Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-cbk24 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T18:54:44.895Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Roman Bureaucratese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Ramsay MacMullen*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
Get access

Extract

The theory and fact of the Roman emperor's position were strikingly at variance in the fourth century. ‘Quod principi placuit legis habuit vigorem’ may hav been the established doctrine, but when he spoke to his proconsuls, the emperor said rather, ‘You must order the proceedings [of civil suits] to be on luded on the third day, or at the latest on the fourth day, or at any rate on the fifth’; or, to the civil service, ‘Let the greedy hands of the officials now forbcar, let theln forbear, I say. The stutter and shrillness do not fit an autocrat, nor the repetitions; but repetitions are characteristic of the Codes. An entire decree might have to be re-enacted, in almost identical form, eight or ten time, evidently because no one had paid any attention to it. Against this merely ornamental legislation, against ‘the ruler who lays down a law and is reckoned unable to enforce it,’ Libanius might protest, yet, three times imperatively summoned to the capital, he simply remained in Antioch. A contenlporary, Valerianus v. c., flouted one decree after another, one judicial decision after another, and flouted, too, the authority of the praetorian prefect, the proconsul, the urban prefect, and the imperial secret police, one of whom he allegedly killed with his own hands. Between the emperor and his subjects, and between his theoretical omnipotence and his actual powers, the essential link was the bureaucracy. Plainly, it was not doing its job. It is the argument of this paper that part of the difficulty lay in the failure of all ranks of government to get through to each other.

Information

Type
Miscellany
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 New York, Fordham University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable