Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

190 7. government and administration
evidence for public-spirited officials to imply that the system regularly
worked well. When pope Gregory praised the public conduct of particular
officials, his reasons cannot be reconstructed, 121 but are unlikely to have
been simple – there are instances of governors being praised by one group
of provincials and attacked by another. 122
John Lydus’ On Magistracies provides a glimpse of the operation of one
particular bureau of the praetorian prefecture as seen through the eyes of
a loyal and talented, but also embittered, member; he was proud of his own
unit’s skills and talents, and jealous of the prestige of the financial branch
of the prefecture – though his overall loyalty to the prefecture ensured that
he took an intelligent and sympathetic interest in its fiscal health and the
differing impact on it of high-spending or frugal emperors. 123 According to
John, not surprisingly, patronage was of crucial importance in securing
advancement; much attention was devoted to increasing the official remuneration
and constructing a healthy cash balance on which to retire;
members of the bureau were jealous of their own positions within the
bureau, but also of the position of their bureau relative to other parts of
the administrative machine; the dull routine of quotidian duties was alleviated
by the shared literary interests of many of the officials. Many elements
of John’s picture would be quite familiar to the inhabitants of modern
administrative units, with their concern for mutual back-scratching, departmental
gossip, inter-office rivalries and the diversion of crosswords. Above
all, administrators always know better than their political masters: an anonymous
sixth-century dialogue regarded a good emperor as one who left the
administration to run itself. 124
The bilingual Greek and Coptic archive of Dioscorus casts light on
administration at a much lower, provincial level. Learning was still important,
and Dioscorus is representative of the educated lawyers whose shared
literary and professional interests provided some coherence to the disparate
bureaucratic structure. Favourable decisions required the interest of the
local governor, and Dioscorus used his talents to attract attention: strong
metaphors presented the governor with the qualities which his petitioners
hoped he would display; grandiloquent poetry showed him, and influential
members of his or the prefect’s staff, the rewards that favourable decisions
might bring, while enemies would be publicly shamed by Dioscorus’ vituperation.
125 Dioscorus represented the intertwined interests of his family
(including a monastery founded by his father) and local community in the
121 Greg. Reg. vii.3; xi.4; Brown, Gentlemen and Officers 122–3 with n. 25 for other references.
122 Amm. Marc. xxviii.6.21, the Romanus affair, where complaints from the curiales of Tripolis in
Africa were discredited by their fellow citizens. There were clearly divergent attitudes among leading
inhabitants of Gaul to the prefect Arvandus: Sid. Ap. Ep. 1.7.
123 John Lydus, De Mag. iii.43–5, 51, 54, 56. 124 Anon. Peri politikes epistemes 5.
125 MacCoull, Dioscorus ch. 2; and cf. pp. 168,9 above on sources.
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