fficers who were
directly in touch with the emperor and responsible to him alone. From
these were drawn the members of the council of state or imperial
consistory (so-called from the obligation to remain standing in the
presence of the emperor). Permanent members of this council were the four
ministers of the court mentioned above, who were known as the counts of
the consistory, and also the grand chamberlain.

*The officia.* The officials who were at the head of administrative
departments, civil or military, had at their disposal an _officium_ or
bureau, the members of which were known as _officiales_. These subaltern
employees of the state were free men, no longer slaves or freedmen like
their predecessors of the principate. As in the case of the palace
servants their numbers, terms of service (_militia_), promotion and
discharge were fixed by imperial edicts, and they were not placed at the
mercy of the functionary whose office staff they formed. Indeed, owing to
the permanent character of the organization of the _officia_, the burden
of the routine administration fell upon their members, and not upon their
temporary director, for whose acts they were made to share the
responsibility. This was particularly true of the bureau chief
(_princeps_), who was regularly appointed from the _agentes-in-rebus_ as a
spy upon the actions of his superior. Like the soldiers, the civil service
employees enjoyed exemption from the ordinary courts of justice and the
privilege of defending themselves in the courts of the chief of that
branch of the administration to which they were attached.

*Official corruption.* The attitude of the emperor towards his chief
servants was marked by mistrust and suspicion. The policy which led to the
attempt to weaken the more powerful offices by the separation of civil and
military authority and by the subdivision of the administrative districts
was adhered to in the provisions for direct communication between the
emperor and the subordinates of the great ministers, and the highly
developed system of state espionage whereby the ruler kept watch upon the
actions of his officers. However, in spite of the efforts of the majority
of the emperors to secure an honest and efficient administration, the
actual result of the development of this elaborate bureaucratic system was
the erection of an almost impassable barrier between the emperor and his
subjects. Neither did their complaints reach his ears, nor wer