each half at the head of the civil services. They were responsible for justice and taxation, but not for the
army. Under them were deputies (uicarii) administering groups of provinces called dioceses, and
provincial governors. At court lay the central officers of State, the most influential being the Master of
the Offices, responsible for intelligence services, the government postal service (not available to private
individuals), arsenals, coastguards, keeping the Emperor informed, and seeing that his wishes were
carried out. The civil service was organized in departments called 'cabinets' (scrinia). Other major
officers were the Treasurer; the administrator of the Privy Purse; and, especially powerful, the Quaestor
of the Palace, responsible for justice. Diocletian copied the Persian court, enhancing his authority by the
mystery of elaborate ceremonial, with veils separating the anterooms from the audience chamber, and a
series of silentiaries to guard the way. The number of veils to be passed was an index of the dignity of an
official's place in the bureaucracy. Eunuchs became important as major-domos, not only in rich
households, but also at court. In the office of High Chamberlain they would exercise an influence
resented by high officers of state.
Diocletian's division of the Empire into two halves was reversed by Constantine, who by 324 had
disposed of superfluous colleagues and made himself sole Emperor. But the division was later restored,
and from 395 the western and eastern empires were in effect administered increasingly independently.
People talked of 'both governments', recognizing the Empire to be a duality in more than language. In
476 the barbarian army commander Odovacer sent the Emperor Romulus Augustulus into pleasant
retirement and assumed the insignia of regal office. The Ostrogothic king Theoderic, educated at
Byzantium, was sent to remove Odovacer in 493, but he too found that his status in relation to the east-
Roman Emperor Anastasius (491-518) was uneasy. There was regret at the ending of the line of Roman
emperors in the West, even though they had long been controlled by barbarian generals. Anastasius,
Justin (518-27), and Justinian (527-65) aspired to restore Roman control. Two decades of desolating war
were the price that Italy paid for having the Goths (whose administration under Theoderic (493-526) was
pre-eminent) turned out by Justinian's armies under Belisarius and Narses. Soon the Goths were
succeeded by the Lombards; and in the generations after Justinian's death Slavs and Avars poured into
the Balkan peninsula (the Avars leaving a lasting mark in the name Navarino). The Emperor Heraclius
exhausted the Empire's military strength in beating back the Persians and left the Jordan desert frontier
defenceless against the Arabs. The Arabs had long been restless and marauding in Palestine and Egypt,
but were now inspired by Islam and dreams of world conquest.
But until the Arab invasions of the seventh century the peoples of the Mediterranean world still felt
themselves to be inhabiting a Roman world. The Vandals at Carthage were a nuisance for a hundred
years of piracy, but Justinian's wars ended that. In the barbarian kingdoms of the West the Germanic
tribes lived according to their own tribal law, while Romans continued under Roman law. The great
aristocratic families served under the barbarian military authorities (the elevation of dukes above counts
being one permanent consequence), and provided a civil service and law courts. Self-consciously they
tried to educate their new masters, whom they found hard-drinking and malodorous. The Visigoths in
southern Gaul and the Burgundians early in the sixth century produced legal codes, in the one case
juxtaposing, in the other amalgamating, Germanic and Roman enactments. Thanks to the value placed
on Roman imperial edicts in the Germanic kingdoms, there survives the law-code of the Emperor
Theodosius II, published in the East on 15 February 438 and then also accepted in the West. The