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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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BOOK I - THE VISIGOTHIC INVASIONCHAPTER XII.INTERNAL ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE
The death of Theodosius was the prelude to momentous changes in the whole
Roman world. Before proceeding to describe them, it will be convenient to give
some faint outline of the internal organization of the Empire during the fourth
century. Fragmentary and imperfect the sketch must necessarily be. Materials
for it are scanty, and for some unknown reason the attention of scholars has
been little turned to the history of Roman administration between Constantine
and Justinian. Even the patient German has scarcely yet fully applied the
microscope of his historical research to the institutions of the sinking
Empire. But the attempt must be made, though the result may be a confession of
ignorance on many points rather than a series of defined and well-rounded statements
such as readers naturally prefer.
The Emperor, that still majestic figure who stood at
the head of the Roman state, how shall we think of him? The old idea that he
was merely the most influential of Roman citizens, that idea which Augustus and
even Tiberius strove to preserve, must be considered as quite obsolete since
the changes introduced by Diocletian and Constantine. All the Greek half of the
Empire calls him without compunction BasILEUs (King), and no Roman, though he may not use the actual word Rex in speaking of him, can still cheat
himself with the thought that the Imperator is one whit less of an absolute
sovereign than Tullus or Tarquin. Few things impress one with a more vivid
conception of his power than the matter-of-fact way in which a historian like
Zosimus speaks of the imperial dignity as “the Lordship of the Universe”. In
the Directory of the Empire, the Chamberlain, the Almoner, the Marshal, are
described as having charge of “the Sacred Cubicle”, “the Sacred Charities”, and
“the Sacred Palace”. The characters which the imperial hand deigns to trace in
purple ink upon the parchment scroll are “the Sacred Letters”. When the august
scribe wishes to describe his own personality he speaks with charming modesty
of “Our Clemency” or “My Eternity”. Nay, in some place he speaks of his own
presents to his courtiers as “gifts from heaven”.
If it were possible to penetrate into the secret
thoughts of those long-vanished wearers of the purple, one would eagerly desire
to know under what aspect the imperial deification presented itself to their
minds. Many a one had watched the failing intellect and the increasing bodily
infirmities of the preceding Emperor. In some instances a timely dose of
poison, or a judicious arrangement of the bed-clothes over his mouth, had
hastened his departure from a world in which his presence was no longer
convenient, yet in the very first proclamation of the new ruler to the soldiery
he would speak of his predecessor as “God Augustus” or “God Tiberius”, “God
Claudius” or “God Commodus”, and the court poets would, as we have seen,
describe in unfaltering phrase his translation to the spheres. The homely
common sense of Vespasian seems to have perceived the humour of the thing. At
the first onset of his disease he said, “If I am not mistaken I am in the way
to become a god”. But Caligula accepted his divinity much more seriously. He
averred that the goddess Luna visited him nightly in bodily shape, and he
called upon his courtier Vitellius (the same who was afterwards Emperor) to
vouch for the fact. Vitellius, with his eyes bent towards the ground, with
folded hands, in a thin and trembling voice, replied, “My lord, you gods alone
are privileged to look upon the faces of your fellow-deities”. And Caligula
evidently received the answer as a matter of course, and not a smile probably
crossed the faces of the bystanders—for to smile at Caligula’s godhead would
have been to die.
But it may be said that no fair argument can be drawn
from the case of a confessed madman like Caligula. Let us hear then how
Theodosius, the statesman, the Christian, the sound theologian, permitted
himself to be addressed in the Panegyric of Pacatus. The latter is praising him
for the accuracy with which he always discharges his promises of future favour
to his courtiers. “Do you think, O Emperor, that I wish to praise only your
generosity? No, I marvel also at your memory. For which of the great men of
old, Hortensius, Lucullus, or Caesar, had so ready a power of recollection as that
sacred mind of yours, which gives up that has been entrusted to it at the
very place and time which you have ordered beforehand. Is it that you remind
yourself? or, as the Fates are said to assist with their tablets that God
who is the partner in your majesty, so does some divine power serve your
bidding, which writes down and in due time suggests to your memory the promises
which you have made?”. Such a sentence, gravely premeditated and uttered
without reproof in the presence of Theodosius, is surely not less extraordinary
than the impromptu answer of Vitellius.
How was this omnipotent Emperor, this God upon earth,
selected from the crowd of ordinary mortals around him? Hereditary descent was
not the title, though we have already met with many instances in which it
asserted itself. The Empire never, at any rate during the period with which we
are concerned, lost its strictly elective character. Who then were the
electors? Imagine the endless discussions on this point which would take place
in any modern European state, the elaborate machinery by which in Venice, in
Germany, in the United States, even in Poland, the election of the Chief of the
Executive has been accomplished. Of all this there is not a trace in the Roman
Empire. In old days, when the Republic was still standing, the army, after an
especially brilliant victory, gathered around the praetor or proconsul who
commanded them, and with shouts of triumph, while they clashed their spears
upon their shields, saluted him Imperator. That tumultuary proceeding
seems to have been the type of every election of a Roman Emperor. The successor
might have been absolutely fixed upon beforehand, as in the case of Tiberius;
he might follow in the strict line of hereditary descent as Titus followed
Vespasian and Domitian Titus; the choice might even have been, as in the case
of the Emperor Tacitus, formally conceded by the soldiery to the senate; but in
any case the presentation of the new sovereign to the legions, and their
acclamation welcoming him as Imperator, seems to have been the decisive moment
of the commencement of his reign.
This fact explains the anxiety of every Emperor who
had a son to have him associated with himself in his own lifetime. By
presenting that son to the legions, as Valentinian presented Gratian at Amiens
to the army of Gaul, this delicate and critical event of the Acclamation was
accomplished, while he still had all his father's influence at his back, and
being an Augustus already, his reign might, if all went well and no
rival claimant to the favour of the legions arose, be quietly prolonged without
any solution of continuity at his father’s death.
