Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:24:15.667Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Roman Bureaucratese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Ramsay MacMullen
Ramsay MacMullen*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The theory and fact of the Roman emperor's position were strikingly at variance in the fourth century. ‘Quod principi placuit legis habuit vigorem’ may hav been the established doctrine, but when he spoke to his proconsuls, the emperor said rather, ‘You must order the proceedings [of civil suits] to be on luded on the third day, or at the latest on the fourth day, or at any rate on the fifth’; or, to the civil service, ‘Let the greedy hands of the officials now forbcar, let theln forbear, I say. The stutter and shrillness do not fit an autocrat, nor the repetitions; but repetitions are characteristic of the Codes. An entire decree might have to be re-enacted, in almost identical form, eight or ten time, evidently because no one had paid any attention to it. Against this merely ornamental legislation, against ‘the ruler who lays down a law and is reckoned unable to enforce it,’ Libanius might protest, yet, three times imperatively summoned to the capital, he simply remained in Antioch. A contenlporary, Valerianus v. c., flouted one decree after another, one judicial decision after another, and flouted, too, the authority of the praetorian prefect, the proconsul, the urban prefect, and the imperial secret police, one of whom he allegedly killed with his own hands. Between the emperor and his subjects, and between his theoretical omnipotence and his actual powers, the essential link was the bureaucracy. Plainly, it was not doing its job. It is the argument of this paper that part of the difficulty lay in the failure of all ranks of government to get through to each other.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 18 , 1962 , pp. 364 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 New York, Fordham University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The two passages are from Codex Theodosianus 1.12.1. and 1.16.7. Repetition in the latter may be less hysterical than rhetorical. Cf. 6.4.15, where Constantius speaks to the senate about a certain precedent which ‘ought, it ought, to have reminded others also …’ of the duties of their rank.Google Scholar

2 For example, palatine troops are exempt from all public burdens whatseoever, in Cod. Theod. 6.35.1 (A.D. 314); which is repeated in 6.35.2-6 and 8-11, over the years 315 to 381; and governors are told eight times not to initiate any new building till they have completed older projects, 15.1.3 (326), 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 29, and 37 (398). Tacitus is right: ‘in pessima republica plurimae leges.’Google Scholar

3 Orat. 47.37-8; P. Petit, Libanios et la vie municipale à Antioche … (Paris 1954) 68 η. 1.Google Scholar

4 J. Α. McGeachy, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (Chicago 1942) 85 on Relatio 31. Other particularly glaring examples of the impotence of the emperor are discussed in C. H. Coster, The Iudicium Quinquevirale (Cambridge, Mass. 1935) 6, and Β. H. Warmington on Count Romanus, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 49 (1956) 55ff.Google Scholar

5 On these guilds the best account is Α. Η. M. Jones', in J(ournal of) R(oman) S(tudies) 39 (1949) 41ff.; but there is valuable material also in W. G. Sinnigen, The Officium of the Urban Prefecture (Rome, 1957) llff., 64ff. They refer to the earlier works of E. Stein, J. P. Waltzing, and T. Mommsen. Two quite neglected authorities are worth mentioning: A. Marchi, in Archivio giuridico 76 (1906) 291ff., whose treatment of the sale of militiae is essential; and (if only as a curiosity) P. Louis-Lucas, Étude sur la vénalité des charges et fonctions publiques (Paris 1883), especially vol. I. Louis-Lucas is incredibly prolix (in I. 241-294 there are 60 lines of text and over 3000 of notes 1), but on some questions uniquely thorough. G. Kolias, Ämter- und Würdenkauf (Athens 1939), concerns himself mostly with a later period, but see pp. 20ff. On the corruption prevalent in the late Roman period, there is an embarrassment of material. In more modern works, see A. Alföldi, A Conflict of Ideas (Oxford 1952) ch. m, especially pp. 35-6; S. Le R. Wallace, Taxation in Egypt (Princeton 1938) 323; E. Stein, Histoire du bas-empire I (Bruges 1959) 50; R. Grosse, Römische Militärgeschichte (Berlin 1920) 247ff.; and J. Karayannopulos, Das Finanzwesen (Munich 1958) 13ff. The phrase quoted in the text, ‘cum suis commodis’ ‘with its perquisites’ (Dig. 31.1.49, Paul; cf. 32.102.2, Scaevola), suggests that posts in the bureaucracy were yielding a fair profit, and fetching a fair price on the market, as early as Severan times.Google Scholar

