Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman History – The Brief Version

hands of a variety of new officials of various sorts, all answer able to the emperor. Some of the new positions were formally part of the emperor’s household staff rather than of the gov ernment. For instance, since judicial appeals came to the emperor personally (see Chapter 4), his secretary in charge of petitions was a powerful person. Other new (or newly empow ered) positions were recognized as part of the state: deputies ( legati ) who governed many of the provinces, a “prefect” in charge of the city of Rome, and a variety of other prefects, procurators, and curators. These men owed their positions to the emperor personally, and could be counted on to do his bidding. The later history of the Imperial government (that is, of the third and fourth centuries and later) largely continued the same trends. Most of the Republican offices remained in place, although in purely honorific form, and the Senate also faded back into formal powerlessness. The old courts eventually dis appeared, as the assemblies had earlier (for more detail, see Chapter 11). The fiction that the emperor was not a monarch faded, as did any distinction between his personal staff and the official government. There was also a steady growth in the number of and types of officials, even though the Roman gov ernment remained tiny by modern standards, perhaps reach ing a few tens of thousands of civilian personnel. From around 300, the eastern and western halves of the empire became increasingly separate; beginning in 395, the two always had separate capitals and independent emperors. In fact, even after the last emperor in Rome was deposed (in 476),

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