This article offers to paint a picture of the ancient or new elites in Roman late imperial courts (Vth c. A.D.), by enlighting the ‘power balances’ (N. Elias) as a constituent part of the aulic system. The point is not to study the daily life at court or its standardized ceremonial but its nature of interface, in the middle of a dynamic reshaping of the Western elites in late Antiquity. In this way, the study of the imperial court as a space and a system of power in the Vth century, through the profil of high functionaries and members of honor, could allow us to better understand the great changes which took place in Western Mediterranean. With this in mind, could we say that the imperial court reveals also – if not better – these socio-political changes or is this structure just a living museum of an immutable romanity? Indeed, the imperial court belongs to a grey area in terms of power but it tends to establish itself more and more as an institution as we can see by studying the imperial legislation and the way that emperors confer honorific titles. To understand these realities, we have to examine the social composition of these Western courts in late Roman Empire. We know that the implication of the older senatorial elites in the highest positions of the palatial administration could enlight some several aspects of their link to the central power during the last moments of the Western Roman Empire.
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