At the same time the duties of the officials were divided. Besides the governors and the deputies in the provinces there were in the border provinces military commanders--the dukes and the counts. The emperor had about him a small picked force to guard the palace, body-guards, chamberlains, assistants, domestics, a council of state, bailiffs, messengers, and a whole body of secretaries organized in four bureaus.
All these officials did not now receive their orders directly from the emperor; they communicated with him only through their superior officers. The governors were subordinate to the two prætorian prefects, the officials of public works to the two prefects of the city, the collectors of taxes to the Count of the Sacred Largesses, the deputies to the Count of the Domains, all the officers of the palace to the Master of the Offices, the domestics of the court to the Chamberlain. These heads of departments had the character of ministers.
This system is not very difficult for us to comprehend. We are accustomed to see officials, judges, generals, collectors, and engineers, organized in distinct departments, each with his special duty, and subordinated to the commands of a chief of the service. We even have more ministers than there were in Constantinople; but this administrative machine which has become so familiar to us because we have been acquainted with it from our infancy, is none the less complicated and unnatural. It is the Later Empire that gave us the first model of this; the Byzantine empire preserved it and since that time all absolute governments have been forced to imitate it because it has made the work of government easier for those who have it to do.
=Society in the Later Empire.=--The Later Empire is a decisive moment in the history of civilization. The absolute power of the Roman magistrate is united to the pompous ceremonial of the eastern kings to create a power unknown before in history. This new imperial majesty crushes everything beneath it; the inhabitants of the empire cease to be citizens and from the fourth century are called in Latin "subjects" and in Greek "slaves." In reality all are slaves of the emperor, but there are different grades of servitude. There are various degrees of nobility which the master confers on them and which they transmit to their posterity. The following is the series:[172]