A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

the first time, a budget could be planned. Each of the new provinces had a
separate military and civil administration. The military leader (dux) was in
charge of its forces and responsible to more senior commanders, the magistri
militum, the ‘masters of the soldiers’, and so ultimately to the emperor. The 114
provinces of the empire were grouped into fourteen dioceses, each under a
vicarius, a deputy, while there were also proconsuls who might be given
responsibility for a smaller number of provinces. The civilian governors reported
to the praetorian prefects, men who held considerable power in their own right as
the immediate subordinates of the emperor. Normally there were three of these
‘regional prime ministers’, one for the east, one for Italy, Africa and Illyricum,
and one for Gaul, Spain and Britain. These reforms allowed resources to be
grouped more effectively so as to provision and support the Roman forces,
which were concentrated in the three most vulnerable areas, the Rhine, the
Danube and the Persian frontier. There has been scholarly controversy over the
total number of men under arms, with estimates ranging between 450,000 and
600,000. 9 This, then, was the administrative structure that Theodosius inherited
in 379, with his own sphere of authority covering the whole of the eastern
empire, under its own praetorian prefect, and, so long as the Gothic crisis lasted,
IIlyricum, again with its own prefect. 10
So how was Theodosius able to exercise his own ‘divine’ power? Over the
centuries the emperor had absorbed the traditional legal powers of the Roman
senate and magistrates and so had become the focus of lawmaking in the empire.
One way for an emperor to express his wishes was through an edict. In early
Roman law, an edict had been a statement made by a magistrate when he
assumed office of how he proposed to carry out his duties. It had no permanent
effect and lapsed as soon as his appointment came to an end. The emperors used
edicts as a way of announcing a new policy to the empire. One of the bestknown
examples is the edict of the emperor Caracalla, the so-called Antonine
Constitution of 212, which gave citizenship to all free men and women of the
empire. An edict might be addressed to the empire as a whole or to a particular
city or province. In order to convert an edict into enforceable law, it had to be
confirmed, normally in a letter (epistula) sent to a named official, a praetorian
prefect or provincial governor perhaps, asking him to effect the specific policy or
providing him with guidance for conduct in the courts. When the emperor or his
jurists dealt with a case in person, their decisions might be issued as decreta or