Governmental Administration 57
that required a smaller, more mobile administrative apparatus.49 Additionally,
the Variae include a formula for warrants that admit petitioners to the pres-
ence of the Gothic ruler (princeps), where the location of the princeps is desig-
nated as illam urbem (“such and such city”).50
Rather than viewing Ravenna as the embedded seat of a densely bureau-
cratic government, it seems more realistic to view Ravenna as serving the
Gothic regime as an entrepot for resources (taxes) travelling to the various
points of the Po River valley that served as residences for the comitatus of Amal
rulers as they endeavoured to remain in constant contact with heavier areas
of Gothic settlement (muster zones of the military). Instructions command-
ing the fleet (the dromonarii) at Ravenna to assist servants of the public trans-
port system (cursus publicus) with conveyance along the Po River strengthen
this picture.51 There is no doubt that Ravenna played a crucial role in the pro-
paganda of the Gothic regime, as attested by the building programme of the
city, but it seems likely that this attention to the fabric of Ravenna may have
masked a strategy for governing Italy that was strikingly different from that of
the emperor at Constantinople. Attention to parallels between building proj-
ects at Ravenna and architectural elements at Constantinople may suggest
that Ravenna served as a stage for diplomacy with the eastern empire.52
Ennodius, on the rare occasions when he mentioned the palatine bureau-
cracy, associated it with the city of Ravenna. Of course Ennodius’ references
were limited to the excubitores, Romans holding more or less honorary posi-
tions as the ‘palace guard’.53 And while the imprint of Felix Ravenna on Gothic
coins attests to the importance of the city to Gothic imperial propaganda
and to relations with the east, it is significant that the letters of the Variae,
despite the attention received by Ravenna in individual letters, never designate
Ravenna as the principal capital of the Amals.54 Indeed the prolongation of
49 On the mint at Milan, Arslan, “La struttura delle emissioni”, pp. 517–39.
50 Variae 7.34, ed. Mommsen.
51 Variae 2.31, ed. Mommsen, on dromonarii and the cursus publicus; 5.17–19 on the assem-
bly of the fleet at Ravenna; on this fleet, Cosentino, “Re Teoderico costruttore di flotte”,
pp. 347–56.
52 On the semiotics of imperium in the architecture attributed to Theoderic: Johnson,
“Theoderic’s Building Program”, pp. 73–96; on the imperial and post-imperial history of
building at Ravenna more generally: Deliyannis, Ravenna; for comparisons of Ravenna to
Constantinople, see Johnson in this volume.
53 Ennodius, Letter 2.27, 6.21, ed. Vogel.
54 On Felix Ravenna in the numismatic record, Grierson/Blackburn, Medieval European
Coinage, p. 28, attribute this iconography to Odovacer; Arslan, “La monetazione dei Goti”,
pp. 23–4, that it originates with Theoderic; on Ravenna as the stage setting in relations