Imperial Systematization of the Past Emperor Constantine VII and His Historical Excerpts

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1 Imperial Systematization of the Past Emperor Constantine VII and His Historical Excerpts Doctoral Thesis by András Németh Submitted to Central European University Department of Medieval Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Niels Gaul Budapest, Hungary 2010

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3 Contents Contents List of Figures List of Tables Abbreviations i v vi vii Introduction 1 Survey of Previous Scholarship Structure of the Thesis The Quest for Patterns in History I Constantinian Excerpts 15 1 The Byzantine Context Tradition and Innovation Citations in Thematic Arrangement Summaries: Photios and Abridged Historians Innovative Combination of the Traditions Historians in Tenth-century Lexicography Par. suppl. gr. 607A Haimodein Lexicon Suda Lexicon Priorities in Selecting Historians Historical Preference in Constantine s Treatises Historical Preference Points in the Suda Selection of Material for the Constantinian Excerpts The Use of the Constantinian Excerpts? De thematibus and the Constantinian Excerpts DAI and the Constantinian Excerpts Selection of the Fifty-Three Subjects The Singular Universality of the Number Fifty-three Ideological Basis for Using Fifty-Three The Mathematical Justification for Fifty-three Inconsistent Elements The Constantinian Subjects Hagiography and Church Matters Emperors i

4 Contents Geography and Ethnography Leisure Readings Embassies Military Affairs Historical Epigrams in the Palatine Anthology Literary Genres The Material Evidence Constantine VII s Library Revisited The Palace School and the Constantinian Excerpts Tours C 980 (T) Study of the Manuscripts Description of T The Present Structure of Gatherings and Leaves in T The Reconstructed Structure of T Decoration Structure of T The Hand of T ES: Vat. gr. 73 (V) The Present Structure of Gatherings and Leaves Reconstruction of the Tenth-century Layer Later Copies of CE ELg r False Excerptors of ELr EI Pseudo Collections of CE? Par. suppl. gr The Present and the Reconstructed Composition (P) Evidence for a Draft of the Collection On Sieges Case Study: On Sieges in Par. suppl. gr. 607 (P) The Hands of P Milan: Ambros. B 119 sup A Data Management System Prooemium to the Constantinian Excerpts Critical Edition of the Prooemium Interpretation of the Prooemium Dedicatory Poem Comparative Analysis of the Prooemium and the Poem The System of Marginal Indices Table of Contents and Main Headings Organization of Historians Table of Contents Former Paratexts in Secondary Position Cross-References Editorial Comments in T Indices Highlighting the Content Scholia Adaptation (οἰκείωσις) Wise Usage of Human Resources ii

5 Contents 3.5 Reconstructed Methodology of the Excerptors Conclusion 247 II Appendices 259 A Editorial Supplements in T 261 A.1 Paratexts from the Exemplars A.2 Cross References A.3 Scholia A.4 Notes: the Excerptors Working Method A.5 Marginal Indices A.5.1 Josephus Flavius A.5.2 George the Monk A.5.3 John Malalas A.5.4 John of Antioch A.5.5 Diodorus of Sicily A.5.6 Nicolas of Damascus A.5.7 Herodotus A.5.8 Thucydides A.5.9 Xenophon A.5.10 Dionysius of Halicarnassus A.5.11 Polybius A.5.12 Appian A.5.13 Cassius Dio A.6 Critical Marks B The Siege of Tyre 317 Abbreviations C Glossary of Technical Terms 327 III Bibliography 331 Manuscripts 335 Primary Sources 339 IV Plates 377 iii

6 List of Figures 2.1 Explanation on the use of codicological reconstructions Ruling types in T T (1) T (2) T (3) T (4) T (5) The hand of the main scribe in T V: unit a V: unit b V: unit c V: unit d V: unit e V: unit f V: unit g Stemma of ELg r P: ff P: ff P, ff P: ff P: ff P, ff P, ff P, ff Reconstructions of 3b (P, ff ) Stemma: De obsidionibus Historical speeches in Ambros. B 119 sup The iambic dedicatory poem in T The End of Eunapios and the beginning of Polybius in V Minuscule cross-references in T Nicolas of Damascus in T C.1 Contemporary representations of Constantine VII C.2 T, 101r: The title page of Diodorus of Sicily C.3 The title page of Appianus (T, 272r) C.4 Leipzig, Univ. Rep. I 17: Headpieces C.5 Florence, Plut. 55,4: Headpiece decorations C.6 Basil II s Menologion (Vat. gr. 1613, p. 410) C.7 Parallel frontispieces to T iv