In a great number of cases such an attempt to settle
the succession beforehand, whether in favour of a real or an adopted son, was
successful. In many, as we all know, it failed, some other legions, often in a
distant part of the Empire, having, when the news of the death of the old
Emperor arrived, acclaimed their favourite officer as Imperator, arrayed him
with the purple, and eventually carried him, shoulder-high, into the chambers
of the Palatine. This, it may be said, was mutiny and insurrection, but when
one considers the essentially unconstitutional and tumultuary character of the
election of every Emperor, one is almost ready to say that in this case at
least success was the only test of legality. The lawful Imperator was the man
who either succeeded to the throne without opposition, or who made good his
pretensions by the sword. The usurper was a general who having been ‘acclaimed’
by the troops was afterwards defeated in battle.
A parallel might possibly be drawn between the
election of a Roman Emperor and that of his yet mightier successor the Roman
Pontiff. It is well known to how fluctuating and ill-defined an electorate the
choice of a new bishop of Rome was entrusted until, in the eleventh century, it
was transferred to the College of Cardinals. And although the lengthy
deliberations of the old men who are now immured in the Vatican during a Papal
Interregnum might seem as little as possible to resemble the cheers uttered by
the rough voices of the Roman legionaries, there is still among their
traditions the possibility of electing a Pope by ‘Adoration’, a rapid and
summary process, with no set speeches or counting of votes, which may possibly
have been suggested by the remembrance of the equally impulsive movement
whereby, in theory at least, the Roman army chose its Emperor.
The brothers, sisters, and children of the Emperor,
bore the title of Nobilissimus, and naturally took precedence of the
rest of the brilliant official hierarchy which surrounded his throne. Of the
members of this hierarchy it is usual to speak as Nobles, and there does not
seem any reason for departing from the customary practice if it is clearly
understood by the reader that hereditary dignity, or in the strict sense of the
term ‘noble blood’, did not form part of the idea of an aristocracy in Imperial
Rome. Office ennobled the actual holder. No doubt the son of a Prefect had a
greater chance of attaining to office than the son of a shopkeeper. In right of
this chance he enjoyed a certain social pre-eminence, but he had no claim by
inheritance to a seat in the Senate, or to any other share in the government of
the State. In thinking of the aristocracy of the Empire we must entirely
unfeudalize our minds. The Mandarins of China or the Pachas of Turkey furnish
probably safer analogies than any which could be drawn from our own hereditary
House of Peers.
Of the many grades into which this official hierarchy
was divided, three only need here attract our attention :
1. The Illustres.
2. The Spectabiles.
3. Clarissimi.
Our own titles of distinction are for the most part so
interwoven with ideas drawn from hereditary descent that it is impossible to
find any precise equivalents to these designations. "His Grace the
Duke", "The Most Noble the Marquis", are out of court at once.
But as extremely rough approximations to the true idea, the reader may perhaps
be safe in accepting the following equations :
Illustris = The Right Honourable.
Spectabilis = The Honourable.
Clarissimus = The Worshipful.
If we describe the functions of the different classes
we shall get a little nearer to a true analogy, but parliamentary institutions
and local self-government will still prevent that analogy from being exact.
With these limitations we may say that
The Cabinet
ministers = the Illustres
Heads of
Department, Lords Lieutenant of Counties, Generals and Admirals = the Spectabiles
The Governors
of our smaller Colonies, Colonels and Captains in the Navy = the Clarissimi
The Illustres, who alone need be described with any
detail, were twenty-eight in number, thirteen for the West and fifteen for the
East, and may be thus classified. For the sake of clearness we will confine our
attention to the thirteen Cabinet Ministers of the West. The only difference
worth noticing is that there were five Magistri Militum for the East as
compared to three in the West.
Praetorian Prefect
1. In each of the four great compartments into which
Diocletian had divided the Roman world, the Praefectus-Praetorio was the
greatest man after the Emperor. To him the great majority of the laws were
addressed, and he was charged to see to their execution. He held in his hand
the whole network of provincial administration, and was the ultimate referee,
under the Emperor, in all cases of dispute between province and province, or
municipality and municipality. In all the processes of civil and criminal law his
was (still under the Emperor) the final court of appeal. The idea of his office
seems to have been that as the Emperor was the head, so he was the hand to
execute what the head had decreed. What Joseph was to Pharaoh when the Lord of
Egypt said to him "Only in the throne will I be greater than thou",
what the Grand Vizier is now to the Sultan of the Ottomans, that,
substantially, the Praetorian Prefect was to the Augustus. The nearest approach
which, under our own political system, we can make to a counter-part of his
office, is to call him a Prime Minister plus a Supreme Court of Appeal.
The history of his title is a curious one. In the very
early days of Rome, before even Consuls had a being, the two chief magistrates
of the Republic bore the title of Praetors. Some remembrance of this fact
lingering in the speech of the people gave always to the term Praetorium (the
Praetor's house) a peculiar majesty, and caused it to be used as the equivalent
of palace. So in the well-known passages of the New Testament, the palace of
Pilate the Governor at Jerusalem, of Herod the King at Caesarea, of Nero the
Emperor at Rome, are all called the Praetorium. From the palace the
troops who surrounded the person of the Emperor took their well-known name the Praetorian
Guard. Under Augustus the cohorts composing this force, and amounting
apparently to 9,000 or 10,000 men, were scattered over various positions in the
city of Rome. In the reign of Tiberius, on pretence of keeping them under
stricter discipline, they were collected into one camp on the north-east of the
city. The author of this change was the notorious Sejanus, our first and most
conspicuous example of a Prefect of the Praetorians who made himself
all-powerful in the state. The fall of Sejanus did not bring with it any great
diminution of the power of the new functionary. As the Praetorians were the
frequent, almost the recognized, creators of a new Emperor, it was natural that
their commanding officer should be a leading personage in the state, as natural
(if another English analogy may be allowed) as that the Leader of the House of
Commons should be the First Minister of the Crown. Still it is strange to find
the Praetorian Prefect becoming more and more the ultimate judge of appeal in
all civil and criminal cases, and his office held in the golden age of the
Empire, the second century, by the most eminent lawyers of the day.
