20. Constantine VII’s doctrine of “Containment” of the Rus
Jonathan Shepard (Cambridge)
Professor Litavrin has made many notable contributions to the study of Russo-Byzantine relations. In recent years, he has meticulously examined the legal and working conditions in which trading between northeners and “Greeks” was conducted in the tenth century [1]. And he has been pivotal to the new Russian translation of and commentary on Constantine VII’s De administrando imperio (= DAI). In his introduction Litavrin remarks on the lack of any reference in the DAI to the military cooperation which is envisaged by the Russo-Byzantine treaty, ratified a few years before the DAI was composed (c. 948-52). He suggested that a special chapter devoted to the Rus may have been drafted but not incorporated into the text as it stands.
Alternatively, he surmises the treaty’s clauses about Cherson may have remained a dead letter, as being incompatible with the empire’s agreement with the Pechenegs whom the Byzantine government under Constantine VII preferred as allies. Hence the absence from the DAI of any hint that the Rus might act as agents or allies [2].
It is, in my view, possible to take Litavrin’s suggestion a little further, and to attribute the silence in the DAI to the personal judgement of Constantine VII. It is well-known that the DAI is a composite work, drawing upon inaccurate or tendentious sources, and some have adjudged section of it to be merely antiquarian items. However, as Litavrin points out, there is a certain geopolitical rationale to the sequence of the chapter’s tour d’horizon and to the review of the numerous lands lost to the ancient Roman empire. The residual rights of the present-day “Roman” emperor are thereby implied, if never fully spelled out [3]. It may well be that Constantine was trying to bolster the general claim to overlordship which perpetuation of the “Roman” imperium yielded with specific claims based on more recent imperial accomplishments, such as Heraclius’ alleged responsibility for the settlement and baptism of the Croats and Serbs, Basil’s mission-work and military aid for the Dalmatian towns and the Slavs,
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and also Basil’s liberation of southern Italy from the Moslems [4]. To that extent, there is method in the DAI’s discursive treatment of obscure events and protracted anecdotes, as well as in its interest in antique ruins. As I have suggested elsewhere, the DAI’s opening chapters about the northern peoples may have been more prescriptive and up-to-date because these peoples appeared less susceptible to arguments from the history of their foreberers’ relations with the empire, or from Rome’s territorial rights over the lands which they now occupied; accordingly, the DAI’s treatment was confined to practical matters such as the relative military strengths of various northern groupings and to ways of cultivating the friendship of the Pechenegs [5].
It could be argued that this consideration alone fully explains the pre-eminence of the Pechenegs in the first twelve chapters of the DAI. The chapters focus quite narrowly on politico-military concerns, probably owing much to the intelligence reports of Byzantine governors or agents [6]. They are mostly laconic and their silences do not necessarily represent deliberate suppression; thus, one might argue, there is nothing very surprising about the lack of an explicit description of the Rus’ trading activities. Nonetheless, even on the strictly military plane, the omission of any role for the Rus as potential proxies in the steppes is, as Litavrin observed, noteworthy. In contrast, the capability of the Uzes to attack the Pechenegs is recorded, and that of both the Uzes and the Alans to attack the Khazars. Constantine also indirectly advises against trying to incite the Hungarians against the Pechenegs: an attempt had been made by means of the cleric Gabriel, and it had been rebuffed [7].
Constantine’s omission of any such auxiliary role for the Rus needs to be viewed in the light of events which had unfolded little more than a decade before the DAI was compiled. They are recounted relatively fully in a source whose authenticity is no longer in doubt, the anonymous Letter of a Khazar, written in Hebrew c. 949 and relaying information and opinions current among the Khazar ruling elite. It is likely to have been addressed to Hasdai ibn Shaprut, chief minister at the Ommayad court in Cordova [8].
The Letter relates events of the Khazars’ recent past, notably the liaisons between potentates ruling in or near the Black Sea and the Volga steppes. As C. Zuckerman has pointed out, more space is given to the dealings of “Romanus the Wicked” - clearly Romanus I Lecapenus (920-944) - than to any other episode in Khazar history [9].
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This was partly because these events were recent and had turned out to the Khazar’s advantage, but it is also a reflexion of their far-reaching repercussions, which might be expected to have interested any contemporary student of diplomacy. In what can be deduced to have been the later 930s, Romanus incited the ruler of the Rus (HLGW) to attack SMKRYY, a form which can reasonably be reconstructed as SMKRS and identified as SMKERTS\SMKUSH, the Khazar fortress dominating the Straits of Kerch. He sent “great gifts” to HLGW and the Rus seized the fortress “by stealth” in the absence of the garrison commander [10]. The precise motivation of Romanus cannot be determined: he may have been retaliating for Khazar persecution of Christians in Khazaria, as the Letter itself indicates [11], but he could also have been seeking, on general strategic grounds, to destroy a key Khazar forpost. At any rate, the Rus, rather than steppe-nomads, were engaged for the task. They were well-enough acquainted with the topography, seeing that Rus boats had for more than a generation been passing through the Straits of Kerch to trade in Khazaria, and not long after 912 a large Rus fleet took this route to reach the Volga and then sail down and devastate Moslem territories around the Caspian [12]. Employment of the Rus as surrogates in the steppes was already being threatened by Nicholas Mysticus in a letter addressed to Symeon of Bulgaria [13]. Romanus was thus adhering to, or developing, existing policies in engaging the Rus as proxies to the north of the Black Sea, actually in the later 930s and prospectively in two clauses of the Russo-Byzantine treaty generally dated to 944. One of these clauses denies the Rus ruler the right to make war on the “towns” of the region of Cherson but seems also to provide for action on the Rus leader’s part to restore imperial authority there, in the event of rebellion by the local inhabitants. The other clause commits the Rus prince to action against the Black Bulgars, in the event of them attacking “the Cherson land” [14]. The precise abode of these Bulgars is unclear, and may well have varied according to their pasturage needs, but it was in the vicinity of the Sea of Azov and it opened up at least the possibility of Rus war boats at large in the sea whose outlet Khazar SMKERTS still guarded c. 944 [15].
F. E. Wozniak pointed out that the treaty’s terms could well have been framed partly to set the Rus against the Pechenegs, whose territories they would cross in order to assist the Crimean towns, and there is no reason to doubt such an arrière-pensée in the Byzantines’ manipulation of the northerners [16].
