13
Agentes in rebus
Diocletian is the emperor credited with establishing Rome’s new internal security organization.1 Unfortunately, the organization that replaced the frumentarii did not compare favorably with its predecessor from the point of view of the average Roman citizen. Commentators in the late Empire were unanimous in comparing the frumentarii with their successors, the agentes in rebus, who are generally described as being the “corrupt minions of a police state.”2 As disliked as they were, however, no emperor was about to give up such an essential source of intelligence. Diocletian therefore replaced the frumentarii with another organization that would perform the same counterintelligence/security tasks under a different name. He reorganized the corps of frumentarii as the agentes in rebus, an ominously bland title meaning “general agents.” The title belies the insidious nature of the institution. The new agents performed a wide range of functions that were almost identical to those of the frumentarii, but they were different in several administrative respects. First, members of the new corps were not recruited from the military. Although their titles matched those of field soldiers, they were entirely civilian. Second, their relationship to the central government was changed in two important ways. The new agents were removed from the jurisdiction of the praetorian prefect and were placed under a new official of ministerial rank at court, the Master of Offices. Their duties were coordinated with those of other intelligence-gathering officials serving the imperial privy council, or Consistory, and who formed an important second branch of the internal security organization. The Master of Offices in effect became the Minister of Information. The general agents were much more numerous than the frumentarii had been; their corps numbered as high as 1,200 men.3
The primary duty of an agent was the conveyance of intelligence. They are seen most often carrying dispatches. Later, other responsibilities were added to the job, though in what sequence is uncertain. They went out to the provinces as inspectors of the post, to see that no one utilized it without a warrant or that no official demanded facilities in excess of what his warrant entitled him to receive. By a law of ad 357, two inspectors were sent to each province annually. This was reduced to one per province in ad 395, and the limit was removed in ad 412. They retained the name curiosi and, as such, policed the intelligence network upon which the emperor relied. Curiosi were also stationed at ports to control maritime traffic. Like their predecessors, they found ample opportunity in these functions to abuse the public.4
Their official duties were supplemented by various police tasks and private informing. They are accused of bringing false charges in order to confiscate other people’s goods, similar to the role the delatores had played. The law codes mention agents making enormous profits by extorting money and imprisoning people whom they had falsely accused.5 Excessive and at times undeserved rewards encouraged informers to make a career of destroying people.6 This was nothing new; it had been happening since the time of Augustus. However, these were not private informers but government officials who were hired to keep the law and to gather information. They were sent to ferret out information, and whom they might destroy in the process was of no importance to them. Information of political interest was rarely ignored. We see the system in operation in ad 355, when an agent named Gaudentius reported allegedly treasonable statements by the governor of the province, Pannonia Secunda, to Rufinus, the chief of staff of the praetorian prefecture. Rufinus was himself a retired agent and trained informer, and he traveled quickly to the imperial court to bring the charges personally before the Emperor Constantius II.7 The Curiosi’s reputation for slander and intrigue became so widespread that the Emperor Julian discharged almost the entire corps.8 When two of his former agents asked to be reinstated in return for intelligence about the enemy, he threw them out.9
These intelligence agents also took part in enforcing governmental regulations regarding the Church. Under the reign of Theodosius I (ad 379–395), when orthodox Christianity became the state religion, the internal security forces were turned on heretical groups instead. Groups such as the Egyptian Nicenes were persecuted, and the curiosi were there to inform and testify against them.10 Edicts show them aiding the ecclesiastical authorities in preventing gatherings of heretical groups such as the Donatists and the Manichaeans in Africa. Agentes in rebus functioned as messengers between the imperial court and church officials, and they were in attendance at the great Church councils and synods, where they read imperial pronouncements.
The growth of the imperial bureaucracy in the late Empire created another area of operation for spies. Surveillance duties included spying on other ministries of state, specifically the praetorian and urban prefectures. Central government, wanting its authority to be all-pervasive, assigned experienced intelligence officers from the imperial court to other departments of the bureaucracy to serve as chiefs of staff and to spy on their superiors and subordinates alike, somewhat in the manner of the Soviet political commissars.11 If the central government expected these men to stay free of such corruption as they were supposed to control, then the emperor must have been disappointed. In theory, agents should have remained loyal to the emperor while acting as imperial troubleshooters and reporting back any malfeasance. In practice, they were no more reliable than the people they were spying on, and, as historians have noticed, the emperor discovered he had sent thieves to catch thieves.12 Agents often cooperated with rather than spied on those superiors who they realized could help their careers.
