When day dawned Monolycus with the same intention ordered the Turks to do the same as before. In the meantime Clitziasthlan, the Sultan, arrived, and when he saw the perfect order of the army, he marvelled, but like a young man jeered at the old man, Monolycus, for having deferred battle with the Emperor. Monolycus replied, ” I, because I am old or cowardly, have put off a close engagement with him up to the present ; but if you are so courageous, go yourself and have a try; the proof will lie in the result.”
Andronicus Porphyrogenitus
Accordingly Clitziasthlan’ at once attacked the rear, ordered some other satraps to attack the Emperor from the front, and yet others he bade open the battle on either flank. Now the Cxsar Nicephorus’ Bryennius who held the right wing, noticed the battle in the rear, and longed ardently to go to the assistance of the men at the back, but as he did not wish to prove his inexperience or his youth he restrained his raging anger against the barbarians and continued to march on in good order and the same formation. As the barbarians were fighting vigorously, the brother I held dearest, Andronicus Porphyrogenitus, who commanded the left wing, wheeled round and with his own troops made a fierce set upon the barbarians. He had just reached the most charming period of his life, in war he displayed prudent boldness, a quick hand, and abundant wisdom, and then prematurely he died, and when none would have expected it, he left us and vanished.
Oh, youth and physical beauty and your light leaps on horseback, where in the world have you gone? my grief compels me to utter a lament over him; the law of history, however, again restrains me. But it is wonderful that nowadays nobody is changed, as they say happened in former days, into a stone or bird or tree or some inanimate thing, changing his nature into such things under the force of great calamities; whether it is all a fable or truth. For perhaps it were better to exchange one’s nature for another that is non-sentient, than to possess such a vivid perception of evil. If this had been possible, the ills that have befallen me would very likely have turned me into stone.
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