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But Romanus was probably also hoping to set the scene for another clash between the Rus and the Khazars, leading perhaps to a further assault on Khazar possessions near the Sea of Azov.
Emperor Romanus’ continuity of policy in the Crimean region is no less noteworthy than is the silence of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. For the train of events which Romanus triggered off did not end with the Rus’ capture of SMKERTS. According to the Letter, the commander of the fortress and “chief of the armed troops”, Pesah, retaliated with an attack on the emperor’s possessions, capturing three towns “besides the villages, very many”, and putting men and women to death. He went on to attack a “major town” (medinah) called SWRSWN[.], which the Letter’s editors identify as Cherson [17]. The text of the Letter, in so far as it can be reconstructed, does not claim unequivocally that the Rus’ captured SWRSWN[.], but it seems to indicate that many prisoners were taken and that the Khazars held the initiative. HLGW was then attacked and after considerable resistance he surrendered, giving up the booty taken from SMKERTS. HLGW is depicted as pleading, “Romanus enticed me into doing this”. Pesah’s response was to order him to attack Romanus; otherwise, he warned, he would exact full revenge [18]. HLGW accordingly launched a naval expedition against Byzantium; after four months of campaigning he accepted defeat, having lost “his men of valour” to the enemy’s Greek Fire. The details of a four-month-long naval expedition against Byzantium, the use of Greek Fire and the defeat of the Rus correspond with those of the raid lasting from June to September 941 recorded by Byzantine and Latin sources, and it is overwhelmingly probable that the selfsame expedition is described in the Khazar Letter [19].
If the Letter is to be believed, the Rus’ expedition of 941 was the unlooked-for consequence of Romanus’ incitement of HLGW to seize SMKERTS. The following consideration weighs in favour of the Letter’s version of events: on the Letter’s own internal evidence, the Byzantines were assumed by the Khazars to be in league with the Rus and hence Pesah’s assault on “the towns of Romanus” before attending to HLGW. It is probably no coincidence that a prime concern of the DAI is to deter the Khazars from ravaging the empire’s Crimean holdings. The only chapter-heading (10) containing an expressly martial message features “Khazaria, how it must be fought against, and by whom” and both this and the following chapter emphasize the key importance of the ruler of the Alans, who can inflict heavy damage on Khazar territories
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or pounce on them while they advance to attack Cherson and “the so-called Klimata” [20]. The recommendations as to how, through deterrence of the Khazars, Cherson and the Klimata may be protected are matched in detail only by the prescriptions for preventing the Rus from attacking “this imperial city” [21]. This alone would suggest that specific occurences lay behind both sets of recommendations - that there had been an actual Khazar attack or attack on the Crimea not long beforehand, as there had certainly been a Rus assault on Byzantium in 941. That, in turn gives credibility to the background to the Khazar attack which the Letter presents [22].
The Letter also gives clues as to why Romanus Lecapenus might have persisted with a policy of treating the Rus as potential agents, even after the events of 941. The Rus were obliged by Pesah to mount an attack on Romanus, and HLGW is said to have done so “against his will” [23]. Although the Bosporos’ eastern shore was ravaged, HLGW did not attempt a direct assault on the city of Constantinople, and for much of the time the Rus in their small boats hove to offshore, rather than seizing every opportunity for killing and pillaging. It may be that the Rus leadership was trying to fulfil its pledge to attack the Greeks in minimalist fashion [24]. At any rate, Romanus would most probably have been informed or inferred that the Rus were acting under Khazar duresse, rather than launching a raid of their own volition. This would make his contunued willingness to envisage their intervention in the Crimean region less bizarre. His policy was not, however, acceptable to Constantine VII, judging by the DAI’s omissions. One cannot, it is true, be completely sure that Constantine knew of Romanus’ original démarche to HLGW or of the subsequent Khazar diktat to him. He seems to have been excluded from Romanus’ inner councils, and after 945 there may have been neither a memorandum nor an ex-confidant of Romanus willing to brief him on all his predecessor’s initiatives. Yet it seems unlikely that Constantine and his agents could have been wholly ignorant of Khazar pronouncements of the sort exemplified by the Letter. His general interest in the Crimean settlements would most probably have made him suspicious, if not directly aware, of the imbroglio which had triggered off the recent Khazar attack or attack on them. Constantine’s failure to mention the Rus among the adversaries of the Khazars is therefore most probably deliberate: he runs through the names of other peoples who might act as counter-balances to them, the Uzes, the Black Bulgars and the Alans. [25]
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The Black Bulgars figure in the list, even though their raids on the Cherson region were rated serious enough to be provided for in the treaty of c. 944. And not long beforehand the Alans - also in the list - had been in league with the Khazars; they were apparently only won back to cooperation with the empire after 941 [26]. So a checkered past did not in itself debar a people from Constantine’s line-up of potential foes of the Khazars. Why, then, the dropping of the Rus?
The obvious answer takes the form of strategic considerations. Romanus’ policy of employing the Rus had highlighted their strengths and weaknesses. Aided by their naval capability, they were past-masters of the surprise attack but vulnerable to sustained pressure, not least because of their limited numbers and the exposed nature of their settlements on the Middle Dnieper. They could be useful for strikes against fixed points, but they were less effective in dealing with the amorphous groupings of nomads which made up the majority of the population of the Black Sea steppes. In fact, the maritime settlements of the Byzantines made convenient targets for their war-boats, as the events of 941 showed. The Rus’ hit-and-run tactics were ill-geared to permanent occupation of such towns as they might seize and their chances of storming Constantinople itself were minimal. But fear did grip the citizens in 941, fuelling the interpretation of the classical relief-carving as portending the Rus’ sack of the city, and giving Romanus himself “sleepless nights” [27]. The Rus attack was dramatic enough to impinge upon a classicizing letter which Constantine VII wrote at the time, [28] and it could well have appeared to him reason enough for regarding the Rus as the foremost threat to “this imperial city of the Romans”, his home-town. The containment of the Rus is, in effect, the underlying theme of the first nine chapters of the DAI.