Many of the cases reported by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, even those that involve fiscal abuse, often have political overtones and some even concern treasonable activities. Many of the charges are brought forward by political rivals of higher or lower rank. The emperors had entrusted these men with the responsibility of reporting illegal activities; what their activities in effect did was to open a new and fertile field for personal and political ambitions and rivalries. And, in spite of their corruption, no emperor thought he could rule safely without them. They survived as late as the sixth century in Ostrogothic Italy, while in the Byzantine Empire they continued to be a useful organization until the central government was reorganized shortly after ad 700.13
The notarii
The late Roman government institutionalized its information services and espionage activities to an extent unknown during the principate. The distinguishing characteristic of espionage in the later Roman Empire, after the frumentarii were dismantled, is that it was not carried out by one department alone. Several other organizations were coopted into intelligence work, and their officials were assigned security or counterintelligence tasks. The notarii, or imperial secretaries, performed quasi-military and bureaucratic functions that made them adaptable to clandestine activities.14 They served as clerical personnel in military headquarters. While the activities of the agentes in rebus as spies, special agents, and informers grew out of their responsibilities as curiosi in the postal system, those of the notarii came from their intimate acquaintance with decisions made in the Consistory and with office holders in both civil and military branches of the government. The head of the Corps of Secretaries (the primicerius) probably kept the Notitia Dignitatum, the list of all the administrators of the Roman Empire, and it was natural that his subordinates had knowledge of bureaucratic careers and appointments throughout the Empire.15
Although the duties of the notarii and agentes in rebus were nominally different, their activities tended to overlap. The notarii, too, gradually assumed the quasimilitary responsibilities of an internal police force. A few examples will suffice. We find a notarius named Gaudentius sent to Gaul to spy on the future emperor, Julian.16 Notarii were present at the trials of men accused of high treason by Gallus Caesar, and reported back to him about the cross-examination.17 The notarius Paul, later nicknamed “The Chain” because of his relentless espionage, informed against the friends of Gallus Caesar.18 Paul also informed the Emperor Constantius II of alleged plots being hatched by the adherents of General Silvanus.19 Under Valentinian I, a notarius was ordered to investigate affairs in Africa following complaints of provincials regarding the activities of Count Romanus.20 A notarius was associated with the vicarius urbis Romae Maximinus in ad 370, during an investigation of treason and sorcery in urban Roman senatorial ranks.21 Similar specialists called referendarii first appear in the sources at the time of the Emperor Julian. They become prominent in the fifth and sixth centuries, and in Ostrogothic Italy the referendarii and the Quaetor of the Sacred Palace eventually exercised the functions formerly performed by the schola notariorm as a whole.22 As late as the sixth century, a referendarius named Cyprianus is mentioned in the sources as an informer to Theodoric of alleged treason involving leading Roman senators, including Boethius 23 The corps was in decay by the time of Cassiodorus (c. ad 490–583).24
While neither the agentes in rebus nor the notarii were soldiers, both corps were occasionally associated with the military in a supervisory capacity. Again, the comparison with Soviet political commissars is tempting. They also appear as messenger or supervisors. Constantius II sent a notarius to Gaul with an order to transfer Julian’s auxiliaries to the eastern front. A notarius was dispatched together with two other officials to defend Africa against the usurper Procopius. When the Rhine frontier was threatened, Valentinian I sent a notarius to order the local dux to construct fortifications. The notarius supervised the work and was the sole survivor of a barbarian attack.25 When the Pannonian frontier faced barbarian invasion, a notarius was assigned to investigate the situation.26
In a few instances, notarii actually did perform military duties. The notarius Procopius was entrusted with the command of 30,000 troops on the Roman side of the Tigris in ad 363.27 During the siege of a Mesopotamian town during Julian’s campaign, Jovian the primicerius notarium was one of the first men to lead the attack; a rare case of a notarius appearing as a combat officer.28 As late as the sixth century we see notarii with military as well as political and administrative responsibilities.29
Some scholars have tried to deemphasize the more insidious face of these two groups, stressing that their activities were neither secret nor involved with espionage.30 A.H.M. Jones, for example, tells us:
The agentes in rebus have achieved a rather sinister reputation as a kind of secret police. It is based on the activities of certain number of the corps who made themselves notorious in Constantius II’s reign by ferreting out and denouncing treasonable plots, real and alleged. But they were by no means alone in exploiting the emperor’s suspicious temper – several notaries gained as sinister a reputation – and there is no reason to believe that the agentes in rebus in normal times had any police functions except as inspectors of the post.31
According to this interpretation, the notarii and agentes in rebus were simply bureaucrats for whom spying was a temporary aberration. But, as we have seen, their activities spread over a much longer period than only the reign of Constantius II, and had serious consequences. Nor were any bureaucrat’s duties limited by his title if the emperor chose to impose on him certain intelligence duties. The need for intelligence concerning possible plots against the emperor’s life was constant. Their effectiveness as agents of counterespionage and control was grounded not in their official titles or duties, but rather in the administrative relationships these men had to the court, from their position in the bureaucratic chain of command, or simply because of their employment by the emperor.
