The Justice of Constantine: Law, Communication, and Control

7. Control and Consultation: Breves, Relationes, Consultationes

7 Control and Consultation: Breves, Relationes, Consultationes Breves Several of the constitutions discussed in previous chapters illustrate evidence of a further means of controlling the administration, namely the traf- fic of reports. Official correspondence between provincial administrators, whether gubernatorial, fiscal, or military, and the imperial court was brisk. The Codex Theodosianus addresses at great length the forms of correspondence peculiar to judicial matters—relationes and consultationes. These forms of correspondence lead to the subject of the next chapter, appeal, which was partly modeled on the procedure of the consultatio. Besides correspondence generated by judicial business, a steady flow of reports, frequently in the form of lists, from lower to higher officials in the administrative hierarchy and eventually to the emperor was fostered under the Constantinian regime.1 Such briefs (breves) could be, and often were, used to monitor the actions of various officials throughout the empire.2 The delegation of authority, from emperor to praetorian prefect, to comes or vicar, facilitated the collection of reports and distributed the burden of their review. In CTh. 10.8.2, Constantine instructs the rationalis Priscus to send breves to his superior, the comes (rei privatae), when property has been confiscated by Caesariani, the clerical officials who served on the staff of the rationalis. These breves, the emperor states, are to be plenis- / 192 / 1. See n. 44 below. 2. Cf. the discussion in S. Schmidt-Hofner, Reagieren und Gestalten. Der Regierungsstil des spätrömischen Kaisers am Beispiel der Gesetzgebung Valentinians I. (Munich, 2008), 64–68. simi: the detail of the description of the property affected should prevent spurious claims to it or peculation perpetrated, as it seems, by the Caesariani . Since the property subsequently would have been granted to a petitioner or lavished on some other favorite by the emperor or in his name, it lay in the imperial interest to maintain such potential gifts intact for their future recipients. The rationalis is thus called upon to protect the interests of both emperor and imperial beneficiary by guaranteeing the integrity of his staff. One should not assume a priori that the emperor’s wish had little prospect of fulfillment. The rationalis served for a short time, over a staff of career clerks. It would be hasty to suppose that there existed such solidarity between him and his clerks that he might connive at their indiscretions at his own peril. The rationalis looked to the comes rei privatae and ultimately to the emperor for advancement and reward. That he should have ensured that full documentation of confiscated property reached his superiors in order to retain their favor is much more credible than the alternative—that he should sacrifice due procedure and expose himself to punishment for the sake of enriching an underling. Caesariani may indeed have persisted in attempts to profit from the manipulation of such confiscations, but the diligence of the rationalis in reporting the extent of confiscated property will have prevented the diminution of imperial grants without the knowledge, and before the arrival, of the grantee. Reports of judicial proceedings might also be demanded of provincial governors in the form of breves. This is shown in CTh. 1.16.3, one of the fragments of the letter addressed to Felix, governor of Corsica.3 Constantine instructs Felix to send reports of all cases to the praetorian prefect after six months of his governorship have elapsed: Cum sex menses transcurrerint, breves omnium negotiorum ab officio tuo descripti commeent ad scrinia eminentissimae praefecturae, ut his recensitis et ad scrinia nostra perlatis pandatur, quis iudicum et in quibus discingendis causis fidelem operam praestiterit, quo vel dignus praemium mereatur vel neglegens coercitionem incurrat. After six months have passed, reports drafted by your officium of all cases shall go to the bureaus of most eminent (praetorian) prefecture, so that once they have been reviewed and forwarded to Our bureaus, it may be shown which judges, and in which cases they have heard, have acted honestly, so that either the worthy earn his reward or the negligent meet with punishment. Control and Consultation / 193 3. Seeck, Regesten, 57. The reports were prepared by the officium of the governor, not by the governor himself. Constantine again exploits the potential for antagonism between an official and his permanent staff, his officium, that appears in CTh. 10.8.2. Constantine assumes...