Page "Diocletian" Paragraph 57

Altogether, Diocletian effected a large increase in the number of bureaucrats at the government's command ; Lactantius was to claim that there were now more men using tax money than there were paying it.

The historian Warren Treadgold estimates that under Diocletian the number of men in the civil service doubled from 15, 000 to 30, 000.

The classicist Roger Bagnall estimated that there was one bureaucrat for every 5 – 10, 000 people in Egypt based on 400 or 800 bureaucrats for 4 million inhabitants ( no one knows the population of the province in 300 AD ; Strabo 300 years earlier put it at 7. 5 million, excluding Alexandria ).

( By comparison, the ratio in twelfth-century China was one bureaucrat for every 15, 000 people.

) Jones estimated 30, 000 bureaucrats for an empire of 50 – 65 million inhabitants, which works out to approximately 1, 667 or 2, 167 inhabitants per imperial official as averages empire-wide.

The actual numbers of officials and ratios per inhabitant varied, of course, per diocese depending on the number of provinces and population within a diocese.

Provincial and diocesan paid officials ( there were unpaid supernumeraries ) numbered about 13 – 15, 000 based on their staff establishments as set by law.

The other 50 % were with the emperor ( s ) in his or their Comitatus, with the praetorian prefects, with the grain supply officials in the capital ( later, the capitals, Rome and Constantinople ), Alexandria, and Carthage and officials from the central offices located in the provinces.