General Introduction

The method of compilation has been elucidated in detail in the General Introduction to the Commentary⁴¹. These findings can here be very briefly summarized. The work as we have it now is a reworking original Italian: 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 On Nations original Greek: Περὶ ἐθνῶν, which the emperor had compiled during the 940s as a companion volume to his On Themes original Greek: Περὶ θεμάτων; a work describing the administrative divisions or "themes" of the empire. As the On Themes described the origins, antiquities and topography of the imperial provinces, so the On Nations told the traditional, sometimes legendary, stories of how the territories surrounding the empire came in past centuries to be occupied by their present inhabitants (Saracens, Lombards, Venetians, Slavs, Magyars, Pechenegs). These chapters, then, are the earliest parts of On Administering the Empire original Latin: De Administrando Imperio, hereafter 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 by oversight) are notices of a different kind: they are political directives, illustrated by contemporary or nearly contemporary examples. Chapters 1—8, 10—12, explain imperial policy towards the Pechenegs and Turks. Chapter 13 is a general directive on foreign policy from the emperor's own pen. Chapters 43—46 deal with contemporary policy in the north-east (Armenia and Georgia). Chapters 49—52 are guides to the incorporation and taxation of new imperial provinces, and to some parts of civil and naval administration. These later parts of the book are designed to give practical instruction to the young emperor Romanus II, and were probably added to the On Nations during the year 951—952, in order that the whole treatise might mark Romanus' fourteenth birthday (952). The book as it now stands is therefore an amalgam of two unequal parts: the first historical and antiquarian, the second political and diplomatic.

The sources of the various sections, where these are known, are noted in the apparatus the technical notes and references accompanying the text to the present volume. But the peculiar construction of the book, with its diversity of styles and often careless expression, calls for a note of explanation regarding the English translation. The chief value of the treatise to the modern historian lies in its third section, which provides information not found elsewhere about the origins and early history of many nations established on the borders of the Byzantine empire in the tenth century of our era. This information, valuable as it is, is often given in a style so careless as to leave many statements open to more than one interpretation. Chapter 39 is a notable instance of this;⁴² but there are several others. Now, these statements have been, are and probably will continue to be the subject of controversy between scholars of many nations; and it is therefore our duty as translators, at whatever cost to elegance or even in a few cases to sense, to render

⁴¹ See D. A. I. Vol. II, Commentary (London, 1962), pp. 1—8; also Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica (2nd ed.) I, pp. 361—367.
⁴² D. A. I., 39₃₋₅, ₇₋₁₀.