eror or King nearly the same position which a Grand Vizier
holds towards a Turkish Sultan. Like his sovereign he wore a purple robe
(which reached however only to his knees, not to his feet), and he drove
through the streets in a lofty official chariot. It was for him to
promulgate the Imperial laws, sometimes to put forth edicts of his own.
He proclaimed what taxes were to be imposed each year, and their produce
came into his "Praetorian chest". He suggested to his sovereign the names
of the governors of the provinces, paid them their salaries, and
exercised a general superintendence over them, having even power to
depose them from their offices. And lastly, he was the highest Judge of
Appeal in the land, even the Emperor himself having generally no power
to reverse his sentences.

There was another "Illustrious" minister, who, during this century both
in the Eastern and Western Empire, was always treading on the heels of
the Praetorian Prefect, and trying to rob him of some portion of his
power. This was the _Master of the Offices_ the intermediary between the
sovereign and the great mass of the civil servants, to whom the
execution of his orders was entrusted. _A swarm of Agentes in Rebus_
(King's messengers, bailiffs, sheriff's officers; we may call them by
all these designations) roved through the provinces, carrying into
effect the orders of the sovereign, always magnifying their "master's"
dignity, (whence they derived their epithet of "Magistriani",) and
seeking to depress the Praetorian Cohorts, who discharged somewhat
similar duties under the Praetorian Prefect. The Master of the Offices,
besides sharing the counsels of his sovereign in relation to foreign
states, had also the arsenals under his charge, and there was
transferred to him from his rival, the Prefect, the superintendence of
the _cursus publicus_, the great postal service of the Empire.

Again, somewhat overlapping, as it seems to us, the functions of the
Master of the Offices, came the "Illustrious" _Quaestor_, the
head-rhetorician of the State, the official whose business it was to put
the thoughts of the sovereign into fitting and eloquent words, either
when he was replying to the ambassadors of foreign powers, or when he
was issuing laws and proclamations to his own subjects. As his duties
and qualifications were of a more personal kind than those of his two
brother-ministers already described, he had not like them a large
official staff waiti