Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the emperor 143
The emperor’s activities varied according to the individual character and
abilities of the ruler. Some appear to have been little more than figureheads,
for whom officials, empresses and eunuchs guided the fortunes of state,
while others, none more so than Justinian, worked day and night to achieve
astonishing ambitions. Emperors did not leave the palace to direct affairs
of state as they had in earlier days. They no longer led the Roman army into
battle. A Justinianic civil servant claimed that Theodosius I had forbidden
this to future emperors; Maurice’s attempt to do so was met, we are told,
with a flock of sinister portents. 46 In an age of great bureaucracies, emperors
governed with the bureaucrat’s tools of meetings and the pen.
We often see emperors performing symbolic acts of governance: inspecting
granaries, celebrating triumphs, holding audiences. This was serious and
time-consuming business. For reasons we shall see, questions of ceremonial
and precedence sometimes required the emperor’s personal attention. 47
Ceremonial catered to the institutions which translated imperial decisions into
policy. An impatient Justinian could try to gain time only by shifting some
obligatory ceremonies to odd hours of the day or night, or by performing
them on the side as he proceeded to a public appearance in the Hippodrome. 48
But the seclusion and security which shielded the emperor make it difficult to
see behind the ceremonial scenes into the emperors’ daily routine of running
the empire. We catch a glimpse of Marcian in the senate, discussing a wealthy
widow’s contested will. 49 Exception or routine? We cannot tell.
The emperor’s purple ink fuelled the engines of bureaucracy. He will
have spent many hours reviewing and subscribing documents; a child who
could not write could not rule. 50 The emperor listened: to endless panegyrics
and petitions in public, to proposals and reports in private, the responses
to which are preserved in the laws and historians of the age. But Justinian’s
personal drafting of laws, which once would have epitomized an ideal
emperor, was resented in the sixth century. 51 So far had the central institutions
of the empire evolved towards autonomous activity. The parallel and
competing organs of the central government jealously guarded their territory.
John Lydus was acutely aware that every diminution of his beloved
praetorian prefecture meant another bureau’s increase, and vice versa. 52 The
emperor must often have intervened to arbitrate among bureaucratic rivals.
Though the circumstances are unusual, the emperor occasionally
appears at work in less secluded settings – for instance, when Justin II hammered
out an edict of religious union. The emperor or his advisers first
drew up a draft. The emperor’s personal physician, a seeming sympathizer,
46 McCormick, Eternal Victory 47. 47 E.g. Const. Porph. De Cer. i.86 and 87.
48 Const. Porph. De Cer. i.84 and 86. 49 Marcian, Nov. 5, praef.
50 Justin I needed a stencil: PLRE ii s.v. Iustinus 4; V. Dan. Styl. 67; Classen (1977c) 60–7.
51 Procop. Secret History 14.2–3. 52 John Lyd. De Mag. ii.11;cf.iii.41.
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