Key ideas: Michail Psellus (1018–96) was born in Constantinople and was a court philosopher, historian, and man of letters. He had a deep understanding of human nature and how it could be manipulated. The book covers fourteen Byzantine rulers, many of whom he knew personally, and is particurly astute in describing their machinations and intrigues.
Also see: The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.
976–1025
A change took place in his character after he acceded to the throne, and instead of leading his former dissolute, voluptuous sort of life, he became a man of great energy.
His character stiffened, so to speak. Feebleness gave way to strength and the old slackness disappeared before a new fixity of purpose.
Basil behaved with extraordinary circumspection. It is perfectly true that the great reputation he built up as a ruler was founded rather on terror than on loyalty, for as he grew older and became more experienced, he relied less on the judgement of men wiser than himself.
He alone introduced new measures, he alone disposed his military forces. As for the civil administration, he governed, not in accordance with the written laws, but following the unwritten dictates of his own intuition, which was most excellently equipped by nature for the purpose. Consequently he paid no attention to men of learning; on the contrary, he affected utter scorn – towards the learned folk, I mean.
It seems to me a wonderful thing, therefore, that while the emperor so despised literary culture, no small crop of orators and philosophers sprang up in those times. One solution of the paradox, I fancy, is this: the men of those days did not devote themselves to the study of letters for any ulterior purpose – they cultivated literature for its own sake and as an end in itself, whereas the majority nowadays do not approach the subject of education in this spirit, but consider personal profit to be the first reason for study.
However, we must return to the emperor. Having purged the Empire of the barbarians, he dealt with his own subjects and completely subjugated them too – I think ‘subjugate’ is the right word to describe it.
He surrounded himself with favourites who were neither remarkable for brilliance of intellect, nor of noble lineage, nor too learned.
As he spent the greater part of his reign serving as a soldier on guard at our frontiers and keeping the barbarian marauders at bay, not only did he draw nothing from his reserves of wealth, but even multiplied his riches many times over.
In fact, all his natural desires were kept under stern control, and the man was as hard as steel.
The emperor seems to have lived a very long time, more than all the other sovereigns, for from birth up to his twentieth year he shared imperial power with his father and Phocas Nicephorus, and later with John Tzimisces, the latter’s successor. During this period he occupied a subordinate position, but for the next fifty-two years he ruled supreme. He was therefore in his seventy-second year when he died.
1025–8
ON the death of Basil, his brother Constantine became emperor.
Constantine was at this time in his seventieth year, a person of decidedly effeminate character with but one object in life – to enjoy himself to the full. Since he inherited a treasury crammed with money, he was able to follow his natural inclination, and the new ruler devoted himself to a life of luxury.
No man was ever more quick-tempered. His anger was uncontrolled.
his method was to punish malefactors on the spot, with blinding of the eyes by a red-hot iron. This was the penalty imposed on all and sundry, quite apart from the fact that, in one case, he was dealing with apparently flagrant crime, in another with minor delinquency. No distinction was made between the perpetration of a crime and mere suspicion of wrongdoing.
As a matter of fact, he had not much learning. He had acquired a smattering of culture, just as much as one considers enough for children, but he was endowed with great natural intelligence and more than ordinary grace.
He was a man of enormous size, standing up to nine feet in height.
Being dominated by his gluttony and sexual passions, he became afflicted with arthritis, and worse still, his feet gave him such trouble that he was unable to walk.
The most beautiful of Constantine’s daughters [he had three] was no sooner in his sight than she was made his bride. So her father, having survived just long enough to see the marriage ceremony performed, passed away and left the Empire to his kinsman, Romanus.
1028–34
ON the death of Basil, his brother Constantine became emperor.
CONSTANTINE was succeeded as emperor by his son-in-law Romanus, surnamed Argyropulus.
From now on the history will be more accurate than hitherto, for the Emperor Basil died when I was a baby, while Constantine ended his reign just after I had begun my elementary studies... I both saw Romanus and on one occasion actually talked with him. Naturally, therefore, my remarks on the first two emperors are based on information supplied by others, but my account of Romanus is quite independent.
