A when they begin the reading of this work, will encounter from the start some annoyance or even nausea. For the author, having promised that he would recount histories in summary from the beginning of the world down to his own times, once he came to the subject, neither sets forth in the best order those things which are described copiously in Holy Scripture and in the *Jewish Antiquities* of Flavius Josephus and elsewhere; and he inserts many things, I know not why, worthy of relating or believing: and with narratives often interpolated, often mutilated, he sometimes inculcates the same thing not without weariness and loathing. In setting forth the greatest empires of the world and their successions and mutations, he is plainly barren. He touches upon Roman affairs in such a way that he seems to have been quite ignorant of them. And in listing the emperors themselves by order and summarizing their deeds, he has achieved nothing noteworthy or even worth the labor almost until Constantine the Great, so that I fear lest anyone reading these things should exclaim: "What did this promiser provide that was worthy of such a great gap?" Digressions, too, into arguments about monastic life, against the Jews, and other things of that sort, are such that they are little suited to annals and cannot be digested by any stomach. These things, which I have said, I would wish to be taken as coming from one who does not disparage but excuses Cedrenus, a writer such as those times and perhaps even his own way of life produced, to say it in one word, sometimes B. Certainly, if there is any error by him, it is not an error at a great cost of facts, since there is an abundance of books from which knowledge of the histories omitted by him or treated less commodiously may be recovered. But I can truly affirm this, that there are very many things in this work of Cedrenus which, since they are not found elsewhere, can and ought to gain for him the greatest gratitude among all lovers of truth and history. Especially in Justinian the Great, in Heraclius, and in others following them, Emperors of Constantinople, he is much more diligent and copious than Zonaras himself in describing them, even dividing the deeds year by year. For what he has before the birth of the new Rome, that seems to have been patched together somehow from various books without great care and with very little judgment: but in the affairs of Constantinople he was more experienced, as is apparent, and he used greater industry; and if I judge anything, this was his C main work, the rest were secondary. Those who might compare him with Zonaras will find it easy to realize that I am saying these things truthfully. For Zonaras omitted many things that our author has, very worthy of being known, and by the omission of which it was necessary for history to be mutilated and obscured. Many things he indicated only briefly, which are illustrated by our author with all circumstances explained. Nor am I the first to have realized this; but our Wolfius, whom I name for the sake of honor, a man by far most expert in these matters (as his own studies most evidently demonstrate to those to whom he himself is unknown), had somewhat earlier prefixed a note to your codex by which his argument is expressed in these words: "He treats the same argument as Zonaras, but has many things intentionally omitted by Zonaras, for the sake of brevity, I suppose, but certainly not things that should have been omitted. If the option had been given to me from the beginning, I would have preferred this one to Zonaras. Now, since Zonaras is to be edited anew, it will seem advisable that this entire work be read through, and whatever seems worthy of memory, with a certain mark attached, be inserted into Zonaras in its proper place." These are the words of Wolfius; who, undoubtedly, when he held this judgment concerning Cedrenus, looked toward those things which cannot be conveniently recovered from elsewhere than from him or Zonaras. For the two earlier volumes of Zonaras are otherwise far better and more worthy of praise than what our author has collected up to Constantine the Great. And yet in these same ones there are some things which, while worthy of being known and useful, nevertheless do not occur in Zonaras nor are they so obvious elsewhere. For I would dare to affirm that from this writer of ours, by an industrious man many things can be derived by which the Emperors and histories of Zonaras, Procopius the Deacon, and others of that sort, as well as more recent ones—such as Cuspinianus, Egnatius, Panvinius—may be in part corrected, in part illustrated and polished. Which utility alone ought to make our edition well-received among fair readers. Nor will I now propose examples; for although our annotations will provide a certain taste of the matter, I prefer to leave these things to be observed by the keen reader rather than to boast of myself by recounting them. Let this also be added: that knowledge of those places which are around Byzantium and in the city itself, as well *as* of many other cities, rivers, and mountains, can be explained and illustrated D by very many passages of this writer; so that for the increase of geographical knowledge and as an aid to recollecting antiquity, he may be useful to the diligent. But enough, or perhaps more than enough, about Cedrenus: let him be read; he will prove himself, and he will show that "there is no need of ivy for wine that is for sale." I come now to my own labor, not indeed that I might boast of it or even disparage it, neither of which do I consider the act of an honest man; and not because I distrust your judgments and those of other good men (for I care nothing for the rest), and therefore thought I must plead my case, but because, since I myself have been mistaken somewhere in this work, I would not wish others to be led astray as well. First of all, I have not even attempted to achieve this, that I might render the Latin eloquence of Nicetas and Choniates equal to Cedrenus. For, quite conscious of my own weakness, and with no one telling me, I held it as certain that I ought not to undertake what an elegant pastor rightly claims to despise: *equally to the peak of the mountain reaches the home of the cloud-ruler.* And indeed that Cedrenus is much inferior in his use of the Greek language to those whom I have named, and much less eloquent in his own forum, readers will find no difficulty in judging; there is even less for him to complain about if they speak Latin more purely and more neatly than he does. And I do not know how it happens to me that sometimes, though unwilling, yet more than usual, I myself also stammer, while I follow the words of the one preceding and strive to express them. But whatever evil this is, the equanimity of the readers will either overlook or correct. After you, heroes most worthy of the name of Maecenas, of your own accord, out of your kindness, toward me
A who think honestly, and especially at the urging of D. Ludovicus Carinus, a man by far most learned and truly an example of humanity, kind toward the cultivators of the liberal arts, and as for you, not without the most serious reasons and merits, very dear and acceptable—but for my part, long since so deserving that this place cannot hold a return of thanks (for what could I offer for so many benefits in my condition?) worthy of the memory of the favors that have flowed from him to me while I live, which nothing shall ever obliterate; and with them urging me, as did other leading men and Wolfius himself (of whose praises I shall now say nothing, since they exceed my power of speech, nor does he himself desire this to be set down as a service in return for his merits), having pursued me always with a kind of abundance of love, he thought that he would rightly hand over to me this lamp, as it were, in the course of translating Greek history; so after you entrusted to me the province of translating Cedrenus (which was, as it should have been, most gratifying to me), I indeed applied myself to this, that I might maturely and faithfully satisfy your expectation and my own promises. I had anticipated in my mind that everything would be easy to complete, perhaps not too arrogantly, as one who was not now for the first time undertaking to handle this kind of work. But in the progress of it, I experienced what Alcaeus once elegantly sang:
When once the sea is carried into the deep, Wherever the tempest calls, As for you, it is necessary for the ship to go.
