Exceptores.
(10) We now come to the Exceptores, or shorthand writers[166], a large and fluctuating body who stood on the lowest step of the official ladder[167] and formed the raw material out of which all its higher functionaries were fashioned in the regular order of promotion.
Augustales.
We are informed by Lydus[168], that in his time the Exceptores in the Eastern Empire were divided into two corps, the higher one called Augustales, who were limited in number to thirty, and the lower, of indefinite number and composing the rank and file of the profession. The Augustales only could aspire to the rank of Cornicularius; but in order that some prizes might still be left of possible attainment by the larger class, the rank of Primiscrinius was tenable by those who remained 'on the rolls of the Exceptores.' The reason for this change was that the unchecked application of the principle of seniority to so large a body of public servants was throwing all the more important offices in the Courts of Justice into the hands of old men. The principle of 'seniority tempered by selection' was therefore introduced, and the ablest and most learned members of the class of Exceptores were drafted off into this favoured section of Augustales, fifteen of the most experienced of whom were appropriated to the special service of the Emperor, while the other fifteen filled the higher offices (with the exception of the Primiscriniate) in the Praefectoral Courts[169]. Deputati.The first fifteen were called Deputati[170], the others were apparently known simply as Augustales.
The change thus described by Lydus appears to have been made in the West as well as in the East, since we hear in the 'Variae' of Cassiodorus ([xi. 30]) of the appointment of a certain Ursus to be Primicerius of the Deputati, and of Beatus to take the same place among the Augustales[171].
Adjutores.
(11) The Adjutores of the 'Notitia' were probably a lower class of Exceptores, who may very likely have disappeared when the Augustales were formed out of them by the process of differentiation which has been described above.
We have now gone through the whole of what was termed the 'Learned Service[172]' mentioned in the 'Notitia,' with one exception—the title of an officer, in himself humble and obscure, who has given his name to the highest functionaries of mediaeval and modern Europe.
Cancellarius.
(12) The Cancellarius appears in the 'Notitia' only once[173], and then in connection not with the Praetorian Praefect, but with the Master of the Offices. At the very end of the Officium of this dignitary, after the six Scholae and four Scrinia of his subordinates, and after the Admissionales, whom we must look upon as the Ushers of the Court, comes the entry,