CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE EASTERN EMPIREThe extraordinary amount of documentation surrounding the ecclesiastical
councils and the Theodosian Code itself marks a new stage in record-keeping.
We know little about the actual process of producing the conciliar records
(Acts), but the actual proceedings, and the original records, were largely in
Greek, though they were often then translated into Latin, or survive in Syriac.
This was true of the fi rst ecumenical council held at Nicaea in 325 under Con-
stantine, at which the Latin-speaking emperor’s efforts to greet the assembled
bishops in Greek made a favourable impression. It was partly because the
attendance at these councils was overwhelmingly eastern (Chapter 3), but also
because the dominant, and the offi cial, language of the eastern empire was
Greek. In contrast, Latin remained the language of legislation, and both the
Figure 1.3 A Byzantine empress in her regalia, depicted on a leaf from an ivory diptych,
late fi fth or sixth century. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum