficulties in the incidence of taxation and in the
collection of the taxes came under his consideration, but no officer of
the Empire, however highly placed, could diminish or increase taxation
without the emperor's express sanction.
The Praefectus was also re-
sponsible for the due transport of corn and other necessaries destined for
the supply of Rome and Constantinople. Many other functions fell
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. II.
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
The Vicarius.
The Scrinia
to his lot, among them the superintendence of the state Post (cursus
publicus).
If we may adapt an ecclesiastical phrase which describes the Arch-
deacon as the oculus Episcopi, we may say that the Vicarius was the
oculus Praefecti. He gave a closer eye to details than was possible for
his superior within his Dioecesis. At first he was perfectissimus, after-
wards spectabilis. The tendency of the rulers after Constantine was to
increase his importance at the expense of the Praefectus ; rather however
in the field of jurisdiction than in other fields. The Vicarius had but
little disciplinary power over the rector provinciae. The governor could
in a difficult case seek advice from the
emperor
without having recourse
to either of his superior officers, though he was bound to inform the
Vicarius, and the latter could on occasion go straight to the monarch.
The court of the Vicarius, like that of the Praefectus, was an appeal
court only. The provincial governor was judge of first instance in all
civil and criminal matters, except in the cases of some privileged persons,
and in those minor affairs which were left to the magistrates of the
municipalities within the province. The small size of the province made
it unnecessary that its ruler should travel about to administer justice, as
in the earlier time. Causes were heard at the seat of government. Much
of the time of the governor was occupied in seeing that imposts were
duly collected and that no irregularities were practised by subordinates.
Responsibility for public order rested primarily with him.
The lower grades of civil servants in the provinces were to a very
large extent in connexion with and controlled by the great departments
of the imperial service whose chief offices were in the capital. Early in
the imperial period three great bureaux were established, whose presidents
were named ab epistulis, a libellis, and a memoria. These phrases survived
into the age of Constantine and after, but denoted the offices and not
their chiefs, whose title was magister. The departments themselves were
now described by the word scrinium, which had originally denoted a box
or desk for containing papers. The word had therefore undergone a
change of meaning similar to that which had passed over fiscus, whereby
from a basket for holding coin, it came to mean the imperial exchequer.
The demarcation of business allotted to the three great scrinia was not
always the same. The magister memoriae gradually encroached on the
functions of the other two heads of departments and became much the
most influential of the three. A fourth scrinium, called the scrinium
dispositionum, was added. Its magister (later called comes) was at first
inferior to the other three, who belonged to the class of the spectabiles,
but was afterwards placed on a level with them. All these magistri on
being promoted became vicarii. All four were subject to an exalted
personage known as magister officiorum, who was a vir illustris.
The department known as ab epistulis was early divided into two
sections distinguished as ab epistulis Latinis and ab epistulis Graecis. It
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
The Scrinia and the Magister Officiorum
35
was originally the great Secretariat of the Empire. Here were managed
all communications touching foreign affairs, and the general corre-
spondence of the government, excepting in so far as it related to the legal
and other multifarious petitions addressed to the emperor, appealing for
his interference or his favour. These would come not only from officials,
but also from private persons, and all fell within the functions of the
office a libellis. This bureau absorbed into itself another which had
been specially devoted to legal inquiries, and was called a cognitionibus.
Hence the magister libellorum is described in the Digest by the fuller
title magister scrinii libellorum et sacrarum cognitionum. The depart-
ment had famous lawyers, like Papinian and Ulpian, connected with it,
and it must often have sought the aid of specialists in other matters
belonging to the public service, as revenue and finance : for many of the
petitions addressed to the ruler sought relief from taxation.
The name of the department a memoria implies that its head was the
keeper of the “emperor's memory. ” It was therefore a Record Office,
but it was much more. It assisted other offices in putting documents
into their final shape, and not only recorded the documents but issued
them. The accounts we have of the office make it clear that it took to
itself much important business which originally was transacted by other
departments. Thus the Notitia describes the magister memoriae as
dictating and issuing adnotationes, that is to say brief pronouncements
,
running in the emperor's name; also as giving answers to supplications
(preces). Further he gave to the emperor's letters, speeches, and general
announcements their final form, and sent them forth. The magister
libellorum and the magister epistularum must have become in fact, though
not in form, his inferiors. From his office emanated diplomas of appoint-
ments, the permission to use the imperial post, and countless other
official permits. The scrinium dispositionum kept in order all the emperor's
engagements, and made the innumerable arrangements necessary for his
journeys, and took count of many matters with which he was in touch,
being of such a nature as not to come definitely within the purview of
other bureaux.
All these scrinia were under the control of one of the greatest
functionaries of the Empire, the magister officiorum. His importance
grew over a long space of time from small beginnings. His functions
encroached greatly on those of the Praefecti Praetorio, and their develop-
ment is a measure of the jealousy entertained by the emperors for these
great officers. The word officium indicates a group of public servants
placed at the disposal of a state functionary. The magister officiorum
is the general master of all such groups. Naturally he is vir illustris.
He selected from the scrinia in accordance with elaborate rules of service,
the clerks who were required to carry out many sorts of business in the
capital and in the provinces. His duties were of many different kinds,
.
through which no connected thread of principle ran; they evidently
CH. II.
3-2
## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################
36
The Agentes in Rebus
99
«
reached their full compass by an agglomeration which followed lines of
convenience merely. One of the most prominent occupations of the
magister lay in his direction of what may be called the Secret Service of
the Empire. He had under him the very important schola agentum in
rebus, which was organised by Constantine or possibly by Diocletian,
and replaced a body of men called frumentarii, drawn originally from
the corps which had in charge the provisioning of the army. These had
acted as secret agents of the government. They were the men by whose
means Hadrian, as his biographer says, “wormed out all hidden things.
The vast extension of the Secret Service in the age of Constantine and
later was a consequence of the huge increase in the number of officials,
and of the suspicion which an autocratic ruler naturally entertains
towards his subordinates: in part also of a genuine but ineffectual desire
to check misgovernment. The term schola is closely connected with the
army, and implies a service which is regarded as military in trend, like
that of the other scholae palatinae. The duties assigned to this schola
opened of course wide doors through which corruption entered, and it
became one of the greatest scourges from which the subjects of the
Empire suffered. All attempts to keep it in order failed. The number
of the officers attached to it was generally enormous. Julian practically
disbanded it, retaining only a few of its members; but it soon grew
again to its former proportions. The officers belonging to the schola
were arranged in five classes, with more or less mechanical promotion,
such as generally prevailed through the imperial service. The members
themselves seem to have had some voice in the selection of men for the
highest and most responsible duties. The standing of the schola became
continually more honourable; and members of it rose to provincial
governorships and even to still higher positions. The agens in rebus
was ubiquitous, but only some of the more momentous forms of his
activity can be mentioned here.
An officer called princeps, drawn from the schola, was sent to every
Vicarius and into every province, where he was the chief of the governor's
staff of assistants (officium). This officer had gone through a course of
espionage in lower situations, and his relation to the magister officiorum
made his proximity uncomfortable for his nominal superior. Indeed the
princeps came to play the part of a sort of Maire du Palais to the rector
provinciae, who tended to become a merely nominal ruler. The princeps
and the officium were quite capable of conducting the affairs of the
province alone. Hence we hear of youths being corruptly placed in
important governorships, and of these offices being purchased, as in the
days of the Republic, only in a different manner. After this provincial
service, the princeps usually became governor of a province himself.
