There is no doubt that Late Antiquity saw reinforced political control of communication and serious improvement in the circulation of news. This was true everywhere in the empire in the fourth century, and was still true in the east until the sixth century and later. A larger and more centralized administration, a characteristic feature of the Later Roman Empire, developed an ‘‘enhanced ability to collect, collate, and retrieve information, by the use of skilled personnel primarily dedicated to specialist administrative tasks’’ (Kelly 2004: 1). A good impression of the changes in this matter is given by a law of ad 321: ‘‘On account of the remissness of the judges who delay the execution of the imperial orders, We have dispatched various men to the different provinces to report to Our knowledge the matters which they see have been promoted by diligence and those that they blame on the ground that they are ruined by sloth’’ (Cod. Theod. 15. 1. 2). It is here a matter of public building, but the process of centralization is clearly defined, as well as the key role played by information in this process: because the emperor cannot trust the local people in charge, he sends envoys whose only task is to gather information, which can lead to political action. Though Roman centralization was never as complete as used to be thought, whatever effort was made in that direction needed more information. Army, administration, and taxes were of course the most demanding areas. Justinian’s law settling the fiscal system in ad 545 gives a striking image of a centrally controlled empire (Justinian, Nov. 223):
Every year, the praetorian prefects worked out the global tax sum to be required for the year, taking into account, above all, the costs of war, the main variable in the budget. These sums had a basic stability, but the presupposition that tax levels could change regularly is assumed by a wide range of sources, and was a consistent feature of Roman and indeed post-roman tax system. The rates, set out in great detail, were communicated to provincial governors and thence, by formal proclamation, to cities, whose councillors had the task of ensuring collection, overseen by other councillors and/or by central government officials, in an ever-changing set of institutional protocols, as curiales or officials thought out new loopholes or abuses, which were corrected by later legislation. (Wickham 2005: 71)
Wickham’s impressive summary might exaggerate slightly the efficiency of the imperial system of taxation, but it rightly stresses the importance of information in such a sophisticated tributary empire.
Another reason why the need for information increased in Late Antiquity was the fact that, for most of the time between the reign of Diocletian and the end of the Western Roman Empire, there was more than one emperor. Portraits of emperors, painting or statues, had always been widespread in the empire; but only with the fourth century do we have evidence of a systematic policy of sending portraits at the beginning of a reign (Zanker 1983; Ando 2000: 228-32). During the last years of the Tetrarchy, when Constantine was hailed emperor by his troops in Britain in 306, he sent his laureate portrait to Galerius, then the senior Augustus. After some hesitation, Galerius accepted Constantine as his junior colleague and sent him the imperial insignia. At a distance, tokens of power had been exchanged, as a substitute for an actual meeting (Lactant. De mort. pers. 25; Bruun 1976: 124). In this case, news was part of a political action: by sending the insignia, Galerius had not simply expressed an opinion but had made Constantine a legitimate emperor. The use of a medium (the laureate image or the imperial insignia) was made necessary by the distance between the two emperors. We do not know that Galerius sent the portrait of Constantine on to the provinces, but that was still the rule.
In the late fifth century, when Anthemius became emperor in the west, he sent a legation to Constantinople to meet the eastern emperor Leo. After having received the embassy and accepted the laureate image of the new emperor, Leo commanded ‘‘that this portrait of his, joined with ours, shall share the same honours as our portrait to the delight of all our people, so that all the cities joyfully shall realize that the rulers of both parts of the empire act in concert and that we have been united into one with His Indulgence.’’ The fact is recorded as part of imperial protocol in Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos’ tenth-century work On the Administration of the Empire (De administrando imperio 1, quoted by Bruun 1976: 124). (Although this passage is a later interpolation, suppressed in the most recent edition of the text, it probably reflects a contemporary source.) Here, the dissemination of imperial images was clearly a way of asserting the unity of the empire, precisely at a time when the threat of division is high.
We hear from Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria at the end of the fourth century, that imperial portraits were ‘‘painted and set up in the midst of the marketplace’’; and these images were used as substitutes for the actual presence of the emperor. They were to be treated with great respect and were displayed in the place of honor during spectacles (Ando 2000: 212; see Cod. Theod. 8. 11. 3, ‘‘if by chance We display the sacred imperial countenances to the eager multitude’’). Such portraits were part of the display of imperial authority and, in this area as in many, the late empire was a time of both continuity and creative innovation. While imperial portraits were no less ubiquitous than in earlier periods (Ando 2000: 232-45), the semantics of imperial imagery changed in a remarkable way, stressing the superiority of the emperor over other men, his privileged link with the divinity. Moreover, at the end of the fourth century, Christian symbols were included in the representation of power (on statues, on coins, and on mosaic portraits), and new opportunities for display were seized upon - for example, in churches (Elsner 1998: 53-87).
Using the same language as emperors, the Ostrogoth Theoderic, king in Italy AD 493-526, had his image depicted on a mosaic in the church of S. Vitale in Ravenna. As soon as the Byzantines regained control over Italy, after twenty years of war against the Goths, Justinian had this image replaced by his own, so communicating in a lavish way his legitimate authority to the Christian population of the city, which was at the time the capital of Italy.
World History
