ABSTRACT
The lack of codified laws of imperial succession in Byzantium meant that emperors often faced questions of their legitimacy to rule, mere effectiveness as a leader being no guarantee of longevity in office. In the imperial worldview that developed under Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, once an imperial dynasty had been established by an individual with the correct genetic and moral credentials, the virtues could flow into each succeeding generation through the bloodline and through paternal instruction, giving scions of imperial families the unquestionable right to rule. The De cerimoniis was conceived as a treatise on imperial ceremonial in two books. The first was to be a book on past ceremonies, which were collected from a variety of now-lost sources from the sixth to the ninth centuries. The second was envisaged as a collection of current ceremonial ‘which did not have a written account’, but had been passed down ‘through memory’ to Constantine’s day.
