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Translated Texts for Historians
Volume 52

Three Political Voices from

the Age of Justinian
Agapetus, Advice to the Emperor
Dialogue on Political Science
Paul the Silentiary, Description of
Hagia Sophia

Translated with an introduction and notes by

PETER N. BELL

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University
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First published 2009
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 contents

Preface vii
Abbreviations ix

Introduction
1. The World of Agapetus, the Dialogue on Political Science
and Paul the Silentiary 1
2. The Authors 8
3. Dating 17
4. Agapetus – Advice: His Sources, Methods and Thought 27
5. The Dialogue on Political Science – Sources, Methods and
Thought 49
6. Paul the Silentiary – Description of Hagia Sophia: Sources,
Methods and Thought 79
7. Texts and Translations 95

AGAPETUS: ADVICE TO THE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN

Translation and Notes 99

THE DIALOGUE ON POLITICAL SCIENCE

BOOK 4 – MILITARY MATTERS
Translation and Notes 123
BOOK 5 – THE IDEAL STATE
1. Translator’s Synopsis 143
2. Translation and Notes 144

PAUL THE SILENTIARY: DESCRIPTION OF HAGIA SOPHIA

Translation and Notes 189

Select Bibliography 213

Map of Constantinople 231
Index 233
 PREFACE

The sixth century CE in the late Roman world was a period of political, intel-
lectual 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, archi-
tectural 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 treat-
ment 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
viii PREFACE

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 concep-
tion 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
 ABBREVIATIONS

a. anno (in the year)

AJP American Journal of Philology
AM Anno Mundi (year of the world)
Amm. Marc. Ammianus Marcellinus
Anth. Pal. Anthologia Palatina (Palatine Anthology)
AT Antiquité Tardive
BCE Before the Common Era (or BC)
BMGS Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Bldgs. Procopius, Buildings (de Aedificiis)
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
C century (e.g. C6)
C. Constitutio (Imperial law): e.g. C. Haec (528), C. Summa (529), C.
Tanta (533), C. Omnem (533), C. Imperatoriam Maiestatem (533), C.
Cordi (534)
CAH Cambridge Ancient History
CE Common Era (or AD)
CIC Corpus Iuris Civilis (Corpus of Civil Law)
CJ Codex Justinianus (Justinianic Code)
Coll. Avell. Collectio Avellana
CFHB Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae
Corippus Corippus, In laudem Iustini Minoris (In Praise of Justin II)
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CSHB Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CTh. Codex Theodosianus (Theodosian Code)
de Caer. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De Caerimoniis (On Ceremonies)
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
Ep(p). Epistula(e) (or Letter(s))
EH Ecclesiastical History / Historia Ecclesiastica
GA Greek Anthology / Anthologia Graeca
GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
GRW Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
Hom. Homily
x ABBREVIATIONS

IGR Ius Graeco-Romanum (Greek-Roman Law)

Il. Homer, Iliad
JEd Justiniani Edicta (Edicts of Justinian)
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
JIIN Justini Minoris Novellae Constitutiones (Novels of Justin II)
JInst. Justiniani Instituta (Institutes)
JÖB Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
Just. Nov. Justiniani Novellae Constitutiones (New Laws / Novels of Justinian)
LSJ Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn)
Mal. John Malalas, Chronicle
Mansi Sacrorum Consiliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, ed. J. D. Mansi
Met. Aristotle, Metaphysics
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Nic. Eth. Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics
OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn)
OCT Oxford Classical Texts
ODB Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991 edn)
Or. Oratio (speech)
PG Patrologiae cursus completa, series graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Patrologia
Graeca)
PGL A Patristic Greek Lexicon
Phdr. Plato, Phaedrus
PL Patrologia cursus completa, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Patrologia
Latina)
PLRE II The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. II A.D. 395–527
PLRE III The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. III A.D. 527–641
PS Syrianus Magister, On Strategy (Peri Strategikes)
r. reigned
Rep. Republic
SH Procopius, Secret History (Anecdota)
Smp. Plato, Symposium
str. strophe
s. a. sub anno (under the year)
SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta
TibN Novellae Constitutiones Tiberii II (New Laws of Tiberius II), in Ius
Graeco-Romanum.
Tim. Plato, Timaeus
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
TTH Translated Texts for Historians, Liverpool University Press
Veg. Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science
Wars Procopius, Wars
 INTRODUCTION

1. The World of Agapetus, the Dialogue on Political

Science and Paul the Silentiary

The authors presented in this book were deeply concerned with the politics
of the sixth century of our era.1 The first, the cleric Agapetus, offered
72 artfully drafted, occasionally radical aphorisms, at least ostensibly to
help the new emperor, Justinian, succeed – even survive – in the difficult
period following his accession in 527. The second, the anonymous author
of the Dialogue on Political Science, drew heavily, in what survives of his
treatise, on the Platonic tradition of the philosopher-ruler; on later Greek
theorising which, like Agapetus, saw the emperor as the ‘imitation of God’;
and integrated this with ideas from Roman political philosophy concerned
with the nature of an ideal republic, especially those of Cicero. He did so
in order to model an ideal state, one implicitly critical of Justinian’s rule,
though not of the imperial institution, which broadly favoured the interests
of the senatorial aristocracy. The third, by contrast, the courtier Paul the
Silentiary, exploited the re-dedication (over the Christmas period of 562/3)
of the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, following
the repair of damage caused by an earthquake, to spin a panegyric of the
emperor towards the disturbed, crisis-prone end of his reign.
All three were steeped in literary traditions and rhetorical conventions
whose sources lay in remote classical antiquity, both Greek and Roman,
and whose mastery, via a laborious and expensive education, served to
mark out the social and political elites of their society. They also wrote in a
Greek remote from that spoken on the streets of Constantinople and which
went back a thousand years to classical Athens and beyond. Their way of
expressing their ideas is not ours. But we must not, on that account, discount
the seriousness with which they moulded ancient models and genres to
address issues of great contemporary salience.

1 All dates here and in the remainder of this book are CE unless otherwise indicated.
2 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

In fact, all three writers are not only of intrinsic interest, but, from their
differing perspectives, they cast great, often still unappreciated, light on the
political and intellectual culture of the sixth century – above all, on the reign
of Justinian I (r. 527–65) – in what some call the early Byzantine, others
the late Roman Empire. After China, this was the largest, most populous,
richest and most sophisticated polity on the planet.2 The Western Roman
Empire had, after a period of retrenchment and withdrawal, evaporated in
the previous century; the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was
deposed by the Ostrogoth Odavacar in 476 and, with him, imperial authority
finally disappeared over the western Mediterranean, Gaul and Britain. But
the Eastern Empire, ruled from ‘New’ Rome (or Constantinople – now
Istanbul), had retained the Balkans, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Syria and
Palestine, as well as Egypt and Libya. It was also the home of most of the
cities and, apart from Rome, of the greatest and richest of those that had
once made up the undivided empire.
But this society was not at peace with itself. It was far from the just and
stable polity, ‘moved by all the notes of a harmonious symphony’, to which
the author of the Dialogue aspired (5.136). Internally, it set landlords against
their tenants and workforces, many little better than slaves, who may have
comprised anything up to 80–90% of the population of its pre-industrial
agricultural economy. Cities were often pitted against their rural hinterlands.
‘Banditry’ and general lawlessness were also reducing large, especially
rural, areas of the empire to near anarchy.3 The elite were also divided
amongst themselves in Constantinople and elsewhere; this reflected bitter
resentments on the part of the older aristocracy against relative upstarts such
as Justin I (r. 518–27), his nephew, Justinian, and their close associates.
At the same time, the imperial government promoted the persecution of
(Christian) heretics, ‘Hellenes’ (that is, Pagans, of whom far more remained
at all levels of society throughout the empire than contemporary Christian
writers cared to admit), Manichaeans, and other ‘deviants’, including gay

2 For the best overview of all aspects of the C6 empire, see The Age of Justinian, ed.
M. Maas (2005). The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XIV, eds. Averil Cameron, B. Ward-
Perkins and Michael Whitby (Cambridge, 2000) is also invaluable for the period 425–600.
The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, ed. J. Shepard (2008), also contains useful
material, esp. ch. 1 on Justinian. For the socio-economic structure of the entire Mediterranean,
by region, at this period, see C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the
Mediterranean 400–800 (2005). For the intellectual culture of the C6, Maas (1992) remains
enlightening; even more so, Averil Cameron (1979; 1985, esp. ch. 11; 1991) and Liebeschuetz
(2001).
3 The French Byzantinist, M. Kaplan (1992), 173, wrote of ‘l’anarchie justinienne’.
 INTRODUCTION 3

men. Meanwhile, the supporters of the rival chariot-racing and theatrical

factions fought on the streets of the capital (and other cities); the worst of
these outbreaks, the Nika riot of 532, nearly cost Justinian his throne and
left up to 25,000 dead in a wrecked city. Violent disturbances, again often
involving the factions, also featured in the troubled last years of Justin-
ian’s reign.4 The churches were bitterly, sometimes violently split over the
nature(s) of Christ, which in this society had wider political consequences.
Neither intensive imperial diplomacy nor coercion could reconcile them.
Even within the majority ‘Catholic/Orthodox’ camp, which subscribed
to the doctrinal formulae proclaimed at the ecumenical Council of
Chalcedon in 451,5 relations between the emperor and patriarch in Constan-
tinople and the pope in Rome were often strained.6 In 545, for instance, the
emperor appears to have kidnapped the pope, Vigilius, and brought him to
Constantinople to ‘encourage’ him to subscribe to imperial ecclesiastical
policies. Such wide-ranging tensions and resentments were exacerbated by
the remorseless taxation of a relatively primitive pre-industrial economy to
fund the emperor’s expensive, spectacular, politically motivated and empire-
wide building and charitable programmes,7 and, no less important, almost
continuous war.8 Book 4 of the Dialogue, devoted to military matters, and
Paul’s repeated references to Justinian’s conquests, in his Description of
Hagia Sophia, remind us of this.
Protracted wars persisted for nearly all of Justinian’s reign: in Italy, North
Africa and, later, in southern Spain in the west; in the Balkans; and with the
Persians in the east. Some, notably the reconquest of North Africa and Italy,
were remarkably successful in the short term, although the Roman hold on
Italy, not finally subdued until 561, began to disintegrate once Justinian died.

4 For factional riots, see e.g. Procopius, Wars 1.24ff., SH 7, in the Loeb edition; Mal.,
Chronicle 474–77, 484, 490–92, 496, in Jeffrey’s translation – the figures refer to pages in
ed. Dindorf (1831) on which her translation is based; Chronicon Paschale 112ff., in the TTH
edition; and Theophanes, AM 6024, ed. Mango and Scott. See Dialogue 5.103, with n. 91, for
further details.
5 Modern Kadıköy, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. The most famous (and
subsequently controversial) doctrine affirmed was that Christ had two natures (physeis), albeit
concurring in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis (or subject). For details, see The Acts
of the Council of Chalcedon (2005). Here, as later, references are normally to the translations
cited in the Select Bibliography.
6 For East–West relations, see Sotinel (2005).
7 For charitable works, see e.g. Bldgs., passim; Paul, Description of Hagia Sophia below,
and his Description of the Ambo in Mango (1986), 91–96.
8 For major internal conflicts, see Bell (forthcoming).
4 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

Worse, the empire suffered not only the first ruinous pandemic of, probably,
bubonic plague in European history with outbreaks from 542–70, but also
from numerous other major environmental catastrophes – including disas-
trous earthquakes (some 250,000 are reported to have died, for instance, in
Antioch in 524),9 floods and locusts.10 Although the archaeological record
suggests widespread economic prosperity till the mid-sixth century, much
of the population remained vulnerable to famine and more general hardship,
in ways not so far different from some contemporary developing countries
in Africa or Asia.11 Even allowing for the exaggeration to which rhetorically
trained writers were prone, the situation could be grim, especially for the
lower classes.
It is against this turbulent background that we must view the near comple-
tion, during the century under discussion, of a process that had gathered
momentum from the accession of Diocletian in 284, if not earlier. In this, the
empire had effectively transformed from a relatively lightly administered
aggregate of quasi-autonomous cities to an ever-more centralised autocracy
which, from the conversion of the emperor Constantine (r. 306–37), was
also increasingly and intolerantly Christian. This was focused on the person
of the emperor and centred on the ever-more splendid new imperial capital,
Constantinople, to whose ornament Justinian devoted such high priority and
immense resources.12 It dominated a society whose artistic and intellectual
vitality would not be surpassed over the nearly one thousand years of the
empire’s remaining life until the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
If what we now think of as ‘Byzantium’ had not arrived by the reign
of Justinian, it was nearly there; the process would be completed in the
next century when the loss of all the imperial territories in the Middle
East and North Africa to the Muslim Arabs, combined with Slav inroads

9 For the plague, Wars 2.22–23, John of Ephesus (in Ps. Dionysius of Tel Mahre, Chronicle,
73–98, 102, 107); Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 4.29; and Mal., Chronicle 482. Also Horden
(2005) on the plague, with more detail in Little (2007). Mal., Chronicle 418, for earthquake
deaths in Antioch in 524.
10 There is a lengthy, though still incomplete, list of such calamities from 500–65 in Meier
(2003), 656–70 (in German).
11 For the horrific famines in the Edessa area (modern Urfa) of south-east Turkey around
500, following plagues of locusts, see Ps. Joshua the Stylite, Chronicle 253, in TTH edition. For
poverty and famine more generally, including the vulnerability of large sections of the popula-
tion, both urban and rural, see Patlagean (1977) (in French); Brown (1992; 2002).
12 For Constantinople, rebuilt by Justinian, as the setting for ‘political theatre’ on the grand
scale, see Maas and Croke (both 2005). On autocracy, see the suggestive comparison between
Justinian and Stalin in Honoré (1978), 28–30.
 INTRODUCTION 5

in the Balkans, forced still more radical re-organisation and centralisation.

It was also accompanied by financial impoverishment, the near-extinction
of classical culture as a living force and its replacement by an imperial,
Christian culture as the exclusive basis of social and political cohesion.13
Yet when people think of the achievements of this empire, they often have
in mind the period before this metamorphosis was complete: that of the
‘Great Church’ of Hagia Sophia, the mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna,
or the Justinianic reform and codification of Roman law (the Corpus Iuris
Civilis) – all products of this one century, and largely the inspiration of one
emperor, Justinian.
This turbulence was reflected on the ideological level: the intellectual
scene was diverse. It now also included literary genres that had only emerged
with the rise of Christianity, such as chronicles, ecclesiastical history,
hymnography, homiletics or theology, in the last of which the emperor
personally claimed expertise. Literatures also developed in Syria and Egypt
in Syriac and Coptic respectively, while Latin literature was widely avail-
able and read at least in Constantinople.14 The older, classical genres still
clung on as well: all three of our texts, for example, belong to ancient tradi-
tions, echoing writers such as Homer and Plato, who lived a thousand and
more years earlier, as well as more recent ones, both Greek and Roman.
In this rapidly evolving culture, the emperor himself was not immune to
criticism: the last major historian of antiquity, Procopius, savagely indicted
Justinian and his wife – although the author of the Dialogue was also critical
of the regime, if more temperately and obliquely. Agapetus, and above all
Paul, on the other hand were actively supportive. The civil servant and intel-
lectual John the Lydian prudently confined his criticisms of the regime to
Justinian’s officials, about whose wrongdoing the pious emperor, whom he
praises, allegedly knew nothing.15 Such tact was a necessity in a state where,
for example, Procopius lamented that frankness could be, literally, fatal, or
where a prominent bishop, John of Ephesus, boasted of the many ‘famous
persons’ he had had tortured for suspected religious deviance.16 But if the
hostility is not always apparent in our evidence, it still seethed below the
surface.

13 For the C6 cultural transformation under the influence of Christianity, see Averil
Cameron (1979; 1991) and Liebeschuetz (2001), esp. ch. 10.
14 For the availability of Latin literature, see Mazzucchi (1978), Averil Cameron (2009).
15 Procopius, esp. in SH; John the Lydian, On Magistracies 3.55ff.
16 SH 1.1; John of Ephesus (in Ps. Dionysius of Tel Mahre, Chronicle, 77–78). See Kaldellis
(2004), 164–73, for such prudent dissimulation and its potential for misinterpretation today.
6 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

It was at least partly in response to such alienation, as well as to poten-

tial and actual challenges from within the elite,17 from hostile churchmen or
the factions, that Justinian applied, with great determination and consider-
able success, policies adopted since the first Christian emperor, Constan-
tine, to display, promote and, crucially, legitimise his vulnerable regime.18
This meant, given prevailing values, projecting himself as an exemplary
Christian monarch, and exploiting and taking further all the rhetorical and
artistic techniques employed, even by Pagan predecessors, for this same end.
This was, the regime maintained, shown above all by military conquests
attributed to God’s support and his own ostentatious zeal, so that Justin-
ian’s early successes in North Africa featured heavily (along with his chari-
table works and personal devotions) in his propaganda throughout his life
– even featuring on his pall;19 in his law reform project, also achieved, he
claimed, with God’s help;20 and in his massive building programme. This
was by no means confined to the capital; sites of religious significance, such
as Jerusalem or Ephesus (where Mary, Jesus’ mother, had allegedly died)
were amongst other spectacular beneficiaries.21 It was also demonstrated in
propagandist literature, of which Paul the Silentiary provides a magnificent
example. There was also the ceaseless search, already noted, for church
unity – under imperial hegemony – and the extirpation of ‘heresy’, which
all had a fiercely political as well as a religious dimension. The aim was to
eradicate ‘error’ and possible political alienation; but also, more positively,

17 For senators trying to exploit the Nika riot (532), see Wars 1.25, with Kaldellis (2004),
123–24.
18 This does not mean that pre-Christian emperors neglected their PR. It was, for instance,
a major preoccupation of the first emperor Augustus (r. 26 BCE–14 CE), who set a precedent
his successors followed: see e.g. Millar and Segal (1984), and Augustus’ own Res Gestae
(The Achievements of the Divine Augustus), ed. with trans., Brunt and Moore (1967). This
emphasises such themes as military success, piety, lavish building works (esp. of temples) and
charitable expenditures, in terms not so different from Paul’s panegyric on Justinian, albeit in
sober prose.
19 Corippus, 1.274.
20 E.g. C. Tanta, C. Deo Auctore. In general, the preambles to these and the other imperial
constitutions (= laws) introducing the constituent parts of the Corpus of Civil Law (529–33), i.e.
the Code, Digest and Institutes, and those to Justinian’s Novels (= his later legislation) provide
full accounts both of how the emperor wanted his achievements (and policies) to be seen and of
his own status as, in effect, God’s vicegerent: on which, see Dvornik (1966), 716–23. (By long
tradition, the introductory constitutions of the parts of the CIC are referred to simply by C. [=
Constitutio], followed by the first word, or two, in Latin, of the law in question. In isolation,
they make little sense, and should not be translated.)
21 Bldgs. gives details, including of important military works also. On this work, see the
useful collection of articles in AT (2000) and also below.
 INTRODUCTION 7

as we might conceptualise it, to generate a shared sense of Roman imperial

identity. This project remained, however, unfulfilled – notwithstanding
Procopius’ propagandist claim in the 550s that the emperor had eradicated
religious deviation, and ‘brought it about that it [sc. the empire] stood on the
firm foundation of a single faith’.22
Christian emperors, unlike their Pagan predecessors, could not lay
claim to divinity. But they could seek, so far as possible for a mortal, to
assimilate themselves to divinity and project themselves as God’s vicege-
rents on earth. Thus we see Justinian and his wife portrayed as leading
mankind, under Christ, in the apse mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna. The
same pair intercedes on behalf of mankind to end the sufferings visited on
earth by a wrathful God in Romanos’ kontakion (or hymn), On Fires and
Earthquakes, while the same hymnodist exploits another kontakion, The
Entry into Jerusalem, to set out his vision of the imperial office.23 For his
immediate successor, Justin II (r. 565–78), the emperor could be described,
without any sense of blasphemy, as the ‘image of the Omnipotent’ – a Latin
phrase (omnipotentis imago)24 that echoes the ideology of empire funda-
mental to the Dialogue, to Agapetus, and also implicit in Paul. Paul may
even be thought to have upgraded the emperor, since God has now become
his ‘colleague’ or ‘co-worker’ (sunergon, line 6)! With similar ‘divinising’
intent, the throne of Justin II was placed in the imperial palace under a
mosaic of Christ (de Caer. 2.52.705, ed. Reiske). Not least, perhaps, we hear
in Paul the Silentiary’s poem on the re-dedication of Hagia Sophia that this
event, in this greatest of all churches, on this greatest of all days – so Paul
writes in his opening lines – was one in which both ‘God and the emperor
are honoured’.25 We soon also learn that his late empress, Theodora, who in
her lifetime served as her spouse’s earthly helpmeet in Agapetus (ch. 72),
now acts as a heavenly intercessor for Justinian with God (61). She plays
here the role more normally associated with Mary (or a saint). Although
characterised by his enemies as a monstrous hypocrite, even his most hostile
surviving critic had to concede the emperor’s ostentatious piety and personal
austerity.26
In the capital especially, there were the spectacular and constantly
evolving imperial ceremonials – at court, in church, in the hippodrome or

22 Bldgs. 1.1 – itself a species of panegyric. See pp. 92ff. below.

23 See Topping (1977; 1978) for an analysis of both kontakia.
24 Corippus, 2.427–28.
25 Paul, Description (or Ekthesis) of Hagia Sophia 1. My italics.
26 SH 1.3.
8 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

on the streets of Constantinople – which tended increasingly to integrate the

sacred and the secular.27 Against this background, both Agapetus and the
author of the Dialogue had no difficulty in representing the emperor as the
‘imitation of God’, with the former offering a politically charged recipe for
successful imitation. Agapetus saw the emperor’s role as the ‘imitation’ of
God as bestowed on him by the Deity (ch. 1); the author of the Dialogue, as
befitted a Neoplatonist philosopher from (probably) the highest social strata,
offered a more philosophically nuanced approach, set far more clearly in a
legal-administrative framework based on the perceived justice and legiti-
macy of the imperial institution. This showed how an emperor trained in
‘political science’ might achieve the same objective by imitation of the
divine through ‘ascent’ to the intellectual world ‘above’, and his return to
our own below with the necessary equipment to rule well (D. 5.116–17) –
and, by implication, to do so better than Justinian.
In this, both writers were continuing, as Section 3 below explains, a
tradition dating from Constantine’s bishop, Eusebius. He had re-formulated,
in Christian terms, the concept of the emperor as God’s likeness on earth.
This concept had a long history in Pagan antiquity; it reached back to the
great monarchies of the Hellenistic period in the third century BCE.28 But
it is hard not to see such a metaphor of the emperor as the ‘imitation of
God’ and his vicegerent on earth (on which more below) as in some sense
equating the emperor to Christ.