This part of his functions survived. When Constantine
at length abated the long-standing purely nuisance of the Praetorian
Guards—setting an example which was unconsciously followed by another ruler of
Constantinople, Sultan Mahmoud, in his suppression of the Janissaries—he
preserved the Praetorian Prefect, and, as we have already seen, gave him a
position of pre-eminent dignity in the civil and judicial administration of the
Empire. But of military functions he was now entirely deprived, and thus this
officer who had risen into importance in the state solely as the most
conspicuous Guardsman about the court was now permitted to do almost anything
that he pleased in the Empire so long as he in no way touched soldiering.
This strong line of demarcation drawn between civil
and military functions was one of the most important features of the change in
the government introduced by Diocletian and Constantine. It was alien to the
spirit of the old Roman Republic, whose generals were all judges and
revenue-officers as well as soldiers; but it consolidated for a time the fabric
even of the Western Empire, and it created that wonderful bureaucratic machine
which, more than any other single cause, prolonged for ten centuries the
existence of the Empire of Byzantium.
On the important question how long the Praefectus
Praetorio continued in office there is an inexplicable silence among most
ancient and modern authorities; but the following statement made by a learned
and laborious German legist may probably be relied upon with safety. With
reference to the tenure of office [of all the imperial functionaries]
Augustus's plan of continuing them in power for an indefinite series of years
had [in the fourth century] been abandoned, and a return had been made to the
fundamental principle of the Republic that all offices were annual in
their duration : an arrangement by which the cause of good administration was
not benefited, but which served to break the power of the provincial governors.
The prolongation of the term of office depended entirely on the favor of the
Emperor. Only the Praetorian Prefects were nominated for an indefinite time,
albeit they seldom maintained themselves in power Longer than one year.
Prefect of the city.
2. Praefectus Urbis. The Prefects of the two
great capitals of the Empire seem to have been theoretically the equals in rank
of the Praetorian Prefects, and though their power extended over a more
circumstantial area, the splendour of their office was quite as great. When the
Prefect of Rome drove through the streets of the city he was drawn by four
horses richly adorned with silver trappings and harnessed to the stately carpentum. This degree of state was apparently permitted to no other official save
only to the Praetorian Prefects. He convened the Senate, spoke first in that
august assembly and acted as the channel of communication between it and the
Emperor. The police of Rome, the anxious task of the gratuitous distribution of
corn among the poorer inhabitants, the aqueducts, the baths, the objects of art
in the streets and squares of the city, were all under his general supervision,
though each department had a subordinate Prefect, a Count or a Curator as its own especial head. The Prefect of Rome had also civil and criminal
jurisdiction extending, in the time of Augustus, over the city itself and an
area of a hundred miles radius round it, and at a later period over a much
wider territory. As the especial champion of the privileges of the Senate he
was the judge in all cases where the life or property of a senator was at
stake. All lawsuits also and prosecutions arising out of the relation of master
and slave, patron and freedman, father and son, and thus involving that
peculiar sentiment which the Romans called pietas (dutiful affection),
came by a curious prerogative before the Praefectus Urbis. At a later period of
this history we shall make acquaintance with a man holding this exalted
position, and shall learn from his private correspondence some of its glories
and anxieties.
Master of the Offices
3. Magister Officiorum. Thus far we have been
concerned with the government of separate portions of the Empire, for both the
Praetorian Prefect and the Praefectus Urbis were somewhat like what we should
call Lords Lieutenant. Now we come to the central authority, the staff
officers, so to speak, of the civil administration. The chief of these was the Master
of the Offices. He was supreme in the audience-chamber of the sovereign.
All dispatches from subordinate governors passed through his hands, all
embassies from foreign powers were introduced by him. The secretaries of the
Imperial cabinet, the guards in immediate attendance on the Imperial person,
were amenable to his authority. The elaborate and expensive service of the public
posts, and, by a less intelligible combination of duties, the great armor
manufactories and arsenals of the Empire, were under his oversight. He was thus
a great officer of the household, but he was also chief of the Imperial bureau, and it is easy to see how enormous an influence he could exercise, especially
under an indolent sovereign, over the conduct both of foreign and domestic
affairs. Our constitutional system offers no precise analogy to his position,
but if we imagine the offices of the various principal Secretaries of State
again held, as in the days of the Tudors, by one man, and that man also
discharging the important though little noticed duties of Private Secretary to
the Queen, we shall not perhaps be very far from an adequate idea of the functions
of the Illustrious Master of the Offices.
(These manufactories in Italy were as follows :—1- of
arrows at Concordia (between Venice and Udine; 2, 3- of shields at Verona and
Cremona; 4 of breast-plates at Mantua ; 5- of bows at Ticinum (Pavia); 6- of
broadswords at Lucca).
Quaestor.
4. The Quaestor had the care of preparing the
Imperial speeches, and was responsible for the language of the laws. He would
probably be generally a professed rhetorican, or at any rate a man of some note
in the world of letters. His office is not unlike that of the Chancellor of a
mediaeval monarch.
