Dominate
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The Dominate, also known as the late Roman Empire, is the
It may begin with the commencement of the reign of
Etymology
The modern term dominate is derived from the Latin dominus, which translates into English as lord or master. Dominus, traditionally used by Roman slaves to address their masters, was sporadically used in addressing emperors throughout the Principate, usually in the form of excessive flattery (or political invective) when referring to the emperor.[5] Augustus actively discouraged the practice, and Tiberius in particular is said to have reviled it as sycophancy.[6] Domitian encouraged its use,[7] but none of the emperors used the term in any semi-official capacity until the reign of Aurelian in AD 274, where coins were issued bearing the inscription deus et dominus natus.[8] It was only under Diocletian that the term dominus was adopted as part of the emperor's official titulature, forming part of Diocletian's radical reforms.[1]
Transition from the Principate
The Dominate system of government emerged as a response to the 50 years of chaos that is referred to as the
Although Diocletian is commonly thought of as creator of the Dominate, its origins lie in the innovations of earlier emperors, principally those undertaken by Aurelian (AD 270–275).[11] Some reforms stretch back to the reigns of Gallienus (AD 253–268)[12] and Trajan (AD 98–117), during whose reign "knights were given an escalating importance in the administration of Rome and the empire."[13] Not all the changes that produced the 'Dominate' were completed by the time of Diocletian's abdication in AD 305; many changes were either introduced or modified by Constantine I. Consequently, just as the Principate emerged over the period 31 BC through to 14 AD, it is only by AD 337 that the reforms that resulted in the Dominate were largely complete.[14]
In the opinion of the historian John Bagnall Bury, the system of government,
constructed with the most careful attention to details, was a solution of the formidable problem of holding together a huge heterogeneous empire, threatened with dissolution and bankruptcy, an empire which was far from being geographically compact and had four long, as well as several smaller, frontiers to defend. To govern a large state by two independent but perfectly similar machines, controlled not from one centre but from two foci, without sacrificing its unity was an interesting and entirely new experiment. These bureaucratic machines worked moderately well, and their success might have been extraordinary if the monarchs who directed them had always been men of superior ability. Blots of course and defects there were, especially in the fields of economy and finance. The political creation of the Illyrian Emperors was not unworthy of the genius of Rome.[15]
Characteristics
Multiple emperors
Under the
It was during the Crisis of the Third Century that the traditional imperial approach of a single imperial magistrate based at Rome became unable to cope with multiple and simultaneous invasions and usurpations that required the emperor to be everywhere at once. Further, it was their absence which caused usurpations to occur in response to a local or provincial crisis that traditionally would have been dealt with by the emperor.[19]
Under the Dominate, the burden of the imperial position was increasingly shared between colleagues, referred to as the
While each augustus was autonomous within each portion of the empire they managed, all laws that were introduced by any emperor were valid across the entirety of the empire.
