2-5. The Civil Administration of the Empire
Each praefectal region was divided into great sections called dioeceses. Each of these was formed by combination of a certain number of provinces; and each was comparable to the more important of the old provinces of the age of the Republic and early Principate. The word dioecesis had passed through a long history before the time of Diocletian. The Romans found it existent in their Asiatic dominions, where it had been applied by earlier rulers to an administrative district, especially in relation to legal affairs. The Roman government extended the employment of the term both in the East and in the West and connected it with other sides of administration besides the legal. Diocletian marked out ten great divisions of the Empire to be designated by this title. The number of the divisions and their limits were somewhat altered by his successors. At the head of each Dioecesis was placed an officer who bore the name vicarius, excepting in the Eastern praefecture. Here the Vicarius was after a while replaced by a comes Orientis, to whom the governor of Egypt was at first subject, though he acquired independent authority later.
The treatment of Italy (in the new and extended sense) was peculiar. It constituted a single Dioecesis, but possessed two vicarii, one of whom had his seat at Milan, the other at Rome. This bisection of the Italian praefecture depended on differences in taxation, to which we must recur later. In the Dioecesis Asiana, and the Dioecesis Africae, the Vicarius was of course responsible not to the Praefectus, but to the proconsul.
Such were, in broad outline, the features which the civil administration of the Empire wore after Diocletian's reforms. Some rough idea must be conveyed of the mode in which the scheme was applied to the practical work of government. It must be premised that now, as heretofore, there was no point in the vast and complex machinery of bureaucracy at which the direct interposition of the emperor might not be at any moment brought into play. There was therefore no mechanical subordination of officer to officer, such as would produce an unbroken official chain, passing down from the emperor to the lowest official. And even apart from imperial intervention we must not conceive of the different grades of functionaries as arranged in absolutely systematic subjection, one grade to another. This would have interfered with one principal purpose of the new organisation, which aimed at providing the emperor with information about the whole state of his dominions, through officers immediately in touch with him at the centre of the government.
The emperor could not afford to restrict himself to such reports as might reach him through a Praefectus Praetorio or a proconsul. Thus the Vicarii were never regarded as mere agents or deputies of the Praefocti, and the same may be said of other officials. All might be called on to leave the beaten track. The Praefecti Praetorio, though each had his allotted sphere, were still in some sense colleagues, and wore required on occasion to take common action. One great aim of the new system was to prevent administrators from accumulating influence by long continuance in the same post, or in any other way. Therefore functionaries were passed on rapidly from one position to another. Therefore, also, except in rare instances, no man was allowed to hold office in the province of his birth.
All offices were now paid and the importance of many was discernible from the amount of the stipend received by the holder. As in earlier times, certain offices conferred on their incumbents what may be regarded as patents of nobility. The nobiliary status arising from office was not hereditary as in an earlier age; yet the halo of the title to some extent covered the official's family. New appellations were invented to decorate the higher offices, whose tenants were graded as illustres, spectabiles, and clarissimi. To the last designation all senators were entitled. Other expressions as comes and patricius, were less closely bound up with office.
The use of these titles spread gradually. Before the end of the first century vir clarissimus (v.c. on inscriptions) began to denote the senator. The employment of distinctive titles for high officers of equestrian rank, vir eminentissimus, vir perfectissimus, vir egregius, began with Hadrian, and developed in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The designation vir egregius fell out of use during or soon after Constantine's reign. The tendency of the new organisation was to detach many offices from their old connexion with the equestrian body, whose importance in the State diminished and then rapidly died away. Many changes in the application of these titles to the different offices took place from time to time.
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