CHAPTER III.
THE GRADATIONS OF OFFICIAL RANK IN THE LATER EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Official Hierarchy introduced by Diocletian.]
It is well known that Diocletian introduced and Constantine perfected an elaborate system of administration under which the titles, functions, order of precedence, and number of attendants of the various officers of the Civil Service as well as of the Imperial army were minutely and punctiliously regulated. This system, which, as forming the pattern upon which the nobility of mediaeval Europe was to a great extent modelled, perhaps deserves even more careful study than it has yet received, is admirably illustrated by the letters of Cassiodorus. The _Notitia Utriusque Imperii_, our copies of which must have been compiled in the early years of the Fifth Century, furnishes us with a picture of official life which, after we have made allowance for the fact that the Empire of the West has shrunk into the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy (with the addition of Dalmatia and some other portions of Illyricum), is almost precisely reproduced in the pages of the 'Various Letters.' In order that the student may understand the full significance of many passages in those letters, and especially of the superscriptions by which each letter is prefaced, it will be well to give a brief outline of the system which existed alike under Theodosius and Theodoric.
[Sidenote: Nobilissimi.]
In the first place, then, we come to what is rather a family than a class, the persons bearing the title _Nobilissimus_[110]. These were the nearest relatives of the reigning Emperor; his brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. The title therefore is not unlike that of Royal or Imperial Highness in modern monarchies. I am not sure whether any trace can be found of the survival of this title in the Ostrogothic Court. Theodahad, nephew of Theodoric, is addressed simply as 'Vir Senator[111],' and he is spoken of as 'praecelsus et amplissimus vir[112].' It is not so, however, in respect of the three great official classes which follow--the Illustres, Spectabiles, and Clarissimi--whose titles were rendered as punctiliously in the Italy of Theodoric as ever they were in the Italy of Diocletian and Constantine.
[Footnote 110: The existence of this title is proved not only by the language of Arcadius in the Theodosian Code x. 25. 1, concerning 'Nobilissimae puellae, filiae meae,' but also by Zosimus (ii. 39), who says that Constantine bestowed the dignity of Nobilissimus on his brother Constantius and his nephew Hannibalianus ([Greek: tês tou legomenou nôbelissimou par' autou Kônstantinou tuchontes axias aidoi tês syngeneias]); and by Marcellinus Comes, s. a. 527, who says: 'Justinus Imperator Justinianum ex sorore suâ nepotem, jamdudum a se Nobilissimum designatum, participem quoque regni ani, successoremque creavit.' It is evident that the title did not come by right of birth, but that some sort of declaration of it was necessary.]
[Footnote 111: Var. iii. 15.]
[Footnote 112: Var. viii. 23.]
[Sidenote: Illustres.]
I. The _Illustres_ were a small and select circle of men, the chief depositaries of power after the Sovereign, and they may with some truth be compared to the Cabinet Ministers of our own political system. The 'Notitia' mentions thirteen of them as bearing rule in the Western Empire. They are:
1. The Praetorian Praefect of Italy.
2. The Praetorian Praefect of the Gauls.
3. The Praefect of the City of Rome.
4. The Master of the Foot Guards (Magister Peditum in Praesenti).
5. The Master of the Horse Guards (Magister Equitum in Praesenti).
6. The Master of the Horse for the Gauls (per Gallias).
7. The Grand Chamberlain (Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi).
8. The Master of the Offices.
9. The Quaestor.
10. The Count of Sacred Largesses.
11. The Count of the Private Domains (Comes Rerum Privatarum).
12. The Count of the Household Cavalry (Comes Domesticorum Equitum).
13. The Count of the Household Infantry (Comes Domesticorum Peditum).
Substantially these same titles were borne by the Illustres to whom Cassiodorus (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 assume 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 shores 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 Cassiodorus, 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 assistance 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 Cassiodorus, had lost part of its lustre, 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 Cassiodorus 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 class, were entitled to the designation of Illustris, there were also those whom we may call honorary members of the class: 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 Illustrious 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 destitute of all real power, was still greeted, it seems probable that the Consuls for the year would rank as Illustres; but here, too, we seem to require fuller details.
[Sidenote: Spectabiles.]
II. We now come to the Second Class, the _Spectabiles_, which consists chiefly of the lieutenants and deputies of the Illustres.
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 title of the ruler of the Diocese, who in his restricted but still ample domain wielded a similar authority to that of the Illustrious 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 Illustrious 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 Notitia 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 Notitia before us, assert 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 classes 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 title 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 Notitia.]
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 title '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 nobleman's name after he had risen higher in the official scale and was entitled to be called Spectabilis or Illustris. 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 title is given to men in high, but not the highest, positions in the Civil Service of the State.
[Footnote 118: See Emil Kühn's Verfassung des Römischen Reichs i. 182, and the passages quoted there.]
[Footnote 119: p. 31.]
Besides the three classes 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 classes slight mention is made in the Theodosian Code, and none at all (I believe) in the 'Notitia' or the 'Letters of Cassiodorus.'