The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 12

[Footnote 128: Ib. iii. 22-24.]

'Now that, if I am not mistaken, we have described all the various official grades, it is meet to set forth the history of the Cornicularius, the venerable head of the Civil Service, the man who, as beginning and ending, sums up in himself the complete history of the whole official order. The mere antiquity of his office is sufficient to establish his credit, seeing that he was the leader of his troop for 1,300 years, and made his appearance in the world at the same time with the sacred City of Rome itself: for the Cornicularius was, from the first, attendant on the Master of the Horse, and the Master of the Horse on the King, and thus the Cornicularius, if he retained nothing of his office but the name, would still be connected with the very beginnings of the Roman State.

'But from the time when Domitian appointed Fuscus to the office of Praefect of the Praetorians (an office which had been inst.i.tuted by Augustus), and abolished the rank of Master of the Horse, taking upon himself the command of the army[129], everything was changed.

Henceforward, therefore, all affairs that were transacted in the office of the Praefect were arranged by the Cornicularius alone, and he received the revenues arising from them for his own refreshment.

This usage, which prevailed from the days of Domitian to our own Theodosius, was then changed, on account of the usurpation of Rufinus.

For the Emperor Arcadius, fearing the overgrown power of the Praefectoral office, pa.s.sed a law that the Princeps of the Magister [Officiorum]'s staff[130] ... should appear in the highest courts, and should busy himself with part of the Praefect's duties, and especially should enquire into the principle upon which orders for the Imperial post-horses ([Greek: synthemata]; _evectiones_) were granted[131]....

This order of Arcadius was inscribed in the earlier editions of the Theodosian Code, but has been omitted in the later as superfluous.

[Footnote 129: This seems to be the meaning of Lydus, but it is not clearly expressed.]

[Footnote 130: There is something wanting in the text here.]

[Footnote 131: See Cod. Theod. vi. 29. 8, which looks rather like the law alluded to by Lydus, notwithstanding his remark about its omission.]

'Thus, then, the Princeps of the Magistriani, being introduced into the highest courts, but possessing nothing there beyond his mere empty dignity, made a bargain with the Cornicularius of the day, the object of which was to open up to him some portion of the business; and, having come to terms, the Princeps agreed to hand over to the Cornicularius one pound's weight of gold [40] monthly, and to give instant gratuities to all his subordinates according to their rank in the service. In consequence of this compact the Cornicularius then in office, after receiving his 12 lbs. weight of gold without any abatement, with every show of honour conceded to his superior[132] (?) the preferential right of introducing "one-membered" cases ([Greek: ten ton monomeron entuchion eisagogen]), having reserved to himself, beside the fees paid for promotion in the office[133], and other sources of gain, especially the sole right of subscribing the _Acta_ of the court, and thus provided for himself a yearly revenue of not less than 1,000 aurei [600].'

[Footnote 132: [Greek: to kreittoni].]

[Footnote 133: [Greek: ek tou bathmou].]

I have endeavoured to translate as clearly as possible the obscure words of Lydus as to this bargain between the two court-officers. The complaint of Lydus appears to be that the Cornicularius of the day, by taking the money of the Princeps Magistrianorum, and conceding to him in return the preferential claim to manage 'one-membered' cases (or unopposed business), made a purse for himself, but prepared the way for the ruin of his successors. The monthly payment was, I think, to be made for twelve months only, and thus the whole amount which the Cornicularius received from this source was only 480, but from other sources--chiefly the sums paid for promotion by the subordinate members of the _officium_, and the fees charged by him for affixing his subscription to the _acta_ of the court--he still remained in receipt of a yearly revenue of 600.

[Sidenote: Jealousy between the Officia of the Praefect and the Magister.]

The jealousy between the Officia of the Praetorian Praefect and the Magister Officiorum was intense. Almost every line in the treatise of Lydus testifies to it, and shows that the former office, in which he had the misfortune to serve, was being roughly shouldered out of the way by its younger and more unscrupulous compet.i.tor.

