Opening Passage: From the beginning account, Basil II:
The circumstances in which the Emperor John Tzimisces met his death have already been described [in the history of Leo Diaconus]. Basil and Constantine, the sons of Romanus, were now the legitimate heirs to an Empire which through the efforts of their predecessor had won many triumphs and greatly increased its power. (p. 27)
Summary: Michael Psellus's Chronographia is a jaunty and opinionated look at fourteen(-ish) Roman Emperors in the Byzantine period. They are:
(1) Basil II (976-1025). His father was Romanos II, but when his father died, he and his brother Constantine were too young to take the throne. The throne was held instead first by Nicephoros Phocas and then by John Tzimisces; then his mother and great-uncle managed to make sure that it would pass to Basil. Michael Psellus sees his work as a sort of sequel to a historical work by Leo Diacanus, which ended at the death of John Tzimisces. Michael Psellus mostly focuses on the revolt of Sclerus, however; Sclerus was a major general and a sort of leftover problem from the days of Nicephoros Phocas, who had been his rival. The revolt would be of some significance for Basil's approach as Emperor; he became very motivated to prevent further revolts, and shifted a number of policies with this end in view. (This is one of the things that led to the epoch-defining alliance between the Empire and Kievan Rus.) Ascetic in tastes, contemptuous of scholars, and immensely practical in attitude, Basil did a great deal to strengthen the treasuries and the military defenses of the Empire.
(2) Constantine VIII (1025-1028). He inherited from his brother Basil, to whom he had been junior co-emperor. In fact, since technically he had been co-emperor since the death of his father, he had the longest Imperial reign up to this point, after Augustus himself. Not that he ever did the Empire much good. As lazy and self-indulgent as his brother was practical and industrious, he poured money out of the treasuries for pointless projects and arbitrary gifts for favorites, neglected the military, and fostered an atmosphere of corruption at court. (Indeed, while Michael Psellus is not in a position to make this assessment, later historians generally regard Constantine's reign as the beginning of a long decline in the Empire, because he created problems that were never really solved.)
(3) Romanos III (1028-1034). A good-looking, book man, Romanos was married to Zoe, Constantine's daughter. Michael Psellus tells us that this was the first of the Emperors he discusses whom he met, although it was only once and when he was quite young. He does not have a high opinion of Romanos, though; he regards him as a pseudo-intellectual fool, indulging his mediocre literary talents as if he were going to live forever, despite the fact that he and his wife were both getting on in years. He was incompetent in military matters -- sure enough of his intelligence to think that he knew what he was doing but in fact lacking all competence in that area. During his reign, Zoe began to have a scandalous semi-public relationship with a handsome young man named Michaell a former moneychanger; Michael Psellus seems to waver a bit over whether he was a completely unaware and therefore a complete idiot or whether he suspected but turned a blind eye. He died in quite ill health, but inevitably there were rumors that Zoe and Michael killed him. Michael Psellus is neutral about this, but he does think that the two acted in ways that accelerated his end.
(4) Michael IV (1034-1041). Zoe essentially made her paramour Romanos's successor by marrying him, against the advice of everyone. She quickly learned, however, that Michael was not quite the man she thought he was; put into the most powerful office in the realm and no longer required to act a part, he mostly acted ungratefully to Zoe. As Emperor, Michael Psellus thinks Michael had a number of redeeming qualities, but his power-grabbing family was a constant source of trouble at the court, and Michael was also an epileptic, which, as time went on, increasingly interfered with his duties.
(5) Michael V (1041-1042). Michael IV was succeeded by his nephew, also called Michael, in part because Zoe was convinced to go along with it. Unlike his uncle, the nephew was a rascal and mostly unfit to hold the throne; he was obsessed with being sole ruler, so he exiled Zoe on accusations of trying to poison him. This turned out to be an error on his part; Zoe was, if not exactly popular, a very known quantity to the populace and to the elites, and his apparent ingratitude to her sparked anger in all classes of Byzantine society. The City literally revolted in her favor, a mob revolution, but unlike most mob revolutions it actually had an effect because the Emperor was caught completely by surprise. Zoe, in exile, was not at hand, but her younger sister Theodora was (ironically because she had been shoved into a nunery in the reign of Romanos to get her out of the way), and became, willy-nilly, a symbol for the mob, and was declared Empress by them. Michael fled, but was arrested and blinded (thus making him ineligible for the throne).