2. The Authors

(i) Agapetus

The traditional view that someone named Agapetus was the author of the
sixth-century text addressed to the emperor Justinian I is undoubtedly right.
The manuscript tradition, in Greek, goes back to the thirteenth century; in
Slavonic, via translations, to the eleventh century; while citations are to be
found in earlier Byzantine literature.29 The addressee is certainly Justinian I,
not Justinian II (r. 685–95, 705–11). Read with chapter 34, chapter 17 kills
any suggestion that the latter was the dedicatee of Agapetus’ work: both
chapters represent the emperor as having established his credentials for the
27 See n. 12 above.
28 Eusebius, Tricennial Orations, and Life of Constantine. See Plato, Theaetetus 176b, for
the concept of assimilation to the divine in Platonic (and Neoplatonic) thinking.
29 Barker (1957), Ševčenko (1954; 1982).
 INTRODUCTION 9

throne before his accession. Justinian II, in contrast, was born to the purple,
and crowned in 685, aged only 16 (or 14).30
But who exactly was Agapetus? Not the pope of that name, nor the
Western consul for 517.31 Exhaustive searches since the sixteenth century of
all known sixth-century bearers of the name have, so far, yielded no definite
conclusions; the tradition, which might be true, that he was a deacon of
Hagia Sophia depends on a reference in only one branch of the MS tradi-
tion.32 The tradition that he was Justinian’s teacher seems merely a fanciful
inference from his having addressed a book of advice to that emperor. He
may also have been associated in some way with the so-called Akoimetoi33
since his short text apparently contains 204 references to the letters of the
fourth-century saint and writer, Isidore of Pelusium, and the library of their
monastery in Constantinople seems to have held a collection of some 2,000
such letters.34 However, we can be certain he was a deacon called Agapetus:
the acrostic, hardly a later hoax, made up of the initial Greek letters of his
72 chapters spells out the author’s name: Agapetos … diakonos (‘Agapetus
… deacon’).

(ii) The Dialogue

The authorship of the Dialogue is more obscure. The surviving ninth-/tenth-

century Greek text was first discovered in the Vatican library by Cardinal
Mai, the librarian, as a palimpsest (or reused MS) of very poor quality,
in which a work of the second-century CE intellectual Aristides had been
written over our text.35 This discovery comprised around a book and a half
of a sixth-century political dialogue recalling Plato’s Republic. (A further
fragment was discovered in 1973.)36 Mai published it in 1827, along with
other important finds, including much of the lost text of Cicero’s Republic,
while expressing the (sadly unfulfilled) hope that he would eventually be

30 Ševčenko (1982).
31 PLRE II s.v. ‘Fl. Agapitus 3’.
32 Bellomo (1906), 40–44 (in Italian). Over 100 MSS survive, testifying to the work’s
geographically widespread popularity, then and in later printed texts. See below and Ševčenko
(1954; 1982).
33 Literally, the ‘Sleepless Ones’ – monks whose liturgy was organised to provide contin-
uous services 24 hours a day, with three choirs serving in successive 8-hour shifts.
34 Frohne (1985), 199–208, 245–46, 251 (in German).
35 A photograph of part of this MS, included as a frontispiece to Mazzuchi’s editions of
both 1982 and 2002, shows how illegible even a relatively well-preserved portion of this text is.
36 On which see Behr (1974).
10 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

able to produce a better edition.37 Mai attributed its authorship to one Peter
the Patrician (c.500–65), a distinguished high official, diplomat, lawyer and
historian belonging to exactly the right period.38 He surmised that our text
was part of a work of Peter’s referred to in the Suda (a Byzantine lexicon
of around 1000) as On Political Institutions, of which extracts survive.39
This identification is no longer generally accepted, not least because Peter
was apparently writing about political institutions, whereas our Dialogue is
concerned with political philosophy. Moreover, extracts from Peter ‘differ
so much in kind from our text that identification can hardly be regarded
as even probable’. Mazzuchi, the only editor of the Greek text since Mai,
concurs.40 It is even less likely that anyone who held the very senior appoint-
ment of Master of the Offices (magister officium), as Peter did for a record
26 years from 539, would have risked voicing the implicit criticisms of the
emperor found in our text.
More probable, however, is Mai’s identification of the text with that
briefly summarised by the scholar, politician and prelate Photius (patriarch
of Constantinople 858–67, 877–86) in his Bibliotheca – to which he does not
assign an author. We should perhaps ascribe this anonymity to the criticisms
it contained of Justinian’s regime.41 Of this work, Codex (or page) 37 reads:
A work on political science was read which, in a dialogue, introduced two
interlocutors, Menas, the patrician, and Thomas, the referendarius. The work
contains six books, in which it introduces another form of constitution beyond
those spoken of in antiquity. It calls this ‘dicaearchic’.42 Plato’s Republic is
justly criticised. The constitution which they say should be introduced must
be constructed out of the three forms: the imperial,43 the aristocratic, and the
democratic. It will combine the purity of each constitution and thereby create
the truly best constitution.44

37 Scriptorum veterum nova collectio e Vaticanis codicibus edita ab Angelo Maio II (Rome,
1827), 590–699.
38 See ODB vol. 3. under ‘Peter Patrikios’.
39 In the On Ceremonies (de Caerimoniis), 1.84–95, of the emperor Constantine VII
Porphyrogenitus (r. 945–59).
40 Peter’s title is Peri politikes katastaseos (On Political Institutions), in contrast to our
Peri politikes epistemes (On Political Science). Quotation from Averil Cameron (1985), 251;
see also Cameron (2009); Mazzucchi (1978; 2002), xv (in Italian and Latin respectively); Behr
(1974); Mazzucchi and Matelli (1985) (in Italian).
41 Wilson (1994), for a part-translation of the Bibliotheca, with introduction and notes.
42 For the meaning of this, see p. 64 below.
43 Or ‘royal’. See p. 50 below.
44 My translation of Photius’ text (ed. Henry [Paris, 1959]). This is reproduced by Mazzuchi
(2002) on an unnumbered page, preceding his p. 1.
 INTRODUCTION 11

Since only one and a half books of the Dialogue survive, we cannot
judge securely whether Photius’ work is identical with ours. If Photius
generally worked from memory, as his most recent translator and editor,
Nigel Wilson, believes, then it is even less likely that we shall reach firm
conclusions; Photius may well be recalling only what he found memorable,
as well as making the occasional slip.45 Moreover Photius does not mention
all the topics covered in our text – nothing on military matters (Book 4), for
example. The Platonic style of the Dialogue is also ignored, although there
is some (mild) criticism of Plato both overt and implicit: for our author, the
ruling elite are not to live communally but with households of their own
(5.32); their wives are only to be concerned with matters concerning women
of the lower classes (5.78). Also, although in the surviving text the concept
of a ‘mixed constitution’ is not spelt out in terms and the word ‘dicaearchan’
nowhere appears, there is a strong hint of a tripartite constitution in our
author’s assignment of complementary roles to the ‘optimates’46 and the
other, lower classes of the state in his selection procedure for an emperor
(5.50–52), about which more will be said below. On balance, it is probably
safe, with Cameron, Fotiou or Mazzuchi, to take the identity of our Dialogue
and Photius’ anonymous dialogue as our working assumption.
Assuming that Mai correctly identified Photius’ ‘Menas’ as an abbrevi-
ated, or misremembered, form of the ‘Menodorus’ used in the Dialogue, then
he was probably referring to the Menas who had been Urban Prefect, respon-
sible for the administration of the capital.47 He was later to be ­Praetorian
Prefect of the East in 528–29, and enjoyed the rank of patrician,48 in which

45 See Wilson (rev. ed. 1996), 95–99, for Photius’ methods of composition. For a counter-
example, showing that Photius could also work with a text in front of him, in this case, of
Josephus, see Maas (1990).
46 ‘Optimates’ translates the Dialogue’s aristoi, literally the ‘best people’; Paul also
addresses his audience of the ‘great and good’ of the capital in his Description of the Ambo of
Hagia Sophia (line 3) as aristoi. But to talk of the ‘best people’ in English sounds prissy; to
talk of ‘senators’ gives a specific institutional interpretation of the term, which could mislead.
Hence my preference for the more neutral ‘optimates’. This is a Latin term corresponding to the
Greek aristoi. It has some currency (in English, following Cicero’s usage) as a designation of
the upper classes – in effect, the most prominent senators – in discussions of politics in the late
Roman Republic. But it is also used to designate the ‘best people’ ruling the state by late C5/6
(West) Roman Neoplatonic philosopher and statesman, Boethius (Institutions of Arithmetic
2.45), writing in Latin, while cf. Machiavelli’s usage of ottimati and its near synonym grandi
for the same ‘top people’ in his Discourses.
47 PRLE II s.v. ‘Menas 5’.
48 The ancient rank of ‘patrician’ (patricius) had been revived by Constantine (r. 306–37).
It was awarded on a very select basis by him (and his successors) to his closest friends and
12 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

capacity he is flatteringly addressed in the imperial constitution confirming

the new Justinianic Code (529).49 Such was his eminence, and one presumes
respectability, that he even escorted the empress Theodora to the hot springs
of Pythia (in Bithynia). He may also be the subject of a recently discovered
short elegiac poem, extolling a ‘Menas’ as a great legislator and rhetorician
of philosophical bent who ‘outshone Pericles by as much … as Plato did
Anaxagoras … Let jealousy of his discourses and laws depart.’50
No referendarius named Thomas is, however, known.51 But a quaestor
(effectively, legal secretary or minister to the emperor) of that name (and an
ex-consul) is cited in another imperial constitution, establishing the Justini-
anic Code,52 as one of those responsible for this achievement. He was also,
allegedly, a victim of a purge of eminent Pagans in the same year, 529. But
whether or not this is true – the relevant passage in Malalas’ Chronicle is
an abridgement – he was apparently dead by 535, when there is a reference
to Thomas of ‘the most glorious memory’ in a Novel of Justinian. This
suggests rehabilitation, if Thomas had indeed been killed in 529.53
We cannot be absolutely certain about Photius’ identification of the
participants in our Dialogue. Even Mazzucchi, who formerly speculated that
Menas was the author, now goes no further than suggesting that, if Menas
was still alive at the time of publication, he did not object to the book.54 But

the highest officials. Patricians ranked after consuls and ex-consuls in the senatorial hierarchy:
Jones (1964), 106, 254.
49 C. Summa, Introduction (529). Text in Mazzucchi (2002), xiii.
50 My translation. Rashed (2000), 89–98 (in French). See also Mazzucchi (2002), xvi, for
Greek text and discussion (in Latin). Mazzucchi is unconvinced by Rashed’s suggestion that
the Dialogue was the inspiration of the (first?) Arabic work of political philosophy, al Farabi’s
Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the Best State, possibly written in Aleppo in the
mid-C10. But O’Meara (2003), ch. 14, detects a strong Neoplatonic influence, as well as a good
knowledge of Plato in the Principles; he sees the work as having deep correspondences both to
the Dialogue and to the C6 theological writings of Ps. Dionysius the Areopagite.
51 Referendaries (referendarii) served as the emperor’s judicial clerks and messengers.
Their number rose to fourteen, only to be cut back to eight by Justinian (Just. Nov. 10, 535).
As officials close to the emperor (and empress), they were men of considerable standing: one,
Theodorus, was put in charge, for instance, of emergency measures in the capital during the
great plague in 542. For details of the office, see Jones (1964), 575, with sources at 1236.
52 C. Haec 1 (529).
53 Mal., Chronicle 449, for his execution; Just. Nov. 35, for mention in legislation. Also
PLRE IIIb s.v. ‘Thomas 3’.
54 Mazzucchi 1982, and 2002, xvi. Mazzucchi and Matelli (1985) argued for east Mediter-
ranean links for the author, relying in part on the use of the dialogue form, only found elsewhere
in the C6 in Gaza, then a flourishing metropolis, but also on the continuing existence of a school
of philosophy in Alexandria that included Christians as well as Pagans.
 INTRODUCTION 13

the identification is probable – even if using modified names would represent

a departure from the practice of Plato and Cicero, to whom our author is
heavily indebted:55 both these two writers employed the actual names of the
real people purportedly speaking in their dialogues. Possibly also, if Photius
was writing from memory, his referring to Thomas as a referendarius was
a slip for quaestor, especially as both functionaries were active in the legal
area. Perhaps too, our author did not want to make as his spokesman someone
who had fallen spectacularly from grace in 529, whether rehabilitated or not.
But, speculation aside, we certainly have as our two actors, members – real
or imaginary – of the highest administrative levels in the empire, whose
exalted social position and probable wealth, like that of Paul the Silentiary
(on whom more below), contrast with that of Agapetus, a ‘mere’ deacon.
True, a deacon attached to major churches could receive a comfort-
able income, even before offerings are taken into account, of up to 100
gold nomismata / solidi a year in exceptional cases, although less in poorer
rural churches. This compared most favourably with what, say, an unskilled
labourer in full employment might hope to earn in sixth-century Constan-
tinople: one solidus a month. But that is nothing to what a senior official
might receive by way of salary, fees and, indeed, bribes: at the apex, the
Praetorian Prefect of Africa received 7,200 solidi (= 1000 lbs of gold)
annually, the governor of Egypt received some 2,880 solidi; even the civil
servant and antiquarian John the Lydian received, admittedly in an excep-
tional first year as a civil servant in the sixth-century Praetorian Prefecture
in Constantinople, 1000 solidi, including fee income.56
We must not forget the relative wealth and importance of the actors
in the Dialogue (and presumably of its author and his intended audience)
and of Agapetus when we examine the differing social attitudes reflected
in their political recommendations: for example, the great responsibili-
ties reserved for the optimates in the Dialogue, and by contrast not simply
Agapetus’ concern for the poor, a standard feature of Christian discourse,
but his apparent enthusiasm for what we might conceptualise as ­‘progressive
taxation’ (ch. 16): not just giving to the poor, but taking from the rich.

55 See the Summary introducing Dialogue Book 5, p. 144 below (which must not be
confused with my own Synopsis preceding Book 5), as well as the persistent echoes, duly
annotated, of both writers in the Dialogue. See also p. 50 below.
56 The gold solidus (Latin) / nomisma (Greek) was the standard and remarkably stable
currency of late antiquity at the rate of 72 to the pound (of gold). See Jones (1964), 906ff. for
deacons’ earnings; 396ff. for official salaries. More generally, Banaji (2nd ed. 2007), App. 1;
Mango (1980), 40; Laiou (2002), ch. 39, Table 18; John the Lydian, On Magistracies 3.26–27.
14 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

(iii) Paul the Silentiary

Happily, Paul’s identity is clear. The contemporary historian and poet

Agathias was apparently a (younger?) friend who admired him, and included
Paul’s poetry in his own Cycle of epigrams.57 He also describes Paul, in his
History, as coming from a rich and famous family, with a father, Cyrus, also
mentioned in the manuscript heading preceding line 135 of Paul’s Descrip-
tion of Hagia Sophia, and a grandfather, Florus. Much further than that we
cannot go. It is unsurprising that he became a silentiary – a member of a
notionally army corps comprising, in the sixth century, 30 court attendants
of, it seems, rich backgrounds, organised under three officers (or decurions).
Their first responsibility was to secure order and silence in the imperial
palace – ceremonial functions of the kind one associates with Gentlemen-
in-Waiting at the modern British court. But they were also entrusted with
important special commissions, especially in church matters. By the sixth
century, silentiaries had also achieved the exalted social rank of illustris,
the highest title of senators in the late empire. The prestige of the post is
shown by the elevation to the throne in 491 of one of their decurions, Anasta-
sius; Paul himself may have reached the first position in the corps (primi-
cerius). He was, therefore, someone from the same high social stratum as
the probable interlocutors and author of the Dialogue.58 It is unsurprising
that, with this background and his talent and commitment to literature, he
should have produced the greatest surviving verse panegyric of the age in the
introduction to his description of Hagia Sophia on its re-dedication in 562/3.
Its prologue provides, apart from imperial legislation, the clearest insight
into the imperial ideology of our period, in addition to the wider value of
the poem in describing the building, both here and in his supplementary
Description of the ambo of Hagia Sophia. 59
As for Paul’s other poems, some 80 epigrams are now preserved in
the Greek Anthology.60 Although his subject matter is wide-ranging, much

57 Alan Cameron and Averil Cameron (1966), 17–19; McCail (1969), 94. Also PLRE IIIA,
PLRE IIIB under ‘Cyrus 4’, ‘Florus 1’ and ‘Paulus 21’, respectively.
58 Agathias, Histories 5.7ff.; see Jones (1964), 571–72, for details of the office of silentiary,
with full sources.
59 Ambo: a platform or quasi-pulpit, often on columns, which stood in the nave, between
the chancel barrier and the west wall. It served, in Hagia Sophia as elsewhere, as a focal point
for the liturgy: where it began and ended, where scripture was read, and where other ritual acts
were performed. See under ‘ambo’ in ODB.
60 The collective title of two collections of ancient and Byzantine epigrams, the Anthologia
Palatina and the Anthologia Planudea, usually dated to the C10 and early C14 respectively.
 INTRODUCTION 15

is explicitly erotic and uses Pagan imagery in a society where Paganism

was not only far from extinct but actively persecuted by the regime. The
following gives some flavour of his work:
I hold her breasts in my hands. We’re mouth to mouth. Around her silver neck,
I’m in a feeding frenzy. But I’ve not yet made my foam-born one: I still labour,
hugging a girl who refuses me her bed. Half of herself she’s given to the Paphian,
half to Athene. And I’m ground down between the two.61

If Paul’s poems in this vein alone survived, one might well conclude –
more confidently now than formerly – that the author was a Pagan, notwith-
standing the range of styles and themes, from the high classical to the
demotic, available to writers of this period, or the fact that classical (Pagan)
culture was for many laymen the only literary culture they had to read or
create in – one moreover which had been drilled into them through years of
instruction.62 But he also wrote the two ekphraseis – both firmly as eccle-
siastically and politically ‘on message’ as one would expect from a senior
courtier, familiar with the traditions of imperial panegyric. This is despite
their classical language, ‘Hellenic’ imagery and massive debts of substance,

Paul’s oeuvre is mainly found in Bk 5 of the Anth. Pal: see Loeb edition of the GA, trans. W.
Paton (1916–18). Beckby’s edition of the Anthologia Graeca (= GA) (1965) usefully lists all
epigrams by author in his final index. All his epigrams are also to be found, with an Italian
translation, in ed. Viansino (1963).
61 GA 5.272 (my translation). ‘Foam-born’ translates Aphrogeneia – a pun on the name
of the foam-born goddess of love, Aphrodite, whose name literally means ‘foam-given’. Her
aquatic birth is captured in Botticelli’s painting, The Birth of Venus. ‘Paphian’ alludes to the
goddess’s famous cult centre at Paphos in Cyprus. Athene, normally thought of as the goddess
of wisdom, was also the eternal virgin, parthenos in Greek, after whom the Parthenon in Athens
is named.
62 ‘More confident than formerly’ because, until a major article by A. Kaldellis (1999), one
could have argued that if Agathias, seemingly universally regarded until recently as a Chris-
tian, could write of a ‘three-in-a-bed-sex-romp’ (GA 5.269, trans. in the Loeb edition), as well
as anthologising numerous poems with Pagan themes, then so his friend Paul could equally
have been a Christian, even if he also wrote on very un-Christian themes. Thanks, however, to
Kaldellis, this view of Agathias at least is now less certain; even his three ‘Christian’ epigrams
(GA 1.34–36) can be interpreted as an ‘insurance policy’ against condemnation as a Pagan.
For an alternative view, see Averil Cameron (1970), esp. 106–07. See also Jeffreys (2006),
127–40, for an overview of the wide range of literary options available in the C5/C6 centuries;
and Alan Cameron (2004), 327–54, arguing, with special reference to Nonnus, that there was
no necessary incompatibility in late antiquity between being a Christian and writing on Pagan
themes. All this does no more, however, than counsel us against uncritical generalisations, and
to examine each case on its merits, while ever mindful of the dangers inherent in writing under
a religiously intolerant regime.
16 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

language and technique to such Pagan poets as Homer, Callimachus and

Nonnus, whose rigorous metrics Paul scrupulously copied, even outdid. All
these leave his personal religious affiliations unclear.63
Paul’s personal beliefs are not, however, our primary concern, rather
the public message his poem meant to convey. Yet the prima facie conflicts
of religious outlook exemplified by his work as a whole, as well as by his
choice of style and allusion in his Description, warn against too readily
inferring, in this period certainly, someone’s religion from what he wrote
under an intolerant regime, especially when that person was, like Paul, a
courtier, close to the emperor. This is especially true of a poem written for
declamation in the purlieus of a church where the great Christian hymnodist,
Romanos, had specifically denounced by name the same ‘Hellene’, Homer,
whom Paul explicitly claims to imitate.64 We would do well to remember
that under a tyranny or religious or other ideological repression, modern no
less than ancient, it is the expressions of unorthodoxy that are more likely
to provide truer indications of what a writer really believed than professions
of piety, especially on a public platform.65 The alternative is to attribute
‘religiously incorrect’ sentiments and themes to the triumph of the desire of
late classicising poets to write in the classical manner over their Christian
piety.
Agathias, however, helps clarify matters. He describes Paul, notwith-
standing his exalted provenance, as:
chiefly devoted to the study of literature and eloquence and it was on these
cultured pursuits that he prided himself most. He is, in fact, the author of very
many poems of considerable merit, among which that written on the subject of
the Great Church reaches a higher pitch of refinement and erudition than the
rest …66

To the extent that Paul saw his panegyric primarily in terms of enhancing his
reputation or career by displaying his talents for extreme literary ­classicism

63 Nonnus had written, in the previous century, an epic in 48 books, the Dionysiaca, on
the adventures of the Pagan god Dionysius, as well as a verse paraphrase of John’s gospel.
Liebeschuetz (2001), ch. 10, offers a wide-ranging, accessible starting-point for the historical
and cultural background to his work, including on the wider transformation of Greek culture
in this period. See also Bowersock (1996), esp. ch 4, on the mutual influence of Christianity
and Paganism in late antiquity.
64 Paul, Description of Hagia Sophia, 617; Romanos, On Pentecost (Kontakion 33, str.
17.6).
65 An argument cogently developed in Kaldellis (2004), 165–73.
66 Histories 5.7, trans. Frendo (1975).
 INTRODUCTION 17

and imperial promotion on a grander scale than, say, erotic elegiac couplets
permitted, the question of his personal convictions becomes less pressing.
After all, a contemporary advertising executive or political publicist does
not have to believe (although he may) that his client’s product, or his candi-
date, has descended from heaven to save mankind; the essential, for which
he will be richly rewarded, is that he must convince his audience or the
electorate of this.

