Appendices to the Audiobook

African red slipware, a common fine pottery form in the 1st through 7th centuries that was manufactured for export in modern Tunisia

Amphora, a tall jar with two handles and a narrow neck common in the Greco-Roman world for storing and holding beverages

Autexousion, legal emancipation of a minor son from his parents (especially his father); usually between 16 and 18 years of age although variable if the child married, took monastic vows, owned his own workshop or joined the military

Basilikoi, officials who accompanied foreign embassies and dignitaries, who brought them into audiences and meetings, provided for their needs and arranged for safe passage

Battle of Maurica, known to various historical accounts as the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, the Battle of Châlons or the Battle of Maurica; it occurred on June 20, 451 AD, about 100 years before the events in this narrative

Blattia, plural of blattion—originally meaning the color purple, in late antiquity and the earlier Byzantine days of Justinian and Theodora, it had the connotation of the highest quality purple that was reserved for royal or imperial use

Boullotes, an assistant to the eparch who oversee one or another bureau or regulatory body in the eparch’s purview – corporeal punishment was imposed on a merchant who refused entry of a boullotes or his representative (i.e.: a mitotes or a legatarios) to a workshop

Βούττα, Buddha, in Greek: Βούττα, was known to Greco-Roman society and minimally found mention by Augustine and the second and third century Clement of Alexandria, the latter in his Stromata, which Clement designed as a medium of Christian secret teachings via largely symbolic explanation

Chartoularioi, in both Byzantine government and church affairs, chartoularioi, or chartophylax, the latter term more appropriate for the church, acted as tertiary officials and functionaries with a variety of responsibilities for fiscal, archival or other affairs including some military applications; their responsibilities may range from the relatively simple courtier to heads entire bureaus, often called “sekreton” or “secreton”

Chiton, basic tunic worn by both men and women of all socio-economic strata

Comes sacrarum largitionum, the count of the imperial largess – minister in charge of the imperial treasury and a member of the Emperor’s Consistorium

Comitatenses, Roman or Byzantine field army which came to replace the legions in later Roman and early Byzantine times of late antiquity beginning around the time and under reforms of Diocletian who specifically designed the comitatenses as mobile field armies whose mission, training, equipment and structure differed from limitanei, the other primary organizational form for large military units, who were assigned to guard the border or “limit” of empire; driven by the changing military landscape in late antiquity which increasingly came to favor mobile units while incorporating archery, artillery and the horse, the comitatenses were a means and ends to military force re-organization and modernization that continued through Theodosius who merged cavalry and infantry units and up through the time of Justinian, by whose era Rome’s legendary legions were already an artifact of the distant past 

Consistorium, the highest advisory body in the imperial service—closely akin in function to a Presidential Cabinet—technically separate from the Senate, during the time of Justinian the role of the two bodies effectively converged

Daqin, Chinese word for Rome. By the time of the early 7th century we know the Chinese knew the Byzantine Empire by the word “Fulin” (Chinese: 拂菻), however it is not certain that the name 

Fulin had come into adoption before 618 AD, about 70 years after the events in this story. Before that, the Weilüe (Chinese: 魏略, "A Brief History of Wei")which was written by Yu Huan, a historian of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period between 239 and 265, records information about societies west of China including India, Parthia and the Roman Empire, the latter of which Yu Huan describes as “Da Qin”(Chinese: 大秦), “The Great Qin”. The Weilüe includes in particular descriptions of sea-based routes by which one may travel from China to Roman regions. We presume for the start of our story that the term Fulin was still in use.

Daugava, a waterway used in late Roman times and throughout the Middle Ages by the Byzantines to access Russia, the Baltics and Scandinavia. 

