Help with a translation

[Carlton Bach]

Sorry all,

Whilst I'm at it, would anyone know a translation of the infamous agentes in rebus? I've been trying out a few translators online, however the closest I can get is something along the line of 'Secret Police Regarding Affairs'?

Well, the Agentes in Rebus are a bit of a puzzler so it's not that surprising. First of all, they were organised more or less a along military lines, but were not technically soldiers and subject IIRC to the Magister Officiorum, not the Magister Militum. Without the later development of the word 'agent' taking on a meaning in itself, their name really means something along the lines of 'doers of things' (I suspect the assumption that they were some kind of KGB is based partly on the modern reading of 'agent').

As far as I know (and this was read a long time ago), their main employment was with the public post. They supervised its use, read communications and carried confidential messages (and supervised the implementation of orders they transmitted where necessary, too). A professor of mine once referred to them as 'Postbeamte zbV' - a German phrase that broadly translates as 'special forces mail carriers'. Their further career path (if any) was not into the military hierarchy but into the administration, and there are several sources that speak to their venality.

I'm guessing something a bit like the frumentarii of the early Empire.