A man of heroic stature, he looked every inch a king. His idea of his own range of knowledge was vastly exaggerated,.. as for letters, his experience was far from profound: in fact, it was merely superficial. However, his belief in his own knowledge, and this straining beyond his own intellectual limits, led him to commit mistakes on a big scale.
As it was, he did nothing more than make projects, or, shall I say, built castles in the air and then, in actual practice, hurled them down again.
Setting his heart on military glory, he prepared for war against the barbarians, east and west... For these reasons, although no real pretext for war existed, he made an unprovoked assault on the Saracens, who lived in Coele-Syria and whose capital was Chalep.
He thought that if he increased the army beyond its normal strength, or rather, if the legion was made more numerous, when he came upon the foe with such masses of soldiers, Romans and allies, no one would be able to resist him...
In fact, he wanted to imitate the traditional deeds of the famous Trajans and Hadrians, or (still farther back in history) of the Augusti and Caesars, or of their predecessor, Alexander the son of Philip... To attain his object, however, he did not choose the best men. He thought war was decided by the big battalions, and it was on the big battalions that he relied.
When he left Antioch and went on farther, a detachment of barbarian soldiers [...] Suddenly they appeared on high ground. Yelling their war-cry and filling their opponents with consternation at this unexpected sight, they made a tremendous din as their horses charged to the attack. By not keeping in close order, they created the illusion of great numbers, running about in scattered groups and with no regular formations.
This so terrorized the Roman soldiery and spread such panic in this mighty and famous army, and so shattered their morale, that they all ran away, dressed just as they were, and not a thought did they give to anything but flight. [...] every man, running off or wandering away, sought his own safety to the best of his ability. It was an extraordinary sight.
At dawn he called for his generals and suggested that they should decide what to do. Without exception they advised him to return to Byzantium.
There followed bitter repentance for what he had done, and self-pity for the sufferings he had endured. Then, all at once, his mood changed. His career now entered on a new and, for him, somewhat unusual phase. He hoped that by careful management of public funds he would completely recover his losses. So he became more tax-gatherer than emperor.
What happened next? I will tell you. An illness of an unusual and painful character befell Romanus. Actually, the whole of his body became festering and corrupted inside.
I do maintain that Zoe and Michael [wife and her lover] were the cause of his death.
1034–41
Michael’s elder brother approached her [Zoe] on the subject privately (he was the eunuch John, a man of outstanding intellect, as well as a man of action). ‘We shall die,’ he argued, ‘if there is any further delay in promoting Michael.’
Zoe, now completely won over, at once sent for the young man, clothed him in a robe interwoven with gold, placed on his head the imperial crown, and set him down on a magnificent throne, with herself near him in similar dress. She then issued an order that all those who were living in the palace were to prostrate themselves before both of them and hail them both as sovereigns in common...
There is one more trait in the emperor which I cannot refrain from admiring. It is this: although his origin was humble, in the hour of his great good fortune he did not lose his sense of balance, nor was he overwhelmed by his power.
He devoted himself entirely to thought for his Empire. Not only did he ensure the good government of cities within our boundaries, but he stopped the nations beyond our borders from invading Roman territory. This he did, partly by the dispatch of envoys, partly by bribery, partly by annual displays of military strength.
Thanks to these precautions, neither the ruler of Egypt nor of Persia, nor even of Babylonia, broke the terms of treaties they had made with us. Nor did any of the more distant peoples openly show their hostility
One idea followed another, and among other schemes he [Micahel IV] devised a plan for the salvation of lost souls. Scattered all over the city was a vast multitude of harlots, and without attempting to turn them away from their trade by argument – that class of woman is deaf anyway to all advice that would save them – without even trying to curb their activities by force, lest he earn the reputation of violence, he built in the Queen of Cities a place of refuge to house them, an edifice of enormous size and very great beauty.