The palace guard (protectores domestici) were another arm of the central government’s intelligence network. They were assigned to inspect and report on provincial authorities.32 These groups were used as political police for arrests and executions carried out on the authority of the emperor. They frequently monitored ecclesiastical affairs.33 They also functioned as inspectors of the state’s armaments industry.34 The Emperor Gallus used his protectores to arrest a man who had been insolent, then sent others to arrest the official’s son-in-law, captured in Armenia while fleeing to Constantinople.35 How the various imperial services worked together is illustrated by the case of Afranius, governor of Pannonia Secunda. At a party given by Afranius, several of the house guests freely criticized the government and intimated that they looked forward to a change of rulers. A member of the agentes in rebus was present and reported the seditious conversation to Rufinus, a colleague in the secret service assigned to the praetorian prefecture as chief of staff. Rufinus immediately informed the emperor, who then dispatched two palace guards to Sirmium to arrest Afranius and all the other partakers at the fatal banquet.36
No single organization served as an imperial police force, nor do any of these groups fit the modern description of a secret police. But the pattern of diplomatic, undercover, and enforcement activities is clear – and not just during the reign of Constantius II. Although abuses were worse under the more suspicious emperors, we cannot overlook the potential use of these men as information gatherers, regardless of what their primary functions might have been. To play down their more insidious functions would be to ignore entirely the political and military climate at court during the late Roman Empire. These imperial organizations truly deserve the title of secret service, because they performed duties relating to the political safety of the state. They formed an integral part of a bureaucracy rooted in the military establishment, and represented imperial power in spheres that could adversely affect the lives of people all over the Empire; indeed, their duties eventually earned them the hatred of the Roman Empire’s population.
State security and the emperor
I have extended this particular discussion far beyond the principate to illustrate a point. The establishment of a secret service was a slow but steady development in the Roman Empire. In the beginning the idea of a centralized intelligence agency may have been contrary to Republican principles. But once Augustus had established an empire, it was simply a matter of time before imperial communications networks and widespread informing became institutionalized. The establishment of the cursus publicus by Augustus provided a physical communications link that was necessary for a good intelligence network, and later administrative changes under Domitian made the manpower available. The resulting organization, however, was devoted almost entirely to internal security. The political atmosphere in Rome had become decidedly less free since the days of the Republic. Enemies were now sought from within as well as from without, especially under emperors who felt themselves especially threatened. The ruler had gone from being the first citizen to being an absolute monarch who could no longer rule without the strict surveillance of his subjects. The secret service was just one more fact of political life in Rome and the provinces.
Foreign intelligence: the governor's officium
If the Romans were watching each other, then who was watching the borders? While the emphasis of the Roman intelligence network was clearly on internal security, a need still existed for intelligence about areas beyond the borders. How was it collected and by whom? Recently, Austin and Rankov have attempted to answer this very question by asking what evidence there is for a filing cabinet marked “Intelligence” in a provincial governor’s headquarters. They have gone into great detail defining the links between the intelligence-collecting bodies in the provinces that worked at the headquarters of provincial governors, and the reporting and archival structures that supported the system.37 They correctly point out the ad hoc nature of Roman intelligence gathering, their sources and means of collection. The principal person in charge of intelligence operations for a province was the governor. Each of the principal frontier provinces of the Roman Empire was governed by an ex-consul with the title legatus Augusti pro praetore.38 Such governors were in charge of between two and four legions and an equivalent number of auxiliary troops. The smaller frontier provinces that had legions (and some did not) were garrisoned by only a single legion with auxiliaries. Such provinces were governed by ex-praetors who had already held a legionary command.39
A Roman governor’s first duty was to familiarize himself with his province and his intelligence assets. He would probably begin his tour of duty by inspecting the province.40 Such a goodwill tour was a useful start, but once back at headquarters he had to have a steady and reliable source of intelligence. This source was the governor’s headquarters staff – his officium. These staffs could sometimes be as large as several hundred persons, most of them trained legionaries.41 The Roman Army developed a number of different types of military staffs. How the disparate types of officers came to serve in these staffs is not known, but it has been suggested that they came about through personal contact between these men and their commanders.42 There was a staff for each military tribune, auxiliary prefect, one for the camp prefect, one for the legate, and one for the governor himself. The more senior the officer, the higher the relative rank of his officials. So the cornicularius of a legionary legate ranked higher than the cornicularius of a tribune. The highest ranking staff officers in a province were those of the governor. At their simplest, these staffs consisted of a cornicularius and some beneficiarii. Senior officers had more complex and developed staff and the governor’s staff was the most populous. More and more specialist ranks with titles reflecting their actual functions were added over time to the grades developed from the Republican core groups.
