(_b_) The _Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi_ had under his orders the large staff of Grooms of the Bedchamber, at whose head stood the _Primicerius Cubiculariorum_, an officer of 'respectable' rank. The _Castrensis_, Butler or Seneschal, with his army of lacqueys and pages who attended to the spreading and serving of the royal table; the _Comes Sacrae Vestis_, who with similar assistance took charge of the royal wardrobe; the _Comes Domorum_, who perhaps superintended the needful repairs of the royal palace, all took their orders in the last resort from the Grand Chamberlain. So, too, did the three Decurions, officers with a splendid career of advancement before them, who marshalled the thirty brilliantly armed Silentiarii, that paced backwards and forwards before the purple veil guarding the slumbers of the Sovereign.
(_c_) The _Comes Sacrarum Largitionum_, theoretically only the Grand Almoner of the Sovereign, discharged in practice many of the duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The mines, the mint, the Imperial linen factories, the receipt of the tribute of the Provinces, and many other departments of the public revenue were originally under the care of this functionary, whose office however, as we are expressly told by Cassiodorus, had lost part of its lustre, probably by a transfer of some of these duties to the Count of the Private Domains.
(_d_) This Minister, the _Comes Rerum Privatarum_, had the superintendence of the Imperial estates in Italy and the Provinces. Confiscations and the absorption by the State of the properties of defaulting tax-payers were probably always tending to increase the extent of these estates, and to make the office of Count of the Domain more important. The collection of the land-tax, far the most important item of the Imperial revenue, was also made subject to his authority. Finally, in order, as Cassiodorus quaintly observes[114], that his jurisdiction should not be exercised only over slaves (the cultivators of the State domains), some authority was given to him within the City, and by a curious division of labour all charges of incestuous crime, or of the spoliation of graves, were brought before the tribunal of the Comes Privatarum.