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Page 3 of 4 As was said earlier, one of the ideas behind the division of the provinces appears to have been the desire to lessen the chances of a successful rebellion. It may therefore be a sign of the Roman's recognition of the weaknesses of the system that after its creation it was deemed necessary to create mobile field armies separate from those of the emperor in various regions of the empire. The irony in this situation is that a close look at the troops listed under the command of the named officials show that most of the Magistri Militum now theoretically commanded forces in excess of those previously commanded by old-style provincial governors. The result of this dichotomy appears to have been that emperors did not always fill these posts, instead leaving them vacant to be filled when needed. An example of this may be seen in Aurelius Victor, where the Emperor is vilified for; "....his inadequate attention in approving provincial governors and military commanders and at the same time....by his neglect of all the best sort of men.... nothing is more frightful than the majority of his subordinates." (Aurelius Victor, 42). Note that the end of this passage can also be used to support the argument that inefficiency and corruption were present throughout the administration.
The vacancies thus left open and the earlier example of the Comes of both Germanies being unable to give orders to his inferior suggests that the stratified hierarchy seen by modern scholars as a reflection of present-day 'red-tape' bureaucracies is not necessarily applicable in the Roman period. This impression is reinforced by the experience of Julian, as described in two incidents by Ammianus:
"Finally, contrary to precedent, Caesar [Julian] by entreaty had obtained this favour from the prefect, that he should be entrusted with the administration of the province of Second Belgium." (Amm. Marc. xvii, 3.6)
And
"So when he … [Florentius, Praetorian Prefect of Gaul under Julian] … received Julian's letter, urging and begging him to hasten and come and aid his country by his counsels, he most emphatically refused." (Amm. Marc. xx, 4.8)
The first of these depicts a situation in which the Caesar Julian, far from being the superior of the prefects of the Dioceses, has to request that he be entrusted the province of Second Belgium. The second clearly depicts the Prefect refusing to respond to Julian's summons.
Although Ammianus depicts the second episode as part of the conspiracy to destroy Julian, it is possible to see both as a reflection of the non-stratification of the system: the Prefect is actually only responsible to the emperor that appointed him, not to any of the emperor's inferiors.
Consequently, the impression that can be gained from a reading of the sources is that the increased administration had the net result of making interactive support between officials difficult, especially when, as shown previously, an official could not be assured of the support of a theoretical inferior, or when the post that was in theory supposed to deal with particular problems was vacant due to the political fears of the emperor.
That the potential existed for the west to resist the Germanic attacks is undoubted. When Julian was sent to retrieve the situation in Gaul he was given a few troops by the emperor and told to use the ones already in situ to restore Gallic fortunes: "He … [Constantius] ... detailed … [to Julian] … three hundred of his most unreliable infantry to act as his escort: [Julian] … would, he said, find his army in those already stationed there, that is, in men who had long been schooled in defeat and whose job had long been to stand siege." (Lib. Or. xviii.37). Despite Ammianus' protests that this was a further item in Constantius' attempt to either kill or discredit Julian, the fact that Julian was able to clear the entire region of Germanic invaders and defeat the Alamanni at the battle of Strasburg (where, according to Ammianus, he was outnumbered by nearly three to one) indicates that it was not the poor quality of the troops that was allowing the situation to deteriorate.
Therefore another explanation is necessary, and I believe that the proposed hypothesis is the most likely candidate. The fact that Julian later rebelled is evidence that an emperor's fears concerning the appointing of powerful generals with large field-armies, as mentioned above, is justified. But the failure of emperors to act and take control of the situation in Gaul and the Western Provinces is likely to be one of the main reasons for the ability of others, such as Magnus Maximus and Constantine III, to mount their own bids for imperial power: frustration at imperial lethargy may have induced coalitions of officials to appoint one from amongst themselves to take control.
These 'secessions' from the empire required action on the part of the official emperor and in the ensuing civil wars Roman weakness was exacerbated by both the loss of troops and the confusion of loyalties inherent in such conflicts.
It is interesting to note that Procopius describes an imperial military bureacracy that mirrors the one being proposed in his descriptions of the Wars fought during the reign of Justinian (527-565). Although modern historians accept that Belisarius stands out from his contemporaries thanks to his loyalty and trustworthiness, they have yet to accept that conditions may have been similar much earlier in the Empire.
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