Each provincial governor’s staff varied in size and make-up, but we can certainly say that by the second century ad they had become large and complex.43 By the third century we start to have inscriptional evidence for a centurion being in charge of at least some provincial headquarters. He was the princeps praetorii (chief of the headquarters) and was evidently supplied with both a deputy (Optio praetorii) and low-ranking assistants (adiutores praetorii). Nevertheless, each provincial official was also provided with two or three cornicularii, who may have headed some officia in the absence of the princeps, or alternatively have been the executive officers in charge even if the princeps were present.44 These too had their assistants (adiutores). Next in rank were a similar number of commen- tarienses (judicial recorders), who first appear in the second century, then the speculatores, the beneficiarii consularis (employed in a variety of different ways), and the quaestionarii (interrogators and torturers). Specialist troops attached to the officium included interpretes (interpreters) and a haruspex (see Chapter 1). In addition, there was a variety of secretarial staff, including librarii (archivists), notarii (secretaries), exacti (recorders), and exceptores (short-hand writers).45
One must keep in mind that the division of labor in such an office was by no means as rigid as these titles would suggest. Individuals seem to have carried out a variety of overlapping tasks.46 The group of officers would number eighty-four and they would be just the core of the officium. Most of the inscriptional evidence comes from the late second or early third century, when the system was fully developed. Austin and Rankov’s calculations suggest that a staff of 200–300 in a two-legion province, or 300–450 in a three-legion province, was not unusual.47
Contemporary with the growth of reconnaissance units on the border is the growth of a branch of the provincial governor’s staff called the beneficiarii consularis. Beneficiarii was a term employed by Caesar for soldiers specifically attached to a particular commander and so freed from their ordinary duties by his beneficium.48 Under the principate, the term had come to be used for a specific grade of staff officer within each military officium, although the Younger Pliny also uses it for staff officers in general.49 It was used for a specific grade of staff officer within each military office in the provinces. When the Roman government began to create a series of posts, or stationes, at key points along major roads in the provinces of the Roman Empire in the early second century ad, they were manned by beneficiarii attached to the governor’s staffs. We know about these men because of their habit of erecting votive altars at the stationes where they served.50 It has been thought that they were sent out to coordinate the local gathering of intelligence and its transmission back to headquarters. They were a key element in the apparatus of administration and communication (and thus intelligence gathering) of the Roman Empire.51 Their number multiplied dramatically in the early third century. Rankov has concluded that the beneficiarii were a sort of super messenger corps beefed up in response to the great military crises of the 160s onward faced by Marcus Aurelius. The new policies and intelligence network were successful until the later third century, when even greater pressures on the frontiers weakened by administrative chaos and civil war required new defense strategies and a new reliance on effective intelligence work.52
The governor’s offices in frontier provinces became the centers for the initiation of intelligence activities.53 Military governors were thus served by a very substantial specialist staff whose size was proportional to the size of the armies under their command. A great deal of information could be processed and stored by such a staff and thus could be available for the use of each successive governor. It is ironic, however, that for all the detail that Austin and Rankov could marshal in describing these offices and the “mountains of paperwork” they supposedly produced, not a single intelligence document has ever been identified. Much of the documentary evidence that has been found in border forts consists of recruitment information, pay schedules, and inventories. Any secret information passing through was either never written down, destroyed afterwards, or it simply did not survive.
