Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire
Passions and pedantry of John, a high-ranking Roman bureaucrat..
The Source:
Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire, Harvard University Press 2004
Prologue: First Thoughts
… The first part of this book looks at the workings of later Roman bureaucracy through the eyes of one man. A series of fortunate accidents has ensured the preservation in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris of the one surviving early medieval manuscript which contains a copy of a treatise written by John Lydus, a high-ranking official serving in an important central government department in Constantinople in the sixth century. On the Magistracies of the Roman State is the only surviving description of the operation and functioning of central government in late antiquity written by someone who was actually on the inside. Behind an impressive façade of formal descriptions of the imperial administration (its duties, competence, and responsibilities), John’s reminiscences provide a real and present sense of a complex system in motion. He allows a close appreciation of the combinations and possibilities which shaped officials’ work practices, dominated their often bitter departmental rivalries, and affected their chances of appointment and promotion. He exposes the competing ambitions, interests, career strategies, and moral judgments which both structured and bounded this narrow bureaucratic world.
This delineation of the institutional contours of later Roman administration is framed by John’s own experiences and his unashamedly personal concerns. Alongside his detailed account of the intricate workings of government in the imperial capital he incorporated a memoir of his own (ultimately disappointing) career. Here John confessed frankly to his thwarted ambitions. He roundly and often obscenely abused those superiors and colleagues whom he held responsible for impeding his progress. These various conflicts, successes, and failures are explored … Together they provide modern readers with a precious and intimate insight into the ancient world. On the Magistracies is a valuable text. In short, it offers us our best chance to understand later Roman bureaucracy from the point of view of a bureaucrat. …
Bureaucrats like John Lydus might strongly advocate the merits of a tightly organized administration with carefully defined duties and clear-cut lines of control. At the same time they deployed a number of often-overlapping tactics (such as the payment of money, the exercise of influence, or the claims of merit or seniority) to further themselves and their colleagues. Those seeking access to government services or to the courts likewise moved to their best advantage. Long-hallowed methods of promoting self-interest continued to be used in combination—sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes skillfully—with a range of other tactics (such as the payment of money or the purchase of office) which might seem to hold out a greater promise of success in a more centralized and bureaucratic empire. In particular circumstances, too, the available options might be circumscribed by the individual interests of officials, by the resilience of traditional ways of organizing power and influence, and by the ability of those deploying such methods either to accommodate or to counteract alternative and potentially challenging ways of achieving the same ends.
For many, the later Roman Empire remained an unstable world. Few emperors ever achieved a lasting or satisfactory resolution of the tensions between themselves and their administration. Few bureaucrats (as John Lydus’ autobiography amply illustrates) were able to locate or maintain the fine balance necessary for the undisturbed and profitable holding of power they desired. Few of those wishing to use the judicial or administrative services provided by Roman government negotiated their way across this same difficult ground with ease or confidence. Such concerns again underscore some of the problems surrounding the expansion and imposition of a centralized bureaucracy, and its engagement with traditional priorities and expectations, both at the imperial court and in the provinces. Indeed, ambiguity and uncertainty—tightly encircling all those involved—often reflect more closely the conflicting pressures which characterized this new pattern of power.
John Lydus: A Man and His Book
… In April 552, after forty years and four months of service, he finally retired, having been promoted to the post of cornicularius, the highest-ranking office on the judicial side. At a formal ceremony, John was publicly praised in front of his colleagues by the then prefect, Hephaestus, as “the most learned, for he delights more in this title than in the recognition he has achieved as a result of the honours which have been conferred upon him”. …
… … As a retiring cornicularius (the highest-ranking post on the judicial side), John was granted the honorary title of tribunus et notarius and was made a comes primi ordinis with the rank of spectabilis. These were coveted honors and carried with them advantageous rights, privileges, and immunities. John’s new status was conferred by the emperor in person. Having “adored the purple” (kissed the hem of the imperial robe), he received his codicilli, a document case consisting of two hinged plaques, each about 30 centimeters long. Those presented to the highest-ranking officials in the empire were of ivory trimmed with gold. For lesser honors—like John’s—they were probably made of bronze, wood, or parchment. Their outer face displayed a portrait bust of the emperor; inside, over the imperial signature, were the necessary documents of appointment.