3. Dating

Dating texts can be frustrating. Dating two of ours is no exception. Fortu-

nately, because both are more closely related to ‘the real world’ than one
might first assume from their highly stylised manner, addressing the chrono-
logical problems has the advantage of casting light on that world and on the
substantive issues their authors were addressing.

(i) Paul the Silentiary

Paul happily poses no great problem. His poem was indubitably deliv-
ered during the re-dedication ceremonies between 24 December 562 and
Epiphany (‘Twelfth Night’), 6 January 563, following the reconstruction of
the dome that had collapsed during restoration work in 558, after damage
in earthquakes the year before. Some scholars, however, are never satis-
fied and the actual day has this time stimulated controversy. There are two
candidates: Epiphany and the Sunday after Christmas, which fell that year
on 31 December 562. Briefly, the case for the later day reflects the emperor’s
granting two extensions, by popular request, of the re-dedication ceremo-
nies, suggesting a feast day of the church after Christmas (79–80). The
feast of Epiphany seems a suitable date: it was a well-established festival,
‘on which both God and the emperor were honoured’ (2). According to
the treatise of the tenth-century emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ On
Ceremonies, there were ritual acclamations for the latter as well as a special
liturgical celebration in which he took part. This is the date which, since
Friedländer’s edition (1912), scholars have broadly accepted.67
However, in favour of the earlier date, Macrides and Magdalino68
have claimed that taking Epiphany as the date of delivery causes textual

67 E.g. Mary Whitby (1985a), 215–28.

68 Macrides and Magdalino (1988), 63–67.
18 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

a­ wkwardness in the poem, while the prominence given to David, an

early Jewish king, in lines 429–3769 provides a clue as to the true date of
delivery. By the ninth century – and possibly much earlier – the Sunday
after Christmas commemorated David, while he was already celebrated
as the iconographic type of the king in the sixth-century apse mosaics of
St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, founded by Justinian. On this view, to
praise David is to praise the current emperor, Justinian. However, as they
concede, neither date can be conclusively shown to be the actual date of
delivery. And, since they also correctly assert that neither date affects the
interpretation of the poem, interested readers can follow up the arguments
for themselves.

(ii) Agapetus

A text that advertises itself as advising someone how to be a good ruler is

likely to have been produced earlier rather than later in his reign. Beyond
that, we cannot go with certainty. (This is true whether or not the work really
was primarily meant for Justinian’s guidance, or was more of a rhetorical
exercise for public display, opinion moulding and securing imperial patronage
– not that these objectives are incompatible.) In her doctoral thesis, however,
Renate Frohne attempted to go further, essentially by noting how possible
references to actual events in his work all seem to indicate a time fairly
early in the reign.70 Her argument is that Justinian is consistently addressed
as already emperor, setting a date for the composition not earlier than 527.
Chapter 72 refers to the empress Theodora, who died in 548, as still living.
The work was, therefore, completed before then, and, in her view, probably
not long after the catastrophic Nika riots (532). Moreover, the reference
to teaching men to protect justice (ch. 1) refers to Justinian’s law reform
and consolidation programme, begun in 528 and completed in 533. (We
know there was opposition to this, since Procopius’ hostile references to
Tribonian, then quaestor, and in effect ‘Minister for Law Reform’, probably
reflected not just personal hostility but a wider contemporary, conservative
hostility to [here, legal] ‘innovation’ [res novae] found in, say, John the
Lydian and Procopius elsewhere.)71 Next, chapter 4 alludes, she believes, to
those lying destitute in the streets after the destruction in the Nika riots of

69 Not included in this selection.

70 Frohne (1985), 160ff.
71 ‘Innovation’ also characterises ‘bad’ emperors such as Domitian and Caracalla (Justinian
is carefully not mentioned): On Magistracies 1.49, 2.19. Procopius, SH 20.16; Wars 1.24.16.
 INTRODUCTION 19

an asylum between Hagia Sophia and the adjacent basilica of Hagia Eirene,
which Justinian had rebuilt more splendidly. The chapter points, therefore,
to a publication date shortly after those riots.72 Chapter 17, which describes
Justinian as a philosopher-king, must, however, precede the downfall of
the Platonic school at Athens around 529, as a result, direct or indirect, of
imperial legislation.73 Chapter 20 probably alludes to victories against the
Persians, preceding the ‘Eternal Peace’ with Persia in 532, and the initial
spectacular victories in North Africa the same year.74 Finally, chapter 30,
prescribing a stringent selection process for officials, is an implied criti-
cism of the influx of powerful ‘new men’ into the imperial service of the
new regime whom Procopius so viciously criticised.75 All this shows, in
Frohne’s submission, that Agapetus published his Exposition shortly after
the catastrophe of the Nika riots when the world was, allegedly, going right
again following victories in North Africa, peace in the Near East, and the
completion of the publication of the new law codes. This justifies the up-beat
tone of the work.
However, her identification of these contemporary allusions is not
without problems. For example, we cannot date the work both before the
downfall of the Athenian school (529) and after the Nika disaster and the
‘Eternal Peace’ with Persia (532). Others, like me, would see the post-Nika
years as altogether less joyous – with a regime desperate to secure and
consolidate its legitimacy, even its hold on power.76 Taken together, Frohne’s
arguments do not take us much further than confirming our original hypoth-
esis: publication near the beginning of the reign. They do, however, remind
us that we must relate Agapetus’ work to contemporary concerns.

(iii) The Dialogue on Political Science

Dating the Dialogue is harder. Averil Cameron noticed that, if we cannot

precisely date the work, it seems to be written in the senatorial interest. So
it could easily reflect senatorial resentments either in the context of the Nika
riot and its aftermath of senatorial confiscations and executions – which

72 Frohne (1985), 160; Bldgs. 1.2.14–19.

73 What exactly happened to this school and why remains debatable: see Watts (2006), with
full refs. to earlier literature.
74 Wars 1.22; 3–4.
75 SH 21.8–13 for Justinian’s allegedly vicious ‘selection process’. But these men had
started their evil work (in Procopius’ eyes) even before Nika: SH 12.12ff.
76 Above all, Meier (2003), see n. 10 above; Bell (forthcoming).
20 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

have, understandably, lead some scholars to plump for an early date;77 or

later in the reign, when the emperor seemed to be even less considerate
of the senatorial elite, and there was a regrouping of senators around his
eventual successor, Justin II. There was also a revival of factional violence
and persecution of Pagans in this later period, combined with outbreaks
of plague and famines, as well as a further plot against Justinian in which
even the great Belisarius was allegedly involved.78 The prominence that Paul
gives to this conspiracy in his Description (ekphrasis) illustrates both these
tensions and the continuing vulnerability of a regime for which the Dialogue
itself constitutes further evidence.79 The latter work not only concerns itself
with the choice of patriarchs, but recognises (5.51) the potential impor-
tance of the patriarch to senators in determining the imperial succession.
The realism of the Dialogue’s approach, suggests Cameron, was shown in
the last year of Justinian’s reign – although in this suggestion, she simpli-
fies the arrangements the Dialogue proposes: these do not just involve the
patriarch, but a complex process including sortition. Cameron also passes
over the importance our author rightly placed on securing the legitimacy of
a new emperor across all social classes (5.46–53). This last year of Justin-
ian’s reign (565) saw the deposition of one patriarch and a replacement,
John Scholasticus, who became actively involved in Justin II’s elevation:
he aligned himself with a senatorial faction, thereby producing a grouping
‘nicely supported’, as Cameron puts it, ‘by the “laws” put forward in this
work’. Seen from Cameron’s perspective, therefore, the Dialogue is making
recommendations, in the light of experience under Justinian, for the conduct
of the successor regime at a time of upper-class discontent.
Mazzucchi disagrees.80 His arguments fall into three categories: those
allusions that are compatible with any date during Justinian’s reign and not,
therefore, precisely dateable; those that are wrong; and, last, those we must
take seriously. The first group includes references to a Persian king, Firoz,
prudently punishing misbehaviour by his troops (4.63–68), an episode with

77 For some of the arguments on dating, see Averil Cameron (1985), 250–51; Fotiou
(1981), 539ff.
78 See e.g. Mal., Chronicle 487–94; Dialogue 5.103ff. Belisarius (c. 505–65) was the most
celebrated general of Justinian’s reign. He suppressed the Nika riot in 532, but is best known
for his reconquest of North Africa in 533–34, and later of Sicily and Rome itself (536). In
559–60, he led an emergency defence against the Kotrigur Huns who threatened Thrace and
Constantinople.
79 Paul, Description 20–35. See also Corippus, 4.384ff.
80 Mazzucchi (2002), xiii–xv (in Latin).
 INTRODUCTION 21

the flavour of a moral fable,81 but of contemporary political relevance and

a target of legislation designed to prevent the mistreatment of civilians by
troops: for instance, in Just. Nov. 130 (545). Also mentioned is the Frankish
takeover of Gaul (4.43–44). Firoz died in 484; the Franks took over Gaul
in 507. But nothing necessarily follows from these facts about the dating of
the Dialogue. For even towards the end of Justinian’s reign, they remained
relatively recent events of importance.
He also considers that the proposed law in the Dialogue, whereby an
emperor must designate a successor, refers to Justin I’s decision in 527,
four months before he died, to designate Justinian as his co-emperor and
successor (5.162–64).82 Securing a peaceful transition, in the absence of
any clear rules of hereditary succession, was a problem for the Roman
Empire from its inception – and never resolved, to its great harm, during
the whole subsequent history of Byzantium: the ‘politicking with violence’
that followed the death of Anastasius in 518 had shown this only recently.83
Justin’s action in naming his successor, therefore, was prudent, especially
as Justinian’s position under his uncle seems to have been more vulnerable
than Procopius represents it, in his desire to ‘credit’ Justinian with all the
failings of Justin I, whom it suited him to portray as an illiterate geriatric
with the real power controlled by his nephew (SH 6.10–18). Many, including
the author of the Dialogue, may reasonably have thought more systematic
arrangements should be introduced in future.84 But that does not imply an
early date for our text. The protracted period throughout Justinian’s own,
childless – and politically troubled – old age when no successor had been
designated seems an even stronger candidate for inspiring such a legislative
proposal. (In the end, as mentioned above, Justin II only secured power
through a bloodless coup involving senators and the patriarch.) My counter-
argument is essentially a re-formulation of Cameron’s point on the previous
page.
In this same category of ‘undatables’ falls Mazzucchi’s contention that
the praise given (5.78) to the wives of the ruling class (our ‘optimates’) and
the valuable services they will perform is an oblique tribute to Theodora, the
value of whose advice was, for instance, mentioned by the emperor in the

81 Perhaps reflecting the way the earlier Persian monarch, Cyrus, had become a stock
rhetorical figure to point a moral: for such a use of Cyrus in the Dialogue, see 4.3 below.
82 Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle a.527.
83 See Vasiliev (1950), ch. 1, for details with sources.
84 For the struggle for power under Justin I, see Croke (2007), Bell (forthcoming).
22 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

preface to a major law reforming public administration.85 What this has to

do with the date of our text (or even Theodora) is not spelt out. Paul could,
after all, honour Theodora, now promoted to be God’s policy advisor, in
563, fifteen years after her death in 548.86 Mazzucchi seems, moreover, to
ignore the respect consistently given to women in the Neoplatonic tradition
to which our writer belongs (see below), even if our author, like Plato in his
Laws, which describes his ‘second-best’ polity, does not give women the
equal status with men, including the right to function as rulers of his ideal
state, that they enjoy in his Republic.87 Similarly questionable is his belief
that our author’s enthusiasm for Latin literature and Cicero’s Republic88 –
he could almost as easily have mentioned, amongst others, Livy, Juvenal or
Seneca – is more appropriate to a text dating from the beginning of Justin-
ian’s reign, after which Latinity faded in Constantinople. Possibly. One
recalls that, while the overwhelming bulk of Justinian’s Corpus of Civil Law
(528–33) is in Latin, much of his later legislation is not. But the Latin culture
of the capital was more vigorous than often imagined, notwithstanding the
complaints of John the Lydian, who prided himself on his Latinity, that
Latin had ceased to be the administrative language of the empire. Junillus
Africanus, the successor to the law-reformer Tribonian as quaestor, and
effectively chief legal minister to the emperor in 541/2, where he remained
until his death in 548/9, published, probably during his period of office,
his influential and ‘theologically correct’ introduction to Christian belief
in Latin.89 Even in the next reign, Corippus could count on an audience for
one lengthy panegyric at least – delivered in Constantinople and in Latin.90

85 Just. Nov. 8.1.

86 Paul, Description 62.
87 O’Meara (2003), 83–86, on ‘Philosopher Queens’, for the Platonist tradition of a
community of virtue shared by men and women for whom gender differences, as reported
at length by Proclus, On the Republic 1.237.5–13, were for most only ‘a product of different
modes of life’. Cf. Olympiodorus, On the Gorgias 105.25–29: ‘woman differs from man in no
respect, excepting the genital parts, so that often a woman might live a superior political life
to a man …’ One recalls the reverence in this tradition accorded to such teachers as Sosipatra
(late C4) in Pergamum and Hypatia (d. 415) in Alexandria; the latter’s murder by Christians
was equated, as by Damascius (Philosophical History fr. 102), with the death of the Athenian
philosopher, and Plato’s mentor, Socrates.
88 Cicero is referred to in Dialogue 4.53, 5.48, 64, 151, 152, 155, 161 and 209.
89 See Maas (2003) for text, translation and introduction to Junillus’ Handbook of the Basic
Principles of Divine Law. Maas’s work has the further merit of countering Procopius’ malicious
criticisms (SH 20) of Junillus.
90 John the Lydian, On Magistracies 2.12, 3.42; Corippus. For the continuing significance
of Latin culture in Byzantium, see n. 181 below.
 INTRODUCTION 23

In the second category, where Mazzucchi’s arguments seem wrong,

fall the Dialogue’s recommendations that the empire should concentrate
on defending its own frontiers rather than indulging in foreign adventures
(5.153); and that neglect of infantry, in contrast to cavalry, threatened the
state (4.39–40). It would, in Mazzucchi’s judgement, have been impos-
sible to maintain either position after the spectacular cavalry victories in
winning back North Africa during Belisarius’ reconquest in 533. It is true
that Procopius (Wars 3.10.7) tells us that the wisdom of Justinian’s policy
of reconquest was strongly opposed, by no less than John the Cappadocian
amongst others – in a society where the disastrous attempt to reconquer
North Africa from the Vandals in 468 was still remembered. Even if we do
read 5.152 as opposing an expansionary foreign policy – which is question-
able – as opposed to advocating self-reliance and eschewing divination,
advice to concentrate on home defence was equally, if not more, apposite
later in the reign, given the military pressures in both the Balkans and the
Near East. We recall, for example, the trauma reported by Procopius of the
loss of Antioch (and other rich provinces) to the Persians in 540, and the
strain of continuing in parallel the reconquest of Italy where momentum
had been lost – Italy was not finally subjugated until 561, even if sufficient
progress had been made by 554 for the emperor to issue a ‘Pragmatic
Sanction’ setting out the rules governing a final settlement.91 After this, an
emphasis on home defence becomes even more understandable; it certainly
gives no grounds for rejecting a later date for the Dialogue.
The same holds for the debate on the relative merits of cavalry and
infantry. Menas’ advocacy of the primacy of infantry has been taken by
Mazzucchi (2002, xiv) to show that the Dialogue cannot have been written
later than 533, when Belisarius defeated the Vandals and re-took Africa after
two brilliant cavalry victories. He could also have cited the way Procopius
singles out contemporary mounted and heavily armed bowmen as repre-
senting the acme of military progress.92 But notwithstanding the cavalry’s
increasing importance, Mazzucchi’s conclusion does not necessarily follow.
Averil Cameron dismissed Mazzucchi’s earlier version of this argument on
the grounds that the discussion in the text is set in an archaising context
and must not be taken too seriously.93 But this underestimates how, for all
its stylistic and other allusions to the Greek classical tradition and whatever

91 Fall of Antioch: Wars 2.8. Italy: Pragmatic Sanction (included as App. vii in Justinian
Novellae, eds. Schöll and Kroll [1928]).
92 Wars 1.1.
93 Averil Cameron (1985), ch. 14.
24 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

reservations one may entertain of the merits of some of its specific recom-
mendations, the Dialogue seeks here as elsewhere to engage with current
issues. In fact, one of the interlocutors, Thomas, pertinently points out (4.38)
that Menas’ argument, in appealing to ancient Roman precedent, takes no
account of changes in warfare, including the character of enemy forces, over
several hundred years.
The infantry still remained vitally important in the sixth century. Yes,
Dara, Ad Decimum and Tricamarum in North Africa were cavalry victories
in which the Roman cavalry engaged, if unexpectedly, the enemy before the
infantry arrived.94 But, in other battles, the cavalry dismounted and fought
on foot: e.g. Taginae and Mons Lactarius in Italy,95 Mammes in N. Africa96
and the River Hippis in Lazica.97 Modern military historians emphasise the
continuing central role of infantry: John Haldon, for example, notes a shift
towards cavalry by the later sixth century, but does not see this as reducing
the infantry role to insignificance; Philip Rance has more to say about what
this role was – how the infantry could function as the ‘hard core’ of the army
on the battlefield and also its importance in the ‘low-intensity operations’,
especially on rough ground, that increasingly characterised military opera-
tions in late antiquity. The Strategicon, an important military handbook
widely attributed to the emperor Maurice (r. 582–602), recognises this.98
If the Dialogue is dated later in Justinian’s reign, these comments can be
seen as a contribution to a contemporary strategic debate on the relative
­importance of the two arms and the need not to underestimate the infantry
role.
More interesting is Mazzucchi’s list of topics where the Dialogue argued
there was a need for government action, and which we know independently
were the subject of imperial legislation.99 We are meant to infer that this

94 Wars 1.13–14, 3.18–19, 4.3.

95 Wars 8.29–32, 35.
96 Wars 4.11–50.
97 Wars 8.30–31.
98 Lee (2005), 113–29; Haldon (1999), 193–97; best of all, Rance (2007), who conveys a
vivid impression, through examples, of military operations, as also does Sidebottom (2004).
In correspondence, however, Rance has explained that he remains far from certain about the
case the Dialogue is making about the relative importance of the two arms in this period: for
instance, our author, after a considerable ‘build up’ in his text, has little positive to say about
how the infantry can be better used.
99 Mazzucchi’s list of mischiefs, with the corresponding legislation – to which we could
often add further examples – comprises:
• 4.60–68: losses caused to civilians by the army – Nov. 130 (545);
 INTRODUCTION 25

legislation, dated from 533 to 565, though mostly from the 530s, must
have followed the publication of our text. Mazzucchi also believes that
the space and passion that our author (5.97–114) devotes to the evils of
conflict between the circus and theatre factions, whether in Constantinople
or elsewhere, are inspired by the Nika riot of 532 (so called after the slogan
‘Nika’ – Conquer! – adopted by the factions). On this occasion, the two chief
factions, the Blues and the Greens, combined (with a little senatorial help)
against the emperor in rioting that was eventually crushed, as we have seen,
with massive loss of life and destruction of the city.
Mazzucchi could be right. Whatever side one supported, the Nika riot
was a disaster, undoubtedly traumatic for all who lived through it and its
aftermath. It strongly influenced the emperor’s policy afterwards, especially
in terms of his determination to legitimise his regime.100 Unsurprisingly
Procopius and more or less contemporary chronicles, such as Malalas, give
it such prominence. But it does not follow that the Dialogue was written
shortly afterwards. Although, post-Nika, the factional scene was quiescent,
it revived towards the end of Justinian’s reign when the chronicles again start
providing notices of serious factional and other disturbances.101 A Dialogue
written in this late period could make its (politically tendentious) points
about factional behaviour and the lack of effective government control
most convincingly by oblique allusion to the most apocalyptic of all such
disturbances.102 We know nothing of the dramatic date of the Dialogue from
what remains. But one recalls that Cicero’s Republic, for instance, which so
influenced our author, was set in 129 BCE – more than twenty years before
Cicero was born. Our Dialogue too, following precedent, may well have
enjoyed a dramatic date considerably earlier than its date of composition.