Intelligence from allies
Roman administrators continued to rely on reports from allies for intelligence on enemies beyond their borders. The governor would receive representatives from the local commanders and communities in his province. The system of allied, protected, or befriended kings and chiefs had remained in place since the Republic, especially in Asia and Africa. Those with first-hand information on particular sections of the frontier would be given particular attention. On the eastern frontier especially, governors made much use of Rome’s client princes in their dealings with territories beyond the Roman Empire. Client kings probably sought to make contact with a new governor as soon as he arrived.54 Their information could now be carried to Rome or from provincial capitals more quickly and efficiently by the state post. To give an example, in the correspondence of Pliny the Younger, an interesting piece of evidence tells of an eager ally informing the emperor on matters of political and military importance. Pliny writes to Trajan:
King Sauromates has written to me that certain affairs have happened which require your immediate knowledge. I have therefore assisted the courier [tabellarius] with whom he dispatched with a letter to you, to arrive more speedily, by granting him an order [diploma] to employ the public post.55
There is little evidence to suggest that the Romans had as much interest in placing agents among neighboring populations as they did among their own subjects. Such a practice would have helped to detect dangerous shifts in alignment among those nations. Spies could pass on useful information to commanders of the Limes stations, who could then relay it to the capital. Only one piece of evidence, recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, suggests that such agents existed, but Ammianus adds that Count Theodosius had to stop using them. He says:
In the midst of such important events the Arcani, a class of men established in early times, about which I said something in the history of Constans, had gradually become corrupted, and consequently he [Theodosius] removed them from their posts. For they were clearly convicted of having been led by the receipt, or the promise, of great booty at various times to betray to the savages what was going on among us. For it was their duty to hasten about hither and thither over long spaces, to give information about our generals of the clashes of rebellion among neighboring peoples.56
Unfortunately, the history of Constans by Ammianus is not extant. We simply do not know, and may never know, who these agents were, where they operated, or even when these “early times” were. No other text supports his statement, nor documents a group by that name. British scholars have recently interpreted the passage to refer to a tribe of people used as scouts along the border.57 Nor does any evidence support the belief that they were either frumentarii or agentes in rebus. Both of those groups functioned solely along the cursus publicus and within the borders of Roman territory.58 From what the sources show, the frumentarii and agentes in rebus were bureaucrats acting as spies, and for internal espionage only.59 No clear example exists of political agents infiltrating foreign governments or tribes, nor running agent networks on the other side of the Limes.
Collection beyond the frontier was done by military units, the exploratores. In the late second and third centuries, more of these units show up, especially in Germany and Pannonia, which were the provinces most threatened by invasion. These units were sent to border areas in anticipation of major campaigns. The raising of a new explorator unit in Britain in ad 205–207, for example, would have provided information about local conditions there, and the strength and state of the peoples in the lowlands of Scotland in anticipation of Septimius Severus’s campaign there.60 The acquisition of such information required more than simple scouting. It necessitated making contact with and questioning the local inhabitants, perhaps in plain clothes or under the guise of trade. The fact that a trained intelligence operative such as Oclatinius Adventus (a former speculator, by then head of the frumentarii) shows up in the border area at just this time, is probably no mere coincidence. As a man familiar with the workings of the Roman intelligence apparatus, he would have known which kind of men to select as agents, and how to organize their training.61
There is little to suggest that in peacetime there was any coordinated intelligence activity beyond the frontiers, especially before the time of Marcus Aurelius. Most intelligence was collected in the course of routine patrolling by the garrisons of the forts deployed along the frontiers. Anything of interest would have been passed on to the provincial governors by local prefects and tribunes. Such information would then have been filed at the provincial capital, as was all the governor’s correspondence, by headquarters staff drawn in the frontier provinces, at least, from experienced legionary soldiers.62 Whether special intelligence- collection operations like the one initiated by Severus in the British campaign of ad 208–210, we do not know. The success or failure of that campaign has been debated by scholars, but one might suggest that without good intelligence collection, the results could have been worse.63
Breakdown of the system
Considering how much money and manpower was spent on internal security in the Roman Empire, by any standard of internal security, the Roman system was not a great success. Only a minority of emperors died a natural death. Indeed, a dozen fell before assassins, not in battle.64 After Nero, the palace was fitted with heavy iron gates. The blow, when it came, might have been delivered by anyone – a madman jumping out of the garden shrubbery, as one did at Hadrian, the wrestling companion of Commodus, or cultivated literary/philosopher types. Between the death of Septimius Severus in ad 211 and the accession of Diocletian in ad 284, there were twenty-four more or less legitimate emperors and many more usurpers. These would-be emperors could not dominate Rome for long and, if their internal security apparatus had indeed been counted upon to keep the emperor safe on his throne, then the system clearly failed. The average reign of a “legitimate” emperor was only three years. The longest reigns of the post-Severan era were held by Gallienus, who held the throne for fifteen years and then was killed by his staff officers, and Postumus, a usurper who managed to hold on to Gaul for nine years. Decius (ad 249–251) died in battle, fighting the Goths; Valerian (ad 253–260) was captured by the Persians and died in captivity; and Claudius II (ad 268–270) fell victim to the plague. All the other emperors and usurpers were either assassinated or perished fighting their domestic rivals. No component of the government, not the army, not the secret police, not even his own bodyguards, could ever guarantee a ruler’s safety. The emperor of the hour had to focus his attention on threats to himself, even while attacks were underway from without. It was a more urgent business for the emperor to protect his throne than to strive to maintain the tranquillity of remote frontiers. Naturally, inhabitants inside the borders suffered the consequences of such an order of priorities. Perhaps this explains the lack of effort made to devise a better system for seeking out and transmitting foreign intelligence. The Roman state had improved its capacity for conveying information and keeping a watchful eye on its own bureaucrats, but the emperor was no safer. Much of this had to do with the buying off of the Praetorian Guard. Juvenal put his finger on the problem in his sixth satire, when he asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, who will guard the guardians?
