Reviews 971

or a vetula.) Afive-yearpenance with three years on bread and water is prescribed for a
mathematicus who by the invocation of demons makes men mad. Penances for fornication
vary depending on whether a child is conceived and depending on the clerical rank of the
culprit. In contrast to Rob Meens's exemplary study of tripartite penitentials (Het tripartite
boeteboek: Overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biecbtvoorschriften [Hilver-
sum, 1994]), there is no attempt here to explore who owned these volumes, but the synoptic
tables, the identification of patristic and canonical sources, and the magnificent indexes
make this edition an essential tool for those interested in women, sexual practices, marriage,
the laity, food and drink, and those unfortunate enough to be so drunk that they vomit up
the host.
DAVID GANZ, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

ANGELIKI E. LAIOU and DIETER SIMON, eds., Law and Society in Byzantium: Ninth-
Twelfth Centuries. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collec-
tion, 1994. Pp. ix, 267; black-and-white frontispiece, black-and-white illustrations. $35.
Distributed by Harvard University Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138.
In 1989 Alexander Kazhdan published an article entitled "Do We Need a New History of
Byzantine Law?" and answered that we do: "It must become a history of institutions, not
only of legal science, and it must reveal the reality of human status, of rights and trans-
actions, of the work of judiciary courts and not only Greek images of Roman jurisprudence,
interesting in themselves but often quite distant from daily reality" (Jahrbuch der osterrei-
chischen Byzantinistik 39 [1989], 28). Although Kazhdan noted Dieter Simon's strong
disagreement with him, the subject of the 1992 Dumbarton Oaks symposium that Simon
has now edited with Angeliki Laiou was not just the law but its impact on middle Byzantine
society. Simon writes in the preface, "The results were to be expected. Only a few of the
questions could be answered, while the number of questions themselves increased" (p. viii).
This unfortunately proves to be true.
Seven of the twelve contributors adhere to a narrow definition of what the law was and
find that by that definition the law had little effect on society. Thus Simon himself examines
the ideology of the law codes, chiefly in their introductions, and concludes, "For various
reasons, each of the 'codifications' are [sic] equally distant from a world and social order
formed by legal-political concepts" (p. 25). In a paper entitled "Lawful Society and Legit-
imate Power," Gilbert Dagron finds that the law codes were "too conservative to be truly
effective" and the Novels mere "transitory measures," so that jurists and judges practically
had to make up the law as they went (p. 51). In a rather vaguely conceived study of
legislation, Marie Theres Fogen reaches much the same result: "Legislation continuously
payed [sic] tribute to the eternal Kaiseridee in its skillful and convincing introductions. As
for the rest, lawgiving was managed predominantly by lawyers, judges, and functionaries"
(p. 70).
J. H. A. Lokin makes a similar observation in a survey of law books: "New law is not
so much the result of civil legislation as of developing custom . . ." (p. 86). In a study of
canon law Ioannis Konidaris observes that most clerics, even most bishops, had "a super-
ficial and totally nebulous knowledge, a mere acquaintance, with the law of the church"
and relied on the concept that "the lack of knowledge was made good by faith" (p. 150).
After examining the opinions of Byzantine historians, Laiou notes "the general attitude
that law is less important than justice, and that justice does not necessarily depend on laws"
(p. 174). George Dennis concludes from the legal works of Michael Psellus, "Decisions
were based on criteria other than the laws" (p. 196).
Two more papers seem irrelevant to the topic. Henry Maguire describes slanders in
972 Reviews
stories of saints' miracles and of God's judgment of souls, without arguing or even sug-
gesting that these have any bearing on real judicial proceedings. Ioli Kalavrezou's comments
on the difficult problem of the altered mosaic of Constantine IX and Zoe in St. Sophia
seem at least as plausible as previous explanations but have nothing to do with the law.
This leaves only three papers to make the connections between law and society that were
supposedly the work of the symposium. By no coincidence, their authors use a wider def-
inition of the law that includes judicial practice along with legislation. Paul Magdalino's
topic, "Justice and Finance in the Byzantine State," is especially promising. Though the
other contributors have scarcely anything to say about it, Laiou remarks in her paper,
"Dieter Simon has suggested that the [Byzantines'] emphasis on fiscal justice may indicate
that the state played a rather limited administrative role so that state power became par-
ticularly visible on the issue of taxation, in which we do know that the state had a pervading
interest. . . . The matter will certainly profit from further investigation" (p. 171).
Probably, however, it was too big a topic for Magdalino's short paper, which makes some
questionable assertions and conjectures. Among them are that Nicephorus I's poorly doc-
umented reforms "consolidated the basis for the middle Byzantine fiscal system" (p. 97),
that the much-disputed land legislation of Romanus I, Constantine VII, and Basil II was
"the beginning of the development whereby the state itself joined in the process of feudal-
ization" (p. 102), and that Alexius I was "perhaps the first Byzantine emperor to reduce
the scale of the financial administration while increasing the provision of justice . . ." (pp.
114-15). Yet Magdalino criticizes with reason "the prevailing orthodoxy which regards
Alexios' regime as a total victory of the forces of reaction" (p. 114), an orthodoxy to be
seen in Laiou's offhand reference to "the feudal authoritarianism of the twelfth century"
in her own paper (p. 184). Magdalino deserves credit for questioning some ill-founded
generalizations, but his replacements for them are not much better supported.
On a more manageable scale, R. J. Macrides discusses Byzantine views as to which courts
had jurisdiction over which cases, and Alexander Kazhdan considers the legal opinions of
Theodore of Studius, Michael Psellus, and Nicetas Choniates on how verdicts should be
tempered by considerations of mercy, friendship, or humanity. Like the contributors with
more limited definitions of the law, Kazhdan notes "the seminal role of the extrajudicial
factor in Byzantine judicial practice" (p. 216), but unlike them he takes "the extrajudicial
factor" as the focus of his inquiry. This is surely a more profitable approach than simply
giving a demonstration of the unimportance of formal law in Byzantine society, as the seven
other papers do.
Yet most of the contributors are not at fault. They are admirably candid about the failure
of traditional legal research to illuminate Byzantine social history; given that few but Kazh-
dan had acknowledged this failure before, most of the papers would have seemed original
before they were brought together. But the organizers seem to have given little thought to
assigning the papers, or they would have noticed the obvious danger of monotony and the
meager chance of breaking new ground. The legal historians chosen to contribute have
scant interest in social history; few of the contributors are much interested in institutions;
and not one is an economic historian. A more promising list of participants could easily
have been drawn up.
The editors have overlooked many misprints and English errors, and their own papers
are among the weakest in the book. Simon first insists on taking rhetoric in the laws
seriously (p. 2: "The opinion . . . that one should not give too much credence to such
'phrases' is simply not justified"), then fails to find much in the rhetoric that is serious (p.
19: "One almost gets the impression that the emperor is more concerned with the text,
with the phrases themselves, than with the possible objective at which they might be di-
rected"). Laiou declares that in discussing Theophanes' views on laws she will count only
passages including the words nomos or nomothetein (p. 158), even if Theophanes used
 Reviews 973
other words for edicts that he considered equivalent to laws (p. 160). She confuses Theo-
phanes Continuatus with the chronicle of Pseudo-Symeon (p. 166), and twice uses the
spelling "quiestor" (pp. 152, 167), which is neither Latin (quaestor) nor Greek (koiaistor;
cf. p. 100, in Magdalino's paper).
We still need a new history of Byzantine law.
WARREN TREADGOLD, Florida International University

