bound by the laws (alligatum legibus) is, for the sovran, an utterance befitting the majesty of a ruler. For the truth is that our authority depends on the authority of law. To submit our sovranty to the laws is verily a greater thing than Imperial power.”41 Deep respect for the rules of law, and their systematic observance characterised the Roman autocracy down to the fall of the Empire in the fifteenth century, and was one of the conditions of its long duration. It was never an arbitrary despotism, and the masses looked up to the Emperor as the guardian of the laws which protected against the oppression of nobles and officials.42
The laws, then, were a limitation on the power of the autocrat; and soon another means of limiting his power was discovered. In the fifth century, the duty of crowning a new Emperor at Constantinople was, as we saw, assigned to the Patriarch. In A.D. 491 the Patriarch refused to crown Anastasius unless he signed a written oath that he would introduce no novelty into the Church. This precedent was at first followed perhaps only in cases where a new Emperor was suspected of heretical tendencies, but by the tenth century43 an oath of this kind seems to have been a regular preliminary to coronation. The fact that such capitulations could be and were imposed at the time of elevation shows that the autocracy was limited.
The essence of an autocracy is that no co-ordinate body exists which is able constitutionally to act as a check upon the monarch’s will. The authority of the Senate or the Imperial Council might constitute a strong practical check upon an Emperor’s acts, but if he chose to disregard their views, he could not be accused of acting unconstitutionally. The ultimate check on any autocracy is the force of public opinion. There is always a point beyond which the most arbitrary despot cannot go in defying it. In the case of a Roman Emperor, public opinion could exert this control constitutionally, by an extreme measure. The Emperor could be deposed. The right of deposition corresponded to the right of election. The deposition was accomplished not by any formal process, but by the proclamation of a new Emperor. If any one so proclaimed obtained sufficient support from the army, Senate, and people, the old Emperor was compelled to vacate the throne by force majeure; while the new Emperor was regarded as the legitimate monarch from the day on which he was proclaimed; the proclamation was taken as the legal expression of the general will. If he had not a sufficiently powerful following to render the proclamation effective and was suppressed, he was treated as a rebel; but during the struggle and before the catastrophe, the fact that the Senate or a portion of the army had proclaimed him gave him a presumptive constitutional status which the event might either confirm or annul. The method of deposition was, in fact, revolution; and we are accustomed to regard revolution as something essentially unconstitutional, an appeal from law to force; but under the Imperial system it was not unconstitutional; the government was, as has been said,44 “an autocracy tempered by the legal right of revolution.”45
The transformation of the Principate into the Autocracy was accomplished by changes in the titular style of the Emperors, in their dress, in the etiquette of the court, which showed how entirely the old tradition of the republic had been forgotten.
The oriental conception of divine royalty is now formally expressed in the diadem; and it affects all that appertains to the Emperor. His person is divine; all that belongs to him is “sacred.” Those who come into his presence perform the act of adoration;46 they kneel down and kiss the purple. It had long been the habit to address the Imperator as dominus, “lord’; in the fourth century the sovrans began to use it of themselves and Dominus Noster appears on their coins.47
Since the first century we can trace the use of Basileus to designate the Princeps, and Basileia to describe the Imperial power, in the eastern provinces of the Empire.48 Dion Chrysostom wrote a discourse on the Basileia; Fronto calls Marcus Aurelius “the great Basileus, ruler of land and sea.” Basileus was the equivalent of Rex, a title odious to Roman ears; but by the fourth century the Greek name had long ceased to wound any susceptibilities; it became the term regularly employed by Greek writers and in Greek inscriptions, and the Emperors began to employ it themselves. Usage soon went further. Basileus was reserved for the Emperor and the Persian king,49 and rex was employed to designate other barbarian royalties.
The Imperial Chancery was conservative, and it was not till the seventh century that the Emperor designated himself as Basileus in his constitutions and rescripts.50 The official Greek equivalent of Imperator was Autokrator, which was similarly used as a praenomen.51 The mint of Constantinople continued to inscribe the Imperial coins with Latin legends till the eighth century.52 The earliest coins with Greek inscriptions have Basileus and Despotes.
The general use of Despotes is one of the most characteristic oriental features of the new Empire. It denoted the relation of a master to his slaves, and it was regularly used in addressing the Emperor from the time of Constantine to the fall of the Empire. Justinian expected this form of address. The subject spoke of himself as “your slave.” But this orientalism was a superficial etiquette; the autocrat seldom forgot that his subjects were freemen, that if he was a dominus, he was a dominus liberorum.
A few words may be said here about the unity of the Empire. From the reign of Diocletian to the last quarter of the fifth century, the Empire is repeatedly divided into two or more geographical sections — most frequently two, an Eastern and a Western — each governed by its own ruler. From A.D. 395 to A.D. 476, or rather 480, the division into two realms is practically continuous; each realm goes its own way, and the relations between them are sometimes even hostile. It has, naturally enough, proved an irresistible temptation to many modern writers to speak of them as if they were different Empires. To men of the fourth and fifth centuries such a mode of speech would have been unintelligible, and it is better to avoid it. To them there was and could be only one Roman Empire; and we should emphasise and not obscure this point of view.
But it is not merely a question of constitutional theory. The unity was not only formally recognised; it was maintained in practical ways. In the first place, the Imperial colleagues issued their laws under their joint names, and general laws promulgated by either and transmitted for publication to the chancery of his associate were valid throughout the whole Empire.53 In the second place, on the death of either Emperor, the Imperial authority of the surviving colleague was constitutionally extended to the whole Empire until a successor was elected. Strictly speaking, it devolved upon him to nominate a new colleague. After the fall of the Theodosian House, some of the Emperors who were elected in Italy were not recognised at Constantinople, but the principle remained in force.
The unity of the Empire was also expressed in the arrangement for the nomination of the annual Consuls. Each Emperor named one of the two consuls for the year. As a general rule the names were not published together. The name of the Western consul was not known in the East, nor that of the Eastern in the West, in time for simultaneous publication.54
Many passages in our narrative will show that the Empire throughout the fifth century was the one and undivided Roman Empire in all men’s minds. There were “the parts of the East,” and “the parts of the West,”55 but the Empire was one.56 No one would speak of two or more Roman Empires in the days of the sons of Constantine; yet their political relation to one another was exactly the same as that of Arcadius to Honorius or of Leo I to Anthemius. However independent of each other or even unfriendly the rulers from time to time may have been, the unity of the Empire which they ruled was theoretically unaffected. And the theory made itself felt in practice.
§ 2. The Senate. The Imperial Council
Although the dyarchy, or double government of Emperor and Senate, had come to an end, and autocracy, as we have seen, was established without reserve or disguise, the Senate remained as an important constitutional body, with rights and duties, and, though it was remodelled, it maintained many of its ancient traditions. The foundation of Constantinople had led to the formation of a second Senate, modelled on that of Rome — a great constitutional innovation. Constantine himself had not ventured upon this novelty. He did found a new senate in Byzantium, but his foundation seems rather to have resembled the senates