Roman emperors found themselves unable to protect either their throne or their borders. The breakdown of internal security during the third century ad invited aggression from outside the Empire, and evidence shows that external threats increased significantly. Along the Rhine and the upper Danube, the tribes previously kept separated by Roman diplomacy now began to federate into much larger and more dangerous agglomerations. The Franks and Alamanni amassed in greater numbers to attack the Empire‘s frontiers. The Romans, who had for so long managed to keep those people divided, were now faced with a more united German front. In the East, the weak Parthian regime of the Arsacids was overthrown around ad 224 by the Persian dynasty of the Sassanids, and the new enemy was out to reclaim its ancestral lands, which even included all the Roman territory in Asia Minor. No Roman Limes, or “scientific frontier,” was about to stop them. And the Romans had even fewer intelligence assets amidst these people than they had had among the Parthians.
The interaction between internal disorder and foreign offensives had calamitous results. The third century witnessed a string of invasions, some so deep that Rome had to be protected by new and bigger walls. External defense was sometimes completely sacrificed for internal security. Philip the Arab (ad 244–249) altogether abandoned the Persian campaign of his predecessor Gordian III (ad 238–244) and signed an unfavorable peace treaty with Persia in order to return to Rome and claim the throne, lest someone else claim it. Even had these emperors possessed excellent intelligence regarding cross-border incursions, they would have been helpless or unwilling to do anything about it. Once the state itself began to crumble, for whatever political and military reasons, no intelligence service could have saved it. The idea of a united empire was still alive, but rapidly dying. People were patriotically loyal to the idea of a united Rome, but they also yearned for peace, order, and stability. The Emperor Diocletian (ad 284–305), who was brought up in this era of chaos and insecurity, divided the Empire into a tetrarchy and pursued a policy of domestic regimentation and systematic consolidation of frontiers. Peace was restored, but at the price of freedom. Under the stem rule of Diocletian, the Roman Empire became one vast logistics base for his army. All the money, food, fodder, clothing, and arms required for the imperial defense were ruthlessly extracted from a population bound to the system by legal measures. All the lessons that the Romans had learned about intelligence and defense were applied to good effect in the late Empire. But they were no longer protecting the same ideals. The world over which Diocletian governed could not even remember the Republican liberties that the Romans had once enjoyed. Both their instruments of defense and what they were defending had irreversibly changed.
Notes
1. According to Aurelius Victor 39.44, this step was taken by Diocletian because of their extreme corruption.
2. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 69.
3. W.G. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” AJPh 80 (1959), pp. 238–54, who lists 1,174 agents in ad 430.
4. G. Purpura, “I curiosi e la schola agentum in rebus,” ASGP 34 (1973), pp. 165–275 analyzes the term curiosi as it is applied to certain members of the agentes in rebus. He determines that the term should only apply to a subgroup of the agentes given the responsibility of overseeing the cursus publicus. He does not agree with W. Blum, Curiosi und Regendarii (Munich, 1969), or Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service” that they constituted part of a Roman secret service.
5. Dio Cassius 52.37.2; Cod. Th. 6.29.12; Cod. Th. 6.29.1.
6. Amm. Marc. 16.8.9; 15.3.7–9; 22.7.5. See Rostovzteff, SEHRE, pp. 412–13.
7. Amm. Marc. 15.3.7ff.
8. Libanius, Orations 18.48ff.
9. Amm. Marc. 22.7.5.
10. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 249.
11. See W.G. Sinnigen, “Chiefs of Staff of the Secret Service,” Byz. Zeit 57 (1964) pp. 78–105; Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 239.
12. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 70.
13. Under the Ostrogoths they were known as comitiaci and worked with the saiones, the corresponding German officials. See E. Stein, Histoire du Bas (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1949–59), vol. 2, pp. 122ff. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 72, n. 56.
14. M. Clauss, Die magister officiorum in der Spätantike (Munich: Beck, 1980), p. 22; H.C. Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1985) makes no mention of this function.
15. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 242. See also “Consistorium” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 377.
16. Amm. Marc. 17.9.7.
17. Website: Ibid., 14.9.3.
18. Website: Ibid., 15.3.3–4.
19. Website: Ibid., 15.6.1.
20. Website: Ibid., 28.6.12.
21. Website: Ibid., 28.1.12.
22. 22 Chron. Pasch., sub ad 363; Stein, Histoire du Bas, vol. 2, pp. 736–9; Sinnigen “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 242.
23. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 246, citing Anon. Vales. S5.
24. Cassiodorus, Var. 6.16–17; 1.4.10. See Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 242; Stein, Histoire du Bas, vol. 2, p. 256.
