threat which had not been seen for generations, and when the weak Parthian state had evolved into the ferociously effective Sassanian power in the East.
The cumbersome and inefficient system of the high Empire could not cope. In the crisis economic disaster overtook most of the Empire (though many
areas, including most of Italy, escaped physical devastation). But it is essential to realize that this catastrophe was sudden. The first and second centuries
with their many problems and lackadaisical amateur government had been no golden age; but it was not the troubles of that age which multiplied into the
chaos of the third century. The disasters were new.
The Arts of Government
'And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled to be taxed' (Luke 2:1). The
evangelist wants to emphasize the centrality in world history of the coming of the Messiah, and accordingly links the birth of Christ to the moment when
the power of Rome seemed at its most universal. For him, as often for us, the power of Rome is most potently expressed by reference to its administrative
activity. St Luke, however, was wrong. We know now that no such decree commanded a universal registration of the Roman world, at this time or any
other; he exaggerated Roman omnipotence on the basis of the experience of a single province. It remains extremely easy for us too to misunderstand the
scope, practice, and effects of Rome's governmental procedures. We mistake patterns of decision-making for policies and take hierarchical sequences of
posts for career-structures. When we find the taking of minutes or the accumulation of archives, we immediately see a bureaucracy. Virtuosity in the
public service is confused with professionalism. Recent work has been able to show well how far Rome's administration failed, or could be corrupted or
subverted, or simply had no effect but oppression on thousands of provincials. There have been fewer examinations of the way in which the arts of
government at which the Romans thought themselves that they excelled actually worked-imposing civilization and peace, leniency to the defeated, and
war to the last with the proud (Virgil, Aeneid 6. 852-3). The analogies which spring most readily to our minds often mislead. Either, beguiled by the
delightful portrayal of Roman administration in Evelyn Waugh's Helena, we see Imperium as Raj, or we transpose to Rome with W.H. Auden the
perpetual movement of memos in the offices of Whitehall:
Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes 'I do not like my work'
On a pink official form.These images of government will fit neither the headquarters of the governor nor the imperial Palatine. What follows is an outline alternative.
Roman theories of government were not elaborate; the practice too was simple. Two broad categories cover almost all the activities of Roman rule:
settling disputes between communities or individuals, and assembling men, goods, or money-jurisdiction and exaction. Antiquity recognized three main
types of authority: magistrate, soldier, and master of a household; and all governmental activity in the Roman Empire can be linked with one of these. The
first, deriving from the Greek city, covers both the immemorial officers of the city-state which Rome had been and the magistrates of the hundreds of
essentially self-governing cities which made up nearly all the Roman Empire. In a polis magistrates ran the military; at Rome the usual citizen militia
became under the Empire a permanent, institutionally separate army, whose officers played an ever greater part in government culminating in the
militarization of the third century. Finally, in a slave-owning society the type of authority exercised within the household was naturally recognizably
different, and also came to be of considerable importance in government. These three administrative approaches will be examined individually. But it was
always through activities which we would hesitate to call governmental that Roman rule -was most effectively maintained: through the involvement of the
upper classes in public religion, spectacles, impressive patronage of architecture, philosophy, literature, painting; and in civil benefactions all over the
Empire. The civilizing and beneficial effects of this should be remembered as we move on to find the actual administrative and executive structure of the
Empire erratic and illiberal.