I’ve Got a Little List: the Notitia Dignitatum
What if there were a picture of the government and military of the late Roman Empire? A scheme of its organization in both its eastern and western halves? In fact, there is— a document, (or rather two,) generally called the Notitia Dignitatum. As we have it, it has come down to us through copies made, ultimately, of an original late Roman document. The story of its transmission is rather complicated and beyond this scope of this piece, but we do have the document, the Notitia Dignitatum Omnium, tam Civilium quam Militarium, in Partibus Orientis and the Notitia Dignitatum Omnium, tam Civilium quam Militarium, in Partibus Occidentalis. In English these might be rendered “The List of all Dignities (offices or positions) both Civilian and Military in the Eastern Areas” and “The List of all Dignities both Civilian and Military in the Western Areas.”
What is this ancient Roman document? What follows is a brief and, I hope, a not controversial description. Questions related to the document are many, however, and a reader who is interested in the many detailed issues associated with it should look at the sources listed in further reading below. Even at the remove of about a hundred years, the article by the classicist J. B. Bury is a good place to start, as it contains one of the best descriptions of the document and how it was used.
Shield Patterns from the Notitia Dignitatum. Source: Bodleian Library
Because it consists of a series of lists that set out the civil and military organization of both the eastern and western halves into which the Roman empire was by then divided, the Notitia is an administrative document of great importance. The document is fairly complete, though in the course of transmission some few sections have been lost. The eastern half of the document was drawn up first, perhaps by 395 AD, and the western half was modeled on it shortly thereafter. The western half of the document was used for administrative purposes for some time thereafter, being updated until some time into the 420s, perhaps as late 428. The eastern section, because it had been drawn up as a model for the western (and was probably not intended as a practical document apart from that) was not updated, and therefore illustrates not only the governmental and military structure of the east, but shows that structure as it was about two decades before that reflected in the western Notitia.
Both the eastern and western halves of the Notitia begin with the highest offices and proceed to those below them and, besides the offices themselves, list any staffs they had. The positions and social grades of office holders given, but not the names of the men in office, who often changed. Of particular interest to the military historian are the lists of all of the military units in both halves of the empire and their distribution under their different commanders in the various provinces. In all, over 600 hundred military units of various sorts are listed.
The western Notitia begins:
Praefectus Praetorio Italiae
Praefectus Praetorio Galliarum
Praefectus Urbis Romae
Magister Peditum in Praesenti
Magister Equitum in Praesenti
Magister Equitum per Gallias . . . .
Or, in English
Praetorian Prefect of Italy
Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls
Prefect of the City of Rome
Master of the Infantry in the Presence (of the Emperor)
Master of the Cavalry in the Presence (of the Emperor)
Master of the Cavalry for the Gauls (Gallic Provinces) . . . .
And so on. Lest the reader think, from the start of the list, that it is primarily military, it must be said that, apart from the names of troop units, about half of the positions listed are civil.
The organization of the East, though broadly similar, differs from that of the West, for which it was a model. For example, the military command in the Eastern Empire was headed by two top generals, each with the title “Master of Cavalry and Infantry in the Presence,” to which were subordinated three other generals (also called “Masters of Cavalry and Infantry”) for the dioceses (groups of provinces) of the Orient, Thrace and Illyricum.
A document that sets out the scheme for both the civil and military administration of the late Empire is valuable to us now, but how was this document used then? An imperial officer in each half of the empire called the Primicerius Notariorum (himself listed in the Notitia), used the Notitia in order to prepare the official documents of commission for the various high government officials and military commanders. Therefore, the Notitia set out the correct titles and insignia for imperial officials and military commanders down to the level of the duces, who commanded the provincial border garrisons. The Notitia sets out not only the insignia of the higher officials, but also the shield patterns of military units throughout the empire. Not all of these patterns survive in our copy, but many do and they demonstrate sharply how the shields of the late Roman army differed from those of the Republic and Principate. These are shown in their colors and the are often marked with stars, rings or other geometric patterns, or with various beasts, some of them mythical. They suggest a rather barbaric taste, verging on the medieval.
Historians of the late Roman military find the document extremely useful; it shows the late Imperial army in its fully developed form, the various troops divided into several classes according to status and function: palatini, comitatenses, pseudocomitatenses and limitanei. Each of these categories were further divided into cavalry and infantry.
The palatini were troops of the “palace,” those posted at the imperial court; they consisted of palatine legions and of auxilia, the term “auxilium” now applying to cohorts of elite troops often raised, at least initially, from barbarian allies. Below these in status were the comitatenses or field troops, who were paid more than the limitanei or border garrisons. Limitanei attached to reinforce the field armies are listed as pseudocomitatenses.
A question that vexes historians, the size of the late Roman army, cannot be settled by reference to the Notitia because, while more than 600 units are listed between the Empire’s two halves, the sizes of the units are not known and some of them are phantoms— units that have disappeared or been destroyed but have not been excised from the lists. Beyond this, there are some missing sections, so it cannot be known how many units were originally listed.
Furthermore, the reliability of the western Notitia is questioned because it was in use for about twenty or twenty-five years and became rather a patchwork of entries from different times. For example, as a troop was shifted from one posting or province to another, its name was struck out from one place and then written onto the appropriate page, but where it was convenient to do so rather than where it ought to have appeared. As a result, troops were sometimes listed out-of-order, at least with regard to their status. It happened from time to time that a unit would be listed as being in two places at once, either the result of a clerical mistake or because the unit was shifting from one posting to the next and is listed in two places. Some units, known to have been destroyed, continue to appear.
Despite these difficulties, the Notitia is a mine of information and, as historians have pointed out since the nineteenth century, even its inconsistencies and emendations furnish clues to the development and history of the civil government and military administration of the late Empire.
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Further Reading
Bury, J. B., “The Notitia Dignitatum,” The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 10, (1920) pp. 131-154
Collingwood, R. G.
Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire, 284-602, A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, Vol. I, Cambridge University Press, 1963
Michael Kulikowski, The "Notitia Dignitatum as a Historical Source” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 3rd Qtr., 2000, Bd. 49, H. 3 (3rd Qtr., 2000), pp. 358-377
Stevens, C. E., “The British Sections of the Notitia Dignitatum,” Archaeological Journal 97:1,(1940), pp. 125-154
Ward, J. H., “The Notita Dignitatum,” Latomus, Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles April-June 1974, pp. 397-434
