On the Administration of the Empire (De Administrando Imperio)

God; and there, on the 15th of November, 959, he died.^16 In person, he was tall, broad-shouldered and erect in bearing, with a long face, an aquiline nose, blue^17 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 favourable and the unfavourable traditions concerning the character of Constantine VII provide no mutually incompatible elements.^18 They show him to have been a weak and retiring personality, artistic, studious and laborious. If he drank 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 the Lecapenids The family of Romanus I Lecapenus, who usurped the throne and kept Constantine in the background for over twenty years. 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 mediaeval empire of East Rome The Byzantine Empire.

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 encouragement of learning and research a word must be said. Himself deeply versed in classical learning,^19 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.^20 To the latter branch, which was principally concerned with the study of history,^21 he devoted especial attention; and from among the graduates of his university, of which he was, after the Caesar Bardas A powerful 9th-century regent who revived the University of Constantinople, the second founder, he chose his higher bureaucrats and churchmen.^22 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!^23 How essential was it that 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!

^16 The symptoms recorded (Theophanes Continuatus, p. 464) do not seem to support the later allegation that he was poisoned.
^17 Theophanes Continuatus, p. 468, if that is what original: "χαροποιούς" "bright" or "joyful" means here; but compare Genesis 49:12, where the reference is to wine-induced brightness, and may in Theophanes Continuatus covertly refer to the emperor’s original: "φιλοινία" love of wine.
^18 Rambaud, cited work, pp. 41, 42.
^19 Zonaras, (Bonn edition), III, p. 483.
^20 Theophanes Continuatus, p. 446; De Administrando Imperio Constantine VII's manual on foreign policy, "On Administering the Empire", Preface, line 6 and following.
^21 Theophanes Continuatus, p. 211.
^22 Theophanes Continuatus, pp. 446, 447; Cedrenus, II, p. 326.
^23 De Administrando Imperio, Chapter 1, line 6.