Download PDF | Agapetus, Paul the Silentiary, Peter N. Bell (transl.) - Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian_ Agapetus, _Advice to the Emperor_ Dialogue on Political Science Paul the Silentiary, Description of Hagia Sophia, Liverpool University Press 2009.
262 Pages
PREFACE
The sixth century CE in the late Roman world was a period of political, intellectual and cultural transformation in response to long-standing and often painfully acute pressures, both internal and external; these were to give us, by the next century, what we now think of as ‘Byzantium’. Despite the efforts of an increasingly autocratic and intolerant regime, we know something about what intellectuals in Constantinople especially thought about issues of their day, not least through the writings of Procopius, Agathias or John the Lydian. We know quite a lot more about what the regime and the churches wanted everyone to think – through, for example, the rhetoric of laws, architectural display and imperial ceremonial, or the homilies of bishops, church mosaics and even the epistles of the emperor Justinian himself. But there are other, unfairly neglected, figures who can help us navigate better through the obscurities of a changing political universe.
Some are barely read, like the unknown author of the Dialogue on Political Science; or now largely forgotten, like Agapetus; or exploited chiefly as a quarry for art historians and philologists, like Paul the Silentiary’s Description of Hagia Sophia. Worse, they are barely accessible to those without knowledge of (particularly abstruse) Greek, while much modern scholarship, itself relatively sparse, comes in Italian or German versions only. Works of both great intrinsic interest and historical significance are thus denied to many students of late antique and Byzantine history in the English-speaking world. This collection, therefore, aims to make these important texts available to all those, not least beginning students, who want to read them and also to set them within their wider socio-political context, thereby illuminating the society as well as the writers.
(I apologise in advance to literary scholars and art historians for all that I have omitted.) I also acknowledge that some subjects, notably the religious climate of the later sixth century and its implications for intellectual expression, have not received the detailed treatment they deserve. But I intend to put this right in my forthcoming book on social conflict in the age of Justinian. And, in the meantime, I have included enough material, I hope, both to stimulate reflection and to enable those interested to follow up the issues for themselves. I hope also, for I believe it to be a centrally important function of history, that these three works will encourage some readers to reflect on the wider issues they raise.
These are not confined to the later sixth century, but remain of great political salience: the nature and importance of securing legitimacy, for instance, for any successful regime; or the role and significance of presentation and spin – which transcend the particular, time-bound conception of the emperor as the imitation of God that played so influential a role in the late Roman and Byzantine polity, and in our authors. I could not have attempted such a task unaided, not least because I only arrived late in life in academia after a career in the UK Civil Service dealing, in Northern Ireland, with many issues touched on by the authors here. So I am immensely grateful to Wolfson College for providing me with an academic base. I am no less grateful to Phyllis Bennett, Phil Booth, Charles Bradley, Averil Cameron, Gillian Clark, Mark Edwards, Miriam Griffin, Michael Maas, Ruth Macrides and Michael Whitby. Special thanks are due to Philip Rance for his outstanding help in an area, late Roman military affairs, where I was a complete novice. Nor dare I pass over my punctilious editor, Mary Whitby, for the many improvements she has suggested and for teaching me more about text-preparation than I had ever dreamt there was to learn.
Most important, however, there is my home team: Jake has continued to show just how supportive a dog with a commitment to late antique history can be; without Jennifer, and her heroic efforts in proof-reading and editing, there would quite simply have been no book. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is for others to say. But it is their book. April 2009 Peter Bell Wolfson College, Oxford
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