The earliest surviving copy was made by John Doukas' confidential secretary, Michael, in the late
11th century.This manuscript (marked in the book as P=codex Parisinus gr. 2009)
will be fully copied later, in 1509 year, by Antony Eparchus. The copy, marked as
V=codex Vaticanus-Palatinus gr. 126,
has a number of notes in Greek and Latin, added by late readers. The third full copy, marked as F=codex Parisinus gr.2967,
will be actually copy of the manuscript V, started by Eparchus and continued and finished by Michael Damascene. Dates when it was done are not given. The fourth and
incomplete, M=codex Mutinensis gr. 179, is copy of the manuscript P, done by Andrea Darmari in between 1560 and 1586. Two of the manuscripts (P and F) are now located in Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the third (V) complete in the Vatican Library. The one partially completed (M) is in Modena.
The Greek text is its entirety was published seven times.
The first edition (based on manuscript V) was published in 1611 by Johannes Meursius, who gave it the Latin title by which it is now universally known, and which translates as On Administering the Empire. Six years later, the same edition will be a literal copy of the first one. The next copy belongs to A. Bandur (1711) which is collated copy of the first edition and manuscript P. Bandur's edition was reprinted twice: in 1729 in the Venetian collection of the Byzantine Historians and in 1864 Migne republished Bandur's
text with a few corrections.
Constantine himself had not given the work a name, preferring instead to start the text with the standard formal salutation: "Constantine, in Christ the Eternal Sovereign, Emperor of the Romans, to [his] own son Romanos the Emperor crowned of God and born in the purple".
De Administrando Imperio
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Не само да је копија (не постоји оригинал)
била стално ''коригована'' и допуњавана (и та верзија је нама данас позната) од стране разних ликова већ и да је Порфирогенетов оригинални запис преживео требали би да приметимо огромну временску дистанцу између Ираклија и Порфирогенита - неких 350 година, и не само то, Порфирогенит нема никакве родбинске или крвне везе са династијом Ираклије, све те чињенице компромитују тај наводни рад Профирогенита и зато може слободно да се одбаци његова ''историјска вредност'' (и 350 година закаснело сведочанство) увези ''досељавања'' Словена на балканском полуострву.