John Lydus: On the Months

the Cappadocian caused a further shameful decline. The prefect further reduced the use of Latin, and even the Greek he used and tolerated was "old-womanish," "base," and "common"—and thus (of course) drew with it a lamentable carelessness in judicial record-keeping. 27

Seeing that literary excellence was not rewarded, John says, he began to "hate" his service in the prefecture, and devoted himself entirely to his books. 28 John does not put a precise date on this disillusionment, which could well have been gradual rather than sudden. Carney, however, suggests that it was in fact immediately after the reinstatement of the Cappadocian as Praetorian prefect in 532, given that John does not seem to describe life in the prefecture in detail after this. 29 While his attention and heart were no longer in his bureaucratic career, John did not stagnate forever even there. Kelly argues that "it may be one of the greatest ironies of John's career that the reforms carried out under John the Cappadocian actually increased his chances of advancement"—that is, with others leaving under financial pressures, John had a "cushion" that others may not have had, and was able to remain in the prefecture notwithstanding the circumstances, with less competition and more senior posts likely becoming vacant. 30

As for the end of his career after forty years in the prefecture, the uppermost office John achieved before his retirement is usually assumed to have been that of cornicularius (the highest position in the judicial branch, under the princeps officii). 31 This is not entirely certain; 32 but John does say that he reached the limit of the ranked levels within the service, with nothing to show for it but the title—and this in the context of a discussion of the cornicularius and the monetary rewards formerly granted to this official by the princeps of the prefecture. 33 The implication is difficult to miss. It is characteristic of John's enthusiasms that he describes in detail the retirement ceremony, 34 including the praise offered by the current Praetorian prefect Hephaestus

27 De mag. 3.68. John mentions but dismisses what was likely the administrator's justification for departing from archaizing Classical standards—the desire for clarity and understandability.
28 De mag. 3.28.
29 2: 15 n. 9.
30 Ruling the Later Roman Empire, pp. 86-7.
31 Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire, pp. 13, 248 (n. 11); Bandy (1983), p. xiv.
32 Maas, p. 36, following PLRE 2: 614, notes the lack of an explicit statement that he was a cornicularius, and suggests that he might have been primiscrinius in his final year of service instead.
33 De mag. 3.25; cf. 3.30. This would also imply that John at some point joined the ranks of the Augustales, who alone of the exceptores were able to rise to the position of cornicularius. For this group, cf. De mag. 3.9-10; De mens. fr. 3; Kelly, "John Lydus and the Eastern Praetorian Prefecture," pp. 449-56; id., Ruling the Later Roman Empire, pp. 90-95. Note also that at De mag. 3.66-67, John strongly hints also that he served as matricularius (keeper of the personnel lists), a high post below the cornicularius), and Photius (cod. 180) directly asserts this—see Bandy (1983), pp. xiii-xiv; cf. Caimi, p. 48; Maas, p. 34.
34 De mag. 3.30.