The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir (Russian: Сказание о князьях Владимирских) is an early 16th-century Muscovite treatise which propounds the conception of Moscow as the Third Rome.[1] It has been attributed either to Dmitry Gerasimov or Pachomius the Serb, among other learned monks.[2]
The book traces the male-line descent of Muscovy's royal family not only from Rurik, but from a certain Prus, to whom his uncle, Emperor Augustus, gave the northern part of the world, which later came to be known as "Prussia".[3] These claims to imperial heritage are further shored up by the story of Monomakh's Cap, a purported imperial crown which Constantine IX Monomachos of Byzantium is supposed to have presented to his grandson, Vladimir Monomakh, and which was used at coronations in Muscovy.