The ceremony at which the codicilli were presented was memorably magnificent. …
… … For the uninitiated, later Roman officialdom must often have seemed like a foreign country with inexplicable customs and an incomprehensible language. Only a highly educated expert could hope, and then only after many years’ experience, to have sufficient knowledge of the correct forms, styles, and procedures necessary for the successful conduct of administrative affairs. John had little sympathy for those who failed to grasp the technical details. He complained patronizingly that some people could not even master basic bureaucratic vocabulary. …
… Many of his statements still remain as confusing and as contradictory as they must have seemed to contemporaries not themselves bureaucrats. John’s technical language, like the formal grandeur of imperial ceremonies, consciously and deliberately excluded outsiders. In his description of the procedure followed in the prefect’s court, he used in one short passage, without any explanation, six different terms to describe the process of recording a judgment. …
… Technical language, distinctive military-style uniforms, correct procedures, and carefully regulated hierarchies all helped to separate the formal, highly structured world of officialdom from the less formal, private world of “ordinary people”. Like the imperial images on the Missorium of Theodosius, in Luxor, and in Ravenna, later Roman bureaucrats must have appeared to many as distant and powerful figures. That was an impression John and his colleagues would have been pleased to convey. For them, formality, impenetrability, and obscurity were important protective strategies. At court (near an emperor) and in the provinces (near a governor), those outsiders jealous of the influence wielded by officials could not so easily exploit or colonize an organization with its own intricate rules and complex work practices. In many cases it was often quicker and more effective to enlist the cooperation of bureaucrats than to attempt to bypass or oppose them.
Similarly, many ordinary people faced with a set of rules and procedures which they could never hope to understand (and which they always feared could be suddenly turned against them) were forced to reach an accommodation with officials offering to perform administrative services. As John repeatedly made clear, the government of empire was not the proper concern of a private citizen. To be well executed, it required an expensive education, long experience, and above all a specialized knowledge of the relevant administrative arcana. Only an expert would know a department’s “registers, titles, and duties” and the “practices, forms, and terms” to be used in drafting any necessary documentation. And in John’s view, only bureaucrats could offer such a service.
The formal trappings of officialdom (on splendid display at the ceremony marking the retirement of bureaucrats in the eastern Praetorian Prefecture) were also important in promoting a strong and highly valued sense of corporate identity. For John, a feeling of belonging to a recognizably separate organization was doubly significant. It was another factor which marked out officials as different from the rest of the world. Importantly too, in a predatory administrative environment, it also helped to define boundaries between groups of officials. Faced with the need to defend their own area of responsibility against the expansionary claims of rival departments, officials with similar interests banded together for protection and mutual support. They formed close-knit, self-interested cliques. Similarities among members of a particular department were emphasized, differences between rivals exaggerated.
Something of this pattern was reflected in the less formal terms for bureaucrats sometimes used in imperial legislation: praefectiani (the staff of the praetorian prefect); magistriani (the staff of the magister officiorum, the head of the palatine bureaucracy); urbaniciani (the staff of the urban prefect of Rome, the high-ranking imperial official in charge of the administration of the city). It was also evident in John’s repetitive insistence on the greatness of the Prefecture and the inherent inferiority of other, more recently established departments. As John continually reminded his readers, the Prefecture’s antiquity was a self-evident guarantee of its excellence. Against his careful exposition of “the perfections of former times”, the inadequacies of newer magistracies were clearly exposed. John claimed (seemingly without irony) that those who served under the magister officiorum were unable to escape from their own “arrogant-bundling-together-of-wordiness”. …
… as John’s autobiography set out to show, only the Praetorian Prefecture, which “from the beginning was subordinate to the scepter alone”, could justify its claims to superiority. In John’s view, only its officials could be indisputably considered “the greatest staff of the foremost of the magistracies”.
Those on the inside also knew that these differences could be made to cut across departments. Within the eastern Praetorian Prefecture, John himself rarely missed an opportunity to illustrate the divisions he believed lay between the skilled and highly educated officials who had once competed to join the Prefecture, and the raw recruits …
… What to an outsider might look like a uniform procession of officials, might also display finer divisions and more subtle internal tensions visible only to the highly trained expert. In John’s version, the same factors which distinguished bureaucrats from ordinary people also sharply divided experienced, established officials from new, unqualified recruits …
… Greater experience and superior expertise were a twofold shield which separated the judicial staff of the Prefecture both from the world outside and from others serving in the imperial administration. It helped to defend them against rivals, most of whom (at least ideally) lacked the necessary skills to pose any serious threat. The difficulty of effectively reallocating specialist or highly technical tasks might also reduce the risks of any loss of responsibility as a result of administrative reform. It was clearly in a well-run department’s best interests that it both preserve the need for its own expertise and emphasize the importance of its own internal working practices.
