Michael Psellus - Fourteen Byzantine rulers: the Chronographia of Michael Psellus

The Chronographia of Michael Psellus

*

TRANSLATED,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
E. R. A. SEWTER

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This translation first published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, UK,
and Yale University Press, USA, 1953
This revised edition published in Penguin Books 1966
22

Copyright E. R. A. Sewter, 1966
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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EISBN: 9781101491072

THE first edition of this book was published in 1953 by Routledge & Kegan Paul in London, and in the United States by Yale University Press. It appeared as The Chronographia of Michael Psellus in Rare Masterpieces of Philosophy and Science (edited by Dr W. Stark) a compliment which would surely have delighted Psellus himself. I have every reason to be grateful to the London publishers for their courtesy and forbearance; no English translation of the whole work had been attempted before in fact, only once had the Chronographia been rendered into any modern language, in mile Renaulds Bud version; ten years ago Byzantine studies were still regarded in some quarters with suspicion or even contempt; it was by no means certain that the book would sell. However, all went well and for some time now it has been out of print.

This second edition, although the text remains substantially unaltered, has been thoroughly revised. The notes have been simplified and where necessary amended. Maps and a brief glossary have been added. The bibliography has been brought up to date. In one important respect there has been a change of a more drastic nature: in Penguin Books it is customary for authors to write their own Introductions, whereas in the earlier edition I had not been required to do this, for Professor Joan Hussey, whose services to Byzantina have justly won the admiration of scholars all over the world, volunteered to carry out this task herself. Not only did she find time to do this, despite her many other duties, but she read the text, made valuable comments, supplied notes for the bibliography, and interested herself generally in the books production. To her I owe a great debt. If this volume contributes anything to our knowledge of eleventh-century Constantinople, I shall feel hat some part at least of that obligation has been paid. Others ave helped me by their encouragement and advice, notably. H. Barrow and W. F. Jackson Knight. The former has long exercised a beneficial influence on the teaching and study of he classics; the scholarship of the latter extends far beyond his avourite Virgil. Neither could have been expected to favour ioneer Byzantine research tanto magis libentissime gratias eddo.

It is proper, too, that tribute should be paid here to M. enauld. I have used the Greek text established by him and here were ample opportunities to observe and respect his cholarly approach. Nevertheless, our versions do differ coniderably. If mine does not meet with everyones approval I all derive some minor comfort from his admission that sellus is often utterly obscure: there are difficults insurontables.

Newbury, Berkshire

30 September 1964

FIFTY years ago any English schoolboy who professed admiration for things Byzantine would almost certainly have been reprimanded. The Golden Age of Athens, the fifth century before Christ, was the most profitable object of study, and Roman History was respectable enough up to the reign of Hadrian; after that (had not Gibbon said so?) there followed a period of decline and fall. The miserable Byzantines were pale reflections of decadent Greeks: their art was stereotyped, lacking in inspiration, and stiff; their form of government was static and inefficient, their literature debased. Byzantinus est, non legitur was the accepted maxim. The boys mentors probably never bothered to define the term Byzantine, which had long been pejorative, but in my schooldays (about that time) we knew vaguely that the ancient city of Byzantium had been founded by a Greek Byzas somewhere about 650 B.C., that it paid tribute to the Delian Confederacy, and that Constantine the Great made it the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire in the year 330 of the Christian Era. We were not encouraged to ask what happened to Rome itself; in fact, looking back on those faraway lessons on Roman History, one wonders if our teachers themselves knew or cared. Once, in an aside, we were told that the first and last rulers of Rome were called by the same name (with a contemptuous reference to Augustulus) and further inquiries were dismissed as irrelevant. Obviously something dreadful had occurred in the West two hundred years after Constantines foundation of his new capital, but many years were to elapse before my contemporaries seriously concerned themselves with the surviving half of the old Roman Empire. It was not even generally agreed whether East Romans or Byzantines was the correct title of its inhabitants, though most people thought of the Empire as definitely Byzantine from the time of Justinian to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, a period of some nine hundred years. However ignorant we may have been, some of us did ask awkward questions: if they were so inferior, how did these wretched Byzantines manage to survive so long after the collapse of the West? and what about Santa Sophia? and wasnt a millennium rather a long time for a sustained decline?