Many things thwarted my hope. I often fell into places that were either obscure or mutilated; where, when I had nothing but one codex, or did not have in readiness the same or similar things written elsewhere, I had to hesitate. I know that conjectures can do something, but they are sometimes not safe enough, and not rarely it did not occur to me what I might conjecture or to whom I might refer. But lest my ignorance be a detriment to either the author or the reader, where it seemed the matter had some significance, I explained the matter to the best of my ability in my annotations, or at least proposed it for others to unravel.
The barbaric words troubled me most, of which the reader will find a great abundance, partly hybrid and *mixobarbarous*, or (if anyone wishes so) *mixohellenic*, and partly entirely foreign to both the Latins and the Greeks. Some of these are of things, such as *scaramangium, tuldum, cumparia, barducium, laesa*, and many others; others are designations of offices, such as *barangi, protovestiarus, logotheta dromi, caniclium, protospatharius, drungarius, ameras*. He will also find many Latin words veiled in Greek fashion, *κινστέρναν, σκάμνον, λεγάτα, silentium, asecretia, scalam, κρύφιον*, and six hundred others. In how successful I was in noticing and translating these, I do not know: I was certainly laboriously occupied. B Regarding my annotations, I could have extended and amplified them with the indication and comparison of those things that are held in other writers concerning the same subjects; which perhaps would not have been unpleasant to an idle reader or one destitute of a supply of books. But I studied brevity; and when I finally reread them, I cut out a great many things which I saw I would handle more conveniently elsewhere, since here I had to indicate them more briefly than so that they could be sufficiently understood, or in commenting, proceed beyond the limits of annotating. However, I trust that these very annotations will bring the reader great momentum for understanding Cedrenus, or at least for investigating some things more diligently. They certainly cost me incredible labor. It will be put to gain for free, if from this they can seek any help to understand other writers also: which I hope will be the case. The numbers correspond to the numbers placed in the margin of Cedrenus; except that we have often included more in a single place.
At the end I added chronological tables, which I had composed long ago, useful both for other things and for finding the *synchronisms* promptly and for calculating intervals of time. In these I have mostly followed Funckius, although I seem to myself to have things to warn and dispute about certain points; which very matter, such as it is, will be brought forward in another place, if God wills. The Greek codex is edited most diligently and with the greatest fidelity and no small labor, and has been collated with your example. From it, an emendation of those parts in which I have erred can be taken, for that I should profess that I have nowhere hallucinated, no one will easily persuade me. I trust, however, that fair and expert readers of the things and troubles that must be endured in works of this kind will not find that there is so much missing that they will not have gratitude toward me for these labors. To you, however, most excellent men, to you they ought to owe their thanks for the utility and pleasure they will receive from reading this work: to you, I say, not to me. For although I am held by the very greatest desire to help and enrich the republic of letters, and yield to few (may no one think this said too arrogantly) in the will to deserve well of my country, or perhaps to none, yet such is the meagerness of my affairs that unless my labors are let out to others, who take into account my fortunes and labors and their own generosity, I have no ability for writing. And although it is much more laborious than the unskilled may believe, to write these things, such as we have generally published up to now; so that not only the master of the farm may seem to owe the greatest thanks, but also the tenant, who consumes the fruits; I, for my part, do not have what I might demand from others, for whom it is not dubious but that you, in accordance with your generosity and munificence, are going to compensate my labors in this work in such a way that, bound by a noble benefit to you, I shall be bound and hold eternal thanks. And indeed, I neither wish nor ought I even to deny that this was my primary reason for offering and dedicating my work to you, that having obtained what I wanted, no one else should further be appealed to. But as for your magnificence, who—unless he is a person of completely servile spirit—would deny that a great deal is owed C by the republic of letters—