Notitia vtraque dignitatum cum Orientis tum Occidentis

Description

The Notitia Dignitatum is the strangest survival of Roman antiquity: a register of every civil and military office of the late Empire, with the insignia of each command drawn beside it. It lists what the Roman state believed itself to be around the year 400 — the legions, the provinces, the treasuries, the arms factories — and nothing else of the kind has come down to us.Guido Panciroli (1523-1599), professor of law at Padua and Turin, published in 1593 the commentary that turned an obscure list into a working instrument: he identifies the offices, dates them, and explains what each actually did. Historians of the late Empire still start here. Printed in Venice by Francesco de Franceschi, dedicated to Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, and illustrated with the woodcut insignia.This is a faithful print-on-demand facsimile of the 1593 Venice edition, reproduced in full from a library copy. The historical text is reproduced without modification; only the format, margins and legibility have been reset for modern printing.