Deed of Purchase, deeds recording the details and exchange of property and rights in a legal transaction typified by a deposit or disposal of money and an exchange of money or property; they followed formularies—that is formulas or templates, “model books” for documents which in different times and places were more universal or more local that were produced by chanceries and notaries—6th century law schools are believed to have fomented the spread of uniform deeds in the Byzantine world

Dekarch, a leader of a 10-soldier squad (a decharchy)

Depotatoi, medical corpsmen – units in a Tagma of eight to ten whose role was to recover injured soldiers and unhorsed cavalry from the field of battle

Empress Leizu, Can Nainai, legendary empress—wife of the Yellow Emperor, credited by tradition with the discovery of silk and known in folklore as Can Nainai, “Silkworm Mother”

Eparch, The Eparch of the City, effectively the governor and supreme judge of Byzantium and chief of police responsible for law and order, second only to the emperor

Eukraton, a beverage common in monasteries which substituted for wine usually served as a hot drink made by boiling water with pepper, cumin, or anise - it was usually a staple during fasting periods

Exagion, a unit of weight intended to match the weight of a solidus, a gold coin originally minted by Diocletian where there were 60 solidi to a Roman pound but by the time of Justinian the conversion had been increased to 72 such that one weighed one exagion and 72 exagion weighed 1 pound; by the late Roman and early Byzantine era the solidus had taken on the name nomisma

Excubitor, a small group of elite troops created by Leo I as a special imperial bodyguard under the command of a comes excubitorum which was a position that rapidly took on considerable importance in the regime

First Watch, the first nightly watch ended around 10 PM, so as much as four hours prior to 10 PM, but after sundown—if described as “later” as here, then probably between 8 and 10 PM

Hegumenia (Greek: ἡγουμένη), female form of hegumen (Greek: ἡγούμενος), title for the head of an eastern orthodox monastery

Hekantontarch, a commander of a hundred soldiers (a hekatontarchy)

Hetaireia, a military unit of uncertain provenance but which in some way was attached to the emperor—it is likely that they were responsible for the administration of certain estates held by the imperial government, including properties about the palace

Horologian, a Byzantine time keeping device—usually a water clock or sundial

Hyrcanian Ocean, the Caspian Sea as it was known to the Byzantines—its geography was poorly understood and the Byzantines had no clear sense of where it ended

Iconostasis, a high barrier in churches and similar sanctuary buildings that was used to create a reserved or protected space in religious buildings of late antiquity; it was superseded later in the Middle Ages by the use of open templons and low screens

Jacobite, local (Syrian) term for a follower of what was late (7th century) described as the monophysite or miaphysite movement of Christianity centered in Alexandria but popular in Egypt and Syria; that movement then as to this day at some odds with the larger northern body of eastern orthodox and Catholic Christianity both of which are regarded as Chalcadonian based on agreements they made against the doctrines of the Jacobites (monophysites) at the Council of Chalcadon regarding the nature of the incarnation and the Trinity

Jade Emperor, one of the representations of the first god in Taoist theology; known as Yuanshi Tianzun, he is one of the Three Pure Ones: the three primordial emanations of the Tao 

Jing, in Traditional Chinese Medicine jing is the essential fluid of the physical body that contains the life force; sometimes described as the “essence of Qi (Chi)” it is both the material basis of the body and the fluid container of the life force—it works with the life force Qi and Spirit, Shen and together with these three is recognized as one of the “three treasures”—said to be stored in the kidneys and “prenatal jing” which one is born with cannot be replenished—a loss of jing can cause premature aging and death

Kelliotes, kellia, a monastic cell

Logos, (Greek: λόγος) – when translation is attempted, often translated as “word”, such as in the most common English translation of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the (λόγος) Word…”, or when Saint Jerome translated the New Testament into Latin, “In principio erat Verbum…”, and contemporary Spanish translations, “En el principio era el Verbo…”

Arguably—each of these translations are in error and the correct rendering of logos is for translators to retain the word in its Greek form, logos, so as to urge readers and thinkers to ascertain it as a distinct concept, apart from “word”, which for its part is a different word altogether in Greek: λέξις, transliterating as “lexis”; 

Found in Plato’s writings and those of his followers for centuries afterwards, and believed to have predated Plato and possibly originating from out of the Bronze Age, logos may be most simply understood on a human level as the dark, precognitive space—just prior to and beyond the reach of language, that creates meaning by selecting words in party to the action of mind, before words themselves are formed as cohesive, verbal thoughts—or more generally as the source out of which the mind forms meaning, for example the font from which an artist imagines an new image or a musician intuits a composition for a musical score; 

