The Roman imperial court was virtually inseparable from Emperor's person. As such, it inevitably accompanied any Emperor on his travels within the Empire. In the late 3rd century, after Rome had lost its status as the imperial city, many other cities began to serve as residences of Emperors, who found themselves frequently on the move. An obvious question concerns possible motivations of Emperors to travel. Energetic Emperors usually did travel to personally attend places of crises or make sure that their policies were duly implemented. Up to the late 2nd century, however, their travels were not politically imperative. Also, we may well ask ourselves, whether every member of the court had to be on the move along with the Emperor, especially in conditions of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, when the court experienced a rapid growth in size. Our sources supply only meagre informations, leaving us with mere guesswork for answering this question. For the same reason, the questions of speed, frequency or difficulties of such travels are open to speculations, too.
The eunuchs at the imperial court of the Late Roman Empire generally appeared to ancient authors to be a destructive element in the decision-making and executive processes at the highest level of government. Especially the 'praepositus sacri cubiculi' is often descibed by our sources as an 'eminence grise' behind a weak emperor, or at any rate a bad influence at the court. This is why eunuchs as a social group tended to be despised or mocked even by otherwise fair-minded and unbiased authors. Furthermore, a myth was created about innate or acquired bad personal qualities of all eunuchs. In sum, there may have been no other social group in the empire that was generally disliked that much. Ancient authors overlook multitudes of menial eunuchs with low social standing, who were no influence whatsoever, because these were of no interest to them. Likewise, there were notable exceptions to the picture about greedy, effeminate, malicious castrated chamberlains, prone to cruelty and abuse of power, and some of the reliable historians mention them. Access to power and handling of it was indeed what mattered most in the evaluation of the eunuchs by our sources; the other features, such as the ethnical or cultural otherness, or the physical defect itself, or humble origin, seem to be far less significant.
The Germanic tribes which lived on the both banks of the Rhine in the first century CE had different experiences with the Roman empire, and often, they were not entirely sure which attitude toward Rome they should adopt: whether unambiguously positive or negative. Their ambivalent attitudes were thus characterized by the symptomatic hatred directed toward the Roman occupation of the Germanic territory on the one hand, and by the awe before the Roman authorities on the other.
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