Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the structures of government 171
his office as in the case of the praetorian prefect Cyrus of Panopolis (simultaneously
prefect of Constantinople), like a great private benefactor, or
even like an emperor: this point was lost neither on the Hippodrome crowd
in Constantinople, which compared Cyrus’ building achievements with
those of Constantine, nor on the emperor Theodosius II, who promptly
relegated Cyrus to the bishopric of Cotyaeum. No description of the
administration can really do justice to its pervasiveness and complexity. 23
Among those at the top in the fifth and sixth centuries, the men whose
offices gave them the rank of illustris and membership of the senate of
Rome or Constantinople, were the two great palatine heads of department,
members of the emperor’s personal entourage (comitatus) with the title of
count (comes or companion of the emperor). 24 These were the comes sacrarum
largitionum (count of the sacred largesses), who collected the revenues due
in the form of precious or semi-precious metals and textiles, and disbursed
it in coin, plate and uniforms, and the comes rerum privatarum (count of the
private estates), who saw to the incorporation and administration of estates
accruing to the emperor by confiscation or bequest, and as abandoned or
heirless property (bona vacantia or caduca). 25 The former headed a large and
elaborate department, with ten sub-departments (scrinia) at the imperial
court; in each diocesan group of provinces, he controlled an administrator
with a large staff, and jurisdiction in fiscal cases; he also controlled provincial
depots, customs offices, mines, certain state factories and a departmental
transport service. The latter’s organization was similar, but on a smaller
scale: five sub-departments at court, administrators at diocesan and provincial
level, and officials in charge of individual estates or groupings of
estates (domus divinae). Both ministers supervised the work of their provincial
subordinates, principally the collection of revenue, by annually
despatching staff (palatini) from their central scrinia.
In the west, some of the functions of the comes rerum privatarum were eventually
hived off to a new illustris minister, the comes patrimonii, perhaps first
attested under the emperor Glycerius (473–4). 26 He seems to have been in
charge of imperial estates directly administered, while the comes rerum privatarum
took in new accessions and collected revenues from those estates which
had been rented out. This reform was imitated in the east by the emperor
Anastasius in the 490s, although it is uncertain whether the responsibilities
of the two counts were identical to those of their western counterparts; it
may be that the patrimonium was dedicated to the emperor’s public, fiscal
expenditure, his ‘largesses’, the res privata to the expenses of the court. This
may reflect a distinction between public and private property which had
accrued to the crown, the former including confiscated civic or temple lands,
23 In general, for description see Jones, LRE chs. 12–16. 24 Cf. Kelly in CAH xiii.162–9.
25 Delmaire (1989). 26 Hänel (1857) 260.
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