Imperial Administrative Tasks
Defence, public order, and taxation were of course the primary public tasks of the emperor. For the first there was the army; the second was maintained through the provincial governors and the army; and the third was farmed out to tax farming companies but from the third century was included in the imperial administration (see Section 9).
But there was more. Augustus had assumed responsibility for the public distributions in Rome and in general for its provisioning in times of shortage, the cura annonae. For this he appointed a prefect for the annona, who had a small staff and who contracted out the transport of grain for the distributions. The grain itself was levied as an additional tax in Egypt and Africa. But in the course of the second century AD public bodies appear which comprised investors, ship owners, and transporters (navicularii). They received immunity from guardianship as long as they invested half of their assets in companies engaged in providing grain or olive oil for the Roman market or in transporting these to Rome, or themselves provided transport to Rome. In the third century in the provinces of Africa and Egypt a similar public body - a corpus naviculariorum - was instituted, consisting of landowners who had to invest in the building and maintenance of ships which, with the ships of other landowners, were organized into a fleet. This fleet, managed by the corpus, would transport grain for the public distributions from Africa to Ostia, where it was unloaded. For the unloading and subsequent transportation to Rome similar public bodies (corpora) existed. Those participating in these corpora received immunities from other public duties. The landowners were, for example, freed from the decurionate (i.e., serving as local councillors). In order to keep its accumulated capital intact, membership of the corpus became compulsory in the third century; it was considered an origo: being heir to a member made one liable to membership. Theoretically this created a self-sustaining body, but there were factors which threatened to reduce it, like the marriage of a decu- rion’s son to the daughter of a navicularius (which might make her property subject to the decurionate), and rules were issued to amend these flaws in the system. In addition members tried to enjoy the privileges without investing too much, or they abused the rules: for instance, after receiving a cargo one had two years to return the receipt, given in Ostia, to the authority that sent the cargo. Some abused this by selling the cargo at a high price elsewhere and buying other grain at a low price. The complications of the system led to a body of rules and exceptions, with procedural safeguards.19After Constantinople had been founded as a second capital, public distributions were established there as well. Egypt became its sole supplier, with its corpus. In the winter of AD 408/409 a crisis in transportation was overcome by using transporters outside the corpus, paying them a good reward. This led to a change in the set-up: by AD 534 the corpus consisted of landowners who had to contribute to a common chest, out of which these transporters were paid. As a result rules on transportation were reduced to supervision of transport and emergency requisition of ships.
A public body was also set up in Rome for the milling and baking of the grain which was distributed publicly. This corpus pistorum consisted of a number ofpistores (miller/bakers) who were bound to this both personally and in respect of their assets. Membership was probably voluntary in the second century, but in the early third century it became compulsory. Here also membership was considered an origo. If apistorhad only daughters, the son-in-law had to manage the enterprise. A pistor could also leave his enterprise to the corpus, which would appoint a manager. In this case he formally became owner but, in order to avoid alienation of the property, it was treated as if it were property comprised in a dowry (dotis nomine) and by that means made inalienable.
Later on even assets acquired subsequently were treated as if held dotis nomine.20 As with the navicularii, a body of administrative law governed this system.Further public bodies with membership as a public duty were those of the saccarii, the people who filled the sacks with grain and loaded and unloaded the ships in Ostia and Rome. In the middle of the third century, for five months of the year the public distribution of grain was supplemented in Rome with one of meat. For that a public body of pig merchants, the corpus suariorum, was set up. Landowners in Lucania and Britti (nowadays Basilicata and Calabria) had to deliver a number of pigs (canon suariorum) or to pay the equivalent in money: the pig merchants had to drive these pigs to Rome, to make up any shortfall with money, and to deliver all of this to the prefecture. Similarly, the maintenance of roads and the public postal system came to be a charge, this time imposed on adjoining landowners. As with other charges, an appeal was possible.
Lastly, certain services considered to be in the public interest were also regulated by public law. The workers in the mints and in the state factories for such things as arms and textiles for the imperial house, and the purple dye fishers, were likewise collected into corporations, subjected to rules of membership based on origo, and supervised. All these public bodies disappeared in the west with the falling away of imperial power.
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