While strategic considerations of this sort informed Constantine’s “doctrine” on the Rus, they were not its sole ingredients. There were, I suggest, other grounds, personal and ideological, for keeping them at arm’s length. A similar stance is discernible in the case of another glaring omission from the DAI, a chapter dedicated to Bulgaria. As Litavrin has justly observed, the omission can hardly be due to Bulgaria being deemed unimportant [29]. The Bulgarians are named with the Rus and the Hungarians as a people whom the Pechenegs may attack, being only “half a day’s journey” from them. Constantine is much concerned to deny that the Bulgarian rulers have ever exercised undisputed overlordship
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over the Croats or the Serbs, yet he presumably kept up the payments of tribute to Tsar Peter which the latter was continuing to expect in the 960s [30]. The lack of a chapter devoted to the Bulgarians is rather, I suggest, a measure of Constantine’s inability to reconcile their existing polity and such current practices as paying tribute to them with his views on the the correct scheme of things. His disapproval of the settlement of 927 is brought into the open in chapter 13 of the DAI, where he breaks his silence to denounce the marriage of Peter to Maria, the grand-daughter of Romanus Lecapenus, as “an unworthy and unseemly innovation into the noble polity of the Romans” [31]. Constantine is here formulating a rejoinder to be put to other northerners who might cite the match as a precedent justifying their own requests for an imperial marriage-tie. But there need be no doubt as to the strength of his personal conviction that the ruling house of “the Romans” should stand aloof. He practised what he preached in that he was, around the time of the DAI’s composition, seeking a match with the one people exempted from the ban on foreign marriage in chapter 13, the Franks [32]. If he eventually made do with a bride of ignoble (and local) stock for his son, he kept all five of his daughters unmarried [33].
Constantine had a particular motive for excoriating the marriage of Maria Lecаpina to Peter of Bulgaria. As I have suggested elsewhere, the marrige was abhorrent to Constantine above all because it seemed set to herald his own exclusion from the senior emperorship. Romanus’ eldest son, Christopher, whom he was clearly grooming for the succession, was acclaimed before Constantine’s name at “the vehement insistence of the Bulgarians” during the wedding festivities [34]. This was most probably stage-managed by Romanus Lecapenus. Essentially, Romanus seized the opportunity which his feats of bringing about peace and forging a new tie with the Bulgarian ruling house presented to bolster Christopher’s claim to the senior emperorship. Even through the filter of mid-tenth-century narrative of the wedding the implication that the Lecapenus family was now linked to another royal house (thereby dignifying its own status) is clear [35]. The Bulgarians’ acclamations were not in themselves constitutive and they represent merely one stage in manoeuvrings which Christopher’s sudden death cut short in 931. But in forging a Bulgarian connexion for Christopher Romanus was, in effect, devising an alternative political strategy to that of bonding his daughter Helena with the Porphyrogenitus, effected in 919.
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As the oration acclaiming the peace-treaty of 927 emphasized, Byzantium and Bulgaria were henceforth to live in peace with one another [36], and considerable influence and prestige would accrue to an emperor capable of managing that peace firmly. Had Christopher become senior emperor as well as father-in-law of the Bulgarian ruler, he would have been uniquely well-placed to do this, displacing, if not wholly effacing, Constantine VII.
Constantine’s outburst against the marriage of Peter to Maria is, then, highly significant. It shows that the prevailing silence - or rather, absence of extensive discussion - about Bulgaria is deliberate, and not merely a mark of careless composition methods. The marriage-tie, even though it involved a non-Porphyrogenita, had had major repercussions in the “Roman” court, jeopardizing the rights of a true Porphyrogenitus. Moreover, it had bolstered the pretensions of a “Scyth” potentate, whose seals styling himself and his wife “augoustoi basileis in Christ” had presumably been arriving at Constantinopole’s and other courts. In proclaiming his Purple-born status on his seals and coins, Constantine may well have had his Bulgarian neighbour, as well as Lecapen coteries, in his sights [37]. His insistence that only “those raised up in the palace” could “have followed Roman customs from the beginning” [38] was compounded by awareness that the Bulgarian connexion of the Lecapeni had been designed to sap his own position. Regarding himself as, so to speak, the embodiment of true “Roman” imperial qualities, and anxious to pass these on to his son [39], Constantine was at once scornful and suspicious of personal bonds with potentates from among the northern neighbours. As Litavrin has pointed out, Tsar Peter’s sons, one of whom bore the evocative name of Romanus, posed an alternative (is not overt challenge) to the claims of Constantine’s own son, Romanus II, on the “Roman” throne [40]. In other words, his policy of “Roman” exclusiveness was at least partly formed out of personal grudges, harboured over many years. His reservations and apprehensions about the “unworthy and unseemly innovation” were not exclusively the product of these. But the empire’s “objective” concerns about Bulgaria’s power in the Balkans were, I suggest, heavily coloured by Constantine’s particular political circumstances.
Constantine never suffered any threat to his imperial ranking order from the “vehement insistence” of the Rus, and stood in no danger of so doing. To be beholden to the Rus, bogeymen in the eyes of the Constantinopolitan populace, would have been a liability to the surviving members of the Lecapenus family and their sympathizers [41].
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Nonetheless, if the above interpretation of the DAI’s treatment of the Bulgarians is valid, it suggests that the DAI’s silence about the Rus as allies is likewise deliberate and that here, too, Constantine may be presenting personal convictions rather than describing long-established, generally agreed, practice. That is, emphasis on “containing” the Rus which runs through chapters 1-9 may well represent recommendations which Constantine is advocating against what has been recent practice. I suggest that his insistence on intensive use of the Pechenegs and silence about an auxiliary role for the Rus constitutes a kind of “silent polemic”. This was not spelled out explicitly, but neither is there a full critique of Romanus’ policy of rapprochement with the Bulgarians. That the Pecheneg policy is being actively advocated rather than merely described is signalled by the phraseology with which Constantine introduces it:
“For I conceive (ὑπολαμβάνω) that it is always (my italics) greatly to the advantage of the emperor of the Romans to be minded to keep the peace with the people of the Pechenegs and to conclude conventions and treaties of friendship with them” [42].
