Imperial Handbook

Among the most precious documents to survive from late antiquity is the Notitia Dignitatum, a handbook to the Roman Empire's civil government and military structures as of about 400 CE.

It survived in a book known as the Codex Spirensis which vanished before 1672, but was copied out half a dozen times by interested readers. One of those copies, the Vatican's arrived online on July 7 and this is a major event for anyone interested in this extraordinary sourcebook. Dr Ingo Maier, who has spent many years studying the handbook, has a website devoted to many of its details.

Fairley's English partial translation of the text (1899) is online at Fordham. Online, you can compare the Vatican copy, Barb.lat.157 with three other online copies: the two in clm10291 in Munich and that in BNF lat. 9961 in Paris (jump to fol. 72r to begin reading the latter). As far as I know, the Trent codex is not online and from the Oxford codex, only the pictures are on the internet.

Below is the Vatican codex's copy of the Provincia Dalmatiae page, compared to the W copy (Munich) below it. It is plain that the Vatican copy is more fanciful and that the artist has willfully converted the town into an early modern one.

However the other manuscripts are hardly more accurate, as you will see from the Luke Ueda-Sarson Praeses Dalmatiae (i.e. Governor of Dalmatia) composite page. Many of the images, including the specific shields of the military units, require considerable expert interpretation to understand.

Even this figure of a coach and horses needs interpreting:

My especial personal interest in the Notitia is that the Codex Spirensis also preserved a major Roman legal diagram which acquired the medieval name arbor juris or arbor consanguinatis and which is among the important classical precursors to the invention of information visualization in late antiquity:

Here is the full list of 38 uploads by Digita Vaticana on July 7 bringing the posted total to 4,794

1. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.F.28 - Details
2. Barb.lat.157 - Notitia Dignitatum (above) - Details
3. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.64 - Details
4. Capp.Giulia.XVI.16 - Details
5. Chig.H.VI.188 - Details
6. Ott.lat.1190 - Details
7. Vat.gr.186 - Details
8. Vat.lat.401 - Details
9. Vat.lat.424 - Details
10. Vat.lat.466 - Details
11. Vat.lat.534 - Details
12. Vat.lat.724 - Details
13. Vat.lat.751 - Details
14. Vat.lat.762 - Details
15. Vat.lat.764 - Details
16. Vat.lat.769 - Details
17. Vat.lat.774 - Details
18. Vat.lat.777 - Details
19. Vat.lat.798 - Details
20. Vat.lat.799 - Details
21. Vat.lat.800 - Details
22. Vat.lat.801 - Details
23. Vat.lat.802 - Details
24. Vat.lat.805 - Details
25. Vat.lat.806 - Details
26. Vat.lat.810 - Details
27. Vat.lat.811 - Details
28. Vat.lat.816 - Details
29. Vat.lat.817 - Details
30. Vat.lat.824 - Details
31. Vat.lat.825 - Details
32. Vat.lat.830, Details,
33. Vat.lat.839, Details,
34. Vat.lat.842, Details,
35. Vat.lat.843, Details,
36. Vat.lat.11543, Details,
37. Vat.lat.12939, Details,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 59. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.