Page from a medieval copy of theNotitia Dignitatum commissioned in 1436 byPietro Donato, depicting shields ofMagister Militum Praesentalis II, a late Roman register of military commands. Bodleian Library, Oxford.Palestine and theRiver Jordan, from theNotitia Dignitatum illuminated byPeronet Lamy
TheNotitia dignitatum et administrationum omnium tam civilium quam militarium (Latin for 'List of all dignities and administrations both civil and military') is a document of theLate Roman Empire that details the administrative organization of theWestern and theEastern Roman Empire. It is unique as one of very few surviving documents of Roman government, and describes several thousand offices from the imperial court to provincial governments,diplomatic missions, andarmy units. It is usually considered to be accurate for the Western Roman Empire in the 420s and for the Eastern or Byzantine Empire in the 390s. However, the text itself is not dated (nor is its author named), and omissions complicate attempts to ascertain its date from its content.
There are several extant 15th- and 16th-century copies of the document, plus a colour-illuminated iteration of 1542. All the known, extant copies are derived, either directly or indirectly, fromCodex Spirensis, acodex known to have existed in the library of the Chapter ofSpeyer Cathedral in Germany in 1542, but which was lost before 1672 and has not been rediscovered. TheCodex Spirensis was a collection of documents, of which theNotitia was the final and largest, occupying 164 pages, that brought together several previous documents of which one was of the 9th century. Theheraldry in illuminated manuscript copies of theNotitia is thought to copy or imitate only that illustrated in the lostCodex Spirensis.
For each half of the Empire, theNotitia enumerates all the major "dignities", i. e., offices, that it could bestow, often with the location and specificofficium ("staff") enumerated, except for the most junior members, for each. The dignities are ordered by:
Court officials, including the most senior dignitaries such aspraetorian prefects;
TheNotitia presents four primary problems as a source for the Empire's army:
TheNotitia depicts theRoman army at the end of the 4th century AD. Therefore, its development from the structure of thePrincipate is largely conjectural because of the lack of other evidence.
TheNotitia has many sections missing andlacunae within sections. This is doubtless due to accumulated textual losses and copying errors, because it was repeatedly copied over the centuries: the earliest manuscript possessed today dates from the 15th century. TheNotitia cannot therefore provide a comprehensive list of all units that existed.
TheNotitia does not record the number of personnel. Given that and the paucity of other evidence of unit sizes at that time, the size of individual units and the various commands cannot be ascertained. In turn, this makes it impossible to assess accurately the total size of the army. Depending on the strength of units, the late 4th century army may, at one extreme, have equalled the size of the 2nd century force, i. e., over 400,000 men;[11] and at the other extreme, it may have been far smaller. For example, the forces deployed in Britain circa 400 may have been merely 18,000 against circa 55,000 in the 2nd century.[12]
Shield pattern of thearmigeri defensores seniores (4th row, third from left).[13][14][15] Bodleian Library, Oxford.
TheNotitia contains symbols similar to the diagram which later came to be known asyin and yang symbol.[13][14][15] The infantry unitsarmigeri defensores seniores ("shield-bearers") andMauri Osismiaci had a shield design which corresponds to the dynamic, clockwise version of the symbol, albeit with red dots, instead of dots of the opposite colour.[13] The emblem of theThebaei, another Western Roman infantry regiment, featured a pattern of concentric circles comparable to its static version. The Roman patterns predate the earliestTaoist versions by almost seven hundred years,[13] but there is no evidence for a relation between the two.
^abIsabelle Robinet: "Taiji tu. Diagram of the Great Ultimate", in: Fabrizio Pregadio (ed.):The Encyclopedia of Taoism A−Z, Routledge, Abingdon (Oxfordshire) 2008,ISBN978-0-7007-1200-7, pp. 934−936 (934)
^abHelmut Nickel: "The Dragon and the Pearl",Metropolitan Museum Journal, Bd. 26 (1991), S. 146, Fn. 5
Notitia Dignitatum, edited by Robert Ireland, inBritish Archaeological Reports, International Series63.2.
Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte contains many precise maps.
Klaus-Peter Johne, 'Notitia dignitatum', in:Der Neue Pauly 8 (2000), 1011–1013.
A. H. M. Jones,The Later Roman Empire, 284–602. A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.ISBN0-8018-3285-3.
Works related toNotitia dignitatum at Wikisource