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1894 315 Notes and Doctiments Downloaded from THE BOJIAN EMPIEE IN 600 A.D. WITH our present materials it is impossible to trace the successive administrative changes •which transformed the empire of Hierocles into the empire of Constantine Porphyrogennetos. In the ' Novels ' http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ of Justinian we have indeed a record of several important and significant changes which that emperor introduced ; but with this exception, which does not carry us very far, we have hitherto had no official or express register of provinces between the ' Synek- demos' and the treatise ' On the Themes.' To gain a fully satisfac- tory view of the development we require at least three lists, one dating from the early years of the seventh century, a second from at University of California, Santa Barbara on July 7, 2015 the reign of Constans, a third from the age of Leo the Isaurian. Of these the second would be, perhaps, more valuable even than the third; but records of the latter half of the seventh century are so rare that we have little chance of ever discovering such a treasure. In the meantime we may congratulate ourselves on the partial recovery of the first, a list enumerating the provinces at the beginning of the seventh century. The unearthing of this docu- ment is the work of the distinguished scholar Professor H. Gelzer of Jena. As his editionl of his discovery may easily escape the notice of some English historical students, whom his results might interest or concern, I propose to state briefly here what the most important of those results are. In the firBt half of the ninth century, under Michael the Amorian or his son Theophilus, an Armenian named Basil com- piled an ecclesiastical notitia of the empire. This notitia is pre- served in several manuscripts, of which some date from the eleventh century, and had been already edited repeatedly but imperfectly. The edition of Professor Gelzer (1890) rests on a new collation of the manuscripts, and is provided with an elaborate commentary and four maps. But the most important result of his labours is the discovery that in this ninth-century notitia lies embedded a valu- able document of much earlier date. Professor Gelzer has made it 1 Oeorgii Cyprii Deacriptio Orbis Romani. Aeeedil Leonit Imperatoru DiatypotU genuina adhuc irudiia. Tenbner, 1891. 816 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 600 A.D. April quite clear that Basil's compilation consists of two parts of totally different character, drawn from two totally different sources. The first part enumerates the bishoprics of Thrace and Asia Minor, and is obviously of ecclesiastical origin—is, in fact, a copy of an ecclesi- astical notitia of the Constantinopolitan diocese. The second part is a list of the cities and forts of the provinces of Italy, Africa, Egypt, and the East. On the face of it—and Gelzer has proved the fact with a completeness which leaves nothing to be desired— this part is of profane origin. It is, as the compiler lets out under Downloaded from ' Cyprus,' a copy of a notitia written by one George, a Cyprian (Aa.7ri0os iv fj lyevvydi] Tewpyios 6 Kwrpwj 6 ypdyfras TTJV fBlfSXcv i£ fj» ravra fUTsX^Brjcrav). Basil put together these two different texts, without apparently the slightest consciousness that they were heterogeneous. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ The time at which the book of George the Cyprian was written can be defined approximately; but here I cannot agree in every par- ticular with the conclusions of the editor. In the first place, a prior limit is given to us at once, as Professor Gelzer points out, by the mention of the /cdtrrpop "Zanoxdprtav, which, as we tnow from John of Ephesus, was instituted by Maurice. Now Maurice'B first campaign in the east was either in 577 or 578 A.D. (see my ' Later Eoman Empire,' ii. 104), and therefore George wrote not earlier at University of California, Santa Barbara on July 7, 2015 than the reign of Tiberius. But we can bring the limit further down, as Gelzer goes on to show. Daras, which is mentioned as Boman by George, was Persian from 574 to 591 A.D. ; therefore 591 is the prior limit. On the other hand, a posterior limit is given without any difficulty by the fact that Syria and Egypt still belonged to the empire. This gives us 684 A.D., the year of the Arab invasion of Syria. We get a similar limit, though not so early or precise, by the mention of the Ligurian towns Luna, Genua, Vintimilia, which were won by the Lombards in the reign of Rotharis (686-52 A.D.) So far all is clear. But when Professor Gelzer tries to narrow the limits more closely I cannot agree with