[Footnote 115: I think the usual account of the matter is that which I have given elsewhere (Italy and her Invaders, i. 227), that the Comes had military command in the Diocese and the Dux in the Province. But on closer examination I cannot find that the Notitia altogether bears out this view. It gives us for the Western Empire eight Comites and twelve Duces. The former pretty nearly correspond to the Dioceses, but the latter are far too few for the Provinces, which number forty-two, excluding all the Provinces of Italy. Besides, in some cases the jurisdiction appears to be the same. Thus we have both a Dux and a Comes Britanniarum, and the Dux Mauritaniae Caesariensis must, one would think, have held command in a region as large or larger than the Comes Tingitaniae. Again, we have a Comes Argentoratensis and a Dux Moguntiacensis, two officers whose power, one would think, was pretty nearly equal. The same may perhaps be said of the Comes Litoris Saxonici in Britain and the Dux Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani in Gaul. While recognising a _general_ inferiority of the Dux to the Comes, I do not think we can, with the Notitia before us, assert that the Provincial Duces were regularly subordinated to the Diocesan Comes, as the Provincial Consulares were to the Diocesan Vicarius. And the fact that both Comes and Dux were addressed as Spectabilis rather confirms this view.] Besides these three classes of dignitaries, the _Castrensis_, who was a kind of head steward in the Imperial household, and most of the Heads of Departments in the great administrative offices, such as the _Primicerius Notariorum_ and the _Magistri Scriniorum_[116], bore the title of Spectabilis. We have perhaps hardly sufficient data for an exact calculation, but I conjecture that there would be as many as fifty or sixty Spectabiles in the Kingdom of Theodoric. [Footnote 116: Probably, from the order in which they are mentioned by the Notitia.] It appears to me that the epithet _Sublimis_ (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is used as synonymous with Spectabilis[117]. [Footnote 117: Sublimis occurs in the superscription of the following letters: i. 2; iv. 17; v. 25, 30, and 36; ix. 11 and 14; xii. 5.] [Sidenote: Clarissimi.]