The supreme legal minister was the Quaestor of the Sacred Palace. His duty was to draft the laws, and the Imperial rescripts in answer to petitions. A thorough knowledge of jurisprudence and a mastery of legal style were essential qualifications for the post.10
The post of Master of Offices (magister officiorum) had grown from small beginnings and by steps which are obscure into one of the most important ministries.11 It comprised a group of miscellaneous departments, unrelated to each other, and including some of the functions which had belonged to the pre-Constantinian Praetorian Prefects. Officium was the word for the body of civil servants (officiales) who constituted the staff of a minister or governor, and the Master of Offices was so called from the authority which he exercised over the civil service, but especially over the secretarial departments in the Palace.
There were three principal secretarial bureaux (scrinia), which had survived from the early Empire, and retained their old names: memoriae, epistularum, and libellorum.12 At Constantinople the second bureau had two departments, one for Latin and one for Greek official correspondence. The secretarial business was conducted by magistri scriniorum,13 who were in direct touch with the Emperor and were not subordinate to any higher official. They were not, however, heads of the bureaux, but the bureaux, which were under the control of the Master of Offices, supplied them with assistants and clerks.14
With the three ancient and homogeneous scrinia was associated a fourth,15 of later origin and at first inferior rank, the scrinium dispositionum, of which the chief official was the comes dispositionum. His duty, under the control of the Master of Offices, was to draw up the programme of the Emperor’s movements and to make corresponding arrangements.
The Master of Offices was responsible for the conduct of court ceremonies, and controlled the special department16 which dealt with ceremonial arrangements and Imperial audiences. The reception of foreign ambassadors thus came within his scope, and he was the head of the corps of interpreters of foreign languages. In the Roman Empire the administrations of foreign and internal affairs were not sharply separated as in modern states, but the Master of Offices is the minister who more than any other corresponds to a Minister of Foreign Affairs. As director of the State Post (cursus publicus)17 he made arrangements for the journeys of foreign embassies to the capital.
One of his duties was the control of the agentes in rebus, a large body of officials who formed the secret service of the State and were employed as Imperial messengers and on all kinds of confidential missions. As secret agents they were ubiquitous in the provinces, spying upon the governors, reporting the misconduct of officials, and especially vigilant to secure that the state post was not misused. Naturally they were open to bribery and corruption. The body or schola of agentes was strictly organised in grades, and when they had risen by regular promotion, they were appointed to be heads (principes) of the official staffs of diocesan and provincial governors, and might rise to be governors themselves. Their number, in the East, was over 1200.18
The Scholarian bodyguards, organised by Constantine,19 were subject to the authority of the Master of Offices, so that in this respect he may be regarded as a successor of the old Praetorian Prefect. He also possessed a certain control over the military commanders in frontier provinces.20 He became (in A.D. 396) the director of the state factories of arms. In the Eastern half of the Empire there were fifteen of these factories (fabricae), six in the Illyrian peninsula, and nine in the Asiatic provinces.
One of the most striking features of the administrative system was the organisation of the subordinate officials, who were systematically graded and extremely numerous.21
Our use of the words “office” and “official” is derived from the technical meaning of officium, which, as was mentioned above, denoted the staff of a civil or military dignitary.22 Most ministers, every governor, all higher military commanders, had an officium, and its members were called officiales. Theoretically, the civil as well as the military officials were supposed to be soldiers of the Emperor; their service was termed militia, its badge was the military belt, which was discarded when their term of service expired, and their retirement from service was called in military language “honourable dismissal” (honesta missio). But these usages were a mere survival, and the state service was really divided into military, civil, and palatine offices. The term palatine in this connexion meant particularly the staffs of the financial ministers, the Counts of the Sacred Largesses and the Private Estates.
The number of subalterns in each office was fixed. To obtain a post an Imperial rescript was required, and advancement was governed by seniority. Those who had served their regular term in the higher offices became eligible for such a post as the governorship of a province and might rise to the highest dignities in the Empire.
Offices, such as those of a Praetorian Prefect, a vicar, or a provincial governor, were divided into a number of departments or bureaux (scrinia), each under a head. On these permanent officials far more than on their superior, who might only hold his post for a year, the efficiency of the administration depended. The bureaux differed in nature and name according to the functions of the ministry. Those in the office of the Praetorian Prefecture differed entirely from those of the financial ministries or those of the Master of Offices. But the offices of all the governors who were under the Praetorian Prefect reproduced in their chief departments the office of the Prefect himself. Each of these had a princeps,23 who was the right hand of the chief and had a general control over all departments of the office.
The State servants were paid originally (like the army) both in kind and coin, but as time went on the annona or food ration was commuted into money. They were so numerous that their salaries were a considerable item in the budget. We have no information as to the total number of State officials; but we have evidence which may lead us to conjecture that the civil servants in the Prefectures of the East and Illyricum, including the staffs of the diocesan and provincial governors, cannot have been much fewer than 10,000.24 To this have to be added the staffs of the military commanders, of the financial and other central ministries.
It was a mark of the new monarchy that the eunuchs and others who held posts about the Emperor’s person and served in the palace should be regarded as standing on a level of equality with the State officials and have a recognised position in the public service. The Grand Chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi), who was almost invariably a eunuch, was a dignitary of the highest class. In the case of weak sovrans his influence might be enormous and make him the most powerful man in the State; in the case of strong Emperors who were personally active he seldom played a prominent part in politics. It is probable that he exercised a general authority over all officers connected with the Court and the Imperial person, but this power may have depended rather on a right of co-operation than on formal authority.25 At Constantinople the Grand Chamberlain had a certain control over the Imperial estates in Cappadocia which supplied the Emperor’s privy purse.26
We have already seen27 that all the higher officials in the Imperial service belonged to one or other of the three classes of rank, the illustres, spectabiles, and clarissimi,28 and were consequently members of the senatorial order. The heads of the great central ministries, the commanders-in-chief of the armies,29 the Grand Chamberlain, were all illustres. The second class included proconsuls, vicars, the military governors in the provinces, the magistri scriniorum, and many others. The title clarissimus, which was the qualification for the Senate, was attached ex officio to the governorship of a province, and to other lesser