De Administrando Imperio
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The emperor
Constantine VII Perphyrogenitus (905 – 959) was the second and only surviving
son of the emperor Leo VI, surnamed the Wise, (866 – 912) by his mistress and
later fourth wife, Zoe Carbunopsina.
For the next 14
years he governed, or seemed to govern: for the substance of power appears to
have been in the Augusta Helen, of the hetaeriarch Basil Peteinos, of the
eparch Theophilus, of the sacellarius Joseph Bringas, and of the protovestiary
Basil, the emperor’s illegitimate brother-in-law. These made or marred – for
the traditions are conflicting – the internal administration. The church was
scandalized by the impieties of the worldly patriarch Theophylact; he, dying in
956, was succeeded by Polyeuctus, who soon showed that stiff-necked king Stork
might be worse trouble then disreputable king Log. But abroad the imperial
forces, under the leadership of Bardas Phocas and his two sons, and of the
protovestiary Basil, continued, with occasional set-backs, that glorious career
which had begun with the accession of Michael III and was to terminate only
with the death of Basil II. The sole major disaster recorded of the reign was the
failure of a costly but ill-led expedition against
During these years, emperor devoted himself with tireless zeal to the minutiae of every department of administration, and to the punctilious observance of every kind of imperial ritual. His greatest personal contributions to the prosperity of his empire were externally, in the sphere of diplomacy, and internally, in the encouragement of higher education. His relaxations were the pursuits which had always lain next his heart, and which, during the long years of his enforced seclusion, he had been able to cultivate without interruption: art, literature, history and antiquities. He found domestic happiness in the society of his three daughters, whom he tenderly loved; nor is there evidence that his relations with his wife were other than uniformly affectionate, despite the difference of temperament. With his only son Romanus he was not so fortunate. To fit the youth for his future lofty station, he lavished on him a wealth of minute instruction which was probably excessive. The boy is said to have grown up weak and even vicious; but the accounts are conflicting, and he died in the age of 24.
By the age of 54 the emperor was old and worn out. His 14 years of power had been years of ceaseless toil, and his infirmities grew fast upon him. A quarrel with Polyeuctus, whom he seems to have had in mind to depose, occasioned a journey to the monks and hermits of the Bythinian Olympus; and from the he learned the mournful tidings of his own approaching dissolution. He dragged himself back to the City guarded of God; and there, on the 15th of November he died. In person, he was tall, broad-shouldered and erect in bearing, with a long face, an aquiline nose, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. Of stainless morals, deep piety and unremitting devotion to duty, he was an emperor after the hearts of his people, who testified their affection by a spontaneous outburst of grief at his funeral.
The favorable
and the unfavorable traditions concerning the character of Constantine VII
provide no mutually incompatible elements. They show him to be a weak and
retiring personality, artistic, studious and laborious. If he drunk wine to
excess, it was his antidote to shyness. If he had fits of severity, even of
cruelty, they were the obverse of his diffidence. His love of learning was
inherited from his father, and was confirmed by seclusion. His lack of
self-confidence was inveterated by his long durance in the hands of Lecapenids.
Yet in those years he was amassing a wealth of historical and antiquarian
knowledge which bore fruit in those encyclopedic manuals and historical studies
to which we owe the chief part of our knowledge of the machinery and
organization of the medieval empire of
His achievements in the cultural field were indeed immense. Of his patronage of the manual arts this is no place to speak. But of his encouragements of learning and research a word must be said. Himself deeply versed in classical learning, his liberal intelligence comprehended both the theoretical and the practical aspects of knowledge, the knowledge which was good in itself, and the knowledge which was necessary to enable the practical man to arrive at a correct decision in the affairs of life. To the later branch, which was principally concerned with the study of history, he devoted especial attention; and from among the graduates oh his university, of which he was, after the Caesar Bardas, second founder, hi chose his higher bureaucrats and churchmen. To this practical education he naturally subjected his son Romanus also. If such knowledge was important for the governed in the conduct of their individual, everyday lives, how much more important was it for him who should govern all! How essential was it decisions which would affect the whole world should be dictated by the utmost practical wisdom, sharpened by the widest experience and knowledge of every similar decision or parallel set of circumstances in the past!
