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1 results

  • 6a - General developments

  • from 6 - The emperor and his administration
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 131-136

  • Summary

    The novelty of the constitutions in the Codex Theodosianus within the overall context has often unconsciously led historians to believe that the procedures of government and administration attested from the age of Constantine onwards were always genuine fourth century innovations. According to a widely accepted reconstruction of the procedures of government and administration between the Augustan and Constantinian ages, the emperor Theodosius II management of the empire was characterized, on the one hand, by a substantial lack of initiative; on the other, by frenetic activism and personal commitment in the response to appeals from his subjects. While the second-century empire was perhaps less randomly governed and more 'bureaucratic' than is generally thought, its late antique counterpart was surely much less bureaucratized than is suggested by a deeply rooted tradition of studies. The age running from Severus to Constantine was an age of both fracture and continuity.