• 4.71–72: compensation to the sons of dead soldiers – CJ 12.47.3 (533); cf. also
Theophylact Simocatta, Histories 7.1.7; Jones (1964), 675;
• 5.18: certain administrative and fee arrangements for the senate – Nov. 62 (537);
• 5.56: separation of civil and military authority in certain provinces (mainly in Asia
Minor) – Nov. 24–31 (535–36);
• 5.66–71: clerical and monkish regulation, elimination of abuses etc. – Nov. 6 (535), 16
(535), 133 (539), 123 (546) 137 (565);
• 5.74: controls on immigration from the provinces to the capital – Nov. 80 (539);
• 5.80–81: greater equity etc. in tax collection – Nov. 128 (545); and,
• 5.218: prevention of corrupt purchase of office – Nov. 8 (535).
100 See Bell (forthcoming).
101 See p. 88 below for details.
102 See Dialogue 5.109, with n. 91, for why the Dialogue’s treatment of the factions is
tendentious.
26 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

As to issues that Mazzucchi noted as being subsequently dealt with by

legislation, the individual cases are discussed in the notes to the Dialogue
below. But some general considerations are relevant. Most of the issues
touched on in the Dialogue refer to matters of concern throughout the sixth
century – or even longer – and thereby make a claim for the Dialogue of
contemporary social and political relevance. This is clear even from the
legislation Mazzucchi cites: measures, for example, dealing with church
governance are spread over thirty years. Legislation on the split between
civil and military authority (and in some cases its reunion, which he does
not mention)103 is one phase in a long-drawn-out process of trying to provide
effective government in those wide swaths of the empire characterised by
disorder, rural violence and the difficulties for tax collection they caused.
The administration of taxation, another of Mazzucchi’s examples, was an
especial problem and an enduring source of complaint. By way of further
evidence for this, we have the moans of Procopius, John the Lydian,
Evagrius and others; the emperor even acknowledged it in his own legis-
lation.104 Likewise official malfeasance, especially concerning purchase of
office.105 Other examples would include the legislation noted in relation to
4.60–69, regulating the behaviour of soldiers in their dealings with civilians.
Mazzucchi takes all references to such abuses, or, more generally, to areas
in the Dialogue where it is suggested that reform is needed and which were
the subject of legislation, as indications that the work could not have been
written after such legislation. But this is not a convincing argument, not
least because it is notorious that many deep-seated problems continued after
legislation was enacted – hence so much repetitive legislation.106
The Dialogue’s author did not, therefore, identify, with remarkable
prescience, issues to which legislation was later addressed, often more than
once. It is rather that, given that there is nothing in the extant text that
necessitates an early dating, this kind of reference makes a later date of
composition more rather than less probable. For it enables the writer, first, to
highlight with the benefit of hindsight the relevance of his treatise to points
of general, long-term public concern; and, second, to do so still more artfully
and effectively if his Dialogue, following the precedents set by Plato and
Cicero, who are both echoed throughout his work, was set at a date early in

103 E.g. Just. Nov. 145.

104 E.g. in Just. Nov. 149, where the emperor seeks to justify taxes, but also in many Novels
dealing with administrative reform in Asia Minor: n. 99 above.
105 Kelly (2004), esp. ch. 4.
106 Harries (1999), esp. ch. 5, on this striking feature of imperial legislation.
 INTRODUCTION 27

the reign, though probably after the Nika riot.107

Finally, a ‘Health Warning’: Plato’s Menexenus cautions anyone trying
to date a ‘Platonic’ dialogue by reference to its contents. In it, ‘Socrates’ is
permitted to make a ‘funeral oration’ on the dead of the Corinthian War – a
war that began in 395 BCE, four years after Socrates’ own execution!

4. Agapetus – ADVICE: His Sources, Methods and

Thought

(i) Sources

It would be a pardonable, if misleading, generalisation to say that Agapetus’

Advice was wholly derivative and of minimal intellectual, let alone political,
interest: pardonable, because so much of the work can be traced back to
earlier writers; misleading, because what counts is what Agapetus did with
the material he had harvested from others, not least in injecting a degree
of political radicalism hard to find in the upper-class prose literature of the
period. This section addresses both issues in turn.
Since the first modern, printed edition in 1509, there have been some
140 further editions, translations and commentaries, including over 60 from
the ‘golden age’ of Agapetus studies, the sixteenth century. But there have
only been five editions and translations, including this one, two German
full- and one English part-translation, since Migne’s edition in 1867; the last
complete English translation dates to 1564.108 This reflects an accelerating
decline in most of Europe from the eighteenth century onwards of monarchy,
together with any doctrine of the ‘divine right of kings’, including its polit-
ical and ideological centrality and the Christian religion that underpinned it.
Most monarchies have now been supplanted by republics. Where monarchy
has survived, in such places as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands or
Scandinavia, the doctrine has been replaced by such ideologies as liberalism
or social democracy, and monarchy retains only a largely symbolic role.
Most scholarship has, however, concentrated on Agapetus’ sources (and his
rhetorical tropes)109 rather than his political significance. Happily, after four
107 As Averil Cameron (1985), 250, also suggested.
108 Frohne (1985), 19–110. Her doctoral thesis (in German) is indispensable, especially
for Agapetus’ sources and the history of his text. I am much indebted to her work, especially
in this section.
109 E.g. internal rhymes, antitheses, homoioteleuton, paronomasia, alliteration etc. See
Blum (1981).
28 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

hundred years of scholarship, a large measure of consensus now exists on

the former.
These sources fall into three main groups. First, works by Isocrates, the
fourth-century BCE Athenian rhetorician and educator, best remembered for
his seminal importance in defining and promoting what constituted the basis
of elite literary and rhetorical education (paideia) for the rest of antiquity.
Three books, written roughly between 374 and 365 BCE, were of particular
importance to Agapetus in terms both of style and substance: To Demonicus,
which is classed with the next two discourses owing to their shared concern
with the proper conduct of life, in this case with man’s relation to the gods,
to humanity in general, and in relation to the recipient in developing his own
virtuous character;110 To Nicocles, the young king of Cyprus, who may have
been a pupil of Isocrates, offering a compendium of advice on how to be
a good ruler; and Nicocles or The Cyprians, ostensibly a work by the king
himself on the duties of subjects. The links in terms of subject-matter with
the Advice are clear, while allusions to them in it are concentrated, Frohne
notes, though not exclusively, in chs. 18–32 (especially the Demonicus)
and 47–57. Less obvious, though relevant to Agapetus’ style, is how these
texts combine practical with more high-flown advice. The material thus
comprises Isocrates’ own precepts with others drawn from earlier Greek
gnomic writers.111 His own material is rather loosely thrown together, as he
himself conceded,112 and in a way not wholly unlike like that of Agapetus.
By contrast, the writers in the second main group are largely Hellenistic
writers, mostly neo-Pythagoreans, of whom excerpts survive in the early
fifth-century anthology of Stobaeus, which includes writers from Homer
onwards, though apparently no Christians. These appear to have been read
earlier in Neoplatonic schools, including in the fourth century CE.113 They
provide us with most of what little remains of Hellenistic theorising about
kingship, and were written in a wholly different political climate when the
Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, including Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia
(modern Iraq) and, more briefly, Iran were ruled in a number of very large

110 The authenticity of the Demonicus has been challenged; what matters here is the use
Agapetus made of this work. (Whether Demonicus was a Cypriot is also doubtful.) All three
Isocratean texts are conveniently collected together, with useful introductions and English
translations, in Isocrates: Volume I, ed. Norlin (1928 and later reprints), in the Loeb Classical
Library.
111 See n. 139.
112 Isocrates, Antidosis 68.
113 O’Meara (2003), 97.
 INTRODUCTION 29

kingdoms by a variety of Greek monarchs, chiefly descended from the

generals of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). In their writings, kingship
is now a given. But it remained to be defined and legitimised. Indeed, it
is helpful to see their writing as creating, in the language of the Italian
political philosopher Gramsci, a new, hegemonic ideology – that is, an
ideology safeguarding the interests of a ruling class, here the Hellenistic
rulers, their associates and, more generally, those who benefited from their
regimes, by promoting its acceptance by society at large.114 The essence
of their approach was to see the king standing in the same relation to the
‘city’ as God to the cosmos and as the embodiment of law (Diotogenes and,
later, Plutarch); he is the legitimate imitator of God (Sthenidas); the king
either has the Logos (Word) of God as his guiding principle (Plutarch) or
incarnates it (Ecphantus – who also describes God as the archetype of the
true king); while for Plutarch, the king’s virtuous activity is an imitation
(mimesis, in Greek, as in Agapetus) of the divine virtue. He must love men,
be their good shepherd (Archytas), and so on.115
Apart from the suggestion that a king could incarnate God’s Word –
something reserved by Christians for Jesus (John 1.14) – all these attributes
of a model (Pagan) king or emperor could be adopted by Bishop Eusebius
(in his Tricennial Oration, celebrating thirty years of rule by the first Chris-
tian emperor) and applied to the first Christian emperor, Constantine. He
also supplemented these authors with material from Christian writers such
as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, and from the Bible.116 Similarly,

114 A. Gramsci (1891–1937) was imprisoned under Mussolini when he wrote his Prison
Diaries (Eng. trans. 1971) in which he developed, between 1929 and 1935, his concept of a
hegemonic ideology.
115 Diotogenes and Sthenidas, Neopythagoreans variously dated between C3 BCE and C2
CE, of whom virtually nothing is known apart from their views on kingship, which may only
have been attributed to them. Ecphantus, a C4 BCE Pythagorean, best-known for a Neopla-
tonic treatise On Kingship (wrongly) attributed to him. Archytas, also a C4 BCE Pythagorean
philosopher and mathematician, whose views on music may have influenced Plato, whom he
appears to have known. Little is known for certain about his political views. Plutarch (before
50 CE–after 120), was a prolific, influential and popular rhetorician, Platonic philosopher and
religious writer, now best-known for his parallel biographies of famous ancient Greek and
Roman statesmen and generals. He was widely read in Byzantine times. OCD provides further
information (where it exists) on all these writers.
116 Origen (c.185–c.254) prolific, influential and controversial Alexandrian biblical critic,
exegete, spiritual writer and theologian, who may have castrated himself, in accordance with
Matt. 19.12. Much of his writing is lost or known only in doubtful translations. He held inter
alia that, in the end, all souls, even Satan’s, would be saved. Unsurprisingly, he was condemned
at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Clement (c.150–c.213), born in Athens of
30 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

Eusebius’ argument that the king/emperor, having been shaped in the image
of the divine kingdom, looks up ‘as if to an archetypal Form’ according to
which he rules, recalls nothing so much as Plato’s philosopher-rulers in
his Republic.117 His Oration, in fact, provided an important source for the
‘standard model’ of royal rule to be employed by orators in praising the
emperor, This rhetorical rule (basilikos logos) remained available for later
generations, including Agapetus, to follow.118
In fact, there was a flourishing, wider literary tradition, later dubbed
the ‘Mirror for Princes’, especially in the form of speeches, which dated
from Isocrates and Xenophon in the fourth century BCE onwards. And
this set out criteria for a good monarch. Much scholarly attention has been
devoted recently to such imperial panegyric.119 Thus, close to our period,
we find major fourth-century examples in the Funeral Oration (Or. 18)
by the Antiochene orator Libanius for his friend and patron, the emperor
Julian; and we have Julian’s own Heroic Deeds of the Emperor Constantius,
or, On Kingship (Or. 2). Other ingredients of the tradition were supplied,
for example, by the Christian Neoplatonist, and later bishop, Synesius of
Cyrene (c.370–c.413), in his On Ruling (de regno). This combined political
theory with practical political advice to the Eastern emperor, Arcadius (r.
383–408). Everywhere we find the influence of rhetorical theory, of whom
some of the best-surviving examples are texts associated with the influ-
ential, late third-century Menander Rhetor, which contained guidance on
ceremonial addresses, including those to emperors, and which contributed
to the development of the standard model we noted above.120 Platonopolis,
a recent book (2003) by Dominic O’Meara on Neoplatonic political theory,
cites further writers who influenced this tradition, as does the German, W.
Blum (1981). But the central idea was caught in a classic article by the
English Byzantinist, Norman Baynes:
The basis of political philosophy is to be found in a conception of the imperial
government as a terrestrial copy of the rule of God in Heaven: there is one God

Pagan parents, whose prolific theological and controversial writings show a wide knowledge
of classical Greek literature. His theology helped pave the way for Origen.
117 For the philosophical problems which the Dialogue rightly saw are entailed in governing
by reference to a transcendental Form, see below.
118 Eusebius, Tricennial Oration, trans. and comm. Drake (1976); Life of Constantine,
trans. and comm. Averil Cameron and S. G. Hall (1999). This later work reinforces the points
made in the former; it does not, however, seem to have been widely known in C6. See Introduc-
tion to Cameron and Hall’s edition, 48–50.
119 See Mary Whitby (1998) for a wide-ranging set of papers with bibliography.
120 Ed. and trans. Russell and Wilson (1981).
 INTRODUCTION 31

and one Divine law, therefore there must be on earth but one ruler and a single
law. That ruler, the Roman emperor, is the Vicegerent of the Christian God.121

Whether Eusebius personally was one of Agapetus’ sources is uncertain,

although, as O’Meara noted, his first chapter could serve as a summary of the
Tricennial Oration, while some of the writers we have noted were certainly
known to our man. More important, thanks to their Eusebian ‘consecra-
tion’, there was now a corpus of materials on the nature of kingship that
could be safely drawn on by subsequent writers. These include not just
Agapetus, but the author of the Dialogue, who is himself no less committed
than Agapetus to the idea of kingship/imperial rule imitating the rule of God,
or Paul, whose production in some ways complies with the ‘Menandrian’
rules more closely than either of the two others. Other panegyrists in this
tradition include, for instance, in the sixth century, the poet Corippus, who
could write in these Eusebian terms of Justinian’s successor, Justin II:
Christ granted the Lords of the earth to have power over all things.
He is omnipotent; and he [sc. the emperor] is the likeness (or image) of the
Omnipotent.122

The third group of Agapetus’ sources is more heterogeneous. It includes

two of the best-known (Eastern) Fathers of the Church, Basil of Caesarea
(330–79) and Gregory of Nazianzus (329–89), on whom chapters 7, 34, 43,
66, 69, 70 and 72 of Agapetus all depend.123 Less familiar are two further
saints, Nilus of Ancyra (or Sinai) (d. c.430) and Isidore of Pelusium (d.
c.449–50). Modern scholarship means that, as also with Agapetus and the
author of the Dialogue, we know less about Nilus than formerly. He has
been ‘deconstructed’, while the authorship of his alleged works (surviving
in several languages other than Greek) is disputed. Sadly, it appears to be
a romantic fabrication that he was a high official in Constantinople who
abandoned his wife to go to Sinai to become a monk, where he led an
exciting life, including rescuing a son who had been sold as a slave by
‘Saracen’ raiders. Similarly, many of the titles of the letters addressed to
illustrious officials, even emperors, are now judged anachronistic additions.
Nevertheless, a ‘Nilus’, along with his voluminous literary output, genuine
or attributed, was well known as a substantial intellectual in the early
Byzantine period; Alan Cameron has argued that the bulk of the correspon-
dence at least – comprising 1,061 letters – is genuine, even if edited by an
121 Baynes (1955a), 168.
122 Corippus 2.427–28, trans. Averil Cameron. My additions in brackets.
123 So Karl Praechter (1893), 455–58.
32 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

admirer.124 He was also believed to have written a book of ‘Admonitions’ (or

Gnomai), comprising some 200 short moral maxims.125 For Agapetus, who
did not have twentieth-century scholarship to confuse him, the appeal of this
corpus, which emphasised the imitation of Christ as the way to perfection,
is obvious.
The same is broadly true of the more securely known Isidore, who
retired to the monastic life near the city of Pelusium on the Egyptian coast,
where he became famous for his austerity. Theologically orthodox, he was
a moderate and a defender of John Chrysostom: he campaigned against
the Nestorian ‘heresy’ (which strongly emphasised Christ’s human nature).
But he also rightly believed that the patriarch of Alexandria, Nestorius’
great adversary, Cyril, pressed his theological opinions too hard against his
opponents. (Gibbon quotes, with approval, Isidore’s view that the episcopal
participants in the great ecclesiastical controversies of the fifth century
were more strongly motivated by ambition than a love of truth.)126 Of his
voluminous literary output, ‘only’ some 2,000 letters remain. Mostly short,
sober, well-written, with a sharp awareness of wider social issues (e.g. of the
social function of the circus factions in preventing sedition),127 they contrast
markedly with other virulent, contemporary Christian theological discourse
and constitute in themselves a valuable historical source.128 They fall into
three classes: on dogma, concerning monastic and ecclesiastical discipline,
and, most relevant here, moral guidance for men of all conditions. They
clearly impressed Agapetus: Frohne estimates that there are 204 echoes of
Isidore in Agapetus’ 72 paragraphs.129

(ii) Agapetus’ Views on Philosophy and Religion

Of the remaining sources,130 Agapetus is aware of the Platonic philosophical
124 Alan Cameron (1976b). Nilus’ Tales (or Narrations) are translated and their historical
background discussed in Caner (2009).
125 The whole (Greek) corpus is available in PG vol. 79. Another name for this work is
Kephalaia (or Chapters), which also appears in the long title of Agapetus’ Ekthesis … Parai-
netikon Kephalaion (= Exposition of … advisory chapters). Also ODB s.v. ‘Neilos of Ancyra’.
126 Isidore, Ep. 1.25, 4.57, with Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ed. Womersley (1994), vol. 2,
ch. 47, p. 947.
127 Isidore, Ep. 90, and in striking contrast to the view taken in Dialogue 5.97–115.
128 See e.g. Bell (forthcoming), Barnes (1996).
129 Frohne (1985), 245–48.
130 These do not include Philo, the C1 Hellenised Alexandrian Jew, whose voluminous
writings influenced both Christian theology and Neoplatonism. By some process, as yet
unexplained, a number of passages from Agapetus are cited in Maximus the Confessor and
 INTRODUCTION 33

tradition: chapter 17 refers to the current ‘age of felicity’ in which ‘philoso-

phers [here, Justinian] are kings’. This view is attributed to an unnamed
philosopher, in reality Plato, for whom this was a central requirement of
his ideal Republic (e.g. 5.473d). But it turns out that, for Agapetus, the
beginning of wisdom – ‘philosophy’ means, etymologically, the ‘love of
wisdom’– is not here the Platonic search for wisdom through reasoning
and intellectual (and moral) self-improvement, as it is also in the Dialogue,
but the ‘fear of the Lord’.131 This is less surprising than one might think:
we are dealing with a sophisticated work in a culture in which even highly
educated writers can describe an illiterate ascetic or certainly an uncultured
holy man – John the Baptist is an example cited by John Chrysostom – as
‘a philosopher’ because he loves the ‘(Divine) Wisdom’.132 Agapetus’ trope
is unlikely to have been offensive to the devoutly Christian Justinian or to
those, clerical or lay, who thought on similar lines. But it was also a time
when the emperor could promulgate a code of laws, soon after his accession,
in which, as an integral part of his efforts to legitimise his rule, he reaffirmed
legislation against Pagans (or ‘Hellenes’) and heretics.133 Action was also
taken against the Platonic School in Athens.134
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that, whatever Agapetus’ personal
views, a work targeted at the emperor near the start of his reign contains
little that can be regarded as ‘philosophical’, whether in terms of style of
argumentation or prescription. However, even if the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom, it is not necessarily the end of it – although Agapetus
is too politick to spell this out. As the text stands, Agapetus can be read
in three ways without being himself committed to any one interpretation:
the emperor is a Platonic philosopher-ruler; the emperor is a God-fearing
Christian monarch; or, and probably for most of his original readers, both.
There is, however, no compelling reason to believe that Agapetus is
hostile to philosophy (or Platonism), apart perhaps from a lack of explicit

other authors as belonging to Philo. In consequence, some commentators have taken these
original passages in Agapetus (in chs. 12, 21, 23, 28, 50, 63, 64) as borrowings or echoes of
Philo. See Henry (1967), 284–91, for details of this confusion complete with texts (which are
cited in Greek).
131 Ps. 110, Prov. 1.7.
132 For John, see John Chrysostom, Hom. 37.1 in Matt. 1. See also, PGL s.v. philosophos/
philosophia.
133 C. Summa (529), introducing the 1st edition of the Codex Justinianus. See CJ 1.5 for the
best example of legislation against Pagans, heretics, Jews, Samaritans and Manichaeans. For
the emperor’s efforts to legitimise his rule more generally, see Bell (forthcoming).
134 Watts (2006), with full bibliography.
34 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

philosophy in his work. We should take seriously Henry’s proposal that

Agapetus was suggesting, however obliquely, how a Christian emperor
could finally embody what for Plato was only an aspiration135 – hardly so
remarkable or daring a position when Platonic ideas of kingship had by then
been thoroughly absorbed into the standard rhetorical tradition. Agapetus is
careful, for example, to bring out more than once that good behaviour (as
he defines it) is in the emperor’s own best interest (e.g. chs. 5, 8, 18, 24,
44, 60, 64). He also sees the emperor’s own moral behaviour as an integral
part of his becoming a good emperor, in the same way as the Platonic tradi-
tion consistently saw, from Plato onwards, the personal development of the
‘political’ virtues – practical wisdom, courage, moderation, justice, which
are required to subject his own passions and will to his reason136 – as a
necessary pre-condition of the philosopher’s ability to govern the wider
polity.137 Above all, there is that reference, noted above, to Plato’s ideal
philosopher-king in chapter 17. Moreover, if explicit philosophy is absent,
in striking contrast to the Dialogue, explicit Christian teaching is not much
in evidence either, apart, that is, from reminders of God’s judgement on
sinners (ch. 69) or the frailty of all men (chs. 23, 64), including emperors.
Christian theology, in any technical sense, is absent, although one commen-
tator cites Agapetus’ use of technical Christian terms; on the other hand,
we can simply note, for instance, his repeated use of ‘pious’ (chs. 5, 11,
15, 60), attributed also to Pagan Roman emperors, as a term of the highest
praise.138 The emperor, in effect, is to purchase his own ticket to heaven by
his good behaviour, rather than through redemption. What matters is that
in the absence of formal constraints upon him, the law, say, or powerful
public institutions, the only ‘control’ on the emperor is his own moral sense
– and the elusive eye of God. (We shall return to the possible Christological
implications of Agapetus’ position below.)
So was Agapetus a Christian? There is, as with the Dialogue, an