(6) Zoe (with Theodora) (1042). The two sisters neither liked nor trusted each other, but were stuck. Theodora had to bring her sister home, under the circumstances. Zoe wanted to kick Theodora out, but under the circumstances she couldn't practically do so. So Zoe became senior Empress and Theodora junior Empress. After the bad experience with the two Michaels, they tried their hands at ruling on their own. Michael Psellus was certainly not impressed by their effort, and seems quite down on Empresses in general, but it's true that none of the Empresses in his lifetime were at all a good fit for the practical administration of an entire Empire. Ultimately, the alliance between Zoe and Theodora was not sustainable. Zoe, having been married twice, was allowed once more under Orthodox marriage laws, so to get Theodora out, she tried again. After considering a few options, she picked one of her former lovers.
(8) Constantine IX (1042-1055). I have to confess, the account of Constantine IX was the one place in the work that I bogged down a bit; it is by far the most confusingly written portion of the book. But Psellus perhaps cannot be blamed for that, because Constantine's reign is the most baffling in the period. Constantine was extraordinarily active as an Emperor, but his activity was good or bad for the Empire almost at random. He massively depleted the treasuries. He debased the coinage. He made an active attempt to reform corruption in the aristocracy and mostly failed. Some of his projects, military or civil or religious, worked out; others failed disastrously; many betrayed a stranged sense of priorities. Michael Psellus, who was in his twenties and in the beginning of a his full courtly career, is clear that he liked Constantine personally; he is also clear that he did not have a high opinion of much of what Constantine did, but seems to have had the view that overall Constantine's reign was mostly good.
(9) Theodora (1055-1056). Zoe having died, Theodora became sole ruler after Constantine's death. Theodora decided that she would rule the whole thing herself, and even Psellus does admit that given her experience, she had some reason to think that entrusting the throne to a man would not end well. If you make a man an Emperor, you cannot count on him being grateful. Michael Psellus does, however, regard her as somewhat foolish and unfit for the throne; she was also in her seventies at this point. Nonetheless, he can't find much to say in criticism of her; the Empire mostly did well, and while she was a bit harsh, she mostly handled the aristocracy well. Her primary failure was one of finding competent administrators. (However, Sewter, the editor, thinks Michael Psellus was perhaps biased against some of her choices for political reasons.)
When Theodora, the last of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Roman Empire, was ill, she refused to marry or even at first appoint an heir. The nobles at her bedside picked one of their number to succeed her, and, according to Psellus, she agreed to it. (Other sources are apparently not so sure that her consent was not a fiction pushed by the nobles choosing her successor.)
(10) Michael VI (1056-1057). Psellus says that the new Emperor, Michael VI, was probably the best candidate on hand, but he is also clear that this wasn't saying much, and it is clear that Michael did not really understand how to balance power. His sidelining of the military and addiction to bestowing honors on the court created a crack between essential Imperial institutions that would continue to plague the Empire beyond his own reign. And, unsurprisingly, it is dangerous for an Empire to treat its military badly. Discontent began to brew, and Michael was not at all the man to handle it. The discontent soon gathered around a general, Isaac Comnenus, and after some early failure of negotiation, it broke out into revolt. Psellus was in the thick of this; he was sent by Michael in a diplomatic embassy to negotiate the matter before it gathered too much momentum to stop. At least according to himself, he was key in salvaging the situation. Isaac was promised co-emperor status, putting him in line for the throne. However, the attempt to make peace did not hold; a pro-Isaac revolt broke out in the City, and the Patriarch convinced Michael to abdicate.
(11) Isaac Comnenus (1057-1059). With Isaac, the Emperor suddenly found itself again under the control of a shrewd and practical man. Recognizing the fragility of the situation, Isaac immediately, before the day of his coronation was even done, set about diffusing the military situation by giving his troops leave to go home. Then he set out to patch the holes in the ever-leaking Imperial treasuries. Psellus's primary criticism of him is that he tried to do too much too quickly; if he had begun a gradual progress, Psellus thinks he might have done the Empire immense good, but he was trying to ram things through in ways that did not always work. In Psellus's metaphor, instead of treating the illness he tried to solve the problem by radical surgery. Mostly ascetic in tastes, the Emperor nonetheless had a passion for hunting, which eventually led to his death.
(12) Constantine X (1059-1067). On his deathbed, Isaac named his most loyal supporter, Constantine Ducas. Michael Psellus is highly laudatory of Constantine; the editor, Sewter, remarks that Constantine was "a mediocre person" (p. 331), and, if anything, that seems to be more generous than most historians will grant. In truth, it becomes difficult at this point to see how much of Psellus's commentary is history and how much of it is politicking, and how much of the praise for Constantine is due to his actual skill as opposed to Constantine's obvious support for Michael Psellus's own career. In Constantine's reign, the Empire lost much of the West to the Normans and much of the East to the Turks; Psellus's entire comment on this situation is, "In war he achieved several successes, without undue effort, and wore the garlands of victory" (p. 332)! Constantine was brought low by sickness.