At an earlier stage of his career, the agens in rebus would be despatched
to a province to superintend the imperial Post-service there, and see that
it was not in any way abused. This title was then praepositus cursus
!
1
1
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
The Quaestor Sacri Palatii
37
publici, or later curiosus. This service would enable him to play the
part of a spy wherever he went. The burden of providing for the Post
was one of the heaviest which the provincials had to bear, and those
who contravened the regulations concerning it were often highly-placed
officials. That the curiosi by their espionage could make themselves
intolerable there is much evidence to show.
The agentes in rebus were also the general messengers of the govern-
ment, and were continually despatched on occasions great or small, to
make announcements in every part of the emperor's dominions. While
performing this function they were often the collectors of special dona-
tions to the imperial exchequer, and made illegitimate gains of their
own, owing to the fear which they inspired. A regulation which is
recorded forbidding any agens in rebus from entering Rome without
special permission, is eloquent testimony to the reputation which the
schola in general had earned.
Among the other miscellaneous duties of the magister officiorum was
the supervision of formal intercourse between the Empire and foreign
communities and princes. Also the general superintendence of the
imperial factories and arsenals which supplied the army with weapons.
The corps of guards (scholae scutariorum et gentium) who replaced the
destroyed Praetorians were under his command, so that he resembled the
Praefectus Praetorio of the earlier empire. And connected with this
was a responsibility for the safety of the frontiers (limites) and control
over the military commanders there. Further the servants who attended
to the court ceremonial (officium admissionis) were under his direction,
as were some others who belonged to the emperor's state. His civil and
criminal jurisdiction extended over the immense mass of public servants
at the capital, with few exceptions, and his voice in selecting officials
for service there was potent. In short, no officer had more constant
and more confidential relations with the monarch than the magister
officiorum. He was the most important executive officer at the centre of
government.
The greatest judicial and legal officer was the quaestor sacri palatii.
The early history of this officer is obscure and no acceptable explanation
has been found for the use of the title quaestor in connexion with it.
The dignity of the Quaestor's functions may be understood from descrip-
tions given in literature. Symmachus calls him “the disposer of
petitions and the constructer of laws“ (arbiter precum, legum conditor).
The poet Claudian says that he “issued edicts to the world, and answers
to suppliants," while Corippus describes him as “the Champion of
justice, who under the emperor's auspices controls legislation and legal
principles" (iura). The Quaestor's office, like many others, advanced in
importance after its creation, which appears to have taken place not
earlier than Constantine's reign. In the latter part of the fourth
century he took precedence even of the magister officiorum, and with
2
CH. II.
## p. 38 (#68) ##############################################
38
The Tribuni et Notarii
>
one brief interruption, he maintained this rank. The requirements for
the office were above all skill in the law and in the art of legal expression.
On all legal questions, whether questions of change in law, or questions
of its administration, the emperor gave his final decision by the voice of
the Quaestor. No body of servants officium) was specially allotted to
him, but the scrinia were at his service. Indeed he may be said to have
been the intermediary between the scrinia and the emperor. His relations
with the heads of the departments a libellis and a memoria, and particularly
with the latter, must have been very close; but their work was prepara-
tory and subordinate to his so far as legal matters were concerned. The
instances in which the magister memoriae succeeded in acting independently
of the Quaestor were exceptional. A share in the appointment to certain
of the lesser military offices was also assigned to the Quaestor, who kept
a record of the names of their holders, which was known as laterculum
minus. In this duty he was assisted by a high official of the scrinium
memoriae, whose title was laterculensis.
There was another body called tribuni et notarii, not attached to the
scrinia, which was of considerable importance. The service of these
functionaries was closely connected with the deliberations of the great
Imperial Council, the Consistorium, which is to be described presently.
They had to see that the proper officers carried out the decisions of the
Council. Their business often brought them into close and confidential
relation with the emperor himself. The officer at the head is primicerius
(literally, one whose name is written first on a wax tablet-primâ cerâ).
The title is given to many officers serving in other departments and
indicates usually, but not always, high rank. This particular primicerius
ranked even higher than the chiefs of the scrinia and the castrensis sacri
palatii. According to the Notitia he has “cognizance of all dignities
and administrative offices both military and civil. ” He kept the great
list known as laterculum maius, in which were comprised not only the
actual tenants of the greater offices, but forms for their appointment,
schedules of their duties, and even a catalogue of the different sections
of the army and their stations, including the scholae which served as
imperial guards.
The reorganisation of Finance brought into existence a host of
officials who either bore new names or old titles to which new duties
had been assigned. The great and complex system of taxation initiated
by Diocletian and carried further by his successors can here be only
sketched in broad outline. Although, like all the institutions of the
new monarchy, the scheme of taxation had its roots in the past, the new
development in its completed form stands in such marked contrast to old
conditions, that there is not much to be gained by detailed references to
the earlier Empire. Before Diocletian's time the old aerarium Saturni
had ceased to be of imperial importance, and the aerarium militare of
Augustus had disappeared. The general census of Roman citizens,
## p. 39 (#69) ##############################################
Financial Changes
39
carried out at Rome, is not heard of after Vespasian's time. Of the
ancient revenues of the State very many were swept away by Diocletian's
reform, even the most productive of all, the five per cent. tax on inherited
property (vicesima hereditatum) by which Augustus had subjected Roman
citizens in general to taxation. The separate provincial census, of which
in Gaul, for example, we hear much during the early Empire, was
rendered unnecessary. The great and powerful societates publicanorum
had dwindled away, though publicani were still employed for some
purposes. Direct collection of revenue had gradually taken the place
of the system of farming. Where any traces of the old system remained,
it was subject to strict official supervision. Before Diocletian the
incidence of taxation on the different parts of the Empire had been most
unequal. The reasons for this lay partly in the extraordinary variety of
the conditions by which in times past the relation of different portions
of the Empire to the central government had been fixed when they first
came under its sway; partly in Republican or Imperial favour or
disfavour as they afterwards affected the burdens to be endured in
different places; partly by the evolution of the municipalities of different
types throughout the Roman dominions. Towns and districts which
once had been immune from imposts or slightly taxed had become
tributary and vice-versa. The reforms instituted by Augustus and
carried further by his successors did something towards securing uni-
formity, but many diversities continued to exist. Some of these were
produced by the gift of immunitas which was bestowed on many civic
communities scattered over the Empire. Without this gift even com-
munities of Roman citizens were not exempt from the taxation which
marked off the provinces from Italy.
In order to understand the purpose of Diocletian's changes in the
taxation of the Empire, it is necessary to consider the struggle which he
and Constantine made to reform the imperial coinage. The difficult
task of explaining with exactness the utter demoralisation of the currency
at the moment when Diocletian ascended the throne cannot be here
attempted. Only a few outstanding features can be delineated. The
political importance of sound currency has never been more conspicuously
shewn than in the century which followed on the death of Commodus
(A. D. 180). Augustus had given a stability to the Roman coinage which
it had never before possessed. But he imposed no uniform system on
the whole of his dominions. Gold (with one slight exception) he
allowed none to mint but himself. But copper he left in the hands of the
Senate. Silver he coined himself, while he permitted many local mints
to strike pieces in that metal also as well as in copper. Subsequent
history extinguished local diversities and brought about by gradual
steps a general system which was not attained till the fourth century.
Aurelian deprived the Senate of the power which Augustus had left it.
Although the imperial coins underwent a certain amount of deprecia-
CH. II.