7 List of Figures C.8 The iambic poem addressing Constantine VII C.9 Constantine VII s preface in Buxellensis , f. 2r C.10 Constantine VII s preface in Scorialensis R.III.14, f. 1r C.11 John of Antioch, title page (EI : Par. gr. 1666) C.12 John of Antioch, title page (EI : Scorialensis Ω.I.11) C.13 Facsimile of the De obsidionibus C.14 The epigram in Par. suppl. gr. 607, f. 91r C.15 Cross references in T C.16 Editorial notes in T v

8 List of Tables 0.1 Historians in CE Parallel passages in works by Constantine VII Sardanapalus in CE and other works Historical anecdotes in DAI and De thematibus Constantine VII s subjects Sardanapalus epitaph in T Excerpted oracles from Herodotus in the Palatine Anthology The structure of the burnt archetype of ELr g (Θ.I.4) The structure of Scorialensis Ω.I The sequence of the historians in EI Joint collection of artillery and historical excerpts on sieges Majuscule slips in P (Thucydides) Patterns of omissions in Arrianus in P The structure of Ambros. B 119 sup References in the apparatus to the prooemium and to the iambic poem Iambic poem and prooemium Table of contents in T (EV 1, 2 3) Headings of historiogaphers in T Patterns of historiographical categories in EV and EI Two suggestions for the sequence of the historians in V Marginalia highlighting proverbs in Polybius Shared patterns of adaptation in ELr and Suda Lexicon Scholia interpolated in the body text in T Scholium from Josephus Flavius in T The Prokopios excerpt 5 in ELr Coherent gaps in Prokopios excerpts Distribution of excerpts in Prokopios s Wars Distribution of excerpts in Theophylaktos Simokattes Distribution of excerpts in Polybius vi

9 Abbreviations The sigla of the most frequently quoted manuscripts P Par. suppl. gr. 607 T Tours, Municipal Library, C 980 V Vat. gr. 73 The abbreviations used in the thesis BHG Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, ed. F. Halkin, 4 vols. Brussels, CE Constantinian Excerpts in general (cf. EI, ELg r, ES, EV) CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum CPL Clavis Patrum Latinorum DAI De administrando imperio, ed. by Moravcsik (1967) De them. De thematibus, ed by Pertusi (1952) EI Excerpta de insidiis, ed. C. de Boor. In: Excerpta Historica..., vol. iii. Berlin: Weidmann, ELg Excerpta de legationibus gentium ad Romanos, ed. C. de Boor. In: Excerpta Historica..., vol. i, part 2. Berlin: Weidmann, ELr Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum ad gentes, ed. C. de Boor. In: Excerpta Historica..., vol. i, part 1. Berlin: Weidmann, ES Excerpta de sententiis, ed. U. Ph. Boissevain. In: Excerpta Historica..., vol. iv. Berlin: Weidmann, EV 1 2 Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis, part 1, ed. Th. Büttner-Wobst, part 2, ed. Theodor Büttner-Wobst and A. G. Roos. In: Excerpta Historica..., vol. ii, Berlin: Weidmann, 1906 (part 1) and 1910 (part 2). FGrHist Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby. Berlin: Weidmann, FHG Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, 5 vols, ed. C. Müller. Paris: Didot, Lake Lake, K. and S. Lake. Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200, 10 vols. Boston, Index. Boston, LSJ Liddell H. G., R. Scott, and H. S. Jones. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, PG Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, 161 vols, ed. J. P. Migne. Paris, RGK 1 3 Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten, , ed. E. Gamillscheg and D. Harlfinger. Part. 1. Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Großbritanniens; part. 2. Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Frankreichs und Nachträge zu den Bibliotheken Großbritanniens; part. 3. Handschriften aus Bibliotheken Roms mit dem Vatikan. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vii