135 Henry (1967), 296.

136 Plotinus’ definition, Enneads 1 2.1.17–21.
137 Plato, Gorgias. See O’Meara (2003), chs. 8–9, for the importance of this dialogue in
Neoplatonic ‘political’ education (i.e. in the ‘political virtues’).
138 For technical Christian vocabulary, see Letsios (1985) (in mod. Gk.): e.g. ‘almsgiving/
acts of charity’ (eleemosune) and ‘prayer’ (proseukhe), ch. 58; ‘taking pity’ (eleein), ch. 51;
‘love of the poor’ (philoptokhia), ch. 60. On the other hand, another of his examples, ‘becoming
like God’ (homoiosis theōi), in ch. 3, had been an objective of Pagan philosophy since at least
Plato. In his Theaetetus 176a–b, he associates this assimilation to God with ‘becoming just and
pious with wisdom’: O’Meara (2003), 8. For piety (eusebeia) as the (Pagan) virtue of reverence
towards the gods or parents, see Plato, Rep. 10.615c etc.
 INTRODUCTION 35

absence of dogmatic theology, although the need for both piety and prayer
for guidance are both stressed (ch. 25); there are some apparent allusions
to the Bible (e.g. chs. 17 and 67). He also was apparently in Holy Orders,
which implies he was a Christian, even though his ecclesiastical and
doctrinal sympathies are unknown. We hear nothing, for instance, about
the Justinianic project of promoting religious uniformity or extirpating
heresy. But our author heavily emphasises his concern for the poor; and,
yes, Christ does turn up in the final chapter 72. We have already noted his
‘Christian’ language. Indeed, one could even argue that since this is a work
of rhetoric rather than formal theology, the Christianity is more obtrusive
than absolutely necessary. So the answer must be ‘yes’ – a conclusion that
the remainder of this section will reinforce.
But we should not press arguments of this kind too hard: explicit philos-
ophy (or theology) is arguably inappropriate in the kind of collection of
maxims Agapetus sought to produce (although see more below on this).
For this the ancient Greek gnomic poets, Hesiod, Theognis and Phocylides,
whom Isocrates had seen as ‘the best counsellors for human conduct’, offered
a better model, especially once incorporated with later, including exten-
sive Christian, material to produce a work with a more ‘politically correct’,
Christian flavour.139 For what we do have in the Advice is an outstanding
example of how a sixth-century intellectual could combine material from
the classical roots of his culture with later Christian accretions, in a way
analogous to that in which Eusebius, we saw, had artfully unified Pagan and
Christian theories of kingship. What we have is a carefully crafted exercise
in applied, non-technical (Christian) philosophy, capable of being read in
several ways, whose enduring success in intellectual circles in Byzantium,
the Slav world and Western Europe testifies to its various merits.

(iii) Agapetus’ Manipulation of his Sources

We can move on to considering how Agapetus uses these sources. In fact,

the subjects he chooses from them – whether extracted from florilega (or
anthologies), from texts read whole, or, as seems most probable, a combin­
ation of both140 – can be categorised under five headings: the appointment

139 Isocrates, To Nicocles 43. Hesiod, early Greek didactic poet fl. c.700 BCE; Theognis,
elegiac poet c. mid-C6 BCE; Phocylides, a gnomic hexameter poem of the early C6 BCE, of
which a Phocylides may have been the author. For Isocrates’ hostility to a more austerely philo-
sophical education, see his Antidosis, passim; Against the Sophists; Panathenaicus 1.26–27.
140 Frohne (1985), 249ff.
36 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

of the emperor by God; the relation of the emperor to God; the emperor’s
relation to his subjects; the qualities required of an emperor; and, finally, the
relation between the state and its citizens.141 But our author did not just poke
around in his sources to provide a range of maxims which he then served
up raw. Given his themes and maxims related to them in his sources, he
then artfully reworked them. Frohne, moreover, argues that he ‘improved’
his sources in accordance with the following principles, all to be found in
closely related language in his source-texts. He could thus combine profit
for his readers with pleasure by:
• ‘imitating the wise-honey bee’, taking the best from each flower, and
collecting what is useful;142
• exalting the holiness of kingship (or imperial rule) above all else;143
• adorning material, but moderately, thereby avoiding excess and
exaggeration, with a view to enhancing its utility and its beauty.144
Frohne shows, with diagrams, just how complicated was the stylistic
re-working, re-ordering and splicing together of related source texts. She
thereby also illustrates the difficulties in relating a particular chapter to its
source(s). In fact, she may even understate them. Agapetus may well also
have been guided in his choice of material by the kind of ‘rules’ for the
composition of encomia of the emperor that one finds in, say, Menander
Rhetor. It is, for example, striking how much Agapetus stresses, as Menander
had urged, the importance of a love of humanity (philanthropia) in the
emperor, of which his justice as well as his mercy are both parts.145 But the
result of his authorial labours was no treatise, but a short work whose only
organising principles are, first, robust opening and closing chapters enunci-
ating the key themes of the work; and, second, the acrostic made up of the
initial (Greek) letters of each paragraph, dedicating the work to Justinian,
already noted above.
This laborious craftsmanship of the chapters and the absence of a
perspicuous thematic structure show, first, that we are dealing with no trite,
unoriginal, pious handbook, but a carefully constructed work of literary art

141 Frohne (1985), 151–59, for the attribution of chapters to these broad headings.
142 To Demonicus 52; Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. 2.3; Nilus, Ep. 2.208. An image exploited
by others, including the C2–3 Christian writer Clement of Alexandria, and the C6 writer John
Moschus, Spiritual Meadow, Proem.
143 To Nicocles 6; Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. 5.422.
144 To Nicocles 41; Isidore of Pelusium, Epp. 5.133, 309.
145 Menander Rhetor, Epideictic Speeches 2.374.28–375.4. The correspondence between
the virtues singled out in Menander and Agapetus is high.
 INTRODUCTION 37

(or rhetoric) which goes far to explain the book’s subsequent popularity
both East and West.146 As Henry put it: ‘even if we could trace every one of
Agapetus’ maxims to an earlier source, we would still be justified in reading
his treatise carefully as providing evidence for opinions about the emperor
and his role that were current in the sixth century’.147 It further suggests
that the work was not intended to be read from beginning to end, though it
could be – and in a single sitting – but as something for dipping into as, for
instance, into the Oxford Book of Aphorisms.148
Most of the stylistic artistry evaporates in translation; what survives of
the metaphor and wordplay (see, for instance, chs. 1, 2, 3…) is not always
to modern taste, although the repeated allusions to the transitory character
of earthly life have a melancholy appeal similar to allusions to this ‘floating
world’ of ours in classical Japanese poetry.149 Dvornik (1967, 714), one of
the few writers not to dismiss Agapetus as banal at best, praises the book’s
‘light and elegant style, well-suited for school purposes’. No less interesting
is what is and is not included in the finished work – one will look in vain,
for instance, for the kind of guidance on the darker arts of government one
finds in Machiavelli’s Prince. This leads directly to the messages Agapetus
intended his sophisticated book to convey.
We have already noted the coverage of the Advice in general terms. But
in the absence of a clear formal structure, it may help to set out the main
themes, before reflecting further on their significance.150 The fundamental
point registered, in chapter 1, is the Eusebian doctrine that the emperor’s
authority is modelled on the likeness of the heavenly kingdom; he should
be accessible to his subjects, notwithstanding his exaltation, because of the
strength of authority from above (ch. 8). He will – another clearly Christian
point – find prayer invaluable in safeguarding his dominions (ch. 58). This
is something on which he and Justinian were at one: in his Novel (or ‘new
law’) 133.5 (539), the prayers of monks will, the emperor asserts, ensure
the well-being of the state, including its army. But the heavenly kingdom is
also the goal of the emperor’s efforts, and good governance of the earthly
empire becomes ‘a ladder (klimax) … to the glory above’ (ch. 59). This is
a point re-emphasised for both the emperor and his wife in the concluding
chapter 72.

146 See section viii) below.

147 Henry (1967), 284.
148 Ed. Gross (1983).
149 See e.g. Carter (1991), an anthology with both English translation and transcription into
Latin script (romaji) of the originals.
150 Henry (1967) is especially helpful here.
38 THREE POLITICAL VOICES FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

As to precisely how the emperor should make his earthly kingdom a

ladder, there is plenty of advice – much of which can also be found, in
Latin, in Corippus’ Praise of Justin II, dating from near the beginning of
the next reign. This includes, though Agapetus does not spell it out in detail
– there was probably no need – acquiring the classical, personal ‘political’
virtues of the Platonic tradition. Amongst these, one finds temperance or
moderation (sophrosune, ch. 18), both preconditions of political wisdom
to which others such as piety (eusebeia) are added (ch. 15). This is not a
narrowly Christian point: the neo-Pythagorean Diotogenes had, for instance,
commended ‘piety’ as a royal virtue before Eusebius had insisted on the
piety of Constantine.151 Examples of other ways the emperor should imitate
God are provided: in teaching men to respect the law and justice (ch. 1) –
advice hardly unwelcome to the great law reformer; in remaining steady
among changing circumstances (chs. 11, 13, 33, 34); forgiving, in language
echoing the Lord’s Prayer, those who have ‘trespassed against you’; and,
since God abounds in good works, the emperor should ‘imitate Him through
good works’ (ch. 45).
Above all, Agapetus repeatedly commends the virtue of ‘humanity’,
literally, ‘love for mankind’ (philanthropia) in, for example, chapters 6, 40,
50 and 53. Here he once again writes in a venerable classical tradition,
more recently reaffirmed in such fourth-century Pagan writers as Themis-
tius, Libanius and the last Pagan emperor, Julian, as well as in rhetorical
textbooks, but which had now also been adopted and assimilated into
mainstream Christian thinking – to the extent of substituting for the tradi-
tional word for the Christian concept of ‘love’, agape. This last only appears
twice in the Advice, in chapters 20 and 56, denoting the love of subjects for
the emperor.152
A fundamental question for both Agapetus and the author of the Dialogue
is how to ensure that the emperor behaves well. For Agapetus, it is axiomatic
that no one has the power to discipline such power as that of the emperor (ch.
27). Hence the emphasis on the rewards, above all in the heavenly kingdom,
for good behaviour here below (e.g. ch. 59). Perhaps, like Henry,153 we
should see the imitation of God as serving itself as a kind of control over

151 Quoted in Stobaeus, 4.264–65.

152 See Henry (1967), 301–02, for the history of philanthropia and agape in Pagan/Chris-
tian controversy in the C4. For Menander Rhetor, philanthropia (under which he subsumes
justice) was the imperial virtue par excellence to be commended in encomia of emperors
(Men. Rhet. 2.374).
153 Henry (1967), 306–07.
Exploring the Variety of Random
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gallantly holding out. The rest perished in the defiles of Khurd Kabul and Jagdalak, either from the
knives and matchlocks of the Afghans or from the effects of cold. A few prisoners, mostly women,
children and officers, were considerately treated by the orders of Akbar Khan. (See Afghanistan.)

Within a month after the news reached Calcutta, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord
Ellenborough, whose first impulse was to be satisfied with drawing off in safety the garrisons from
Kandahar and Jalalabad. But bolder counsels prevailed. General Pollock, who was marching
straight through the Punjab to relieve General Sale, was ordered to penetrate to Kabul, while
General Nott was only too glad not to be forbidden to retire from Kandahar through Kabul. After a
good deal of fighting, the two British forces met at their common destination in September 1842.
The great bazar at Kabul was blown up with gunpowder to fix a stigma upon the city; the
prisoners were recovered; and all marched back to India, leaving Dost Mahommed to take
undisputed possession of his throne. The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord
Ellenborough, who had caused the gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni to be carried back
as a memorial of “Somnath revenged.”

Lord Ellenborough, who loved military display, had his tastes gratified by two more wars. In
1843 the Mahommedan rulers of Sind, known as the “meers” or amirs, whose only fault was that
they would not surrender their independence, were crushed by Sir Charles
Annexation of Napier. The victory of Meeanee, in which 3000 British troops defeated 20,000
Sind. Baluchis, is perhaps the most brilliant feat of arms in Indian history; but an
honest excuse can scarcely be found for the annexation of the country. In the
same year a disputed succession at Gwalior, fomented by femimine intrigue, resulted in an
outbreak of the overgrown army which the Sindhia family had been allowed to maintain. Peace
was restored by the battles of Maharajpur and Punniar, at the former of which Lord Ellenborough
was present in person.

In 1844 Lord Ellenborough was recalled by the court of directors, who differed from him on
many points of administration, and distrusted his erratic genius. He was
First Sikh War. succeeded by Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Hardinge, who had served through
the Peninsular War and had lost a hand at Ligny. It was felt on all sides that a
trial of strength between the British and the Sikhs was at hand. (For the origin of the Sikh power
see Punjab.)

Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh kingdom in the Punjab, had faithfully fulfilled all his
obligations towards the British. But on his death in 1839 no successor was left to curb the
ambition of the Sikh nationality.

In 1845 the khalsa, or Sikh army, numbering 60,000 men with 150 guns, crossed the Sutlej and
invaded British territory. Sir Hugh Gough, the commander-in-chief, together with the governor-
general, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks four pitched battles were fought, at Mudki,
Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy; but by the last
victory the Sikhs were fairly driven into and across the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the
British. By the terms of peace then dictated the infant son of Ranjit, Dhuleep Singh, was
recognized as raja; the Jullundur Doab, or tract between the Sutlej and the Ravi, was annexed;
the Sikh army was limited to a specified number; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed to be
resident at Lahore; and a British force was detailed to garrison the Punjab for a period of eight
years.

Lord Dalhousie succeeded Lord Hardinge, and his eight years’ administration (from 1848 to
1856) was more pregnant of results than that of any governor-general since Wellesley. Though
professedly a man of peace, he was compelled to fight two wars, in the Punjab
Dalhousie. and in Burma. These both ended in large acquisitions of territory, while Nagpur,
Oudh and several minor states also came under British rule. But Dalhousie’s
own special interest lay in the advancement of the moral and material condition of the country.
The system of administration carried out in the conquered Punjab by the two Lawrences and their
assistants is probably the most successful piece of difficult work ever accomplished by Englishmen.
Lower Burma prospered under their rule scarcely less than the Punjab. In both cases Lord
Dalhousie deserves a large share of the credit. No branch of the administration escaped his
reforming hand. He founded the public works department, to pay special attention to roads and
canals. He opened the Ganges canal, still the largest work of the kind in the country, and he
turned the sod of the first Indian railway. He promoted steam communication with England via the
Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. It is Lord Dalhousie’s
misfortune that these benefits are too often forgotten in the vivid recollections of the Mutiny,
which avenged his policy of annexation.

Lord Dalhousie had not been six months in India before the second Sikh war broke out. Two
British officers were treacherously assassinated at Multan. Unfortunately Henry Lawrence was at
home on sick leave. The British army was not ready to act in the hot season,
Second Sikh and, despite the single-handed exertions of Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Herbert)
War. Edwardes, this outbreak of fanaticism led to a general rising. The khalsa army
again came together, and more than once fought on even terms with the
British. On the fatal field of Chillianwalla, which patriotism prefers to call a drawn battle, the British
lost 2400 officers and men, besides four guns and the colours of three regiments. Before
reinforcements could come out from England, with Sir Charles Napier as commander-in-chief, Lord
Gough had restored his own reputation by the crowning victory of Gujrat, which absolutely
destroyed the Sikh army. Multan had previously fallen; and the Afghan horse under Dost
Mahommed, who had forgotten their hereditary antipathy to the Sikhs in their greater hatred of
the British name, were chased back with ignominy to their native hills. The Punjab henceforth
became a British province, supplying a virgin field for the administrative talents of Dalhousie and
the two Lawrences. Raja Dhuleep Singh received an allowance of £50,000 a year, on which he
retired as a country gentleman to Norfolk in England. (See Punjab.)

The second Burmese war of 1852 was caused by the ill-treatment of European merchants at
Rangoon, and the insolence offered to the captain of a frigate who had been
Second sent to remonstrate. The whole valley of the Irrawaddy, from Rangoon to
Burmese War. Prome, was occupied in a few months, and, as the king of Ava refused to treat,
it was annexed, under the name of Pegu, to the provinces of Arakan and
Tenasserim, which had been acquired in 1826.
 Lord Dalhousie’s dealings with the feudatory states of India, though actuated by the highest
motives, seem now to have proceeded upon mistaken lines. His policy of annexing each native
state on the death of its ruler without natural heirs produced a general feeling
The doctrine of of insecurity of tenure among the princes, and gave offence to the people of
lapse. India. This policy was reversed when India was taken over by the crown after
the Mutiny; and its reversal has led to the native princes being amongst the
most loyal subjects of the British government. The first state to escheat to the British government
was Satara, which had been reconstituted by Lord Hastings on the downfall of the peshwa Baji
Rao in 1818. The last direct representative of Sivaji died without a male heir in 1848, and his
deathbed adoption was set aside. In the same year the Rajput state of Karauli was saved by the
interposition of the court of directors, who drew a fine distinction between a dependent principality
and a protected ally. In 1853 Jhansi suffered the same fate as Satara. But the most conspicuous
application of the doctrine of lapse was the case of Nagpur. The last of the Bhonslas, a dynasty
older than the British government itself, died without a son, natural or adopted, in 1853. That year
also saw British administration extended to the Berars, or the assigned districts which the nizam of
Hyderabad was induced to cede as a territorial guarantee for the subsidies which he perpetually
kept in arrear. Three more distinguished names likewise passed away in 1853, though without any
attendant accretion to British territory. In the extreme south the titular nawab of the Carnatic and
the titular raja of Tanjore both died without heirs. Their rank and their pensions died with them,
though compassionate allowances were continued to their families. In the north of India, Baji Rao,
the ex-peshwa who had been dethroned in 1818, lived on till 1853 in the enjoyment of his annual
pension of £80,000. His adopted son, Nana Sahib, inherited his accumulated savings, but could
obtain no further recognition.

The annexation of the province of Oudh was justifiable on the ground of morals, though not on
that of policy. Ever since the nawab wazir, Shuja-ud-Dowlah, received back his forfeited territories
from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the very existence of Oudh as an
Annexation of independent state had depended only upon the protection of British bayonets.
Oudh. Thus, preserved alike from foreign invasion and from domestic rebellion, the
long line of subsequent nawabs had given way to that neglect of public affairs
and those private vices which naturally flow from irresponsible power. Their only redeeming virtue
was steady loyalty to the British government. Warning after warning had been given to the
nawabs, who had assumed the title of king since 1819, to put their house in order; but every
warning was neglected, and Lord Dalhousie at last carried into effect what both the previous
governors-general had threatened. In 1856, the last year of his rule, he issued orders to General
(afterwards Sir James) Outram, then resident at the court of Lucknow, to assume the direct
administration of Oudh, on the ground that “the British government would be guilty in the sight of
God and man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an administration
fraught with suffering to millions.” The king, Wajid Ali, bowed to irresistible force, though he ever
refused to recognize the justice of his deposition. After a mission to England, by way of protest
and appeal, he settled down in the pleasant suburb of Garden Reach near Calcutta, where he lived
in the enjoyment of a pension of £120,000 a year. Oudh was thus annexed without a blow; but it
may be doubted whether the one measure of Lord Dalhousie upon which he looked back himself
with the clearest conscience was not the very one that most alarmed native public opinion.
 Lord Dalhousie was succeeded by his friend, Lord Canning, who, at the farewell banquet in
England given to him by the court of directors, uttered these prophetic words: “I wish for a
peaceful term of office. But I cannot forget that in the sky of India, serene as it
The Mutiny. is, a small cloud may arise, no larger than a man’s hand, but which, growing
larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst and overwhelm us with ruin.” In
the following year the sepoys of the Bengal army mutinied, and all the valley of the Ganges from
Patna to Delhi rose in open rebellion.

The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth
seems to be that native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe
the wildest stories, and to act precipitately upon their fears. The influence of panic in an Oriental
population is greater than might be readily believed. In the first place, the policy of Lord
Dalhousie, exactly in proportion as it had been dictated by the most honourable considerations,
was utterly distasteful to the native mind. Repeated annexations, the spread of education, the
appearance of the steam engine and the telegraph wire, all alike revealed a consistent
determination to substitute an English for an Indian civilization. The Bengal sepoys, especially,
thought that they could see into the future farther than the rest of their countrymen. Nearly all
men of high caste, and many of them recruited from Oudh, they dreaded tendencies which they
deemed to be denationalizing, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed
it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and all India was held quiet. The
numerous dethroned princes, their heirs and their widows, were the first to take advantage of the
spirit of disaffection that was abroad. They had heard of the Crimean War, and were told that
Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Owing to the silladar system, under which the native
cavalry provided their own horses and accoutrements, many of the sowars were in debt, and were
in favour of a change which would wipe out the existing régime and with it the money-lender.