In contrast to words and other symbols and acts of art which themselves are meaning—logos is an elusive, inchoate noun—that thing which creates meaning and a philosopher may speculate that this act of creation is of its own nature ex nihilo

On a metaphysical level, logos is the aspect of Plato’s fecund and infinite, divine “One”, which Plato held to be unknowable to its emanations—emanations such as gods and goddesses, angels and demons, men and women, animals, plants, the four elements and matter—but emanations destined in Plato’s universe to reunite with the One; though the One is unknowable, lying as it does even beyond Plato’s “Realm of the Forms”, the logos is an aspect of the One which renders as intellectable both the One and the process of imminent return to the One, to its emanations; in Plato’s complex ontology emanations, otherwise lost to confusion and chaos, may come to know about the One, because the logos renders the One intellectable to them

Logos found particular refinement as a concept for fusing together Hebrew and Greek thought in the writings of the Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria in the early first century; in the Christian era, particularly in the Johannine tradition beginning with John’s non-synoptic gospel and echoed from Irenaeus to Justin Martyr to Clement of Alexandria and Origin all the way to Justinian himself, the logos was appropriated out of the Platonic tradition where it was equated with Christ as divine-made-incarnate, just such as we find stated in the Gospel of John; 

Though it has fallen out of popular use in the awareness of contemporary Christians of all sects, the logos lay at the heart of Byzantine Christian spirituality and references to it are frequent in Byzantine writings and art, including those of Justinian himselfl 

Apprehension of the roll of the logos in the ex nihilo act of creation of meaning in a Platonic, fecund, infinite universe is a precondition to understanding the minds of pre-modern, pre-scientific people, but more so it would be difficult for people in modern times to understand the most divisive issue of Justinian and Theodora’s era without first understanding the place of the logos in the minds of people in Late Antiquity—the dispute between European “Nicene Christianity” and African, largely Egyptian miaphysitism

The conflict between Nicene Christianity, also known as “Chalcedonian Christianity” which descends to us today as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, versus monophysitism or miaphysitism, which is preserved today as the Coptic Orthodox Church, is a division that literally set Justinian and Theodora apart from one another, as a couple, while paradoxically this personal division also accounted for their ability as a couple both to seize and hold power over a divided empire, together, for decades

Of some interest to the particular cultural intersection at the heart of this novel, Serinda, is that when early translators of the Bible first translated the text into Mandarin Chinese, when confronted with the same problem as western translators who faced the Greek logos and elected to replace it with “word”, Chinese language translators opted instead to translate logos to Mandarin as “Tao” so that when rendered in Chinese the first verse of the Gospel of John reads, “In the beginning was the Tao and the Tao was with God, and was God”

Manoualia, large brass candle stands, usually placed on either end before the iconostasis or templon and intended to represent the pillars of fire that guided the Hebrews on their journey in the desert

Melchite, local term for Chalcadonian (Eastern Orthodox or Catholic) Christians in Syria who used the term to distinguish themselves from the majority Jacobites (monophysites) and Nestorians

Mese, literally meaning the "middle" road, this was the central avenue and main street of Byzantium; it began at the Milion which was symbolically the initial milestone of empire which originated in the Augustaion Square in front of the Hagia Sophia and stretched from there towards the city center where around the south west base of Third Hill in an area called the Philadelphion it forked with one branch extending north west to the Gate of Adrianople and the other branch extending south west to the Golden Gate, this second branch subdivided shortly beyond Dalmatou at a juncture called Sigma where one branch continued to the Xylokerkos Gate, also known as the Gate of the Source or the Pege which was planted with trees and had a source of water (pege) that locals held to be miraculous 

Misthios, an apprentice

Mitotes, one class of legatarios, the word was broadly applied for both civil and military officials responsible for overseeing the operations of variousdepartments of the Byzantine bureaucracy who usually answered ultimately to the Eparch and who were considered his assistants in the conduct of regulation; mitotes were legatarios who were inspectors responsible for the quality of silk linens

