突破窠臼的拜占庭史著作

罗马政权的历史延续性：

Politeia：res publica in Roman usage (politeia in Byzantine Greek translation) 。

But here we will focus on its dominant meaning in Byzantine political, legal, and historical texts, where politeia was the most common way of rendering res publica.

By the age of Justinian, politeia was the dominant standard translation of res publica.

拉丁语中的res publica，res Romana于希腊语中被对译成politeia。politeia词源来自polis城邦，可以理解为城邦人民的事务。注意Politeia为柏拉图著作《理想国》的原标题。拉丁语res publica与希腊语politeia是一体的

The res publica in ancient Rome and the politeia in Byzantium did not refer to a type of regime but to a political sphere that legitimated the exercise of power with reference to the common interests and ultimate sovereignty of the Roman people.

res publica与 politeia 并不指代具体的政治形式，而是指代一个代表人民利益与最高主权的实体

So according to Cicero the res publica was not regime- specifific: monarchies could be republican. ···James Hankins has recently exposed the debates of the Renais sance that gradually led to the term res publica being associated exclusively with nonmonarchical regimes.

The res publica could be governed by a monarchy.

republic共和原为“公共事务，全体人民事务”之意，其并不指代具体的政权形式，与君主制也并不相悖，共和国可以被君主领导。文艺复兴以来方才将共和与君主制对立起来。

We could, then, call the regime of Byzantium an “imperial republic,”that is, a republic with an emperor (as opposed to an expansionist republic). Preferably, we should call it a republican monarchy, monarchical republic, or just “the Roman Republic in its monarchic phase.”A number of scholars have proposed such terms, though sometimes with the usual arbitrary limitations (“until the reign of Diocletian”).

因此，拜占庭政权可以被称为帝制共和国，有皇帝的共和国，共和君主制，君主制共和国，正如本书标题所示

But the res publica was not just about the senate. In many respects, the monarchy served the needs and interests of the populus better than the late Republic, as was recognized at the time and afterward.

共和体制并不能与元老院等同起来，在很多方面，君主反而比元老院更能维护人民的利益。

The continuity of the republic is broken up and obscured by the compartmentalization of knowledge into semantic fields: there is a division between Republic and Empire, and then the Empire is broken up into Principate, Dominate, and Byzantium.

One of the most curious aspects of this metanarrative is the way in which names have been invented to give reality to its four periods. The “Republic” was invented when segments of modern political thought decided that republics and monarchies were incompatible. The“Principate”— from Latin princeps, one of the many things that Augustus called himself— reflects the emperor’s supremacy, while “Dominate” is based on the word dominusused by later emperors, a word that was apparently anathema to the more freedom- loving Romans of . . . the Principate. But no Roman used these labels to refer to periods of Roman history or to types of regimes. In reality, the long transition from the Principate to the Dominate involved the creation of a larger bureaucracy and an intensification of cultural changes. These trends were visible already in the Principate and entailed no essential rupture. Changes of titulature and court imagery do not justify the conclusion that Roman history ended at that time. It is common now to doubt that much changed in that transition.As for “Byzantium,” which is a modern term based on a Greek name used to designate what was in reality a later phase in the history of the Roman state, its function as a term has always been to mark it off as “essentially” different from its predecessor. To question only one criterion, there is nothing in the transition from Dominate to Byzantium that suggests the latter was less “free.” But in the morality play of the long decline, Byzantium stands for Christian theocracy and oriental despotism (terms that are still used); it was servile, Greekish, and superstitious; it was governed by eunuchs and palace intrigue; and it was smaller in size. It is precisely on the basis of such moralizing notions, falsehoods, and irrelevant criteria that periods have been divided and “essences” defined, while academic specialization has prevented exchanges that should have exposed this narrative for what it is.

传统历史学家习惯将罗马历史分为王国时代，共和国时代，帝国时代，帝国时代之下为元首制(第一公民)，多米内特制(大君制)，拜占庭时代。认为随着历史发展，罗马君主专制日益加强，人民自由权的不断衰落，然而对于罗马人而言，无论是处于奥古斯都治下，还是戴克里先治下，甚至到了拜占庭即将衰亡，他们所在的政权都是res publica或者politeia，罗马历史并未出现断裂，只是最高统治者由执政官转为元首或者奥古斯都，最后到达希腊化时代的巴塞琉斯。拜占庭人民，特别是君士坦丁堡市民也恪守着共和传统，拜占庭的君主专制并不一定就强于屋大维时代，拜占庭代表着东方专制主义，神权国家的说法并不能站得住脚(第二章之后重点阐述)……