Then, in the stentorian notes of the public herald, he issued a proclamation: all women who trafficked in their beauty, provided they were willing to renounce their trade and live in luxury, were to find sanctuary in this building: they were to change their own clothes for the habit of nuns, and all fear of poverty would be banished from their lives for ever, ‘for all things, unsown, without labour of hands, would spring forth for their use’
Thereupon a great swarm of prostitutes descended upon this refuge, relying on the emperor’s edict, and changed both their garments and their manner of life, a youthful band enrolled in the service of God, as soldiers of virtue.
1041–2
[Michail V] succeeded him [Michael IV] as emperor.
[Before becoming the emperor, but] after his promotion to Caesar, he began to imagine in his own mind what it would be like to rule. He began to plot the things he would do.
Every member of the family was considered in turn. All those who had shown him favour and helped to promote him he planned to destroy.With the empress he would be bitterly angry, some of his uncles he would kill, others he would drive into exile. And all the time he was imagining these things he was even more careful than usual to appear friendly towards them...
The outstanding characteristic of the man, indeed, was his interest in a great variety of subjects and an extraordinary facility in moving from one subject to another.
A second peculiarity was the contradiction in the man between heart and tongue – he would think one thing and say something quite different.
The man was a slave to his anger, changeable, stirred to hatred and wrath by any chance happening.
[Shortly after he exiled Zoe, people revolted,] he had no ally in the palace nor could he send out for help, and even the mercenaries maintained by him were, some of them, of doubtful allegiance and not invariably obedient, while others were openly hostile, and, when their discipline broke, they broke out with the mob.
In his utter perplexity an ally did come to his aid – the Nobilissimus [his uncle]... They determined then to recall the empress from exile at once – it was through her that the mob had broken out in revolt and the war was being fought on her behalf.
In the meantime the empress was carried into the palace... Every proposal he offered she agreed with, and they made a covenant to face the danger together. On these conditions they carried her up to a balcony on the Great Theatre and there they showed her to the rebel people; they thought it would quench the fire of the rebels’ anger if they saw their mistress had been recalled from exile, but the people were in no hurry to recognize the lady. Those who did know her were all the more incensed at the tyrant’s stratagem; they thought it monstrous that even in the midst of danger he still could not forget his natural ferocity and wickedness.
The war, therefore, flared up against him all the more bitterly...
The mob proclaimed Theodora empress [second daughter of Konstantine].
When news of this reached Michael, fearing that the rebels would suddenly come upon him and lay violent hands on him there in the palace, he embarked on one of the imperial ships and landed with his uncle at the holy Studite monastery. There he laid aside his emperor’s garments and put on the clothes of a suppliant and refugee.
Theodora’s companions meanwhile sent a guard for him. The guard commander was one of the nobles and I myself accompanied him...
At his command the mob laid hands on them and without more ado proceeded to break the law, hounding them out of the church like wild beasts. The victims emitted cries of anguish unrestrained.... In reality, nothing could help them; circumstances were far too unfavourable and the people’s hatred too general.
Bold, resolute men were dispatched with all speed. Their instructions were to burn out the fugitives’ eyes, as soon as they saw them outside the sacred building. [They] showed their instructions to the mob and they began preparing for the execution; the iron was sharpened for the branding.
After his eyes, too [after his uncle's], had been blinded, the insolence of the mob, so marked before, died away
1042
SO the Empire passed into the hands of the two sisters.
Zoe was a woman of passionate interests, prepared with equal enthusiasm for both alternatives – death or life... Theodora; in fact, she had a placid disposition, and in one way, if I may put it so, a dull one.
To put it quite candidly (for my present purpose is not to compose a eulogy, but to write an accurate history) neither of them was fitted by temperament to govern. They neither knew how to administer nor were they capable of serious argument on the subject of politics.
Fate, indeed, decreed that the new master of the Empire should be Constantine, the son of Theodosius
1042-55
At the start of his reign Constantine ruled neither with vigour nor with discretion... Unfortunately Constantine’s idea was to exhaust the treasury of its money, so that not a single obol was to be left there, and as for the honours, they were conferred indiscriminately on a multitude of persons who had no right to them.
