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The Seven Ministers of the Palace – Agents, or Official Spies – The Use of Torture.
IV. Besides the magistrates and generals, who at a distance
from the court diffused their delegated authority over the
provinces and armies, the emperor conferred the rank of
Illustrious on seven of his more immediate servants, to whose
fidelity he intrusted his safety, or his counsels, or his
treasures.
1. The private apartments of the palace were governed
by a favorite eunuch, who, in the language of that age, was
styled the proepositus, or praefect of the sacred bed-chamber.
His duty was to attend the emperor in his hours of state, or in
those of amusement, and to perform about his person all those
menial services, which can only derive their splendor from the
influence of royalty. Under a prince who deserved to reign, the
great chamberlain (for such we may call him) was a useful and
humble domestic; but an artful domestic, who improves every
occasion of unguarded confidence, will insensibly acquire over a
feeble mind that ascendant which harsh wisdom and uncomplying
virtue can seldom obtain. The degenerate grandsons of
Theodosius, who were invisible to their subjects, and
contemptible to their enemies, exalted the praefects of their
bed- chamber above the heads of all the ministers of the palace;
142 and even his deputy, the first of the splendid train of
slaves who waited in the presence, was thought worthy to rank
before the respectable proconsuls of Greece or Asia. The
jurisdiction of the chamberlain was acknowledged by the counts,
or superintendents, who regulated the two important provinces of
the magnificence of the wardrobe, and of the luxury of the
Imperial table. 143
2. The principal administration of public
affairs was committed to the diligence and abilities of the
master of the offices. 144 He was the supreme magistrate of the
palace, inspected the discipline of the civil and military
schools, and received appeals from all parts of the empire, in
the causes which related to that numerous army of privileged
persons, who, as the servants of the court, had obtained for
themselves and families a right to decline the authority of the
ordinary judges. The correspondence between the prince and his
subjects was managed by the four scrinia, or offices of this
minister of state. The first was appropriated to memorials, the
second to epistles, the third to petitions, and the fourth to
papers and orders of a miscellaneous kind. Each of these was
directed by an inferior master of respectable dignity, and the
whole business was despatched by a hundred and forty-eight
secretaries, chosen for the most part from the profession of the
law, on account of the variety of abstracts of reports and
references which frequently occurred in the exercise of their
several functions. From a condescension, which in former ages
would have been esteemed unworthy the Roman majesty, a particular
secretary was allowed for the Greek language; and interpreters
were appointed to receive the ambassadors of the barbarians; but
the department of foreign affairs, which constitutes so essential
a part of modern policy, seldom diverted the attention of the
master of the offices. His mind was more seriously engaged by
the general direction of the posts and arsenals of the empire.
There were thirty-four cities, fifteen in the East, and nineteen
in the West, in which regular companies of workmen were
perpetually employed in fabricating defensive armor, offensive
weapons of all sorts, and military engines, which were deposited
in the arsenals, and occasionally delivered for the service of
the troops.
3. In the course of nine centuries, the office of
quaestor had experienced a very singular revolution. In the
infancy of Rome, two inferior magistrates were annually elected
by the people, to relieve the consuls from the invidious
management of the public treasure; 145 a similar assistant was
granted to every proconsul, and to every praetor, who exercised a
military or provincial command; with the extent of conquest, the
two quaestors were gradually multiplied to the number of four, of
eight, of twenty, and, for a short time, perhaps, of forty; 146
and the noblest citizens ambitiously solicited an office which
gave them a seat in the senate, and a just hope of obtaining the
honors of the republic. Whilst Augustus affected to maintain the
freedom of election, he consented to accept the annual privilege
of recommending, or rather indeed of nominating, a certain
proportion of candidates; and it was his custom to select one of
these distinguished youths, to read his orations or epistles in
the assemblies of the senate. 147 The practice of Augustus was
imitated by succeeding princes; the occasional commission was
established as a permanent office; and the favored quaestor,
assuming a new and more Illustrious character, alone survived the
suppression of his ancient and useless colleagues. 148 As the
orations which he composed in the name of the emperor, 149
acquired the force, and, at length, the form, of absolute edicts,
he was considered as the representative of the legislative power,
the oracle of the council, and the original source of the civil
jurisprudence. He was sometimes invited to take his seat in the
supreme judicature of the Imperial consistory, with the
Pretorian praefects, and the master of the offices; and he was
frequently requested to resolve the doubts of inferior judges:
but as he was not oppressed with a variety of subordinate
business, his leisure and talents were employed to cultivate that
dignified style of eloquence, which, in the corruption of taste
and language, still preserves the majesty of the Roman laws. 150
In some respects, the office of the Imperial quaestor may be
compared with that of a modern chancellor; but the use of a great
seal, which seems to have been adopted by the illiterate
barbarians, was never introduced to attest the public acts of the
emperors.
