The Office of a Rationibus in the Imperial Government. A Historiographical Controversy

Abstract

This article provides a detailed analysis of modern historiographical discourse on the administrative position of the a rationibus office in the Roman imperial government, based on the findings of Friedländer, Hirschfeld, Mommsen, Liebenam, Cuq and others, in order to investigate the origins of disparate opinions on the office of a rationibus. The author also analyses the process of updating the terminology used to describe the office and comments on two dominant views of imperial administration (bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic) in historiographical works that have shaped the contemporary scholarship on the subject.