No man was better endowed by Nature with qualities that endeared him to his subjects... Listening to the emperor’s conversation was a real delight. He was always ready to smile .. His favourite companions were simple persons, the type that did not stand greatly in awe of himself, and he hated to see anybody approach him with a worried look.
Although he could scarcely be called an advanced student of literature, or in any sense of the word an orator, yet he admired men who were, and the finest speakers were invited to the imperial court from all parts of the Empire, most of them very old men.
A healthy animal, with a thoroughly strong constitution, is not altered in a moment at the first symptoms of illness. So with the Empire in the reign of Constantine: it was by no means moribund and its breathing was still energetic; the neglect from which it was suffering seemed an insignificant item, until, by slow degrees, the malady grew, and reaching a crisis threw the patient into utter confusion, complete disorder..
The symptoms of his disease were not all immediately apparent. The humours first flowed into his feet, and at once he was compelled to take to his bed. If he had to walk at all, he did so with the help of other people. The illness was recurrent, and it was evident that the flux continued for a certain number of days, followed by an equal period of rest. Later on, the intervals between these attacks diminished and his relief became short-lived..
As this condition developed, the flux gradually approached his hands, then with a kind of upward flow, the humours attacked his shoulders, and finally occupied the whole of his body..
The result was that every one of his members, swamped by this terrible flux, lost the ability to perform its natural functions.
1055–6
WHEN he died, supreme power passed into the hands of Theodora, the daughter of Constantine (VIII).
Everybody expected that she would entrust the government to one of the leading noblemen, but, contrary to all belief and opinion, she took on her own shoulders the duties of a Roman sovereign. The truth is, she knew that there is no man on earth so ungrateful as one who finds himself emperor through the generosity of someone else; his greatest benefactor, indeed, is the last person to whom he shows his indebtedness.
1056–7
The Emperor Michael the Aged had spent one whole year in power. He died soon after his abdication, a private citizen.
1057–9
Having inherited the throne, Comnenus, always the man of action, lost no time in making himself complete master of the Empire. From the very start he personally supervised the affairs of State...
More than any other man he was laconic in the extreme, not expressing all his ideas in so many words, yet leaving no doubt as to his meaning.
In matters other than the civil administration he advanced the welfare of his Empire by gradual progress,..
He was eager to lose no time in cutting out the dead wood which had long been accumulating in the Roman Empire. We can liken it to a monstrous body, a body with a multitude of heads, an ugly bull-neck, hands so many that they were beyond counting, and just as many feet; its entrails were festering and diseased, in some parts swollen, in others wasting away, here afflicted with dropsy, there diminishing with consumption. Now Isaac tried to remedy this by wholesale surgery.
He attempted to get rid of the bulges and restore the body to a normal shape, to take away this and build up that, to heal the intestines and breathe into this monster some life-giving breath; but the task was beyond him, and in consequence he lacked faith in his own success...
Here then we have the first crisis. The greater part of the nation had been changed from men into beasts. They had been fattened up to such an extent that it was necessary to administer purgative drugs, and that in considerable doses. A second course of treatment was demanded – I mean, of course, surgical operations, cauterization, cathartics.
The opportunity for healing recurred, and Isaac Comnenus, wearing his crown, climbed into the Roman chariot.
Isaac was a devotee of the philosophic life: he abhorred anything that was physically diseased or corrupt. But his hopes were disappointed, for he found nothing but disease and festering sores, the imperial horses running at full speed from the starting-post, quite impossible to master, heedless of the reins...
He wanted to see the sick body restored to health immediately... As I have often remarked, the emperors before Isaac exhausted the imperial treasures on personal whims. The public revenues were expended not on the organization of the army, but on favours to civilians and on magnificent shows....
The present emperor, of course, had been commander-in-chief of the army. He was already aware, for many reasons, of the cause of the Roman Empire’s deplorable state. He knew why it was that our neighbours prospered while all our affairs had declined, and why not one Roman had been able to stop the attacks and robberies carried out by the barbarians.