Devaluation of the Consulate
During the Roman Republic, the office of Consul was the highest elected magistracy in the Roman state, with two consuls elected annually. With the arrival of the Principate, although all real power was invested in the emperor, the consuls were still in theory the head of state, and the calendar year was identified by the two ordinary consuls who began in office at the start of the year.[20] Throughout the Principate, the imperial consulate was an important position, albeit as the method through which the Roman aristocracy could progress through to the higher levels of imperial administration – only former consuls could become consular legates, the proconsuls of Africa and Asia, or the urban prefect of Rome.[21]
Consequently, the high regard placed upon the ordinary consulate remained intact, as it was one of the few offices that one could share with the emperor, and during this period it was filled mostly by patricians or by individuals who had consular ancestors. It was a post that would be occupied by a man halfway through his career, in his early thirties for a patrician, or in his early forties for most others.[22] If they were especially skilled or valued, they may even have achieved a second (or rarely, a third) consulate. Prior to achieving the consulate, these individuals already had a significant career behind them, and would expect to continue serving the state, filling in the post upon which the state functioned.[23]
Under the Dominate, the loss of many pre-consular functions and the encroachment of the
Transformation of the traditional Senatorial order
One of the key changes in the management of the empire during the Dominate was the large scale removal of old-style senatorial participation in administrative and military functions. The process began with the reforms of Gallienus, who removed senators from military commands, placing them in the hands of the Equites.[24]
Under Diocletian, the military equestrian transformation was taken a stage further, with the removal of hereditary senators from most administrative, as well as military, posts (such as the
Constantine I, however, re-introduced a limited form of senatorial career, basing the magistracies on previous offices but with changed functions.[26] Beginning with the quaestorship, a role which had acted as a form of apprenticeship for an ambitious senator during the Principate, it was downgraded during the Dominate and assigned to the sons of senators, with the legal qualifying age lowered to sixteen. This was followed by a suffect consulship and/or a praetorship. The office of Praetor had also lost much of its influence, as it had been stripped of its legal functions, so that during the Dominate its purpose was primarily to organise the Ludi Romani.[27]
The most prestigious post that a senator could hold under the Dominate was that of Praefectus urbi; during this period the office gained in effective power, as the imperial court was removed from the city of Rome, meaning that the prefects were no longer under the emperor's direct supervision. The most significant change was the return of provincial government to the senatorial order, with the larger or more important provinces handed over to those senators who had held an ordinary consulship. However, unlike the time of the Principate, the role of governor was much reduced, being a purely civil magistrate with no military functions, and with provinces greatly reduced in size, and the number increasing from the roughly fifty pre-existing provinces to approximately one hundred.[28]
The decline in the functions carried out by the old aristocratic senatorial families acting collegially with the emperor in the running of the empire was offset by the rise of an expanded imperial bureaucracy who served the emperor in a subordinate role. Interposed between the governors and the emperors was the
The increasing administrative machinery surrounding the emperor resulted in an explosion of bureaucratic offices. These state officials were paid originally both in food and with money, but over the course of the Dominate, the annona (or food ration) was converted into money. Their salaries therefore consumed a considerable chunk of the imperial budget. Although precise numbers are not available, it has been speculated that the state bureaucracy in the Praetorian prefecture of the East and the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum, including the diocesan and provincial governor's staffs, would have consisted of somewhere around 10,000 individuals.[31] This figure did not include the staff of the military commanders, or the financial and other central ministries, and contrasts with the estimated 300 state bureaucrats that were employed across all the provinces during the period of the Julio-Claudian emperors.[32]
Among the most important offices under the Dominate were the:
- Quaestor sacri palatii (the officer responsible for drafting the laws, and the Imperial rescripts responding to petitions)
- Magister officiorum (officer responsible for managing the secretarial departments in the palace, the conduct of court ceremonies, and controlling the special department which dealt with ceremonial arrangements and Imperial audiences)
- Magistri scriniorum (the emperor's secretaries, belonging to the memoriae, epistularum, and libellorum bureaus)
- Praepositus sacri cubiculi (the emperor's chamberlain, who exercised a general authority over all officers associated with the imperial court).
All important offices automatically carried with them admission into the Senate, thereby further eroding the standing of the traditional aristocratic Senatorial families of the Principate under the Dominate. This resulted in a senatorial body of around 2,000 members during the reign of Constantine,[26] and these numbers only increased when there were two senatorial bodies in existence, one at Rome and one at Constantinople.