4. The extraordinary title of count of the sacred
largesses was bestowed on the treasurer-general of the revenue,
with the intention perhaps of inculcating, that every payment
flowed from the voluntary bounty of the monarch. To conceive the
almost infinite detail of the annual and daily expense of the
civil and military administration in every part of a great
empire, would exceed the powers of the most vigorous imagination.
The actual account employed several hundred persons, distributed
into eleven different offices, which were artfully contrived to
examine and control their respective operations. The multitude
of these agents had a natural tendency to increase; and it was
more than once thought expedient to dismiss to their native homes
the useless supernumeraries, who, deserting their honest labors,
had pressed with too much eagerness into the lucrative profession
of the finances. 151 Twenty-nine provincial receivers, of whom
eighteen were honored with the title of count, corresponded with
the treasurer; and he extended his jurisdiction over the mines
from whence the precious metals were extracted, over the mints,
in which they were converted into the current coin, and over the
public treasuries of the most important cities, where they were
deposited for the service of the state. The foreign trade of the
empire was regulated by this minister, who directed likewise all
the linen and woollen manufactures, in which the successive
operations of spinning, weaving, and dyeing were executed,
chiefly by women of a servile condition, for the use of the
palace and army. Twenty-six of these institutions are enumerated
in the West, where the arts had been more recently introduced,
and a still larger proportion may be allowed for the industrious
provinces of the East. 152
5. Besides the public revenue, which
an absolute monarch might levy and expend according to his
pleasure, the emperors, in the capacity of opulent citizens,
possessed a very extensive property, which was administered by
the count or treasurer of the private estate. Some part had
perhaps been the ancient demesnes of kings and republics; some
accessions might be derived from the families which were
successively invested with the purple; but the most considerable
portion flowed from the impure source of confiscations and
forfeitures. The Imperial estates were scattered through the
provinces, from Mauritania to Britain; but the rich and fertile
soil of Cappadocia tempted the monarch to acquire in that country
his fairest possessions, 153 and either Constantine or his
successors embraced the occasion of justifying avarice by
religious zeal. They suppressed the rich temple of Comana, where
the high priest of the goddess of war supported the dignity of a
sovereign prince; and they applied to their private use the
consecrated lands, which were inhabited by six thousand subjects
or slaves of the deity and her ministers. 154 But these were not
the valuable inhabitants: the plains that stretch from the foot
of Mount Argaeus to the banks of the Sarus, bred a generous race
of horses, renowned above all others in the ancient world for
their majestic shape and incomparable swiftness. These sacred
animals, destined for the service of the palace and the Imperial
games, were protected by the laws from the profanation of a
vulgar master. 155 The demesnes of Cappadocia were important
enough to require the inspection of a count; 156 officers of an
inferior rank were stationed in the other parts of the empire;
and the deputies of the private, as well as those of the public,
treasurer were maintained in the exercise of their independent
functions, and encouraged to control the authority of the
provincial magistrates. 157
6, 7. The chosen bands of cavalry
and infantry, which guarded the person of the emperor, were under
the immediate command of the two counts of the domestics. The
whole number consisted of three thousand five hundred men,
divided into seven schools, or troops, of five hundred each; and
in the East, this honorable service was almost entirely
appropriated to the Armenians. Whenever, on public ceremonies,
they were drawn up in the courts and porticos of the palace,
their lofty stature, silent order, and splendid arms of silver
and gold, displayed a martial pomp not unworthy of the Roman
majesty. 158 From the seven schools two companies of horse and
foot were selected, of the protectors, whose advantageous station
was the hope and reward of the most deserving soldiers. They
mounted guard in the interior apartments, and were occasionally
despatched into the provinces, to execute with celerity and vigor
the orders of their master. 159 The counts of the domestics had
succeeded to the office of the Pretorian praefects; like the
praefects, they aspired from the service of the palace to the
command of armies.
