De Administrando Imperio

[7] From 920, Constantine VII become increasingly distant from the imperial authorities; until December 944, when the sons of Emperor Romanos I suddenly rebelled and cloistered their father.

Constantine VII, with the help of his supporters, cloistered his brothers-in-law, and personally ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire from January 945 to his death in November 959.

He gathered a group of educated people and dedicated himself to writing books about the administration, ceremonies, and history of the empire.

[11][12][13] The text known as De Administrando Imperio was written by emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, but he had at least one educated "Anonymous Collaborator".

[22][23] In the beginning of the De Administrando Imperio, Constantine VII wrote that the work was a set of knowledge which his son Romanos II (born in 938, and ruled 959–963) will need.

[24][25] The intention of Emperor Constantine VII to write a manual for his successor, Romanos II, reduces the possibility that large untruths have been written.

Therefore, De Administrando Imperio is one of the most important sources for the study of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) and its neighbors.

The work combines two of Constantine's earlier treatises, "On the Governance of the State and the various Nations" (Περὶ Διοικήσεως τοῦ Κράτους βιβλίον καὶ τῶν διαφόρων Ἐθνῶν), concerning the histories and characters of the nations neighbouring the Empire, including the Hungarians, Pechenegs, Kievan Rus', South Slavs, Arabs, Lombards, Armenians, and Georgians; and the "On the Themes of East and West" (Περὶ θεμάτων Ἀνατολῆς καὶ Δύσεως, known in Latin as De Thematibus), concerning recent events in the imperial provinces.

This treatise contains traditional and legendary stories of how the territories surrounding the Empire came in the past to be occupied by the people living in them in the Emperor's times (Saracens, Lombards, Venetians, Serbs, Croats, Magyars, Pechenegs).

The editio princeps, which was based on V, was published in 1611 by Johannes Meursius, who gave it the Latin title by which it is now universally known, and which translates as On Administering the Empire.

[citation needed] The only difficulty is the regular use of technical terms which – being in standard use at the time – may present prima facie hardships to a modern reader.

It is probably the extant written text that comes closest to the vernacular employed by the imperial palace bureaucracy in 10th-century Constantinople.