Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the structures of government 175
each diocese; others dealt with outgoing payments or levies of money or
commodities for public works, and for the state arms factories. Another
looked after the treasury, and thereby apparently channelled the prefecture’s
holdings in gold to the other scrinia; the eastern treasury was divided
into the General Bank and the Special Bank (the Genike and the Idike
Trapeza), the separate duties of which are virtually unknown. There were
also departments without the title of scrinium, one for army rations and one
(formed under Justinian) for the corn supply of Constantinople. The judicial
sections had a smaller range of scrinia, concerned with legal records,
management of trials and the general secretarial work of the prefectures.
The staffs of diocesan vicarii (also those of the quasi-vicarial augustal
prefect and count of the east) and of provincial governors replicated the
judicial/financial division, and many of the official grades of the prefectures
above them; how far the formal scrinium organization was also reproduced
is unknown, although some elaboration must have been necessary
in the larger diocesan staffs. All departmental staffs had a large administrative
penumbra of supernumeraries, assessors, advisers, and men recruited
from the households of their heads, or assigned by them to special duties.
They also had many low-ranking sub-clerical personnel officially on the
strength. 44
In addition to the great ministries, staffed at the upper levels by men
from the landed aristocracies of the empire, the emperors maintained large
numbers of cubicularii (chamberlains), usually eunuch slaves or freedmen.
In addition to potentially vast influence in politics and patronage (reflected
in the rise of the praepositi sacri cubiculi, by the early fifth century, to illustris
rank), these had important administrative roles. Their control of the domus
divina per Cappadociam has been noted; in addition, the eunuch sacellarius
managed the privy purse. Presumably dedicated initially to court expenses,
under Justinian, if not earlier, it was used to fund warfare and fortifications;
hence, sacellarii emerge as generals and army paymasters. The distinction
between public and private imperial resources seems to have proved hard
to maintain, and emperors probably received nearly as much wealth from
crown properties as from taxes: in 431, Valentinian III, an emperor whose
tax revenues were very inadequate, boasted of his public expenditure from
the res privata. 45 It may be that emperors were, in fact, making themselves
increasingly independent of the traditional state hierarchies and the ruling
class of the empire. Procopius describes at length and with bitterness
Justinian’s methods of enriching the crown; there may be more in this than
just a standard attack on a bad emperor. The counts of the various parts of
the domus divina were already important people by the end of Justinian’s
reign, a reflection of the emperor’s determination to secure direct control
44 Jones, LRE 586–96. 45 C.Th. xi.1.36.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008