from a triclinio (cp. ἀσηκρήτις). κλητόριον was a technical word for an Imperial banquet,2 and the verb kλŋτopeúw was used both in the general sense of inviting,3 and also in the special sense of receiving the guests and announcing their names in order of precedence,* a duty which devolved on the atriklines. To fulfil this duty, a list of the ministers, officials, and dignitaries, who had a right to be entertained in the palace, arranged in order of precedence, was indispensable to the atriklines, and such a list was called a κAnTopoλólov. These lists were revised from time to time; for not only might new offices be instituted and old ones abolished, but changes might be made in the order of precedence.

That such changes were made is clear from the comparison of Philotheos with an earlier document which was published by Uspenski from the same MS., in which he found a portion of Philotheos.5 This is a TaкTIKOV, or table of ranks, which was compiled under Michael III and Theodora. The title is :

Τακτικὸν ἐν ἐπιτόμῳ γενόμενον ἐπὶ Μιχαὴλ τοῦ φιλοχρίστου δεσπότου καὶ Θεοδώρας τῆς ὀρθοδοξοτάτης καὶ ἁγίας αὐτοῦ μητρός.

6

Uspenski has not touched upon the limits of the date of this document, but it can be fixed within fourteen years. The fall of Theodora occurred at the beginning of A.D. 856, so that the Taktikon must have been compiled before that year and after A.D. 842, the year of the accession of Michael. Internal evidence bears out the date of the superscription. The Stratêgos of Cherson (σrparηyòs tŵv Kλquáτwv) is mentioned; the first Stratêgos of Cherson 7 was appointed by Theophilus (c. A.D. 834). The Charsian province appears as a kleisura not a stratêgis; this agrees with the Arabic lists which describe the themes as they existed in the period A.D. 838-845.9 In

1 It occurs in Gen. 311 τοῦ τὴν ἐπιστασίαν ἔχοντος τῶν εἰς τράπεζαν κεκλημένων ἓν árpikλívny Onμíčovou. The Latin version renders rightly a triclinio, and Sophocles gives the same explanation. The word does not appear in Ducange.

2 Suidas explains Kλnróptov as n Baσiλikỳ трáπega. Cp. Pseudo-Symeon 703, Leo VI crowned Anna, διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι ποιεῖν τὰ ἐκ τύπου κλητόρια μὴ οὔσης Αὐγούστης.

3

Theoph. 375,9 (Justinian II) pòs dρLoтódelπvov KλŋтоρEÚшν.

4 We meet it in this sense in Philotheos.

5 loc. cit. 109 sqq.

A notable example of changes in precedence is furnished by the different positions of the Domestic of the Excubiti and the Prefect of the City in the two lists.

6 See the evidence in Hirsch, Byzantinische Studien, 60–1.

7 Cont. Th. 123.

8 P. 123, where we must read the singular ὁ κλεισουράρχης Χαρσιανοῦ.

9 Of Ibn Khurdâdhbah, Ibn al-Fakih, and Kudâma, depending on a work of Al-Garmi, who had been a captive among the Romans and was redeemed in

A.D. 873 the Charsian theme was under a Stratêgos.1 Kolonea, a theme in A.D. 863, is omitted, as in the Arabic lists.2 The earliest mention hitherto known of the Stratêgos of Chaldia was in the Arabic lists; he appears in the Taktikon.3

The Taktikon is an epitomized catalogue of officials and dignitaries, for the purpose of showing their order of precedence. It is therefore not arranged like the Notitia Dignitatum (of the fifth century) in which the subordinate officials are placed under their chiefs. It is arranged in classes, according to ranks (patricians, &c.). It is not a klêtorologion (or it would have been so named), but it must have served court ceremonials; perhaps it was a handbook of the master of ceremonies (ὁ τῆς καταστάσεως). Τακτικὰ βιβλία are mentioned by the biographer of Theophilus (Cont. Th. 142), and evidently mean books which deal with court ceremonial. ráĝis meant, among other things, a ceremony ',4 and we might render TаKTIKÓν as ceremonial list'.

6

A new list of this kind was naturally compiled with the help of older lists which it was intended to supersede. Philotheos tells us, as we shall see, that he made use of older klêtorologia. Now in the Taktikon we can detect certain inconsistencies which must have arisen in the process of bringing an older Taktikon up to date. (1) The governor of Chaldia appears both as stratêgos (113) and as archon (123). I infer that Chaldia had been an archontate till recently, when it had been made a stratêgis. The new dignity is duly inserted, but the compiler omitted to strike out the old title. (2) The same thing has happened in the case of Crete. We did not know before the position of Crete in the administrative organization, before the Saracen conquest. The Taktikon shows that it was

A.D. 845.