But in addition to these general causes of unrest the condition of the native army had long given
cause for uneasiness to acute observers. During the course of its history it had broken out into
mutiny at recurrent intervals, the latest occasion being the winter of 1843-1844, when there were
two separate mutinies in Sind and at Ferozepur. Moreover the spirit of the sepoys during the Sikh
wars was unsatisfactory, and led to excessive casualties amongst the British officers and soldiers.
Both General Jacob and Sir Charles Napier had prophesied that the Mutiny would take place. Sir
Hugh Gough and other commanders-in-chief had petitioned for the removal of India’s chief arsenal
from Delhi to Umballa; and Lord Dalhousie himself had protested against the reduction of the
British element in the army. But all these warnings were disregarded with a blindness as great as
was the incapacity that allowed the Mutiny to gather head unchecked after its first outbreak at
Meerut. Moreover the outbreak was immediately provoked by an unparalleled instance of
carelessness. It has recently been proved by Mr G. W. Forrest’s researches in the Government of
India records that the sepoys’ belief that their cartridges were greased with the fat of cows and
pigs had some foundation in fact. Such a gross violation of their caste prejudices would alone be
sufficient to account for the outbreak that followed. (For the military incidents of the Mutiny see
Indian Mutiny.)

The Mutiny sealed the fate of the East India company, after a life of more than two and a half
centuries. The Act for the Better Government of India (1858), which finally transferred the entire
 administration from the company to the crown, was not passed without an
Transfer to the eloquent protest from the directors, nor without acrimonious party discussion in
Crown. parliament. It enacts that India shall be governed by, and in the name of, the
sovereign of England through a principal secretary of state, assisted by a
council. The governor-general received the new title of viceroy. The European troops of the
company, numbering about 24,000 officers and men, were amalgamated with the royal service,
and the Indian navy was abolished. By the Indian Councils Act 1861 the governor-general’s council
and also the councils at Madras and Bombay were augmented by the addition of non-official
members, either natives or Europeans, for legislative purposes only; and by another act passed in
the same year high courts of judicature were constituted out of the existing supreme courts and
company’s courts at the presidency towns.

India under the Crown.

It fell to the lot of Lord Canning both to suppress the Mutiny and to introduce the peaceful
revolution that followed. As regards his execution of the former part of his duties, it is sufficient to
say that he preserved his equanimity undisturbed in the darkest hours of peril, and that the strict
impartiality of his conduct incurred alternate praise and blame from the fanatics on either side.
The epithet then scornfully applied to him of “Clemency” Canning is now remembered only to his
honour. On November 1, 1858, at a grand durbar held at Allahabad the royal proclamation was
published which announced that the queen had assumed the government of India. This document,
which has been called the Magna Charta of the Indian people, went on to explain the policy of
political justice and religious toleration which it was her royal pleasure to pursue, and granted an
amnesty to all except those who had directly taken part in the murder of British subjects. Peace
was proclaimed throughout India on the 8th of July 1859; and in the following cold season Lord
Canning made a viceregal progress through the upper provinces, to receive the homage of loyal
princes and chiefs, and to guarantee to them the right of adoption. The suppression of the Mutiny
increased the debt of India by about 40 millions sterling, and the military changes that ensued
augmented the annual expenditure by about 10 millions. To grapple with this deficit, James Wilson
was sent out from the treasury as financial member of council. He reorganized the customs
system, imposed an income tax and licence duty and created a state paper currency. The penal
code, originally drawn up by Macaulay in 1837, passed into law in 1860, together with codes of
civil and criminal procedure.

Lord Canning left India in March 1862, and died before he had been a month in England. His
successor, Lord Elgin, only lived till November 1863, when he too fell a victim to the excessive
work of the governor-generalship, dying at the Himalayan station of Dharmsala, where he lies
buried. He was succeeded by Sir John Lawrence, the saviour of the Punjab. The chief incidents of
his administration were the Bhutan war and the terrible Orissa famine of 1866. Lord Mayo, who
succeeded him in 1869, carried on the permanent British policy of moral and material progress
with a special degree of personal energy. The Umballa durbar, at which Shere Ali was recognized
as amir of Afghanistan, though in one sense the completion of what Lord Lawrence had begun,
owed much of its success to the personal influence of Lord Mayo himself. The same quality,
combined with sympathy and firmness, stood him in good stead in all his dealings both with native
chiefs and European officials. His example of hard work stimulated all to their best. While engaged
in exploring with his own eyes the furthest corners of the empire, he fell by the hand of an
assassin in the convict settlement of the Andaman islands in 1872. His successor was Lord
Northbrook, whose ability showed itself chiefly in the department of finance. During the time of his
administration a famine in Lower Bengal in 1874 was successfully obviated by government relief
and public works, though at an enormous cost; the gaekwar of Baroda was dethroned in 1875 for
misgovernment and disloyalty, while his dominions were continued to a nominated child of the
family; and the prince of Wales (Edward VII.) visited the country in the cold season of 1875-1876.
Lord Lytton followed Lord Northbrook in 1876. On the 1st of January 1877 Queen Victoria was
proclaimed empress of India at a durbar of great magnificence, held on the historic “Ridge”
overlooking the Mogul capital Delhi. But, while the princes and high officials of the country were
flocking to this gorgeous scene, the shadow of famine was already darkening over the south of
India. Both the monsoons of 1876 had failed to bring their due supply of rain, and the season of
1877 was little better. The consequences of this prolonged drought, which extended from Cape
Comorin to the Deccan, and subsequently invaded northern India, were more disastrous than any
similar calamity up to that time from the introduction of British rule. Despite unparalleled
importations of grain by sea and rail, despite the most strenuous exertions of the government,
which incurred a total expenditure on this account of 11 millions sterling, the loss of life from
actual starvation and its attendant train of diseases was lamentable. In the autumn of 1878 the
affairs of Afghanistan again forced themselves into notice. Shere Ali, the amir, who had been
hospitably entertained by Lord Mayo, was found to be favouring Russian intrigues. A British envoy
was refused admittance to the country, while a Russian mission was received with honour. This led
to a declaration of war. British armies advanced by three routes—the Khyber, the Kurram and the
Bolan—and without much opposition occupied the inner entrances of the passes. Shere Ali fled to
Afghan Turkestan, and there died. A treaty was entered into with his son, Yakub Khan, at
Gandamak, by which the British frontier was advanced to the crests or farther sides of the passes
and a British officer was admitted to reside at Kabul. Within a few months the British resident, Sir
Louis Cavagnari, was treacherously attacked and massacred, together with his escort, and a
second war became necessary. Yakub Khan abdicated, and was deported to India, while Kabul was
occupied in force.

At this crisis of affairs a general election in England resulted in a change of government. Lord
Lytton resigned with the Conservative ministry, and the marquis of Ripon was nominated as his
successor in 1880. Shortly afterwards a British brigade was defeated at
Lord Ripon. Maiwand by the Herati army of Ayub Khan, a defeat promptly and completely
retrieved by the brilliant march of General Sir Frederick Roberts from Kabul to
Kandahar, and by the total rout of Ayub Khan’s army on the 1st of September 1880. Abdur
Rahman Khan, the eldest male representative of the stock of Dost Mahommed, was then
recognized as amir of Kabul. Lord Ripon was sent out to India by the Liberal ministry of 1880 for
the purpose of reversing Lord Lytton’s policy in Afghanistan, and of introducing a more
sympathetic system into the administration of India. The disaster at Maiwand, and the Russian
advance east of the Caspian, prevented the proposed withdrawal from Quetta; but Kandahar was
evacuated, Abdur Rahman was left in complete control of his country and was given an annual
subsidy of twelve lakhs of rupees in 1883. In the second purpose of his administration Lord Ripon’s
well-meant efforts only succeeded in setting Europeans and natives against each other. His term of
office was chiefly notable for the agitation against the Ilbert Bill, which proposed to subject
European offenders to trial by native magistrates. The measure aroused a storm of indignation
amongst the European community which finally resulted in the bill being shorn of its most
objectionable features. Lord Ripon’s good intentions and personal sympathy were recognized by
the natives, and on leaving Bombay he received the greatest ovation ever accorded to an Indian
viceroy.

After the arrival of Lord Dufferin as governor-general the incident known as the Panjdeh Scare
brought Britain to the verge of war with Russia. During the preceding decades Russia had
gradually advanced her power from the Caspian across the Turkoman steppes
The Panjdeh to the border of Afghanistan, and Russian intrigue was largely responsible for
scare. the second Afghan war. In February 1884 Russia annexed Merv. This action led
to an arrangement in August of the same year for a joint Anglo-Russian
commission to delimit the Afghan frontier. In March 1885, while the commission was at work, Lord
Dufferin was entertaining the amir Abdur Rahman at a durbar at Rawalpindi. The durbar was
interrupted by the news that a Russian general had attacked and routed the Afghan force holding
the bridge across the river Kushk, and the incident might possibly have resulted in war between
Britain and Russia but for the slight importance that Abdur Rahman attributed to what he termed a
border scuffle.

The incident, however, led to military measures being taken by the government of Lord Dufferin,
which had far-reaching effects on Indian finance. The total strength of the army
Increase in the was raised by 10,000 British and 20,000 native troops, at an annual cost of
Army. about two millions sterling; and the frontier post of Quetta, in the
neighbourhood of Kandahar, was connected with the Indian railway system by a
line that involved very expensive tunnelling.

The Panjdeh incident was likewise the cause of the establishment of Imperial Service troops in
India. At the moment when war seemed imminent, the leading native princes made offers of
pecuniary aid. These offers were declined, but it was intimated to them at a
Imperial later date that, if they would place a small military force in each state at the
Service troops. disposal of the British government, to be commanded by state officers, but
drilled, disciplined and armed under the supervision of British officers and on
British lines, the government would undertake to find the necessary supervising officer, arms and
organization. The proposal was widely accepted, and the Imperial Service troops, as they are
called, amount at present to some 20,000 cavalry, infantry and transport, whose efficiency is very
highly thought of. They have rendered good service in the wars on the north-west frontier, and
also in China and Somaliland. Later in the same year (1885) occurred the third Burmese war. For
the causes of the dispute with King Thebaw, and a description of the military operations which
ensued before the country was finally pacified, see Burma.

From 1885 onwards the attention of the Indian government was increasingly devoted to the
north-west frontier. Between the years 1885 and 1895 there were delimited at various times by
joint commissions the Russo-Afghan frontier between the Oxus and Sarakhs on the Persian
frontier, the Russo-Afghan frontier from Lake Victoria to the frontier of China and the Afghan-
Indian frontier from the Kunar river to a point in the neighbourhood of the Nawa Kotal. To the
westward, after various disagreements and two military expeditions, the territories comprising the
Zhob, Barhan and Bori valleys, occupied by Pathan tribes, were in 1890 finally incorporated in the
general system of the Trans-Indus protectorate. About the same time in the extreme north the
post of British resident in Gilgit was re-established, and the supremacy of Kashmir over the
adjoining petty chiefships of Hunza-Nagar was enforced (1891-1892). In 1893 the frontiers of
Afghanistan and British India were defined by a joint agreement between the two governments,
known as the Durand agreement. There followed on the part of the British authorities, interference
in Chitral, ending in an expedition in 1895 and the ejection of the local chiefs in favour of
candidates amenable to British influence. A more formidable hostile combination, however, awaited
the government of India. By the agreement of 1893 with the amir most of the Waziri clan and also
the Afridis had been left outside the limits of the amir’s influence and transferred to the British
zone. Soon after that date the establishment by the British military authorities of posts within the
Waziri country led to apprehension on the part of the local tribesmen. In 1895 the occupation of
points within the Swat territory for the safety of the road from India to Chitral similarly roused the
suspicion of the Swatis. The Waziris and Swatis successively rose in arms, in June and July 1897,
and their example was followed by the Mohmands. Finally, in August the powerful Afridi tribe
joined the combination and closed the Khyber Pass, which runs through their territory, and which
was held by them, on conditions, in trust for the government of India. This led to the military
operations known as the Tirah campaign, which proved very costly both in men and money.

Meanwhile considerable difficulties had been experienced with the Indian currency, which was
on a purely silver basis. Before 1873 the fluctuations in the value of silver as compared with gold
had been comparatively small, and the exchange value of the rupee was rarely
The currency. less than two shillings. But after 1873, in consequence of changes in the
monetary systems of France and Germany, and the increased production of
silver, this stability of exchange no longer continued, and the rupee sank steadily in value, till it
was worth little more than half its face value. This great shrinkage in exchange caused
considerable loss to the Indian government in remitting to Europe, and entailed hardship upon
Anglo-Indians who received pensions or other payments in rupees, while on the other hand it
supplied an artificial stimulus to the export trade by increasing the purchasing power of gold. This
advantage, however, was outweighed by the uncertainty as to what the exchange value of the
rupee might be at any particular date, which imported a gambling element into commerce.
Accordingly in June 1893 an act was passed closing the Indian mints to the free coinage of silver.
Six years later, in 1899, the change was completed by an act making gold legal tender at the rate
of £1 for Rs.15, or at the rate of is. 4d. per rupee, and both the government and the individual
now know exactly what their obligations will be.

When Lord Curzon became viceroy in 1898, he reversed the policy on the north-west frontier
which had given rise to the Tirah campaign, withdrew outlying garrisons in tribal country,
substituted for them tribal militia, and created the new North-West Frontier province, for the
purpose of introducing consistency of policy and firmness of control upon that disturbed border. In
 addition, after making careful inquiry through various commissions, he
Lord Curzon’s reformed the systems of education and police, laid down a comprehensive
reforms. scheme of irrigation, improved the leave rules and the excessive report-writing
of the civil service, encouraged the native princes by the formation of the
Imperial Cadet Corps and introduced many other reforms. His term of office was also notable for
the coronation durbar at Delhi in January 1903, the expedition to Lhasa in 1904, which first
unveiled that forbidden city to European gaze, and the partition of Bengal in 1905. In December
1904 Lord Curzon entered upon a second term of office, which was unfortunately marred by a
controversy with Lord Kitchener, the commander-in-chief, as to the position of the military member
of council. Lord Curzon, finding himself at variance with the secretary of state, resigned before the
end of the first year, and was succeeded by Lord Minto.

The new viceroy, who might have expected a tranquil time after the energetic reforms of his
predecessor, soon found himself face to face with the most serious troubles, euphemistically called
the “unrest,” that British rule has had to encounter in India since the Mutiny.
Lord Minto. The For many years the educated class among the natives had been claiming for
unrest. themselves a larger share in the administration, and had organized a political
party under the name of the National Congress, which held annual meetings at
Christmas in one or ether of the large cities of the peninsula. This class also exercised a wide
influence through the press, printed both in the vernacular languages and in English, especially
among young students. There is no doubt too that the adoption of Western civilization by the
Japanese and their victorious war with Russia set in motion a current through all the peoples of
the East. The occasion though not the cause of trouble arose from the partition of Bengal, which
was represented by Bengali agitators as an insult to their mother country. While the first riots
occurred in the Punjab and Madras, it is only in Bengal and eastern Bengal that the unrest has
been bitter and continuous. This is the centre of the swadeshi movement for the boycott of English
goods, of the most seditious speeches and writings and of conspiracies for the assassination of
officials. At first the government attempted to quell the disaffection by means of the ordinary law,
with fair success outside Bengal; but there, owing to the secret ramifications of the conspiracy, it
has been found necessary to adopt special measures. Recourse has been had to a regulation of
the year 1818, by which persons may be imprisoned or “deported” without reason assigned; and
three acts of the legislature have been passed for dealing more directly with the prevalent classes
of crime: (1) an Explosives Act, containing provisions similar to those in force in England; (2) a
Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act, which can only be applied specially by proclamation; and (3)
a Criminal Law Amendment Act, of which the two chief provisions are—a magisterial inquiry in
private (similar to the Scotch procedure) and a trial before three judges of the High Court without
a jury.

While the law was thus sternly enforced, important acts of conciliation and measures of reform
were carried out simultaneously. In 1907 two natives, a Hindu and a
Reforms. Mahommedan, were appointed to the secretary of state’s council; and in 1909
another native, a Hindu barrister, was for the first time appointed, as legal
member, to the council of the viceroy. Occasion was taken of the fiftieth anniversary of the
assumption by the crown of the government of India to address a message (on November 2,
1908) by the king-emperor to the princes and peoples, reviewing in stately language the later
development, and containing these memorable words:—

“From the first, the principle of representative institutions began to be gradually

introduced, and the time has come when, in the judgment of my viceroy and governor-
general and others of my counsellors, that principle may be prudently extended. Important
classes among you, representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British
rule, claim equality of citizenship, and a greater share in legislation and government. The
politic satisfaction of such a claim will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power.
Administration will be all the more efficient if the officers who conduct it have greater
opportunities of regular contact with those whom it affects and with those who influence and
reflect common opinion about it.”

The policy here adumbrated was (at least partly) carried into effect by parliament in the Indian
Councils Act 1909, which reconstituted all the legislative councils by the addition of members
directly elected, and conferred upon these councils wider powers of discussion. It further
authorized the addition of two members to the executive councils at Madras and Bombay, and the
creation of an executive council in Bengal and also (subject to conditions) in other provinces under
a lieutenant-governor. Regulations for bringing the act into operation were issued by the governor-
general in council, with the approval of the secretary of state, in November 1909. They provided
(inter alia) for a non-official majority in all of the provincial councils, but not in that of the
governor-general; for an elaborate system of election of members by organized constituencies; for
nomination where direct election is not appropriate; and for the separate representation of
Mahommedans and other special interests. They also contain provisions authorizing the asking of
supplementary questions, the moving and discussion of resolutions on any matter of public
interest and the annual consideration of the contents of the budget. In brief, the legislative
councils were not only enlarged, but transformed into debating bodies, with the power of
criticizing the executive. The first elections took place during December 1909, with results that
showed widespread interest and were generally accepted as satisfactory. The new council of the
governor-general met in the following month.

Authorities.—Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India (Oxford, 1904, 2nd ed., 1908);
and Asoka (“Rulers of India” series, Oxford, 1901); J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India (1901); T.
W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (1903); Imperial Gazetteer of India (1907-1909); Sir J.
Campbell, Gazetteer of Bombay (1896); Stanley Lane-Poole, Medieval India (“Story of the
Nations” series, 1903); The Mohammedan Dynasties (1894) and The Mogul Emperors
(1892); H. C. Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present (1902); Sir H. M. Elliot, History of India as
told by its own Historians (1867). For the “unrest,” its causation and history, see the series of
articles in The Times, beginning July 16, 1910.
(W. W. H.; J. S. Co.)

Indian Costume

Personal attire in India so far resembles a uniform that a resident can tell from a garb alone the
native place, religion and social standing of the wearer. This is still true, though the present facility
of intercommunication has had its effect in tending to assimilate the appearance of natives.
Together with costume it is necessary to study the methods of wearing the hair, for each race
adopts a different method.

The population of India, of which the main divisions are religious, falls naturally into four
groups, (1) Mahommedans, (2) Hindus, (3) Sikhs, (4) Parsees. To these may be added aboriginal
races such as Bhils, Sonthals, Gonds, &c., whose costume is chiefly noticeable from its absence.

Mahommedan Men.—Apart from the two sects, Sunnis and Shias, whose garb differs in some
respects, there are four families of Moslems, viz. Pathans, Moguls, Syeds and Sheiks. The first
came to India with Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi in a.d. 1002; the second are of Tatar origin and came
to India with Baber; the Syeds claim descent from Mahomet, while Sheiks comprise all other
Mussulmans, including converted Hindus. It is now no longer possible to distinguish these families
by their turbans as was formerly the case.

Hair.—In the hadis, or traditional sayings of Mahomet other than those to be found in the Koran,
it is laid down that the head is to be shaved and the beard to be allowed to grow naturally to “a
legal” length, i.e. 7 or 8 in. long. This is known as fitrah or the custom of prophets. The beard is
frequently dyed with henna and indigo for much the same reasons as in Europe by elderly men;
this is entirely optional. The wearing of whiskers while shaving the chin was a Mogul fashion of the
17th and 18th centuries and is now seldom seen except among Deccani Mahommedans. The
mustachios must not grow below the line of the upper lip, which must be clearly seen; a division
or parting is made below the nose. The lower lip is also carefully kept clear. Hair under the arms or
elsewhere on the body except the breast is always removed.

Mahommedan clothing for indoor wear consists of three pieces: (a) Head-dress, (b) body-
covering, (c) covering for the legs.

Head-dress.—This is of two kinds: the turban and the cap. The former is chiefly worn in
northern India, the latter in Oudh and the United Provinces. What is known in Europe as a turban
(from the Persian sarband, a binding for the head) is in India divided into two classes. The first,
made of a single piece of cloth 20 to 30 in. wide and from 6 to 9 yds. long, is bound round the
head from right to left or from left to right indifferently and quite simply, so as to form narrow
angles over the forehead and at the back. This form is called amāmāh (Arabic), dastār (Persian),
shimlā or shamlā, safā, lungi, selā, rumāl, or dopattā. The terms amāmāh and dastār are used
chiefly with reference to the turbans of priests and ulema, that is learned and religious persons.
They are usually white; formerly Syeds wore them of green colour. They are never of bright hue.
The lungi is made of cloth of a special kind manufactured mostly in Ludhiana. It is generally blue
and has an ornamented border. In the case of Pathans and sometimes of Punjabi Moslems it is
bound round a tall red conical cap called a kullah (Plate I. fig. 1). The ends are frequently allowed
to hang down over the shoulders, and are called shimla or shamla, terms which also apply to the
whole head-dress. The names safa, sela, rumal and dopatta are sometimes given to this form of
turban. The sela is gaudier and more ornamental generally; it is worn by the nobles and wealthier
classes.
 The second form of the turban is known as the pagri.12 This head-dress is of Hindu origin but is
much worn by Mahommedans. It is a single piece of cloth 6 to 8 in. wide, and of any length from
10 to 50 yds. The methods of binding the pagri are innumerable, each method having a distinctive
name as arabi (Arab fashion); mansabi (official fashion, much used in the Deccan); mushakhi
(sheik fashion); chakridar (worn by hadjis, that is those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca);
khirki-dār (a fashion of piling the cloth high, adopted by retainers of great men); latudār (top-
shaped, worn by kāyasths or writers); joridār (the cloth twisted into rope shape) (Plate I. fig. 6);
siparali (shield-shaped, worn by the Shiā sect); murassa, or nastālikh (ornately bound), latpati
(carelessly bound) (Plate I. fig. 4). Many other fashions which it would be difficult to describe can
best be learned by studying pictures with the help of a competent teacher. The chīrā is a pagri of
checked cloth. The mandīl is of gold or highly ornamented cloth; it is worn by nobles and persons
of distinction.