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11 Constantine [... ] occupied himself also with literature. There exist letters from his hand which demonstrate his education, and logically composed speeches. There are treatises which miss the professional touch of expression but show not the slightest hesitation in applying every rhetorical figure. Rhythms and all sorts of metres had his attention. At any rate, when his wife had died, he honoured her with an iambic poem and he published other similar artful poems. [... ] he exercised a great interest in theoretical matters and also had companions at dinner in the same way as Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily had surrounded himself with men who shared his interests... Psellos, Historia syntomos, 102, tr. Aerts (1990), 95 Introduction The purpose of this thesis is to explore the innovative and, at the same time, conservative concepts and vehicles by which Byzantine imperial power was manifested in an extraordinary project initiated and overseen by the Byzantine emperor, Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos ( born in the purple, in 905). This project involved the deconstruction of a vast corpus of prior historical writings in Greek into small sections and reconstructing them in a newly arranged systematic order. This intricate editorial endeavour seems to have commenced in the early 940s, was mainly carried out during Constantine s reign as sole emperor ( ), accomplished later in the early years of Basil II ( ), and resulted in the substantial collections of historical extracts known as the Constantinian Excerpts (henceforth, CE). This imperially sponsored project, contrasted with traditional methods of preserving and transmitting knowledge, invites attempts at coherent scholarly explanation. The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the ideological and methodological background of CE. As will be demonstrated for the first time, the fact that CE were classified into fifty-three subjects is not a coincidence. Fifty-three expressed the historical success of Rome, that is Byzantium, because Rome conquered the Mediterranean world within fifty-three years ( BC), according to the concept emphasized by Polybius in his Histories. As Constantinople regarded herself as the heir of Rome, Constantine VII may easily have adopted this concept in his imperial ideology. For a project of systematizing, fifty-three proved useful for a scientific reason as well. By simultaneously being a prime number, which can be divided by 1

12 INTRODUCTION one and itself, and the sum of five consecutive primes ( ), fiftythree successfully expressed the idea of completeness. At the same time, prime numbers were regarded as the indivisible particles of the universe. Thus, the number of the subjects granted success to CE, a new tool which seems to have been designed for the purpose of discovering various patters in the history of mankind by systematically juxtaposing different historical passages of a similar context. In addition to the ideological purposes, the selection of the fifty-three subjects consciously broke with traditional methods of structuring a historical narrative. These methods included the chronological arrangement of chronicles as practiced by George the Synkellos and Theophanes Confessor in the ninth century; the presentation of particular historical events as modelled by the classicizing historians of the Late Antiquity (Prokopios, Agathias, Menander Protector, and Theophylaktos Simokattes); and the biographical arrangement of either classical pagan or hagiographical traditions. Neither did the new method involve producing summaries of the texts, which was also a traditional solution for abbreviating extensive works, followed by Photios in his Bibliotheca a couple of generations earlier. Instead, the new project intended to adopt the solution, which was mainly available in dogmatic florilegia, of arranging verbatim citations in the form of excerpts according to the subject of the passages. The innovative aspect of this methodology mainly lies in the attempt to innovatively combine the advantages of the summaries and the arrangement according to the subject. As a borrowing from the tradition of summarizing, the narrative sequence was carefully followed and every passage was intended to be assigned to one or another of the fifty-three subjects which were designed to cover all significant aspects of the universe. It was, thus, the newly established canon of fiftythree subjects that offered a guideline to the emperor s employees to accommodate a vast selection of historiography to an ideologically charged view of history. To modern observers, the entire project may easily seem bizarre as regards both its scope and its peculiar approach to previous historiography. The ambitious scheme covered the complete works of at least twenty-six historians ranging in date from 2