This belief in
the practical value of learning and education, which is set out at full in the
preface to the De Administrando Imperio
and repeated in many subsequent parts of the book, was, of course, derived
through Plutarch from Aristotle; and the method of education through the early
inculcation of precept, which is illustrated in the long series of medieval
manuals of gnomic wisdom, goes back ultimately to the Ad Demonicum of the Pseudo-Isocrates, which, with Latin Disticha of Cato, formed the basis of
primary education throughout later medieval and renaissance Europe. But to
With tireless zeal he set about the enormous task of creating such material, and set about it in three ways: first, in diligent search for and collection of books, of which the supply was quite inadequate; second, by the compilation of anthologies and encyclopedias from such books as existed but were too tedious or prolix for any but a scholar to read; third, by writing or causing to be written histories of recent events and manuals of technical instruction of the various departments of business or administration. A school of historians wrote beneath his eye, sometimes at his dictation. Documents from the files of every branch of the administration, from the foreign ministry, the treasury, the offices of ceremonial, were scrutinized and abstracted.
Provincial
governors and imperial envoys wrote historical and topographical reports on the
areas of their jurisdiction or assignment. Foreign ambassadors were diligently
questioned as to the affairs of their respective countries. From every quarter
the tide of information rolled in, was co-ordinated and written down. Learning
became the key of worldly advancement. The principle ;aid down by illiterate
Basil I found its ultimate fulfillment in the educational reforms of his
scholarly grandson. This is the true glory of the Porphyrogenitus. Among the
great emperors who enriched the middle-Byzantine heritage between A.D. 843 and
1204, none is to be compared with Constantine VII, for depth in scholarship,
catholicity of interest or fineness of taste. Of the last, his Life of his grandfather is a unique
memorial. It was Constantine who amassed the libraries from which his
successors acquired their learning. With him
The De Administrando Imperio, to give this nameless treatise the Latin title attached to it by Meursius, was written and compiled as we know from internal evidence, between the years 948 to 952. It is a manual of kingcraft addressed to the youthful Romanus, the emperor’s son, and is in form like numerous other contemporary manuals on various subjects, avowedly didactic. It aims at teaching the youth to be wise sovereign, first by a knowledge of past and present affairs, and second by giving him a summary of the experiences of others in circumstances analogous to those likely to surround himself; so that knowing what policies have succeeded or failed in the past, he may himself be able to act prudently and successfully in the future. The matter of this teaching is a political and historical survey of very wide extent, suitable to the training of one who is to rule the world. The preface divides it into four sections: the first, a key to foreign policy in the most dangerous and complicated area of the contemporary political scene, the area of the “northerners and Scytians”; the second, a lesson in the diplomacy to be pursued in dealing with the nations of the same area; the third and the longest, a comprehensive historical and geographical survey of the nations surrounding the empire, starting with the Saracens to the southeast, fetching a compass round the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and ending with the Armenian states on the eastern frontier; the fourth, a summary of recent internal history, politics and organization, within the borders of the empire. Upon the whole, these divisions are adhered to in the text as we have it.
The method of compilation has been elucidated in detail in the General Introduction to the Commentary. These findings can here be very briefly summarized. The work as we have it now, is a rifacimento of an earlier work which corresponds to chapters 14 – 42 in the present arrangement. This earlier work was a historical and antiquarian treatise probably entitled ПЕРИ ЕТНОН, which the emperor had compiled during the 940’s as a companion volume to his ПЕРИ ТЕМАТОН. As the Пери Тематон described the origins, antiquities and topography of the imperial provinces, so the Пери Етнон told the traditional, sometimes legendary, story of how the territory surrounding the empire came in the past centuries to be occupied by their present inhabitants (Saracens, Lombards, Venetians, Slavs, Magyars, Pechenegs). These chapters, than, are the earliest parts of D.A.I. The remaining parts of the book (except for a few chapters – 23-25, 48, 52, 53 and perhaps 9 and 30 – of source material included oversight) are notices of a different kind: they are political directives, illustrated by contemporary or nearly contemporary examples.
Chapter 1-8, 10-12, explain imperial policy towards the Pechenegs and Turks.
…
(Dumbarton Oaks: Center for Byzantium studies/ Trusees for Harvard University; Washington, District of Columbia 1967)
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