This is one of the few instances in the DAI where Constantine uses the first person singular, and it is noteworthy that here he refers to the advantage to “the emperor of Romans” as an individual rather than to “the Romans” in general (as he does in the preface). In the opening chapters the only other occasions when “the emperor” is designated as personally concerned involve the Pechenegs again; the Bulgarians to whom “the emperor of the Romans will appear more formidable... if he is at peace with the Pechenegs"; and the ruler of Alania [43]. As has been noted above (p. 269) Constantine’s provision for an alliance with the Alan ruler against the Khazars marked an alternation from the recent past, when they had been leagued with the Khazars. He may well be signalling a comparable policy-shift towards reliance on the Pechenegs, which he himself had inaugurated. Accordingly, he gives practical information as to how the policy is to be sustained. Thus he expatiates on the diverse uses to which the Pechenegs can be put against other peoples; the only other people similarly characterized are the Alans. Constantine refers to essentially the same procedure for courting the Pechenegs in two separate chapters. In chapter 1 he proposes as first item of his personal counsel to Romanus the annual despatch of an agent “from here” (ἐντεῦθεν) to take “hostages and a diplomatic agent” from them, while in chapter 8 he describes the procedure for sending an agent directly from Constantinople to the Pechenegs living “in the region of Bulgaria” [44].
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This repetition may not merely reflect the importance of the Pechenegs to his northern policy: it may have seemed necessary because such a sharp focus on the Pechenegs was essentially a novelty, following upon Constantine’s acquisition of the senior emperorship in January 945. Equally, the up-to-date and prescriptive nature of the first thirteen chapters as a whole may partly be registering new circumstances: the Rus were to be discarded as potential auxiliaries and the Bulgarians treated as rivals rather than as being “in community of brotherly love and concord”, the pious hope of the oration on the peace of 927 [45].
This is not, of course, to claim that Constantine VII was the first Byzantine ruler to regard the Pechenegs as potential surrogates in the steppes. But there is no clear evidence that in earlier reigns they had consistently been singled out as special agents before all other peoples, in the manner which the DAI enjoins. According to Theophanes Continuatus it was John Bogas, strategos of Cherson, who proposed that the Pechenegs be enlisted for an attack on Symeon of Bulgaria. Reportedly, he was responsible for negotiating the accord which committed them to action [46]. Bogas was acting in consultation with the imperial government, but the assignment to the Pechenegs of a key role in the campaign of 917 could well represent the adoption of an enterprising governor’s proposal, rather than the enactment of an established policy. It should be noted that around the time of the campaign an attempt was made to incite the Hungarians, too, against Symeon [47]. Subsequently, in a letter datable to c. 922, Nicholas threatened that “a most formidable joint-action” was being prepared against Symeon, and the Pechenegs are listed among the peoples willing to take part. But they are mentioned as being in league with the Rus and there is no suggestion that their involvement differed from that of the Rus, Hungarians or Alans [48]. Moreover, it has plausibly been suggested that the attempt to incite the Hungarians against the Pechenegs recounted in the DAI chapter 8 occurred some time after 927, [49] and such a dating would militate against the existence of a policy of “always” keeping the peace with the Pechenegs at that time. Not even “the first expedition of the Hungarians against the Romans” and their ravaging of Thrace in 934 seem to have swung imperial policy markedly in favour of employment of the Pechenegs [50]. For, as we have seen, Romanus, wishing to strike a blow against the Khazars, turned not to the Pechenegs but the Rus.
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Against this background, features of the opening chapters of the DAI come into sharper relief. Constantine, in repeatedly referring to the despatch of an agent from Constantinople to the Pechenegs, may be describing a practice which he himself had instituted. It may be that before Constantine’s assumption of sole rule the strategos of Cherson was the sole regular intermediary: John Bogas had conducted negotiations even with Pechenegs who were to operate “in the region of Bulgaria”. Now the emperor took a direct hand in dealings with the Pechenegs and judging by the phraseology of chapter 1, the emperor himself would bestow suitable “imperial benefits and gifts” on each year’s crop of Pechenegs [51]. The reasons for Constantine’s preference lie, we have suggested, in a mixture of general strategic and personal considerations. The hazards of recourse to the Rus were apparent to Constantine, while the Pechenegs’ very handicaps were a kind of recommendation to him: they were the predominant grouping in the Black Sea steppes, but though they could raid the environs of Cherson they could not suddenly appear before the walls of Constantinople itself, panicking the citizens and potentially bringing acute embarrassment to the regime. In addition Constantine bitterly resented Romanus Lecapenus’ rapprochement with the Bulgarians (Above, p. 270).
These calculations of a more or less rational nature were compounded by Constantine’s preconceptions, a basic equation of “Roman customs” with the culture of “those raised up in the palace” who alone were well-qualified - in fact, chosen by God - to determine and uphold them. The notion was not merely a convenient means of reserving legitimacy for the palace-bound and Constantine’s own Purple-born offspring. These arbiters of, and living monuments to “Romanness” were a means of preserving the uniquely “Roman” character of the empire, and in upholding their claim (however distored) to be following in the line of the first Constantine they were serving the empire [52]; for only through their remaining true to supposedly “Roman customs” could the empire convincingly maintain claims to hegemony over other peoples. This in turn favoured a sort of cultural isolationism. At the end of the DAI chapter 13 Constantine advises his son directly that “each nation has different customs and divergent laws and institutions, and should consolidate those things that are proper to it” from its own resources [53]. These statements, unlike the “prudent and clever excuses” to be put to importuning northern suitors [54], seem to express an article of faith- heart-felt antipathy
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towards foreign marriage-ties and cultural diffusion alike. It is no accident that Constantine’s tirade is precipitated by remarks on the Bulgarian marriage. Bulgaria’s capital, Preslav, was attaining its fullest extent and splendor at the time when he was writing, and soon afterwards, in the 960s, its tsar could be described by Ibrahm ibn Yakub as enjoying “great authority” and governing in the manner of “the greatest monarchs” [55].
Constantine - or rather, his ghost-writer - fulsomely praised his grandfather Basil I, for furthering the process of Christianization in Bulgaria and even cast him (falsely) as the emperor responsible for the conversion of the Rus. However, dynastic pride and imperial “apostolic work” aside, Constantine seems tacitly to have concluded that Christianization had created more problems than solutions, fostering the rivalry of “boastfulness” (ἀλαζονεία) of Symeon, leader of a “God-damned” people and himself “utterly godless” (ἀθεότατον) [56].
