Let us suppose our traveler to be concerned in some commerce which brought him to the centres of local government throughout the Western Empire. Let him have to visit Paris, Toledo, Ravenna, Arles. He has, let us say, successfully negotiated some business in Spain, which has necessitated his obtaining official documents. He must, that is, come into touch with _officials_ and with the actual _Government_ in Spain. Two hundred years before he would have seen the officials of, and got his papers from, a government directly dependent upon Rome. The name of the Emperor alone would have appeared on all the papers and his effigy on the seals. Now, in the sixth century, the papers are made out in the old official way and (of course) in Latin, all the public forces are still Roman, all the civilization has still the same unaltered Roman character; has anything changed at all? Let us see. To get his papers in the Capital he will be directed to the “_Palatium_.” This word does not mean “Palace.” When we say “palace” today we mean the house in which lives the real or nominal ruler of a monarchical state. We talk of Buckingham Palace, St. James’ Palace, the Palace in Madrid, and so on. But the original word _Palatium_ had a very different meaning in late Roman society. It signified the _official seat_ of Government, and in particular the centre from which the writs for Imperial taxation were issued, and to which the proceeds of that taxation were paid. The name was originally taken from the Palatine Hill in Rome, on which the Cæsars had their private house. As the mask of private citizenship was gradually thrown off by the Emperors, six hundred to five hundred years before, and as the commanders-in-chief of the Roman Army became more and more true and absolute sovereigns, their house became more and more the official centre of the Empire. The term “_Palatium_” thus became consecrated to a particular use. When the centre of Imperial power was transferred to Byzantium the word “_Palatium_” followed it; and at last it was applied to _local centres_ as well as to the Imperial city. In the laws of the Empire then, in its dignities and honors, in the whole of its official life, the _Palatium_ means the machine of government, local or imperial. Such a traveler as we have imagined in the middle of the sixth century comes, then, to that Spanish _Palatium_ from which, throughout the five centuries of Imperial rule, the Spanish Peninsular had been locally governed. What would he find?