1. Nations that are useful and dangerous to the empire, and how to use them against each other (Chapters 1-13).
2. Their insatiable demands (Chapter 13).
3. Differences between other nations: “their origins and customs and manner of life, and the position and climate of the land they dwell in, its geographical description and measurement” (Chapters 14–46).
4. “Events which have occurred at various times between the Romans and various nations” (Chapters 47–48).
5. Changes that have been introduced at various times in “our state/city” and throughout the whole Roman Empire (Chapters 49–53).

Throughout the work, this structure is formally adhered to. The headings are reiterated in almost identical terms, and on the whole they recognizably correspond to the material that follows them. Although it is not always clear why some chapters fall under one rubric rather than another, the classification scheme generally makes more than less sense of apparent inconsistencies, and notably the fact that the geographical information on the Black Sea region is divided among three different sections. Indeed, if the work has a concealed agenda, the key to unlocking this may lie in matching the section headings exactly to the section contents. More prosaically, and perhaps more plausibly, the occasional mismatch between contents and headings, and the generally disjointed character of the work as a whole, may be explained by reading the headings as the titles of files into which Constantine sorted his materials with the intention—which he never realized—of connecting them into a continuous narrative.

The multiplicity of files and the unprocessed heterogeneity of their contents create not only a moving lens but also an abruptly shifting depth of focus and angle of vision, which together present a highly fragmented tableau of imperial geography: a series of animated vignettes with a bewildering variety {30|31} of scales and legends, rather than a uniform panorama. The camera dwells first on the area north of the Black Sea (Chapters 1–13, DAI:44-65), then switches to record some scenes of policy-making at imperial headquarters (Chapter 13, DAI:66–77), before taking a rapid tour of the Islamic Mediterranean (Chapters 14–25, DAI:77–109). Coming around to Italy, it lingers there a little (Chapters 26–28, DAI:109–121), as a preliminary to shooting detailed footage on Dalmatia and the Balkan Slavs (Chapters 29–36, DAI:122–165), and revisiting the Black Sea area (Chapters 36–42, DAI:166–189). Then there are some equally close-up shots of the Armenian, Arab, and Georgian principalities on the eastern frontier (Chapters 43–46, DAI:189–223). This is followed by brief shots of Cyprus and Cyzicus (Chapters 47–48, DAI:224–227), after which the focus shifts inside the empire to register administrative changes in the Peloponnese (DAI:228–237, 256–257), Asia Minor (DAI:237–243), and the imperial entourage (DAI:244–257). The final scene is a long piece of action set in Cherson, in the Crimea, so that the coverage ends where it began, north of the Black Sea (Chapter 53, DAI:258–287).

The difference in coverage lies not just in the degree of zooming and lingering, but also in the depth of the historical dimension and the relative density of topographical and genealogical information. The first 12 chapters, which concern the importance of maintaining good relations with the Pechenegs, contain no history but report current steppe politics and diplomacy, and Chapter 9 consists of a long, detailed topographical description of the river and sea route taken by the Rus from the Baltic area to the Black Sea. The greater part of Chapter 13, which forms the second section of the work, contains absolutely no geography but fabricates much bogus history, invoking mythical curses of Constantine the Great to fob off the importunate northern barbarians who come asking for precious state assets like crowns, Greek fire, and imperial daughters.

The long, central, ethnographic section 3 (Chapters 14–46), which sweeps clockwise around the Mediterranean and Black Sea from Syria to Armenia, is full of the history of the peoples who occupy these former imperial territories and the genealogies of their rulers. But the history varies considerably in timespan, emphasis, originality, and accuracy. Chapters 14–25, covering the Islamic world, are primarily the history of the Arabs, except for Chapters 23–25, where the focus is more on the territory of Spain and on all the peoples who have occupied it since its loss to the empire. All these chapters, however, are lifted mainly from chronicles and, in the case of Spain, from Stephanos of Byzantium.

Chapters 29–36, on Dalmatia and the western Balkans, are similarly constructed to rationalize the presence of the Croats and Serbs on former imperial territory. However, here the story begins much earlier and is told in much greater detail. It has four main phases:

1. The settlement of Romans in Dalmatia by Diocletian because he greatly loved the country.
2. The expansion of these Rhōmanoi as far as the Danube and their wars with the Avars, equated with the Slavs, who eventually broke through the frontier, overran the land, and drove the Rhōmanoi back on the coastal cities and islands.
3. The arrival of the Croats and Serbs and their settlement authorized by the emperor Heraclius, who had some groups baptized.
4. The genealogy of the Croat and Serb rulers in the past century. Constantine must have obtained the elements of this narrative from both Dalmatian and Serbo-Croatian informants. The earlier parts of it are fanciful, but there is little reason to doubt the basic authenticity of the agreements between Heraclius and the Serbs and Croats, and none at all to question the facts, if not the chronology, of more recent events.