13 INTRODUCTION Table 0.1.: Historians in CE name period works EV ES ELr ELg EI Herodotus (BC ) Histories 7 (9) Thucydides (BC ) His life by Marcellinus, History of 8 (10) Pelop. War Xenophon (BC ) Cyr., An. 9 a1 Polybius (BC ) Roman History ( BC) 12 b5 5 (1) (7) Diodorus Siculus (BC 90 30) Bibliotheca Historica 5 e1 9 (7) (5) Dionysius of Hal. (1st c BC AD) Ant. Rom (6) Nicolas of Damascus (1st c BC AD) Autobiography, Histories, Life of 6 1 Augustus Josephus Flavius (AD ) AJ, BJ, Ap., De Macchabeis, Vit. 1 8 (2) Arrianus (AD 85/90 131) Anab. Alexandri, Diadochi, 10 b3 (10b) (15) Parthica Iamblichus (AD 2nd c) Babylonian History c2 Appianus (AD 115/7 61) Hann., Hisp., Ill., Mac., Mith., 13 g1 (16) Pun., Sam., Syr. Cassius Dio (AD? 223/4) Roman History 14 f1 10 (8) Dexippus (AD ) Diadochi, Skhytika, World Chronicle c1 (4) ( 270) Eunapios of Sardis (AD ) Histories ( ) b4 (19) Sokrates (AD ) Church History ( ) (5) Priskos of Panion (AD 5th c) Histories 12 Zosimos (AD 5th c) Pagan history until (3) Prokopios (AD ) Pers., Vand., Goth. Wars b2 11 (14) Peter the Patrician (AD ) Roman History (44 BC AD 361) d1 1 (6) Malalas (AD ) World chronicle 3 (18) 3 Malchos of Phil. (AD 5th 6th c) Byzantiaka 13 (17) Agathias of Myrina (AD ) Histories (552 9) a2 (11) Menander Protector (AD 6th c) Histories (558 82) a3 14 (12) Theophylaktos Simoc. (AD 580s 641) Histories ( ) b1 15 (13) John of Antioch (AD 6th 7th c) World Chronicle George the Monk (AD 9th c) World Chronicle Abbr. = Latin name of collection English translation EV = Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis On virtue and vice ES = Excerpta desententiis On gnomic statements ELg = Excerpta de legationibus gentium ad Romanos On the embassies of Romans to the barbarians ELr = Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum ad gentes On the embassies of barbarians to the Romans EI = Excerpta de insidiis On ambushes The numbers below the abbreviations of each extant collection show the place of each historian within each collection. In EV and ELr, the number shows the tenth-century arrangement of the authors. In ES, the sequence of groups (a g) cannot be reconstructed but the arrangement within them (1 5) is ascertained by the careful study of the codex. In ELg and EI, the tenth-century sequence cannot be reconstructed with precision. In column three, shows the texts that have been almost entirely preserved only in CE or dependent texts; indicates that the proportion exclusively preserved in CE is significant. the fifth century BC to the AD ninth century (for a chronological list, see tab. 0.1). As part of the project, the selected historical works were divided into small sections; each section was then, in turn, assigned to one of the fifty-three predefined subjects, while carefully observing the coherent sense of the new excerpts. The principles of systematization behind the assemblage of these concise sections into fifty-three thematic groups reflect what subjects fascinated the close-knit circle around the emperor. 1 1 On intellectuals, scholars, and the imperial circle under Constantine VII, see Markopoulos (1989). 3

14 INTRODUCTION To accomplish this idiosyncratic plan in a relatively short time, Constantine VII had to employ a considerable number of learned men and make a huge financial commitment. The enormous cost can be illustrated by the probably not overestimated figure of more than 10,000 sheep that had to be slaughtered and skinned to provide a sufficient amount of parchment needed to carry through the various steps of the project, always assuming the project was actually brought to the end. 2 It is worth noting that the single still extant manuscript of the final volumes of CE, nowadays in Tours (see below, Codex Peirescianus, ch. 2.2, p. 103 and app. 2.2, p. 103), does not have a single leaf exhibiting any holes or damage, which would have been present from the beginning. Any damage to the parchments such as cut and removed parchment strips in the lower margins occured in later periods. The quality of the parchment in itself is a persuasive sign of luxury and affluence in addition to the decorative features, which are restricted to simple yet attentively executed headpieces. Besides the material support, the employment of skilled men as scribes, decorators and binders (though some of these functions may have been combined in the same individual) must also have cost a considerable amount of money. Until the excerpted texts were written down in their final copies, that is, the codices designed for the imperial library, many learned men had to spend considerable effort and time to copy, read through, amend, and annotate the exemplars. They worked in a manner that was particularly careful and, at the same time, seems considerably different from what they were accustomed to judging by the traditional techniques of excerpting exercised in the ninth-tenth centuries (see ch. 1 on p. 18). The ambition of collecting artefacts, books and extracting their essence by summarizing and reorganizing the rich variety of their content seems to have charac- 2 The single extant copy, the first volume of the collection On virtue and vice, contained forty-six quaternios or more; each made of at least one sheepskin. This collection consisted of two volumes (ca. 90 sheep) and there were fifty-three collections (ca sheep). As I will demonstrate later, there must have been draft copies (ca sheep). Some collections might have been shorter than estimated, but copying the exemplars of the drafts carrying the excerpts, which also required parchment, justifies if not increases this huge number, and some collections may have been more extensive than the one On virtue and vice. 4

