CHAPTER X

VII.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE

The declining vitality of the Senate was in part both cause and result of the growing responsibilities of the officials under direct Imperial control. It had been among the first tasks of the Principate to supply that adequate civil service which the Republic had lamentably lacked Julius Caesar, trying to develop the existing machine, failed before the refusal of the Senate to acquiesce in the first essential—the increase of its own numbers; and Augustus, with his unfailing deference to public opinion, had proved his loyalty to what passed as the Republic by restoring the Senate to its old dimensions. The problem thus remained, and the Augustan solution was to concentrate the public service of senators on selected kinds of office which there were senators enough to fill, and then to seek recruits among the equites for those of the remaining posts which were of too public a character to be held by freedmen of the imperial households. In the fifty years which followed, the influence of the freedmen increased, but with the fall of Nero signs of a change appeared. Vespasian, the sturdy burgher of Reate, knew the value of the Italian bourgeoisie from which he came, and the bourgeoisie itself was eager to accept service under a princeps of its own class.

Little need be said of equestrian encroachment on senatorial posts; for this was no more than a consequence of the Senate’s surrender of its functions to the princeps. The process had begun in Julio-Claudian times, and the contemporaries of Claudius or Nero would not have been surprised when Titus, whose Commissioners for the Devastated Area in Campania had been ex-consuls, chose equites to organize rebuilding in Rome after the fire of AD 80, or when Trajan—if he was the first—started the custom by which men of this class took the place of senators as census officers in the provinces. But the ousting of freedmen by equites is of more significance. The exceptional conditions of the time make it impossible to argue that a new policy is to be seen in Otho’s choice of an equestrian secretary or in Vitellius’ behaviour at Cologne, when he appointed Knights to a variety of posts customarily held by freedmen; but a change became plain when Domitian, by whom freedmen were still indeed employed, gave the great office of ab epistulis to an eques. Trajan, it is true, again had freedmen among his secretaries, though he treated his freedmen in a way which became their station; but in his time an even greater prize was re-captured by the Knights when an eques was chosen to fill the office of Minister of Finance, long held by the famous father of Claudius Etruscus—who himself had risen to the ordo equester from slavery. Thus, though there was a libertus a rationibus again even under Marcus, the way was prepared for that change in the recruitment of the emperor’s civil service which is particularly associated with the name of Hadrian. His biographer, indeed, is in error when he claims that Hadrian was the first to have Knights as ab epistulis and a libellis, but there is evidence in plenty to prove that he moved far towards substituting equites in all the posts of prominence which had been held in the past by freedmen. The historian Suetonius, ab epistulis at the beginning of the reign, and T. Haterius Nepos, probably the a libellis, are typical of the class from which, not only great imperial secretaries, but an increasing majority of those employed by the princeps in administration were now regularly drawn.

The number of these was large; for they were needed not merely for the immediate business of the Palatium or in central offices at Rome but in various capacities throughout the Empire. In Rome itself their greatest influence was still to come; for the Praetorian Prefects, who were in the end to be something like deputies of the princeps (when they were not his masters), had not yet brought the civil service at large under their supervision, nor had they acquired those great judicial responsibilities which increased their power and compelled them to enlarge their staffs. Marcius Turbo, indeed, like Bassaeus Rufus after him, had business to do in court, but it was not till the time of Septimius that the appointment of Papinian to the Prefecture marks the beginning of its greatness as a court of civil appeal and brings the office to its full development. In other departments, however, expansion came earlier. The praefectus vigilum had a subpraefectus by the time of Trajan, and before the end of the second century an equestrian subpraefectus annonae seems to have superseded the freedman who served as adiutor in earlier days. But it was outside Italy, in the corn-bearing provinces of the Empire, that the Ministry of Food most notably increased its activities. The government’s care for the food-supply of the capital, commemorated in Rome itself by the rebuilding of the Horrea Galbae and by the Horrea Nervae, is freely attested by the records of new officials in this service abroad. Even more widespread were the agents of the new department charged with the collection of the Succession Duty. When this tax was first imposed under Augustus, despite the obvious difficulties of such a method, publicani seem to have been employed to fix the sums due and to receive them; and, though there was a certain amount of detailed supervision by the government, this system was maintained in essentials throughout the first century. But the extension of the Roman citizenship continually increased the numbers of estates to be taxed, and in Trajan’s time equestrian procurators are found apparently presiding over a central bureau in Rome, and soon afterwards subordinates in charge of various regions in Italy and the provinces. Since Hadrian is recorded to have concerned himself with the regulations about this tax, it is not improbable that some part of the responsibility for these developments belongs to him; and it is certain that with them came the introduction of direct collection by the State.

