His title is reported as "discussor" in
Latin and
logothetēs in Greek. While clearly a financial official, normally based at
Constantinople, Alexander was reportedly sent on special missions and even assumed military duties. He may have held the additional titles of "scriniarius" (notary) or "numerarius" (accountant). His post being one specifically dealing with the military. "Furthermore, they [the Logothetai] kept grinding down the soldiers with many other forms of penalties, as though to requite them thus for the dangers incurred in the wars, charging some with being "
Greeks", as though it were wholly impossible for any man from Greece to be a decent man, others with being in the service without an order from the Emperor, even though they could show, on this point, an imperial order, which, however, the Logothetes with no hesitation had the effrontery to denounce; and others still they accused on the ground that for some days they had chanced to be absent from their comrades. Later on also some of the Palace Guards were sent out through the whole Roman Empire, and ostensibly they were in search of any among the armies who were quite unsuitable for active service; and they dared to strip the belts from some of these as being unfit or too old, and these thereafter had to beg their bread from the pious in the public square of the market-place, so that they became a constant cause for tears and lamentation on the part of all who met them; and from the rest they exacted great sums of money, to the end that they might not suffer the same fate, so that the soldiers, broken in manifold ways, had become the poorest of all men and had not the slightest zest for warfare. It was for just this reason that the Roman power came to be destroyed in
Italy." In 541, Constantianus, Alexander and nine others led the Byzantine army against the city of
Verona, a stronghold of the Ostrogoths. Their army was eventually defeated at the
Battle of Faventia (542). A letter of
Totila to the
Roman Senate mentions Alexander as an example "of imperial injustice and oppression". This seems to be the last mention of him. His fate following Faventia is unknown. == References ==