ABSTRACT
The Peira ranks as high as any of the unusual and informative texts. It is a legal work, gravid with Roman law and case narratives, dating from the middle of the eleventh century. Much of the legal advice takes the form of statements on the part of Eustathios, interspersed with records of legal debates, some almost certainly moots, involving high courts judges. Eustathios’ admiring former assistant, it may be conjectured, was joining in the opposition when he put together the Peira. The Peira is preserved in a single manuscript dating from the first half of the fifteenth century, Florence Bibl. With the revival of Byzantium in the tenth century, manifest primarily in its steady piecemeal expansion into the Arab borderlands and in the conquest of the core territory of Bulgaria, judges rose in importance in the interior themes which were shielded by an outer zone of more militarized provinces.
