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lic treasurer.

CHAP. Imperial quæstor may be compared with that of a moXVII. dern chancellor; but the use of a great seal, which seems to have been adopted by the illiterate barba rians, was never introduced to attest the public acts The pub- of the emperors. 4. The extraordinary title of count of the sacred largesses, was bestowed on the treasurergeneral of the revenue, with the intention perhaps of inculcating, that every payment flowed from the voluntary bounty of the monarch. To conceive the almost infinite detail of the annual and daily expense of the civil and military administration in every part of a great empire, would exceed the powers of the most vigorous imagination. The actual account employed several hundred persons, distributed into eleven differ ent offices, which were artfully contrived to examine and controul their respective operations. The multitude of these agents had a natural tendency to increase; and it was more than once thought expedient to dismiss to their native homes the useless supernumeraries, who, deserting their honest labours, had pressed with too much eagerness into the lucrative profession of the finances15. Twenty-nine provincial receivers, of whom eighteen were honoured with the title of count, corresponded with the treasurer; and he extended his jurisdiction over the mines from whence the precious metals were extracted, over the mints, in which they were converted into the current coin, and over the public treasuries of the most important cities, where they were deposited for the service of the state. The foreign trade of the empire was regulated by this minister, who directed likewise all the linen and woollen manufactures, in which the successive operations of spinning, weaving, and dying were excuted, chiefly by women of a servile condition, for the use of the palace and army. Twenty-six of these institutions are enumerated in the west, where the arts had been more recently introduced, and a still larger proportion may be

Eloquio crevere tuo; nec dignius unquam
Majestas meminit sese Romana locutâm.

Claudian in Consulat. Mall. Theodor. 33. See likewise Symmachus (Epis
tol. i. 17.) and Cassiodorus, Variar. vi. 5.

151 Cod. Theod. 1. vi. tit. 30. Cod. Justinian. 1. xii. tit. 24.

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allowed for the industrious provinces of the east152. CHAP. 5. Besides the public revenue, which an absolute monarch might levy and expend according to his plea- The prisure, the emperors, in the capacity of opulent citi- vate treazens, possessed a very extensive property, which was administered by the count, or treasurer of the private estate. Some part had perhaps been the ancient demesnes of kings and republics; some accessions might be derived from the families which were successively invested with the purple; but the most considerable portion flowed from the impure source of confiscations and forfeitures. The Imperial estates were scattered through the provinces, from Mauritania to Britain; but the rich and fertile soil of Cappadocia tempted the monarch to acquire in that country his fairest possessions153, and either Constantine or his successors embraced the occasion of justifying avarice by religious zeal. They suppressed the rich temple of Comana, where the high-priest of the goddess of war supported the dignity of a sovereign prince; and they applied to their private use the consecrated lands, which were inhabited by six thousand subjects or slaves of the deity and her ministers. But these were not the valuable inhabitants: the plains that stretch from the foot of Mount Argæus to the banks of the Sarus, bred a generous race of horses, renowned above all others in the ancient world for their majestic shape and incomparable swiftness. These sacred animals, destined for the service of the palace and the Imperial games, were protected by the laws from the profanation of a vulgar master155. The

152 In the departments of the two counts of the treasury, the eastern part of the Notitia happens to be very defective. It may be observed that we had a treasury-chest in London, and a gyneceum or manufacture at Winchester. But Britain was not thought worthy either of a mint or of an arsenal. Gaul alone possessed three of the former, and eight of the latter. 153 Cod. Theod. 1. vi. tit. xxx. leg. 2. and Godefroy ad loc.

154 Strabon. Geograph. I. xii. p. 809. The other temple of Comana, in Pontus, was a colony from that of Cappadocia, 1. xii. p. 825. The president Des Brosses (see his Salluste, tom. ii. p. 21.) conjectures that the deity adored in both Comanas was Beltis, the Venus of the East, the goddess of generation: a very different being indeed from the goddess of war.

155 Cod. Theod. I. x. tit. vi. de Grege Dominico. Godefroy has collected every circumstance of antiquity relative to the Cappadocian horses. One of the finest breeds, the Palmatian, was the forfeiture of a rebel, whose estate lay about sixteen miles from Tyana, near the great road between Constantinople and Antioch.