Count of the Sacred Largesses
5. Comes Sacrarum Largitionum. The Count who
had charge of the Sacred (i.e. Imperial) Bounty, should have been by his title
simply the Grand Almoner of the Empire, and thus would seem to require a place
among the officers of the household. In practice however the minister who took
charge of the Imperial largesses had to find ways and means for every other
form of Imperial expenditure; and now that the Emperor had become the State,
and the Privy Purse (Fiscus) had practically become synonymous with the
National Treasury (Aerarium) the House Steward of the Sovereign was the Finance
Minister of the State. The Count of the Sacred Largesses was therefore in fact
the Chancellor of Exchequer of the Empire. To him all the collectors of taxes
in the smaller divisions of the realm (comites largitionum per omnes
diceceses) were subordinate. The mines, the mints, the linen factories, the
purple dye-houses, were under his control. And as some part of the Imperial
revenue was drawn from duties on the transport of goods by sea, the Count of
the Sacred Largesses was supposed to have a general superintendence of private
commerce—though more, it must be feared, with a view to fleece than to foster
it.
Masters of Horse and Foot
6,7,8. Magister Peditum in Praesenti (or Praesentalis);
Magister Equitum; Magister Equitum per Gallias.When Constantine
deprived the Praetorian Prefect of his military command, and made of him the
first civil minister of the state, he lodged the leadership of the troops in
the hands of a new officer to whom he gave the title of Master. Still bent on
prosecuting to the utmost his policy of division of powers, he gave to one
officer the command of the infantry—always far the most important portion of a
Roman army—with the title of Magister Peditum; to another the command of
the cavalry with the title Magister Equitum. It is possible that in
these arrangements there was a retrospective glance to the earliest days of the
Republic, when the appointment of a Dictator, that absolute lord of the legions
was always accompanied by the appointment of a Master of the Horse. But
whatever the constitutional warrant for the practice, it seems difficult to
suppose that such a division in the supreme command could have worked
successfully. And in fact we often find, in the period that we are now
considering, the two offices united under the title Magister utriusque
Militiae (Master of both kinds of soldiery.)
Under the sons of Constantine the number of these commanders-in-chief
was increased, and under Theodosius it was increased again, partly in order to
meet the stress of barbarian warfare on the frontiers, partly in order that the
pride or jealousy of each Emperor might be flattered or soothed by having his own
Magister in attendance at his court. But in the East and West the Master of the
Foot or Horse, who commanded the troops nearest to the Imperial residence, was
called the Master in the Presence (in Praesenti or Praesentalis);
thus with bated breath, in Latin which would have been unintelligible to
Cicero, were courtiers beginning to talk of that portion of the atmosphere
which was made sacred by the presence of the Imperial Majesty. In addition, at
the time when the Notitia was compiled, Gaul, the Orient, Thrace, and
Illyricum had each its Magister of one or both divisions of the army.
It will be well here to put on record the unfavorable
opinion of the historian Zosimus with reference to the institution of these
offices. The view generally adopted, and that which has been submitted to the
reader, is that the separation between the civil and the military functions was
a wise measure. Zosimus, however, is of a different opinion, and he holds that
Constantine, who first instituted the offices of Magister Equitum and Magister
Peditum, and Theodosius, who so largely increased the number of these
officers, both did ill service to the state. The charge against the second
Emperor seems more reasonable than that brought against the first; but here are
the words of the indictment :—“Having thus divided the rule of the Prefect
[into the four Prefectures], Constantine studied how to lessen his power in
other ways. For whereas the soldiers were under the orders not only of
centurions and tribunes, but also of the so-called duces, who exercised
the office of general in each district, Constantine appointed Magistri, one
of the cavalry, and another of the infantry, to whom he transferred the duty of
stationing the troops and the punishment of military offences, and at the same
time he deprived the Prefects of this prerogative. A measure this which was
equally pernicious in peace and war, as I will proceed to show. So long as the
Prefects were collecting the revenues from all quarters by means of their
subordinates, and defraying out of them the expenses of the army, while they
also had the power of punishing the men as they thought fit for all offences
against discipline, so long the soldiers, remembering that he who supplied them
with their rations was also the man who would come down upon them if they
offended, did not dare to transgress, lest they should find their supplies
stopped and themselves promptly chastised. But now that one man is responsible
for the commissariat and another man is their professional superior, they act
in all things according to their own will and pleasure, to say nothing of the
fact that the greater part of the money allotted to the provisioning of the
troops goes into the pockets of the general and his staff”.
“Meanwhile the Emperor Theodosius, who was residing at
Thessalonica, showed much affability to all with whom he came in contact, but
his luxury and neglect of state affairs soon became proverbial. He threw all
the previously existing offices into confusion, and made the commanders of the
army more numerous than before. For whereas there was before one Master of the
Horse and one of the Foot, now he distributed these offices among more than
five persons. Thereby he increased the public burdens (for each of these five
or more commanders-in-chief had the same allowances as one of the two had
before), and he handed over his soldiers to the avarice of this increased
number of generals. For as each of these new Magistri thought himself bound to
make as much out of his office as a Magister had made before when there were
only two of them, there was no way to do it but by jobbing the food supplied to
the soldiers. And not only so, but he created Lieutenants of Cavalry and
Captains and Brigadiers in such numbers that he left two or three times the
number that he found, while the privates, of all the money that was assigned to
them, out of the public chest, received nothing”.
Super-intendent of the Sacred Bed-Chambers
9. Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi. We now come to a
branch of administration which, as statesmanship declined, became surrounded
with more and more awful importance, the Imperial, or in the language of the
day the Sacred, Household. The fortunate eunuch who attained to the dignity of
Superintendent of the Sacred Bed-chamber, took rank in the year 384 immediately
after the other Illustres. But a solemn edict, issued in 422 by the grandson
and namesake of the great Theodosius, ordained that “when the nobles of the
Empire shall be admitted to adore our Serenity, the Superintendent of the
Sacred Bed-chamber shall be entitled to the same rank with the Praetorian and
Urban Prefects and the Masters of the Army”; in front, that is to say, of the
humbler departments of Law and Finance, represented by the Master of the Offices,
the Quaestor, and the Count of the Sacred Largesses. The wardrobe of the
sovereign, the gold plate, the arrangement of the Imperial meal, the spreading
of the sacred couch, the government of the corps of brilliantly attired pages,
the posting of the thirty silentiarii who, in helmet and cuirass,
standing before the second veil, guarded the slumbers of the sovereign, these
were the momentous responsibilities which required the undivided attention of a
Cabinet Minister of the Roman Empire.