Neorion, a merchant market relocated to the Harbor of Julian by Justinian with a colorful history of enchantments 

Nestorians, a Christian movement centered around Antioch in Syria that developed in the early fifth century that tended to punctuate the human nature of Christ while denying what other Platonist educated Christians called the hypostatic union of the divine Logos with the human person of Jesus; in addition they rejected the use of the term Theotokos, which means Mother of God" as a reference to Mary and preferred to substitute it with Christotokos which means "Mother of Christ"; they incurred the ire of other Christians who accused them of propounding the existence of two sons of God rather than one Son of God; besides a violence their opponents perceived the Nestorian theology to commit on a seemingly more Platonic understanding of the Christian vision their opponents also objected that Nestorian beliefs implied that Jesus liberated himself to become Christ rather than that being Christ, he lacked the ability to sin; the movement was uniformly rejected by the antecedents groups which would eventually come to be the modern Orthodox, Catholic and Coptic Christian movements at the Council of Ephesus in 431; despite this rejection they retained a strong presence in some parts of Syria, Persia, Northern Arabia, and across Central Asia to India and even into China

Oikonomos, a cleric responsible for managing the property, income and expenses of a religious body or institution such as a church or monastery; in a monastery this role might be known as a steward and was generally second to the hegumenos—the Council of Chalcedon (451) had required this appointment but it was not extended as a requirement to monasteries until the Second Council of Nicaea (787). 

Olovina, while it is difficult to be conclusive because most surviving literature from the Byzantine era is naturally a product of the upper classes and literate ranks and therefore infected with certain slants we nevertheless get a sense that while wine and other liquors were both common and popular in Byzantine times and places, beer was not so popular; though one factor that may serve to support the idea that beer's unpopularity was merely a quality of the bias of surviving literature are reports of a wine like drink made from barley called olovina, which is an old Russian word for beer - it was used disparagingly to refer to a drink popular with "semi-barbarians"

Opsonion, referred to as a provisions allowance, a sum that soldiers received when on campaign in addition to their ordinary salary (roga)—although it technically could be granted in cash

Orphanage, orphanages had an important function in Byzantine society—one should exercise caution not to project modern assumptions onto the past—orphanages occupied a significant structural place in early modern western Europe, but generally have not been a significant fixture of society prior to that—though they were an important institution in Byzantium; called orphanotrophos, they were under the direction of a orphanotropheion and while sometimes independent, were usually administered by a monastery; orphanotrophos served the blind, crippled and elderly; orphans could stay in them until they were old enough to marry and orphans had rights that were recognized in law

Paludamentum, a form of chlamys which by the sixth century had many forms and applications to designate that the wearer bore this or that formal office, where the paludamentum was a chlamys designating a high ranking military officer, as opposed to other versions for huntsmen, riders, civilian officers and a purple chlamys which was exclusively worn by the emperor

Panis Civilis, the Roman custom of bread distribution which was preserved in Byzantium by Emperor Constantine who ordained it there on May 18 332 and which continued until after the reign of Justinian in 618— along with the distribution of bread officials could also distribute wine, meat and various linens including clothing

Pous, a unit of length similar to a “foot”, 31.23 centimeters and derived from the Greek “foot”—used in documents describing the Hagia Sophia; at 400 meters above the Kodori River, the base of Tsibilium fortress was at 1280 pous by Byzantine reckoning, which is about 1312 English feet high, a quarter-mile at the fortress’s base

Prandiopratai, merchants who imported and sold foreign, but especially Syrian silk fabrics

Psamathia, the quarter in the southwestern corner of Byzantium between the Constantinian and the Theodosian walls; originally occupied by aristocratic mansions in the fourth and fifth centuries they came to be replaced by monasteries 

Rasophore (Greek: ρασοϕόρος), title given to an eastern orthodox nun, in the modern era of the lowest rank, but less stringently so in antiquity—the name is derived from a napless woolen cloth garment out of which developed the cassock—the title is used in a similar fashion to “sister” in Latin / western monastic convent traditions