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CHAP. demesnes of Cappadocia were important enough to require the inspection of a count156; officers of an inferior rank were stationed in the other parts of the empire: and the deputies of the private, as well as those of the public, treasurer, were maintained in the exercise of their independent functions, and encouraged to con troul_the authority of the provincial magistrates157. 6,7. The chosen bands of cavalry and infantry, which the domes- guarded the person of the emperor, were under the immediate command of the two counts of the domestics. The whole number consisted of three thousand five hundred men, divided into seven schools, or troops, of five hundred each; and in the east, this honourable service was almost entirely appropriated to the Armenians. Whenever, on public ceremonies, they were drawn up in the courts and porticoes of the palace, their lofty stature, silent order, and splendid arms of silver and gold, displayed a martial pomp, not unworthy of the Roman majesty 158. From the seven schools two companies of horse and foot were selected, of the protectors, whose advantageous station was the hope and reward of the most deserving soldiers. They mounted guard in the interior apartments, and were occasionally despatched into the provinces, to execute with celerity and vigour the orders of their master159. The counts of the domestics had succeeded to the office of the Prætorian præfects; like the præfects, they aspired from the service of the palace to the command of armies.

official

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Agents, or The perpetual intercourse between the court and the provinces was facilitated by the construction of roads and the institution of posts. But these beneficial establishments were accidentally connected with a perni

156 Justinian (Novell. 30.) subjected the province of the count of Cap. padocia, to the immediate authority of the favourite eunuch, who presid ed over the sacred bed-chamber.

157 Cod. Theod. 1. vi. tit. xxx. leg. 4. &c.

158 Pancirolus, p. 102. 136. The appearance of these military domestics is described in the Latin poem of Corippus, de Laudibus Justin. 1. iii. 157-179. P. 419, 420, of the Appendix Hist. Byzantin. Rom. 177.

159 Ammianus Marcellinus, who served so many years, obtained only the rank of a protector. The first ten among these honourable soldiers were Clarissimi.

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eious and intolerable abuse. Two or three hundred CHAP. agents or messengers were employed, under the jurisdiction of the master of the offices, to announce the names of the annual consuls, and the edicts or victories of the emperors. They insensibly assumed the licence of reporting whatever they could observe of the conduct either of magistrates or of private citizens ; and were soon considered as the eyes of the monarch, and the scourge of the people. Under the warm influence of a feeble reign, they multiplied to the incredible number of ten thousand, disdained the mild though frequent admonitions of the laws, and exercised in the profitable management of the posts a rapacious and insolent oppression. These official spies, who regularly corresponded with the palace, were encouraged, by favour and reward, anxiously to watch the progress of every treasonable design, from the faint and latent symptoms of disaffection, to the actual preparation of an open revolt. Their careless or criminal violation of truth and justice was covered by the consecrated mask of zeal; and they might securely aim their poisoned arrows at the breast either of the guilty or the innocent, who had provoked their resentment, or refused to purchase their silence. A faithful subject, of Syria perhaps, or of Britain, was exposed to the danger, or at least to the dread, of being dragged in chains to the court of Milan or Constantinople, to defend his life and fortune against the malicious charge of these privileged informers. The ordinary administration was conducted by those methods which extreme necessity can alone palliate: and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied by the use of torture 161.

The deceitful and dangerous experiment of the cri- Use of minal quæstion, as it is emphatically styled, was ad. torture.

160 Xenophon. Cyroped. 1. viii. Brisson, de Regno Persico, 1. i. No. 190. p. 264. The emperors adopted with pleasure this Persian metaphor.

161 For the Agentes in Rebus, see Ammian, l. xv. c. 3. 1. xvi. c. 5. 1. xxii. c. 7. with the curious annotations of Valesius. Cod. Theod. 1. vi. tit. xxvii. xxviii. xxix. Among the passages collected in the Commentary of Godefroy, the most remarkable one is from Libanius, in bis discourse concerning the death of Julian,

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CHAP. mitted, rather than approved, in the jurisprudence of XVII the Romans. They applied this sanguinary mode of examination only to servile bodies, whose sufferings were seldom weighed by those haughty republicans in the scale of justice or humanity; but they would never consent to violate the sacred person of a citizen, till they possessed the clearest evidence of his guilt162. The annals of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as long as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom and honour, the last hours of a Roman were secure from the danger of ignominious torture163. The conduct of the provincial magistrate was not, however, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict maxims of the civilians. They found the use of torture established not only among the slaves of oriental despotism, but among the Macedonians, who obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind 164. The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens. The apprehensions of the subjects urged them to solicit, and the interest of the sovereign engaged him to grant, a variety of special exemptions,

162 The Pandects (1. xlviii. tit. xviii) contain the sentiments of the most celebrated civilians on the subject of torture. They strictly confine it to slaves and Ulpian himself is ready to acknowledge, that Res est fragilis et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat.

163 In the conspiracy of Piso against Nero, Epicharis (libertina mulier) was the only person tortured; the rest were intacti tormentis. It would be superfluous to add a weaker, and it would be difficult to find a stronger, example. Tacit. Annal. xv. 57.

164 Dicendum . . . de Institutis Atheniensium, Rhodiorum, doctissimorum hominum, apud quos etiam (id quod acerbissimum est) liberi, civesque torquentur. Cicero. Partit. Orat. c. 34. We may learn from the trial of Philotas the practice of the Macedonians. (Diodor. Sicul.-1. xvii. p. 604. Q. Curt. 1. vi. c. 11.)

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