Count of the Privated Domains
10. The Comes Rerum Privatarum, whom we may compare to our Commissioners of Woods and Forests, held an office which must sometimes have been not easily distinguishable from that of the Count of Sacred Largesses. Only, while the latter officer handled the whole revenue raised by taxation, the former was especially charged with the administration of the Imperial Domain. In the language of our law he dealt with realty rather than personalty. The vast estates belonging to the Emperor, concentrated in the city, or scattered over all the provinces of the West, were administered under his direction. He had to see that they were let to suitable tenants, to guard against the usurpation of "squatters"; to keep a watch upon the Superintendents of the Imperial Stables, the Sheepmasters, the Foresters. A corps of porters, who were perhaps originally organized in order to convey to the palace the various delicacies grown on the domains of the Emperor, were also placed under his control. And lastly, as one of his chief subordinates was styled Count of the Private Largesses, he must have had charge of outgoings as well as incomings, and must have fulfilled some of the duties which now devolve on the Keeper of the Privy Purse. Count of the Domestics
11, 12. Comes Domesticorum Equitum; Comes
Domesticorum Peditum. These officers (who are sometimes called "Counts
of the Domestics") commanded the various divisions of the household
troops, known by the names of Domestici and Protectores, and thus together
replaced the Praetorian Prefect of the earlier days of the Empire. The Notitia fails to inform us what number of troops were subject to their orders.
Theoretically their duties would not greatly differ from those of a Colonel in
the Guards. Practically the Count of the Domestics often intervened with a most
decisive voice in the deliberations respecting the choice of a candidate when a
vacancy occurred upon the Imperial throne.
The Illustrious Ministers, whose offices have now been
described, formed the nucleus of the Consistorium, the council with
which the Emperor was accustomed, but of course in no way bound, to consult
upon all great matters of state. Such a Consistory was probably held at Antioch
when Valens was deliberating concerning the admission of the Visigoths into the
Empire.
It will not be needful to describe the functions of
the Spectabiles and the Clarissimi with any minuteness of detail.
For the most part their offices were mere copies of the offices of the
Illustres on a smaller and provincial scale. In order however to make clear the
gradations of the Imperial hierarchy, a few words must be given to the new
territorial divisions introduced by Diocletian. In the first ages of the
Empire, the provinces were the only subordinate division known. Now the size of
these was greatly reduced (as an unfriendly critic says, “the provinces were
cut up into bit”), and two divisions, the Prefecture and the Diocese, were
introduced above them.
Of the Prefectures, as has already been explained,
there were four, each, let us say, about as large as the European Empire of
Charles the Fifth.
Of the Dioceses there were thirteen. We must empty our
minds of all ecclesiastical associations connected with this word, associations
which would pin us down to far too small an area. For practical purposes it
will be sufficient to consider an Imperial Diocese as the equivalent of a
country.
The Provinces, 116 in number, were, as a rule, somewhat
larger than a French province of average size. Many of the frontier still
survive, especially in ecclesiastical geography. Where the lines are not the
same, how infinitely various have been the causes of change. The course of
trade, the conflict of creeds, war and love, crusades and tournaments, and the
whole romance of the Middle Ages, might all be illustrated by the lecturer who
should take for his text the map of Europe as divided by Constantine and as it
was marked out at the time of the Reformation.
A glance at the following table will bring the chief
divisions of the Empire in the fourth century clearly
The separation between the civil and military
functions was carried down through all the divisions and subdivisions of the
Empire, and the following may be taken as the type of the gradations of rank
thus produced :
The subordination of the military offices was not
quite so regular as that of the civil. Some of the provinces of the interior
scarcely required an army at all, while on an exposed frontier two or three
large armies might be assembled. But the general idea of the subordination of
offices is that shown above. To make this point quite clear let us examine the
arrangement of Imperial functionaries in the two ‘dioceses’ with which we have
most concern, Britain and Italy.
That part of Britain which was subject nitrated to the
Romans (the Dioecesis Britanniarum) was divided into five provinces:
1. Britannia Prima = the country south of the Thames
and Bristol Channel
2. Britannia Secunda=Wales
3. Flavia Caesariensis = the Midland and Eastern
Counties.
4. Maxima Caesariensis = the country between Humber
and Tyne.
5. Valentia = the country between Tyne and Frith of
Forth.
The first two provinces were governed by (perfectissimi)
Praesides, the last three by (clarissimi) Consulares. This slight difference in
dignity is perhaps due to the fact that (at any rate) Nos. 4 and 5 were more
exposed to hostile invasion. The civil authority may have been therefore
pitched a note higher in order to accord with the prominence of the military
officers.
The chief military leaders were—
1. The Count of Britain (Comes Britanniae).
2. The Count of the Saxon shore (Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam),
who from his nine strong castles dotted along the coast, from Yarmouth to
Shoreham, was bound to watch the ever-recurring Saxon pirates.
3. The Duke of the Britains, whose head-quarters were probably at York,
and who had under his control the Sixth Legion stationed in that city, and
various detachments of auxiliary troops posted along the line of the wall in
Northumberland (per lineam Valli), and in the stations upon the great
Roman roads through Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumberland. It is not expressly
stated that these last two officers were subject to the control of the first,
the Count of Britain, but we may reasonably infer that they were so from the
fact that all the details of the troops subject to them are given with great
minuteness, while of him it is only said, ‘Under the control of the Spectabilis
the Count of Britain is the Province of Britain’.
