The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 10

Substantially these same t.i.tles were borne by the Ill.u.s.tres to whom Ca.s.siodorus (himself one of them) addressed his 'Various Letters.' The second and the sixth (the Praetorian Praefect of the Gauls, and the Master of the Horse for the Gauls) may possibly have disappeared; and yet, in view of the fact that Theodoric was during the greater part of his reign ruler of a portion of Gaul, it is not necessary to a.s.sume even this change. Into the question of the military officers I will not enter, as I confess that I do not understand the relations (whether co-ordinate or subordinated one to another) of the two pairs of officers, Nos. 4 and 5 and Nos. 12 and 13.

The rank and duties of the Praetorian Praefect of Italy, the Master of the Offices, and the Quaestor have already been described in the first chapter. It will be well to say a few words as to the four remaining civil dignitaries, the Praefect of the City, the Grand Chamberlain, the Count of Sacred Largesses, and the Count of the Private Domains.

[Sidenote: Praefect of the City.]

(_a_) The _Praefectus Urbis Romae_ was by virtue of his office head of the Senate. He had the care of the Annona or corn-largesses to the people, the command of the City-watch, and the duty of keeping the aqueducts in proper repair. The sh.o.r.es and channel of the Tiber, the vast _cloacae_ which carried off the refuse of the City, the quays and warehouses of Portus at the river's mouth were also under his authority. The officer who was charged with taking the census, the officers charged with levying the duties on wine, the masters of the markets, the superintendents of the granaries, the curators of the statues, baths, theatres, and the other public buildings with which the City was adorned, all owned the supreme control of the Urban Praefect. At the beginning of the Fifth Century the _Vicarius Urbis_ (whom it is difficult not to think of as in some sort subject to the _Praefectus Urbis_), had jurisdiction over all central and southern Italy and Sicily. But if this was the arrangement then, it must have been altered before the time of Ca.s.siodorus, who certainly appears as Praetorian Praefect to have wielded authority over the greater part of Italy. He states, however[113], that the Urban Praefect had, by an ancient law, jurisdiction, not only over Rome itself, but over all the district within 100 miles of the capital.

[Footnote 113: Var. vi. 4.]

[Sidenote: Grand Chamberlain.]

(_b_) The _Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi_ had under his orders the large staff of Grooms of the Bedchamber, at whose head stood the _Primicerius Cubiculariorum_, an officer of 'respectable' rank. The _Castrensis_, Butler or Seneschal, with his army of lacqueys and pages who attended to the spreading and serving of the royal table; the _Comes Sacrae Vestis_, who with similar a.s.sistance took charge of the royal wardrobe; the _Comes Domorum_, who perhaps superintended the needful repairs of the royal palace, all took their orders in the last resort from the Grand Chamberlain. So, too, did the three Decurions, officers with a splendid career of advancement before them, who marshalled the thirty brilliantly armed Silentiarii, that paced backwards and forwards before the purple veil guarding the slumbers of the Sovereign.

[Sidenote: Count of Sacred Largesses.]

(_c_) The _Comes Sacrarum Largitionum_, theoretically only the Grand Almoner of the Sovereign, discharged in practice many of the duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The mines, the mint, the Imperial linen factories, the receipt of the tribute of the Provinces, and many other departments of the public revenue were originally under the care of this functionary, whose office however, as we are expressly told by Ca.s.siodorus, had lost part of its l.u.s.tre, probably by a transfer of some of these duties to the Count of the Private Domains.

[Sidenote: Count of Private Domains.]

(_d_) This Minister, the _Comes Rerum Privatarum_, had the superintendence of the Imperial estates in Italy and the Provinces.

Confiscations and the absorption by the State of the properties of defaulting tax-payers were probably always tending to increase the extent of these estates, and to make the office of Count of the Domain more important. The collection of the land-tax, far the most important item of the Imperial revenue, was also made subject to his authority.