I returned rather early the next morning. Just before I reached the doors someone gave me the most alarming news: the emperor was suffering from a stabbing pain in his side, his respiration was difficult, and the breathing was not very strong. I was astonished at this information...
The illness afflicting the emperor had now reached its crisis.
1059–67
Constantine Ducas ruled the Roman Empire for seven years and six months (from November 1059 to May 1067).
There is no other emperor whom I am qualified to describe with such intimate knowledge, for here was a man who as an ordinary citizen earned my praise, as a crowned emperor my admiration, one from whom I was never estranged in the slightest degree.
As soon as he acceded to power, this man, an emperor in very truth appointed by God, made it his first concern to ensure in his Empire fair dealing and good order, to put an end to fraudulence and introduce a moderate and just system of government.
Finding the Empire reduced to serious straits – all its revenues had been squandered – he inaugurated a moderate financial policy. There was no foolish spending, no reaping (if I may quote) where he had not sowed, no gathering of what he had not scattered. On the contrary, he was careful to determine in advance what capital he was prepared to expend, thereby saving himself from trouble in the future.
As a result he left the imperial treasury not full, certainly not overflowing, but half-replenished.
He administered the Empire for slightly over seven years, and when he died, a victim of disease, he left abundant material for would-be eulogists. He controlled his temper, did nothing by instinct, always followed the dictates of reason.
1067
WHEN the Empress Eudocia, in accordance with the wishes of her husband, succeeded him as supreme ruler, she did not hand over the government to others.
I do not know whether any other woman ever set such an example of wisdom or lived a life comparable to hers, up to this point; I will not go so far as to say that she became less wise after this event, only that she lost some of her old precision: her ideas changed as she grew older.
The truth is, she was very worried over her sons, and feared they might be deprived of the crown, if there were no one to protect and guide them.
1068–71
As for Diogenes, he was brought in his blindness to the monastery which he himself had founded, on the island of Prote, and there he died, not long afterwards. His reign had lasted less than four years.2 Michael was now undisputed ruler of the Empire.
1071–8
Not one was ever abused by him, or insulted in public, or refused admittance to his presence because of some delinquency. Further than that, even when Michael had been deliberately affronted, he preferred to disregard bad manners rather than to rebuke them openly.
He was a man of extraordinary intelligence, and through careful observation he acquired a knowledge of affairs. He had, for instance, a thorough grasp of the whole system of taxation, of revenues and public expenditure, of the incomes paid from the exchequer and the percentage of income paid back to the treasury in the form of taxes.
He knew all about the mint, the exact weight of a stater, how a touchstone functioned, what proportion of precious metal was included in every gold coin. In short, his information on the whole business of finance was extremely accurate.
He was addicted to no pleasures, was no slave to gluttony, did not encourage sumptuous banqueting. From the delights of love he abstained so rigorously that of most of them he had no knowledge at all and was quite ignorant of sexual practices condemned by law.
Nothing pleased him more than reading books on all kinds of learned subjects, studying literary essays, pithy sayings, proverbs; he delighted in elegant compositions, subtle combinations of words, changes of style, coining of new words, poetic diction; but, above all else, he cultivated a love of philosophy, of books that enrich the spiritual life, of allegory and its interpretation.
In brief, Michael is a prodigy of our generation, and a most beloved character.(1)
[ 1. Scylitzes (856D, p. 725) is scathing in his condemnation of the emperor’s pursuits: ‘While he spent his time in the useless pursuit of eloquence and wasted his energy on the composition of iambic and anapaestic verse (and they were poor efforts indeed) he brought his Empire to ruin, led astray by his mentor, the philosopher Psellus.’ Again (846, p. 706): ‘While he (Nicephoritza, the emperor’s favourite) concentrated all power in his hands, Michael found time for nothing but trifles and childish games. The leading philosopher, Psellus, had made him quite unfitted for the position he occupied.’ ]