Rome was now generally abandoning the use of publicani, and it is clear that the old system had fallen too deep into disfavor for it to be adopted in any new developments. Even the customs­dues—the largest source of revenue controlled by the tax-farmers in Imperial times—were being slowly reorganized in a way which would make difficult abuses of the kind which had moved Nero to the drastic proposal of AD 58. In the first century there was a tendency to give contracts for collection no longer to large companies but to individual conductores of a type early used on Imperial estates; and these were at first supervised, and later superseded, by procurators of the permanent civil service. In Hadrian’s time there was a procurator of the quadragesima Galliarum, as of the quattuor publica Africae, and though the latter were still let out to contract in the time of Pius, conductores are not found after the Antonines. In practice this change, which was in progress throughout the Empire, seems often to have been made by means which are attested in Illyricum, where individuals found first as publicani appear later to have become paid members of the administration and to have been transformed into procurators.

The high ideal of efficiency shown by the government before Commodus was not the only cause of the growth in the public services: business itself was increasing. Bequests to the princeps, which had been continuous since the time of Augustus, not only moved Trajan—if it was he who took this step—to appoint a procurator hereditatum independent of the procurator patrimonii, who had probably been in charge of these matters hitherto, but also produced a steady accumulation of property for which the emperor was responsible. All this demanded a larger staff, as did the constant additions, made by purchase or penal expropriation or by the operation of the leges caducariae, to the already vast assets of the fiscus. The importance of these accessions was recognized by the creation of advocati fisci, officers who in fiscal matters seem to have done work not unlike that of the procuratores hereditatum for the patrimonium in the days before they too began to serve the fiscus. The institution of these advocati is ascribed to Hadrian, and though it is possible that at first there was only a single functionary of this kind, having his office in Rome, before long there are signs of advocati fisci, as of procuratores hereditatums, in the provinces as well. The list of departments thus developed might be prolonged, but here it will be enough, by way of final illustration, to mention the Imperial Post. The cursus publicus, introduced to the Roman world by Augustus to provide rapid communication with officials in the provinces, was at first a charge on the communities through whose territories it ran, and as early as Claudius the burden was resented. Claudius had sought remedies in vain, and the first unmistakable relief recorded was given when Nerva, if such be the meaning of the evidence, transferred the cost of the service in Italy to the State. Perhaps as a result of this a small office was opened in Rome, and this soon had at its head an equestrian praefectus, whose duties were doubtless a result of Hadrian’s decision to put the whole organization under Imperial control. Thereafter, while complaints from the provinces still demanded notices, subordinates of this office spread outside Italy, and their numbers became large when Septimius carried Hadrian’s policy to its logical conclusion by making the government, temporarily at least, responsible for the cost of an organization which it already managed and which it alone could uses.

