Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

438 16. state, lordship and community in the west
predecessor, and how had they generated political boundaries in the minds
of their subjects, where previously there had been none?
1. Imperial heritage
In the late Roman empire, central government was exercised from central
imperial courts, 2 local government from civitas capitals: urban centres controlling
dependent rural hinterlands. Situated between court and civitas were
regional administrative centres – praetorian prefectures, sometimes in their
own capitals – and a non-uniform range of assemblies, from provincial
level upwards, in which local élites would periodically gather. From c. 400,
two regional forums had particular importance in the west: the Gallic
council in Arles and the Roman senate in Italy. 3
The fourth century had seen the ever tighter linking of these levels, both
formally and informally. Traditionally, cities had been governed by councils
of city landowners: decurions or curials. From the third century onwards,
however, curials tended to graduate to imperial bureaucratic service,
leaving many fewer decurions available to undertake the numerous tasks
which the imperial authorities continued to assign to local councils. The
new imperial bureaucracy which thus had emerged by c. 400 a.d. made
Roman emperors powerful on two levels. It gathered and processed information,
and wrote legislation, redistributing large amounts of wealth, and
making much of the empire operate as some kind of a unity. It was also a
patronage machine. By c. 400 a.d., around 3,000 very good bureaucratic
jobs (those leading to senatorial status) existed in each half of empire, and
the total size of the bureaucracy was around 24,000. The system also
encompassed long waiting-lists for established posts and ever decreasing
lengths of service; both these features maximized the number of jobs available.
Bureaucratic numbers largely increased through consumer demand. In
the fourth century, it was increasingly in central government, rather than
cities, that money was to be made, and bureaucratic service also brought in
its wake senatorial status and a series of other rights and privileges. By 400,
these honours defined a class of retired imperial servants – honorati – who
constituted a new local élite, whose dominance depended precisely on participation
in central structures of the empire. 4 The political communities
generated around this changing structure were complex. Local pre-eminence
demanded that western landowners made efforts to become honorati.
Those who failed might fall into a second grade of local landowner. The
2 From the time of Valentinian and Valens (364) two imperial courts became the norm: an eastern
one at Constantinople, and a western at Trier or Milan, and later Ravenna.
3 General survey: Jones, LRE chs. 11, 19. For a more political treatment, Heather (1998).
4 In more detail, Heather (1994).
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