6 J. P. Waltzing, Corporations professionnelles (Louvain 1895–1900) I 54, speaking of the decuriae apparitorum and scribarum in Rome, with a history reaching back to the Republic, sometimes even calling themselves collegia. Whether the incorporated officia of the fourth century developed from these (largely Roman) guilds, or, with the militarization of the civil service, from the guilds of army officers permitted from Septimius Severus’ time, is not clear.Google Scholar

7 Cod. Theod. 8.9.2 (382) on the dividend and Lydus, De magistratibus 3.25, on the amounts due to the chiefs of staff. Army staffs were obliged to pay their chiefs a certain sum (derived historically from their superiors’ embezzlements) countenanced by law, or as least by custom: Mommsen in Ephemeris epigraphica 5 (1884) 642ff.; L. Casson, in Aegyptus 32 (1952) 58ff.; Publications of the Princeton Archaeological Expeditions to Syria III A 2 (Leydcn 1910) 29ff., esp. 35. Corporate organization in troop units is shown in the provision that the whole company of his commilitones should divide the unconsumed rations of a deceased comrade. See, e.g., Cod. Theod. 14.17.8 (380).Google Scholar

8 Cod. Theod. 11.30.8 (319) is an especially clear instance of a normal arrangement. If a iudex delays action on an appeal, the entire staff (universum officium) shall pay a fine. ‘For the office staff must urge Our decrees upon the iudex, and if he should ignore their recommendations, they must oppose him; and as though by forcible seizure they must lead him into court, deliver him to the office of the fiscal accounts, and obligate him with the bonds of the former statute, if they should perceive that he is violating Our sanctions.’ They must ‘admonish’ him (11.30.34 [364]), and pay a fine for connivance. See 11.30.29, 11.30.58, and 12.1.85.Google Scholar

9 Lactantius, De mort, persecut. 22; Cod. Theod. 14.1.1 (357/360), that no one shall rise in the decuriae who is not ‘so polished that words proceed from him without the offense of imperfections.’Google Scholar

10 Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Ant. Pius 11.1, Sev. Alex. 36.2-3, 67.2.Google Scholar

11 O. J. Zimmermann, The Late Latin Vocabulary of the Variae of Cassiodorus (Catholic University of America, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Language and Literature 15; Washington 1944) 107; on the custom of soliciting suffragia, G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, British Journal of Sociology 5 (1954) 33ff. (passim) and H. Pflaum, Les procurateurs équestres (Paris 1950) 195ff.; and on introitus similarly narrowed to mean ‘entrance fee,’ Marchi, Arch, giurid. 76. 318ff.Google Scholar

12 For stillatura, see Cod. Theod. 7.4.28.1 (406), ‘an emolument under the title of stilla- tura’, on which the recipients are trying to get a further ‘rake-off’ by juggling the commutation-rates of supplies in kind and in cash. For salgamum, ibid. 7.9.3 (393), demands made ‘salgami nomine.’ For sportulae, a common word with a long history, see e.g. Publicazioni délia Società Italiana per la ricerca dei papyri … 1026 (150); G. Behrens, in Mainzer Zeitschrift 35 (1940) 82; and Cod. Theod. 6.24.3 (364/5) — examples from papyri, inscriptions and laws, covering four centuries of the Empire. For munusculum, Cod. Theod. 11.11.1 (368/370/373), the affectionate diminutive, from munus, like lucellum from lucrum, 1.31.2 (368/370). For ξένια, 11.11.1 and Dig. 1.16.6.3. The word, like ‘bakshish,’ ‘lagniappe,’ ‘douceur,’ and ‘largesse’ in English, was adopted into Latin (xenia) probably because its foreign extraction served better to muffle its meaning. J. N. L. Myres, JRS 50 (1960) 25f., shows how, in the second half of the fourth century, gratia shifted from ‘favor’ to ‘favoritism,’ gratiosus from ‘gracious’ to ‘corrupt,’ and potentia and potentes from ‘powerful’ to ‘wickedly powerful, oppressive.’Google Scholar

13 Anon. De rebus bellicis 4.1 (ed. E. A. Thompson, A Roman Reformer… [Oxford 1952]): sollemnia lucra, developing into payments under the naine των καλουμένων συλεμνίων, in Justinian's day (Karayannopulos, Finanzwesen 16) — another example of the usefulness of a foreign word (see preceding note).Google Scholar