John would no doubt have strongly approved of the ruling handed down in 368 by the emperors Valentinian I and Valens which reprimanded a provincial governor for allowing his officials to use litterae caelestes (literally “heavenly writing”) in the documents prepared for onward transmission to the court. The governor was reminded that this form of script was the exclusive preserve of bureaucrats in the sacra scrinia (the palatine secretariats most closely associated with the emperor). Palace officials’ mastery of a particular style of handwriting helped guard against forgeries. It marked out these documents as unmistakably imperial. In John’s opinion, too, complexity in administration was also an important guarantor of justice. It was a matter of pride that each case which came before the prefect’s tribunal was summarized twice. One abstract was the responsibility of the high-ranking official known as the secretarius, the other (the personalium) of the most experienced adiutor (principal assistant) attached to the ab actis, the senior official on the judicial side in charge of civil cases and court records. Nor was the compilation of two separate summaries—both in Latin—to be seen as overly bureaucratic or needlessly inefficient. Rather, in John’s view, this duplication was an important precaution against fraud, forgery, or loss. “And I myself well remember such an occurrence. For although a hearing had been held, the transactions relevant to the case were nowhere to be found. But when the personalium, as it is known, had been brought before the magistracy, the case was completely restored”. As John repeatedly insisted, the intricate formalities surrounding hearings in the prefect’s court operated to the advantage of those seeking justice. Faced with the judicial staff’s impressive qualifications, their long experience, and their detailed knowledge of correct procedure, litigants could (at least in John’s version) only “marvel at the court of justice for its precision”, even if on some occasions they must have had little idea of what was going on. …
… John was both angered and perplexed by the decision of Cyrus of Panopolis (in office from December 439 to August 441 under Theodosius II) to issue his legal judgments and decrees in Greek rather than Latin. This was a significant change. Of course, Greek had been a fundamental part of Roman government in the eastern Mediterranean since the Republic. It was the language of court hearings, of many standard legal documents (petitions, contracts, bills of sale), and of much official paperwork (reports, tax lists, and land registers), particularly at provincial level. But Latin also had a technical and professional importance. The 2,500 pieces of legislation gathered together in the Theodosian Code (a consolidated collection of imperial edicts issued two years before Cyrus was appointed prefect) were all in Latin. Without it, full mastery of the law was impossible.
Cyrus’ decision was part of a series of countermeasures aimed at breaking down that linguistic barrier. In 397 the emperors Arcadius and Honorius had allowed provincial governors to issue their judgments in Greek. In September 439, Theodosius II confirmed the validity of wills written by Roman citizens in Greek. By the turn of the fourth century, Latin was no longer the language of instruction at the empire’s most prestigious law schools in Constantinople and Berytus (modern Beirut). Legal textbooks and commentaries were written in Greek. From the mid-530s on, most of Justinian’s legislation (unless specifically directed at the Latin-speaking West) was promulgated in Greek. His law of 535 ratifying the mid-fifth-century emperor Leo’s regulations on the alienation of property by religious foundations set out the advantages of this change simply and clearly. “We decree that this law [of Leo] shall be valid in all these matters, and we confirm it. And for this reason we have promulgated and caused it to be written not in the language of our ancestors but in everyday speech, that is, in Greek, so that through ease of understanding it might become known to all.”
Imperial praise for administrative transparency, however worthy, was not echoed by John. Those on the judicial side of the eastern Praetorian Prefecture strongly objected to the gradual replacement of Latin as the specialist language of government. They took great pride in their hard-won linguistic competence. They valued those tasks which only a limited number of officials with the appropriate language skills could perform. Nor, on this view, were time-honored practices to be violated without serious consequences. Inevitably the Prefecture suffered first. John explicitly linked Cyrus’ reform with the loss of a wide range of administrative responsibilities. …
… Once, according to John, those on the staff of the Prefecture “were eager to excel in the language of the Romans, for it was indispensably useful to them”. But now Latin was no longer a prerequisite for those seeking appointment or promotion. Among his many complaints, John cited the treatment of the diocese of Thrace as a model example of the danger faced by any department whose exclusive claim to certain tasks was based on its staff’s expertise. In this administrative district (the diocese covering, until reforms in 536, six provinces to the west of the Black Sea, an area now occupied by Romania, Albania, and European Turkey) Greek replaced Latin as the official language of government. “The Cappadocian changed it into a haggish and base idiom, not because he cared for clarity (as he alleged) but so that it might be convenient and colloquial and cause no difficulty to those who, in accord with his aim, dared to complete what certainly did not concern them. For he transacted business, wrote, innovated, and in every way undermined the ancient ways”.