15 INTRODUCTION terized Constantine VII s reign. 3 In this field, literary and textual production has received much less attention than it deserves. 4 One of the main characteristics of the texts produced in the age of Constantine VII in Constantinople was that earlier texts were structured in a manner that might be interpreted as encyclopædic. 5 From this huge variety of accumulated data, the scrutiny of scholars has focused on the elements regarded by them as valuable for scholarly studies, especially those originating from the dark ages and testifying to otherwise unknown events, 6 rather than on the tenth-century mentality which shaped the collected data in its own particular way. Thus, the content of CE overshadowed the tasks of Constantine VII s court, an undertaking which, nevertheless, left its traces on these valuable remnants of the past. A core aim of this thesis is to recognize definitive patterns in these traces and interpret these patterns in a way that allows the reader to better understand the tenth-century mindset directing the movements of the hands that shaped these excerpted historical texts. In addition to the underlying financial commitment, a special and well defined data management system was invented to serve as the basis for the collaboration of the educated men who collected the excerpts, reorganized them through annotations, copied, and decorated them in the final volumes. The emperor employed a number of learned men, operating as a team, who hid anonymously behind the authority of their patron and ruler. This system permitted an enormous amount of data to be managed with a remarkable accuracy within a short time, necessitating 3 Cutler (1999), Constantine s curiosity concerning artefacts is described by Theophanes Continuatus vi. 15, 22 28, in Bekker (1838), 477,1 4; 450,12 452,19. See also the famous preface to Theophanes Constinuatus, ed. by Bekker (1838), and commented on by Ševčenko (1998). 4 See the few studies emphasizing the significance of the transmission of classical texts without going into detail: Dain (1954), 33 47; Wilson (1983), and Gaul (2010), with bibliography. See the recent overviews on the textual transmission from the angle of historiography by Markopoulos (2006, 2009). 5 See the interpretations by Büttner-Wobst (1906) and Lemerle (1971), E. g. Hellenistic period, late Roman and early Byzantine historiography that cover the interaction of quite a few Mediterranean states such as the Roman Empire, the heir states (diadochoi) of the conquest by Alexander the Great with their neighbouring territories encompassing a large geographical scope. In the Near East, a major emphasis was put on the history of the Persian empire. 5

16 INTRODUCTION substantial human resources which would even challenge modern technologies such as computer databases to achieve the same results. In the mid-tenth century, about a hundred years after the elevation of the Greek minuscule to the status of bookscript, the Constantinian method of restructuring the historical texts seems to have been modelled from the means of functionally juxtaposing majuscule and minuscule scripts, as well as hierarchizing them spatially between the main body of the text and the margins (see ch. 3.2). After summarizing the various scholarly approaches to CE and the structure of this thesis, I will demonstrate the innovative character of the excerptors methods. Survey of Previous Scholarship The fragmentary remains of Emperor Constantine VII s ambitious project of restructuring historical texts are highly esteemed even now, especially among scholars and students of the Hellenistic, late Roman, and early Byzantine periods, but not for the same reasons that made Emperor Constantine VII and his inner circle seem to have felt rewarded in producing and presumably also in reading them. Any scholar who now scrutinizes the history of the Mediterranean and the Near East in the period covered by Constantine s collections cannot avoid using CE because most of their disjointed historical record has not come down to us in any parallel transmission (marked with asterisks in tab. 0.1). The gratitude of the scholar, for this reason, is usually accompanied by disappointment. Countless studies have tried to puzzle out and revitalize the now fragmented works of these historians, seeing them as soulless, and, in a sense, striving to reverse Constantine s procedures. However, the textual scholars rather inflexible criticism of their tenth-century Byzantine colleagues, equally shared by Byzantinists, has often hindered ambitious attempts to re-join the dislocated passages of many classical and Byzantine historians into their original form; to give one example: Paul Lemerle expresses his opinion in the most thorough handbook on ninth- and tenth century Byzantine scholarship as follows: 6