## p. 40 (#70) ##############################################
40
Financial Changes
tion between the time of Augustus and that of the Severi, it was not such
as to throw out of gear the taxation and the commerce of the Empire.
But with Caracalla a rapid decline set in, and by the time of Aurelian
the disorganisation had gone so far that practically gold and silver were
demonetised, and copper became the standard medium of exchange.
The principal coin that professed to be silver had come to contain no
more than five per cent. of that metal, and this proportion sank
afterwards to two per cent. What a government gains by making its
payments in corrupted coin is always far more than lost in the revenue
which it receives. The debasement of the coinage means a lightening
of taxation, and it is never possible to enhance the nominal amount
receivable by the exchequer so as to keep pace with the depreciation.
The effect of this in the Roman Empire was greater than it would have
been at an earlier time, since there is reason to believe that much of the
revenue formerly payable in kind had been transmuted into money.
A measure of Aurelian had the effect of multiplying by eight such taxes
as were to be paid in coin. As the chief (professing) silver coin had
twenty years earlier contained eight times as much silver as it had then
come to contain, he claimed that he was only exacting what was justly
due, but his subjects naturally cried out against his tyranny. No
greater proof of the disorganisation of the whole financial system could
be given than lies in the fact that the treasury issued sackloads ( folles)
of the Antoniani, first coined by Caracalla, which were intended to be
silver, but were now all but base metal only. These folles passed
from hand to hand unopened.
Diocletian's attempts to remove these mischiefs were not altogether
fortunate. He made experiment after experiment, aiming at that
stability of the currency which had, on the whole, prevailed for two
centuries after the reforms of Augustus, but never reaching it. Finally,
discovering that the last change he had made led to general raising of
prices, he issued the celebrated edict of a. d. 301 by which the charges
for all commodities were fixed, the penalty for transgression being
death.
Constantine was forced to handle afresh the tangled problem of the
currency. The task was rendered especially difficult by the fresh
debasement of coinage which was perpetrated by Maxentius while he
was supreme in Italy. It may be said at once that the goal of Diocletian's
efforts was never reached by Constantine. He did indeed alter the
weight of the gold piece, which now received the name of solidus, and it
continued in circulation, practically unchanged, for centuries. But this
gold piece was to all intents and purposes not a coin, for when payments
were made in it, they were reckoned by weight. The solidus was in effect
only a bit of bullion, the fineness of which was conveniently guaranteed
by the imperial stamp. The same is true of Constantine's silver pieces.
The only coins which could be paid and received by their number,
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
Assessment of Taxes
41
without weighing, were those contained in the folles, of which mention
was made above, and the word follis was now applied to the individual
coins, as well as to the whole sack. It had proved to be impossible to
restore the monetary system which had prevailed in the first and second
centuries of the Empire. But the tide of innovation was at length stayed,
and this in itself was no small boon.
The line taken by the reform of Diocletian in the scheme of taxation
was partly marked out for him by the anarchy of the third century,
which led to the great debasement of the coinage described above and
to many oppressive exactions of an arbitrary character. The lowering
of the currency had disorganised the whole revenue and expenditure of
the government. Where dues were receivable or stipends payable of a
fixed nominal amount, these had largely lost their value. A natural
consequence was that payments both to be made and to be received
were ordered by Diocletian to be reckoned in the produce of the soil,
and not in coin. During the era of confusion a phrase, indictio, had
come into use to denote a special requisition made upon the pro-
vincials over and above their stated dues. What Diocletian did was
to make what had been irregular into a regular and general impost,
subjecting all provincials to it alike, and abolishing the unequal tributes
of different kinds which had been previously required. The result was
an enormous levelling of taxation throughout the provinces. And to
some extent the immunity of Italy itself was withdrawn. But the sum
to be raised from year to year was not uniform. It depended on an
announcement to which the word indictio was applied, issued by the
emperor for each year. Hence the number of indictiones proclaimed
by an emperor became a convenient means for denoting the years of
his reign.
The assessment of communities and individuals was managed by an
elaborate process. The newly arranged burdens fell on land. The territo-
rium attached to every town was surveyed and the land classified according
to its use for growing grain or producing oil or wine. A certain number
of acres (iugera) of arable land was called a iugum. The number
varied, partly according to the quality of the soil, which was roughly
graded, partly according to the province in which it was situated. In
the case of oil, the taxable unit was often arrived at by counting the
number of olive trees; and this was sometimes the case with vines.
The iugum was however supposed to be fixed in accordance with the
limits of one man's labour, and therefore caput (person) and iugum, from
the point of view of revenue, became convertible terms. But men and
women and slaves and cattle were taxed separately, and in addition to
the tax on the land. Each man or slave on a farm counted as one
caput and each woman as half a caput. A certain number of cattle
constituted also a iugum and thus there was no need to divide up the
pasture lands as the arable lands were divided. Meadows were rated for
OH. II.
## p. 42 (#72) ##############################################
42
Other Imposts
a
the supply of fodder. The total requirements of the government were
stated in the indictio, and every community had to contribute in
accordance with the number of taxable units which the survey had
disclosed. All the produce which the taxpayers handed over was stored
in great government barns (horrea).
The system of collection, though decentralised, was bad. The
decurions or senators of each town, or the ten chief men of each town
(decemprimi) were responsible for handing over to the government all
that was due. A revision took place every five years, and was generally
carried through with much unfairness and oppression of the poorer
landholders. Apparently a fresh survey was not made, but evidence
taken by the town-officers in the town itself. From 312 onwards we
find a fifteen-year indiction-period, which came to be largely used as a
chronological instrument. It would seem that every fifteenth year a
re-allotment of taxes was made which was based on actual survey. But
evidence for this is scanty. An imperial revenue officer called censitor
was restricted to the duty of receiving the dues from a community as
a whole. Outside imperial officers were called in to assist in the collection
of dues from recalcitrant taxpayers. This happened at first occasionally,
then regularly. Naturally another door was thus opened to oppression,
from which the rich would manage to escape more lightly than the poor.
The special arrangement made by Diocletian for Italy will be explained
later; also the exemptions accorded to privileged classes of individuals.
Along with the payment of government dues in kind went the
payment of stipends in kind. A certain amount of corn, wine, meat,
and other necessaries, grouped together, constituted a unit to which the
name annona was applied, and salaries, military and civil, were largely
calculated in annonae. Where allowance was made for horses, the amount
granted for each was called capitum. When stability was in some degree
secured for the currency, these annonae were again expressed in money,
by a valuation called adaeratio. The government, to be on safety's side,
of course exacted as a rule more produce from the soil than was needed
for use, and the excess was turned into money, naturally at low prices.
In addition to the burdens on the land, many other imposts were
levied. The maintenance of the Post Service along the main roads was
most oppressive. In the towns every trade was taxed, the contribution
bearing the name of lustralis collatio or chrysargyrum. The customs
dues at the ports and transit dues at the frontier were maintained.
Revenues were derived from government monopolies in mines, forests,
salt factories, and other possessions. Some of the old Republican
imposts, such as the tax on manumitted slaves, still survived. Persons
of distinction were subject to special exactions. Imperial senators paid
several dues, especially the so-called aurum oblaticium, which like many
inevitable forms of taxation, professed in its name to be a free-will
offering.
course it had taken from the beginning. The dynastic principle strove
time after time to establish itself, but dynasties were ever threatened with
catastrophe, such as had ensued on the deaths of Nero, of Commodus,
and of Severus Alexander. But new emperors frequently did homage to
over-
CH. 11.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
Personal authority of the Emperor
9
29
heredity by a process of posthumous and fictitious adoption, whereby
they grafted themselves on to the line of their predecessors. Apparently
even this phantom of legitimacy had some value for the effect it produced
on the public mind.