If such was Constantine’s reading of the recent past, he could reasonably have decided to avoid close liaisons with leaders aspiring to self-improvement and higher culturo-political status: better to resort to those having few, if any aspirations towards “upward mobility” in culturo-political matters. Pecheneg chieftains, presiding over impoverished and ferocious groupings of nomads, were leaders of this stamp. By Constantine’s book, the very lack of cultural pretensions of these “devil’s brats” made them the least problematic of agents or proxies among the northern peoples. It is significant that the Pechenegs are not named among those northerners seeking marriage-alliances or imperial vestments. This was not because they had any less of a “ravening greed of money” than the Khazars, Hungarians or Rus. Elsewhere they, too, are described as “ravenous and keenly desirous of things in short supply among them” [57]. But Pecheneg appetites seemed to be confined to material objects without regard for their more abstract, “imperial” or ideological connotations. Thus the gap between the emperor and his useful savages should remain safely unbridgeable.
These reflexions upon Constantine’s personal outlook are inevitably very speculative, but it seems reasonably clear that the DAI’s opening chapters were intended to illustrate and, in part, explain the new lines of his northern policy. If a policy of even-handedness towards the northern peoples - with may be some penchant for employing the Rus on Romanus I’s part - was being replaced by one of “always” humouring the Pechenegs, this could have a beaming on Princess Olga’s interest in discussions with the emperor face-to-face [58].
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It would not resolve the controversy over the date and purpose of Olga’s visit - or visits - to Constantinople which Litavrin had so successfully rekindled [59]. Constantine’s change of tack might have precipitated an immediate visit from Olga, consistent with Litavrin’s dating a first visit to 946; the accession of the new senior emperor would probably anyway have prompted some sort of exchange for confirmation of the c. 944 treaty [60]. But the facts about and full implications of the emperor’s focus on the Pechenegs might well have taken time to emerge, and so could be connected with Olga’s visit in the mid-950s, not long before she turned to Otto of Saxony for a religious mission [61]. If a religious mission was one of Olga’s specific objectives in paying a visit to the Great Palace in the mid-950s and receiving baptism there, she could have been trying to demonstrate her respectability and to put Russo-Byzantine relations back on the more cooperative footing which they seem to have had in Romanus’ reign. In other words, Olga could have been reacting to that cooling on the Byzantine side which Litavrin has detected (albeit proposing that the cooling followed from Olga’s negotiations in 946) [62].
Olga’s hopes of a rapprochement, probably sealed and signalled with a marriage-alliance [63], were unlikely to be fulfilled in Constantine’s lifetime and her overtures will probably only have served to stir the spleen against barbarian pretensions vented in chapter 13 and implied by silences elsewhere. Constantine could not, however, set a northern policy in stone, much as he wished to impress its validity upon his son and heir. Less than ten years after Constantine’s death, Nicephorus II Phocas engaged the Rus under their prince, Sviatoslav, to attack the Danubian Bulgarians [64]. Nicephorus has often been reproached for ineptitude in diplomacy and his invitation did unleash upon the Balkans a furious new force which proved all but irrepressible. Yet Nicephorus, in seeking to deal a serious blow to an intractable northern power by means of the Rus, was taking a step comparable to Romanus’ in inciting HLGW against SMKERTS. Wittingly or unwittingly, Nicephorus was returning to Romanus’ policy of treating the Rus as proxies in the steppes, offering 1,500 lbs. of gold in succession to Romanus’ “great gifts”. The risks of such a strategy, as against Constantine’s policy of all-out containment of the Rus, may now seem obvious. But even after defeating Sviatoslav, John Tzimisces bound him to respect, and also to protect, Byzantine territories, including, apparently, Cherson and its region [65].
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One may conclude that the opening chapters of the DAI represent Constantine’s personal and, in part, polemicizing views as to which northern barbarians should be courted most intensively. For all the rhetoric of the prooimion, the “doctrine” and details of current practice of the first thirteen chapters offer only a snapshot of ever-shifting sands. They should not be treated as representing a broadly-based “Byzantine policy” towards the northern peoples, constant through the first two-thirds of the tenth century. Rather, they describe and seek to justify a particular policyline which one emperor felt impelled to take, in reaction to the errors (by his lights) of his predecessor in regard to the Rus and the Bulgarians. They may even represent a kind of deviation from the lines of Constantine’s predecessor and successors. The Olympian air of permanence arises from the fact that Constantine, unlike other emperors, set out his views on paper - and that this work happens to have survived. Constantine clearly believed that his assortment of data and advice would be of lasting utility to his son, but neither this seriousness of purpose nor the high-minded rhetoric of the prooimion suffice to render the first thirteen chapters of the DAI an objective or comprehensive guide to tenth-century Byzantine policies towards the north.
Notes
с. Литаврин Г. Г. Древняя Русь, Болгария и Византия в IX-X вв. // История, культура, этнография и фольклор славянских народов, IX международный съезд славистов. М., 1983, с. 62-76; он же. Русско-византийские связи в середине X века // Вопросы истории, 1986, № 6, с. 41-52; он же. О юридическом статусе древних Русов в Византии в X столетии (предварительные замечания) // Византийские очерки. М., 1991, с. 60-82; он же. Киевская Русь и Византия в 9 и 10 веках // Byzantinische Forschungen, 18, 1992, S. 43-59; он же. Византия и древняя Русь в конце IX-X в. // The legacy of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Kiev and Moscow. Thessalonica, p. 225-32; он же. Условия пребывания древних Русов в Константинополе в X в. и их юридический статус // Византийский Временник, 54, с. 81-92.
2. Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей. Текст, перевод, комментарии / изд. Г. Г. Литаврин, А. П. Новосельцев. М., 1989, с. 29.
3. Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 27-28. Cf.: Loungis T. Konstantinou 7. Porphyrogennetou. De administrando imperio Thessalonica. 1990, p. 39-42.
4. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio / ed. and tr. G. Moravcsik, R. J. H. Jenkins. Washington, DC, 1967, ch. 31.8-30, p. 146-149; ch. 32. 19-29, p. 152-155; ch. 33.9-10, p. 160-161; ch. 34, 5, p. 162-163; ch. 35. 3-9, p. 162-165; ch. 36, 7-9, p. 164-165; ch. 29.68-79, p. 124-127; ch. 29. 206-216, p. 134-135.
