A Note on Provincial
Administration
Severian’s brief record of his career in Thrax
is the best (though not the only) evidence we have concerning the
business of government in the age of the Commonwealth, as it is
carried out beyond the shining corridors of the House Absolute and
the teeming streets of Nessus. Clearly, our own distinctions
between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches do not
apply—no doubt administrators like Abdiesus would laugh at our
notion that laws should be made by one set of people, put into
effect by a second, and judged by a third. They would consider such
a system unworkable, as indeed it is proving to be.
At the period of the manuscripts,
archons and tetrarchs are appointed by the Autarch, who as the
representative of the people has all power in his hands. (See,
however, Famulimus’s remark on this topic to Severian.) These
officials are expected to enforce the commands of the Autarch and
to administer justice in accordance with the received usages of the
populations they govern. They are also empowered to make local
laws—valid only over the area governed by the lawmaker and only
during his term of office—and to enforce them with the threat of
death. In Thrax, as well as in the House Absolute and the Citadel,
imprisonment for a fixed term—our own most common punishment—seems
unknown. Prisoners in the Vincula are held awaiting torture or
execution, or as hostages for the good behavior of their friends
and relatives.
As the manuscript clearly shows, the
supervision of the Vincula (“the house of chains”) is only one of
the duties of the lictor (“he who binds”). This officer is the
chief subordinate of the archon involved with the administration of
criminal justice. On certain ceremonial occasions he walks before
his master bearing a naked sword, a potent reminder of the archon’s
authority. During sessions of the archon’s court (as Severian
complains) he is required to stand at the left of the bench.
Executions and other major acts of judicial punishment are
personally performed by him, and he supervises the activities of
the clavigers (“those with keys”).
These clavigers are not only the guards
of the Vincula; they act also as a detective police, a function
made easier by their opportunities for extorting information from
their prisoners. The keys they bear seem sufficiently large to be
used as bludgeons, and are thus their weapons as well as their
tools and their emblems of authority.
The dimarchi (“those who fight in two
ways”) are the archon’s uniformed police as well as his troops.
However, their title does not appear to refer to this dual
function, but to equipment and training that permits them to act as
cavalry or infantry as the need arises. Their ranks appear to be
filled by professional soldiers, veterans of the campaigns in the
north and nonnatives of the area.
Thrax itself is clearly a fortress
city. Such a place could scarcely be expected to stand for more
than a day at most against the Ascian enemy—rather, it seems
designed to fend off raids by brigands and rebellions by the local
exultants and armigers. (Cyriaca’s husband, who would have been a
person almost beneath notice in the House Absolute, is clearly of
some importance, and even some danger, in the neighborhood of
Thrax.) Although the exultants and armigers seem to be forbidden
private armies, there appears little doubt that many of their
followers, though called huntsmen, stewards, and the like, are
fundamentally fighting men. They are presumably essential to
protect the villas from marauders and to collect rents, but in the
event of civil unrest they would be a potent source of danger to
such as Abdiesus. The fortified city straddling the headwaters of
the river would give him an almost irresistible advantage in any
such conflict.
The route chosen by Severian for his
escape indicates how closely egress from the city could be
controlled. The archon’s own fortress, Acies Castle (“the armed
camp of the point”), guards the northern end of the valley. It
appears to be entirely separate from his palace in the city proper.
The southern end is closed by the Capulus (“the sword haft”),
apparently an elaborate fortified wall, a scaled-down imitation of
the Wall of Nessus. Even the cliff tops are protected by forts
linked by walls. Possessing, as it does, an inexhaustible supply of
fresh water, the city appears capable of withstanding a protracted
siege by any force not provided with heavy armament.
G. W.