All the higher officials in the imperial bureaucracy belonged to one of the three classes or ranks introduced by Constantine I – the
The entry level class,
Military reforms
Under the Principate, provinces that contained
It was
The next reforms were undertaken by Constantine I, who reorganised the supreme military command. Two significant parts of the reform are apparent: the separation of military commanders from civil administration and the division of the army into two classes: the Field Armies ("comitatenses") and the Frontier Troops ("limitanei").[39] The Field Armies served as the Empire's strategic reserve to respond to crisis where it may arise whereas the Frontier Troops were permanently stationed along the Empire's borders ("limes"). Recruited from the ranks of the Field Armies were the Palace Troops units ("Palatini"), who accompanied the Emperor as he travelled around the Empire, functioning as the successor to the Principate's Praetorian Guard.[40]
Around the same time, Constantine established the new military roles of the Master of the Soldiers ("
- Within the East, by the late 4th century, there were Masters of the Soldiers, per Illyricum, per Thracias , and per Orientem. Each of these three Masters exercised independent command over one of the three Field Armies of the Eastern Empire. There were also two Masters of the Soldiers in the Presence (in praesenti) who accompanied the Eastern Emperor and who each commanded half of the Palace Troops. Each of the five Masters were of equal rank.[41]
- Within the West, there were originally four Masters of the Soldiers; foot and horse per Gallias and per Italiam. Over time, it became more common for the offices (foot and horse) to be combined under a single person, then styled magister equitum et peditum or magister utriusquae militiae ("master of both forces"). By the time of Stilicho, the Master of Both Services was the supreme military commander of the West, ranking only below the Emperor and above all other military commanders, and commander of half the Palace Troops. The Master of the Horse held command over half the Palace Troops and the Field Army of Gaul, but still under the command of the Master of Both Services.[41]
To support the Masters of the Soldiers, the Empire established several Military Counts ("Comes rei militaris"). There were six such Military Counts throughout the Empire. The Military Counts were all ranked as spectabiles.
- Within the East, there was only one Military Count: the Military Count of Egypt ("Comes rei militaris Aegypti"). Unlike the Military Counts of the West, this Count commanded the Frontier Troops stationed in Egypt and reported directly to the Eastern Emperor.
- Within the West, there were six such Military Counts, one for each of the five Field Armies in Illyria, Africa, Tingitania, Hispania, and Britannia. The sixth military count, the Count of the Saxon Shore ("comes littoris Saxonici per Britanniam"), commanded Frontier Troops along both sides of the English Channel and reported to the Count of Britannia. The five regular Military Counts reported to the Master of Both Services.
The various Frontier Troops were under the command of Dukes ("duces limitis" or "border commanders"). These commanders were the closest in function to the Imperial Legates of the Principate.[42] Most Dukes were given command of forces in a single province, but a few controlled more than one province. In the East, the Dukes reported to the Master of the Soldiers of their district whereas in the West they reported to their respective Military Count.
Religious reforms
The Dominate saw enormous changes in the official religion of the empire from its
"while in all ancient monarchies religion and sacerdotalism were a political as well as a social power, the position of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire was a new thing in the world, presenting problems of a kind with which no ruler had hitherto been confronted and to which no past experience offered a key. The history of the Empire would have been profoundly different if the Church had remained as independent of the State as it had been before Constantine. But heresies and schisms and religious intolerance on one side, and the despotic instinct to control all social forces on the other, brought about a close union between State and Church which altered the character and spirit of the State, and constituted perhaps the most striking difference between the early and the later Empire."[43]
The origins of the change began in the reign of Aurelian, who promoted the worship of Sol Invictus as the supreme deity of the empire.[11] Although the worship of Sol Invictus did not remove the veneration towards the traditional Roman gods, it was seen as a mark of imperial favouritism, and the emperors linked his cult to the well-being of the state and on-going military victories of the empire.[44]
Next, it was during Diocletian's reign that emperor worship was fully adopted by the emperors, as a method of expressing loyalty to the state.
It was under Constantine I that the religious transformation began to take its late Dominate shape, initially with Constantine officially favouring the worship of a single deity in the shape of Sol Invictus.[48] During the course of his reign, the identification of Sol Invictus as the principal god began to merge with the Christian god.[49] To avoid offending Christians, Constantine abandoned the emperor's formal claim to divinity and ceased to demand sacrifices to the emperor that formed part of the imperial cult.[50] In an attempt to appeal to both Christians and pagans, Constantine adopted two new religious symbols into the imperial iconography, in the form of the Chi Rho and the Labarum.[51] By the time of Constantine's death in AD 337, this process was largely complete, with Constantine being baptized on his deathbed.