14 Ammianus Marcellinus 22.6.5 and Lydus, De mag. 3.27.Google Scholar

15 R. Cagnat, Inscriptions Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes 3.1119 (3rd c.); Cod. Theod. 8.5.21 (364), a ‘novum rapinarum aut fraudium genus’; ard 7.4.12 (364?). Tacitus mentions taxes ‘bearing names invented by the collectors’ (Ann. 13.51) but there is of course more evidence for a later period. See the petitioners complaining that ‘we do not know into what account [our payments] have gone’ (P[apyrus] Cair. Isidor. 73, A.D. 314) or against the collectors ονόματα έαντοϊς έξενρόντες; ‘making up titles for themselves’ of P. Oxy. 58 (288).Google Scholar

16 Cod. Theod. 14.1.1 and 6.26.1. On the extraordinary prestige enjoyed by rhetoricians and literati, see Coster, Iudicium 11 and Alföldi, Conflict 106ff., who both turn to China for a parallel ‘veneration for culture, and especially for literature.’ Alföldi's full and excellent treatment is marred only by an unwillingness to see earlier precedents for the condition. In the second century, or in the first, for that matter, while literature alone might not carry a man to the top, it was still often a vital companion to a career. See some examples in H. Bardon, La littérature inconnue II (Paris 1956) 179ff., 208, and 214; A. Calderini, I Severi (Bologna 1949) 6ff.; Cambridge Ancient History 10.610 (M. P. Charlesworth) and 828 (G. H. Stevenson); Frontinus, the Plinies, Silius Italicus, Appian, Tacitus, and some of the men whom the last mentions (Hist. 1.8), and A. Claudius Charax (C. Habicht, in Istanbuler Mitteilungen 9-10 [1959–60] 110f.). Three decisive passages show advancement specifically on the basis of scholarly pretentions: Dio 72.22.2, 72.35.2, and Scr. Hist. Aug., Hadr. 3.11.Google Scholar

17 Alföldi, loc. cit., gathers much evidence. A very incomplete list of such figures would draw on Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 7.32.2-3; Amm. Marcel. 17.5.15, 22.1.2, 27.9.6, 28.1.45; Zo- simus 4.41.3; Eunapius, Vitae soph. 465, 490; Ausonius, Praefatiunculae 35ff., Domestica 4Iff., Parentalia 14.9ff., Epist. 12, Commemoratio professorum 1.9ff., 15.18, 17.12ff.; Gra- tiarum actio 4, 7, and 9; Bardon, Litt, inconnue II 290, 299; McGeachy, Symmachus 159ff.; H. Bloch, Harvard Theological Review 38 (1945) 206; L. Robert, Hellenica 4 (1948) 24ff.; A. Steinwenter, Zeitschrift (der Savigny-Stiftung) für Rechtsgeschichte, Rom. Abt. 65 (1947) 114ff.; and A. Fitzgerald, The Letters of Synesius (London 1926) 258 n. 2. The men whose works survive include Ausonius, Zosimus, Tiberianus, Macrobius, Symmachus, and Latinius (author of the last of the Latin panegyrics).Google Scholar

18 Amm. Marcel. 30.4.14.Google Scholar

19 Amm. Marcel. 30.4.11-13; H. Hagendahl, Studia Ammianea (Uppsala 1921) lOOff.; and A. Müller, in Philologus 64 (1905) 574ff.Google Scholar

20 Α. H. M. Jones, JRS 47 (1957) 88, instancing Cod. Theod. 11.1.15, which substitutes sortes for iugatio; A. J. Fridh, Terminologie et formules dans les Variae de Cassiodore (Stockholm 1956) 73ff. (finding in the Codes eighteen names for the letter of authorization issued by the emperor [beneficium, oraculum, ordinatio, etc.]), 112ff. (similar variants for other types of document [complaints and petitions] sent in to the emperor); and F. Zucker, Byz. Zeitschr. 30 (1930) 152ff., on the multiplication of synonyms, e.g. (Studien zur Palaeographie und Papyruskunde 20 [1921] 121), ομολογώ εκούσια γνώμη και αυθαιρετώ και άμετα- νοητω και άδόλω προαιρέσει, in papyri of a legal or official type — in this truly wild example, a bill of sale. Cassiodorus offers some late parallels, in his letters of appointment (Variae 7, passim); but that this practice was not of his invention can be seen in Ausonius, Grat, actio 9 (lines 291f. Peiper), where Gratian says ‘te consulem designavi et declaravi et priorem nuncupavi’ (A. D. 379).Google Scholar