In civil matters there can be no doubt that the
VICARIUS was supreme, and he probably administered his diocese from the city of
Augusta, which the ancients called Lundinium.
In financial matters we find an Accountant for the
receipts of Britain (Rationalis Summarum Britanniarum), and a Superintendent
of the Treasury at Augusta (Praepositus thesaurorum Augustensium), who
appear to owe no obedience to the VICARIUS, but are directly subordinate to the
Count of the Sacred Largesses-COMES SACRARUM LARITIONEM- (at Rome or Ravenna).
Similarly the Accountant of the Emperor's private estate in Britain (Rationalis
rei privatae per Britannias) reports himself immediately to the Illustrious
the COMES RERUM PRIVATARUM.
This illustration, drawn from the Roman government of
Britain in the fourth century, may help us to understand the similar details
which are given of the civil and military administration of Italy. The system
is here, however, somewhat complicated by the extraordinary powers vested, as
we have before seen, in the Prefect of the city - PREFECTUS URBIS. Though the
geographical limits of his power are not expressly indicated in the Notitia,
we find that his subordinate VICARIUS, who is not likely to have had a wider
jurisdiction than himself, controlled the vicarius administration of seven provinces
in Italy, besides the three islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. These
seven provinces in fact made up the whole of Italy south of Ancona on the east
coast, and Spezia on the west; and thus, little beside the valley of the Po and
the countries at the foot of the Alps was left to the somewhat hardly-treated
official who bore the high-sounding title of Spectabilis Vicarius Italiae. To indemnify him,—but in
those days of trouble with the heaving nations of Germany the charge must have
brought more toil than profit,—he superintended the government of the Raetias,
provinces which reached from the Alps to the Danube, and of which Coire and
Augsburg were the respective capitals.
Of high military officers in Italy we read very little
in the Notitia, doubtless because the great masters of the horse and foot in
Praesenti overshadowed all other commanding officers in the near
neighborhood of the court. There is a Count of Italy -COMES ITALIAE- whose duty
it was to look after the defense of the country close round the bases of the
Alps, and whose charge is illustrated in the effigy at the head of the chapter
by two turreted fortresses climbing at an impossible angle up two
dolomitic-like mountain peaks.
The DUX RAETIAE also is mentioned, who with twenty-one
detachments of auxiliary troops—among them a cohort of Britons stationed near
to Ratisbon—held the posts on the Danube and by Lake Constance and in the
fastnesses of the Tyrol. Of other military leaders in the diocese of Italy we
have no express mention. They doubtless all formed part of the machine of the
legions, and were all under the immediate orders of the Masters of the
Soldiery.
Reviewing now this great civil and military hierarchy,
which was invented by Diocletian, perfected by Constantine, and still majestic
under Theodosius, we see at once how many titles, and through them how many
ideas, modern European civilization has borrowed from that subtly elaborated
world of graduated splendor. The Duke and the Count of modern Europe—what are
they but the Generals and Companions (Duces and Comites) of a Roman province?
Why or when they changed places, the Duke climbing up into such unquestioned
pre-eminence over his former superior the Count, I know not, nor yet by what
process it was discovered that the latter was the precise equivalent of the
Scandinavian Jarl. The Prefects of France are a closer reproduction both
of the name and of the centralized authority of the Praefecti Praetorio of the Empire. Even the lowest official, who has been here named, the Corrector
of a province, survives to this day in the Spanish Corregidor. In
ecclesiastical affairs the same descent exhibits itself. The Pope, who took his
own title of Pontifex Maximus from Caesar, and named his legates after Caesar's
lieutenants, now sits surrounded by his purple-robed councilors to hold what he
calls, after Constantine, his Consistory. Diocese and Vicar are words which
have also survived in the service of the Church, both, it may be said, with
lessened dignity; yet not altogether so, for if the Vicarius of Britain or
Africa was greater than the modern Vicar of an English parish, he was less than
the mighty spiritual ruler who, claiming the whole world as his Diocese,
asserts his right to rule therein as “The Vicar of Christ”.
Thus do the strata of modern society bear witness to
the primary imperial rock from which they sprang. On the other hand, it is
curious to observe how few of the titles of old republican Rome survived into
these latter days of the Empire. Tribunes indeed we do find in the Notitia,
but they are chiefly military officers. Of Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, the
offices which in old days formed the successive steps on the ladder of
promotion to the highest dignities of the state, we find traces indeed, but of
the faintest possible kind, in the Notitia. The Consulate indeed still retained
much of its ancient splendor. The Emperor was generally invested with it
several times during his reign. Claudian's enthusiastic congratulations show
how it was prized by the sons of Probus. Pacatus speaks of it as the highest
honor which Theodosius was able to bestow upon his friends. Sidonius, eighty
years later, says that he and his brother-in-law, who were by birth sons of
Prefects, have attained the honor of the Patriciate, and he hopes that their
sons may crown the edifice by the Consulate. But though the office of Consul
retained its social preeminence it had no practical power. Not once does the
name occur in the Notitia, not the meanest functionary is mentioned as being
“under his control”. The Vicar reflected the Prefect and the Prefect the
Emperor. Power earned by the suffrages of the people was nowhere; power
delegated by the Divine Emperor was irresistible and all-prevailing.
One office indeed there was which might seem to office
of require some limitation of the statement which has just been made. The Defensor
Civitatis derived his power, theoretically at any rate, from the popular
vote, and was in theory a counterpoise to the otherwise uncontrolled dominion
of the Imperial officials; and yet it might with some fairness be argued that
the history of the Defensor’s office is the most striking illustration of the
tendency of all power in the Empire to become Imperial.