Given these baleful consequences, the claims made by John the Cappadocian, echoing those in Justinian’s legislation, that the introduction of Greek and the simplification of procedures would result in greater transparency and increased efficiency were, in John’s view, patently false. In his opinion, the Cappadocian’s justifications for this reform were shallow excuses for promoting his own ill-educated men; unconvincing arguments advanced to lend a moral gloss to a bare-faced and well-judged attack on administrative tasks properly undertaken only by fully qualified officials. In the face of such threatening innovations, it was vitally important that the advantage secured through the expertise of a department’s staff be maintained. As John repeatedly moralized, effective government could be guaranteed only by well-educated officials highly proficient in the difficult and complex business of administration. On this point John was uncompromisingly clear. Like many modern lawyers or accountants, many later Roman bureaucrats were strongly committed to the perpetuation of a system in which their hard-won mastery of specific technical skills helped both to protect their position and to secure their income. For experts, specialization was a strategic advantage not lightly to be surrendered.
Building Societies
Among later Roman bureaucrats, a common educational background, a shared technical expertise, and the formal trappings of a uniformed officialdom all helped to promote a sense of unity and identity. Some degree of solidarity was fundamental to the successful operation of any department or group of officials. Only by working together could an advantageous allocation of administrative tasks be most effectively defended against rival groups eager to expand the areas over which they had control. No doubt it mattered, too, that losses in responsibility were also shared. This emphasis on mutuality was an important factor in regulating the relationship among bureaucrats. Individuals had always to weigh their own ambitions or the chances of immediate personal gain against the pressure to act in conformity with the perceived best interests of their colleagues. These choices must often have been relatively unproblematic. Many bureaucrats valued highly both the reciprocal benefits and the feeling of security which collegiality offered. Many also supported their fellow officials out of a deeply felt sense of duty and loyalty.
Mutuality was a virtue to be paraded. John continually stressed the importance of a sense of solidarity among his fellow exceptores. It colored his memories of his first years in the Prefecture and his account of its decline. John was proud of his colleagues’ successes and affected to have shared equally in the worst of their misfortunes. In his later years, he claimed greatly to miss that feeling of camaraderie. …
… in John’s view, no right-thinking group of bureaucrats would ever have let internal discord impair its collective chances of advancement. Bureaucrats, despite their evident scholarly erudition, had no such overriding commitment to individuality. Their horizons were differently bounded. In attempting to ensure a successful career and a secure retirement, any group of officials was principally concerned to reconcile the sometimes conflicting claims of personal advantage and corporate benefit. The maintenance of such a difficult series of tradeoffs resulted in a set of complex regulations and work practices. In part, that delicate negotiation rested on the knowledge that in a harsh competitive environment mutual support and cooperation were the best defenses against administrative rivals. In part (in addition to the various technical and formal factors promoting solidarity), it was also dependent on the balancing of a set of organizational, financial, and personal relationships. The collective interest of a group of officials had continually to be weighed against the pressing claims of ambitious, talented, or well-connected individuals. Under such circumstances, the virtues of mutuality were not only to be paraded; they were also to be enforced.
In the eastern Praetorian Prefecture, the flow of rewards was carefully channeled. At the department’s most senior level, the strict annual promotion and retirement of those holding high-ranking positions ensured a steady and predictable turnover of personnel. For exceptores (the “entry-level” grade on the judicial side) the opportunities to secure a well-paid position within the department were also strictly regulated. An exceptor was eligible to be selected as an adiutor (principal assistant to one of the department’s senior officers) only after nine years in post. The appointment was for one year. Nor, it seems, could an exceptor serve as an adiutor in consecutive years. On the much more simply organized financial side of the Prefecture, a scriniarius (the basic grade, roughly equivalent to exceptor) might serve as a chartularius (a chief administrative officer attached to an adiutor) no more than four times, with a year’s interval between appointments; or as an adiutor no more than four times, with a two-year interval. Here, too, the rules seem to have been designed to prevent any one member of staff occupying a particularly remunerative post for too long. Among colleagues, opportunities for gain were to be more widely distributed.