Finally, in order, as Ca.s.siodorus quaintly observes[114], that his jurisdiction should not be exercised only over slaves (the cultivators of the State domains), some authority was given to him within the City, and by a curious division of labour all charges of incestuous crime, or of the spoliation of graves, were brought before the tribunal of the Comes Privatarum.

[Footnote 114: Var. vi. 8.]

Besides the thirteen persons who, as acting Ministers of the highest cla.s.s, were ent.i.tled to the designation of Ill.u.s.tris, there were also those whom we may call honorary members of the cla.s.s: the persons who had received the dignity of the Patriciate--a dignity which was frequently bestowed on those who had filled the office of Consul, and which, unlike the others of which we have been speaking, was held for life.

It is a question on which I think we need further information, whether a person who had once filled an Ill.u.s.trious office lost the right to be so addressed on vacating it. I am not sure that we have any clear case in the following collection of an ex-official holding this courtesy-rank; but it seems probable that such would be the case.

Considering also the great show of honour with which the Consulate, though now dest.i.tute of all real power, was still greeted, it seems probable that the Consuls for the year would rank as Ill.u.s.tres; but here, too, we seem to require fuller details.

[Sidenote: Spectabiles.]

II. We now come to the Second Cla.s.s, the _Spectabiles_, which consists chiefly of the lieutenants and deputies of the Ill.u.s.tres.

For instance, every Praetorian Praefect had immediately under him a certain number of _Vicarii_, each of whom was a Spectabilis. The Praefecture included an extent of territory equivalent to two or three countries of Modern Europe (for instance, the Praefecture of the Gauls embraced Britain, Gaul, a considerable slice of Germany, Spain, and Morocco). This was divided into Dioceses (in the instance above referred to Britain formed one Diocese, Gaul another, and Spain with its attendant portion of Africa a third), and the Diocese was again divided into Provinces. The t.i.tle of the ruler of the Diocese, who in his restricted but still ample domain wielded a similar authority to that of the Ill.u.s.trious Praefect, was _Spectabilis Vicarius_.

But the Praefect and the Vicar controlled only the civil government of the territories over which they respectively bore sway. The military command of the Diocese was vested in a _Spectabilis Comes_, who was under the orders of the Ill.u.s.trious Magister Militum. Subordinate in some way to the Comes was the _Dux_, who was also a Spectabilis, but whose precise relation to his superior the Comes is, to me at least, not yet clear[115].

[Footnote 115: I think the usual account of the matter is that which I have given elsewhere (Italy and her Invaders, i. 227), that the Comes had military command in the Diocese and the Dux in the Province. But on closer examination I cannot find that the Not.i.tia altogether bears out this view. It gives us for the Western Empire eight Comites and twelve Duces. The former pretty nearly correspond to the Dioceses, but the latter are far too few for the Provinces, which number forty-two, excluding all the Provinces of Italy. Besides, in some cases the jurisdiction appears to be the same. Thus we have both a Dux and a Comes Britanniarum, and the Dux Mauritaniae Caesariensis must, one would think, have held command in a region as large or larger than the Comes Tingitaniae. Again, we have a Comes Argentoratensis and a Dux Moguntiacensis, two officers whose power, one would think, was pretty nearly equal. The same may perhaps be said of the Comes Litoris Saxonici in Britain and the Dux Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani in Gaul. While recognising a _general_ inferiority of the Dux to the Comes, I do not think we can, with the Not.i.tia before us, a.s.sert that the Provincial Duces were regularly subordinated to the Diocesan Comes, as the Provincial Consulares were to the Diocesan Vicarius. And the fact that both Comes and Dux were addressed as Spectabilis rather confirms this view.]

Besides these three cla.s.ses of dignitaries, the _Castrensis_, who was a kind of head steward in the Imperial household, and most of the Heads of Departments in the great administrative offices, such as the _Primicerius Notariorum_ and the _Magistri Scriniorum_[116], bore the t.i.tle of Spectabilis. We have perhaps hardly sufficient data for an exact calculation, but I conjecture that there would be as many as fifty or sixty Spectabiles in the Kingdom of Theodoric.

