Governmental Administration 49
the Roman Republic (res publica).10 The familiarity Theoderic had gained
with Roman political culture during the period of ten years that he spent as a
political hostage at the eastern court would certainly support the notion that
his government preserved Roman practices.11 Nonetheless, however familiar
Theoderic and his followers may have been with the eastern Roman admin-
istration, the Italy that they encountered in 489 had undergone political, eco-
nomic, and military changes on a scale scarcely witnessed in the East.12 Even
if the rhetoric of veneration for Rome’s imperial past mirrored the scrupulous
implementation of Roman practices, the structural changes that had occurred
in Italy since the early 5th century necessitated that Roman traditions of
administration would have been adapted to substantially different conditions.13
The Dimensions of Administrative Service
One of the conditions that sets the Ostrogothic administration apart from ear-
lier imperial governance and the contemporary eastern administration, and
which is itself a consequence of fundamental economic differences between
the 6th century and the earlier Roman periods, is the scale of administrative
operations, represented primarily by the numbers of bureaucratic personnel.
Viewed through the baroque rhetoric of a text like the Variae the bureaucracy
appears hierarchically complex and numerous, and indeed gives the impres-
sion of being on par with the eastern civil service.14 The swelling of govern-
mental apparatus and personnel was certainly one of the defining features of
late antique society. By the end of the 4th century the state provided civil posi-
tions for an estimated 40,000 across the empire.15 For the eastern empire of
the 6th century Procopius reports that the court at Constantinople employed
5500 scholares, in addition to the domestici and protectores.16 And Procopius
does not mention the exceptores and scrinarii that filled the officium of the
10 Variae 1.1, 1.4, 2.1, 2.26, 3.31, 4.6, 4.13, 5.5, 5.13, 5.16, 9.2, 9.18, 12.4, 12.17, ed. Mommsen.
11 On the imperial character of Theoderic’s Italy, Giardina, Cassiodoro, pp. 73–159; Arnold,
Theoderic.
12 More generally on the difference in structural changes experienced between east and
west: Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall; Ward-Perkins, “Old and New Rome”, pp. 53–78; on
departures originating prior to Theoderic’s arrival: Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 1–13.
13 Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity and Taxes”.
14 On this rhetorical function of the Variae: Bjornlie, Politics.
15 Heather, “New Men”, pp. 18–25.
16 Procopius, Anecdota 24.15–20 and 24.24–26, ed. Dewing; for the function of these and
other administrative offices: Jones, Later Roman Empire.