Lydus continues[134]: 'Now, what followed, like the Peleus of Euripides, I can never describe without tears. For on account of all these sources of revenue having been dried up, I myself have had to bear my part in the general misery of our time, since, though I have reached the highest grade of promotion in the service, I have derived nothing from it but the bare name. I do not blush to call Justice herself as a witness to the truth of what I say, when I affirm that I am not conscious of having received one obol from the Princeps, nor from the Letters Patent for promotions in the office[135]. For indeed whence should I have derived it, since it was the ancient custom that those who in any way appeared in the highest courts should pay to the _officium_ seven and thirty _aurei_ [22] for a "one-membered" suit; but ever after this bargain was made there has been given only a very moderate sum of copper--not gold--in a beggarly way, as if one were buying a flask of oil, and that not regularly? Or how compel the Princeps to pay the ancient covenanted sum to the Cornicularius of the day, when he now scarcely remembered the bare name of that officer, as he never condescended to be present in the court when promotions were made from a lower grade to a higher? Bitterly do I regret that I was so late in coming to perceive for what a paltry price I was rendering my long services as a.s.sistant in the courts, receiving in fact nothing therefrom as my own _solatium_. It serves me right, however, for having chosen that line of employment, as I will explain, if the reader will allow me to recount to him my career from its commencement to the present time.'

[Footnote 134: De Mag. iii. 25.]

[Footnote 135: [Greek: apo ton legomenon kompleusimon], apparently the same source of revenue as the promotion-money ([Greek: ten ek tou bathmou p.r.o.nomian]).]

Lydus then goes on to describe his arrival at Constantinople (A.D.

511), his intention to enter the _Scrinium Memoriae_ (in which he would have served under the Magister Officiorum), and his abandonment of this intention upon the pressing entreaties of his countryman Zoticus, who was at the time Praefectus Praetorio. This step Lydus looks upon as the fatal mistake of his life, though the consequences of it to him were in some degree mitigated by the marriage which Zoticus enabled him to make with a lady possessed of a fortune of 100 pounds' weight of gold (4,000). Her property, her virtues (for 'she was superior to all women who have ever been admired for their moral excellence'), and the consolations of Philosophy and Literature, did much to soothe the disappointment of Lydus, who nevertheless felt, when he retired to his books after forty years of service, in which he had reached the unrewarded post of Cornicularius, that his official life had been a failure.

It has seemed worth while to give this sketch of the actual career of a Byzantine official, as it may ill.u.s.trate in some points the lives of the functionaries to whom so many of the letters of Ca.s.siodorus are addressed; though I know not whether we have any indications of such a rivalry at Ravenna as that which prevailed at Constantinople between the _officium_ of the Praefect and that of the Magister. We now pa.s.s on to

[Sidenote: Adjutor.]

[Sidenote: Primiscrinius.]

(3) The _Adjutor_. Some of the uses of this term are very perplexing.

It seems clear (from Lydus, 'De Mag.' iii. 3) that all the members of the officium were known by the generic name _Adjutores_. Here however we may perhaps safely a.s.sume that Adjutor means simply an a.s.sistant to the officer next above him, as we find, lower down in the list of the 'Not.i.tia,' the Exceptores followed by their Adjutores. We may find a parallel to Adjutor in the word Lieutenant, which, for the same reason is applied to officers of such different rank as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a Lieutenant-General, a Lieutenant-Colonel, and a simple Lieutenant in the Army or Navy. In the lists of Ca.s.siodorus and Lydus we find no mention of an officer bearing the special name of Adjutor, but we meet instead with a _Primiscrinius_, of whom, according to Lydus, there were two. He says[136], 'After the Cornicularius are two Primiscrinii, whom the Greeks call first of the service[137].' And later on[138], when he is describing the course of business in the _secretum_ of the Praefect, as it used to be in the good old days, he informs us that after judgment had been given, and the Secretarii had read to the litigant the decree prepared by the a.s.sessors and carefully copied by one of the Cancellarii, and after an accurate digest of the case had been prepared in the Latin language by a Secretarius, in order to guard against future error or misrepresentation, the successful litigant pa.s.sed on with the decree in his hand _to the Primiscrinii, who appointed an officer to execute the judgment of the Court_[139]. These men then put the decree into its final shape by means of the persons appointed to a.s.sist them[140]

(men who could puzzle even the professors themselves in logical discussions), and endorsed it on the litigant's pet.i.tion in characters which at once struck awe into the reader, and which seemed actually swollen with official importance[141]. The name and t.i.tles of the 'completing' officer were then subscribed.