It is believed that these Defenders of the Cities came
into being in the first half of the fourth century, but the first distinct
trace of them in the Statute-book is in a law of 364 addressed by Valentinian
and Valens to the Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum, Probus, a governor whose
unjust exactions must often have made the Provincials under his rule sigh for a
Defender from such a ruler. The functions of the Defensor were eloquently
expressed in an edict addressed by Theodosius to a holder of the office. ‘The
Defensores of all the Provinces are to exercise their powers for the space of
five years. Thou must in the first place exhibit the character of a father to
the commonalty: thou must not suffer either the rustics or the city-dwellers to
be vexed with inordinate assessments. Meet the insolence of office and the
arrogance of the Judge with proper firmness, yet always preserving the
reverence which is due to the magistrate. Claim thy right of freely entering
into the Judge’s presence when thou shalt desire to do so. Exclude all unjust
claims and attempts at the spoliation of those whom it is thy duty to cherish
as thy children, and do not suffer anything beyond the accustomed imposts to be
demanded of these men who certainly can be guarded by no arm but thine.’
We can gather with sufficient clearness from this
edict what were the duties of the new officer, whom, perhaps with some
slumbering memories of the Tribunes of the Plebs in republican Rome, the
Emperors were now creating to be a check on the venal rapacity of their own
judges and tax-collectors. He was to be the perpetual advocate of the
municipality, to maintain its rights against usurping officials, to resist all
attempts at illegitimate and excessive taxation, to be a sort of embodied
Habeas Corpus Act on behalf of the poorer and friendless citizens. He was
chosen by the voice of the whole community, but his name had to be submitted to
the Praetorian Prefect for his approval, and he was confirmed in his office by
that high functionary. In order to secure in the new officer a sufficient
amount of courage and independence for the exercise of his duties, it was
expressly provided that he should not be chosen from the class of decuriom, the
local vestry-men, corresponding to those Senators of Antioch whose woes we were
recently considering. For the decurion, as we shall see more plainly in a later
chapter, was a being born to be pillaged and oppressed, and was always
trembling before the frowns of power.
But this requirement, that the Defensor should
be a man of rank and importance in the State, ruined a well-meant plan. The Defensor took upon himself the airs of a great official; he gradually became a real
magistrate; his jurisdiction, which at first extended only to cases where an
amount of sixty solidi was at stake, was enlarged so as to include cases
relating five times that amount. And as he grew in importance and power, he
evidently became more and more unapproachable by his ‘children,’ the humbler
class of tax-payers, so that before the end of a century from the first
appearance of the name in the Statute-book, we find a law passed to repress the
insolence and injustice of the Defensor, and to recall him to a
remembrance of the object for which he was appointed. So true it is that every
office takes the color of the State on which it is engrafted. In a monarchy
which has become democratic we see even the professed servants of the monarch
pandering to the passions of the crowd; while in a republic which had become
Imperial even the constituted champions of the commonalty were found before
long in the ranks of its oppressors.
In conclusion, though the proper subject of this
chapter is civil administration, we may give a glance at another most
interesting subject brought before us by the Notitia Dignitatum, namely, the
condition of the army of the Empire. The information with which the Notitia
furnishes us on this subject is tantalizing by its very fullness. At first
sight we seem to have a complete picture of the disposition of all the legions
and all the corps of ‘federate’ infantry and cavalry over the whole Empire. But
on closer examination we find that there are great gaps in the statement thus
laid before us. Deficiencies in one place, redundancies in another, bewilder us
in our attempt to construct a definite scheme of the military organization of
the State. It will probably require some years of patient labor, especially of
comparison of this ill-edited army-list with the slowly accumulating evidence
of inscriptions, before anything like safe and definite conclusions can be
reached as to the magnitude and the composition of those armies on the Danube
and the Rhine, which did not avail to save the Empire from the impact of the
barbarians.
Meanwhile, however, it may be stated very roughly,
that the Notitia appears to display to us a force whose nominal strength was
nearly a million of men, and that this force was pretty evenly divided between
the Eastern and the Western portions of the Empire. There can be no doubt,
however, that this number is enormously in excess of the troops which Rome
could actually put in the field. The legions especially (the theoretical
strength of which at this time was 6100 foot soldiers, with cavalry attached to
the number of 730) appears sometimes in history in such a miserably attenuated
condition, that some writers have asserted that even in theory it only
consisted of 1000 men, an alteration which would require us to reduce the
estimate just given to little more than a sixth. For any such formal and
theoretical reduction, however, there does not appear to be sufficient
authority. The following sentences from a contemporary author probably set
forth the true state of the case. ‘The name of the legions still abides in our
army, but through negligence the strength which it possessed in old days is
broken, the rewards of valor being now given to intrigue, and the soldier’s
promotion which he used to earn by toil being now given by favor. When the
veteran has earned his discharge, having completed his term of service, there
is no one to take his place. Moreover, some must be incapacitated for service
by disease, others will desert or perish by one accident or another, so that
unless every year, I might almost say every month, a troop of young recruits is
brought in to fill the places of those who fall out, a legion, however numerous
at the outset, soon dwindles. There is another reason for our attenuated
legions, namely, the great labor of service therein, their heavier arms, their
more numerous duties, their severer discipline. In order to escape these, most
recruits rush to take the military oath in the auxiliary forces where the toil
is less and the rewards sooner earned.’
This last remark leads us to consider the different
classes of troops, which, according to the Notitia, composed, the Imperial
army. The 132 legions which were enumerated above are divided into three ranks.
These are:—
25 legiones Palatinae.
70 legiones Comitatenses.
37 legiones Pseudo-Comitatenses.
The first class, the legions of the Palace’ speak for
themselves. If not in the strictest sense the bodyguard of the sovereign, a
title which more fittingly belongs to the high-born and brilliantly accoutred Domestici and Protectores, they are at any rate those troops who are most
immediately under the eye of the Emperor, and who will be first grouped round
his standard when he goes forth to war.
