07-22-2010, 01:47 PM
Quote:I suppose his point is that inefficiency and corruption increased with size. As an example he gives a case in Africa where a citizen got fleeced by an official and had to go through multiple layers of bureaucracy before reaching the honest emperor with his petition. Crooks along the way derailed his complaint and the victim was executed for bringing a “false” charge. Later it was revealed that the victim had been right all along, but of course it was too late for him. With a smaller bureaucracy it would have been easier to reach the emperor.This is one of several things in the book I found poorly argumented. The author keeps asserting the bureaucracy was massive or swollen or inefficient without actually showing it was so. Well, maybe it was massive, but the empire was massive, too.
The episode in question, as Goldsworthy admits, "was exceptional. Corruption on such a scale did not pervade the entire administration of the empire and in the end due process caught up with the surviving conspirators."
However his comment that "the imperial view was limited and the increase in bureaucracy had if anything made it more distant, for all information was filtered and refined by others before it reached the emperor himself" doesn't seem to be justified. Did any Roman emperor get unmediated knowledge of all damaging raids occurring in all remote corners of his empire?
Drago?
