On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court

the most distinguished professor, who had been accustomed to frequent it from early youth, to publish a work hitherto unpublished. Previously, Io. Henric. Maius Johann Heinrich Mai, formerly a professor of Greek and Oriental languages at the Academy of Giessen, had attempted the same thing. In the Catalog of the manuscripts of the bibliotheca Uffenbachiana Uffenbach Library which he compiled, he testifies that he had prepared a Latin translation of this book, and provides a sure hope of an edition. But that effort collapsed with his death, nor is it known what became of his translation. A specimen of it, from which it might be judged, is held in the aforementioned catalog and in Fabricius. With a somewhat more auspicious omen, therefore, the famous Leichius Leich, a man most learned in Greek and Latin, and well-versed in all ancient and modern history, undertook the edition of this most desired work. He first gave hope of it in the year 1743 in his booklet de Diptychis veterum on the diptychs of the ancients, pages 10 and following, where he published the entire forty-second chapter of the second book in both languages; he began the edition itself two years later. From that Ed. L. II time, the printing progressed, intercepted by various impediments, until at last, at the beginning of the summer of last year, the force of an acute illness took away the most learned editor, worthy of a longer life and promising excellent things, in the flower of his age. At that time, the printers had reached page 216 of this edition. The responsibility for completing the edition then devolved upon me, by the kind judgment of great men regarding my progress. Therefore, whatever pages follow the one I mentioned were printed under my eyes, and God willing, the rest will be printed hereafter.

§. 2. Regarding the subject matter of the book. If any book useful for knowing the August Roman and Byzantine history has been published in this century, or I might almost say ever, this is certainly it. Nor did the learned burn with desire for it without reason, once they understood its subject matter and value. And certainly, if one reflects within himself that this book expounds on the ceremonies of the Byzantine court, and recalls to mind how many and how varied things occur in the courts of the highest princes, and finally understands that the Byzantine court—such as it certainly was in the time of the Porphyrogeniti those born in the purple—was a shadow of the old August Roman [court]: he will easily believe the one affirming that there is no subject of ancient history, whether sacred or profane, that this book does not touch upon or illuminate.