Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

170 7. government and administration
names of the more lowly staff of prefects or governors; of their competence,
culture or official values, if any, almost nothing. Even at the top levels
of the administration, we are informed of only a tiny percentage of officeholders
(especially during the fifth century, with its dearth of legislation),
and know all too little about their careers (especially any lesser posts they
may have held) and their achievements; 20 this means that general assessments
of competence, promotions and power are bound to be conjectural.
ii. the structures of government
The structures of civil administration in the east when Justinian came to
power, or in contemporary Ostrogothic Italy, had, at least in outward
appearance, altered very little from the days of Valentinian I at the end of
the fourth century. However, following the reign of Maurice (582–602),
change (very ill documented) seems to have been radical: from a complex
and essentially civilian system of a few multi-tiered departments, subject to
great ministers, there evolved a number of simpler departments (sekreta),
as listed in the Kleterologion of Philotheos (899); these were directly subordinated
to the emperor, and integrated with a militarized system of provincial
government. 21 As we shall see, however, it is possible to detect changes
beneath the surface of the fifth- and sixth-century system which prepared
the ground for the empire which fought off the Arabs.
The fundamental purpose of the administrative system remained the
delivery of the resources upon which the empire’s existence depended.
This entailed the control of a complex system of apportionment, extraction,
transport and redistribution, and the judicial supervision of the problems
and complaints which this process inevitably generated. When
studying the administration, it is important to remember that state service
extended far outside the official hierarchies. Thanks in part to the classical
tradition of personal, liturgic service of the community, there was no clear
division between public and private: it is significant that ancient languages
have no word for the concept of the state as something distinct from, and
superior to, its citizens. 22 Any man of standing in the empire was, or might
easily become, an unsalaried civil servant, administering his city (the basic
unit of the empire) or an imperial estate, collecting taxes on his estates,
organizing corvée labour on the roads or finding transport for military or
civil supplies. Conversely, it was easy for him to treat any paid office he
might hold as a kind of private property. A regular civil servant might wield
20 The best lists of known office-holders are provided in the fasti in PLRE ii and iii.
21 Philotheos: Bury (1911). Bureaucratic change: Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century;
Winkelmann (1976).
22 Note, too, that the verb πολιτε�εσθαι, ‘to be a citizen’, came to mean ‘to hold public office’:
Cameron, Circus Factions 288–9.
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