The restriction of access to a range of well-paid posts was also a recurrent concern of many of the surviving imperial laws dealing with the appointment and promotion of bureaucrats and the internal organization of their departments. The overwhelming majority of these laws, spanning the period from the emperor Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century to Justinian in the middle of the sixth, are preserved in the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes. … In some cases, imperial legislation dealing with administrative issues may have been intended to do no more than reiterate or confirm long-established protocols. In other cases, one group in a department may have been protesting against an alleged unfair dominance of certain posts and seeking redress or reform. In yet other cases, the supporters or proposers of these laws (including the emperor himself or rivals in a competing department) may have had their own motives for seeking to change accepted practice. That said, setting aside the particular reasons prompting the drafting or promulgation of specific regulations, a number of laws included in the Codes seem broadly concerned to ensure that certain more remunerative positions not be monopolized—or at least, not for too long—by one set of officials within a particular group or department.
An important element in promoting that aim was the emphasis on a set of formal rules based on seniority and attention to duty (which in many cases meant little more than active service). The basic principle was laid down under Constantine in a law issued to the consularis aquarum (the official subordinate to the urban prefect in charge of the aqueducts in Rome) for the regulation of his staff: “The order of promotion is to be so observed that the senior-ranking official in a department is he who was first in obtaining his appointment from the emperor.” In 404 the magister officiorum (the head of the palatine bureaucracy) was instructed to oversee the promotion of agentes in rebus (a corps of imperial messengers and agents under his direct administrative control) so that “henceforth no one shall attempt to seize the place of a member of staff who has died, but as soon as the fates have carried that person off, that official who in the regular order of those receiving salaries and through the merit of his labors followed the deceased in the ranks of the department shall succeed and take possession of his predecessor’s emoluments, and all deceit shall cease.”
Similarly, in 424 Theodosius II instructed the urban prefect of Rome that in the case of a vacancy arising in his department following the death of a member of staff or for any other reason, “the harm arising from the customary exercise of influence shall be eliminated and that person, whose name comes next as verified by the personnel register, shall obtain the position.” The same concern for the orderly advancement of officials was also made clear in many of the laws which aimed to restrict the success or privileges of those seeking preferment by relying on the favorable recommendation of well-placed friends or connections, or by purchasing a position.
Other legislation displayed an equally strong interest in establishing a regular pattern of promotion by limiting the tenure of various posts. In 416 the magister officiorum was informed that the heads (proximi) of the sacra scrinia were to have their time in office reduced. “We decree that officials who by the regular order and merit of those receiving salaries in the three scrinia (the scrinium memoriae, epistularum, and libellorum) have reached the rank of proximus should henceforth serve for one year instead of two.” Provision was made for those in the sacra scrinia to retire with high honors after twenty years of service. The rate of advancement was also controlled by prescribing a maximum number of established officials in each department, or the number allowed to serve as adiutores assisting the highest-ranking officers, or the number to be promoted in any year. …
… The smooth operation of this system was not to be disrupted by those appointed or promoted through influence or the payment of money; nor was it to be disturbed by absentees, who were to be demoted; nor by the return of those who had once held a post, who were to be ranked again at the bottom of the staff; nor by the joint holding of posts in different departments, which (with some minor exceptions) was disallowed; nor by holding the same position twice, which was penalized by heavy fines; nor by transferring from one department to another in midcareer, which was prohibited; nor by those whose status or profession disbarred them from serving in the imperial bureaucracy.
Even more impressive than this scatter of legislation was the overview of later Roman administration contained in the surviving copy of the notitia dignitatum. The notitia omnium dignitatum et administrationum tam ciuilium quam militarium is, as its full title implies, “a list of all ranks and administrative positions both civil and military.” Its compilation and updating were among the responsibilities of the primicerius notariorum, the most senior of the notarii (a secretariat closely associated with the emperor which functioned independently of the magister officiorum). The copy of the notitia which survives provides a fairly comprehensive picture of the organization of the military and administrative establishments in the eastern half of the empire at the end of the fourth century, and somewhat later, and more haphazardly, for the west.
