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156 6. emperor and court
Diversity, then, characterized the social groups that constituted the
court. Differing religious enthusiasms, languages, social statuses, kinship
networks and rival organizations included, excluded and collided with one
another inside the Great Palace. And we have barely hinted at the ethnic
underlay implied by the tribesmen – Goths, Lombards or Isaurians –
serving in the palatine guards or the ethnic variety, ranging from Italians to
Mesopotamians, which was concealed under the all-embracing Roman citizenship.
United by service to the emperor, their corporate groups, and
themselves, the people of the court shared proximity and the precariousness
of their power and position. Today’s all-powerful courtier who
enjoyed free speech or ‘outspokenness’ ( parrhesia) might be exiled or even
executed tomorrow, whether he was the ruler’s boyhood friend, like
Theodosius II’s magister officiorum, or his trusted physician, like Justinian’s
doctor. 107 This heterogeneous and dynamic human mass needed structure,
and ceremony helped meet that need.
iv. court and ceremony
In its zest for elaborate symbolic gestures, the palace reflected broader
society, for imperial ceremonial capped a pyramid of rituals in late Roman
society and government. The recurring dilemmas of choreographing the
court’s public movements in a stable landscape naturally encouraged court
officials to codify ritual solutions once they had been devised. The durable
empresses, and eunuchs who spent their entire lives in the palace acquiring
or caring for the symbols of power, helped foster a growing ceremonial tradition,
as the insignia of power, like ceremonies, began to accumulate: the
Great Palace still boasted splendid thrones commissioned by Arcadius and
Maurice five centuries later. 108 It is a token of the new situation that the
palace tradition of ceremonial treatises begins in the fifth century. 109
The interplay of the multiple elements we have sketched meant that their
configuration within court society changed. The main scale for gauging one’s
importance was precedence. Accordingly, quarrels among competing
bureaucratic élites explain much of the Theodosian Code, as law after law
tinkered with the minutiae of official rank, and an imperial decision enhancing
an official’s precedence was a sure sign that he and his corporate compartment
had arrived. Revealingly, precedence attained its definitive
statement when members of the court adored the emperor at solemn audiences
– for example, the consistorium. So long as a member of court held a
governmental title – and virtually all significant figures within the palace
received one – the senatorial order provided the general framework for these
107 PLRE ii s.v. Paulinus 8; Chron. Pasch. s.a. 532.
108 Oikonomides (1972) 275.10; Const. Porph. De Cer. ii.15. 109 McCormick (1985) 4.
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