81 sqq.

For these lists see Brooks, J. H. S., xxi. 67 sqq. (1901) and Gelzer,

1 See Gen. 122. But in a. D. 863 it was still a kleisurarchy, Cont. Th. 181. 2 Cappadocia, which is still a kleisurarchy in the Arabic lists, is omitted altogether in the text. But this is probably a scribe's mistake. The text has

(p. 123):

οἱ κλεισουράρχαι

οἱ κλεισουράρχαι Χαρσιανοῦ

οἱ κλεισουράρχαι Σωζοπόλεως

In the second and third cases οἱ κλ. must clearly be errors for ὁ κλεισουράρχης. But the first oi kλ. cannot be right. "The kleisurarchs' would not be followed by a list of particular kleisurarchs. I have no doubt that we should read ó κλεισουράρχης (Καππαδοκίας).

* An ἄρχων Χαλδίας is also mentioned (123).

4

Cp. e. g. Cer. 51ο 516, ἡ τακτική μέθοδος 51712. Phil. (790) ἐκ τοῦδε τοῦ τακτικοῦ παραγγέλματος.

governed by an archon (123). But a stratêgos of Crete also appears (115), and it seems curious that this change should have been made in the period immediately after the loss of the island.1 Perhaps we may suppose that some small islands of the Aegean were included in the circumscription of Crete, so that the Cretan commander was not quite without a province. It is possible that the appointment of a stratêgos of Crete might have been made in connexion with the expedition of Theoktistos in A.D. 843 (George Mon. ed. Bonn, 814), in anticipation of the reduction of the island. In that case the date of the Taktikon would be 842-3.2 (3) The same explanation must also apply to the duplication of ὁ πατρίκιος καὶ σακελλάριος (111 and 115).

The treatise of Philotheos is divided into four Sections, тóμol. The beginning of the first is not clearly marked, for róμos a' has been omitted in the MS. The editors have inserted it before the list of ációμara dià ẞpaßeiwv (p. 708 B), without any indication that it is an insertion of their own. What led them to do this was, I have little doubt, the occurrence in the margin of the words κepáλacov a'. They took it for a heading corresponding to the subsequent róμos B', τ. γ', τ. δ', and silently substituted τόμος for κεφάλαιον. But it is clear that kepáλalov a refers to the first of the eighteen classes of dignities, each of which is marked by a numeral in the margin. It is not quite certain where róμos a' originally stood. The most probable place seems to be at the end of the Preface, before the heading ȧpxÒ tŷs úñoléσews λóyov, and I have placed it here conjecturally, but it is possible that it may have stood before the paragraph beginning Elơì δὲ πᾶσαι ὁμοῦ.

Section I is introductory to the klêtorologion (ἐν εἰσαγωγῆς τάξει and consists of a λoís or laterculus of the ranks and official dignities of the Empire. It falls into five parts: (1) orders of rank; (2) great

1 If the seal found at Gortyn, with the legend [r]epavov σтpar' (published by Xanthudides, Byz. Zeitschrift, 18, 177, 1909), belonged to a stratêgos of Crete it must be referred to this period.

2 I may call attention here to the fact that an archon of Dalmatia appears in Takt. Usp. (124) and a stratêgos is not mentioned. This bears on the date of a ninthcentury seal of Bryennios, strategos of Dalmatia : Βρυεν(ίῳ) βασιλικῷ) σπαθαρίῳ) Kai [OT]p(a)T(ny) Aaλuaria(s), Sig. 205. (There is another example in which Br. is protospatharios.) Schlumberger ascribes it to Theoktistos Bryennios and dates it' vers 840'. But there seems to be no authority for this. All we know of Theoktistos Bryennios is that he was orparnyós of Peloponnesus in the reign of Michael III (De adm. imp. 221). It is a mere guess that he is the Bryennios of the seal. In any case the Taktikon shows that the seal is later than

A. D. 842.

official posts; (3) minor offices in the staffs and bureaux of the great officials; (4) orders of rank of eunuchs; (5) great offices confined to eunuchs.

Section II and Section III contain lists of the officials in the order in which they are introduced by the atriklines, according as they belong to different orders of rank. Section II deals with the highest ranks; Section III with the lower, beginning with the protospathars. These Sections ought to form one; the division is not logical or convenient. To the end of III are appended explanations as to the treatment of ecclesiastics from Rome, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and of Saracen, Bulgarian, and German guests.

