The Economic History of Byzantium - Dumbarton Oaks

1010 NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES
usual rate of interest, which was about 6%. Only in some cases of senior titleholders
( protospatharioi), which were normally held by individuals of more advanced age, since
they would have had to pass through the junior ranks of officialdom first, did the
return on the investment reach 5.55–8.33%. (b) The sum invested could never be refunded
and was consequently lost forever to the investor. (c) The roga was granted for
life and could not be inherited. As a result, in an age when various infections and diseases
kept life expectancy low, the prospect that both the capital and the income might
be lost within a short space of time was a far from unlikely one.
Clearly, then, for the system to have functioned successfully, other incentives must
have been at work. Where the administrative positions were concerned, we can presume
that there was additional income; for example, those employed in the imperial
secretariat can be assumed to have enjoyed frequent “windfalls.” As for the titles of
honor, there were of course social incentives, so powerful that the vain might well be
induced to overlook purely financial criteria. Constantine Porphyrogennetos tells of a
wealthy cleric who gave Leo VI 60 litrai of gold in order to obtain the title of protospatharios,
the salary of which was only one litra per year, adding that he died in the
second year and had thus collected roga of only 2 litrai. 97
This system generated so much revenue for the state that an effort was made to offer
purely financial incentives. Officials who had already invested large sums of money in
the purchase of titles that yielded them little were able to buy a higher roga on more
attractive terms: “the price is to be increased in proportion to the roga,” with 7 more
nomismata of annual roga for each litra invested with the state. 98 The rate of interest
offered on this new investment was a higher one, 9.72%, far above the rate available
on the open market. Yet in order to buy extra roga at a high rate of interest, one had
first to have bought the title; in other words, one had to have invested large sums of
money in the state at low rates of interest and then add to them further large sums of
money that would then yield a satisfactory income. As a result, the investment inevitably
amounted to an immense sum, while the disadvantages of the life salary and the
inevitable loss of the capital remained.
The system functioned without interruption until the eleventh century, and I suspect
that its management was concentrated in the hands of the sekreton tou eidikou, which
paid the rogai of the senate. 99
State Expenditure
The roga, which accounted for the greater part of the state’s expenditure, was paid in
cash: usually in gold coins, but also in the silver and copper subdivisions of the monetary
unit. 100 To this expenditure, we must add certain supplementary payments in
97 De Administrando Imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins (London–Washington, D.C.,
1962–67), chap. 5, lines 236ff (hereafter DAI).
98 De cer., 1:692.
99 Lemerle, “Roga,” 95–96.
100 Cf. N. Oikonomides, “Title and Income at the Byzantine Court,” in Byzantine Court Culture from
829 to 1204, ed. H. Maguire (Washington, D.C., 1997), 199–215.