For Theoderic belongs to an old, conservative tradition, and if the Edict of Theoderic that comes down to us in 154 short chapters—virtually every one a quotation from earlier law—is his (as in some form it may well be), it is in the tradition of the praetor’s edict of old: “If anyone bury a dead body inside the city of Rome, he will be forced to hand over a fourth of his property to the treasury. If he has nothing, then he will be beaten and expelled from the city.”
Even the Christian
Romantic fancy about falling Rome might lead one to imagine that the city was less thickly settled inside its walls than before and that the old and healthy idea of taking bodies outside the walls for burial was giving way to more practical use of space, but we needn’t let ourselves be fanciful. This prescription asserts both the authority of tradition and the traditionalism of authority. Even the Christian- influenced precepts of the edict are phrased in ways that make it clear how Roman this Christianity had become. The right of sanctuary is phrased thus: “If anyone should drag people out of churches, that is to say, places of religion, or think that anything can be taken away from there violently, let him be subject to capital punishment.” That is the voice of an ancient Roman magistrate.
Theoderic’s working court—the administration in Ravenna—was Roman at every level as well, with officers like the praetorian prefects and masters of offices we have met on other pages. Throughout the time of Theoderic, the traditional titles of office were attested, respected, and held by one or another of the Romans of Rome—the old senatorial families or, at best, some of the arrivistes who were ready, willing, and able to become an old senatorial family at the earliest opportunity. (Theoderic’s death challenged these boundaries. During the regency of his infant grandson, the rank of patrician fell in turn to both a Roman civilian, Liberius; and Tuluin, a career soldier in Theoderic’s retinue.) The emperor at Constantinople managed an essentially identical cabinet, though the complexity and intrigues of the large imperial palace gave rise to a further apparatus of guards and chamberlains birdwatching bulgaria.
Theoderic continued to appoint not only the supreme officers of the realm, but even the lesser ones: managers of arms factories and mints (Theoderic continued a very Roman coinage), governors of provinces, and the prefect of the night watch of the city of Ravenna. Of particular interest are the “defenders of cities” (defensores civitatis) appointed from the court since the fourth century and still under Theoderic in at least some places. Roman society had rooted itself in a core of elites based in communities from Arabia to Britain. Wealthy and wellborn citizens would lead their cities, and in exchange they were obligated to pay for their communities’ infrastructure and ostentation. Membership in the local senate may have been an onerous honor, but in the classical age these leaders welcomed it. Prosperity and pride led men to accept the opportunity and to build an empire of a grandeur that could not have been imagined without their resources and generosity.
Honors less satisfying
After Constantine, the burdens grew more onerous and the honors less satisfying. A spate of laws in the fourth century attempted famously (and quite unsuccessfully, by all evidence) to deter local senators (decurions, they were called) from fleeing their offices for opportunities elsewhere. For us, the obvious message of these laws is that people were fleeing. Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian, was one such refugee, abandoning his ancestral home of Tagaste and the duties his father had bequeathed him in favor of an ecclesiastical career. The townspeople of Tagaste lost Augustine’s talent, but the citizens of Hippo found in him a leader with a new kind of community spirit and offering a new kind of public service Since Christians believed.
The old model was fading. In the later empire, more and more of the euergetism (one might render that Greek word as do-goodism) came from on high, from the emperor himself, with money that had flowed up to the throne coming back down to cities and local communities. The individual community had less ability to control, manage, and protect itself, and so this imperially appointed commissioner, the defensor, emerged as the de facto leader of the local society and a point of connection to the imperial government and its taxing authority. Many would feel themselves better off and few would notice the loss of effective self-government.
