Fourteen Byzantine Rulers

"I decided that it was very important to have a book by a Byzantine, because you get a much stronger sense of the culture and the atmosphere of Byzantium by reading what an individual who lived then wrote. Byzantium, the ancient Greek city, established by colonising Greeks from Megara in 667 BC and named after king Byzantas, later, renamed as Constantinople, became the center of the Byzantine Empire, a Greek-speaking Roman Empire of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The city became Istanbul in 1930, the capital of modern Turkey. This book by Michael Psellus is so fascinating that if you only read one book about Byzantium, by a Byzantine, that would be the one I’d choose. He’s a product of the 11th century when things were changing very drastically and rapidly and, in a way, frighteningly. His reaction to these changes is very specific, but at the same time he expresses them in a very delightful fashion, which I find eminently readable. He’s quite different from previous writers of Byzantium in that he inserts himself into the narrative all the time. Psellus is a terrible egotist; he can’t stop talking about all his great achievements. He is constantly referring to his own prowess and brilliance, but you can see from the jobs that he had and the way that he hung on to power and influence that he was very clever and the court continued to need his skills. Byzantium carries this very heavy inheritance from the immediate contact with Ancient Greek culture and the intellectual achievements of fifth century BC Athens. You can see how deeply rooted the pagan culture is, although overlaid with Roman, Christian and, of course, medieval influences which continue to enrich this mixture, right through the centuries. Clearly this culture changes all the time. One of the problems with studying Byzantium is that it went on for so long, over a millennium, and people think it was one static thing, but, in fact, it was changing and transforming itself every decade."