The cap or topi is not bound round the head, but is placed upon it. It is made of cut and sewn
cloth. Some varieties are dopallari, a skull-cap; kishtinumā, or boat-shaped cap; goltopi, a round
cap of the kind known in England as “pork-pie”; bezwi, or egg-shaped cap; sigoshiā, or three-
cornered cap; chaugoshiā, or four-cornered cap; tājdār, or crown-shaped cap; &c. Many other
caps are named after the locality of manufacture or some peculiarity of make, e.g. Kashmīrē-
kītopī; jhālardār, fringed cap, &c.

A form of cap much worn in Bengal and western India is known as Irānī kullāh, or Persian cap.
It is made of goatskin and is shaped like a tārbūsh but has no tassel. The cap worn in cold
weather is called top, topa, or kantop (ear-cover) (Plate I. fig. 2); these are sometimes padded
with cotton. Caps are much worn by Mussulmans of Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and other cities of the
United provinces.

The tārbūsh or tūrki-topī was introduced into India by Sir Sayyid Ahmad (Plate I. fig. 3). It must
not be confused with the Moorish “fez,” which is skull-shaped. The tārbūsh is of Greek origin and
was adopted by Sultan Mahmud of Turkey in the early part of the 19th century. To remove the
head-dress of whatever kind is, in the East, an act of discourtesy; to strike it off is a deep insult.

Clothing.—The following rules from the hadith or traditional sayings of the prophet are
noteworthy:—“Wear white garments, for verily they are full of cleanliness, and pleasant to the
eye.” “It is lawful for the woman of my people to clothe herself in silken garments, and to wear
ornaments of gold; but it is forbidden to man: any man who shall wear silken garments in this
world, shall not wear them in the next.” “God will not be merciful to him who through vanity wears
long trousers” (i.e. reaching below the ankle). The foregoing rules are now only observed by the
ultra-orthodox, such as the Wāhabī sect and by ulemas, or learned elderly men. The Mogul court
of Delhi, especially during the reign of Mahommed Shah, nicknamed Rangīla or the “dandy,”
greatly influenced change in these matters. Coloured clothing, gold ornaments and silken raiment
began to be worn commonly by Mussulman men in his reign.

For the upper part of the body the principal article of clothing is the kūrtā. The Persian name for
this is pairahan and the Arabic kamīs, whence “chemise.” This kūrtā is the equivalent for the shirt
of Europe. It is usually of white cotton, and has the opening or galā in front, at the back, or on
either side indifferently. It was formerly fastened with strings, but now with the ghundi (the old
form of button) and tukmah or loop. In southern India, Gujarat and in the United Provinces the
kūrtā is much the same as to length and fit as the English shirt; as the traveller goes northward
from Delhi to the Afghan border he sees the kūrtā becoming longer and looser till he finds the
Pathan wearing it almost to his ankles, with very full wide sleeves. The sleeves are everywhere
long and are sometimes fastened with one or two buttons at the wrist.

Mussulmans always wear some form of trousers. They are known as izār (Arabic) or pa’ejáma13
(Persian). This article of clothing is sometimes loose, sometimes tight all the way, sometimes loose
as far as the knee and tight below like Jodhpur riding breeches. They are fastened round the waist
with a scarf or string called kamarband (waistband) or izārband, and are usually of white cotton.
The varieties of cut are sharai or canonical, orthodox, which reach to the ankles and fit as close to
the leg as European trousers; rumi or gharāredār, which reach to the ankles but are much wider
than European trousers (this pattern is much worn by the Shias); and tang or chust, reaching to
the ankles, from which to the knee they fit quite close. When this last kind is “rucked” at the ankle
it is called churidār (Plate I. fig. 4). They are sometimes buttoned at the ankle, especially in the
Meerut district. The shalwār pattern, very large round the waist and hanging in folds, is worn by
Pathans, Baluchis, Sindis, Multanis, &c.

Plate I.

Fig. 1.—Punjabi Mahommedan

Fig. 2.—Mahommedan Saint, pir, Fig. 3.—Student of the Aligarh
wearing lungi bound round a red or
wearing the kāntōp, ear-cap. College wearing the tārbūsh.
gold kullah.
 Fig. 6.—Mahommedan Jat
Fig. 4.—Punjabi Mahommedan Fig. 5.—Bombay or Gujarati Bora cultivators. Wife:—with izār, kurta,
wearing pagri, with shimla, wearing white and gold turban and orhni or chadar; husband:—
achkan izār or paejamas. with red top. with majba, chadar, and joridar
pagri.

Fig. 8.—Parsi
woman wearing
Fig. 7.—The Parsi khoka, a tall Fig. 9.—Parsi Fig. 10.—Parsi pith hat with felt
Parsi sari and
hat of glazed chintz. schoolgirl. brim.
mathabana or
white hair cover.

From Pen and Ink Drawings by J. Lockwook Kipling, C.I.E.

Plate II.
 Fig. 2.—Brahman wearing dhoti and Fig. 3.—Rajput wearing chapkan,
Fig. 1.—Deccan Brahman
janeo or sacred thread. This is the which is worn both by
wearing pagri, dhoti or
dining and sacrificial dress of most Mussulmans and Hindus,
pitamber, angā and dopatta.
Hindus. buttoning on different sides.
 Fig. 6.—Sikh devotee, Akali
Fig. 4.—Hindu woman
Fig. 5.—Bengali Babū wearing the most or Nihung, vowed to the
showing method of
popular form of the embroidered cap. wearing of blue and steel,
wearing the sari.
&c.

From Pen and Ink Drawings by J. Lockwook Kipling, C.I.E.

The new fashion in vogue amongst the younger generation of Mussulman is called the ikbārah
or patalūnnumā, which is like the European trousers. They are usually made of calico; they have
no buttons but are fastened with string (kamarband). Bathing drawers are called ghutannah and
reach to the knee. The tight drawers worn by wrestlers are called janghiah.

Garments for outdoor wear are the angā, or angarkhā, the chapkan, the achkan or sherwāni;
the angā, a coat with full sleeves, is made of any material, white or coloured. It is slit at the sides,
has perpendicularly cut side-pockets, and is fastened with strings just below the breast. It is
opened on the right or left side according to local custom. The angā is now considered old-
fashioned, and is chiefly worn by elderly men or religious persons. It is still not uncommon in
Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and at native courts, but is being superseded by the achkan (Plate I. fig. 4),
which is buttoned straight down the front. Both angā and achkan reach to a little below the knee,
as also does the chapkan, a relic of Mogul court dress, best known as the shield-like and highly
adorned coat worn by government chaprasis (Plate II. fig. 3). Over the angā is sometimes worn an
overcoat called a chogā; this is made of any material, thick or thin, plain or ornamented; it has
one or two fastenings only, loops below the breast whence it hangs loosely to below the knees.
The chogā is sometimes known by its Arabic names abā or kabā, terms applied to it when worn by
priests or ulemas. In cold weather Pathans and other border residents wear posteens, sleeved
coats made of sheepskin with the woolly side in. In India farther south in cold weather an
overcoat called daglā is worn; this is an angā padded with cotton wool. A padded chogā is called
labādā; when very heavily padded farghūl. Whereas the European wears his waistcoat under his
coat, the Indian wears his over his angā or chapkan (not over the achkan). A sleeveless waistcoat
generally made of silk is called a sadari; when it has half sleeves it is called nimāstīn; the full-
sleeved waistcoat worn in winter padded with cotton is called mirzāi. For ceremonial purposes a
coat called jāmā is worn. This fits closely as to the upper part of the body, but flows loosely below
the waist. It is generally white, and is fastened in front by strings.

In Gujarat and other parts of western India are to be found classes of Moslems who differ
somewhat from those met with elsewhere, such as Memans, Borās and Khojās. The first are
Sunnis: the two last Shias. Memans wear (1) a gold embroidered skull-cap, (2) a long kamīs
fastened at the neck with 3 or 4 buttons on a gold chain, (3) sadariya, i.e. a tight waistcoat
without sleeves, fastened in front with small silk buttons and loops, (4) an over-waistcoat called
shāyā-sadriya instead of the angā, with sleeves, and slits at the sides (probably of Arab origin).
When he does not wear a skull-cap his amāmāh is made after the arched Arab form, or is a
Kashmir scarf wound round a skull-cap made of Java straw. The Borā adopts one of four forms of
pagri; the Ujjain, a small neatly bound one; the Āhmadābād, a loose high one; the Surat, fuller
and higher than the Ujjain pattern (Plate I. fig. 5); or the Kathiāwādā, a conical turban with a gold
stripe in the middle of the cone. The Borā wears the angā, otherwise he resembles the Meman.
The Khoja wears a pagri smaller than the Meman’s, called a Moghalāi phentā; this leaves a portion
of the head bare at the back. The material is always of kashīda, a kind of embroidered cloth.
Amongst Mahommedans only Pathans wear ear-rings.

Mahommedan Women. Head-dress.—The rupatta (also called dopatta), or veil, is of various colours
and materials. Its length is about 3 yds., its width about 1½. It is worn over the head and thrown
over the left shoulder. It is considered essential to modesty to cover the head. This head-dress is
also known as orhna, orhni, pochan, pochni (Baluchistan and western India) chundri, reo (Sind),
sipatta, takrai or chadar (Pathan). Among the poorer classes it is called pacholi. Farther south in
India when of thicker material it is called chadar or chaddar. It is called pachedi, potra or malāyā
by Meman, Borā and Khojā women. As a rule married women wear brighter colours than
unmarried ones. In Kashmir a small round cap, goltopi, is worn. The kassawa is a handkerchief
bound over the head and tied at the back, and is worn by Mahommedan women indoors to keep
the hair tidy; Mahommedan women plait their hair and let it hang down behind (Plate I. fig. 6).

Clothing.—A short jacket fastened at the back and with short sleeves is worn. It may be of any
material. In Sind, Gujarat and other parts of western India it is called a choli. It is also very
generally known as angiyā. Other common names are mahram and sināband (breast-cover). The
kūrtā is a sort of sleeveless shirt, open in front and reaching to the waist. It may be of any
material. When this is worn with the angiya it is worn over it. This combination of dress is worn
only by young married women. In Kashmir and northern India generally the angiya is not worn,
and the kūrtā is worn instead. This is like the kamīs of the man, already described; it has full
sleeves, is open at the front, which is embroidered, and reaches to the knee or lower. Among
Pathans there are two kinds of kūrtā (kamīs or khat); one worn by married women called gìrādānā
khat is dark red or blue, embroidered with silk in front; the jalānā khat worn by unmarried women
is less conspicuous for colour and ornament. A large pocket (jeb) is often sewn on in front like the
Highlander’s sporran.

The Pa’ejāmās, also called izār, are cut like those of men, and known by the same names. They
differ only in being of silk or other fine material and being coloured (Plate I. fig. 6). Among
Pathans they are called partog or partek (pardek), and those of unmarried girls are of white, while
married women wear them of susi, a kind of coloured silk or cotton. As a general rule the wearing
of paijāmās is the chief distinction between Mussulman and Hindu women. In the Shahpur and
other districts, however, where Mahommedans have followed Hindu customs, Moslem women
wear the majlā, a cloth about 3 yds. long by 1½ wide tied tightly round the waist so as to fall in
folds over the legs. Even Mahommedan men sometimes wear the majlā in these districts. This
form of dress is known among Moslems as tahband [lower binding] (Plate I. fig. 6). In Rajputana,
Gujarat and the southern Punjab, Mahommedan women sometimes wear a lhenga or ghagra skirt
without trousers; in the Sirsa district and parts of Gujarat the ghagra is worn over the trousers.
The sadari or waistcoat is worn by women as well as men. The tillak or peshwaz is a dress or robe
the skirt and bodice of which are made in one piece, usually of red or other coloured material; it is
common in Gujarat, Rajputana and the Sirsa district, and is the style usually adopted by nautch
girls when dancing. Meman women wear also the abā, or overcoat, which differs from that worn
by men in that it has loose half sleeves, and fastens with two buttons at each side of the neck
over the shoulders; it is embroidered on the breast, and adorned with gold lace on the skirts.

In Delhi, Lucknow, Agra and other towns in the Punjab and the United Provinces a special
wedding dress is worn by the bride, called rīt-kājorā, the “dress of custom.” It is worn on the
wedding night only; and it is a rule that no scissors are employed in making it. The trouser string
of this dress is not the usual kamarband, but is made of untwisted cotton thread called kalāwā.
Out of doors Mahommedan women wear the būrkā, a long loose white garment entirely covering
the head and body. It has two holes for the eyes. Mahommedan women pencil the eyes with kohl
or sūrmā, use missi for the teeth and colour the palms and nails of the hand with henna. A nose-
ring is a sign of marriage.

Hindus.—Caste does not influence dress amongst Hindus as much as might be expected. The
garment distinctive of the Hindus of all castes, men and women, all over India, is the dhoti or loin
cloth. It is a very ancient dress, and their gods are represented as clothed in it in old sculptures.

The general term used for clothing is kaprā, latā or lugā. Under Mahommedan influence Hindu
clothing developed into “suits,” consisting of five pieces for men, hence called pancho tuk kapra—
(1) head-dress, (2) dhoti, (3) coat, (4) chaddar or sheet, (5) bathing cloth; and three for women,
hence called tīn tuk—(1) dhoti, (2) jacket, (3) shawl.

Men.—The Hindu (except the Rajput) shaves his head, leaving only a top-knot on the point of
the skull. He shaves the face (except the eye-brows) and his body. The Rajput wears a full beard
and whiskers, usually parted in the middle. He sometimes draws the beard and whiskers to the
side of the head, and to keep it tidy wraps round it a cloth called dhātā or galmochā.
 Head-dress.—Hindus wear sometimes turbans and sometimes caps. When the turban is worn it
is always of the pagri form, never the amāmāh. Hindus wind the pagri in various ways as
described for Mussulmans, but the angles are formed over the ears and not from front to back.
Mahrattas wear flat red pagris, with a small conical peak variously shaped and placed. The pagri is
known in different parts of India as pāg, phentā, phag, phagdi and many other names. In Bengal
a sort of turban is worn which can be taken off like a hat. When Hindus wear caps or topis they
resemble those worn by Mahommedans, but they never wear the fez, tārbūsh or irāni topi. In
Gaya a peculiar cap made of tāl leaves is worn in rainy weather, called ghungā. Bengalis, whether
Brahmans or of other castes, frequently go bareheaded.

Body Clothing.—The dhoti is a simple piece of cloth (cotton), generally white. It is wound round
the loins, the end passed between the legs from front to back and tucked in at the waist behind
(Plate II. fig. 2). The small form of dhoti worn by men of the lower class is called langoti. It does
not fall below mid-thigh. A Brahman’s dhoti, as also that of some other castes, reaches to a little
below the knee; a Rajput’s to his ankles. The dhoti is known under many names, dhutia, pitambar,
lungi, &c. In some parts of India half the dhoti only is wound round the loins, the other half being
thrown over the left shoulder. Some upper classes of Hindus wear for coat the kūrtā; most wear
the angharkā (Plate II. fig. 1), a short angā reaching to the waist. It is also known as kamri,
baktari, badan or bandi. Hindus wear the angharkhā or angā as Mahommedans do, but whereas
the Mahommedan has the opening on the left the Hindu wears it on the right. When the kūrtā is
worn it is worn under the angā. The chaddar (chadar or dopatta) is of various kinds. It is a piece
of cotton cloth 3 yds. long by 1 yd. wide. It is worn across the shoulders, or wrapped round the
body, but when bathing, round the loins. Hindus, both men and women, wear ear-rings.

The Brakminical thread (janeo) (Plate II. fig. 2) is a cord made of twisted cotton prepared with
many ceremonies. It is worn over the left shoulder and hangs down to the right hip. It is of three
strands till the wearer is married, when it becomes six or nine. It is 96 handbreadths in length,
and is knotted. Rajputs also wear this thread, similar in make and length, but the knots are
different.

Caste and sect marks also distinguish Hindus from each other.

Women.—The hair is sometimes worn plaited (chotì), usually an odd number of thin plaits made
into one large one, falling down the back and fastened at the end with ribbons. Another style is
wearing it in a knot after the ancient Grecian fashion; it is always worn smooth in front and parted
in the middle. Over the head is worn the orhna or veil. The end is thrown over the left shoulder in
such a manner as to conceal the breast. On the upper part of the body the kūrtā is sometimes
worn. A bodice called angiyā is worn. This covers the breast and shoulder; it has half sleeves, is
very short, and is fastened at the back with strings.

The skirt is called lhenga or ghagra. It is worn mostly in Rajputana hanging in full flounces to
the knee or a little below. In Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies women do not wear a skirt,
only a choli and sārī. This last is a long piece of cotton or silk cloth. Half is draped round the waist
and hangs to the feet in folds; the remainder is passed over the head and thrown over the left
shoulder (Plate II. fig. 4).
 Sikh.—The Sikh does not shave or cut his hair. The beard is parted in the middle and carried up
each side of the face to the top of the head. A piece of cloth called dhātā or galmochā is wound
round the chin and head so as to keep the hair clean and tidy. The hair of the head is tied into a
knot (kes) at the top of the head or at the back, a distinguishing mark of the Sikh. His religion
requires the Sikh to carry five articles—kes, the knot of hair on the head; the kanga, a comb; the
kard, a knife; the kach, a pair of short trousers peculiar to the Sikh; and the kharā, an iron bangle
on the wrist. It is de rigueur that he should carry some piece of iron on his person. His head-dress
he calls a pāg; it is a turban of amāmāh shape but enormously large. The Sikh nobility and gentry
wear two turbans, either both of pagri form or one of pagri and one of amāmāh form. Each is of a
different colour.

The Sikh calls his kūrtā jhaggā; it is very large and loose, bound with a scarf round the waist.
The kach is a sort of knickerbockers reaching to just below the knee, which they encircle tightly.
Over all the Sikh wears the choga. In outlying villages he wears instead of the kūrtā a chādar or
cloth, which he calls khes, on the upper part of his body. Some village Sikhs wear a tahband or
waistcloth instead of the kach. Sikhs are fond of jewelry and wear ear-rings. The dress of Sikh
women does not differ greatly from that of Hindu women; but in the Sirsa district and some other
parts she wears the Mahommedan sutan or trousers, under the lhenga or skirt. There is a small
sect of Sikh known as Akāli or Nihang. Their dress is entirely of dark blue colour, the turban being
also blue, high and pointed; on it are fastened three steel quoits. The quoit was the ancient
weapon of the Sikh, who calls it chakar. Certain steel blades are stuck through the body of the
turban. The Akālis also wear large flat iron rings round the neck and arms (Plate II. fig. 6).

Parsis.—When the Parsis were first admitted into India, certain conditions were imposed upon
them by the Hindus; among others they were not to eat beef, and they were to follow the Hindu
custom of wearing a top-knot of hair. Old-fashioned Parsis in country districts still follow these
customs. To uncover the head is looked upon as a sin; hence Parsis of both sexes always wear
some head covering whether indoors or out. In the house the man wears a skull cap; out of doors
the older Parsis wear the khoka, a tall hat, higher in front than at the back, made of a stiff shiny
material, with a diaper pattern (Plate I. fig. 7). The younger generation adopted a round pith hat
with a rolled edge of felt, but, under the influence of the swadeshi movement, they have generally
reverted to the older form (Plate I. fig. 10). Next to the skin the Parsi wears a sadra or sacred
shirt, with a girdle called kasti. Over the sadra a white cotton coat is worn, reaching to a little
below the waist. The Parsi wears loose cotton trousers like a Mussulman. In country districts he
wears a jāmā, and over the jāmā a pechodi or shoulder cloth. The young Parsi in Bombay has
adopted European dress to a great extent, except as to head-gear. The Parsi woman dresses her
hair in the old Greek fashion with a knot behind. She also wears a sadra or sacred shirt. Country
Parsis in villages wear a tight-fitting sleeveless bodice, and trousers of coloured cloth. Over all she
winds a silken sari or sheet round the body; it is then passed between the legs and the end
thrown over the right shoulder. Out of doors she covers her head and right temple (Plate I. fig. 8).
In towns the sari is not passed between the legs, but hangs in loose folds so as to hide the
trousers. The upper classes wear a sleeved polka jacket instead of the bodice. Parsi children up to
the age of seven wear cotton frocks called jabhlan. They wear long white trousers of early
Victorian cut, with frills at the bottom. They wear a round cap like a smoking-cap. The little girls
wear their hair flowing loose (Plate I. fig. 9).

Shoes.—There is no distinction between the shoes worn by Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs or Parsis, but
Hindus will not wear them when made of cow’s leather. Shoes are called juta, juti or jute by
Mahommedans, and jore or zore by Hindus. Shoes are usually distinguished by the name of the
material, as nāri kā jūtā, leather shoes, banati jūtā, felt shoes, and so on.