25. Website: Ibid., 28.2.5–9.
26. Website: Ibid., 30.3.2.
27. Website: Ibid., 23.3.5.
28. Website: Ibid., 24.4.23; Zosimus 3.22.
29. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” p. 247:
30. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), vol. 2, p. 581. See W. Liebschuetz’s review of W. Blum’s work Curiosi und Regendarii (Munich, 1969), in Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970), pp. 229–30. Blum holds that detective work was a primary function of the curiosi who were sent to the provinces in connection with the cursus publicus. Even Liebschuetz admits that curiosi can be legitimately translated as “spies.”
31. Jones, Later Roman Empire, vol. 2, p. 581. R.I. Frank, in his review of Clauss’s book Der magister officiorum, rightly points out: “This view could easily be dismissed as absurd, were it not for Jones’ authority. The view has been stated in even more uncompromising terms by a student of Jones’ in reviewing Blum. The author… has been led astray by the analogy of the secret police forces of modern Europe.” W. Liebschuetz, Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970), pp. 229–30. The same view has been endorsed by W. Schuller, “Grenzen des spätromischen Staates,” ZPE 16 (1975), pp. 1–21.
32. There is also some evidence that the protectores and domestici were assigned to military officia. Most of the evidence comes from the eastern empire in the fifth and sixth centuries. R.I. Frank, Scholae palatinae (papers and monographs of the American Academy in Rome, 1969), p. 97. Cf. Clauss, Magister officiorum, pp. 40–4 on the Scholae palatinae.
33. Frank, Scholae palatinae, pp. 112ff.
34. Website: Ibid., p. 120 with references.
35. Amm. Marc. 14.7.12, 19.
36. Amm. Marc. 15.3.7–11. Cf. W.G. Sinnigen, The Officium of the Urban Prefecture during the later Roman Empire (American Academy in Rome, 1957), pp. 28–30.
37. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio; See my review in International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 11, 1 (spring 1998), pp. 104–15; also N.J.E. Austin, “What Happened to Intelligence Information from the Frontiers?,” Prudentia 19,2 (1987), pp. 28–33.
38. The principal provinces were Britain (Upper Britain after ad 213), Lower and Upper Germany, Upper and Lower Pannonia (after ad 214), Upper and Lower Moesia (after ad 86), Dacia, Cappadocia, Judaea (called Syria Palaestina after ad 128) and Syria (Syria Coele after ad 194).
39. Despite their lower rank, they held the same title and insignia as the consular governors. Both groups were technically the deputies of the emperor. These provinces included Lower Britain (after ad 213), Raetia and Noricum (after ad 170), Lower Pannonia (from ad 106 to 214), Judaea (from ad 70 to 128), Syria Phoenice (after ad 194), Arabia (from 106) and Numidia (from ad 38).
40. The only evidence for this is the Periplous Euxeinou Pontou (Circumnavigation of the Black Sea) by Arrian, who was consular legate of Cappadocia from ad 131 to 137. See Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, pp. 143–4 for a detailed description of Arrian’s tour.
41. A.H.M. Jones, “The Roman Civil Service (Clerical and Sub-Clerical Grades),” Journal of Roman Studies 39 (1949), pp. 38–55 was among the first to try to dispel the idea that Roman governors worked without staff. More recently, Austin and Rankov have added to our knowledge of the governor’s officium, Exploratio, p. 149.
42. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 150.
43. The best evidence for their size comes from two third-century inscriptions from Lambaesis, the capital of Numidia. The officers here were drawn from the Legio III Augusta. They included two cornicularii, two commentarienses, four speculatores, thirty beneficiarii consularis, four or five quaetiones and one haruspex (see Chapter 1). CIL 8.2586; AE 1917/18.57. See Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 151, who also point out that these lists do not include the secretarial grades.
44. A number of inscriptions describe the governor’s headquarters’ staff as the officium corniculariorum consularis, “the staff of the governor’s cornicularii.”
45. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio also list frumentarii among these staff. They claim there were several frumentarii drawn from each legion. According to them, these men do not appear on the Lambaesis inscriptions, from which this material is taken, presumably because their role as couriers to Rome and members of the Castra Peregrina made them separate from the main office of the staff. Five ex-frumentarii appear on one of the inscriptions, apparently as candidates for promotion to the rank of beneficiarii consularis. See my comments at Chapter 12, note 35, citing Mann, “Organization of the frumentarii,” pp. 149–50, who believes frumentarii were never a part of the governor’s officium.
46. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 152. The authors have surveyed the evidence from several provinces and suggested that there would have been one speculator, one quaetionarius post per cohort of a legion, and one beneficiaruis post per century.