Footnote 142: Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. 8.
Footnote 143: By a very singular metaphor, borrowed from the
military character of the first emperors, the steward of their
household was styled the count of their camp, (comes castrensis.)
Cassiodorus very seriously represents to him, that his own fame,
and that of the empire, must depend on the opinion which foreign
ambassadors may conceive of the plenty and magnificence of the
royal table. (Variar. l. vi. epistol. 9.)
Footnote 144: Gutherius (de Officiis Domus Augustae, l. ii. c.
20, l. iii.) has very accurately explained the functions of the
master of the offices, and the constitution of the subordinate
scrinia. But he vainly attempts, on the most doubtful authority,
to deduce from the time of the Antonines, or even of Nero, the
origin of a magistrate who cannot be found in history before the
reign of Constantine.
Footnote 145: Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22) says, that the first
quaestors were elected by the people, sixty-four years after the
foundation of the republic; but he is of opinion, that they had,
long before that period, been annually appointed by the consuls,
and even by the kings. But this obscure point of antiquity is
contested by other writers.
Footnote 146: Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22) seems to consider twenty
as the highest number of quaestors; and Dion (l. xliii. p 374)
insinuates, that if the dictator Caesar once created forty, it
was only to facilitate the payment of an immense debt of
gratitude. Yet the augmentation which he made of praetors
subsisted under the succeeding reigns.
Footnote 147: Sueton. in August. c. 65, and Torrent. ad loc.
Dion. Cas. p. 755.
Footnote 148: The youth and inexperience of the quaestors, who
entered on that important office in their twenty-fifth year,
(Lips. Excurs. ad Tacit. l. iii. D.,) engaged Augustus to remove
them from the management of the treasury; and though they were
restored by Claudius, they seem to have been finally dismissed by
Nero. (Tacit Annal. xiii. 29. Sueton. in Aug. c. 36, in Claud.
c. 24. Dion, p. 696, 961, &c. Plin. Epistol. x. 20, et alibi.)
In the provinces of the Imperial division, the place of the
quaestors was more ably supplied by the procurators, (Dion Cas.
p. 707. Tacit. in Vit. Agricol. c. 15;) or, as they were
afterwards called, rationales. (Hist. August. p. 130.) But in
the provinces of the senate we may still discover a series of
quaestors till the reign of Marcus Antoninus. (See the
Inscriptions of Gruter, the Epistles of Pliny, and a decisive
fact in the Augustan History, p. 64.) From Ulpian we may learn,
(Pandect. l. i. tit. 13,) that under the government of the house
of Severus, their provincial administration was abolished; and in
the subsequent troubles, the annual or triennial elections of
quaestors must have naturally ceased.
Footnote 149: Cum patris nomine et epistolas ipse dictaret, et
edicta conscrib eret, orationesque in senatu recitaret, etiam
quaestoris vice. Sueton, in Tit. c. 6. The office must have
acquired new dignity, which was occasionally executed by the heir
apparent of the empire. Trajan intrusted the same care to
Hadrian, his quaestor and cousin. See Dodwell, Praelection.
Cambden, x. xi. p. 362-394.