There are innumerable styles of cut of shoe, three being the commonest: (1) Salimshahi, these
are shaped like English slippers, but are pointed at the toe, terminating in a thin wisp turned back
and fastened to the instep. They are mostly made of thin red leather, plain in the case of poorer
people and richly embroidered in the case of rich people. This cut of shoe is most in vogue
amongst Moslems. (2) Gol panjē ki jūti, like English slippers, but rounded at the toes. (3) Gheltā or
nāgphani (snake’s head) jutā, the toe is turned up, while the back part is folded inwards and
trodden under the heel. Ladies usually wear shoes of this fashion, known as phiri juti. Women’s
shoes differ only in size and in being made of finer material, and in being embroidered. Hindu
women seldom wear shoes. On the northern frontier the pattern known as the kafshi is worn; this
is a slipper having neither sides nor back; the sole towards the heel is narrow and raised by a
small iron-shod heel. In the hills shoes resembling sandals, called chaplis, made of wood, straw or
grass are worn. The soles are very thick, and are secured with straps; there is generally a loop for
the big toe. They are known as phulkārru in Kashmir, and pula in Kulu and Chamba.

Shoes are invariably removed on entering mosques or other holy places. It is also customary to
remove them when entering a house. Orientals sit on the floor in preference to chairs; hence it is
thought very necessary by them that the carpet should be kept clean, which could not be done
were persons to keep their shoes on. While it would be considered a breach of good manners to
enter a room with the shoes on, an exception has been made in favour of those natives who have
adopted European boots or shoes. The babus of Bengal have taken to English-made shoes of
patent leather worn over white socks or stockings.

Authorities.—The Indian section of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) includes an
exhibition of oriental dress; and the library of the India Office many prints and photographs.
The following books may be consulted: Coloured Drawings illustrating the Manners and
Customs of Natives of India (originally prepared by order of the marquess Wellesley,
Governor-General; vide Council minute dated 16th August, 1866) (1 vol.); J. Forbes Watson
and J. W. Kaye, The People of India; F. Baltazar Solvyns, Les Hindous (4 vols. illustrated,
Paris, 1808); India Office Library, 3 small portfolios of pictures of Katch and Bombay men
and women; Costume of Bala Ghat (Carnatic), S.E. India (large water-colours, India Office
Library); Illustrations of various trades in Kashmir, by Indian artists (India Office Library); R.
H. Thalbhoy, Portrait Gallery of Western India (1886) (chiefly portraits of Parsi notables);
Edward Tuite Dalton, C.S.I., Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1 vol., 1872); Talboys Wheeler,
History of the Imperial Assembly at Delhi, 1st January 1877; Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, 6th
February 1887 (in Urdu, illustrated); T. H. Hendley, C.I.E., V.D., Rulers of India and Chiefs of
Rajputana (London, 1897)—the last three are useful for the study of ceremonial dress; G. A.
Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life (Calcutta, 1885; this is a most valuable work of learning and
research; in division 2, subdivision 3, chapter 1, on clothes, will be found names and
descriptions of every article of clothing used in south, central and eastern India); H. B.
Baden-Powell, Handbook of Manufactures and Arts of the Punjab (Lahore, 1872); W. W.
Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal (1875); Hughes’ Dictionary of Islam (London, 1895); Sir
Denzil Ibbetson, Outlines of Punjab Ethnography; E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern
India. It is to be hoped that steps will shortly be taken to arrange articles of costume now
displayed at the Indian Section, Victoria and Albert Museum, in some systematic order so as
to assist students in arriving at a scientific knowledge of the subject. (C. G.)

1 The spelling throughout all the articles dealing with India is that adopted by the government of India,
modified in special instances with deference to long-established usage.

2 The historicity of this convention, not now usually admitted by scholars, is maintained by Bishop
Copleston of Calcutta in his Buddhism, Primitive and Present (1908).

3 In 1909 the excavation of a ruined stupa near Peshawar disclosed a casket, with an inscription of
Kanishka, and containing fragments of bones believed to be those of Buddha himself.

4 In 1909 an inscription in Brahmi characters was discovered near Bhilsa in Central India recording the
name of a Greek, Heliodorus. He describes himself as a worshipper of Bhagavata (= Vishnu), and states that
he had come from Taxila in the name of the great king Antialcidas, who is known from his coins to have lived
c. 170 b.c.

5 This is the conventional European form of the name. For other forms see Yue-Chi.

6 V. A. Smith, Early Hist. of India, p. 238.

7 Smith, op. cit. pp. 239, &c., says that he probably succeeded Kadphises II. about a.d. 120. Dr Fleet
dates the beginning of Kanishka’s reign 58 b.c. (see Inscriptions: Indian). Mr Vincent Smith (Imp. Gaz. of
India, The Indian Empire, ed. 1908, vol. ii. p. 289, note) dissents from this view, which is also held by Dr Otto
Franke of Berlin, stating that Dr Stein’s discoveries in Chinese Turkestan “strongly confirm the view” held by
himself.

8 See V. A. Smith, op. cit. pp. 297, &c.

9 His era, however, is dated from 606.

10 So V. A. Smith, op. cit. p. 314, who on this point differs from Sylvain Levi and Ettinghausen.

11 For Harsha’s reign see Smith, op. cit. xiii. 311-331.

12 This has been Englished by Anglo-Indians into “puggaree” or “pugree” and applied to a scarf of white
cotton or silk wound round a hat or helmet as a protection against the sun.

13 Anglicized as “pyjamas” (in America “pajamas”), the term is used of a form of night-wear for men
which has now generally superseded the night-shirt. This consists of a loose coat and trousers of silk, wool or
other material; the trousers are fastened by a cord round the waist.
 INDIA, FRENCH, a general name for the French possessions in India—on the Coromandel
coast, Pondicherry, Karikal and Yanaon; on the Malabar coast, Mahé; and in Bengal,
Chandernagore. In addition there are a few “lodges” elsewhere, but they are merely nominal
remnants of French factories. The total area amounts to 203 sq. m., of which 113 sq. m. belong to
the territory of Pondicherry. In 1901 the total population amounted to 273,185. By decree of the
25th of January 1879 French India was provided with an elective general council and elective local
councils. The results of this measure have not been very satisfactory, and the qualifications for and
the classes of the franchise have been modified. The governor resides at Pondicherry, and is
assisted by a council. There are two tribunals of first instance (at Pondicherry and Karikal), one
court of appeal (at Pondicherry) and five justices of the peace. The agricultural produce consists of
rice, earth-nuts, tobacco, betel nuts and vegetables.

History.—The first French expedition to India is believed to have taken place in the reign of
Francis I., when two ships were fitted out by some merchants of Rouen to trade in eastern seas;
they sailed from Havre in that year and were never afterwards heard of. In 1604 a company was
granted letters patent by Henry IV., but the project failed. Fresh letters patent were issued in
1615, and two ships went to India, only one returning. La Compagnie des Indes was formed under
the auspices of Richelieu (1642) and reconstructed under Colbert (1664), sending an expedition to
Madagascar. In 1667 the French India Company sent out another expedition, which reached Surat
in 1668, where the first French factory in India was established. In 1672 Saint Thomé was taken,
but the French were driven out by the Dutch and retired to Pondicherry (1674). In 1741 Dupleix
became governor of Pondicherry and in 1744 war broke out between France and England; for the
remaining history of the French in India see India.

See Haurigot, French India (Paris, 1887); Henrique, Les Colonies françaises (Paris, 1889);
Lee, French Colonies (Foreign Office Report, 1900); L’Année coloniale (Paris, 1900); and F. C.
Danvers, Records of the India Office (1887).

INDIANA, a north-central state of the United States of America, the second state to be erected
from the old North-West Territory; popularly known as the “Hoosier State.” It is located between
latitudes 37° 47′ and 41° 50′ N. and longitudes 84° 49′ and 88° 2′ W. It is bounded on the N. by
Michigan and Lake Michigan, on the E. by Ohio, on the S. by Kentucky from which it is separated
by the Ohio river, and on the W. by Illinois. Its total area is 36,350 sq. m., of which 440 sq. m. are
water surface.

Physiography.—Topographically, Indiana is similar to Ohio and Illinois, the greater part of

its surface being undulating prairie land, with a range of sand-hills in the N. and a chain of
picturesque and rocky hills, known as “Knobs,” some of which rise to a height of 500 ft., in
the southern counties along the Ohio river. This southern border of hills is the edge of the
“Cumberland Plateau” physiographic province. In the northern portion of the state there are
a number of lakes, of glacial origin, of which the largest are English Lake in Stark county,
James Lake and Crooked Lake in Steuben county, Turkey Lake and Tippecanoe Lake in
Kosciusko county and Lake Maxinkuckee in Marshall county. In the limestone region of the
south there are numerous caves, the most notable being Wyandotte Cave in Crawford
county, next to Mammoth Cave the largest in the United States. In the southern and south-
central part of the state, particularly in Orange county, there are many mineral springs, of
which the best known are those at French Lick and West Baden. The larger streams flow in a
general south-westerly direction, and the greater part of the state is drained into the Ohio
through the Wabash river and its tributaries. The Wabash, which has a total length of more
than 500 m., has its headwaters in the western part of Ohio, and flows in a north-west,
south-west, and south direction across the state, emptying into the Ohio river and forming
for a considerable distance the boundary between Indiana and Illinois. It is navigable for
river steamboats at high water for about 350 m. of its course. Its principal tributaries are the
Salamanie, Mississinewa, Wild Cat, Tippecanoe and White rivers. Of these the White river is
by far the most important, being second only to the Wabash itself in extent of territory
drained. It is formed by the confluence of its East and West Forks, almost 50 m. above its
entrance into the Wabash, which it joins about 100 m. above the Ohio. Other portions of the
state are drained by the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, the St Joseph and its principal
branch, the Elkhart, which flow north through the south-west corner of Michigan and empty
into Lake Michigan; the St Mary’s and another St Joseph, whose confluence forms the
Maumee, which empties into Lake Erie; and the White Water, which drains a considerable
portion of the south-west part of the state into the Ohio.

Flora and Fauna.—The flora of the state is varied, between 1400 and 1500 species of
flowering plants being found. Among its native fruits are the persimmon, the paw-paw, the
goose plum and the fox grape. Cultivated fruits, such as apples, pears, peaches, plums,
grapes and berries, are raised in large quantities for the market. The economic value of the
forests was originally great, but there has been reckless cutting, and the timber-bearing
forests are rapidly disappearing. As late as 1880 Indiana was an important timber-producing
state, but in 1900 less than 30% of the total acreage of the state—only about 10,800 sq. m.
—was woodland, and on very little of this land were there forests of commercial importance.
There are about 110 species of trees in the state, the commonest being the oak. The bald
cypress, a southern tree, seems to be an anomalous growth. Blue grass is valuable for
grazing and hay-making. The principal crops include Indian corn, wheat, oats, potatoes,
buckwheat, rye and clover.

The fauna originally included buffalo, elk, deer, wolves, bear, lynx, beaver, otter, porcupine
and puma, but civilization has driven them all out entirely. Rattlesnakes and copperheads
were formerly common in the south. The game birds include quail (Bob White), ruffed
grouse and a few pinnated grouse (once very plentiful, then nearly exterminated, but now
apparently reappearing under strict protection), and such water birds as the mallard duck,
wood duck, blue- and green-winged teals, Wilson’s snipe, and greater and lesser yellow legs
(snipe). The song birds and insectivorous birds include the cardinal grosbeak, scarlet and
summer tanagers, meadow lark, song sparrow, catbird, brown thrasher, wood thrush, house
wren, robin, blue bird, goldfinch, red-headed woodpecker, flicker (golden-winged
woodpecker), and several species of warblers. The game fish include the bass (small-mouth
and large-mouth), brook trout, pike, pickerel, and muskallonge, and there are many other
large and small food fishes.

Climate.—The climate of Indiana is unusually equable. The mean annual temperature is

about 52° F., ranging from 49° F. in the north to 54° in the south. The mean monthly
temperature varies from 25° in the months of December and January to 77°-79° in July and
August. Cold winds from the Great Lakes region frequently cause a fall in temperature to an
extreme of −25° F. in the north and north central parts of the state. The mean annual
rainfall for the entire state is about 43 in., varying from 35 in. in the north to 46 in. in the
Ohio Valley.

The soil of the greater part of the state consists of a drift deposit of loose calcareous
loam, which extends to a considerable depth, and which is exceedingly fertile. In the Ohio
and White Water river valleys a sandstone and limestone formation predominates. The north
and north central portions of the state, formerly rather swampy, have become since the
clearing of the forests as productive as the south central. The most fertile part of the state is
the Wabash valley; the least fertile the sandy region, of small extent, immediately south of
Lake Michigan.

Industry and Manufactures.—Agriculture has always been and still is the chief industry of
the state of Indiana. According to the census of 1900, 94.1% of the land area was included
in farms, and of this 77.2% was improved. The proportion of farms rented comprised 28.6%
of the whole number, four-fifths of these being rented on a share basis. The average size of
farms, which in 1850 was 136.2 acres, had decreased to 105.3 acres in 1880 and to 97.4
acres in 1900. The value of the farm property increased from $726,781,857 in 1880 to
$978,616,471 in 1900. The farms are commonly cultivated on the three-crop rotation
system. The proximity of such good markets as Chicago, Cincinnati, St Louis and Louisville,
in addition to the local markets, and the unusual opportunities afforded by the railways that
traverse every portion of the state, have been important factors in the rapid agricultural
advance which has enabled Indiana to keep pace with the newly developed states farther
west. Indiana was ninth in the value of its agricultural products in 1889, and retained the
same relative rank in 1899, although the value had considerably more than doubled,
increasing from $94,759,262 in 1889 to $204,450,196 in 1899. The principal crops in which
the state has maintained a high relative rank are Indian corn, wheat and hay; the acreage
devoted to each of these increased considerably in the decade 1890-1900. In 1907,
according to the Department of Agriculture, the acreage of Indian corn was 4,690,000 acres
(7th of the states), and the yield was 168,840,000 bushels (5th of the states); of wheat,
2,362,000 acres (6th of the states) was planted, and the crop was 34,013,000 bushels (7th
of the states); and 2,328,000 acres of hay (the 8th largest acreage among the states of the
United States) produced 3,143,000 tons (the 8th largest crop). Other important staple crops
are oats, rye and potatoes, of which the crops in 1907 were respectively 36,683,000
bushels, 961,000 bushels, and 7,308,000 bushels. There are no well-defined crop belts, the
production of the various crops being general throughout the state, except in the case of
potatoes, most of which are raised in the sandy regions of the north. The value of the
orchard products is large, and is steadily increasing: in the decade 1890-1900 the number of
pear trees increased from 204,579 to 868,184, and between 1889 and 1899 the crop
increased from 157,707 to 231,713 bushels. Of apple trees, which surpass all other orchard
trees in number, there were more than 8,600,000 in 1900. The total value of the state’s
orchard products in 1899 was $3,166,338, and the value of small fruits was $1,113,527. The
canning industry both for fruits and small vegetables has become one of much importance
since 1890.

Stock-raising is an industry of growing importance, the value of the live stock in the state
increasing from $71,068,758 in 1880 to $93,361,422 in 1890 and $109,550,761 in 1900.
Sheep-raising, however, which is confined largely to the north and east portions of the state,
decreased slightly in importance between 1890 and 1900. The value of the dairy products
sold in 1899 (census of 1900) was $8,027,370, nearly one-half of which was represented by
butter; and the total value of dairy products was $15,739,594.

In the value, extent and producing power of her manufacturing industries Indiana has
made remarkable advance since 1880. This increase, which more than kept pace with that of
the country as a whole, was due largely to local causes, among which may be mentioned the
unusual shipping facilities afforded by the network of railways, the discovery and
development of natural gas, and the proximity of coal fields, the gas and the coal together
furnishing an ample supply of cheap fuel. The number of manufacturing establishments
(under the “factory” system) within the state was 7128 in 1900, 7044 in 1905; their invested
capital was $219,321,080 in 1900 and $312,071,234 in 1905, an increase of 42.3%; and the
value of their total product was $337,071,630 in 1900 and $393,954,405 in 1905, an
increase of 16.9%. The most important manufactured products in 1905 were flour and grist
mill products, valued at $36,473,543; in 1900, when they were second in importance to
slaughter-house products and packed meats, they were valued at $29,037,843. Next in
importance in 1905 was the slaughtering and meat-packing industry, of which the total
product was valued at $29,352,593; in 1900 it was valued at $43,862,273. Other important
manufactured products were: those of machine shops and foundries, the value of which
increased from $17,228,096 in 1900 to $23,108,516 in 1905, or 34.1%; distilled liquors, the
value of which had increased from $16,961,058 in 1900 to $20,520,261 in 1905, an increase
of 21%; iron and steel, valued at $19,338,481 in 1900 and at $16,920,326 in 1905;
carriages and wagons, valued at $12,661,217 in 1900 and at $15,228,337 in 1905; lumber
and timber products, valued at $19,979,971 in 1900 and at $14,559,662 in 1905; and glass,
valued at $14,757,883 in 1900 and at $14,706,929 in 1905—this being 3.7% of the product
value of all manufactures in the state in 1905, and 18.5% of the value of glass produced in
the United States in that year. The growth in the preceding decade of the iron and steel
industry, the products of which increased in value from $4,742,760 in 1890 to $19,338,481
in 1900 (307.7%), and of the manufacture of glass, the value of which increased from
$2,995,409 in 1890 to $14,757,883 in 1900 (392.7%), is directly attributable to the
development of natural gas as fuel; the decrease in the value of the products of these same
industries in 1900-1905 is partly due to the growing scarcity of the natural gas supply. As
compared with the other states of the United States in value of manufactured products,
Indiana ranked second in 1900 and in 1905 in carriages and wagons, glass and distilled
liquors; was seventh in 1900 and fourth in 1905 in furniture; was fourth in 1900 and seventh
in 1905 in wholesale slaughtering and meat-packing; was fifth in 1900 and sixth in 1905 in
agricultural implements; and in iron and steel and flour and grist mill products was fifth in
1900 and eighth in 1905. The most important manufacturing centres are Indianapolis, Terre
Haute, Evansville, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Anderson, Hammond, Richmond, Muncie,
Michigan City and Elwood, each having a gross annual product of more than $6,000,000.

According to the annual report on Mineral Resources of the United States for 1906,
Indiana ranked fifth in the Union in the value of natural gas produced, sixth in petroleum,
and sixth in coal. Natural gas was discovered in 1886 in the east-central part of the state,
and its general application to manufacturing purposes caused an industrial revolution in the
immediate region. Pipe lines carried it to various manufacturing centres within the state and
to Chicago, Ill., and Dayton, Ohio. During the early years an enormous amount was wasted;
this was soon prohibited by law, and a realization that the supply was not unlimited resulted
in a better appreciation of its great value. The gas, which is found in the Trenton limestone,
had an initial pressure at the point of discovery of 325 ℔; this pressure had decreased in the
field centre by January 1896 to 230 ℔, and by January 1901 to 115 ℔, the general average
of pressure at the latter date being 80 ℔. The gas field extends over Hancock, Henry,
Hamilton, Tipton, Madison, Grant and Delaware counties. The value of the output fell from
$7,254,539 in 1900 to $1,750,715 in 1906, when the state’s product was only 4.2% of that
of the entire country. On the 1st of January 1909 there were 3223 wells in operation, some
of which were 1200 ft. deep. It has been found that “dead” gas wells, if drilled somewhat
deeper, generally become active oil wells. The development of the petroleum field, which
extends over Adams, Wells, Jay, Blackford and Grant counties, was rapid up to 1904. The
annual output increased from 33,375 barrels in 1889 to 11,339,124 barrels in 1904, the
latter amount being valued at $12,235,674 and being 12.09% of the value of the product of
the entire country. In 1906 there was an output of only 7,673,477 barrels, valued at
$6,770,066, being 7.3% of the product value of the entire country. The Indiana coal fields,
which cover an area of between 7000 and 7500 sq. m. in the west and south-west, chiefly in
Clay, Vigo, Sullivan, Vermilion and Greene counties, yielded in 1902 9,446,424 tons, valued
at $10,399,660; in 1907, 13,985,713 tons, valued at $15,114,300; the production more than
trebled since 1896, when it was 3,905,779 tons. The deposits consist of workable veins, 50
to 220 ft. in depth, and averaging 80 ft. below the surface. It is a high grade block, or
“splint” coal, remarkably free from sulphur and rich in carbon, peculiarly adapted to blast
furnace use. The quarries and clay beds of the state are of great value. The quarries of
sandstone and limestone are chiefly in the south and south-central portions of the state. The
value of the limestone quarried in 1908 was $3,643,261, as compared with $2,553,502 in
1902. The Bedford oolitic limestone quarries in Owen, Monroe, Lawrence, Washington and
Crawford counties furnish one of the most valuable and widely used building stones in the
United States, the value of the product in 1905 being $2,492,960, of which $2,393,475 was
from Lawrence and Monroe counties and $1,550,076 from Lawrence county alone. Beds of
brick-clays and potters’ clay are widely distributed throughout the state, the total value of
pottery products in 1902 being $5,283,733 and in 1906 $7,158,234. Marls adapted to the
manufacture of Portland cement are found along the Ohio river, and in the lake region in the
north. In 1905 and 1906 Indiana ranked third among the states in the production of Portland
cement, which in 1908 was 6,478,165 barrels, valued at $5,386,563—an enormous advance
over 1903, when the product was 1,077,137 barrels, valued at $1,347,797. The production of
natural rock cement, chiefly in Clark county, is one of the two oldest industries in the state,
but in Indiana as elsewhere it is falling off—from an output in 1903 of about 1,350,000
barrels to 212,901 barrels (valued at $240,000) in 1908. There are many mineral springs in
the state, and there are famous resorts at French Lick and West Baden in Orange county. A
large part of the water bottled is medicinal: hence the high average price per gallon ($0.99
in 1907 when 514,366 gallons were sold, valued at $507,746, only 2% being table waters).
In 1907 19 springs were reported at which mineral waters were bottled and sold; they were
in Allen, Hendricks, Pike, Bartholomew, Warren, Clark, Martin, Brown, Gibson, Wayne,
Orange, Vigo and Dearborn counties. A law of 1909 prohibited the pumping of certain
mineral waters if such pumping diminished the flow or injured the quality of the water of any
spring.
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