17 INTRODUCTION... the ambitious and somewhat vague intentions stated in the preface to a work which lacks originality, would lead to great disappointment, were there not the consolation of possessing so many precious texts which would otherwise have been lost. 7 From the late sixteenth century onward, more and more pieces of CE became available to a broad circle of readers who showed interest primarily in the unique fragments of otherwise lost Greek historians included in them. Their editors limited themselves to short notes on Constantine VII and his excerpting activity. These bits of information were incorporated in various handbooks and thus available for learned readers. 8 Angelo Mai s edition of the fragments of the Vatican palimpsest (Vat. gr. 73) was a milestone in the study of Greek historical excerpts. 9 The modern exploration of CE, however, started in Germany and spread very rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century. 10 This expansion was a side effect of the huge project of publishing Greek historical fragments. 11 As a result of some studies, scholars became convinced that CE had enough merit in their peculiar arrangement to be published as they were. Anyone now investigating the CE owes a debt of gratitude to Carl de Boor, Theodor Büttner-Wobst, Ursul Philip Boissevain, and Anton Gerard Roos, who edited the extant collections of CE, not allowing themselves to be discouraged by their compilatory character. 12 The value of their editions has been emphasized by their recent reprints. 13 The approach 7 Lemerle s opinion, disseminated in his widely quoted book (Le premier humanisme byzantin: Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture à Byzance des origines au Xe siècle), published first in a French edition in 1971 as a basic handbook for studying ninth-tenth century Byzantine literature, demonstrates the ambivalent approach to Constantine s project that also persists in Byzantine studies. Lemerle (1971), 288; the quotation is taken from the English translation by Helen Lindsay and Ann Moffatt in Lemerle (1986), See the list of earlier editions in the Bibliography: Orsini 1582, Hoeschel 1603, 1648 (this was republished in CSHB 19, Bonn, 1829 and later in PG 113), Valois See also Cramer (1839) s edition of the excerpts of the work by John of Antioch taken from Par. gr Mai (1827), vol. 2, 1 295, Schulze (1866), Wollenberg (1861, 1871, 1882); 11 Carl Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (Paris: Firmin Didot, ), 5 vols. Ludwig Dindorf, ed., Historici Graeci Minores (Leipzig: Teubner, ), 2 vols. 12 ELr, ELg, EV 1 2, EI, and ES. 13 Hildesheim: Olms, However, both neglected the majority of the tenth-century marginal notes of the codex and did not indicate inconsistent features such as erroneous punctuation, accen- 7

18 INTRODUCTION of these editors to CE was surprisingly pioneering, compared to general tastes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philology. These scholars aimed at reconstructing Constantine s collections as a whole rather than for each historian separately, as editors before and after them preferred. As a consequence, the basic studies of these scholars on CE provide conclusive results concerning their editorial work, unsurpassed by later attempts. 14 The idea of encyclopædism, advanced in the 1950s and 1960s, 15 and has been disseminated through various handbooks on the Byzantine culture, 16 could not improve on the understanding of CE that had been achieved by The concept of encyclopædism as an appropriate label to describing ninth-tenth-century Byzantine text production challenged by Paolo Odorico who suggested the concept of sylloge (συλλογή = collection) to describe more accurately the Byzantine phenomenon of accumulating various types of knowledge. 17 Jean Irigoin s and Peter Schreiner s special studies of Constantine s manuscripts and, generally, the more sympathetic approach of scholars in recent decades towards works of compilation, especially the studies by Bernard Flusin, improved on tuation, and spelling irregularities if these oddities did not harm understanding and reconstructing the text. Furthermore because of the disordered sequence of leaves, it was not specified from which leaf the edited text was taken despite the editorial purpose of publishing the text as it appears in T. The inaccessibility of this information still forms the main obstacle to a careful analysis of the marginal entries and the scribal customs in this manuscript. 14 E.g., See de Boor (1884, 1885, 1886, 1899, 1902, 1912, ) and also his edition ELr g (Berlin: Weidmann, 1903) and EI (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905) as well as his edition of Theophylaktos Simokattes Histories (Leipzig: Teubner, 1887) and that of George the Monk s Chronicle (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904). See also Büttner-Wobst (1893, 1901, 1906) 15 Büttner-Wobst developed the concept of historische Encylopädie and employed this term throughout his article Büttner-Wobst (1906). See also the term encyclopédie... anti-historique and morale in Dain (1953) and Lemerle (1971), Flusin also reflects on the term in his analysis of CE by giving the title Les Excerpta Constantiniens: Logique d une anti-histoire to his study: Flusin (2002). 16 Lemerle s concept of encyclopædism was disseminated through handbooks such as Hunger (1978), vol. 1, 244 and ; Hannick (1986); Karpozilos (2002), ; Kazhdan (1991); Kazhdan & Angelidi (2006), See Odorico (1990). It was concluded at the symposium Encyclopaedic Trends in Byzantium held at Catholic University of Leuven in May, 2009 that the concept encyclopedism cannot successfully describe the intellectual development of ninth- and tenth-century Byzantium. However, no alternative label could be suggested instead. I express my gratitude to Nadejda Miladinova who summarized the general ideas that were concluded at the conference in Leuven. 8

