removed

I'm afraid you'll have to do a proper search. You can try that online, of course, but some advice from a professional might put you in the right direction. I'd visit the nearest academic history department (again, you can try this online). 'Cursus honorum' is a step in the right direction, but only covers the Roman period. 'Court' might be search term, but for instance in ancient Egypt scribes and priests, as well as the military could be a start for a public career. Unfortunately such things tend to differ per region, so I doubt a general work on this exists. There may be articles though.
 
Last edited:
Yeah I've seen that, but its only a few offices with obviously roman names. I was more wondering if anyone had any knowledge beyond what can be found in a wikipedia article. I can use Google just fine.

If you want a more specific answer you're going to have to give a more specific query. "Can you give me some office titles from Europe and Rome for game because *vague reasons*" doesn't really give me anything to work with. What sort of offices? From what time period? In what sort of way? Remember that offices and office hierarchy seldom sprung, fully formed from day one (à la the US), but instead usually developed organically as the land and responsibilities of a ruler or ruling class expanded. For example: King has to formulate legal documents. King has lots of other responsibilities and doesn't have time to sit down and compose and sign off on all these documents. King creates the Office of the Chancery to do this for him, and delegates to the Lord Chancellor the legal power to bestow the great seal on documents, i.e. to authorize them in his name. Kings rarely cede or delegate power willingly. Usually there is some demand (time, distance, money) that requires them to cede authority.
 
Any specific area or just 'worldwide'?

If you want a more specific answer you're going to have to give a more specific query. "Can you give me some office titles from Europe and Rome for game because *vague reasons*" doesn't really give me anything to work with. What sort of offices? From what time period? In what sort of way? Remember that offices and office hierarchy seldom sprung, fully formed from day one (à la the US), but instead usually developed organically as the land and responsibilities of a ruler or ruling class expanded. For example: King has to formulate legal documents. King has lots of other responsibilities and doesn't have time to sit down and compose and sign off on all these documents. King creates the Office of the Chancery to do this for him, and delegates to the Lord Chancellor the legal power to bestow the great seal on documents, i.e. to authorize them in his name. Kings rarely cede or delegate power willingly. Usually there is some demand (time, distance, money) that requires them to cede authority.

Administrative office seems rather clear to me. The problem is such offices vary widely over time and place.
 
Are you trying to find something that works across different countries and cultures (presumably within the post-Roman world)? If so, you may run into difficulty. A 'prince' in Wales in 1280 was a different beast to a 'prince' there in 1302, to say nothing of the difference between the princeps of the Late Roman Empire versus the princeps of any number of tiny German statelets. In 1596, the Prince of Wales was the subject of a monarch and the head of no state, while the Prince of Lichtenstein was a monarch and a head of state in his own right. In 1500, the Duke of York was a relatively minor English noble, while the Duke of Moscow was the head of a major European power.
 
Well, sort of. But for instance England had shire-reeves (sheriffs), a term which is exclusive to England, as you won't find any shires elsewhere. France had 'parlements', which were more like courts of law. So ti might be useful to limit the search somewhat, as it really is a massive subject.
 
OK. So do you want to limit the search to Western Europe or cover the whole of Europe?
 
'Greece' is going to make your life difficult - Classical Greece didn't really have 'bureaucracy' (even the Athenian public records are a bit fast-and-loose, put mildly, and suggest that people cared more about the fact that official business was put into writing than what that writing actually said) as we'd understand it, nor really any sense of 'government' as something with a structure linking the centre with 'the provinces' - which no Greek state had, with the possible exception of Sparta, which as far as we know had an essentially nonexistent state beyond the legal system and the army. You could probably pick one of the Hellenistic systems, but then you'll soon hit the very vague Roman systems, where local and imperial systems only vaguely joined up. Then you get the Byzantine period, and - well, there's a reason why the word 'Byzantine' means what it does.

I mean, if you just want Greek words for believable in-game offices, you could do worse than calling your generals 'strategoi (singular strategos)', your city-governors 'archontes' (singular archon)', your provincial governors 'episkopoi' (sing. episkopos), and your overall ruler the 'basileus'. Those would translate roughly into Latin as 'duces (dux)', 'praefecti (praefectus)', 'proconsules (proconsul)' and 'imperator'. However, you'd be doing that on the understanding that you're no longer doing history once you try to simplify how government actually worked, even in any given 'country' at any given moment, into a neat hierarchy. The Romans tried it, incidentally, and came up with this monstrosity, and even that is better thought of as a work of propaganda than a useful guide to the imperial government.
 
Last edited:
There was also the "strategos autokrator", ie a strategos (military ruler) who was (usually by voting of some council) granted total power for a brief period of time to act without having to consult with political rulers. Autokrator just means wielding power by oneself. The term later was used for Emperor, cause that was the only rank which would do that in the byzantine system, that tended to invent new offices as intermediates between the real emperor and those ceremoniously named in power as first-ranking non-emperor, eg Sebastokrator, Protosebastos, and the cooler Panyperprotopansebastohypertatos- he still was just below the actual emperor :D
 
I heard about Megadukes, and that sounds funny.
 
Top Bottom