Over against these ‘legiones Palatinae’ are found
certain non-legionary bodies of troops, forty-three in number in the East and
sixty-five in the West, called the Auxilia Palatina. To read through the titles
of these regiments is to study the morbid anatomy of the dying Empire. You find
there the name of almost every barbarian nationality that was hovering on its borders,
the cannibal Atacotti of Scotland, the Heruli, the Thervingi, the Moors. Then
there are names like those of our battle-ships, the Petulantes, the Invicti,
the Victores; and names derived from the reigning Emperor, the
Valentinianenses, the Gratianenses, the Felices Theodosiani, the Honoriani
Victores, the Felices Arcadiani. The terrible name of Goths does not appear on
the list, but there can be lictle doubt that among these barbarian satellites
of the Emperor were to be found a large number of those yellow-haired
Visigothic foederati, whose golden collars roused the envy, and whose
arrogant demeanor kindled the resentment of the Roman legionaries. In the
regiment of Gratianienses there may very likely have still been serving some of
those very Alans, his partiality for whom cost the ill-fated Gratian his life.
From the legiones Palatinae and their attendant auxilia we pass to the legiones Comitatenses, evidently a large
and important portion of the Imperial army. In the laws of this period they are
generally coupled with the Palatini, and it is not easy to see what was
the difference between them, for Comitatus is used for court as Palatium for palace. It is conjectured with some probability that the legiones
Comitatenses may have held something like the same position towards the
‘Masters of the Soldiery’ that the legiones Palatinae held towards the
Emperor. And though we cannot prove the point, there seems some reason to
connect these ‘Comitatensian’ legions with the assertion of Zosimus, that
Constantine withdrew the bulk of his troops from the fortresses on the frontier
and stationed them in the cities of the interior, where they became demoralized
by urban pleasures and a long peace.
For it seems clear that the duty of guarding the
frontier, taken off from these pampered ‘courtly’ legions, was in great measure
devolved upon their inferiors, who went by the uncouth name of Pseudo-Comitatenses or ‘sham-courtly’ troops. These plebeians of the army received only four
rations where the Comitatenses received six; they were probably of lower
stature, received in several ways fewer privileges than their envied superiors.
Lastly, there was a class of troops of whom the
Notitia gives us only fragmentary and imperfect information, the Limitanei or Ripenses. These were apparently a kind of militia stationed on the
frontiers of the Empire, along the great rivers, the Rhine and the Danube;
where Egypt looks forth upon the desert; or where the Parthian was hovering
round Mesopotamia. They were probably not mere soldiers, but cultivated the
soil and practiced the arts of peace; always, however, under special obligation
to take up arms at the approach of an enemy and defend the land which they
tilled. We would gladly receive further information as to this body of men whose
status in some degree foreshadows that of the feudal soldiers of the Middle
Ages, while at the same time some of them must surely have been found among the
defenders of the great Roman Walls in Britain and in Germany.
A survey of this most interesting document, the
Notitia, as a whole, and a comparison of it with the Theodosian Code, suggest
some reflections as to the relative capacity of the Romans as warriors and as
administrators. The citizens of the little stronghold by the Tiber had first
made their mark on Latium by their fierce determination in war. As their
territory grew, their powers of government developed, and when they were the
undisputed lords of all the fair countries round the Mediterranean Sea they did
in truth fulfill with wonderful success the charge given to them in the poet’s
imagination by the spirit of their ancestor:—
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.
At the period which we have now reached in the history
of that vast accumulation of peoples which still called itself the Roman
Republic, the old Roman sprit of delight in battle was departed, but the Roman
genius for law and administration still remained. The Seventh Book of the
Theodosian Code gives us a dreary picture of the military state of the Empire.
The sons of the veterans have to be forced to follow the profession of their
fathers. Self-mutilation to avoid military service is frequent. The man who
does enter the army seems to be only intent on avoiding his obligations as a
tax-payer, or oppressing his fellow-citizen by unreasonable demands when he is
billeted upon them. And while the pages of the Notitia, which deal with the
civil constitution of the Empire, display to us a great, well-organized,
official hierarchy,—corrupt it may have been, oppressive it may have been, but
one in which every wheel of the great administrative machine knew its place and
performed its office,—the military chapters of that book seem to be a perfect
chaos. Fragments of the same legion are dispersed hither ahd thither, some
under the command of the Magister Militum in Praesenti, some under the
Duke of a province. It would seem to have been in the last degree difficult for
the Prefect of a legion to ascertain accurately who were subordinate to him,
and to whom he was subordinate. All the mistakes and the heart burnings to
which divided responsibility and ill-defined prerogatives give birth, seem to
be here prepared in abundant measure. Instead of keeping the noble legions of
the early Empire, the 25 of Augustus or the 33 of Severus, up to their full
strength, and enabling them to do deeds worthy of their great traditions, each
Emperor seems to form a number of fresh legions, some of which he calls after
his own name and some after the name of the latest tribe of barbarians to whom
he has taken a fancy. But whether they be called ‘Happy Honorians,’ or ‘Senior
Britons,’ or ‘Lancers of Comagene,’ in any case we feel certain that they are
not a legion in the old magnificent sense of the word. The full complement of
officers may be there, exhausting the treasury by their exorbitant Annonae, or
parading their gorgeous equipments before the eyes of a gratified Emperor, but
when the Goth or the Frank appears upon the frontiers of the Empire where such
a mushroom legion is stationed, we feel sure that he will not find 6000 stout
soldiers ready to resist him.
In short, the perusal of the Notitia and the Code
leaves us with the conviction that not even Valentinian nor Theodosius, and
certainly none of their successors, was a Carnot or a von Moltke, able to
organize victory. The civil administration of the Empire was marvelous, and it
left its mark upon Europe for centuries, but the military administration at the
close of the fourth century was a fabric pervaded by dry-rot, and it crumbled
at the touch of the barbarian.
CHAPTER XIIIHONORIUS, STILICHO, ALARIC
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