Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

150 6. emperor and court
When Anastasius took over, Longinus was pushed aside. Anastasius’
brother-in-law, Secundinus, was soon made city prefect, clearly to control
public order. A nephew, Hypatius, who may have fought against the Isaurian
rebels, certainly became magister militum praesentalis and occupied several other
commands, even returning to prominence, after his uncle’s death, until he
was swept away by the Nika uprising. His brother Pompeius, who met the
same fate, commanded an army in Thrace late in Anastasius’ reign. Similar
patterns obtain for Justin I’s family. The extreme case is Maurice: the
emperor’s brother Peter was both magister officiorum and curopalatus, his
brother-in-law Philippicus became comes excubitorum and commanded numerous
campaigns, while a cousin or nephew, bishop Domitian, remained
Maurice’s closest confidant and adviser. Here the emperor’s relatives indubitably
spread through different segments of government. The empire had
become so much a family affair that, in unprecedented fashion, Maurice’s
father and Domitian entered the imperial pantheon at the church of the Holy
Apostles; indeed, the latter received a state funeral on an imperial scale. 84
From Verina on, most high-ranking generals were family appointments,
which surely reflects a threat emperors perceived in the armed forces. For
all his power, the emperor’s control was constantly jeopardized by conspiracies,
usurpations and riots. By keeping the armies largely in relatives’
hands, the emperor gained an added degree of loyalty. When other structures
of imperial power cracked in crisis, as in the Nika riot, Justinian fell
back on his kin. His wife alone urged him to keep fighting and she turned
the tide when other advisers panicked. To his cousins Boraides, not otherwise
known to have played a political role, and Justus, he entrusted the dangerous
mission of arresting Anastasius’ nephews who had turned the riot
into a usurpation.
Another factor, too, may have figured in this conspicuous overlay of
family on the institutions of late-Roman government, where power was partitioned
among competing and compartmentalized bureaucracies. These
stretched vertically through society, but lacked much horizontal integration
below the emperor, since the normal bureaucratic career was advancement
by seniority within one organization, whereas transfers seem to have been
rare and resented. 85 This pattern also applied to the court. Thus the
empress’s court was distinct from the emperor’s in its gender, location,
organization and finances. Palace security and its personnel were split
among the magister officiorum, another corps headed by the comes excubitorum,
and, thirdly, the eunuch spatharius. Triply redundant security systems created
countervailing pressures which enhanced the emperor’s safety. Yet such
pronounced corporate identity and rivalry also engendered inefficiency or
84 John Eph. HE iii.5.18; Whitby, Maurice 14–15; Theoph. AM 6085 and 6094.
85 Jones, LRE i.602.
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