The theory of government now became, as has been said, frankly
autocratic. Even Aurelian, a man of simple and soldierly life, had
thought well to take to himself officially the title of " lord and god”
which private flattery had bestowed upon Domitian. The lawyers
established a fiction that the Roman people had voluntarily resigned
all authority into the hands of the monarch. The fable was as baseless
and as serviceable as that of the “social compact,” received in the
eighteenth century. No person or class held any rights against the
emperor. The revenues were his private property. All payments from
the treasury were “sacred largesses” conceded by the divine ruler. So
far as the State was concerned, the distinction between the senatorial
exchequer (aerarium) and the imperial exchequer (fiscus) disappeared.
Certain revenues, as for instance those derived from the confiscated
estates of unsuccessful pretenders, were labelled as the emperor's private
property (res privata), and others as belonging to his “family estate
(patrimonium). But these designations were merely formal and ad-
ministrative. The emperor was the sole ultimate source of all law and
authority. The personnel by which he was immediately surrounded in
his capital was of vast extent, and the palace was often a hotbed of
intrigue. Even in the time of the Severi the “Caesareans ” (Kawoápeloi)
as Dio Cassius names them, were numerous enough to imperil often the
public peace. Another class of imperial servants, the workers at the
mint, had, in the reign of Aurelian, raised an insurrection which led to a
shedding of blood in Rome such as had not been witnessed since the age
of Sulla. The military basis of imperial power, partly concealed by the
earlier emperors, stood fully revealed. Septimius Severus had been the
first to wear regularly in the capital the full insignia of military
command, previously seen there only on days of triumph. Now every
department of the public service was regarded as “militia,” and “ camp
(castra) is the official name for the court. All high officers, with the
exception of the praefectus urbi, wore the military garb. It is needless
to say that officials who were nominally the emperor's domestic servants
easily gathered power into their own hands and often became the real
rulers of the Empire. The line between domestic offices and those which
were political and military was never strictly drawn. All higher functions
whose exercise required close attention on the emperor's person were
covered by the description dignitates palatinae. Under the early
emperors the great ministers of state were largely freedmen, whose
status was rather that of court servants than of public administrators.
The great departments of the imperial service were gradually freed from
their close attachment to the emperor's person. The natural result was
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
Officers attached to the Emperor's person
29
that direct personal influence over the ruler often passed into the hands
of men whose duties were in name connected only with the daily life of
the palace. From the third century onwards the Eastern custom of
choosing eunuchs as the most trusted servants prevailed in the imperial
household as in the private households of the wealthy. The greatest of
these was the praepositus sacri cubiculi. or Great Chamberlain. This
officer often wielded the power which had been enjoyed by such men
as Parthenius had been under Domitian. The office grew in importance,
as measured by dignity and precedence, until in the time of Theo-
dosius the Great it was one of four high offices which conferred on
their holders membership of the Imperial Council (Consistorium), and
a little later was made equal in honour to the other three. The
"Palatine" servants, high and low, formed a mighty host, which re-
quired a special department for their provisioning and another for their
tendance in sickness. But exactly how many of them were under the
immediate direction (sub dispositione) of the praepositus sacri cubiculi
cannot be determined. Some duties fell to him which are hardly
suggested by his title. He was in control of the emperor's select and
intimate bodyguard, which bore the name of silentiarii, thirty in number,
with three decuriones for officers. Curiously, he superintended one
division of the vast imperial domains, that considerable portion of them
which lay within the province of Cappadocia. Dependent probably on
the praepositus sacri cubiculi was the primicerius sacri cubiculi
, who
appears in the Notitia Dignitatum as possessing the quality of a pro-
consular. Whether the castrensis sacri palatii was independent or
subordinate, cannot be determined. Under his rule were a host of pages
and lower menials of many kinds, and he had to care for the fabric of
the imperial palaces. Also he had charge of the private archives of the
imperial family.
The service of the officers described was rather personal to the
emperor than public in character. We now turn to the civil and
military administration as it was refashioned under the new monarchy.
The chaos of the period preceding Diocletian's supremacy had finally
effaced some of the leading features of the Augustan Principate which
had become fainter and fainter as the Empire ran its course. The Senate
lost the last remnant of real power. Such of its surviving privileges and
dignities as might carry back the mind to the days of its glory were
mere shadows without substance. All provinces had become imperial.
All functionaries of every class owed obedience to the autocrat alone,
and looked to him for their career. The old state-treasury, the aerarium,
retained its name, but became in practice the municipal exchequer of
Rome, which ceased to be the capital of the Empire and was merely the
first of its municipalities. The army and the civil service alike were
filled with officers whose titles and duties would have seemed strange to
a Roman of the second century of the Empire.
CH, II.
## p. 30 (#60) ##############################################
30
The forms of Provincial Government
The aspect of the provincial government, as ordered by the new
monarchy, differed profoundly from that which it had worn in the age
of the early Principate. To diminish the danger of military revolutions
Diocletian carried to a conclusion a policy which had been adopted in
part by his predecessors. The great military commands in the provinces
which had often enabled their holders to destroy or to imperil dynasties
or rulers were broken up; and the old provinces were severed into
fragments. Spain, for example, now comprised six divisions, and Gaul
fifteen. Within these fragments, still named provinces, the civil power
and the military authority were, as a rule, not placed in the same hands.
The divisions of the Empire now numbered about a hundred and twenty,
as against forty-five which existed at the end of Trajan's reign. Twelve
of the new sections lay within the boundaries of Italy, and of the old
contrast between Italy and the provinces of the Principate, few traces
remained. Egypt, hitherto treated as a land apart, was brought within
the new organisation. The titles of the civil administrators were various,
Three, who ruled regions bearing the ancient provincial names of Asia,
Africa, and Achaia were distinguished by the title of proconsul, which
had once belonged to all administrators of senatorial provinces. About
thirty-six were known as consulares. This designation ceased to indicate,
as of old, the men who had passed the consulship: it was merely con-
nected with the government of provinces. The consularis became
technically a member of the Roman Senate, though he ranked below
the ex-consul. So also with the provincial governors who bore the
common title of praeses, and the rarer name of corrector. This last
appellation belonged, in the fourth century, to the chiefs of two districts
in Italy, Apulia and Lucania, and of three outside. It denoted originally
officers who began to be appointed in Trajan's reign to reform the
condition of municipalities. The precedence of the correctores among
the governors seems to have placed them, in the West, after the
consulares, in the East after the praesides. Sometimes the title of
proconsul was for personal reasons bestowed on a governor whose
province was ordinarily ruled by an officer of lower dignity. But such
an arrangement was teniporary. The old expressions legatus pro praetore
or procurator, in its application to provincial rulers, went out of use.
After the age of Constantine new and fanciful descriptions of the pro-
vincial governors, as of other officers, tended to spring into existence.
A few frontier districts were treated (as was the case under the
Principate) in an exceptional manner. Their chiefs were allowed to
exercise civil as well as military functions and were naturally described
by the ordinary name for an army commander (dux).