At the Imperial court, Christians began indiscernibly to rise in favour, to the detriment of pagans. This did not begin to immediately hamper the advancement of pagan courtiers after the defeat of
By the time of
The emperors had, over time, conceded many privileges to the clergy and the churches. Firstly, all clergy, like the holders of the pagan religious offices, were exempted from taxation. There were no restrictions placed on churches receiving bequests through wills, and they were given the same rights as the pagan temples had in granting asylum to any who requested it. Bishops were permitted to act as judges in civil cases when both parties had agreed, and no appeal was permitted once the Bishop had made their ruling. The state made increasing use of the ecclesiastical authorities in local administration due to the decline in the civic life of the urban communities, which coincided with the increasing local influence of the bishops. Finally, bishops were given the same role as the defensor civitatis, who was responsible for protecting the poor against exploitation by government officials and defending them from other powerful individuals, during the course of which the bishop could bring cases of illegality directly to the emperor.[54]
Downgrading of Rome as capital of the empire
One of the most visible signs of the changes brought about by the Dominate was the downgrading of
Rome was increasingly seen to be too distant a residence for the emperor when troubles could erupt along any of the borders of the empire. In the west, Mediolanum was seen to be a much better strategic city for the emperor to be based at, as it gave good access through the Alps northwards to both the Danubian provinces in the east as well as the Rhine provinces and Gaul to the west. Further, it was well positioned to guard against incursions through the alpine passes.[56] This decision was confirmed when Diocletian established the Tetrarchy, and his colleague Maximian informally established Mediolanum as the senior western emperor's official residence.[57] Diocletian, conscious that the Persian threat to the eastern provinces required a continuous imperial presence, placed his eastern capital in the city of Nicomedia. Meanwhile, the Caesars also had imperial residences – Constantius Chlorus was based at Augusta Treverorum, while Galerius sited his residence at Sirmium.[58]
After the collapse of the Tetrachy, Constantine I at first placed his imperial capital at
In the west, Mediolanum continued to be the imperial residence until the repeated invasions by Alaric I forced the western emperor Honorius to relocate to the strongly fortified city of Ravenna in 402.[60] Ravenna remained the western imperial capital until the loss of Italy in 476. Although Rome was reincorporated into the empire by Justinian I in 540, it was Ravenna which was selected as the official residence of the Exarch, the governor who represented the emperor in Italy. Ravenna would retain this position until 751, when the Byzantine Empire finally lost the central Italian provinces to the Lombards.
Intensification of coloni use and the origins of serfdom
Large Roman landowners increasingly relied on Roman freemen, acting as tenant farmers to provide labor.[61]
The status of these tenant farmers, eventually known as coloni, steadily eroded. Because the tax system implemented by Diocletian (reigned 284–305) assessed taxes based both on land and on the inhabitants of that land, it became administratively inconvenient for peasants to leave the land where the census counted them.[61]
Starting in 332 AD,
Stylistic changes
Diocletian and his augusti colleagues and successors openly displayed the naked face of Imperial power. They ceased using the more modest title of
Emperors inhabited luxurious palaces (the ruins of Diocletian's enormous palace in
Historian David Potter describes the transformation of government under Diocletian when describing the shifts in imagery the Emperor used to display his power (in this case the building of a huge new palace at Sirmium):
The style of Government so memorably described by Marcus, whereby the emperor sought to show himself as a model of correct aristocratic deportment, had given way to a style in which the emperor was seen to be distinct from all other mortals. His house could no longer be a grander version of houses that other people might live in: it, like him, had to be different.