The ultimate purpose of the historical narrative is hinted at in those passages where Constantine records the achievement of his own ancestor, Basil I, in regaining imperial control of Dalmatia, and where he asserts, in identical wording, both for the prince of Croatia and the prince of Serbia, that each “has from the beginning, that is, ever since the reign of Heraclius the emperor, been in servitude and submission to the emperor of the Romans, and was never made subject to the prince of Bulgaria” (DAI:150–151, 160–161). This reminds us that the Christian kingdom of Bulgaria, the empire’s closest political neighbor, firmly {32|33} established on former imperial territory, was as conspicuous for its powerful presence in the Balkans and Black Sea region as it is for the massive absence of a chapter devoted to it in the DAI.

The looming absence of Bulgaria at the center of Constantine VII’s imperial geography is palpable in the next few chapters of the ethnographic section (Chapters 36–42), which provide the historical background to the steppe nomad peoples whose strategic value to the empire was discussed in section 1. These are essentially the all-important Pechenegs and the Magyars, whom Constantine calls Turks. The emergence of both these groups from the area of the former Chazar empire north of the Black Sea occasions several references to the Chazars and the Uz, and the final settlement of the Magyars on the territory of Greater Moravia prompts a short chapter on the demise of that principality (Chapter 41). The history of these peoples, derived presumably from their own oral memories, begins relatively recently and concerns their clans and their migrations. The only exception is an account (in Chapter 42), reproduced from the contemporary history of Theophanes Continuatus, of the mission of a certain imperial official, Petronas Kamateros, sent by Theophilos to help the Chazars build the city of Sarkel.

The last chapters in the ethnographic section (Chapters 43–46) concern the recent history of the minor Caucasian principalities—Armenian, Arab, and Georgian—in the northern sector of the empire’s eastern frontier. They are certainly not in any sense ethnographies of the nations in question, since the Arab caliphates have been dealt with at the start of the section, and the main kingdoms of Georgia and Armenia are barely mentioned at all. The principalities in question are clearly included because of their strategic importance to the empire, whether for blocking the advance of invading armies or for capturing the important Arab-held city of Erzerum (Theodosiopolis), and the desirability of keeping their princely dynasties, and indeed their towns and castles, under close imperial control. In these chapters, Constantine thus anticipates the future imperial policy of annexing Armenian and Georgian principalities as a result of more or less voluntary bequests by their rulers. In terms of his own filing system, he also anticipates the next section that is labeled “relations between the empire and foreign powers,” so one might ask whether these Caucasian chapters have not been wrongly filed. As for the historical dimension, although the Georgian chapters are introduced with the myth of the nation’s descent from King David, the real dynastic history in each case effectively covers no more than the last three generations: in other words, the period of oral memory. Constantine could have had his information from more than one source: from the imperial agents, like Constantine Lips, who were dispatched to deal with the {33|34} princes, as well as from the various members of the princely families themselves who spent time in Constantinople.

Like the historical coverage of the ethnographic section, the topographical and geographical focus is uneven. Most of the chapters on Italy and eastern Europe end with lists of the main cities, but otherwise the section as a whole provides no consistent geographical information, and very few parts of it supply all the data promised in the section heading: “knowledge of the difference between other nations, their origins and customs and manner of life, and the position and climate of the land they dwell in, and its geographical description and measurement.” While the origins of nations are regularly covered, and most chapters end with a list of the main towns in the area, the other aspects really only feature in the chapters on Dalmatia and the region north of the Danube and Black Sea.

So what is the vision of imperial geography that the DAI presents us with? The text is plainly not a flat, diaphanous window, or even a single distorting lens, through which to view the geographical vista of the tenth-century Byzantine Empire; and it is certainly not the legend for a coherent, homogenous map, such as we do get in the sixth-century geographical list of Hierokles. {34|35} Rather it is a densely packed, intricate mosaic of unequal and highly refractory gemstones, offering a multiple split focus on a spatial image that is as much a reflection of the viewing subject as it is an objective vision of the landscape beyond. But in this aspect, it is not unlike the representation of spatial reality in Byzantine paintings of landscapes, or indeed in all medieval maps. And in its very patchwork of distortions, the DAI may accurately represent the optics of power by which Constantine VII viewed his empire in its geographical dimension and sought to share his vision with his son. It is analogous to his other main political compilation, the Book of Ceremonies, in the way that it states a comprehensive, general idea through the accumulation of highly specific prescriptions and descriptions. Both works are statements of power: this is what unites them, together with the DT, and this is what gives sense and coherence to their internal inconsistencies. Both are studies in the topography of power. The De cerimoniis builds up a picture of the demonstration of power in the ritual spaces of Constantinople; the DAI evokes the exercise of power in the geographical space of the oikoumenē. However, being a more personal and confidential document, apparently destined for the emperor’s son and successor, it is also more partial, in every sense, although it hides its partiality under a discourse of objective, comprehensive reporting. It does not say everything, and it does not state the obvious, leaving its reader to infer the importance of what is being said.