The proconsuls possessed some privileges of their own. Two of them,
the proconsul of Africa and the proconsul of Asia, were alone among
provincial governors entitled to receive their orders from the emperor
himself; and the Asian proconsul was distinguished by having under him
## p. 31 (#61) ##############################################
The new divisions of the Empire
31
two deputies, who directed a region known as Hellespontus and the
Insulae or islands lying near the Asiatic coast. All other adminis-
trators communicated with the emperor through one or other of four
great officers of state, the Praefecti Praetorio. Their title had been
originally invented to designate the commander of the Praetorian
Cohorts, whom Augustus called into existence. The control of these
was usually vested in two men. Now and then three commanders were
appointed. Some emperors, disregarding the danger to themselves,
allowed a single officer to hold command. Men like Sejanus under
Tiberius and Plautianus under Septimius Severus were practically vice-
emperors. As time went on, the office gradually lost its military
character. Sometimes one of the commanders was a soldier and the
other a civilian. During the reign of Severus Alexander the great
lawyer Ulpian was in sole charge, being the first senator who had been
permitted to hold the post. The legal duties of the Praefect continued
to grow in importance. When the Praetorian Cohorts brought destruc-
tion on themselves by their support of Maxentius against Constantine,
the Praefectus Praetorio became a purely civil functionary. The four
Praefecti were distinguished as Praefectus Praetorio, Galliarum, Italiae,
Illyrici and Orientis respectively. The first administered not only the
ancient Gaul, but also the Rhine frontier and Britain, Spain, Sardinia,
Corsica and Sicily. The second in addition to Italy had under him
Rhaetia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and some regions on the upper
Danube, also most of Roman Africa; the third Dacia, Achaia, and
districts near the lower Danube besides Illyricum, properly so called; the
fourth all Asia Minor, in so far as it was not subjected to the proconsul
of Asia, with Egypt and Thrace, and some lands by the mouth of the
Danube. It will be seen that three out of the four had the direction of
provinces lying on or near the Danube. Probably on their first institu-
tion and for some time afterwards all the Praefecti retained in their own
hands the administration of some portions of the great territories
mitted to their charge. Later the Illyrian praefect alone had a district,
a portion of Dacia, under his own immediate control. Apart from this
exception, the Praefecti conducted their government through officials
subordinated to them.
Each praefectal region was divided into great sections called dioeceses.
Each of these was formed by combination of a certain number of pro-
vinces; and each was comparable to the more important of the old
provinces of the age of the Republic and early Principate. The word
dioecesis had passed through a long history before the time of Diocletian.
The Romans found it existent in their Asiatic dominions, where it had
been applied by earlier rulers to an administrative district, especially in
relation to legal affairs. The Roman government extended the employ-
ment of the term both in the East and in the West and connected it
with other sides of administration besides the legal. Diocletian marked
CH. II.
## p. 32 (#62) ##############################################
32
The Status of Functionaries
successors.
out ten great divisions of the Empire to be designated by this title. The
number of the divisions and their limits were somewhat altered by his
At the head of each Dioecesis was placed an officer who bore
the name vicarius, excepting in the Eastern praefecture. Here the
Vicarius was after a while replaced by a comes Orientis, to whom the
governor of Egypt was at first subject, though he acquired independent
authority later. The treatment of Italy (in the new and extended sense)
was peculiar. It constituted a single Dioecesis, but possessed two vicarii,
one of whom had his seat at Milan, the other at Rome. This bisection
of the Italian praefecture depended on differences in taxation, to which
we must recur later. In the Dioecesis Asiana, and the Dioecesis Africae,
the Vicarius was of course responsible not to the Praefectus, but to the
proconsul.
Such were, in broad outline, the features which the civil administra-
tion of the Empire wore after Diocletian's reforms. Some rough idea
must be conveyed of the mode in which the scheme was applied to the
practical work of government. It must be premised that now, as hereto-
fore, there was no point in the vast and complex machinery of bureaucracy
at which the direct interposition of the emperor might not be at any
moment brought into play. There was therefore no mechanical sub-
ordination of officer to officer, such as would produce an unbroken official
chain, passing down from the emperor to the lowest official. And even
apart from imperial intervention we must not conceive of the different
grades of functionaries as arranged in absolutely systematic subjection,
one grade to another. This would have interfered with one principal
purpose of the new organisation, which aimed at providing the emperor
with information about the whole state of his dominions, through officers
immediately in touch with him at the centre of the government. The
emperor could not afford to restrict himself to such reports as might
reach him through a Praefectus Praetorio or a proconsul. Thus the
Vicarii were never regarded as mere agents or deputies of the Praefecti,
and the same may be said of other officials. All might be called on to
leave the beaten track. The Praefecti Praetorio, though each had his
allotted sphere, were still in some sense colleagues, and were required on
occasion to take cominon action. One great aim of the new system was
to prevent administrators from accumulating influence by long con-
tinuance in the same post, or in any other way. Therefore functionaries
were passed on rapidly from one position to another. Therefore, also,
except in rare instances, no man was allowed to hold office in the
province of his birth. All offices were now paid and the importance of
many was discernible from the amount of the stipend received by the
holder. As in earlier times, certain offices conferred on their incumbents
what may be regarded as patents of nobility. The nobiliary status
arising from office was not hereditary as in an earlier age; yet the halo
of the title to some extent covered the official's family. New appellations
## p. 33 (#63) ##############################################
11
The Praefecti Praetorio
33
were invented to decorate the higher offices, whose tenants were graded
as illustres, spectabiles, and clarissimi, To the last designation all
senators were entitled. Other expressions as comes, patricius, were less
closely bound up with office. The use of these titles spread gradually.
Before the end of the first century vir clarissimus (v. c. on inscriptions)
began to denote the senator. The employment of distinctive titles for
high officers of equestrian rank, vir eminentissimus, vir perfectissimus, vir
egregius, began with Hadrian, and developed in the time of Marcus
Aurelius. The designation vir egregius fell out of use during or soon
after Constantine's reign. The tendency of the new organisation was to
detach many offices from their old connexion with the equestrian body,
whose importance in the State diminished and then rapidly died away.
Many changes in the application of these titles to the different offices
took place from time to time.
The Praefectus Praetorio was the most exalted civil officer in the new
Empire. His duties were executive, legal, financial, of every description
in fact excepting the military. His only service for the army lay in
the supply of its material requirements in pay, food, and equipment.
He became in the end one of the highest of the viri illustres. The
Praefectus in whose district the emperor resided was for the time being
of enhanced importance, and was denoted as Praefectus Praetorio praesens.
The office had even before the time of Diocletian attracted to itself a
good deal of criminal jurisdiction. The Praefectus was now not a judge
of first instance, but heard appeals from the courts below, within his
sphere of action, with the exception of the court of the Vicarius, from
whom the appeal went straight to the emperor. On the other hand,
after 331 there was in the ordinary way no appeal against a sentence
passed by the Praefectus, who was held to sit as the alter ego of the
emperor (vice sacra iudicans). No other official possessed this privilege.
The whole administration of the regions committed to him was passed
under review by the Praefectus. His supervision of the provincial
governors was of the most general kind. Each was compelled to send
in twice a year a report on the administration of his province, and
particularly on his exercise of jurisdiction. In the selection of governors
the Praefectus had a large share, and he exercised disciplinary power over
them. Erring functionaries both military and civil could be suspended
by him till the emperor's pleasure was known. He usually advised
the emperor concerning appointments. His control of finance both on
the side of receipts and on that of expenditure formed a most important
part of his duties. All difficulties in the incidence of taxation and in the
collection of the taxes came under his consideration, but no officer of
the Empire, however highly placed, could diminish or increase taxation
without the emperor's express sanction.
