sted
minister was holding--probably not for the first time in his official
career[50]--the great place of Master of the Offices.

[Footnote 50: The language of Cassiodorus in Var. ix. 24 implies that
he had held this office for a considerable time before the death of
Theodoric. Usener thinks that he was made Magister Officiorum for the
first time about the year 518.]

The _Magister Officiorum_, whose relation to the other members of the
Cabinet of the Sovereign was somewhat indefinite, and who was in fact
constantly trying to enlarge the circle of his authority at their
expense, was at the head of the Civil Service of the Roman Empire, and
afterwards occupied a similar position in the Ostrogothic State. It
was said of him by the Byzantine orator Priscus (himself a man who had
been engaged in important embassies), 'Of all the counsels of the
Emperor the Magister is a partaker, inasmuch as the messengers and
interpreters and the soldiers employed on guard at the palace are
ranged under him.' Quite in harmony with this general statement are
the more precise indications of the 'Notitia.' There, 'under the
disposition of the illustrious Magister Officiorum,' we find five
_Scholae_, which seem to have been composed of household troops[51].
Then comes the great Schola of the _Agentes in rebus_ and their
deputies--a mighty army of 'king's messengers,' who swarmed through
all the Provinces of the Empire, executing the orders of the
Sovereign, and earning gold and hatred from the helpless Provincials
among whom their errands lay. In addition to these the four great
stationary bureaux--the Scrinium Memoriae, Scrinium Dispositionum,
Scrinium Epistolarum, and Scrinium Libellorum--the offices whose duty
it was to conduct the correspondence of the Sovereign with foreign
powers, and to answer the petitions of his own subjects, all owned the
Master of the Offices as their head. Moreover, the great arsenals (of
which there were six in Italy at Concordia, Verona, Mantua, Cremona,
Ticinum, and Lucca) received their orders from the same official. An
anomalous and too widely dispersed range of functions this seems
according to our ideas, including something of the Secretaryship for
Foreign Affairs, something of the Home Secretaryship, and something of
the War Office and the Horse Guards. Yet, as if this were not enough,
there was also transferred to him from the office of the Praetorian
Praefect the superintendence of the Cursus Publicus,