[Footnote 136: De Mag. iii. 4.]

[Footnote 137: [Greek: meta de ton kornikoularion primiskrinioi duo, ous h.e.l.lenes protous tes taxeos kalousi].]

[Footnote 138: De Mag. iii. 11.]

[Footnote 139: [Greek: pareei pros tous primiskrinious taxantas ekbibasten tois apopephasmenois]. Probably we should read [Greek: taxontas] for [Greek: taxantas].]

[Footnote 140: [Greek: epleroun dia ton boethein autois tetagmenon] (?

Adjutores).]

[Footnote 141: [Greek: epi tou notou tes entuchias grammasin aidous autothen apases kai exousias onko sesobemenois].]

If the suggestion that the Primiscrinii were considered as in some sense subst.i.tutes (Adjutores) for the Cornicularius be correct, we may perhaps account for there being two of them in the days of Lydus by the disappearance of the Princeps. The office of Cornicularius had swallowed up that of Princeps, and accordingly the single Adjutor, who was sufficient at the compilation of the 'Not.i.tia,' had to be multiplied by two.

[Sidenote: Commentariensis, or Commentarisius.]

(4) The _Commentariensis_. Here we come again to an officer who is mentioned by all our three authorities, though in Ca.s.siodorus he seems to be degraded some steps below his proper rank (but this may only be from an accidental transposition of the order of the letters), and though Lydus again gives us two of the name instead of one. The last-named authority inserts next after the Primiscrinii 'two Commentarisii--so the law calls those who are appointed to attend to the drawing up of indictments[142].'

[Footnote 142: [Greek: kommentarisioi duo (houto de tous epi ton hypomnematon graphe tattomenous ho nomos kalei)] (iii. 4). I accept the necessary emendation of the text proposed in the Bonn edition.]

The Commentariensis (or Commentarisius, as Lydus calls him[143]) was evidently the chief a.s.sistant of the Judge in all matters of criminal jurisdiction[144]. We have a remarkably full, and in the main clear account of his functions in the pages of Lydus (iii. 16-18), from which it appears that he was promoted from the ranks of the _Exceptores_ (shorthand writers), and had six of his former colleagues serving under him as Adjutores[145]. Great was the power, and high the position in the Civil Service, of the Commentariensis. The whole tribe of process-servers, gaolers, lictors[146]--all that we now understand by the police force--waited subserviently on his nod. It rested with him, says Lydus, to establish the authority of the Court of Justice by means of the wholesome fear inspired by iron chains and scourges and the whole apparatus of torture[147]. Nay, not only did the subordinate magistrates execute their sentences by his agency, he had even the honour of being chosen by the Emperor himself to be the minister of vengeance against the persons who had incurred his anger or his suspicion. 'I myself remember,' says Lydus, 'when I was serving as Chartularius in the office of the Commentariensis, under the praefecture of Leontius (a man of the highest legal eminence), and when the wrath of Anastasius was kindled against Apion, a person of the most exalted rank, and one who had a.s.sisted in his elevation to the throne[148], at the same time when Kobad, King of Persia, blazed out into fury[149], that then all the confiscations and banishments which were ordered by the enraged Emperor were entrusted to no one else but to the Commentarienses serving under the Praefect. In this service they acquitted themselves so well, with such vigour, such harmonious energy, such entire clean-handedness and absence of all dishonest gain, as to move the admiration of the Emperor, who made use of them on all similar occasions that presented themselves in the remainder of his reign. They had even the honour of being employed against Macedonius, Patriarch of Constantinople, when that prelate had provoked the Emperor by suspending all intercourse with him as a heretic; and that, although Celer, one of the most intimate friends of Anastasius, was at that very time holding the rank of Magister Officiorum.'

