Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/539

 APPENDIX 517 The secoml Book is a much later compilation (perhaps put together in the earh- part of the eleventh century) in which some documents drawn up in the time of Constantine YIl. have been incorporated. It professes (in the Preface, p. 516) to contain matters which had never been committed to writing. It contains the descriptions of many ceremonies ; but written documents have been interpolated, contrar}- to the intention of the writer of the Preface. Thus chaps. 44 and 45 contain the returns of the expenses, <tc. , of naval armaments ; chap. 50 contains a list of themes which belongs to the reign of Leo VI. ; chap. 52, a separate treatise on the order of precedence at Imperial banquets comp)osed bv Philotheus protospatharius in a.d. 900; chap. 54 is a list of patriarchs and metropolitans drawn up bj Epiphanius of Cyprus. The Ceremonies are included in the Bonn ed. of the Byzantine writers (182'J), with Reiske's notes in a separate volume. On the composition of the work see A. Rambaud, L'empire grec au .xme siecle, p. 128 sqq., also Krumbacher, Byz. Litt. p. 254-5 ; for the elucidation of the ceremonies, &c., D. Bieliaiev, B3-zantina, vol. 2 (1893). The work on the Themes (in 2 Books, see above, p. 66 sqq.) was composed while Romanus I. was still alive, and after, probably not very long after, a.d. 934 (see Rambaud, L'empire grec au di.xieme siecle, p. 165). For an Armenian general Melias is mentioned, who was alive in 9.34, as recently dead : and the theme of Seleucia is noticed, which seems to have been formed after 934. For the contents of the book cp. below, Apjjendix 3. The treatise on the Adiainistration of the Empire is dealt with in a sejiarate note below, Aj^pendix 4. George Codinus (probably 15th century) is merely a name, associated with three works : a short, worthless chronicle (ed. Bonn, 1843) ; an account of the offices of the Imperial Court and of St. Sophia, generally quoted as De Officiix (ed. Bonn, 1839) ; the Patria of Constantinople (ed. Bonn, 1843j. But it is only with the third of these works that Codinus, whoever he was, can have an}' connexion. The Chronicle is anonymous in the Mss. , and there is no reason for ascribing it to Codinus. The Dc Officiis is likewise anonj-mous, and the attribution of it to Codinus was due to the blunder of an editor ; it is a composition of the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. As for the ndrpia K(i}VffravTivoir6€uis, Codinus may have been connected with it in the capacity of a copyist. Later Mss. give the work under his name. But he was no more than a copyi.st. The other Mss. do not know him, and the original anonymous work belongs to the end of the tenth centurv " — to the reign of Basil" II. The compilation, entitled the TlaTpia, consists of five distinct works : (1) on the founding of Constantinople and the origin of its various parts ; (2) the topography of the city ; (3) its works of art ; (4) its buildings (churches, f)alaces, hospitals, kc.) ; (5) the building of St. Sophia. In the reign of Alexius Comnenus the compilation was arranged in sections on a topographical plan ; and the famous "Anonj-mus," edited by Banduri (in the Imperium Orientale, vol. i.), is simpl.v a copy of this Comnenian edition. The chief sources of the Patria are : («) the Patria of Hesychius of Miletus; {h) TlapacTrdcreis ffvvronoi xpo^'xai, an anonj'mous work comiX)sed between the reigns of Leo III. and Theophilus ; it has been edited recently (Munich, 1898) b- Th. Preger, who is preparing an edition of the Patria ; (c) an anonymous narrative concerning St. Sophia (source of the last part of the treatise) ; (d) a lost chronicle. Edstathics, educated at Constantinople, became Archbishop of Thessalonica in 1175 ; he died c. 1193. Besides his famous commentaries on Homer, his com- mentary on Pindar, and his paraphrase of the geographical poem of Dionysius, he composed an account of the Norman siege of Thessalonica in a.d. 1185. This 7 The date a.d. 995 is furnished by a notice on p. 114, ed. B. The later Mss. contain some additions, which do not appear in the older.