f the Sacred Largesses" [_Comes Sacrarum
Largitionum_], one of the greatest officers of State, corresponding to
our First Lord of the Treasury, whose name reminds us that all public
expenditure was supposed to be the personal benevolence of His Sacred
Majesty the Emperor, and all sources of public revenue his personal
property. The Emperor, however, had actually in every province domains
of his own, managed by the Count of the Privy Purse [_Comes Rei
Privatae_], whose subordinate in Britain was entitled the "Accountant
of the Privy Purse for Britain" [_Rationalis Rei Privatae per
Britanniam_]. Both these Counts were "Illustrious" [_illustres_];
that is, of the highest order of the Imperial peerage below the "Right
Noble" [_nobilissimi_] members of the Imperial Family.

C. 9.--Such and so complete was the system of civil and military
government in Roman Britain up to the very point of its sudden and
utter collapse. When the 'Notitia' was compiled, neither Celerinus, as
he wrote, nor the officials whose functions and ranks he noted, could
have dreamt that within ten short years the whole elaborate fabric
would, so far as Britain was concerned, be swept away utterly and for
ever. Yet so it was.

C. 10.--For what was left of the British Army now made a last effort
to save the West for Rome, and once more set up Imperial Pretenders
of its own.[361] The first two of these, Marcus and Gratian, were
speedily found unequal to the post, and paid the usual penalty of such
incompetence; but the third, a private soldier named Constantine, all
but succeeded in emulating the triumph of his great namesake. For four
years (407-411) he was able to hold not only Britain, but Gaul and
Spain also under his sceptre; and the wretched Honorius, the unworthy
son and successor of Theodosius, who was cowering amid the marshes of
Ravenna, and had murdered his champion Stilicho, was fain to recognize
the usurper as a legitimate Augustus. Only by treachery was he put
down at last, the traitor being the commander of his British forces,
Gerontius. Both names continued for many an age favourites in British
nomenclature, and both have been swept into the cycle of Arturian
romance, the latter as "Geraint."

C. 11.--Neither Gerontius nor his soldiers ever got back to their old
homes in Britain. What became of them we do not know. But Zosimus[362]
tells us that Honorius now sent a formal rescript to the British
cities abrogating the Lex Julia, which for