Though freedmen were still employed for humble tasks, it was to the ordo equester that the Empire turned more and more to provide the higher officials in this growing bureaucracy. New posts were freely filled by equites; Knights ousted freedmen from the old; and the importance of the part they played was marked by various signs to show that they were no longer casual servants of the princeps, but members of an organized civil service. Already in the first century procurators were roughly graded by salary, but it was not before the time of Hadrian or the Antonines that they were divided into the four sharply defined classes of  trecenarii, ducenarii, centenarii, and sexagenarii, the members of which each received 300,000, 200,000, 100,000 and 60,000 sesterces a year respectively. Even by the death of Commodus this differentiation had not reached its limits; for the rationalis, formerly known as procurator a rationibus, seems still to have been the only trecenarius. But evidence from the beginning of the third century makes it plain that the developments under the Severi were only an elaboration of a scheme inherited from their predecessors. The dignity of equestrian officials was also marked by formal titles, inspired perhaps by the phrase vir clarissimus which had been appropriated by senators as their special appellation early in the second century. Every eques could be addressed as ‘vir egregious’, but, perhaps already in the second century, some of the more distinguished came to be known as ‘viri perfectissimi’, and the most important of all as’viri eminentissimi’— a title which after slightly wider use was soon confined to the Praetorian Prefects.

The class which thus obtained so prominent a place in the system of administration was one which could provide talent of the most varied kinds. Lack of traditions gave it strength; for, unlike the Senate, the ordo equester had no corporate conceit to be outraged when soldiers, provincials and even freedmen were added to its ranks. So, besides substantial citizens from Rome and Italy, it could absorb a centurion of humble ambition or one like Bassaeus Rufus who was to become Praetorian Prefect, an Egyptian Jew like Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Smyrniote slave like the father of Claudius Etruscus, or the Greek paedagogue Nicomedes, who was first tutor to the young Verus and then advanced by stages to the second place in the Ministry of Finance. From this source the administration could draw recruits whose distinction had been earned by ability and whose status gave them qualities of value which the freedmen of earlier days had often lacked.

When large parts of the Imperial business were transacted by the emperor’s household, the posts which these functionaries held belonged rather to the private establishment of the princeps than to the public service of the State. Gratitude for work well done was a less certain claim to advancement than the capricious favor of an individual; and the freedmen, whose fortunes rested on the good-will of their master, could count on flattery to protect them against the healthy opinion which was outraged by the audacity of their pursuit of money, their one ambition. When Knights took their place, mere servants gave way to men with a rank and honor to maintain, and at the same time what had in some degree retained its original character as the household of the first citizen became more obviously part of a public administration. In appearance at least, and perhaps in fact, this substitution of equites for freedmen was a success for the Republican ideals of government against the menace of autocracy. Nevertheless, the removal of freedmen from high responsibility did not mean that Rome confessed to error. Freedmen were employed by nobles of the Republic because there were many purposes best served by the peculiar gifts of Greeks, and for the same reason freedmen had been used by Julio-Claudian emperors. Pallas was doubtless a peculator; but Claudius had no ground for complaint about the state of the Exchequer. To the Greek capacity for organization and finance Rome had cause to be grateful, and the government did not deny itself the use of Greek ability when freedmen were discarded. Tacitus, writing of AD 56, asserts that even then the majority of the equites and many senators were not without servile blood; and, though epigraphic evidence suggests that this is an exaggeration, it is clear that both by direct recruitment from the East and by the absorption of men descended from freedmen in Italy the equestrian order in the second century was well supplied with members whose descent enabled them to put the shrewd competence of Greeks at the disposal of the administration.