[Footnote 143: To avoid confusion I will use the term 'Commentariensis' throughout.]

[Footnote 144: So Bethmann Hollweg (p. 179), 'Diess ist der Gehulfe des Magistrats bei Verwaltung der Criminaljustiz.' I compare him in the following translation of Ca.s.siodorus to a 'magistrate's clerk.']

[Footnote 145: See iii. 9 (p. 203, ed. Bonn), and combine with iii.

16. The _Augustales_ referred to in the latter pa.s.sage were a higher cla.s.s of Exceptores.]

[Footnote 146: Applicitarii, Clavicularii, Lictores.]

[Footnote 147: [Greek: sidereois desmois kai poinaion organon kai plektron poikilia saleuonton to phobo to dikasterion] (iii. 16).]

[Footnote 148: [Greek: kai koinonesantos auto tes basileias].]

[Footnote 149: [Greek: hote Koades ho Perses ephlegmaine]. The whole pa.s.sage is mysterious, but we seem to have here an allusion to the outbreak of the Persian War (A.D. 502).]

An officer who was thus privileged to lay hands on Patriarch and Patrician in the name of Augustus was looked up to with awful reverence by all the lower members of the official hierarchy; and Lydus, with one graphic touch, brings before us the glow of gratified self-love with which, when he was a subordinate _Scriniarius_, he found himself honoured by the familiar conversation of so great a person as the Commentariensis[150]: 'I too am struck with somewhat of my old awe, recurring in memory to those who were then holders of the office. I remember what fear of the Commentarisii fell upon all who at all took the lead in the _Officium_, but especially on the Scriniarii; and how greatly he who was favoured with a chat with a Commentarisius pa.s.sing by valued himself on the honour.' Lydus also describes to us how the Commentariensis, instructed by the Praefect, or perhaps even by the Emperor himself, would take with him one of his faithful servants, the Chartularii, would visit the abode of the suspected person (who might, as we have seen, be one of the very highest officers of the State), and would then in his presence dictate in solemn Latin words the indictment which was to be laid against him, the mere hearing of which sometimes brought the criminal to confess his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of the Emperor.

[Footnote 150: iii. 17 (p. 210).]

It was from this _commentum_, the equivalent of a French _acte d'accusation_, that the Commentariensis derived his t.i.tle.

[Sidenote: Ab Actis (Scriniarius Actorum?).]

(5) The _Ab Actis_. The officer who bore this t.i.tle (which is perhaps the same as the Scriniarius Actorum of Ca.s.siodorus[151]) seems to have been exclusively concerned with civil cases, and perhaps held the same place in reference to them that the Commentarienses held in criminal matters[152]. Practically, his office appears to have been very much what we understand by that of _Chief Registrar_ of the Court. He (or they, for in Lydus' time there were two _Ab Actis_ as well as two Commentarienses[153]) was chosen from the select body of shorthand writers who were known as Augustales, and was a.s.sisted by six men of the same cla.s.s, 'men of high character and intelligence and still in the vigour of their years[154].' His chief business--and in this he was served by the _Nomenclatores_, who shouted out in a loud voice the names of the litigants--was to introduce the plaintiff and defendant into the Court, or to make a brief statement of the nature of the case to the presiding magistrate. He then had to watch the course of the pleadings and listen to the Judge's decision, so as to be able to prepare a full statement of the case for the Registers or Journals[155] of the Court. These Registers--at least in the flouris.h.i.+ng days of Roman jurisprudence--were most fully and accurately kept. Even the _Dies Nefasti_ were marked upon them, and the reason for their being observed as legal holidays duly noted.

Elaborate indices, prepared by the Chartularii, made search an easy matter to those who wished to ascertain what was the decision of the law upon every point; and the marginal notes, or _personalia_, prepared in Latin[156] by the Ab Actis or his a.s.sistants, were so excellent and so full that sometimes when the original entry in the Registers had been lost the whole case could be sufficiently reconstructed from them alone.

[Footnote 151: Var. xi. 22.]

[Footnote 152: This seems to be Bethmann Hollweg's view (p. 181).]