On the face of it, like many such checklists, the notitia dignitatum does not make for particularly interesting reading. But in its outline catalogue of civil positions it does convey a strong impression of the meticulous classification of administrative tasks and the careful grading of imperial officials. …
… Each entry in the notitia also contained a brief outline of the administrative personnel serving each department. The staff (officium) of the eastern praetorian prefect is shown divided into two main branches, the administrative and judicial, and the financial. The hierarchy of senior posts in the former, described in loving detail by John Lydus, is here given in its most abbreviated form: princeps officii, cornicularius, adiutor, commentariensis, ab actis, cura epistularum, and regendarius.
In some cases, these sketch-maps of individual departments were elaborated by long and complex imperial laws setting out in detail the positions and responsibilities of specific officials. A law of 384 (as modified by the sixth-century compilers of the Justinianic Code) set out the officium of the comes sacrarum largitionum. In this schedule, 443 personnel were divided into eighteen different groups and listed within each group in precise order of seniority. … [list omitted here]
… … the unremitting attention to often highly technical minutiae is particularly impressive. This detailed presentation of the staff serving under the comes sacrarum largitionum seems to leave no room for promotion other than by seniority (on occasions accelerated by the death of superiors); to assume that the allocation of tasks and rewards will remain fixed between the various groups; and to suppose that the number of staff will remain constant.
An equal administrative concern for order also characterized a decree issued by the emperor Anastasius in the early 490s and inscribed (with some local variations) on the walls of a number of forts along the Empire’s eastern frontier. These regulations set out the ranks, duties, and order of seniority of those serving on the civilian staff of a military commander (dux), as well as the stipends and fees they should expect to receive. The best-preserved version of the decree was cut on basalt blocks built into the side of the fortress at Qasr el-Hallabat, northeast of Amman, Jordan. Prescribing the structure of the department, the emperor ruled “that each member of the civilian staff of the military commanders [duciani], the financial side [scriniarii], and the administrative officers [officiales] shall serve according to their order in the personnel register, and no person, either now or hereafter, shall alter his rank except according to the established order of the register.”
There followed a… listing of posts evidently in strict rank order, beginning with the commander’s chief judicial adviser (assessor), followed by the head of his civilian staff (primiscrinius), and so on. In addition, the terms of office for those in various posts were fixed. The primiscrinius was to serve no more than five years; nor was any official permitted to move between departments.
These documents, with their carefully compiled schedules of salaries, posts, and personnel, present a splendid image of later Roman bureaucracy. They offer a striking blueprint of a tightly regimented officialdom, its impressive concern for hierarchy and position beautifully illustrated in meticulously detailed lists or, in some cases, more permanently displayed on an inscribed wall. Here are model administrative corps now (and hereafter) seemingly untroubled by the potentially disruptive demands of the ambitious or the talented. Like officials from the Praetorian Prefecture, proudly marching with their retiring colleagues through the Great Palace at Constantinople, or those flanking the emperors on the painted walls of the temple of Ammon in Luxor, these imperial edicts openly paraded a specific and highly formalized image of later Roman bureaucracy. Against the pressures exerted by individuals seeking to advance their careers or to take advantage of their influential connections, they clearly promoted the interests of a well-ordered administration as a whole.
We should perhaps think of John reading these laws, with their long and tedious schedules, or catalogues such as the notitia dignitatum, in the same way as he himself had encouraged his own readers to think about bureaucrats’ participation in grand and lengthy ceremonies. In their complexity and intricate formality, both could be seen as marking out the differences in organization, identity, and work practices between later Roman bureaucracy and the world outside. Together they presented a powerful and distinctive image of a coherent and well-regulated administrative system. Both, too, could be understood as strong assertions of the importance of corporate interest in securing the wider success of any group of officials. The fact that an individual’s ability or his connections continued to be factors in determining appointment or promotion did not mean that legislation stressing the formal aspects of the administration was either ignored or rendered ineffective, any more than it made the ceremonies surrounding John’s retirement meaningless shams. Rather, these repeated affirmations of the benefits of order and mutuality staked out a significant position in a continuing series of trade-offs. They isolated and underlined particular moments in a disputed balance between the competing claims of individual bureaucrats and the collective advantage of their colleagues. Enshrined in the legislation of empire, and sometimes displayed on its walls, the formal and detailed regulation of a department through the careful prescription of its personnel, posts, and administrative tasks—like the serried, ceremonial ranks of an official procession—forcefully emphasized a set of highly visible “fixed points” in a complex set of negotiations. ….
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