THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 290
The Corruption of the Imperial Courts and Agencies
19.11. The Corruption of the Imperial Courts and Agencies
The emperors of the fourth and of the fifth century had to forbid patronage because it constituted a menace to law and to public order. We hear of cases of "maintenance"; parties to a trial being protected by powerful patroni, who seek to turn the course of justice in favour of their clients. Libanius, a professional orator of the epoch of Valentinian II and Theodosius I, gives a vivid description of the difficulties he had to meet in a suit against some Jewish tenants of his who refused to pay certain rents according to ancient custom. If we are to believe our informant, they had recourse to the protection of a commander of troops stationed in the province, and when Libanius came into court and produced witnesses, he found the judge so prepossessed in favour of his opponents that he could not get a hearing, and his witnesses were thrown into prison or dismissed.
In another part of the same speech Libanius inveighs against officers who prevent the collection of taxes and rents and favour brigandage. There may be a great deal of exaggeration in the impassioned account of the Greek rhetor, but the principal heads of his accusation can be confirmed from other sources, especially from imperial decrees. A company of soldiers gets quartered in a village and when the curiales of the next town appear to collect taxes or rents, they are met by violence and may be called fortunate if they escape without grievous injury to life and limbs.
In the Theodosian Code enactments directed against patronage in villages go so far as to forbid the acquisition of property in a rural district by outsiders for fear the strangers should prove powerful people capable of opposing tax collectors. According to the account of Salvian, a priest who lived in the fifth century in southern Gaul, patronage had become quite prevalent in that region. People turned to private protection out of sheer despair and surrendered their land to the protector, rather than face the extortions of public authorities. There can be no doubt that patrons and protectors of the kind described, if they were helpful to some, were dangerous and harmful to others, and the State in the fourth and fifth centuries had good reasons to fight against their influence. But the constant repetition of the same injunctions and prohibitions proves that the evil was deeply rooted and difficult to get rid of. The Sisyphean task undertaken by the Government in its struggle against abuses and encroachments is well illustrated by various attempts to create special authorities to repress the exactions of ordinary officers and to correct their mistakes.
One of the principal expedients used by Diocletian and his successors was to institute a special service of supervising commissaries under the names of agentes in rebus and curiosi. They were sent into the provinces more particularly to investigate the management of the public post, but, as a matter of fact, they were employed to spy on governors, tax collectors, and other officials. They received complaints and denunciations and sometimes committed people to prison. A decree of Constantius tries to restrict the latter practice and to impress on these curiosi the idea that they are not to act in a wanton manner but have to produce evidence and to communicate with the regular authorities (A.D 355, C. Th. vi. 29, 1). But the very existence of such a peculiar institution was an incitement to delation and arbitrary acts, and in 395 Arcadius and Honorius try to concentrate the activity of the agentes in rebus on the inspection of the post. "They ought not to levy illicit toll from ships, nor to receive reports and statements of claims, nor to put people into prison" (C Th. vi. 29, 8). The service of the agentes and of the curiosi was deemed to be as important as it was dangerous, and those who went through the whole career were rewarded by the high rank of counts of the first class. It is hardly to be wondered at that these extraordinary officials provided with peculiar methods of delation did not succeed in saving the Empire from the corruption of its ordinary officers.
And yet the emperors found that the only means of exercising some control over the abuses of the bureaucratic machinery and the oppression of influential people was in pitting extraordinary officials against them.
The defensor tivitatis was designed to act as a protector of the lower orders against such misdeeds. The office originated probably in voluntary patronage bestowed on cities by great men, but it was regularised and made general under Valentinian I. An enactment of Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius lays chief stress on the protection afforded by defensores to the plebs in regard to taxation. The defensor ought to be like a father of the plebs, to prevent superexaction and hardships in the assessment of taxes both in regard to the town population and to rustics, to shield them against the insolence of officials, and the impertinence of judges. Not merely fiscal oppression was aimed at, but also abuses in the administration of justice, and the emperors tried to obviate the evils of a costly litigation and inaccessible tribunals by empowering the defensores to try civil cases in which poor men were interested.
It was somewhat difficult to draw the line between such exceptional powers and ordinary jurisdiction, but the Government of the later Empire had often to meet similar difficulties. An important privilege of the defensores was the right to report directly to the emperor, over the governor of the province: this was the only means for making protests effective, at least in some cases. As to the mode of electing the defensores we notice some variation: they are meant to represent the population at large and originally the people took part in the election, though it had to be confirmed by the emperors. In the fifth century, however, the office became a burden more than an honour, a quantity of petty police functions and formal supervision was tacked on to it, and the emperors are left no choice but to declare that all notable citizens of the town have to take it in turn. This is certainly a sign of decline and there can be no doubt that the original scope of the institution was gradually lost sight of.
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Are not Musk and DOGE trying to be a form of the Defensor Tivitatis of our day?