[Footnote 120: To illustrate the Eleventh Book of the Variae, Letters
18 to 35.]


[Sidenote: Military character of the Roman Civil Service.]

The official staff that served under the Roman governors of high rank
was an elaborately organised body, with a carefully arranged system of
promotion, and liberal superannuation allowances for those of its
members who had attained a certain position in the office.

Although, in consequence of the changes introduced by Diocletian and
Constantine, the civil and military functions had been for the most
part divided from one another, and it was now unusual to see the same
magistrate riding at the head of armies and hearing causes in the
Praetorium, in theory the officers of the Courts of Justice were still
military officers. Their service was spoken of as a _militia_; the
type of their office was the _cingulum_, or military belt; and one of
the leading officers of the court, as we shall see, was styled
_Cornicularius_, or trumpeter.

The Praetorian Praefect, whose office had been at first a purely
military one, had now for centuries been chiefly concerned in civil
administration, and as Judge over the highest court of appeal in the
Empire. His _Officium_ (or staff of subordinates) was, at any rate in
the Fifth Century, still the most complete and highly developed that
served under any great functionary; and probably the career which it
offered to its members was more brilliant than any that they could
look for elsewhere. Accordingly, in studying the composition of this
body we shall familiarise ourselves with the type to which all the