[Footnote 116: Probably, from the order in which they are mentioned by the Not.i.tia.]

It appears to me that the epithet _Sublimis_ (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is used as synonymous with Spectabilis[117].

[Footnote 117: Sublimis occurs in the superscription of the following letters: i. 2; iv. 17; v. 25, 30, and 36; ix. 11 and 14; xii. 5.]

[Sidenote: Clarissimi.]

III. The _Clarissimi_ were the third rank in the official hierarchy.

To our minds it may appear strange that the 'most renowned' should come below 'the respectable,' but such was the Imperial pleasure. The t.i.tle 'Clarissimus' had moreover its own value, for from the time of Constantine onwards it was conferred on all the members of the Senate, and was in fact identical with Senator[118]; and this was doubtless, as Usener points out[119], the reason why the letters Cl. were still appended to a Roman n.o.bleman's name after he had risen higher in the official scale and was ent.i.tled to be called Spectabilis or Ill.u.s.tris. The _Consulares_ or _Correctores_, who administered the Provinces under the Vicarii, were called Clarissimi; and we shall observe in the collection before us many other cases in which the t.i.tle is given to men in high, but not the highest, positions in the Civil Service of the State.

[Footnote 118: See Emil Kuhn's Verfa.s.sung des Romischen Reichs i. 182, and the pa.s.sages quoted there.]

[Footnote 119: p. 31.]

Besides the three cla.s.ses above enumerated there were also:--

[Sidenote: Perfectissimi.]

IV. The _Perfectissimi_, to which some of the smaller provincial governors belonged, as well as some of the clerks in the Revenue Offices (Numerarii) who had seen long service, and even some veteran Decurions.

Below these again were:--

[Sidenote: Egregii.]

V. The _Egregii_, who were also Decurions who had earned a right to promotion, or even what we should call veteran non-commissioned officers in the army (Primipilares).

But of these two cla.s.ses slight mention is made in the Theodosian Code, and none at all (I believe) in the 'Not.i.tia' or the 'Letters of Ca.s.siodorus.'

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE OFFICIUM OF THE PRAEFECTUS PRAETORIO[120].

[Footnote 120: To ill.u.s.trate the Eleventh Book of the Variae, Letters 18 to 35.]

[Sidenote: Military character of the Roman Civil Service.]

The official staff that served under the Roman governors of high rank was an elaborately organised body, with a carefully arranged system of promotion, and liberal superannuation allowances for those of its members who had attained a certain position in the office.

Although, in consequence of the changes introduced by Diocletian and Constantine, the civil and military functions had been for the most part divided from one another, and it was now unusual to see the same magistrate riding at the head of armies and hearing causes in the Praetorium, in theory the officers of the Courts of Justice were still military officers. Their service was spoken of as a _militia_; the type of their office was the _cingulum_, or military belt; and one of the leading officers of the court, as we shall see, was styled _Cornicularius_, or trumpeter.

The Praetorian Praefect, whose office had been at first a purely military one, had now for centuries been chiefly concerned in civil administration, and as Judge over the highest court of appeal in the Empire. His _Officium_ (or staff of subordinates) was, at any rate in the Fifth Century, still the most complete and highly developed that served under any great functionary; and probably the career which it offered to its members was more brilliant than any that they could look for elsewhere. Accordingly, in studying the composition of this body we shall familiarise ourselves with the type to which all the other _officia_ throughout the Empire more or less closely approximated.

NOt.i.tIA. Ca.s.sIODORUS LYDUS (xi.). (iii. 3 and ii. 18.).

Princeps.

Cornicularius. Cornicularius. Cornicularius.

Adjutor. Primiscrinius. II Primiscrinii.

Commentariensis. Scriniarius Actorum.

Ab Actis. Cura Epistolarum.

IV Numerarii. Scriniarius Curae Militaris.