Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/298

 treasurer. 280 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, absolute edicts: he was considered as the representa- wii •. J_ 1_ tive of the legislative power, the oracle of the council, and the original source of the civil jurisprudence. He was sometimes invited to take his seat in the supreme judicature of the imperial consistory, with the pretorian prefects, and the master of the offices ; and he was frequently requested to resolve the doubts of inferior judges : but as he was not oppressed with a variety of subordinate business, his leisure and talents were em- ployed to cultivate that dignified style of eloquence, which, in the corruption of taste and language, still preserves the majesty of the Roman laws'". In some respects the office of the imperial quasstor may be com- pared with that of a modern chancellor; but the use of a great seal, which seems to have been adopted by the illiterate barbarians, was never introduced to attest The public the public acts of the emperors. 4. The extraordinary title of ' count of the sacred largesses,' was bestowed on the treasurer-general of the revenue, with the inten- tion perhaps of inculcating, that every payment flowed from the voluntary bounty of the monarch. To con- ceive the almost infinite detail of the annual and daily expense of the civil and military administration in every part of a great empire, would exceed the powers of the most vigorous imagination. The actual account em- ployed several hundred persons, distributed into eleven different offices, which wei*e artfully contrived to ex- amine and control their respective operations. The multitude of these agents had a natural tendency to increase ; and it was more than once thought expe- dient to dismiss to their native homes the useless su- pernumeraries, who, deserting their honest labours"^ had pressed with too much eagerness into the lucrative pro- by the heir apparent of the empire. Trajan intrusted the same care to Hadrian, his qua;stor and cousin. See Dodwell, Preelection. Cambden. x. xi. p. 362—394. "■ Terris edicta daturus ; Supplicibus responsa. — Oracula regis Eioquio crevere fuo; nee dignius unquam Majestas meminil sese Romana locutam. Claudian in Consulat. Mall. Theodor. 33. See likewise Symraachus, epist. i. 17. and Cassiodorius, Variar. vi. 5.