(13) The Singularii, a class of men of whose useful services Lydus speaks in terms of high praise, contrasting their modest efficiency with the pompous verbosity[179] of the Magistriani (servants of the Master of the Offices) by whom they were being generally superseded in his day. They travelled through the Provinces, carrying the Praefect's orders, and riding in a post-chaise drawn by a single horse (veredus), from which circumstance, according to Lydus, they derived their name Singularii[180].
We observe that the letter of Cassiodorus[181] addressed to the retiring chief (Primicerius) of the Singularii informs him that he is promoted to a place among the King's Body-guard (Domestici et Protectores), a suitable reward for one who had not been a member of the 'Learned Services.'
After the Singularii Lydus mentions the Mancipes, the men who were either actually slaves or were at any rate engaged in servile occupations; as, for instance, the bakers at the public bakeries, the Rationalii, who distributed the rations to the receivers of the annona[182], the Applicitarii (officers of arrest), and Clavicularii (gaolers), who, as we before heard, obeyed the mandate of the Commentariensis. The Lictors, I think, are not mentioned by him. A corresponding class of men would probably be the Apparitores, who in the 'Notitia' appear almost exclusively attached to the service of the great Ministers of War[183].
Thus, it will be seen, from the well-paid and often highly-connected Princeps, who, no doubt, discussed the business of the court with the Praetorian Praefect on terms of friendly though respectful familiarity, down to the gaoler and the lictor and the lowest of the half-servile mancipes, there was a regular gradation of rank, which still preserved, in the staff of the highest court of justice in the land, all the traditions of subordination and discipline which had once characterised the military organisation out of which it originally sprang.
CHAPTER V.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Editiones Principes.