(13, sort of) Eudocia (1067). Constantine's wife Eudocia found herself practically in charge of the Empire; Constantine's sons were too young. She has an odd position, in that no one has been able to decide whether she should be regarded as a reigning Empress or as a Regent who was informally treated as ruling Empress. Despite the fact that she throws off the count, Psellus seems inclined to treat her mostly as Empress in her own right; indeed, she is the only Empress of whom Psellus has a somewhat-favorable opinion. He regards her as a clever woman with a good sense of how to wield authority. However, he thinks she was much wiser before she became Empress. Although she was supposed to reserve the throne for her son, Michael, she seems to have had no great opinion of him, so she married and shoved her new husband on the throne. Other sources note that very few people protested, because the crisis with Seljuk Turks in the East, begun in Constantine's reign, was become acute; the Turks had made it as far as Caesarea. This gets barely a passing mention from Psellus.
(13) Romanos IV (1068-1071). Romanos is another Empreror whom Michael Psellus liked personally but thought not very good as an administrator; in particular, Psellus faults Romanos for failing to follow good advice (Psellus's, naturally) on military matters. Romanos was unsuccessful at war, and this seems, paradoxically, to have made him more arrogant and sure of himself. The strong-willed Eudocia and the strong-willed Romanos began to clash with each other quite spectacularly, but then Romanos went out against the Turks again, to the Battle of Manzikert, a disaster for the Roman Empire, as the Turkish Sultan (Alp Arslan), who had been doing in everything in his power to avoid a war, which he expected to end badly for him, found to his complete surprise that he not only won the battle, he captured the Roman Emperor.
(14) Michael V (1071-1078). At Romanos's capture, the elites of the Empire seem to have assumed that that was the end of him, and turned to the question of who would be Emperor next. They were in the middle of finally settling on co-rule between Eudocia and her son Michael, when the worst possible news broke: Romanos was alive and coming home. Alp Arslan had treated him well, and having negotiated a ransom, returned him. Interestingly, Christian sources (including Psellus) are clear that Arslan did it out of kindness; Muslim sources seem to be clear that he did it out of contempt. Perhaps the real reason was somewhere in the middle -- having not wanted to be in the war in the first place, he may have thought that this was a way he could get a significant ransom and have some leverage for avoiding future military conflicts -- but, whatever the reason, if Arslan had wanted to throw the Empire into confusion, he could not have picked a better way. Nobody actually wanted Romanos back, and Michael Psellus himself is very clear that he argued that Romanos should not be allowed back as Emperor, but inevitably, Romanos had a different view of the situation, and there would be plenty of troops that would throw in with him. This seems to have decided Michael, Eudocia's son, to realize that he had to take control of the situation or be in very grave danger of being exiled or worse. He sent his mother to a monastery and then organized his defenses. There was battle, and Romanos was a much failure in this battle as in his others, and was eventually exiled. Unsurprisingly, Psellus's account of Michael VII is extraordinarily laudatory. It would have to be, wouldn't it, to justify Psellus's betrayal of Romanos. However, here the Chronographia ends, a bit before the end of Michael VII's reign.
Except for a few parts in the Constantine X section, the whole history is fast-paced and interesting at every turn.
Favorite Passage: From the account of Constantine IX:
...Then, when I saw that he was becoming bored with these lectures, and that he wanted to change teh subject to something more to his own taste, I would turn to the Muse of Rhetoric and introduce him to another aspect of Excellence, delighting him with word-harmonies and rhythmic cadences, composition and figures of speech (which lend the art its peculiar force). The function of Rhetoric is not merely to deceive by persuasive argument, or to deck itself out with ambiguous sentiments: it is an exact science. On the one hand, it expresses philosophic ideas; on the other, by means of its flowery imagery, it beautifies them. The listener is equally charmed by both. Rhetoric teaches a man to think clearly, undisturbed by the associations of words; to classify, to analyse, to make one's meaning plain without undue fuss. Its peculiar excellence lies in its freedom from confusion, its clarity, the way it suits itself to time or to circumstance, even when a man uses simple diction, without recourse to periods or long sentences. By dwelling on all these points I inspired him to a love of the art.... (p. 257)
Recommendation: Recommended.
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Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, E. R. A. Sewter, tr., Penguin Books (New York: 1966).
