Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

from rome to byzantium 203
earned the contempt of John Lydus for having initiated the practice of
issuing prefectural edicts in Greek. 176 The second half of the fifth century
saw a steady increase in the proportion of imperial laws issued in Greek,
and the erosion of Roman civilization in the Latinate north-western parts
of the Balkans will have reduced the availability in the east of native Latinspeakers.
177 The fifth and sixth centuries did witness the great codifications
of Roman law, in Latin, under Thedosius II and Justinian, but these were
as much grand exercises in asserting the continuity of the eastern empire
with increasingly distant Roman traditions as they were projects of practical
administrative import. Greek translations of Justinian’s Code, Digest
and Institutes were soon available, 178 and although Justinian’s great jurist
Tribonian appears to have tried to resist the trend, Justinian’s own subsequent
legislation was increasingly issued in Greek alone, unless specifically
directed to one of the Latin-speaking provinces of the west. 179 These
changes were not completely one-sided, for in the process Greek absorbed
a wide range of Latin administrative terminology, but by the end of the
sixth century, Gregory the Great could complain of the difficulties of
finding anyone in Constantinople competent to translate from Greek into
Latin, 180 while soon after, in a highly significant move, Heraclius began
using the term basileus in his official titulature. 181
v. from rome to byzantium
The seventh century was a time of major administrative change, when the
structure of civilian provinces which could trace its origins back to the days
of the Roman republic began to be replaced by the middle Byzantine system
of themes, whose primary function was the maintenance of the major army
groups, initially the Anatolic, Armeniac, Thrakesian and Opsikion. Just as
military needs in the mid third century contributed to the emergence of the
‘new’ Diocletianic tax system, so now the location of army groups led to the
development of administrative structures to support them. The sequence
and chronology of these developments have been much disputed, partly
because of misguided attempts to establish the identity of the grand
reformer who devised such an administrative revolution, but there is now a
substantial consensus that the process was gradual, a set of responses to the
fundamental changes which overtook the eastern Roman world during
the seventh century. 182 The Persian war which dominated the first quarter
of the century played its part, since the empire successively lost control of
176 CJ vii.45.12; Theod. II, Nov. 16.8; John Lydus, De Mag. ii.12. 177 Honoré (1978) 39.
178 Jolowicz and Nicholas (1972) 481–2, 500–1. 179 Dagron (1969) 44–5; Honoré (1978) 58–9.
180 Greg. Reg. vii.27. 181 Dagron (1969) 38.
182 An illustration of this process is the gradual emergence of a militarized society in the exarchate
of Ravenna: on this, see Brown, Gentlemen and Officers.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008