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176 7. government and administration
of financial matters. 46 In the seventh century, the sacellarius grew further
in importance, and came eventually to supervise the small departments
of the new Byzantine system: the land survey and tax reassessment conducted
by the sacellarius Philagrius in the late 630s illustrates this growing
domination. 47
Offices were not just bureaucratic posts; they were also highly-prized
dignities: the source which provides our best evidence on official structures
at the end of the fourth century, the Notitia Dignitatum, 48 is, as the title suggests,
a register of dignities: offices, civil and military, are defined in terms
of insignia and subordinates far more than of duties. Precedence mattered,
and was controlled and demonstrated, in the eastern empire, through the
organization of imperial ceremonies at Constantinople. 49 Much administrative
legislation of the late empire is devoted to problems of precedence,
and in eleventh-century Byzantium Anna Comnena saw the emperor
Alexius’ skill in devising new and splendid titles for his supporters as decisive
evidence of his political talent. 50 The distinction between service and
honour was blurred. Moreover, the practice of short-term appointments
at the higher levels of the system both enlarged the emperor’s patronage
and confirmed the preference of his more prominent subjects for honoured
leisure. Not surprisingly, then, outside the departmental structures
but within the late Roman establishment stood large numbers of honorati:
retired officials, or men with honorary titles. Such titles were not sought
only for prestige and influence; they freed their holders from the duties of
service on the town councils, although they might still involve them in local
or civic administrative tasks: checking of accounts, revision of the census,
and supervision of buildings or the corn supply. One effect of the multiplication
of honorati was to create a class in each province which might rival,
or outweigh the authority of, the provincial governor, 51 though in some
areas governors came to be drawn from this class. 52 The gradual replacement
of civic by imperial service as the prime source of honour may often
have tied the provinces more closely to the centre, though to offset their
declining importance one finds surviving curiales usurping the title of clarissimus
by the late fifth century. 53 At a higher level, the emperors, especially
in the east, might grant honorary illustris offices to serving officials to lift
them to senatorial status, or to men called in for special tasks: thus, jurists
46 Theophanes 235.1–7; 237.1–4. 47 Kaegi (1992) 256–8.
48 On the Notitia, see Kelly in CAH xiii.163–5.
49 See ch. 6 (McCormick), p. 157 above. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century 387–94.
50 Alexiad iii.4; cf. Eusebius, Life of Constantine iv.1: ‘For the emperor devised new dignities, that he
might give tokens of his favour to a larger number of people.’ For the combined process of development
of new ranks and titles and devaluation of existing ones, see Brown, Gentlemen and Officers 130–43;
Haldon (1990) 389–91.
51 Lendon (1997) 223–35; cf. Van Dam (1996) 80 for bishops and governors.
52 Cass. Variae i.3.5; i.4.13; xi.39.5; Greatrex (1996); Roueché, Aphrodisias 66; Barnish (1988) 131–3.
53 Barnish (1988) 121 n. 9.
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