On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court

that it will turn the studies of learned men toward itself and exercise them. It will please one, if I am not mistaken, to illuminate from this the subject of clothing, another the coinage, and another the offices of the August house. For although those things which were in use in the time of our Leo and Constantine differ from the previous times of Theodosius and Justinian as much as the subsequent age of the Comneni and Palaeologi and the extreme age of the Byzantine empire differs from the age of our Porphyrogeniti, which is evident to anyone comparing Codinus with this work; nevertheless, those old times of the flourishing Roman empire and the Byzantine beginnings can be illuminated much more by this work than this work can be by Codinus. Furthermore, there will be those who, from the lists of rogatae imperial gifts, or annual stipends owed to palace offices and others, as well as from the lists of expenses for certain maritime expeditions undertaken against the Cretan Saracens, will estimate both the military terrestrial and maritime forces of the Byzantine empire, as it was then, and also the pecuniary [forces]. And by comparing the Greek centenaria and pounds of gold with our own money, they will discover how the wealth of the Byzantine kings differs from ours. Others will be there who will pluck from this certain singular chapters of discussions; for example, what was the constitution of the Circensian games among the Byzantines, a very obscure matter; and, which is no less [obscure], what was the part, or retinue, of the Byzantine Augustae; whether those Emperors were anointed after the example of the Latins; how far the Latin language prevailed in the Constantinopolitan court, and whether those speeches delivered by the newly proclaimed Emperors from the tribunal or the circus to the soldiers, which are read in our edition from page 239 onwards, were recited to the Greeks in the same words, or rather were originally spoken in Latin and then converted into the Greek language by Petrus Magister Peter the Master; which indeed seems probable to me. The part I have mentioned is significant, and by editing it, I feel that I have edited a small part of a most desired work, which had long been considered lost. No one is unaware that our Constantine devoted diligent effort to collecting and digesting the decrees and memorable passages of the ancients into certain titles. There were once fifty-three such titles. To us, however, nothing has arrived except the twenty-seventh title, On Legations, complete, through the work of Fulvius Ursinus and David Hoeschelius; and a part of the fiftieth title, whose inscription is On the probity and depravity of character, or On virtues and vices, through the benefit of Peirescius and Henricus Valesius. The remaining titles of that great, but also most useful, work are believed to have perished in an irreparable loss. But what if I were to contend that with this volume, which I am now editing, I am delivering to the hands of learned men the first title of the aforementioned work, if not complete, at least a large part of it? It once dealt περὶ βασιλέων ἀναγορεύσεως on the proclamation of Emperors and kings, as is evident from Fabricius's Bibl. Graec. Tom. VI. page 492. Yet chapters 91 and following of this volume, from page 238 to page 251, not only convey in general the ceremonies distinctly by which Emperors were accustomed to be proclaimed there in the first age of Constantinople, but also in particular, they follow the proclamations of Leo the Great, Leo the Less, Anastasius Dicorus, Justin the Elder, and Justinian the Great so clearly that nothing can be desired, and they ignite a brilliant light for that part of history. I, indeed, do not believe that there exists anywhere a place in ancient monuments that explains the rites of proclaiming Emperors—those truly ancient and purely Roman ones—as splendidly as the part of our work about which I am now speaking. Everything about it breathes antiquity: the speeches to the most brave armies, the Augustan promises, the acclamations of the soldiers and the people. Whoever compares these with the writers of the so-called Historia Augusta History of the Emperors will not be able to contemplate without pleasure the image of ancient Rome in the new. Whatever may be the case regarding my conjecture, whether that part of which I speak formerly belonged to the first title of that huge and celebrated Constantinian Library, or, if you prefer, the Pentecontateuchus collection of fifty titles, or not; I, for one, do not doubt that it was plucked from some other ancient, significant book, the loss of which scholars of antiquities bear with great difficulty; namely, from the books of Petrus Magister, a most illustrious man, the master of sacred offices under Justinian the Great, and also subsequently an envoy to the kings of the Goths in Italy and to Chosroes of the Persians, which Suidas praises as περὶ πολιτικῆς καταστάσεως on the constitution of civil government. Procopius mentions the man quite often, as does Cassiodorus. Nor