That its selectivity is coded and deliberate, and not just the result of incomplete or unprocessed filing, must surely be concluded from the way the treatise downplays or totally ignores the empire’s current relations with what we regard as the most important foreign powers on the mid tenth-century horizon—the Arab caliphates and emirates (including Crete), the German empire, and Bulgaria—while paying what seems like inordinate attention to the western Balkans, the peoples to the north of the Danube and Black Sea, and petty Caucasian princes. That Constantine’s discourse is deliberately opaque can be inferred from the way that he keeps coming, in different contexts and from different angles, at the strategic importance of Greek fire and the security of the region that produces its main ingredient, naphtha. Section 1 prescribes the diplomacy among the northern peoples needed to keep the region secure. Section 2 provides the argument needed to prevent these northern peoples from gaining the secret of Greek fire. In Section 3, Constantine includes the invention of Greek fire in his account of Arab history taken from Theophanes, and later in that section (Chapter 42) he describes in detail the route, circumventing Bulgaria, from Thessalonike via the Danube to Cherson and the regions to the east of it. This is the only part of Section 3 that fulfills the heading’s promise to provide distances. Then we learn, at the very end of Section 5, that the areas at the end of that route are none other than those where the naphta-yielding wells are located. {35|36}

Thus the DAI may be seen to represent Constantine VII’s considered and coherent view of the historical geography of empire, despite its inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and omissions, which are indeed an important part of the picture. If this is true, then it is also fair to conclude that where the work does reproduce geographical details, they represent what was of interest to Constantine, and not just what his informants chose to tell him. They reproduce, to some extent, the pattern of priorities that we saw in the DT. Several ethnographic chapters include lists of towns, both inhabited and abandoned. Mountains are unavoidably mentioned in connection with Dalmatia and the Slavs of the Peloponnese, but otherwise they figure much less prominently than coasts and rivers. The northern Black Sea littoral and the Dalmatian islands are described in some detail, and with attention to their importance for naval communications. The rivers Danube and Dnieper are also described in terms of communication, including details of journey times. Otherwise, the river systems of central and eastern Europe serve to mark the boundaries between peoples and to define the habitat of nomadic populations. Rivers again appear as boundary markers in the Caucasian chapters, where the mountains are again conspicuous by their absence, as too is Lake Van.

In general, the descriptions do not have much to say about land use and agricultural production, and trading activity is implied rather than described. Exceptional is the notice on the Georgian town of Ardanaoutzin, describing the defense, strategic value, and layout of the settlement along with its rich agricultural hinterland and commercial network, which produces an “enormous customs revenue” (DAI:216–217). {36|37}

Like the DT, the DAI pays attention to great ancient monuments of the past, in an area where they must have been much more scarce than in Asia Minor. Pride of place goes to Diocletian’s palace at Split, which is indeed the basis for the whole historical narrative of the Dalmatian section (DAI:122–123). Chapter 40 signals three “ancient landmarks” of the former Danube frontier; going upstream, these are Trajan’s bridge at Trajan’s Gate, “the tower of the holy and great Constantine” at Belgrade, and the city of Sirmium. Chapter 37, on the Pechenegs, mentions six deserted cities on the Dniester, and adds: “Among these buildings of the ancient cities are found some distinctive traces of churches, and crosses hewn out of porous stone, whence some preserve a tradition that once on a time Romans had settlements there” (DAI:168–9). It is tempting to infer that the ancient monuments are mentioned in order to justify an imperial interest in the area.

A similar thought is prompted by the close attention to the hagiography of Dalmatia, which also recalls the DT. Chapter 29 lists the resting places of no less than seven saints, all of them venerated in Constantinople.

While these reminiscences of DT are specific to certain chapters of the DAI, there are two that pervade the text as a whole and may be seen as the defining characteristics of Constantine VII’s vision of the historical geography of empire. One is the primary focus on peoples rather than territories, or peoples as the identifiers of the territories they occupy. The importance of ethnicity to Constantine is clear not only from the disproportionate size of the ethnographic section (22 out of 53 chapters), but also from the ethnocentric content of several other chapters: Chapters 1–13 on steppe diplomacy and Chapters 49–50 on the Peloponnesian Slavs. Even Chapters 51–53, on internal “reforms,” treat certain groups of provincials almost as separate national entities: the Greeks of the Mani, the Mardaites of Attaleia, and of course the people of Cherson. It is particularly instructive to look at two passages where ethnicity is used, in one case to provide a false historical explanation, and in another case to justify a specious argument. In Chapter 47, Justinian II is said to look after the interests of Cyprus because he was a Cypriot. In Chapter 13, Constantine instructs his son to reject dynastic marriage proposals from northern peoples by telling them that interracial breeding is wrong: “For each nation has different customs and divergent laws and institutions, and should consolidate those things that are proper to it, and should form and develop out of the same nation the associations for the fusion of its life. For just as each animal mates with its own tribe, so it is right that each nation also should marry and cohabit not with those of other race and tongue but of the same tribe and speech” (DAI:74–75).