21 Orwell, G., Shooting an Elephant and other Essays (New York 1950) 88.Google Scholar

22 Nov. Just. 13.4; Zimmermann, op. cit. (supra η. 11), 136, 140; Cod. Theod. 11.1.20, 11.24.1, 11.24.6; D. van Berchem, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France 10 (1937) 130.Google Scholar

23 Tr. Elsa R. Graser, in T. Frank (ed.), Economic Survey of the Roman Empire 5 (Baltimore 1940) 314.Google Scholar

24 Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie 1998 (Domitian) is a good instance of the explanatory preface, though it is a relatively modest and succinct one. Further development can be illustrated by a comparison of the laws relating to the lease of imperial land in Africa, an edict of Trajan beginning abruptly, ‘qui eorum intra fundo …,’ and that of Hadrian beginning, ‘quia Caesar noster pro infatigabili cura per quam adsidue pro humanis utilita- tibus excubat, omnes partes agrorum …’, K. G. Bruns, Fontes iuris Romani antiqui 1 [7th ed. Tübingen 1909] nos. 114, 115). For the role of Hadrian in the history of chancery Latin, see below. A further step is clear in various Severan edicts : Wilhelmus Ditten- bergcr, Orient is Graeci inscriptiones selectae 2 (Leipzig 1905) 515 (209/211) lines 47-52, just cited in the text; the Constitutio Antoniniana; and P. Fay. 20 (Severus Alexander; see W. Schubart, in Archiv für Papyrusforschung 14 [1941] 57). Philostratus, Vit. soph. 2.24, speaks of a rhetorician called Antipater, who ‘weakened the force of his ideas by the rhythmical effects of his style,’ but who, when the emperor supplied the ideas, ‘proved brilliantly successful,’ partly through ‘the pleasing effect secured by the use of asyndeton.’ He was ab epistulis to Septimius Severus. For the mature, or already over-ripe, specimens of such diction, the better known texts are the Edictum de pretiis (301; tr. Elsa Graser in Economic Survey 5.314); P. Cair. Isidor. 1 (297)— ‘Our most provident Emperors … to root out this most evil and ruinous practice…’; and the Brigetio Table (see E. Paulovics, in Archaeologia Hungarica 20 [1936] 49) beginning, ‘since in all things we are desirous always of taking notice of the comforts and needs of our soldiers, as befits their devotion and labors, so in this instance, by the foresight of our provisions, we believe …’. See more generally Fridh, Terminologie 40ff. (early instances even under Augustus), 49ff. (the fully developed explanatory preface appearing under Diocletian), and passim; and E. Yernay, in Études d'histoire juridique offertes à P. F. Girard II (Paris 1913) 263-274, giving Diocletian's as the reign that sets the mode, though with first-century precedents.Google Scholar

25 For the reversion to a clear, terse language in the sixth century, see E. Grupe, Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte 14 (1893) 225ff., 15 (1894) 341ff.; and F. Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford 1946) 328.Google Scholar

26 For these stages and participants in the history of chancery, Schulz, 96ff., 258ff., 328; E. Volterra, Mélanges H. Lévy-Bruhl (Publications de l'Institut de droit romain de Γ Université 17; Paris 1959) 327ff.; Steinwenter, op. cit. (supra, n. 17) 93ff., 108ff., 118; Vernay, op. cit. (supra, n. 24) 268-274; and H. P. Jolowicz, Historical Introduction to Roman Law (2nd ed. Cambridge 1952) 481; on the union of rhetorical and legal training in the persons of the upper administration, above nn. 16, 17.Google Scholar

27 Jolowicz, loc. cit.: ‘This rhetorical style … frequently makes the legislator's intention very difficult to discover’; and Schulz, History 328: ‘it is a labor to extract the sense from the flowery verbiage.’ To this opinion the chief witness is the large number of ‘interpretations’ added to the constitutions of the Theodosian Code.Google Scholar

28 Cod. Theod. 9.38.6 (381); cf. 8.15.5, to ‘those who under the name of prison registrars guard the prisons that are loathed by unhappy men.’Google Scholar