Sagia, plural form of sagion, which could variously refer to a cloak worn by soldiers in the sixth century infantry or to a heavier form used for blankets and tents

Scholae Palatinae, imperial guard; created by Diocletian, by the 5th century they had been reduced to a largely ceremonial role including carrying out Palace business, reporting to the Magister Officicorum, their guard role had been transferred to the excubitors—wealthy families often paid for their youths to hold an office in the Scholae Palatinae

Sī, Chinese for “silk”; written 丝

Skiadon, a term which took on different meanings at different times—as used in late antiquity of Justinian and Theodora it was a parasol or sunshade but in later times it came to mean a conical hat with a broad brim that was popular among imperials and those of high rank.

Strepton, a bronze tube used by Byzantines to contain flammable liquids and chemicals—later, just a hundred years after the era of Justinian and Theodora, this would be combined with a pumping device called a siphon which when combined with a strepton made for a pre-modern flame thrower of legendary effectiveness, reported by their allies, their enemies and the Byzantines themselves to be “Greek Fire”, or literally “liquid flame”—in its more advanced, “flame thrower” manifestation its use is not recorded before 678 AD when it was deployed to repel Arab invaders with astonishing efficiency; but the 6th century Strategikon of Maurice, contemporary to these events, as well as other sources make it clear that incendiary weapons, even “bombs” were known and already in use by the Byzantine military at this earlier date—this was especially so in the prosecution of siege warfare where explosive devices where particularly valuable for tilting the balance of power to the side of the aggressing party

Tagma, refers to a military regiment—the word came into adoption around the 4th century and is common for example in the contemporary Stratikon of Maurice, although it took on a more formalized meaning in the fundamental organizational structure of the Byzantine military around the 8th century; prior to that, however, it was in widespread use to refer to various specialized regiments, the first of which were the scholai and excoubitoi, but later came to include at least two units specifically associated with the city of Byzantium, one for wall regiments and another for regiments that guarded prisons and various city sections; one record holds that there were four cavalry and two infantry tagma in Byzantium, each with 4000 soldiers

Taprobanê, Sri Lanka as it was known to the Romans, Greeks and Byzantines 

Taxis, a Byzantine concept that permeated most aspects of life holding that human society was a mirror of the cosmos and opposite the abhorred concept of ataxis, or disorder; from taxis followed realities of etiquette, precedence, ceremony, rank, class and ways of life

Tetrarchy, by the 3rd century AD the Roman Empire was too large to effectively govern and defend and was beset by one crisis after another which often boiled over on account of delays between the onset of what could have been a minor crisis, and the centralized, executive correction, because news traveled slow and information was incomplete and inaccurate; to stem this problem and others the Emperor Diocletian instituted reforms which divided Rome into four “dioceses”, administrative zones ruled by a tetrarch—this was the first separation of Italy from Byzantine, eastern Rome and set the foundation that provided for the structure of the later east/west split which would result in the relative rise of Byzantium that corresponded to the decline of the Latin, Roman west

Toupha, a helmet adorned with a tuft of fur or the feathers of exotic animals

Trapeza, a refrectory in eastern monastic communities

Typikon, foundation charter for a monastery or nunnery

Vasht, a smaller division in the Sasanian Persian army

Vestioprates, (plural: vestiopratai; Greek: βεστιοπράτης) a supposed occupation for the 6th century inferred based on contemporary John Malalas’ use of the word bestion to designate clothing that was handed out as part of the Panis Civilis and the later (after the 9th century) use of the term for merchants of fine luxury garments primarily composed of silk but inclusive of other fine linens

Xylon, called a semantron after about the 11th century, prior to which it was known as a xylon or a rhabdos sidera (“iron rod”)

l See On the Person of Christ: the Christology of Emperor Justinian, Trans. Kenneth P. Wesche, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991 – Justinian wrote copious letters to monastics and clerics staking out positions on the intersection of philosophy and Christian theology – the substance of these letters make clear that he was especially concerned with implications of Christ, as Logos