In the salutary development of the civil service one feature may be discerned less laudable than the rest. It had been a practice of the Republic that men who sought to serve the State should be qualified to hold either military command or civil office as occasion might demand, and this custom Augustus had observed in his incipient organization of the equestrian career no less than in the use he made of senators. Whatever the defects of a system which did nothing to encourage the specialist, its merits were beyond dispute. With Claudius, however, came a change, when the tenure of the military tribunate was in some cases allowed to become a formality. In itself the concession was trivial, but it deserves notice as a step towards a dangerous practice which Hadrian seems to have made common. The historian Suetonius may well belong to a group of several equestrian officials at this time who appear to have served in no military capacity at all, and they are the forerunners of the purely civil functionaries who later found themselves at the mercy of the war-lords of Rome. The separation of the civilian from the military career was dangerous, not because it deprived men engaged in administration of some slight acquaintance with the army, but because, if specialized service were allowed, a bureaucracy of civilians was likely to be confronted before long with a more formidable body of men whose occupation was wholly military. And so it befell. In the conflict which began before the end of the second century the civilians were helpless before the army; power passed to men whose distinction in war was their only fame; and to its lasting harm the Empire found itself in the hands of soldiers whose humble origins and warlike occupations left them strangers to the arts of civil government. The needs of the frontiers in the third century gave the army that influence which is normal in time of war, and it was the conditions of the time which both enabled and constrained Gallienus and Diocletian to make a final division between civil and military services. But when at length they acted in the way which, if it saved the Empire, destroyed the Principate, their work completed a change to which Hadrian’s enthusiasm for efficiency had made a small but gratuitous contribution.

Great as was the value of the equites, it did not move the Principate to despise the service which could be rendered by the Senate. The House contained ability and experience, increased by judicious reinforcement from the equites themselves, which still was enough to fill the urban magistracies and the great provincial commands and to leave men available for new posts required by the demands of government. Equites were adequate for any administrative routine, but when work of special responsibility had to be done abroad, like that of Pliny in Bithynia, it was in the first place to senators that the princeps turned. Senators again played a large part in the control of the Social Services in Italy; for the alimentary system, which was sedulously tended throughout the second century, despite its foundation by Trajan with money from the Imperial treasury, had senatorial officials to supervise its complicated operations; and even when this department was centralized, perhaps by Marcus, a consular was still retained at its head.

The intervention of Marcus has been plausibly connected with another act of his which involved the employment of senators in new appointments, and one which raises questions about the relation of the princeps to the Senate and its responsibilities in Italy. By a measure of a kind which would benefit a government with the interests of the country population at heart, Hadrian had chosen four ex-consuls to administer justice in those parts of Italy beyond easy reach of Romeo. Their duties in detail are obscure; but it is clear that their business was to free litigants of the necessity to travel far for justice, if not at the same time to relieve pressure on the courts in Rome. Such evidence as has survived suggests that it was the consuls (and later the praetor  tutelaris) the praetor in charge of fideicommissa  and the praefectus urbi who lost some of their business to these officials; but there is no reason to believe that, even if it was criticized, their institution had been inspired by hostility towards the older magistrates or to argue that their presence reduced Italy to a level with the provinces. Their purpose was to make justice both cheaper and more expeditious—a purpose in accord with the spirit of the government and one well attested by the judicial arrangements of the Antonines. They were suspended by Pius, though he had himself been one, but were established again by Marcus, with the difference that they were now, not consulars, but ex-praetors, and it was by him that they may possibly have been given some responsibility for the alimentary system.

The Principate of the second century did, indeed, concern itself with Italy more closely than the Principate of the first. The contemporaries of Augustus might have been surprised if, when war was remote, a praetorian legate had been appointed to the regio Transpadana; and the four iuridici themselves were doubtless chosen by the princeps. Nevertheless, their revival by Marcus, whose friendship to the Senate was pronounced, is enough to prove that their institution by Hadrian was no deliberate insult to tradition, and their senatorial status is rather to be taken as evidence of respect for the past. But their creation is one among many signs of that restless passion for efficiency which was responsible for the invocation of the equites and for the steady expansion of the civil service which in the end gave the princeps control of a powerful bureaucracy with great possibilities for good or ill. The servants of the State, both high and low, were picked with honorable care; promotion was a reward for work well done; and the standard of competence was high. If the sphere of government was to extend, its agents could scarcely have been better chosen. But still the one question worth the asking remained to answer. What would the State, with all its bureaucrats, contribute to the well-being of the Empire and its inhabitants? Would they be the better for its activities, or the worse? The third and fourth centuries supplied the answer.