Once the emperor had left the city, the day to day
administration was left to the Urban Prefect (praefectus urbis), an official who might claim the position more on
his honour than on proven ability. Someone clearly thought that having writers
like Quintus Symmachus (384-5), Sextus Aurelius Victor (389), Rutilius
Namantianus (414) and Sidonius Apollinaris (468-9) do the job was a good idea,
although Symmachus was involved in the controversial decision to remove the
altar of victory; as a pagan, he was against it.
The Urban Prefect seems to have been subject to the
Praetorian Prefect of Italy, who was in effect Prime Minister of the core of
the Roman Empire. All Urban Prefects seem to have taken the honorific praenomen ‘Flavius’. There was no fixed
term of office as there was for many such posts, such as Consul, which always
ran from 1 January. We have many instances of new Urban Prefects taking on the
role part way through a year, with others even returning to office for a short
time as a sort of suffect prefect. Two
Urban Prefects also held the Praetorian Prefecture of Italy at the same time;
as these two (Ulpius Limenius [AD347-9) and Hermogenes [AD349-51] followed one
another, this may reflect the complex politics of the reigns of Constantius II
and Magnentius, to ensure that Italy and Rome spoke with the same voice.
To take an example: Afranius Syagrius, a gallo-roman noble
from Lyon. He was a notarius in
AD369, but was sacked by Valentinian for incompetence; however he was brought
back into favour under Gratian due to his friendship with Ausonius and made magister memoriae, then proconsul of
Africa. In AD380 he became Pretorian Prefect of Italy, and simultaneously Urban
Prefect and finally Consul for AD382. He was certainly collecting the full set
of honours. We can’t trace him after that, and is is feasible that he was
caught up in the rebellion of Magnus Maximus and killed. He may have been an
ancestor of the Roman commander of the enclave of Soissons after the collapse
of Gaul in the late fifth century. There is nothing to suggest that Afranius
Syagrius was a Christian.
A certain Tanaucius Isfalangius held the role soon after and
for two or three years (373-5). He certainly doesn’t sound very much like a
standard Roman. Our only record of his is in re-erecting a status, of what we
don’t know. He might even have been an Arab or other near-easterner, or maybe
he was an Isaurian, like Tarasicodissa, later the Emperor Zeno.
The role of Urban Prefect was held by Christians in the fourth
century, notably by Junius Bassus, who held the Prefecture for a few months in
AD359. He clearly was Christian as his sarcophagus (see below), carved
elaborately with Christian iconography (including a beardless Christ) can be
seen to this day in the Vatican Museum. It’s extremely likely that Christians
dominated the role after a while; Boethius held the position in AD486 just
before he was made consul, something which is attested earlier, suggesting
successfully holding the urban prefecture was a step towards the consulate.
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| Christian Sarcophagus of the Urban Prefect Bassus, 4th Century AD (Vatican Museum) |
We do know something about Memmius Vetrasius Orfitius, who served two terms (December 353 to July 355 and January 357 to March 359, replaced by Bassus). Ammianus Marcellinus says of him:
Meanwhile
Orfitus was governing the eternal city with the rank of Prefect, and with an
arrogance beyond the limit of the power that had been conferred upon him. He
was a man of wisdom, it is true, and highly skilled in legal practice, but less
equipped with the adornment of the liberal arts than became a man of noble
rank. During his term of office serious riots broke out because of the scarcity
of wine; for the people, eager for an unrestrained use of this commodity, are roused
to frequent and violent disturbances. (Ammianus XIV, 6.1). The Urban Prefect
was in charge of Rome’s wine tax, according to the Notitia Dignitatum (see below), so there may have been a black
market going on.
No urban prefect ever became emperor, but Priscus Attalus,
the puppet who Alaric ‘made’ emperor at odd times when he felt like it, had
been Urban Prefect in AD409.
The most powerful holder of the Urban Prefect role was
however Gordianus Gregorius (born AD540), who became Urban Prefect in 573, then
entered the Church and rose rapidly through being part of the papal delegation
to the emperor in Constantinople to become Pope Gregory ‘the Great’ in AD590,
dying in 604.
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| Tomb of Gregory the Great |
We do know quite a bit about the tenure of Sidonius as Urban
Prefect (AD468-9), because he refers to it in letters and poems. He came to the
new emperor Procopius Anthemius and composed a panegyric to him on his
consulate (he had previously praised Avitus and Majorian); the emperor made him
a patrician, a senator, caput senati
and praefectus urbis. Quite a haul
for one smarmy poem (I’ve read it). Sidonius was able to use his close contacts
with the emperor to get him to commute the death penalty for treason of
Arvandus, pretorian prefect of Gaul, a position held by Sidonius’ grandfather
and father, as well as his father-in-law Avitus. Arvandus had allied himself
with Euric, the Visigothic leader, against Rome. That caused Sidonius to resign
the prefecture rather than be sucked into its complex politics.
The Urban Prefect seems to have had the Roman police force (cohortes urbis) under his command, and
as there were only three cities in the empire with police forces – Rome,
Carthage and Lyon – this must have been a considerable responsibility; given
the short tenure of the prefects, and their erratic terms of office, the police
would have had to have been professionally led. So would the vigiles, who were a mix of nightwatchmen
and fire brigade.
