a necessary cog in the administrative machine, but most of the others in the jungle that was the Palace service seem to have been somewhat less than
indispensable to the efficient running of the Roman Empire.' But in that case we are entitled to ask where the machine of which the tabellarii were a cog
actually was. The freedmen did not constitute an administrative cadre; they were not dogs bodies doing the 'real' work of running the Empire. The specific
titles that they enjoyed, great and humble alike, mislead; they reflect only the aspect of household life which gave them status, proximity to the Emperor.
Hence, for example, the moral indignation of Epictetus (1.17. 18-19) at the high authority of the man who empties the Emperor's chamber-pot. Epictetus,
freedman of a freedman of the Emperor and famous-if unconventional-philosopher (below, pp.708ff), embodies an important truth about this milieu. The
successful retinue of the Emperor were, or aspired to be, part of the ordinary upper-class world of Rome, taking part in its literary and intellectual culture.
The inscriptions show us imperial freedmen in all sorts of activities quite unconnected with the Palace. Like any influential Roman, they devoted
themselves to government only in an amateur and part-time way, and when they reached, like Pallas and Narcissus, the councils of state, it was as the
friends, advisers, and confidants of the Emperor, not as expert bureaucrats. It is because of their personal power that by the late Empire the imperial
domestics like the Grand Chamberlain have acquired the legitimate public functions which make the court of that period begin to seem medieval.
Government and Litterae
The search for bureaucracy in the Roman world is vain. We should now look a little more closely at the concern with jurisdiction and exaction which
Roman administrators really did have. Then, in conclusion, we can consider in general terms the nature of the governmental process and attempt to
discover what really held the empire together.