The Praefectus was also re-
sponsible for the due transport of corn and other necessaries destined for
the supply of Rome and Constantinople. Many other functions fell
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. II.
3
## p. 34 (#64) ##############################################
34
The Vicarius.
The Scrinia
to his lot, among them the superintendence of the state Post (cursus
publicus).
If we may adapt an ecclesiastical phrase which describes the Arch-
deacon as the oculus Episcopi, we may say that the Vicarius was the
oculus Praefecti. He gave a closer eye to details than was possible for
his superior within his Dioecesis. At first he was perfectissimus, after-
wards spectabilis. The tendency of the rulers after Constantine was to
increase his importance at the expense of the Praefectus ; rather however
in the field of jurisdiction than in other fields. The Vicarius had but
little disciplinary power over the rector provinciae. The governor could
in a difficult case seek advice from the
emperor
without having recourse
to either of his superior officers, though he was bound to inform the
Vicarius, and the latter could on occasion go straight to the monarch.
The court of the Vicarius, like that of the Praefectus, was an appeal
court only. The provincial governor was judge of first instance in all
civil and criminal matters, except in the cases of some privileged persons,
and in those minor affairs which were left to the magistrates of the
municipalities within the province. The small size of the province made
it unnecessary that its ruler should travel about to administer justice, as
in the earlier time. Causes were heard at the seat of government. Much
of the time of the governor was occupied in seeing that imposts were
duly collected and that no irregularities were practised by subordinates.
Responsibility for public order rested primarily with him.
The lower grades of civil servants in the provinces were to a very
large extent in connexion with and controlled by the great departments
of the imperial service whose chief offices were in the capital. Early in
the imperial period three great bureaux were established, whose presidents
were named ab epistulis, a libellis, and a memoria. These phrases survived
into the age of Constantine and after, but denoted the offices and not
their chiefs, whose title was magister. The departments themselves were
now described by the word scrinium, which had originally denoted a box
or desk for containing papers. The word had therefore undergone a
change of meaning similar to that which had passed over fiscus, whereby
from a basket for holding coin, it came to mean the imperial exchequer.
The demarcation of business allotted to the three great scrinia was not
always the same. The magister memoriae gradually encroached on the
functions of the other two heads of departments and became much the
most influential of the three. A fourth scrinium, called the scrinium
dispositionum, was added. Its magister (later called comes) was at first
inferior to the other three, who belonged to the class of the spectabiles,
but was afterwards placed on a level with them. All these magistri on
being promoted became vicarii. All four were subject to an exalted
personage known as magister officiorum, who was a vir illustris.
The department known as ab epistulis was early divided into two
sections distinguished as ab epistulis Latinis and ab epistulis Graecis. It
## p. 35 (#65) ##############################################
The Scrinia and the Magister Officiorum
35
was originally the great Secretariat of the Empire. Here were managed
all communications touching foreign affairs, and the general corre-
spondence of the government, excepting in so far as it related to the legal
and other multifarious petitions addressed to the emperor, appealing for
his interference or his favour. These would come not only from officials,
but also from private persons, and all fell within the functions of the
office a libellis. This bureau absorbed into itself another which had
been specially devoted to legal inquiries, and was called a cognitionibus.
Hence the magister libellorum is described in the Digest by the fuller
title magister scrinii libellorum et sacrarum cognitionum. The depart-
ment had famous lawyers, like Papinian and Ulpian, connected with it,
and it must often have sought the aid of specialists in other matters
belonging to the public service, as revenue and finance : for many of the
petitions addressed to the ruler sought relief from taxation.
The name of the department a memoria implies that its head was the
keeper of the “emperor's memory. ” It was therefore a Record Office,
but it was much more. It assisted other offices in putting documents
into their final shape, and not only recorded the documents but issued
them. The accounts we have of the office make it clear that it took to
itself much important business which originally was transacted by other
departments. Thus the Notitia describes the magister memoriae as
dictating and issuing adnotationes, that is to say brief pronouncements
,
running in the emperor's name; also as giving answers to supplications
(preces). Further he gave to the emperor's letters, speeches, and general
announcements their final form, and sent them forth. The magister
libellorum and the magister epistularum must have become in fact, though
not in form, his inferiors. From his office emanated diplomas of appoint-
ments, the permission to use the imperial post, and countless other
official permits. The scrinium dispositionum kept in order all the emperor's
engagements, and made the innumerable arrangements necessary for his
journeys, and took count of many matters with which he was in touch,
being of such a nature as not to come definitely within the purview of
other bureaux.
All these scrinia were under the control of one of the greatest
functionaries of the Empire, the magister officiorum. His importance
grew over a long space of time from small beginnings. His functions
encroached greatly on those of the Praefecti Praetorio, and their develop-
ment is a measure of the jealousy entertained by the emperors for these
great officers. The word officium indicates a group of public servants
placed at the disposal of a state functionary. The magister officiorum
is the general master of all such groups. Naturally he is vir illustris.
He selected from the scrinia in accordance with elaborate rules of service,
the clerks who were required to carry out many sorts of business in the
capital and in the provinces. His duties were of many different kinds,
.
through which no connected thread of principle ran; they evidently
CH. II.
3-2
## p. 36 (#66) ##############################################
36
The Agentes in Rebus
99
«
reached their full compass by an agglomeration which followed lines of
convenience merely. One of the most prominent occupations of the
magister lay in his direction of what may be called the Secret Service of
the Empire. He had under him the very important schola agentum in
rebus, which was organised by Constantine or possibly by Diocletian,
and replaced a body of men called frumentarii, drawn originally from
the corps which had in charge the provisioning of the army. These had
acted as secret agents of the government. They were the men by whose
means Hadrian, as his biographer says, “wormed out all hidden things.
The vast extension of the Secret Service in the age of Constantine and
later was a consequence of the huge increase in the number of officials,
and of the suspicion which an autocratic ruler naturally entertains
towards his subordinates: in part also of a genuine but ineffectual desire
to check misgovernment. The term schola is closely connected with the
army, and implies a service which is regarded as military in trend, like
that of the other scholae palatinae. The duties assigned to this schola
opened of course wide doors through which corruption entered, and it
became one of the greatest scourges from which the subjects of the
Empire suffered. All attempts to keep it in order failed. The number
of the officers attached to it was generally enormous. Julian practically
disbanded it, retaining only a few of its members; but it soon grew
again to its former proportions. The officers belonging to the schola
were arranged in five classes, with more or less mechanical promotion,
such as generally prevailed through the imperial service. The members
themselves seem to have had some voice in the selection of men for the
highest and most responsible duties. The standing of the schola became
continually more honourable; and members of it rose to provincial
governorships and even to still higher positions. The agens in rebus
was ubiquitous, but only some of the more momentous forms of his
activity can be mentioned here.
An officer called princeps, drawn from the schola, was sent to every
Vicarius and into every province, where he was the chief of the governor's
staff of assistants (officium). This officer had gone through a course of
espionage in lower situations, and his relation to the magister officiorum
made his proximity uncomfortable for his nominal superior. Indeed the
princeps came to play the part of a sort of Maire du Palais to the rector
provinciae, who tended to become a merely nominal ruler. The princeps
and the officium were quite capable of conducting the affairs of the
province alone. Hence we hear of youths being corruptly placed in
important governorships, and of these offices being purchased, as in the
days of the Republic, only in a different manner. After this provincial
service, the princeps usually became governor of a province himself.