The adoption of Dominus as a formal title reflected the divine status (
Emperors imported rituals such as kneeling before the Emperor, and kissing of the hem of the Imperial robe (
In contrast to the situation in the Principate, however, emperors in the Dominate could not be deified as it was, excepting the two initial decades and the reign of
Another clear symptom of the upgrading of the imperial status was the notion of the emperor as an incarnation of the
See also
- Constitution of the Late Roman Empire
References
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- ^ Kuhoff, Wolfgang (2002). "Die diokletianische Tetrarchie als Epoche einer historischen Wende in antiker und moderner Sicht". International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 9 (2): 177–178. doi:10.1007/BF02898434 JSTOR 30224306
- ^ Lee, A. D., From Rome to Byzantium AD 363 to 565: The Transformation of Ancient Rome (2013) p. xiii
- ^ Mitchell, S., A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284–641 (2014), Chapter 1
- ^ Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XI, The High Empire (2008) p. 82
- ^ Shorter, D., Rome and her Empire (2014) p. 174
- ^ Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XI, The High Empire (2008) p. 81
- ^ Watson, A., Aurelian and the Third Century (2004) p. 188
- ^ Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) pp. 12–13
- ^ Bray, J. J., Gallienus: A Study in Reformist and Sexual Politics (1997) p. 2; Körner, C., Aurelian (A.D. 270–275), De Imperatoribus Romanis (2001)
- ^ a b Körner, C., Aurelian (A.D. 270–275), De Imperatoribus Romanis (2001)
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- ^ Bury, J. B., A History of the Roman Empire from its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius (1893) pp. 20; 523
- ^ Watson, A. Aurelian and the Third Century (2004) p. 5; Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) pp. 251–2
- ^ Bury, J. B., A History of the Roman Empire from its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius (1893) p. 38
- ^ Bagnall, R. S.; Cameron, A.; Schwartz, S. R.; Worp, K. A., Consuls of the later Roman Empire (1987) pp.1–2
- ^ Bagnall, R. S.; Cameron, A.; Schwartz, S. R.; Worp, K. A., Consuls of the later Roman Empire (1987) p.1
- ^ a b c d e Bagnall, R. S.; Cameron, A.; Schwartz, S. R.; Worp, K. A., Consuls of the later Roman Empire (1987) p.2
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- ^ a b Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) p. 255
- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 18; Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) p. 255
- ^ Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) p. 255; Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 25
- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), pp. 26–28
- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), pp. 27–28
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- ^ Bowman, A. K. Provincial Administration and Taxation in The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. 10: The Augustan Empire 43 B.C. – A.D. 69 (1996) p. 353
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- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 35
- ^ a b Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 36
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- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 63
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- ^ a b c Southern, P. The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2001) p. 281
- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), p. 64
- ^ Bury, J. B. History of the Later Roman Empire From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian Vol I (1958), pp. 64–65
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Further reading
- Carson, Robert. 1981. Principal Coins of the Romans, III: The Dominate, A.D. 294–498. London: Brit. Museum Publ.
- Elton, Hugh. 2018. The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, A Political and Military History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hebblewhite, Mark 2017. The Emperor and the Army in the Later Roman Empire, AD 235–395. London; New York: Routledge.
- Kelly, Christopher 2004. Ruling the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Kulikowski, Michael. 2016. The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Melounová, Markéta. 2012. "Trials with Religious and Political Charges from the Principate to the Dominate." Sborník Prací Filosofické Fakulty Brnenské University = Studia minora Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis. Rada archeologicko-klasicka = Series archaeologica et classica. 17.2: 117–130.
- Minamikawa, Takashi ed. 2015. New Approaches to the later Roman Empire. Kyoto: Kyoto University.
- Roymans, Nico, Stijn Heeren, and Wim de Clerq eds. 2016. Social Dynamics in the Northwest Frontiers of the Late Roman Empire: Beyond Transformation or Decline. Amsterdam archaeological studies, 26. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Vitiello, Massimiliano. 2015. "Blaming the Late Republic: Senatorial Ideology and Republican Institutions in Late Antiquity." Classical Receptions Journal 7.1: 31–45.