Everyday Life in Byzantium Read online

  4 - THE ADMINISTRATION AND ITS OFFICIALS

  The emperor was, as we have seen, the ultimate authority, source and essence of all law, the fountain-head of the administration, the leader and protector of his people. This explains why so many emperors, notably Theodosius, Heraclius and Maurice in earlier times, and certain later ones such as Alexius I Comnenus, disregarded the wishes of their ministers and insisted on leading their armies into battle. None of the emperors was a mere figurehead, for each played a vital part in the day-to-day running of the country, and it was precisely for this reason that the Byzantine administration remained a highly centralised one, certainly until the Latin conquest of Constantinople. Even during the final phase of the Empire’s history most government departments and the senior officials working in them received their orders direct from the emperor.

  During the first three centuries of the Empire, whilst the administrative machine was still in the process of formation, the emperor had to devote much of his time to government, employing to assist him men who were courtiers rather than administrators. Titles were not hereditary in Byzantium, but every courtier and official was invested with the one which corresponded to his class or office. In each case his title carried a specific rank and position in the order of precedence. Courtiers, known as comes, who had no administrative duties to perform, formed a class of patricians which was divided into three sections. Those belonging to the first of these ranked next in importance to the consuls. Top-ranking officials were known as magistri. By the ninth century there were 18 ranks, but the three highest, carrying the titles of caesar, nobilissimus and curopalate were reserved for members of the imperial family, and another, the zoste patricia, for court ladies entitled to wear the girdle as an insignia.

  To begin with the senior court officials acted also as chief administrators. Thus, the lord chancellor or praepositus sacri cubiculi, as he was first called, though when his office became less important he became known as the parakoimomenos (`he who sleeps near his sovereign’), was not only responsible for the smooth functioning of the court, but also wielded considerable influence in the administrative sphere. In later times his position, like that of the protovestiarius, or master of the wardrobe, was generally filled by a eunuch. On the other hand, the papias, or administrative head of each palace, seldom wielded political power.

  The magister officiorum or master of offices, as the head of the Imperial Chanceries was called, was, at any rate till the Arabs conquered large areas of Byzantine territory, the most powerful man both at court and in the administration. It fell to him to select the men who were to administer the Empire’s affairs by serving in the capital’s government departments. As head of the nation’s establishment he was responsible for the efficient working of the administrative machine. Since he also fulfilled the duties of master of ceremonies and was answerable for the emperor’s safety he was given authority over the imperial bodyguard. He was accountable for his actions only to the sovereign and took orders from no one but the emperor. It was inevitable that his great independence often laid him open to temptations. Many a holder of that exalted office succumbed at times to bribery. More serious was the creation for his use of a corps of informers or spies. The need for them was to some extent justified. It made itself felt only gradually, arising from the master of ceremonies’ duties as foreign secretary. As such it fell to him to negotiate with foreign envoys on the emperor’s behalf and to carry out certain tasks in outlying districts, such as making arrangements for embassies to be met at the Empire’s frontiers. To do so he used couriers. From the fifth century this gave him responsibility for the postal service, and to help him run that efficiently he had to have his own corps of messengers. As his duties multiplied he took to using the more trustworthy among them to report to him about officials who, regardless of rank, served as administrators of the Empire’s far-flung territories. Inevitably these messengers came to form the nucleus of a body of informers which, by the end of the fifth century, already numbered some 1,200 experienced men, the number of officials employed in the Eastern regions being something like 10,000. The master of offices also found his informers indispensable in helping him to ensure the emperor’s safety. When the occupant of the throne was popular and respected the task was not unduly difficult, but in unsettled times such as the eighth century when no fewer than eight emperors were deposed in the space of 21 years, the duty of guarding the sovereign often demanded the utmost vigilance. By the ninth century a new, very high-ranking courtier bearing the title of rector shared responsibility for many court functions. Almost equal in importance to both these senior courtiers was the emperor’s master of the horse.

  29 The High Admiral Apocauchus

  The emperors were naturally attended by their company of bodyguards. These possessed their own officers who took their orders from the lord chamberlain. Though the latter was answerable to the master of offices his position became increasingly important with the passing years till eventually, like many other key appointments, it came to be held by a eunuch. By the tenth century, as much to impress as for security reasons, the size of the sovereign’s bodyguard was considerably increased. The difficulty of finding sufficient recruits was solved by dividing the guards into two corps. One of these, the Varangian, was made up of mercenaries of Norse origin enrolled in Kievan Russia, who were often referred to as Barbarians; the other was manned by Normans raised for the most part in Britain. Harald Hardrada of England and Norway was one of the many distinguished men who served in it. When the Emperor held court, armed guardsmen (the Varangians carrying their battle-axes) were ranged according to nationality behind the imperial throne, lining the apsidal section of the throne room. By then an office of Barbarians had been established as an adjunct to the intelligence service for the purpose of supplying the foreign secretary with information about the new kingdoms arising in what the Byzantines regarded as the Barbarian world.

