ABSTRACT
Under this heading is treated a somewhat amorphous group oftexts (excluding state letters), which have in common the fact that they were conceived and produced by or for members of the imperial administration, the imperial household, or the Church, as either official or semi-official documents with some practical function - descriptive, prescriptive, educative or illustrative. Included in this category are also texts - complete or fragmentary - drawn from larger 'dossiers', which deal with aspects ofthe state or imperial household and their administration, organization, and financing. The heading thus includes the taktika or lists of precedence, as well as documents concerned with fiscal administration, military organization, thematic and provincial structures, and the army and associated matters. I
State Documents
The two most important documents from the point of view of the administrative bureaucracy and imperial hierarchy are the so-called Taktikon Uspenskij and the Kietoroiogion of Philotheos. 2 Both are official lists of titles and offices, concerned with the order of precedence within the imperial system, particularly with respect to the relative ranking of the chief officers of the empire and members of the imperial household. They provide a great deal of information crucial to an understanding of the administrative structure of the Byzantine state, although they must also be used with care: they do not, as has sometimes been assumed, necessarily represent any fixed and permanent order, the more so because they were themselves an evolving form. This is especially true ofthe earlier of the two, the Taktikon Uspenskij, dated to 842/3, which has been shown to represent a much less rigid and hierarchical structure of state offices than has been thought. Although the Kletoroiogion is
For a useful discussion of the nature, forms, and limitations of such materials, see Karayannopoulos and Weiss, 120ff.; but see also the discussion, with critical remarks on Karayannopoulos and Weiss, by F. Winkelmann, 'Rang-und Amterverzeichnisse', in Brandes and Winkelmann, 336-47, especially 338ff.
