Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

136 6. emperor and court
set the emperor’s entourage off from the rest of the population: a draconian
law of treason governing the repression of conspiracies had been
extended to protect the prince’s advisers, and palatine service usually
brought tax exemptions as well as special palace jurisdiction. Thus, even
menial posts in the palace were swamped with ambitious aspirants. 2 But
first and foremost, members of the late Roman court were distinguished
by their physical location, near the emperor and within the palace.
i. the physical context of power
Whereas the fourth century had favoured the vocabulary of a human
group on the move (comitatus) or, in striking Greek, ‘the army camp’ (stratopedon)
for the itinerant imperial headquarters of its day, the new fact of the
fifth and sixth centuries may be summed up with the word for a building,
the palace (palatium, παλα´ τιον). Thus Justin I informed the pope that he
had been elected by ‘the most splendid grandees of our sacred palace and
of the most holy senate’. 3 Insiders like Peter the Patrician, Justinian’s magister
officiorum, might think in terms of archontes (‘officials’ or ‘leaders’), and in
the east synkletos, ‘senate’, and its derivatives seem sometimes to refer
loosely to élite court society as well as designating the institution which
attempted to replicate in Constantinople the senate of old Rome. But to
outsiders, the emperors’ associates were simply palatini, even though over
time the term narrowed to mean the palace people most exposed to the
population at large, the financial bureaucrats based there. 4 The concept of
palace stretched beyond the physical buildings to encompass the entire
imperial establishment – for instance, in the public prayers Christian
churches offered for the state. Nevertheless, the physical context both
reflected and shaped the life of the emperor and his court, and it is there
that we begin.
By about 425 the east’s new capital of Constantinople had expanded into
one of the empire’s greatest cities, whereas Ravenna resembled rather a
glorified military base. Constantine I had established the original core of
Constantinople’s main palace at the south-east end of the peninsula on
which the capital was built, in the city’s monumental centre. 5 The massive
Hippodrome shielded much of the palace’s western perimeter from riots
and fires. The size and importance of this palace warranted it the epithet
‘Great’. From the site now occupied by the Blue Mosque, some thirty
metres above sea level, it spread down the slope towards the shore,
affording splendid sea views and breezes and dominating the view of the
2 C.Th. ix.14.3;cf.CJ ix.8.5; Jones, LRE i.586 and 571. 3 Coll. Avell. cxli.2.
4 Ensslin (1942).
5 Janin (1964); Guilland (1969) (both to be used with caution); Dagron, Naissance 92–7; Müller-
Wiener (1977); Mango, Développement.
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