At an earlier stage of his career, the agens in rebus would be despatched
to a province to superintend the imperial Post-service there, and see that
it was not in any way abused. This title was then praepositus cursus
!
1
1
## p. 37 (#67) ##############################################
The Quaestor Sacri Palatii
37
publici, or later curiosus. This service would enable him to play the
part of a spy wherever he went. The burden of providing for the Post
was one of the heaviest which the provincials had to bear, and those
who contravened the regulations concerning it were often highly-placed
officials. That the curiosi by their espionage could make themselves
intolerable there is much evidence to show.
The agentes in rebus were also the general messengers of the govern-
ment, and were continually despatched on occasions great or small, to
make announcements in every part of the emperor's dominions. While
performing this function they were often the collectors of special dona-
tions to the imperial exchequer, and made illegitimate gains of their
own, owing to the fear which they inspired. A regulation which is
recorded forbidding any agens in rebus from entering Rome without
special permission, is eloquent testimony to the reputation which the
schola in general had earned.
Among the other miscellaneous duties of the magister officiorum was
the supervision of formal intercourse between the Empire and foreign
communities and princes. Also the general superintendence of the
imperial factories and arsenals which supplied the army with weapons.
The corps of guards (scholae scutariorum et gentium) who replaced the
destroyed Praetorians were under his command, so that he resembled the
Praefectus Praetorio of the earlier empire. And connected with this
was a responsibility for the safety of the frontiers (limites) and control
over the military commanders there. Further the servants who attended
to the court ceremonial (officium admissionis) were under his direction,
as were some others who belonged to the emperor's state. His civil and
criminal jurisdiction extended over the immense mass of public servants
at the capital, with few exceptions, and his voice in selecting officials
for service there was potent. In short, no officer had more constant
and more confidential relations with the monarch than the magister
officiorum. He was the most important executive officer at the centre of
government.
The greatest judicial and legal officer was the quaestor sacri palatii.
The early history of this officer is obscure and no acceptable explanation
has been found for the use of the title quaestor in connexion with it.
The dignity of the Quaestor's functions may be understood from descrip-
tions given in literature. Symmachus calls him “the disposer of
petitions and the constructer of laws“ (arbiter precum, legum conditor).
The poet Claudian says that he “issued edicts to the world, and answers
to suppliants," while Corippus describes him as “the Champion of
justice, who under the emperor's auspices controls legislation and legal
principles" (iura). The Quaestor's office, like many others, advanced in
importance after its creation, which appears to have taken place not
earlier than Constantine's reign. In the latter part of the fourth
century he took precedence even of the magister officiorum, and with
2
CH. II.
## p. 38 (#68) ##############################################
38
The Tribuni et Notarii
>
one brief interruption, he maintained this rank. The requirements for
the office were above all skill in the law and in the art of legal expression.
On all legal questions, whether questions of change in law, or questions
of its administration, the emperor gave his final decision by the voice of
the Quaestor. No body of servants officium) was specially allotted to
him, but the scrinia were at his service. Indeed he may be said to have
been the intermediary between the scrinia and the emperor. His relations
with the heads of the departments a libellis and a memoria, and particularly
with the latter, must have been very close; but their work was prepara-
tory and subordinate to his so far as legal matters were concerned. The
instances in which the magister memoriae succeeded in acting independently
of the Quaestor were exceptional. A share in the appointment to certain
of the lesser military offices was also assigned to the Quaestor, who kept
a record of the names of their holders, which was known as laterculum
minus. In this duty he was assisted by a high official of the scrinium
memoriae, whose title was laterculensis.
There was another body called tribuni et notarii, not attached to the
scrinia, which was of considerable importance. The service of these
functionaries was closely connected with the deliberations of the great
Imperial Council, the Consistorium, which is to be described presently.
They had to see that the proper officers carried out the decisions of the
Council. Their business often brought them into close and confidential
relation with the emperor himself. The officer at the head is primicerius
(literally, one whose name is written first on a wax tablet-primâ cerâ).
The title is given to many officers serving in other departments and
indicates usually, but not always, high rank. This particular primicerius
ranked even higher than the chiefs of the scrinia and the castrensis sacri
palatii. According to the Notitia he has “cognizance of all dignities
and administrative offices both military and civil. ” He kept the great
list known as laterculum maius, in which were comprised not only the
actual tenants of the greater offices, but forms for their appointment,
schedules of their duties, and even a catalogue of the different sections
of the army and their stations, including the scholae which served as
imperial guards.
The reorganisation of Finance brought into existence a host of
officials who either bore new names or old titles to which new duties
had been assigned. The great and complex system of taxation initiated
by Diocletian and carried further by his successors can here be only
sketched in broad outline. Although, like all the institutions of the
new monarchy, the scheme of taxation had its roots in the past, the new
development in its completed form stands in such marked contrast to old
conditions, that there is not much to be gained by detailed references to
the earlier Empire. Before Diocletian's time the old aerarium Saturni
had ceased to be of imperial importance, and the aerarium militare of
Augustus had disappeared. The general census of Roman citizens,
## p. 39 (#69) ##############################################
Financial Changes
39
carried out at Rome, is not heard of after Vespasian's time. Of the
ancient revenues of the State very many were swept away by Diocletian's
reform, even the most productive of all, the five per cent. tax on inherited
property (vicesima hereditatum) by which Augustus had subjected Roman
citizens in general to taxation. The separate provincial census, of which
in Gaul, for example, we hear much during the early Empire, was
rendered unnecessary. The great and powerful societates publicanorum
had dwindled away, though publicani were still employed for some
purposes. Direct collection of revenue had gradually taken the place
of the system of farming. Where any traces of the old system remained,
it was subject to strict official supervision. Before Diocletian the
incidence of taxation on the different parts of the Empire had been most
unequal. The reasons for this lay partly in the extraordinary variety of
the conditions by which in times past the relation of different portions
of the Empire to the central government had been fixed when they first
came under its sway; partly in Republican or Imperial favour or
disfavour as they afterwards affected the burdens to be endured in
different places; partly by the evolution of the municipalities of different
types throughout the Roman dominions. Towns and districts which
once had been immune from imposts or slightly taxed had become
tributary and vice-versa. The reforms instituted by Augustus and
carried further by his successors did something towards securing uni-
formity, but many diversities continued to exist. Some of these were
produced by the gift of immunitas which was bestowed on many civic
communities scattered over the Empire. Without this gift even com-
munities of Roman citizens were not exempt from the taxation which
marked off the provinces from Italy.
In order to understand the purpose of Diocletian's changes in the
taxation of the Empire, it is necessary to consider the struggle which he
and Constantine made to reform the imperial coinage. The difficult
task of explaining with exactness the utter demoralisation of the currency
at the moment when Diocletian ascended the throne cannot be here
attempted. Only a few outstanding features can be delineated. The
political importance of sound currency has never been more conspicuously
shewn than in the century which followed on the death of Commodus
(A. D. 180). Augustus had given a stability to the Roman coinage which
it had never before possessed. But he imposed no uniform system on
the whole of his dominions. Gold (with one slight exception) he
allowed none to mint but himself. But copper he left in the hands of the
Senate. Silver he coined himself, while he permitted many local mints
to strike pieces in that metal also as well as in copper. Subsequent
history extinguished local diversities and brought about by gradual
steps a general system which was not attained till the fourth century.