Footnote 150: Terris edicta daturus;
Supplicibus responsa. - Oracula regis
Eloquio crevere tuo; nec dignius unquam
Majestas meminit sese Romana locutam.
Claudian in Consulat. Mall. Theodor. 33. See likewise Symmachus
(Epistol. i. 17) and Cassiodorus. (Variar. iv. 5.)
Footnote 151: Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. 30. Cod. Justinian. l.
xii. tit. 24.
Footnote 152: In the departments of the two counts of the
treasury, the eastern part of the Notitia happens to be very
defective. It may be observed, that we had a treasury chest in
London, and a gyneceum or manufacture at Winchester. But Britain
was not thought worthy either of a mint or of an arsenal. Gaul
alone possessed three of the former, and eight of the latter.
Footnote 153: Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. xxx. leg. 2, and Godefroy
ad loc.
Footnote 154: Strabon. Geograph. l. xxii. p. 809, edit.
Casaub. The other temple of Comana, in Pontus, was a colony from
that of Cappadocia, l. xii. p. 835. The President Des Brosses
(see his Saluste, tom. ii. p. 21, edit. Causub.)conjectures
that the deity adored in both Comanas was Beltis, the Venus of
the east, the goddess of generation; a very different being
indeed from the goddess of war.
Footnote 155: Cod. Theod. l. x. tit. vi. de Grege Dominico.
Godefroy has collected every circumstance of antiquity relative
to the Cappadocian horses. One of the finest breeds, the
Palmatian, was the forfeiture of a rebel, whose estate lay about
sixteen miles from Tyana, near the great road between
Constantinople and Antioch.
Footnote 156: Justinian (Novell. 30) subjected the province of
the count of Cappadocia to the immediate authority of the
favorite eunuch, who presided over the sacred bed-chamber.
Footnote 157: Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. xxx. leg. 4, &c.
Footnote 158: Pancirolus, p. 102, 136. The appearance of these
military domestics is described in the Latin poem of Corippus, de
Laudibus Justin. l. iii. 157-179. p. 419, 420 of the Appendix
Hist. Byzantin. Rom. 177.
Footnote 159: Ammianus Marcellinus, who served so many years,
obtained only the rank of a protector. The first ten among these
honorable soldiers were Clarissimi.
The perpetual intercourse between the court and the
provinces was facilitated by the construction of roads and the
institution of posts. But these beneficial establishments were
accidentally connected with a pernicious and intolerable abuse.
Two or three hundred agents or messengers were employed, under
the jurisdiction of the master of the offices, to announce the
names of the annual consuls, and the edicts or victories of the
emperors. They insensibly assumed the license of reporting
whatever they could observe of the conduct either of magistrates
or of private citizens; and were soon considered as the eyes of
the monarch, 160 and the scourge of the people. Under the warm
influence of a feeble reign, they multiplied to the incredible
number of ten thousand, disdained the mild though frequent
admonitions of the laws, and exercised in the profitable
management of the posts a rapacious and insolent oppression.
These official spies, who regularly corresponded with the palace,
were encouraged by favor and reward, anxiously to watch the
progress of every treasonable design, from the faint and latent
symptoms of disaffection, to the actual preparation of an open
revolt. Their careless or criminal violation of truth and
justice was covered by the consecrated mask of zeal; and they
might securely aim their poisoned arrows at the breast either of
the guilty or the innocent, who had provoked their resentment, or
refused to purchase their silence. A faithful subject, of Syria
perhaps, or of Britain, was exposed to the danger, or at least to
the dread, of being dragged in chains to the court of Milan or
Constantinople, to defend his life and fortune against the
malicious charge of these privileged informers. The ordinary
administration was conducted by those methods which extreme
necessity can alone palliate; and the defects of evidence were
diligently supplied by the use of torture. 161
Footnote 160: Xenophon, Cyropaed. l. viii. Brisson, de Regno
Persico, l. i No 190, p. 264. The emperors adopted with pleasure
this Persian metaphor.