all his arguments. The circumstance that George goes out of his way to mention the exile and martyrdom of St. Sergius at Caesarea and Anastasiopolis (Sergiopolis) is not in itself a cogent argument for placing the work in or very near the reign of Maurice. It is true that in that emperor's days St. Sergius, the revered of Chosroes, was prominently before the eyes of the Romaioi (cf. Theoph. Sim., v. 18); but supposing there happened to be any other evidence tending to place George's book later, say, than 620, the reference to Sergius could not bo pressed. In fact, that reference could be completely explained by supposing that George was alive under Maurice and had taken a special interest in the cult of St. Sergius, though he did not write his ' Descriptio' till a later period. But Professor Gelzer has better grounds than this for fixing a posterior 1894 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 600 A.D. 317 limit earlier than Heraclius. George mentions Brixillum, in the province of Aemilia, and Urbevetus (OpfiofMpa, now Orvieto), in the province of Campania. Now Urbevetus passed to the Lom- bards about 606, while Brixillum was lost soon after Mantua, which was captured in 602. Assuming that George had accurate and early intelligence of events in Italy, we get 603 or 604 as a posterior limit for his work. But his editor goes still further. Observing that while Brixillum appears Mantua is not mentioned, he con- cludes that the ' Descriptio' must have been composed in the short Downloaded from interval which elapsed between the loss of Mantua and the loss of Brixillum. Qiiarc in eo acqtiiescendum est, vt primis imperatoris Phocae annis mm scripsissc statuamus. Now I totally dissent from this argument from omission; and Professor Geker himself may be cited as a witness to the uncertainty of his argument, for http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ he points out that the codex of George, which Basil used, must have been .gravely corrupt, and that a large number of important Italian towns which we know to have been Boman—e.g. Tarra- cina, Ariminum, Bononia, Ancona, Barium, Hydruntum, &c.—are omitted. These omissions were due not to George's negligence, but tins librarii erroribus a quo codices nostri dependent (p. xviii). Therefore, I hold, it is just as likely that the omission of Mantua and Cremona may arise from the same cause as the omission of at University of California, Santa Barbara on July 7, 2015 Barium and Ariminum, as from the intention of George himself. And then, if the argument from apparent silence is permissible, I could find grounds for fixing the composition of the work as post 610, if not post 616 or even 621; for if he wrote before the first of these dates how comes it that he did not mention Carthago Spartaria, which was Boman in that year ? how comes it that he omitted all the plurimas urbes which, Isidore tells us, were captured by Sisebut in 616, and the urbes rcsidaas which were taken by Suinthila, who became king of the Visigoths in 621 ? The mention of Brixillum and Urbevetus shows us that we can make no such inferences from the omission of the cities of Boman Spain. We have no right, then, to draw any inference from the omission of Mantua and Cremona; I therefore propose to modify Professor Gelzer's conclusion, and submit that our data do not permit us to fix the date of George's ' Descriptio' in 603-4 with any greater probability than in 592.. We are only entitled to say that the limits of its date are 591 and 606 (possibly 604). It is unfortunate for us that Basil did not transcribe the entire work of the Cyprian. For Ulyricum, Thrace, and Asia he used his ecclesiastical source, and thus we have only those parts of George which relate to Italy, Africa, Egypt, and the East (Anatolic diocese). Gelzer shows that no province in Italy, which we know from other sources to have been Boman about .600 A.D., has been omitted by George (see his useful table, pp. xxv, xxvi). But in the 818 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN 600 A.D. April manuscript of George, which Basil had, many of the provinces had got placed under the head of other provinces among the towns and castra, owing to a copyist's carelessness. Thus Bruttii (Bperawla), Calabria, Venetia, and Apulia all figure among the towns of Campania. That these errors crept into a manuscript of George which Basil used, and did not arise at a later time in a copy of Basil's compilation, is shown clearly by a remarkable interpo- lation. Among the Italian provinces occurs Calabria, in the later sense of the name, as equivalent to Bruttii, the sense which it bore Downloaded from in the time of Basil, but which it did not yet bear in the time of George.