Lifestyle

The Accession of Alexius and Interfamily Power StrugglesI directly the Comneni had taken possession of the palace they dispatched to the Emperor their niece’s husband, Michael, who later became Logothete of the private treasure....

Bardas, although a prisoner in our hands, is not exposed, as Your captives are, to mutilation; his presence in the capital is the best thing for us, for we have not made a captive...

I said this: “Ibn al-Bakilani came to no agreement with you; it was Ibn Kunis who made this compact and took a copy of it in the Greek language.” At this the Chamberlain broke...

From this nobility are descended those men whom you style ‘rulers of the world.’ But we Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians and Burgundians, so despise these fellows that when we are angry with...

On this same day he ordered me to be his guest. But as he did not think me worthy to be placed above any of his nobles, I sat fifteenth from him and without...

“It is past seven o’clock,” said Nicephorus “and there is a church procession which I must attend. Let us keep to the business before us. We will give you a reply at some convenient...

“But,” said be, “there is one of Adalbert’s vassals here, and he does not acknowledge the truth of this.” “If he denies it,” I replied, “one of my men, at your command, will prove...

To him I made this reply: “My master did not invade the city of Rome by force nor as a tyrant; he freed her from a tyrant’s yoke, or rather from the yoke of...

He called you not emperor, which is Basileus in his tongue, but insultingly Rex, which is king in ours. I told him that the thing meant was the same though the word was different,...

And when, after twenty days, I did go away, from there, that man to whom I had given the carpet ordered the ship’s master, after passing a certain promontory, to put me ashore and...