Anatolia Antiqua XVI (2008), p. 231-257

Eugenia BOLOGNESI RECCHI FRANCESCHINI*

THE SCHOLAE OF THE MASTER OF THE OFFICES AS THE PALACE PRAETORIUM

At the beginning of the fourth century, when Constantinople was founded, the emperor travel¬ ling throughout the Empire needed, wherever he decided to fix his temporary residence, to be pro¬ tected by a corps of imperial guards, and to be assisted by a body of civilian ministers. A similar structure had therefore to underlie his headquarters, either when campaigning, in the mobility of a mil¬ itary camp, or in the more comfortable shelter offered by the provincial Praetoria, when available, or, finally, in his official residences, in the imperial palaces.

Places had always to be set aside to allow for the least possible interruptions of state activities, consenting to a body of attendants to perform their main duties, whose double nature, military and civilian, is repeatedly attested. Thus, when Constantine planned his palace in Constantinople, the basic requirement would have been, as for any other Tetrarchic residence, the existence in it of a self-contained unit for defence and administration, at the emperor's disposal.

The two characteristic aspects of the unit, its mobility and its militarization, are differently evi¬ denced in Latin and Greek. The Latin word comi-tatus derives from comes, travelling companion, and stresses therefore the continuous travelling of the body of attendants. The Greek translation of the same term, stresses instead its military signifi¬ cance, by becoming comitatus synonymous of "military camp". This is very clear in the edict of Constantius and Galerius of 305/6, ordering records of fiscal debts to be sent "to our comitatus" , which in the Greek version becomes "to our camp". It is still true in 335, when Constantine orders the transfer of the council of Tyre to the Palace in Constantinople, as "to the camp of our Clemency"1 .

For the whole of the fourth century, until after the death of Theodosius I in 395 Constantinople will become the only official residence of the rul¬ ing emperor of the Eastern Empire, the basic mili¬ tary camp, where the constant wars brought the emperor and his itinerant comitatus to be for the most part of the year, had indeed to host, while travelling on campaigning, the imperial headquar¬ ters. There the court of the Tetrarchic emperors had to make front to main criteria of defence, but, also, to basic administrative requirements. Such an organization could be expanded, when in a provin¬ cial city, in the Praetorium\ on a more splendid scale, when occasionally in one of the official imperial residences.

The military camp is therefore the basic struc¬ ture to which the whole organization of an imperi¬ al palace had ultimately to be referred at. A military camp was indeed a mixed structure, where military units and administrative clerks had to be housed together. Like in the principia, the head-quarters buildings of the Roman army, spaces devoted to the activities of the body of attendants are attested beside the set of apartments for the private use of the general.

I. The defence

1 . Scholarians and scholae

Names and titles. The imperial guards as the barbarian contingent. The carrier

Soldiers were certainly part of the comitatus, permanent travel-companions of the emperor in his journeys throughout the empire. A " Victorinus biarchus, qui militavit in sacro palatio ", is for example attested probably as early as 324, since the