Footnote 161: For the Agentes in Rebus, see Ammian. l. xv. c. 3,
l. xvi. c. 5, l. xxii. c. 7, with the curious annotations of
Valesius. Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. xxvii. xxviii. xxix. Among
the passages collected in the Commentary of Godefroy, the most
remarkable is one from Libanius, in his discourse concerning the
death of Julian.
The deceitful and dangerous experiment of the criminal
quaestion, as it is emphatically styled, was admitted, rather
than approved, in the jurisprudence of the Romans. They applied
this sanguinary mode of examination only to servile bodies, whose
sufferings were seldom weighed by those haughty republicans in
the scale of justice or humanity; but they would never consent to
violate the sacred person of a citizen, till they possessed the
clearest evidence of his guilt. 162 The annals of tyranny, from
the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially
relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as long as
the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom
and honor, the last hours of a Roman were secured from the danger
of ignominions torture. 163 The conduct of the provincial
magistrates was not, however, regulated by the practice of the
city, or the strict maxims of the civilians. They found the use
of torture established not only among the slaves of oriental
despotism, but among the Macedonians, who obeyed a limited
monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of
commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and
adorned the dignity of human kind. 164 The acquiescence of the
provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to
usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort
from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their
guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction
of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens. The
apprehensions of the subjects urged them to solicit, and the
interest of the sovereign engaged him to grant, a variety of
special exemptions, which tacitly allowed, and even authorized,
the general use of torture. They protected all persons of
Illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters,
professors of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families,
municipal officers, and their posterity to the third generation,
and all children under the age of puberty. 165 But a fatal maxim
was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in
the case of treason, which included every offence that the
subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile intention towards
the prince or republic, 166 all privileges were suspended, and
all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level. As the
safety of the emperor was avowedly preferred to every
consideration of justice or humanity, the dignity of age and the
tenderness of youth were alike exposed to the most cruel
tortures; and the terrors of a malicious information, which might
select them as the accomplices, or even as the witnesses,
perhaps, of an imaginary crime, perpetually hung over the heads
of the principal citizens of the Roman world. 167
Footnote 162: The Pandects (l. xlviii. tit. xviii.) contain the
sentiments of the most celebrated civilians on the subject of
torture. They strictly confine it to slaves; and Ulpian himself
is ready to acknowledge that Res est fragilis, et periculosa, et
quae veritatem fallat.
Footnote 163: In the conspiracy of Piso against Nero, Epicharis
(libertina mulier) was the only person tortured; the rest were
intacti tormentis. It would be superfluous to add a weaker, and
it would be difficult to find a stronger, example. Tacit. Annal.
xv. 57.
Footnote 164: Dicendum . . . de Institutis Atheniensium,
Rhodiorum, doctissimorum hominum, apud quos etiam (id quod
acerbissimum est) liberi, civesque torquentur. Cicero, Partit.
Orat. c. 34. We may learn from the trial of Philotas the
practice of the Macedonians. (Diodor. Sicul. l. xvii. p. 604.
Q. Curt. l. vi. c. 11.
Footnote 165: Heineccius (Element. Jur. Civil. part vii. p. 81)
has collected these exemptions into one view.
Footnote 166: This definition of the sage Ulpian (Pandect. l.
xlviii. tit. iv.) seems to have been adapted to the court of
Caracalla, rather than to that of Alexander Severus. See the
Codes of Theodosius and ad leg. Juliam majestatis.
Footnote 167: Arcadius Charisius is the oldest lawyer quoted to
justify the universal practice of torture in all cases of
treason; but this maxim of tyranny, which is admitted by Ammianus
with the most respectful terror, is enforced by several laws of
the successors of Constantine. See Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. xxxv.
majestatis crimine omnibus aequa est conditio.
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End of Chapter XVII.
To cite original text:
Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. (NY : Knopf, 1993), v. 2, pp. 130 - 139 .