A. D. LEE, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity. Cam-
bridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xxii, 213; 4 maps and 2 charts.
$54.95.
Lee's book fits well into the increasing number of studies devoted to various kinds of
frontiers in late antiquity. As the introduction explains, the book "is concerned with the
foreign relations of the Roman empire during late antiquity," focusing especially on "the
role of information" in two regions in particular, "Sasanian Persia in the east, and the areas
adjacent to the empire's northern Continental [sic] frontier, occupied by a number of dif-
ferent peoples of Germanic and central Asiatic origin during the course of late antiquity"
(p. 1), in other words, the Rhine and Danubian limites. "Information" is defined to include
"background knowledge and strategic intelligence" (pp. 1-2). By the former, "the mental
frame of reference within which decisions about foreign policy relations are worked out"
is meant; the latter comprises "information about current activities and events of potentially
hostile neighbors of direct strategic significance" (p. 2).
Lee notes that hitherto the only work on the subject of information and foreign policy
has been that of Francis Dvornik (Origins of Intelligence Services [1974]), which Lee faults
for its anecdotal approach (p. 4). Unfortunately, Lee's book can be faulted for precisely the
same reason. But, then, it seems that this was the approach of the Romans themselves: to
gather information in a haphazard manner before deciding whether it was worth acting
upon. At the end of Lee's book one realizes that the Romans acquired information that we
would deem vital for the conduct of foreign relations only randomly through a variety of
ad hoc sources.
A topic that surfaces repeatedly in Lee's study is the nature of frontiers. Lee acknowledges
a debt to Fergus Millar's work on emperors, frontiers, and foreign relations (Britannia
[1981]) but disagrees with its major conclusion regarding the role of the frontiers as an
information barrier (pp. 4-5). In fact, Lee's book emerges as a lengthy and detailed re-
sponse to Millar's assertion by claiming precisely the opposite, that is, that frontiers were
very permeable "barriers." Of course, in the wake of studies such as C. R. Whittaker's
Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1994), which Lee knew in an earlier French
version, and Benjamin Isaac's Limits of Empire (Oxford, 1990), this view is nothing new:
few would now dispute the assertion that human interaction and the transfer of information
across the frontiers never ceased.
One issue crucial to our understanding of information transfer across frontiers is the
very meaning of the term "frontiers." Whittaker's analysis portrays frontiers as zones rather
than as rigid, divisive lines between the empire and the world beyond. These amorphous
zones were distinctly different from the regions in the interior and were conducive to human
interaction. Rome's neighbors, moreover, were not as perpetually hostile as they are often
portrayed. John Drinkwater, for example, recently has argued (in R. W. Mathisen and H.
Sivan, eds., Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity [London, 1996], pp. 20-30) that Roman
emperors went so far as to manufacture the menace on the Rhine, and that although peoples
such as the Franks and the Alamanni in the fourth century could be troublesome when the
empire was distracted by civil war, they were usually controllable. In such a view, Roman