Note 430 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3] (continued 2)

Cod. Theod., VI, iv, 5, 26, etc. By a law of 384, eight praetors were appointed to spend between them 3,150 lb. of silver, equal to about £10,000 at that date, a credible sum; but the common belief that three annual praetors used to be enjoined to disburse more than a quarter of a million sterling in games is, I make no doubt, rank nonsense. Large amounts were, no doubt, expended by some praetors (Maximus, c. 400-420, for his sons’ 4,000 lb. of gold, over £150,000, yet, only half the sum; Olympiodorus, p. 470), but these were intended to be great historic occasions, and are recorded as such, bearing doubtless the same relation to routine celebrations as the late Queen’s Jubilees did to the Lord Mayor’s shows, on which a few thousands are annually squandered. Maximus was then bidding for the purple, in which he was afterwards buried. The question turns on the enigma of the word follis, which in some positions has never been solved. But Cod. Theod., XII, i, 159, makes it as clear as daylight that 25,000 folles in ibid., VI, iv, 5, means just about fifty guineas of our money (he had also to scatter £125 in silver as largess), a sum exactly suited to ibid., VII, xx, 3, by which the same amount is granted to a superannuated soldier to stock a little farm. The first law publishes the munificence of the Emperor in presenting the sum of 600 solidi (£335) to the people of Antioch that they may not run short of cash for, and so be depressed at the time of, the public games. And so the colossal sum doubted by Gibbon, accepted by Milman, advocated by Smith, and asserted by Bury may be dissipated like a puff of smoke in the wind. The office of praetor ludorum seems to have been falling into abeyance at this time.