2006-07-04 Fascinating insider viewpoint, entertaning too.....

From the reign of Constantine IX onwards Psellus was a court insider so anything he has to say on this crucial period of Byzantine history is of the first importance. He is at pains to insist that he is writing history and not enconiums but he certainly can get pretty close to the latter, especially when writing about Constantine X and his son Michael VII. The accompanying footnotes remind us that neither of them deserved such fulsome praise. He is often self serving too, reminding us again and again that he is a philosopher and accomplished in just about all the other arts - a doctor for example, and a better military strategist than Romanus IV, though he never was even in the army far less led one! He makes quite a few digressions to tell us about his own career despite repeatedly telling us that he doesn't want to. He is very proud of his writing style and rhetorical abilities but his metaphors can be very laboured and (unintentionally) comical. Perhaps the height of his conceit is when he tells us how the Empress Eudocia regarded him : "In fact, she looked upon me as someting divine." (p345) Only a few lines later he recounts how she married Romanus Diogenes in secret and against his advice. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, it is a brilliant book. He gives wonderfully concise snapshots of the follies and foibles of these emperors and empresses. He has a wicked sense of humour and can do a character assassination in a few mischievious lines. He wrings his hands in supposed anguish as he systematically destroys the reputation of Constantine IX, the emperor who first employed him and was his friend. It is very much a court history, perhaps inevitably, and we learn very little about the often momentous events going elsewhere in the empire except where they impact on Byzantium itself. Astonishingly the schism between the eastern and western churhes of the 1050s doesn't rate a mention! The account of Basil II which opens the book is hardly adequate for such an important figure but the book becomes very much better when Psellus gets to the rulers he knew and worked for. I found it a very easy read and for that the translator must be praised too.