56 RENAISSANCES

catalogue, running to 200 books, giving a calendar of works submitted
but rejected, as well as one of works included. This catalogue, an
abridgement of it, and 147 of the collected works themselves,1 were
eventually printed. The preservation of the collection as a whole was
provided for by the multiplication and dispersion of manuscript sets.
In addition to the original fair copy, three others were made for official
use, and these four were deposited in buildings, specially erected to
house them, in the precincts of the Imperial Palace at Poking, at Yuan-
ming Yuan, at Jehol, and at Mukden.2 Three further complete manu-
script sets were deposited in existing libraries at Yangclunv, Chinkiang,
and Hangchow. The rough copy was presented to the: Hanlin Academy»
Two manuscript sets of an anthology containing about a third of the
complete collection were also lodged in the Imperial Palace at Peking
and at Yiian-ming Yuan respectively.

These huge collections of the remains of the Sinic classical literature
that were assembled by rulers of a Far Eastern oecumenical umpire
dwarf the corresponding works of the Hast Roman Kmpcror Constantino
Porphyrogenitus (imperabat A.D. 912-59). Constantino organized the
extraction of excerpts, classified under divers heads,3 with the object
of thereby making accessible to an intellectually awakening Orthodox
Christian Society the cream of an Hellenic classical literature which even
in the shreds and tatters to which its remains had been reduced already
by the storm and stress of a post-Hellenic interregnum— was still, in the
tenth century of the Christian Era, quite 'immeasurable* and 'unmanage-
able' in its bulk4 when this was pitted against the narrowly limited re-
ceptive powers of an individual human intellect* These Byzantine works
of collective scholarship that were produced on Constantino Porphyro-
genitus's initiative and under his auspices shrink into insignificance
under the shadow of the mighty works of a Yung Lo and a Ch'ien Lung;
and, if the East Roman scholar-emperor could challenge comparison
with his giant Far Eastern counterparts on any ground at all, he would
have a better prospect of holding his own as an author of original works8

1 See Goodrich, op. cit., p. 148. Mayers, loc. cit,, p. 396, gives the number a* 'tome
130 in all'. a $e« VI. vii, *w( n, 4,

3 i.e. Diplomatic Missions, Virtues and Vices, Sententious Slayingt (fft/tl yt'w/wB*'), <i«df
Conspiracies against Sovereign Princes, to mention only the heau* under which Con-
stantino Porphyrogenitus is known for a certainty to have made collection* of extract*
from the Hellenic Classics (see Krumbacher, op, cit., pp. 218-61). ConMttntine alt»o
arranged for th§ production of new editions of two late Hellenic \vorki of the name
character as his own collections: namely, the sixth-century compiler CmiiUnui HMMUI*I
Information about Agriculture (AwTrovi/m) and the fourth-century compiler Orcttuwiut'a
Concise Survey of Medical Theories (Emro^ r&v '/aT/»«<3v WtttipynArtov) (nee Krum-
backer, op. cit., pp. 361—4).

4 *Eir* a-rreipov re KO! a/Aifoavov 1} rvjs taropfas «tfptfrcro crt>/*7rA<»Ki?,. -Conntantine Por-
phyrogenitus: ire/H Aperfjs Kal Kanins, Introduction, quoted by Krumbaeher, op, cit,,
pp. 258-9.

s Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote An Historical Narration of the Lift and Acts of
the Emperor Basil of Glorious Memory [i.e, the author's pmndfathcr Bnuil I timpirabat
A.D. 867-86), the founder of the Macedonian Dynasty]; T/t<r Administration of we Hmpire\
The Army Corps Districts (tepwra) appertaining to thf Empire o/ the Romans and th*
Origins and Etymologies of thnr Names, bringing out the distinction b«tw*n th* N«m« that
have been Newly Coined and those that have been Resuscitated from the Andmt /v"ow«w?/<»»
turei ttodAn Exposition and Outline of the Imperial Rules and Regulations ('# r*t Bafff
il*^ j £«•>&, ^wwwj* *«l TTTortfTTcofftf), labelled De GairiwnHs Aulao Byxantina*
by Modern Western scholars.

In the foregoing list, the order in which Constantino1! origin*! work* have boon