Section IV, which is the longer half of the treatise, contains directions for the conduct of the court banquets throughout the year: what guests are to be invited, how they are to be introduced, where they are to sit, what they are to wear, &c. It is arranged in the order of the calendar, beginning with Christmas. There follow two memoranda (which are marked off in the MS. as cap. 53 of De Cerimoniis, Bk. 2), (1) on the pious largesses (evoeßía) given by the Emperor to the officials on certain occasions, and (2) on the fees received by the atriklinai. These memoranda might appropriately have formed a separate Section, but mediaeval compilers were so clumsy and careless in the arrangement of their books that it would be imprudent to guess the omission of a róμos é.

Having concluded with a recommendation that his Order of Rank' (TAKTIKÓv) should be adopted as canonical, Philotheos adds an appendix on ecclesiastical precedence and reproduces a list of episcopal sees by Epiphanios of Cyprus (= De Cer. ii. c. 54). I have omitted this list, as it has no interest for the purpose of this study.

The author had before him older lists of dignities and descriptions of ceremonies, to which he refers in his preface as ἀρχαῖα συγγράμματα, αἱ τῶν ἀρχαίων ἐκθέσεις οι συγγραφαί. Some of these were doubtless Taktika or tables of rank, of which a specimen is extant in the TaкTIKÓν of the reign of Michael III, described above; and others were kλŋτоρoλóyia which dealt especially with the arrangements at the Imperial table. The title states that the work is compiled from old klêtorologia, and according to the first words of the preface this was the task imposed on the writer by his friends, men of his own calling. But afterwards he says that he did not use lists which were out of date, so that apxaíwv is hardly an appropriate description of his sources. For he writes: "Since I have purposely passed over the expositions of the ancients, not all of them but those which time has rendered obsolete, I will subjoin in the form of a table, line by line,

the expositions which are both recognized and practised in the time of our sovrans Leo and Alexander.'

Now we find in the paragraph on the functions of the eunuchs (725) a distinct proof that this was transcribed from an ecthesis published in the name of an emperor, whom we cannot hesitate to identify with Leo VI.

Ταῦτα δὲ πάντα φυλάττεσθαι, τηρεῖσθαί τε καὶ πράττεσθαι ἀπαρασάλευτα καὶ διαμένειν βέβαια καθὼς ἡ εὐσεβὴς καὶ ἔνθεος βασιλεία ἡμῶν ἐξέθετο, ὡς καὶ ἐξ ἀρχαίων τῶν χρόνων παρὰ τῶν πρὸ ἡμῶν εὐσεβῶς βασιλευσάντων δικαίως ἐξετέθη.

Here Leo is speaking, not Philotheos. The ecthesis of Leo can hardly have been concerned exclusively with the dignities of the eunuchs, and I think we may conjecture with great probability that one of the lists of offices contained in Section I was transcribed from the Emperor's official book. In this Section the high officials are enumerated three times: (1) a full list, in order of precedence ; (2) a full classified list; (3) a list of the staffs, &c. (this is not complete, because only two stratêgoi are named as samples, and a few high officials who have no subordinates are omitted). Now of these three lists (1) and (3) are completely in agreement. But (2) exhibits one important difference. (1) enumerates 60 officials, while (2) enumerates 61. The additional dignitary is the rapetápxns. This raises a presumption that (2) was derived from a different document, and the words which conclude the first list καὶ αὗται τὰ νῦν τιμηθεῖσαι ἀξίαι ἐπὶ Λέοντος δεσπότου are in accordance with the hypothesis that the transcriber at this point passed to a different source. The use of different sources here may be supported by the fact that, while (2) divides the officials into seven classes, this division is also mentioned at the beginning of the Section, where only six classes (è¿ μépn) are given (the stratarchai being omitted).

It might be thought that we have further evidence that the source of Philotheos for his first list dated from the early years of Leo VI. It does not mention the theme of Longobardia. Now this province was not, as is generally supposed (for instance by Gelzer, 133), organized as a theme by Basil I. The stratêgoi who command in South Italy during and immediately after the conquest are not yet stratêgoi of Longobardia. The first who bears that title is Symbatikios in 891, but even then Longobardia has not yet been established as a distinct theme; for this commander is 'stratêgos of Macedonia, Thrace, Cephallenia, and Longobardia',1 and his successor George

1 Trinchera, Syllabus graecarum membranarum, No. 3.