Aurelian deprived the Senate of the power which Augustus had left it.
Although the imperial coins underwent a certain amount of deprecia-
CH. II.
## p. 40 (#70) ##############################################
40
Financial Changes
tion between the time of Augustus and that of the Severi, it was not such
as to throw out of gear the taxation and the commerce of the Empire.
But with Caracalla a rapid decline set in, and by the time of Aurelian
the disorganisation had gone so far that practically gold and silver were
demonetised, and copper became the standard medium of exchange.
The principal coin that professed to be silver had come to contain no
more than five per cent. of that metal, and this proportion sank
afterwards to two per cent. What a government gains by making its
payments in corrupted coin is always far more than lost in the revenue
which it receives. The debasement of the coinage means a lightening
of taxation, and it is never possible to enhance the nominal amount
receivable by the exchequer so as to keep pace with the depreciation.
The effect of this in the Roman Empire was greater than it would have
been at an earlier time, since there is reason to believe that much of the
revenue formerly payable in kind had been transmuted into money.
A measure of Aurelian had the effect of multiplying by eight such taxes
as were to be paid in coin. As the chief (professing) silver coin had
twenty years earlier contained eight times as much silver as it had then
come to contain, he claimed that he was only exacting what was justly
due, but his subjects naturally cried out against his tyranny. No
greater proof of the disorganisation of the whole financial system could
be given than lies in the fact that the treasury issued sackloads ( folles)
of the Antoniani, first coined by Caracalla, which were intended to be
silver, but were now all but base metal only. These folles passed
from hand to hand unopened.
Diocletian's attempts to remove these mischiefs were not altogether
fortunate. He made experiment after experiment, aiming at that
stability of the currency which had, on the whole, prevailed for two
centuries after the reforms of Augustus, but never reaching it. Finally,
discovering that the last change he had made led to general raising of
prices, he issued the celebrated edict of a. d. 301 by which the charges
for all commodities were fixed, the penalty for transgression being
death.
Constantine was forced to handle afresh the tangled problem of the
currency. The task was rendered especially difficult by the fresh
debasement of coinage which was perpetrated by Maxentius while he
was supreme in Italy. It may be said at once that the goal of Diocletian's
efforts was never reached by Constantine. He did indeed alter the
weight of the gold piece, which now received the name of solidus, and it
continued in circulation, practically unchanged, for centuries. But this
gold piece was to all intents and purposes not a coin, for when payments
were made in it, they were reckoned by weight. The solidus was in effect
only a bit of bullion, the fineness of which was conveniently guaranteed
by the imperial stamp. The same is true of Constantine's silver pieces.
The only coins which could be paid and received by their number,
## p. 41 (#71) ##############################################
Assessment of Taxes
41
without weighing, were those contained in the folles, of which mention
was made above, and the word follis was now applied to the individual
coins, as well as to the whole sack. It had proved to be impossible to
restore the monetary system which had prevailed in the first and second
centuries of the Empire. But the tide of innovation was at length stayed,
and this in itself was no small boon.
The line taken by the reform of Diocletian in the scheme of taxation
was partly marked out for him by the anarchy of the third century,
which led to the great debasement of the coinage described above and
to many oppressive exactions of an arbitrary character. The lowering
of the currency had disorganised the whole revenue and expenditure of
the government. Where dues were receivable or stipends payable of a
fixed nominal amount, these had largely lost their value. A natural
consequence was that payments both to be made and to be received
were ordered by Diocletian to be reckoned in the produce of the soil,
and not in coin. During the era of confusion a phrase, indictio, had
come into use to denote a special requisition made upon the pro-
vincials over and above their stated dues. What Diocletian did was
to make what had been irregular into a regular and general impost,
subjecting all provincials to it alike, and abolishing the unequal tributes
of different kinds which had been previously required. The result was
an enormous levelling of taxation throughout the provinces. And to
some extent the immunity of Italy itself was withdrawn. But the sum
to be raised from year to year was not uniform. It depended on an
announcement to which the word indictio was applied, issued by the
emperor for each year. Hence the number of indictiones proclaimed
by an emperor became a convenient means for denoting the years of
his reign.
The assessment of communities and individuals was managed by an
elaborate process. The newly arranged burdens fell on land. The territo-
rium attached to every town was surveyed and the land classified according
to its use for growing grain or producing oil or wine. A certain number
of acres (iugera) of arable land was called a iugum. The number
varied, partly according to the quality of the soil, which was roughly
graded, partly according to the province in which it was situated. In
the case of oil, the taxable unit was often arrived at by counting the
number of olive trees; and this was sometimes the case with vines.
The iugum was however supposed to be fixed in accordance with the
limits of one man's labour, and therefore caput (person) and iugum, from
the point of view of revenue, became convertible terms. But men and
women and slaves and cattle were taxed separately, and in addition to
the tax on the land. Each man or slave on a farm counted as one
caput and each woman as half a caput. A certain number of cattle
constituted also a iugum and thus there was no need to divide up the
pasture lands as the arable lands were divided. Meadows were rated for
OH. II.
## p. 42 (#72) ##############################################
42
Other Imposts
a
the supply of fodder. The total requirements of the government were
stated in the indictio, and every community had to contribute in
accordance with the number of taxable units which the survey had
disclosed. All the produce which the taxpayers handed over was stored
in great government barns (horrea).
The system of collection, though decentralised, was bad. The
decurions or senators of each town, or the ten chief men of each town
(decemprimi) were responsible for handing over to the government all
that was due. A revision took place every five years, and was generally
carried through with much unfairness and oppression of the poorer
landholders. Apparently a fresh survey was not made, but evidence
taken by the town-officers in the town itself. From 312 onwards we
find a fifteen-year indiction-period, which came to be largely used as a
chronological instrument. It would seem that every fifteenth year a
re-allotment of taxes was made which was based on actual survey. But
evidence for this is scanty. An imperial revenue officer called censitor
was restricted to the duty of receiving the dues from a community as
a whole. Outside imperial officers were called in to assist in the collection
of dues from recalcitrant taxpayers. This happened at first occasionally,
then regularly. Naturally another door was thus opened to oppression,
from which the rich would manage to escape more lightly than the poor.
The special arrangement made by Diocletian for Italy will be explained
later; also the exemptions accorded to privileged classes of individuals.
Along with the payment of government dues in kind went the
payment of stipends in kind. A certain amount of corn, wine, meat,
and other necessaries, grouped together, constituted a unit to which the
name annona was applied, and salaries, military and civil, were largely
calculated in annonae. Where allowance was made for horses, the amount
granted for each was called capitum. When stability was in some degree
secured for the currency, these annonae were again expressed in money,
by a valuation called adaeratio. The government, to be on safety's side,
of course exacted as a rule more produce from the soil than was needed
for use, and the excess was turned into money, naturally at low prices.
In addition to the burdens on the land, many other imposts were
levied. The maintenance of the Post Service along the main roads was
most oppressive. In the towns every trade was taxed, the contribution
bearing the name of lustralis collatio or chrysargyrum. The customs
dues at the ports and transit dues at the frontier were maintained.
Revenues were derived from government monopolies in mines, forests,
salt factories, and other possessions. Some of the old Republican
imposts, such as the tax on manumitted slaves, still survived. Persons
of distinction were subject to special exactions. Imperial senators paid
several dues, especially the so-called aurum oblaticium, which like many
inevitable forms of taxation, professed in its name to be a free-will
offering.
