Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

166 7. government and administration
through barbarian occupation of the provinces, while emperors had increasing
difficulty in collecting taxes and enforcing their will in their own territories.
The Code (published when a marriage alliance drew together the eastern
and western branches of the dynasty) symbolically reaffirmed imperial unity
and central control; it legitimated emperors by stressing their role as founts
of law; not surprisingly, it was used or imitated by barbarian kings in the west,
who, on a smaller scale, faced similar problems. 4 Justinian’s Code and his subsequent
Novels reflect the problems of an emperor whose relationship with
the senatorial élite was often tense, and who (arguably) had grandiose longterm
ambitions for the restoration of the empire as a single administrative
unit. Unlike his fifth-century predecessors, Justinian was a legislative and
administrative innovator, ruling an empire undergoing increasing social, economic
and religious change, and aware that his world was in a state of flux.
The rhetorical preambles to his earlier Novels (laws when included in the
Codes omit this standard form) emphasize continuity and tradition, even in
major administrative reforms. 5
The overall picture of government given by the Codes is, then, as much
symbolic as practical, and needs to be treated with some suspicion, when
we ask not what emperors ideally expected from their servants and subjects,
and their servants and subjects from them, but what they actually
achieved. This principle also applies to individual laws. Thus, the 192 constitutions
of Theodosian Code xii.1, in which emperors from Constantine
to Theodosius II repeatedly tried to force men of the curial class to stay in
their cities and do their duties in the imperial system, are often used to highlight
the contrast between aspirations and effectiveness. We should not,
however, be too sceptical. The curial system probably continued to function
in a reasonably effective way over much of the empire during that
period. Such laws may be seen as a repeated symbolic beating of the parish
bounds, allied with the very practical purpose of forcible reminding. At the
same time, however, they acted as a sluice gate by which emperors, and the
curiae which, directly or indirectly, raised these problems and pressed
emperors to legislate, controlled the level of the pool of literate, upperclass
citizens who were needed in both the central and the local administrations.
6
Our other main official source for the system at work in this period is the
Variae. 7 This is the compilation of letters written by Cassiodorus on behalf
of the Ostrogothic kings of Italy between c. 506 and 537, and in his own
4 See ch. 10 (Charles-Edwards), pp. 284,7 below; also Barnwell (1992); Rousseau (1996) 10.
5 Maas (1986).
6 Repetition of laws may also be a consequence of requests by officials and subjects for clarification
of the law: Harries in Harries and Wood (1993) 15. On the curiales, see Heather in CAH xiii.204–9.
7 See Mommsen (1910); also the introduction to his edition in MGH Auct. Ant. xii (Berlin, 1894),
and Barnish (1992), introduction.
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