29 Julian, Ep. 56, the basis of Cod. Theod. 9.17.5 (W. C. Wright, in the Loeb edition of Julian, III 190 η. 2). Yet the letter is no more involved than the labyrinthine one of Constantine to the Antiochians (Eusebius, Vita Const. 3.60). To Α. Η. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London 1948) xi'i, a very proof of the genuineness of such documents in Eusebius is the fact that ‘they are written in a uniformly turgid and long- winded style.’Google Scholar

30 The sophist Heliodorus instructed a friend, ‘as though he were an advocate at the bar, what to put at the beginning of his speech … or with which figures of rhetoric he ought to aim at brilliant passages’ (Amin. Marcel. 29.2.8); while Symmachus could remind Patricius, magister memoriae, ‘tuum sacris tibiis carmen incinere,’ ‘it is your task to sound the song upon the imperial pipes’ (Ep. 7.60.2) — a regular invitation to versify.Google Scholar

31 Εδοξεν αντον τη μεγαλιότητι, W. H. C. Frend, JRS 46 (1956) 47, part of a third- century decision rendered ‘in language at once servile and ornate’ (ibid. 52); της σης άν- δρείας, Ρ. Cair. Isidor. 66 (299); ‘dignationis suae respectu’, in CIL 10.520 (end of the fourth century); and Β. H. Warmington, Papers of the British School at Rome 22 (1954) 46, commenting on the change in the fashion of address to a patron, from the relative simplicity of the first two centuries to ‘the extravagant terms then [in the third century] becoming popular. ‘Google Scholar

32 Higgins, M. J., in Traditio 3 (1945) 74ff.Google Scholar

33 Zucker, op. cit. (supra, n. 20) 148-9; and P. Collinet, Revue des études latines 5 (1927) 254ff., finding the use of rhythmic clausulae so common in later laws that they can be used, even to detect interpolations. Rare before Diocletian, usual in the fourth, such clausulae become mandatory in the second quarter of the fifth century.Google Scholar

34 Zilliacus, H., Eranos 54 (1956) 161ff.Google Scholar

35 Zucker 151; Zilliacus 162ff.; G. Böhlig, Untersuchungen zum rhetorischen Sprachgebrauch (Berlin 1956) 232.Google Scholar

36 Zilliacus 165; C. L. Hrdlicka, A Study of the Late Latin Vocabulary … in … St. Augustine (Catholic University of America, Patristic Studies 31; Washington 1931) 2; A. Er- nout, Aspects du vocabulaire latin (Paris 1954) 180ff.; and R. G. Kent, Transactions of the American Philological Association 50 (1919) 98.Google Scholar

37 Higgins, Traditio 3.91ff.; Steinwenier, op. cit. (supra, n. 17) 92ff.; P. Lond. 1927.Google Scholar

38 Löfstedt, E., Late Latin (Oslo 1959) 151; Fridh, Terminologie 169ff.; Paulovics, Arch. Hung. 20.47 n. 33; Cod. Theod. 6.24.6, 6.26.13, 15.1.38; above n. 31.Google Scholar

39 Dig. 1.4.1.Google Scholar

40 In Cod. Theod. 12.12.14, Theodosius II invites recommendations from his praetorian prefect; 8.9.1 (335) declares that ‘ordines decuriarum … oblatis precibus meruerunt’; Fridh 116 writes on desideria, which generally expressed the wishes of a city or whole province; and see, on suggestiones, Fridh 122ff.; S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (London 1899) 230; and especially W. Ensslin, in Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. Paribeni I (Milan 1956) 315ff. Evidence for these petitions seems more abundant in the second half of the fourth century.Google Scholar

41 On Synesius, see Coster, Byzantion 15 (1940–1941) 16ff., 26ff., Fitzgerald, op. cit. (supra, n. 17) 25; and L. Harmand, Libanius, Discours sur les patronages (Paris 1955) 98. On Libanius, ibid. 99ff., esp. 104; P. Petit in Historia 5 (1956) 479ff. (passim), esp. 495f., 500f.; R. A. Pack, Studies in Libanius (Diss. Mich. 1935) 45, 49, 108. On Symmachus, McGeachy 13, 47ff.Google Scholar

42 That rulers should make every effort to encourage communications from their subjects was agreed among ancient philosophers. Late examples include Themistius, Or. 1.19; Synesius, De regno 17 (reinforcing the point with a quotation from the Iliad); and Julian, Panegyric in honor of Constantius 17, where, in direct address to the emperor, he says, ‘[you] granted to your friends … the privilege of addressing you as an equal and full freedom of speech.’ See also his Heroic Deeds of Constantius 97, making the same point, which Julian knew (none better) was a pure lie.Google Scholar