  30 Diptych of Consul Flavius Anastasius; scenes from the Hippodrome Games appear at the bottom ivory consular diptych, AD 517

  31 Emperor Justinian on horseback Gold solidus struck to commemorate the defeat of the Vandals in A D 535

  32 St Michael dressed as a contemporary foot soldier From a twelfth-century steatite

  As his name implies, the lord chamberlain as master of ceremonies was obliged to make all the arrangements for both the private and official functions held at court, as well as for all public celebrations and state ceremonies. He had to ensure that the route taken by the sovereign in a procession had been cleaned and the streets covered with sawdust, and that the houses bordering them were displaying decorations in ivy, laurel, myrtle and rosemary. He himself took part in such processions carrying the gold wand studded with jewels which was his badge of office. He was accompanied by guardsmen, armed with swords and battle-axes, carrying olive branches. Such ceremonies took place not only at royal baptisms, coronations and burials but also at military triumphs, ambassadorial receptions and religious festivals such as those associated with Easter Sunday or the day of the Virgin’s birth. At the last of these the emperor had a particularly impressive part to play in the religious service held in the cathedral of Haghia Sophia. Among other specially important functions were the rites associated with the issue of free bread.

  Wheat was treated as a Crown monopoly. At Constantinople’s foundation the feeding of the young capital’s rapidly growing population had presented many difficulties. It had finally been decided that corn grown in Egypt was to be earmarked for the inhabitants of Constantinople. A special group of officials were assigned the task of ensuring the town’s corn supplies and of distributing flour to the bakers; some of the latter were responsible for making the bread for those inhabitants who were entitled to receive free supplies, whilst others were permitted to sell their bread in the open market at the price fixed for it by the government. Sometimes the price set on the bread was lower than that which the bakers had been charged for the corn, but the government would then
provide a subsidy to cover the difference. To maintain corn supplies required careful organisation. To ensure the timely arrival of the winter supplies the necessary corn had to reach Antinoe by 9 August each year, so that it would be delivered in Alexandria by 10 December. There it was loaded into ships which sailed to Tenedos in large convoys to be unloaded and stored in vast granaries built by Justinian until needed in Constantinople. It was re-shipped in stages from Tenedos, and was carried to the capital by vessels of the Bosphoran merchant navy. When Egypt’s harvests failed to produce the required stocks, extra supplies were forcibly acquired from the farmers of Thrace and Macedonia. In later times the latter had to provide all the corn needed by Constantinople.

  Yearly, on 11 May, the anniversary of the foundation of Constantinople, the free distribution of bread, cakes, vegetables and fish to the needy people of Constantinople was carried out with much pomp at a ceremony held in the Hippodrome in the presence of the emperor and his court. Even when in 642 Egypt’s fall to the Arabs put an end to supplies of Egyptian corn, and when economic difficulties, such as Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus experienced in the tenth century, made it necessary drastically to reduce the number of those entitled to receive issues of free bread, the May distribution and the celebrations associated with that anniversary were maintained. Exceptional gifts of free bread were issued until the end; the monks of the monastery of Nea Moni at Chios continued to receive them whenever they visited Constantinople, though they were in turn expected (at any rate till the year 1119) on certain occasions to furnish the monks of the monastery of St John at Patmos with free supplies.

  Constantine the Great had established the basic principles of Byzantium’s constitution. In accordance with Roman practice he provided Constantinople with a senate. Though he did not give it power to govern the Empire he invested it with many of the same privileges as those enjoyed by that at Rome. However, by the fourth century, in neither case did these amount to very much, for the senates in both capitals had by then been reduced to little more than advisory bodies whose main duties consisted in drafting regulations which they could only hope that the emperor would prove willing to adopt. It was reasonable for Constantine to grant the Constantinopolitan senate as much authority as the Roman one since, during the opening phase of the new era, the Byzantine senate was staffed by men drawn from the same old Roman aristocracy as were the senators of Rome. Indeed, many of them had had to be persuaded by Constantine to abandon Rome in order to settle in the new city, to serve there as senators. However, within a generation or so Constantinople’s senators were being chosen from members belonging to the three senior grades of the court officials, some of whom were by that time local Greeks. By then too, if requested to do so by the emperor, the senate could act as a high court of justice.

  There were times when Constantinople’s senate was more powerful than at others. It was probably at its weakest under Leo V (813-20), but it acquired considerable authority in the eleventh century when Michael Psellus, the great scholar, statesman and friend of the emperor became its president. Even so the senate only became all-important on the death of an emperor, when, in conjunction with senior service commanders, it had to ratify the succession of the next holder of the throne. If an emperor died before nominating his successor and if, as a result of death or revolution, there remained no member of his family to act on his behalf, it fell to the senate to elect the next ruler. In the eighth century, however, the army exercised so much influence over the senate that in 776, when Leo IV wished to crown his young son Constantine as his co-ruler rather than the five other ‘caesars’ in the imperial family at the time, he thought it advisable to obtain first not only the senate’s written consent, but also that of the entire army, including regiments stationed in the provinces. In addition he sought the support of the Church and people, and called upon the nation to be loyal to the boy and to regard him as heir to the throne.