47. Website: Ibid.
48. Caesar, BC 1.75.2; 3.88.5. Cf. Festus, On the Meaning of Words p. 30L, s.v. beneficiarii; “Beneficiarius” in Dizionario Epigrafico di Antichità Romane (1895), vol. 1, pp. 992–6.
49. Pliny, Letters 10.27. On their role and functions, see E. Schallmayer, “Zur Herkunft und Funktion der Beneficiarier,” in V.A. Maxfield and M.J. Dobson, Roman Frontier Studies, proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, University of Exeter Press, pp. 400–6.
50. A. von Domaszewski, “Die Beneficiarierposten und die römischen Strassennetze,” Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst 21 (1902), pp. 158–211. Domaszewski was the first to conceive of the idea of stationes with beneficiarii stationed along the main roads for the purpose of traffic control. His ideas emerged from a study of the road network of the Roman Empire and it is still of great value in the study of beneficiarii.
51. R.L. Dise, Jr., “A Reassessment of the Functions of beneficiarii consularis,” Ancient History Bulletin 9, 2 (1995), pp. 72–85, who notes that no scholar has successfully defined a single or primary function or pattern of functions for the beneficarii consularis. Dise believes that although they were from time to time connected with internal security activities, this was not their primary use. Evidence for their participation in intelligence collecting comes from several inscriptions that show beneficiarii with previous service as frumentarii.
52. Cited in Austin, “What Happened to Intelligence Information from the Frontiers?,” pp. 28–33. See more recently, Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, pp. 195–206.
53. N.B. Rankov, “M. Oclatinius Adventus in Britain,” Brittania 18 (1987), pp. 246–7.
54. As an example, see Agrippa and Vibius Marsus. Agrippa’ s son, Agrippa II, courted his relative by marriage Tiberius Iulius Alexander when he arrived to take up the prefecture of Egypt in ad 66. Josephus, BJ 2.15.1/309. Cf. Jewish Antiquities 19.5.1/276–7. In ad 19 Aretas IV of Nabataea entertained the newly arrived supreme commander of the Easy, Tiberius’s heir, Germanicus, together with the new governor of Syria, Calpurnius Piso: Tacitus, Annals 2.57.4.
55. Pliny, Letters 10.44, William Melmoth translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.
56. Amm. Marc. 28.3.8. Note that Arcani should be amended to Areani, the name of a tribe on the British frontier that was used for scouting. Evidently they got too close to the natives beyond Hadrian’s Wall and became unreliable. See D. Shotter, The Roman Frontier in Britain (Preston: Carnegie Publishing, 1996), pp. 112, 121, 122.
57. Website: Ibid.
58. Amm. Marc. 28.3.8. J.C. Rolfe in the Loeb edition tries to equate the Arcani to the agentes in rebus, or the Angarii, so called for angaros, the old Greek word for a Persian mounted courier.
59. For the cursus publicus becoming a preserve of the internal security system and not a support for foreign intelligence gathering, see G. Brizzi, I sistemi informativi dei romani (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1982), p. 48.
60. This is the suggestion of Rankov, “M. Oclatinius Adventus in Britain,” pp. 247–8, who believes that the the exploratores at Risingham (RIB 1235) and High Rochester (RIB 1262; ILS 2631 = RIB 1270) were raised by Adventus earlier, under the governorship of Alfenus Senecio (205–207).
61. Website: Ibid., p. 248.
62. Website: Ibid., p. 246.
63. Website: Ibid., pp. 246–7 and Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 194, believe M. Oclatinus Adventus had been sent to Britain to prevent the kind of intelligence failure that had occurred in Severus’s eastern campaigns. The ancient sources Dio Cassius 73–76, Herodian 2.11–13 and SHA, Septimius Severus, are unanimous in considering the campaign a failure. Salway, History of Roman Britain, p. 181 sums up the positive side when he says: “Behind many modern assessments of the changing policies of the Severan house in Britain lies the individual historian’s attitude to the frontier question.” Was it the intention of the Romans to conquer all of Scotland or to establish a frontier defense that would keep the region pacified? The fact that the northern frontier remained unbreached for at least seventy years or so speaks to a successful campaign. Few defensive systems can be expected to be effective for more than a generation or so. On the negative side, see D.J. Breeze, “Why Did the Romans Fail to Conquer Scotland?”, PSAS 118 (1988), pp. 3–22 and D.J. Woolliscroft, “More Thoughts on Why the Romans Failed to Conquer Scotland” Scottish Archaeological Journal 22, 2 (2000), pp. 111–22.
64. Seventy-five percent of all Roman Emperors died by assassination or were killed by pretenders to their thrones. When you consider the Roman Emperor had 9,000 Praetorian Guards whose explicit job was to keep him alive in an age before bullets and bombs, I do not find this an amazingly good track record.