19 INTRODUCTION some of de Boor s and Büttner-Wobst s achievements. 18 Some authors excerpted in CE have been the subjects of special studies. These authors include Polybius, 19 Appian, 20 Cassius Dio, 21 John of Antioch, 22 Zosimos, 23 Eunapios, 24 Dirodorus of Sicily, 25 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolas of Damascus, 26 and John Malalas. 27 Structure of the Thesis My goal within this thesis is primarily to re-study the manuscripts and analyze the tenth-century editorial additions of the excerptors. These marginal notations are mostly unpublished, although they have been transmitted in the lone tenth-century copy of CE (codex Tours C 980: hereafter: T). As I will demonstrate in the thesis using a fair number of examples from collections other than On virtue and vice (preserved in T) and from several independent authors, the conclusions obtained from the study of these marginal notes in T seem hold true for the other collections as well. Chapter One will explore the historical and intellectual context in which CE were produced. (1) First, the innovative combination of more traditional methods of compilation is specified and analyzed. (2) The significance of the marginal indices will be highlighted by examples of how Byzantine lexicography took advantage of the innovative system of annotations in the manuscripts of CE. (3) The selection 18 On manuscript transmission, see Irigoin (1959), , Irigoin (1977a), , Schreiner (1987), 1 29; Flusin (2002) gives a general overview of CE. 19 Moore (1965), Pittia (2006). 21 Mazzucchi (1979) and Molin (2004). 22 Roberto (2001), Roberto (2005a), xxxi xlv, Mariev (2006), and Mariev (2008), Forcina (1987), and Ochoa (1990). 24 Smirnova (2005). 25 Mileta (1996), Goukowsky (2006), x xxix. 26 Parmentier-Morin (2002). 27 Flusin (2004). 9

20 INTRODUCTION (ἐκλογή) of historians and the preferred historical periods shows the ideologically charged imperial view of history, which guided the procedure of systematization. (4) In addition, some examples support the hypothesis that CE served as a model for compiling some passages in Constantine VII s writings in order to enhance their style. (5) The selection of fifty-three subjects constituted an universal system and reflected the taste of the narrow imperial circle. At the same time, the selection of the subjects displays a close relationship with other writings compiled in Constantine s circle. Because of this close relationship, CE are interpreted as a database in the service of Constantine VII s other projects. The analytic presentation of the manuscripts of CE in Chapter Two serves as the material basis of my analysis of the methods employed by Constantine s team. The manuscripts transmitting CE seem to originate from the imperial court. It is argued that Basil Lekapenos the parakoimomenos, half brother to Helen, Constantine VII s wife was involved in the project of CE and he is likely to have been responsible for some final copies produced in the early years ( ) of Emperor Basil II. In addition to the most important manuscripts T and V, my survey also introduces the transmission of the sixteenth-century copies of their lost archetypes (ELr g and EI). As follows from the presentation, the various data of these manuscripts, neglected and often omitted in the editions of the excerpted historical texts, provide new valuable data for analyzing the tenth-century methods of producing CE. The Mynas codex (P) is included among the manuscripts comprising CE as unique evidence for the preparatory material for CE having been used, as argued in chs on p. 147 and on p The relationship between these excerpts and CE will be demonstrated by a comparative edition of a passage from Arrian account on the siege of Tyre (see in App. B, on p. 317). The historical excerpts in this codex support the hypothesis that military collections were circulated among learned officers of the Byzantine army. In these collections, treatises on military techniques were supplied with historical excerpts which seem to have been selected from Constantine s collections. The disproportionate emphasis given this chapter in 10