  The cabinet, or sacrum consistorium as it was called, was from the start far more influential than the senate. It derived its name from the verb consistere, meaning ‘to stand’. Since the emperor presided at its meetings it was necessary for all those attending to remain standing throughout the proceedings—the fact that they were not expected to remain prostrated in his presence was regarded as a gracious act of favour. The sacrum consistorium consisted of a chairman, the quaestor sacri palatii, and only a small number of regular members. Each was chosen personally by the emperor from among his top-ranking officials and his praetorian prefects, but if he so wished he could call upon any senator to attend a special session in order to give information or advice on a particular issue. To judge from a passage in Anna Comnena’s life of her father it would seem that, as in ancient Athens, speeches were timed in the Byzantine cabinet. She asserts that the leading Crusaders, whom her father appears to have received standing when they called on him on official business, were so long-winded that the emperor often had no time for his meals. Furthermore, his legs began to swell with the effort of standing so that, on more than one occasion, he was obliged to drive instead of ride into battle.

  The cabinet had lost some of its importance by the middle of the tenth century, when the country was being administered by about 60 men drawn from the senior grades of courtiers, administrators and service personnel. These ‘ministers’, as they might well be described, continued to work under the emperor’s direct orders. The office of prime minister did not exist, but the emperor charged the official of his choice with the duty of carrying out whatever task he wished to allot to him. By the twelfth century the number of these administrators had grown, especially those in the military grades; the army at the time had become indispensable to the state.

  Constantine divided the Empire into provinces which he subdivided into 13 dioceses; these were then split into 116 districts. By the end of the fourth century these were consolidated into four prefectures, of which the two eastern ones were by far the largest, for they included Egypt, the Orient, the Pontus and Thrace. Each prefecture was governed by a praetorian prefect invested with almost vice-regal powers, though he was not given control over the armed forces in his district. Nevertheless it was the praetorian prefect and not the emperor who paid the troops stationed in his district and provided their food, and who also appointed and dismissed the provincial governors. The praetorian prefect of the eastern region resided in Constantinople and, to begin with, ranked together with the praetorian prefect of Italy as the highest among the Empire’s numerous senior officials. In times of national danger each of these posts was occasionally shared by two men of equal rank.

  Constantine’s successors followed his lead and continued to divide the Empire into regions. Maurice turned Ravenna and Carthage into exarchates, giving each of the exarchs full control over both military and civil affairs. Somewhat later the Byzantine countryside was divided into militarised districts known as themes instead of provinces. By the seventh century Asia Minor had become so heavily populated that, to facilitate its defence, it alone was divided into several themes. By the tenth century the system had been applied to other districts and the total number of themes was raised to 25, the praetorian prefects losing their importance with the abolition, or rather the substitution, of militarised themes for civilian prefectures. The government of each theme was carried out by an official assisted by three men, one of whom handled the theme’s guilds and commercial affairs, another its legal matters, including the administration of its prisons and labour force and who was, in consequence, also responsible for the well-being of travellers visiting his district; whilst the third administered the theme’s finances, industries, customs and excise dues, aqueducts, external relations and postal services, as well as all petitions addressed to the emperor. Till the Latin occupation of Constantinople these officials were directly responsible to the emperor; after that date the central government became so weak that, like many a local landowner, the governors started to behave like practically independent authorities. However, by 1354,
when much of Byzantium’s territory was in Ottoman hands, the themes system had broken down. Instead despotates were established, that is to say the few major districts remaining to the Empire, more especially those of Mistra, Janina, Epirus, the Morea, Vallachia and Rumania, were divided among the younger branches of the imperial house to rule over as princelings or despots. Though these petty rulers swore allegiance to the emperor, they in fact acted and lived as autonomous kinglets.

  When Byzantium was first established two consuls were appointed annually to carry out duties akin to those of lord mayors today. One was in Rome, the other in Constantinople. Just as British lord mayors and lord provosts have to spend considerable sums of their own to pay for the pageants and entertainments associated with their office, consuls too found themselves obliged from the start to spend the equivalent of several thousand pounds on festivities. By the sixth century their expenses are estimated to have amounted to some £30,000 a year and it is thought that this is why Justinian abolished the office in the year 541. Whilst it lasted the consuls, acting rather in the manner of kings presenting their portraits to those whom they wished to honour, arranged for ivory diptychs to be sent to their friends to inform the latter of their elevation to the consulship. The diptychs consisted of rectangular pieces of ivory held together by a hinge and opening out like a Christmas or birthday card, elaborately carved on one face with designs which generally included their portraits, as well as decorative, symbolic or genre scenes and inscriptions. The decorations of the earlier diptychs that survive are essentially Roman in character, those of the later ones show features which are clearly Byzantine.