43 These false praises include Julian's speeches to Gonstantius, Symmachus’ to Valen- tinian (Alföldi, Conflict 84), and that of the envoy recorded in Amm. Marcel. 30.5.8-9.Google Scholar

44 Suppression of the name of the emperor's enemies had a long history, best visible in erasures of inscriptions. An early instance in literature is Augustus’ detour around the name of Lepidus (Res gestae 10.2). Later instances are Eusebius, Vita Const. 1.49; Incerti panegyricus Constantio dictus 6.1 and 12.1 (ed. E. Galletier, Panégyriques latins 1 [Paris 1949] 86, 91); and Themistius, Or. 1.13.Google Scholar

45 On the council-sessions, see C. Zakrzewski, Eos 31 (1928) 405ff., esp. 413, and A. Christophilopulu, Byz. Zeitschr. 44 (1951) 80ff. Utter silence was possible, to be sure, only before imperial announcements, especially those summing up the decisions of the council sitting in a judicial capacity. But there is no doubt that debate was extremely stiff and limited. Jones, Constantine … (cit. supra, n. 29) 164-5, mentions, at Nicaea, the ‘paralyzing … effect [Constantine's] imperial presence had on free discussion.’ It was significant, too, that in about this period (the first use of the word in Lactantius) the room for writing or sealing of documents began to be called the secretarium, though secretarius (hence our ‘secretary’) dates to the mid-fifth century (A. Kraus, Römische Quartalschrift 56 [1960] 45ff.).Google Scholar

46 Praef. 3 and 10 (tr. Thompson, op. cit. supra, n. 13).Google Scholar

47 Panegyrici veteres 6(7).7.1 and 2, 6(7).14.1, 10(4).5.1 (ed. Galletier, Panégyriques latins 3 [Paris 1952] 21, 28,170). Charlesworth's interesting article, JRS 37 (1947) 34-38, gathers the texts on imperial deportment, but add Paneg. vet. 7(6).4.4 (3.57 Galletier), on Constantine's adspectus: ‘eadem in fronte gravitas, eadem in oculis et in ore tranquillitas. ‘Google Scholar

48 Marichal, R., ‘L'écriture latine de la chancellerie impériale romaine,’ Aegyptus 32 (1952) 336–350, analyzes the writing of the period around 300, giving examples, papyro- logical and epigraphical, where the recipient of a chancery document simply could not read what had been sent him. The close wedding of ‘the rhetorical bombast of speech’ and the chancery hand of the fourth century is stressed by Schubart, Griechische Palaeo- graphie (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 1.4.1; Munich 1925) 86-7.Google Scholar

49 Lafoscade, L., De epistulis aliisque titulis imperatorum magistratuumque Romanoruin (Paris 1902) 75, 93, 99.Google Scholar

50 There are two ways of attacking the question: the literary, which tends to be an outcry not an analysis, and the sociological. Of the first, ‘Vigilans,’ Chamber of Horrors, introd. by E. Partridge (London 1952) 9-10, supplies a good bibliography (note especially various works of A. P. Herbert, and add ch. ν of D. Macdonald, The Ford Foundation [Toronto 1956] on ‘ foundationese, ‘ and R. C. Doty, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 18, 1959, on ‘military agglomerese’). With the help of colleagues, particularly Dr. James Price, I have made a fairly thorough search for a sociological study of bureaucratese, in vain. Sociologists, notoriously bad writers of English, are apparently not sensitive to the problem. At any rate, Current Sociology 7.2 (1958) lists nothing; though it does say of one item (no. 93): ‘Answers to all questions posed are integral aspects of the requirements for a systematic appraisal of the ideological goals and institutional framework of the societies in question’!Google Scholar

51 Above, pp. 368 f.; add F. M. Marx, Review of Politics 3 (1941) 100: ‘the unprecedented growth of bureaucracy is one of the striking features of totalitarianism.’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Karayannopulos, Finanzwesen 13, says something on the sluggish pace of government; see also above η. 1; but the sources are full of postponed trials, forgotten appeals, and delays of action. As to forms, they were a necessary part of legal documents and naturally dominated bureaucratese. New ones were invented as need arose (e.g. L. Mitteis, Hermes 30 [1895] 567ff., on a form new in the third century) and became more cumbersome (above, n. 20).Google Scholar

53 Jones, JRS 39 (1949) 50.Google Scholar