The imperial court of the late Roman empire, C. AD 300–C. AD 450

Abstract

I, [an obelisk], reluctant once, am [now] commanded to obey the Lords serene … [for] everything yields to Theodosius and to his everlasting offspring; hence I am conquered and mastered and raised up into the high sky. (Inscription on an obelisk-base in the Hippodrome adjoining the Great Palace at Constantinople, c . AD 390 ( ILS 821)) O Emperor Augustus [Theodosius], if ever there was any one who was justifiably in fear and trembling when about to speak in your presence, I am assuredly he; I both feel it so myself, and perceive that this is how I must seem to those who share in your council at court. Pacatus, Panegyric of Theodosius , AD 389 ( Pan.Lat .II.1) ‘We saw in the papers that you had had a long talk with King Theodosius,’ my father ventured. ‘Why, yes – the King, who has a wonderful memory for faces, was kind enough to remember, when he noticed me in the stalls, that I had had the honour to meet him on several occasions at the Court … An aide-de-camp came down to bid me pay my respects to His Majesty, whose command I naturally hastened to obey.’ (M. Proust, A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff)) The imperial court in the late Roman state: ‘absolutism’, imperial ‘decline’ and the notion of ‘the court society’

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