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5. Shepard J. Byzantine diplomacy and war under Gibbon’s eyes // Gibbon and empire. Cambridge, 1996.
6. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio.., chs. 2-13, p. 50-65; Shepard J. Imperial information and ignorance: a discrepancy // Byzantinoslavica, 56, 1995, p. 107-117.
7. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 9.114, p. 62-63; ch. 10.3-8, p. 62-65; ch. 8.23-33, p. 56-57. On the significance of Constantine’s particular concern for Cherson, see below, c. ΟΟ.
8. Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents of the tenth century. Ithaca-London, 1982, p. 106-121 (text of letter); Zuckerman C. On the date of the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism and the chronology of the kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor // Revue des études byzantines, 53, 1995.
9. Zuckerman C. On the date...
10. Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 114-115, 128. The form SMKERTS occurs in King Joseph’s letter to Hasdai: Коковцев П. К. Еврейско-хазарская переписка X в. Ленинград, 1932, № 19 по 106; SMKUSH - is the form used by: Ibn al-Faqih al Hamadani. Kitab al-Buldan // Abrégé du livre des pays Damascus / tr. H. Masse. 1973, p. 324. On the fortress’ remains, see: Гадло А. В. Проблема приазовской Руси и современные археологические данные о южном Приазовье VIII-X в. // Вестник Ленинградского Университета, серия История - Язык - Литература, 23, 1968, № 14, выпуск 3, с. 61.
11. Golb N., Pritsak О. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 114-115. On Romanus’ well-attested measures against Jews, see: Sharf A. Byzantine Jewry from Justinian to the Fourth Crusade. London, 1974, p. 94-99; Zuckerman C. On the date...
12. al-Faqih al Hamadani. Abrégé du livre des pays..., p. 324; Masudi. Murui al-Dhahab, chs. 485-561 // Les prairies d’or, I / tr. C. Pellat. Paris, 1962, 165-167. См. также: Новосельцев A. П. Хазарское государство и его роль в истории Восточной Европы и Кавказа. М., 1990, 213-215; Zuckerman С. On the date...
13. See below, p. 273.
14. Повесть временных лет / изд. В. П. Адрианова-Перетц, Д. С. Лихачев. T. I М.-Л., 1950, с. 37. On the status of this treaty, see: Malingoudi J. Die Russisch-Byzantinischen Verträge des 10. Jhds. aus diplomatischer Sicht. Thessalonica, 1994, p. 35-47.
15. On the problematic localisation of Black Bulgarians, see: Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., прим. 1 к гл. 12, с. 335.
16. Wozniak F. Е. The Crimean question, the Black Bulgarians and the Russo-Byzantine treaty of 944 // Journal of Medieval History, 5, 1979, p. 122-124.
17. Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 116-117, 136; cf.: Богданова H. M. Херсон в X-XV вв. Проблемы истории византийского города // Причерноморье в средние века. М., 1991, с. 62, 88.
18. Golb N., Pritsak О. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 118-19.
19. Golb N., Pritsak О. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 118-119; Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia // Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Cameniata,
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Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus / ed. I. Bekker. Bonnae, 1838, p. 423-426; Georgius Monachus Continuatus // ibid., p. 914-916; John Scylitzes. Synopsis Istorion / ed. Thurn I. N.-Y.-Berlin, 1973, p. 229-30; Liudprandus Cremonensis. Antapodosis, V. 15 // Idem. Opera / ed. I. Becker. Hannover-Leipzig, 1915, p. 137-139. Doubts as to identification of the letter’s account with the 941 expedition are raised by: Новосельцев А. П. Хазарское государство..., с. 217-18, but rejected by: Zuckerman C. On the date...; cf.: Franklin S., Shepard J. The emergence of Rus, c. 750 - c. 1200. London, 1996.
20. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., chs. 10, 11, p. 62-65. Cf.: Noonan T. S. Byzantium and the Khazars: a special relationship? // Byzantine diplomacy. Aldershot, 1992, p. 116. Klimata seems here to have a special sense of “the Regions”, denoting a zone of Crimean towns and settlements, whereas it is used more generally - and conventionally - to mean “districts, provinces”: Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 10.5, p. 64-65: “the nine Klimata of Khazaria”. See also Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 283.
21. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 2.1-23; p. 48-51; ch. 4. 10-13, p. 50-53.
22. The letter further maintains that HLGW fled after his failed Byzantine expedition to FRS by sea”, only to perish there with “all his troops": Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 118-19, 138. FRS seems to denote “Persia”, i. e. its regions accessible via the Caspian Sea and, in that case, HLGW’s last foray may be identified with the Rus expedition to Berda’a recounted in greatest detail by ibn Miskawaih and dated to 944-945; this expedition ended in defeat and the Rus “commander” was slain: ibn Miskawaih. The experiences of the nations // tr. in Amedroz H. F., Margoliouth D. S. The eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate, V. Oxford, 1921, p. 67-74. This reference to the same episode from an independent source strengthens the Letter’s basic credibility, while also indicating that the Letter telescopes events and does not always represent things in due proportion. Thus the Rus losses at Berda’a were heavy, but not, as the Letter makes out, total: ibn Miskawaith. Eclipse of Caliphate, p. 72-73. And an arrival-date in Caucasia of mid-944 would mean a lapse of nearly three years since the debacle at Constantinople, rather than the immediate flight which the Letter implies; the battle-ready condition of the Rus at Berda’a and the presence of their womenfolk would also be hard to reconcile with immediate flight from Byzantium. But such condensation is understandable in a very brief work which has a certain propagandizing intent, and this aspect of the Letter may even facilitate identification of HLGW with the Oleg of the Rus chronicles. If a leading prince or potentate (albeit not a member of the paramount dynasty) commanded the attack on SMKERTS, was a joint-leader of the expedition against Byzantium and subsequently led a force through Khazaria with the Khazars’ leave and, most probably, support, he might well have loomed large enough in Khazar eyes to appear to be top-ranking. Moreover, to focus on HLGW made his downfall all the more graphic and usefull to the Letter’s propagandistic purpose. The earliest discernible Rus chronicle version of all represents Oleg as a “commander” (воевода), acting jointly with prince Igor and going on an expedition against “the Greek”, eventually to die either in Staraia Ladoga or “overseas” (за море); Новгородская Первая летопись / ред. А. Н. Насонов. М.-Л., 1950, с. 107-109. Such uncertainty, combined with the fact that the chronicle
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draws for illustration of these episodes on a translated excerpt from a Byzantine chronicle and on what appears to be saga’s tale of an attack on the Greeks, does not invest its details about Oleg and Igor with overriding authority. But its outlines are reconcilable with the above collation of ibn Miskawaih’s account with the Letter, if allowance is made for the latter’s preoccupation with the Rus leader who had most dealings with Khazaria. Moreover, the concidence of three-year interval between the expeditions to Byzantium and Berda’a and the Rus chronicle’s awareness of two major expeditions, the second being “in the third year” after the first, is suggestive, even if the chronicle’s compilers falsely supposed them both to be aimed against the Greeks: cf.: Shepard J. The Vikings in Byzantium // The Vikings in the East. Minneapolis, 1996, forthcoming; Zuckerman C. On the date..., where greater faith is placed in the nuances and implications of the Letter’s version of events.
23. Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 118-19.
24. Shepard J. The emergence of Rus..., (forthcoming)
25. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 10.1-4, p. 62-63; ch. 12. 1-4, p. 64-65.
26. ПВЛ, I, 37; Golb N., Pritsak O. Khazarian Hebrew documents..., p. 114-15; 136-137; Zuckerman C. On the date...
27. Scriptores originum constantinopolitanarum. II / ed. T. Preger. Leipzig, 1907, p. 176; Liudprand Cremonensis. Antapodosis... V. 15, p. 138. Romanus’ subsequent acquisition of a new palladium for the city in the form of the Edessa mandylion can be seen as, in effect, making up for the Rus attack which his own diplomacy had unleashed, while obfuscating his initial role and his continuing readiness to employ to Rus: Shepard J. The Vikings in Byzantium... (forthcoming).
28. Darrouzes J. Epistoliers byzantins du X siècle. Paris, 1960, p. 322 and n.3.
29. Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 29-30. See: Литаврин Г. Г. Константин Багрянородный о Болгарии и Болгарах // Сборник в чест на акад. Димитр Ангелов. София, 1994, р. 31-33.
30. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 5.1-13, p. 52-53; ch. 8.20-22, p. 56-57; ch. 37, 48, p. 168-169; ch. 31.60-67, p. 150-151; ch. 32.56-57, 115-116, 133-135, 146-148, p. 154-155, 168-61. The tribute-payment which Tsar Peter is represented by Leo the Deacon as expecting from Nicephorus. It is most likely to have been instituted by the treaty of 927: Leo the Deacon, Historiae / ed. C. B. Hase, Bonnae, 1829, p. 61; Лев Диакон. История / ред. Μ. М. Копыленко, ком. М. И. Сюзюмов, С. А. Иванов. М., 1988, п. 36 и п. 10 на с. 181; Литаврин Г. Г. Константин Багрянородный..., с. 32-33.
31. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio, ch. 13.174-175, p. 74-75; cf.: Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 30; Литаврин Г. Г. Константин Багрянородный..., р. 34-35.
32. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 13.116-121, p. 70-73; Ohnsorge W. Drei Deperdita der byzantinischen Kaiserkanzlei Abendland und Byzanz. Darmstadt, 1979, S. 235 und Anm. 39; Macrides R. Dynastic marriage and political kinship // Byzantine diplomacy... p. 268, n. 26.
33. Theophanus Continuatus’ claim (VI. 39, p. 458) that Romanus, bride was “of noble stock” is less categorical than the statement of Scylitzes (ed. Thurn 240),
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that Anastasia-Theophano’s parents were “common tavern-keepers"; cf. Литаврин Г. Г. Киевская Русь и Византия..., с. 57.
34. Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., VI. 23, р. 414; Shepard J. A marriage too far? Maria Lekapena and Peter of Bulgaria // The empress Theophano. Cambridge, 1995, forthcoming.
35. Maria is represented as rejoicing that she had “en emperor for a husband”: Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., VI, 23, p. 415.
36. Dujčev I. On the treaty of 927 with the Bulgarians // Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 32, 1978, p. 254-255, 264-269, 279-281.
37. On the introduction of the term porphyrogennetos onto the seals and coins of Constantine from 945, see Dagron G. Les nés dans la pourpre // Idem. Travaux et Mémoires, vol. 12, 1994, p. 116-117; on Peter’s seals, see: Shepard J. Marriage too far?..., forthcoming.
38. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 13.150-152, p. 72-73.
39. Constantine drew a direct connexion between Romanus’ display of imperial” traits and his pretention of the throne. He is said to have drilled him in “word and manners, gait and laughter” among other qualities, telling him. “If you maintain these, long will you live (ruling over) the empire of the Romans: ; Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., VI, 38, p. 458.
40. Литаврин Г. Г. Константин Багрянородный..., с. 36.
41. The elaborate ceremonial of adventus for saluting the Edessa mandylion was, in that sense, a diversionary tactic from Romanus’ continuing readiness to employ the Rus on the Crimea: above, p. 269), and n. 27.
42. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 1. 16. p. 48-49.
43. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., prooimion. 14, p. 44-4; ch. 4.3,9, p. 50-51; ch. 5. 3-5, p. 52-53; ch. 11.4-5, p. 64-65.
44. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 1/20-1, p. 48-49; ch. 8.5, p. 54-55.
45. Dujčev I. On the treaty of 927..., p. 278-9, cf.: Priming G. Die Illusion vom orthodoxen “Commonwealth”: Byzanz, der Balkan und Osteuropa, ca. 890-1018 // Bericht über die 37. Versammlung deutscher Historiker in Bamberg. Stuttgart, 1988, S. 150.
46. Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., VI. 7, p. 387; Georgius Monachus Continuatus..., p. 879; John Scylitzes. Synopsis Istorion..., p. 201-202. That Bogas’ action involving “a treaty ratified with fire and the slaughter of beasts” was unusual (if not wholly unprecedented) is suggested by Nicholas Mysticus’ letter of protest about this peculiar impiety: Nicholas Mysticus. Letters / ed. and tr. R. J. H. Henkins, L. G. Westerink. Washington, DC, 1973, n. 66.6-7, 13-14, p. 310-311. The paucity of reliably attested examples of Byzantine employment of the Pechenegs for a major enterprise is underlined by: Wozniak F. E. Byzantium, the Pechenegs and the Rus’// Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 4, 1984, p. 305-307.
47. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 32.87-90, p. 156-157. What is there depicted merely as an allegation made by the prince of Zachlumi is corroborated by Nicholas Mysticus’ mention of attempts to gain the alliance of the Pechenegs and Hungarians and other”, seemingly at this very time: Nicholas Mysticus. Letters, no. 183. 22-23, p. 514-515, 591 (comment.).
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48. Nicholas Mysticus. Letters..., ho. 23. 16-20, p. 158-9. Subsequently he lists them as third among the peoples being mobilized after the Hungarians and Alans, but before “the Rus or the other Scythian peoples”, ibid., no. 23.68-69, p. 160-161.
49. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 8.23-33, p. 56-57; Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 290; above, р. 265.
50. Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., VI. 37, p. 422; Antonopoulos P. T. Byzantium, the Magyar raids and their consequences // Byzantinoslavica, 54, 1993, p. 257-9.
51. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 1.23-24, p. 48-49; see above, p. 272.
52. Patlagean E. La civilisation en la personne du souverain // Byzance, X siècle. Le temps de la réflexion, IV. Paris, 1983, p. 191, 193.; Yannopoulos P. A. Histoire et légende chez Constantin VII // Byzantion, 57, 1987, p. 161-163, 166; Константин Багрянородный. Об управлении империей..., с. 28; Beaud В. Le savoir et le monarque: le traité sur les natios de l’empereur byzantin Constantin VII Porphyrogénète//Annales, 1990, no. 3, p. 561-562; Luzzi A. “L’ideologia constantiniana” nelle Liturgia dell’ eta de Constantino II Porfirogenito // Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, nov. ser. 28, 1991, (1992), p. 119-123; Dagron G. Les nés dans la pourpre..., p. 130-132, 142.
53. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 13.175-178, p. 74-75.
54. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 13.20-21, p. 66-67.
55. Ovčarow D. Emergence et développement de la ville de Preslav, IX-X siècles // Bulgarian Historical Review, 1979, no. 2, p. 58-60; Ibrahim ibn Jakub. Relatio de itinere slavico / ed. tr. and comment. T. Kowalski // Monumenta Poloniae Historica, nova series, vol. I. Cracow, 1946, p. 51, 148 and n. 95 on p. 99; Shepard J. Bulgaria the other Balkan empire // New Cambridge Medieval History, III. Cambridge, 1996 (forthcoming).
56. Theophanes Continuatus. Chronographia..., V. 96, p. 342-4; VI.7,9, p. 387, 388 (the image of Symeon as boastful upstart reflects early tenth-century government propaganda to which the young Constantine was exposed); Constantine VII, De thematibus, / ed. A. Pertusi. Rome, 1952, p. 85.25-26; p. 75.12; Božilov J. Preslav et Constantinople: dépendance et indépendance culturelles // The 17th international Byzantine Congress. Major Papers. N.-Y., 1986, p. 433-438.
57. Constantine VII. De administrando imperio..., ch. 13.15-16, p. 66-67; ch. 7.8-9, p. 54-55.
58. Olga’s interest may be inferred from the De cerimoniis statement that Olga said as much as she wanted to the emperor, during her first reception: Constantine VII, De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae, II. 15 / ed. I. I. Reiske, I. Bonnae, 1829, p. 256.20.
59. Литаврин Г. Г. Путешествие русской княгини Ольги в Константинополь // Византийский временник, 42, 1981, с. 35-48; он же. Русско-византийские связи..., с. 42-49; он же. Киевская Русь..., с. 53-56; Featherstone J. Olga’s visit to Constantinople // Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 14, 1990, p. 293, n. 1; p. 305-311; Poppe A. Once again concerning the baptism of Olga, archontissa of Rus
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// Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 46, 1992, p. 271-3, listing earlier bibliography.
60. Литаврин Г. Г. Русско-византийские связи, с. 51; он же. Киевская Русь..., с. 54; cf.: Chrysos Е. Byzantine diplomacy AD 300-800; means and ends // Byzantine diplomacy, p. 32.
61. That a visit took place between 954 and 957 is widely accepted: Литаврин Г. Г. Русско-византийские связи, с. 47-8, 51-2; Poppe A. Once again..., р. 275-276; Назаренко А. В. Русь и Германия в IX-X вв. // Древнейшие государства Восточной Европы. Материалы и исследования, 1991. М., 1994, с. 66-69, 77-78.
62. Литаврин Г. Г. Русско-византийские связи..., с. 49; он же. Киевская Русь..., с. 58-59. Such a cooling is quite compatible with Byzantium’s interest in employing sizable numbers of Rus as warriors in theatres away from the Black Sea, reflected in Constantine’s reported request for troops (вои) from Olga after her return to Kiev: ПВЛ, I, 45. Byzantium was well-versed in syphoning off military manpower from potential raiders: cf. Shepard J. The Vikings in Byzantium..., forthcoming.
63. Arrignon J.-P. Les relations internationales de la Russie kieviènne au milieu du X siècle er le baptême de la princesse Olga // Occident et Orient au X siècle. Actes du IX congrès de la société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignment supérieur public, 1978. Paris, 1979, p. 173; Литаврин Г. Г. Русско-византийские связи..., с. 50; он же. Киевская Русь..., с. 57-58.
64. Leo the Deacon. Historia..., IV.6, p. 63; cp.: Лев Диакон. История..., с. 36-37; John Scylitzes. Synopsis Istorion..., p. 277; Иванов С. А. Византийско-болгарские отношения в 966-967 гг. // Византийский временник, 42, 1981, с. 96-97; Hanak W. К. The infamous Svjatoslav: master of duplicity in peace and war? // Peace and war in Byzantium. Essays in honor of George T. Dennis, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 141-143.
65. ПВЛ, I, 52; for this interpretation of the treaty text, cf.: Богданова H. M. Херсон..., c. 88.