Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/157

 over a wide area. As a consequence the praefect of the legion could only exist in name, and that office was soon regarded as obsolete. Consistently, when new legions had to be enrolled for the exigences of defence or warfare, their number was limited to about one fifth of the original amount. To complete the fabric of autocracy all the pomp and pretensions of Oriental exclusiveness were adopted by Diocletian, so that henceforward the monarch was only accessible to the subject under forms of such complexity and abasement as seemed to betoken a being of more than mortal mould.

Another signal divergence from the simple manners of the first emperors was the permanent establishment of eunuchs in high offices about the royal person. The Grand Chamberlain, as the constant attendant on the privacy of the monarch, generally became his confidant, and sometimes his master. .]Constantius multum potuit," is the sarcasm of Ammianus on the masterful favourite Eutropius; xviii, 4. Ultimately members of the royal family were castrated to allow of their being intrusted with the office of]*