The Notitia Dignitatum
lists the following as being under the Urban Prefect:
The prefect of the grain supply,
The prefect of the watch,
The count of the aqueducts,
The count of the banks and bed of the Tiber, and of the
sewers,
The count of the port,
The master of the census,
The collector of the wine-tax,
The tribune of the swine-market,
The consular of the water-supply,
The curator of the chief works,
The curator of public works,
The curator of statues,
The curator of the Galban granaries,
The centenarian of the port,
The tribune of art works
The staff of the illustrious prefect of the city:
A chief of staff,
A chief deputy,
A chief assistant,
A custodian,
A keeper of the records,
Receivers of taxes,
A chief clerk (or receiver),
Assistants,
A curator of correspondence,
A registrar,
Secretaries,
Aids,
Clerks of the census,
Ushers,
Notaries
Obviously it’s hard to work out exactly what the gradations
of rank and thus authority are, or what the boundaries of given domains may be.
Some titles may have been traditional or set in a law otherwise half-forgotten.
What the difference is between the Prefect of the Grain Supply and the curator
of the Galban Granaries, I have no idea, since the horrea Galbana were brought into public ownership by Nero as
revenge against Galba’s uprising (Rickman, G.E. (1971) Roman Granaries and Store Buildings, Cambridge: CUP). Possibly the
grain in them was different (barley, not wheat, for instance), or had different
owners; some grain was paid in tax, and some belonged to the Emperor and could
be stored separately and accounted for in a different way, being used for
imperial largesse, the grain dole (annona)
being an obvious candidate.
Grain was not the only resource based there. An inscription
refers to Aurelia Nais, pisciatrix (fishmonger) at the Galban Warehouse (CIL
6.9801), while another refers to C. Tullius Crescens, marble merchant at the
same place (CIL 6.33886). Aurelia may have been an African, since that was a
frequent name there while Crescens may have been descended from a freedman of
Cicero (M. Tullius Cicero). These do not seem to be high-ranking operatives.
However, the Notitia
clearly indicates that the Urban Prefect was (technically) responsible for all
matters to do with foodstuffs, the river and port, and the beautification of
the city. This brings us to the fourteen districts of Rome and the minor
officials who ran them.
Each of the fourteen districts (vici) of Rome had a council of sorts, comprising 48 ‘district
masters’ (vicomagistri) in each. It’s
not clear exactly what a vicomagister
did or how he was selected. It’s easy to see each district as a bit like a
Parisian arrondisment with a council and a mayor, elected from notable citizens
of the district and with a clear level of local authority within its bounds,
perhaps with a sense of civic pride and responsibility. It would be easy, of
course, but we have no idea if it resembles the truth.
The fact that each of the fourteen districts had the same
number of vicomagistri irrespective
of size, population and what lay within its vicus
tended to make me think the role was set out with no actual authority. If we
make a comparison with the decuriones
found in provincial cities across the empire, these were not positions which
people sought, but to which they were assigned by virtue of their wealth and
local status.
The provincial decurion was the sort of man who would have
been a chieftain in earlier times, largely from inherited status. He was
obliged to be on the local curia and
if he did not, he could be compelled to attend. Exemption could be made for
great age, current military service away from the area and such things, but the
tax assessment made by the staff of the provincial governor had to be met by
the decurions collectively, and they in turn were loaned the money by the publicanus in order to meet their
obligation, and he in turn was given his head to extort the sum plus his staff
wages and profit margin from the citizens. Decurions had the idea of joining
the Church in the late empire, so they are particularly forbidden to take holy
orders as a means to avoid their decurial obligations.
So were the vicomagistri
in that situation? Nicholas Purcell in the Oxford
Classical Dictionary gives their responsibilities as largely reactive,
meeting at a crossroads (compitum),
running local rites to lares and
presumingly praising the emperor and running games (ludi compitalicii) in honour of the lares at set times. There is a frieze showing people carrying a lar in their hand found of a base of
altar and now in the Lateran Museum. Here's view of that.
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| Vicomagistri carrying lares in procession |
Purcell considers them to have constituted a local council,
able to own property, run the vigiles
in their district (mentioned in Cassius Dio) and so on; as there were seven
cohorts of fire fighters with 500 men assigned to each, each cohort covered two
districts, at least in theory (somehow the district with the imperial palace
and great houses probably had at least one cohort of its own, while poorer
neighbourhoods had to share one) . They
seems to have some authority over staff through supervisors (hepimeloton in Dio).
We have some indication as to when they took office (1
August) but none as to how they were picked, under what obligation they
operated or how long they lasted. In their processions they were appointed two
lictors. The Description of Rome in the Chronicle of AD354 refers to them at
full strength, but the Christian terror implemented by Valentianian and Valens
will have removed the pagan vestiges; indeed Theodosius in AD394 banned
everyone but Christians from holding any public office.
Between the upper level of the praefectus urbis and the lower level vicomagistri seems to have been a selection of aediles, tribunes
and praetors, their names drawn from the republican cursus honorum, but their functions quite mundane; Vespasian had
been a district aedile and was accused by Gaius of failing to keep the streets
clean (Suetonius Vespasian 5.3). Some
firefighters were slaves of the local aedile, supervised on his behalf by the vicomagistri.
The Urban Prefect’s role predated the empire and outlived
it, continuing under the kings and last mentioned in AD879 under later
Carolingian rule; the pope may have taken on the civic responsibilities at some
point. We know Alfred the Great visited Rome twice as a child with his father;
the Urban Prefect was still going strong then.
There does not seem to have been much work done with regard
to the Praetorian Prefects or vicarii
in the Prefecture of Italy. Then there are ‘castellans’ an innovation of the
later fourth century; a ‘castellan of the sacred palaces’ for the eastern and
western provinces. That will be for a
later posting, I suspect.
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