And I think that men who lived then and associated with him must even now be marvelling at what was done then and think it was not real, and it must seem a dream and mere vision to them. For ever since the time when shortly after Diogenes’ accession the barbarians first overstepped the boundaries of the Roman Empire and he at first start, as they say, made his disastrous expedition against them, from that time right on to my father’s reign the barbarian power was never checked, but swords and spears were whetted against the Christians and there were battles, wars and massacres. Cities were wiped out, countries were laid waste, and the whole Roman territory was defiled with the blood of Christians. For some perished miserably by darts or spears, while others were driven from their homes and led away captive to the cities of Persia.
Emperor Basil
And dread seized them all and they hurried to hide themselves from the dangers that threatened, in the caves and groves and mountains and hills. Among these some lamented aloud over the ills which their friends who had been taken away to Persia were suffering; the few others who still survived in the Roman lands were sighing deeply, and lamenting, one for a son, another for a daughter; or weeping for a brother or a nephew cut off before his time, and shedding bitter tears like women. In fact there was no condition of life free from tears and groans. Of the Emperors not one except a few, I mean Tzimisces and the Emperor Basil, before my father’s time ever dared touch the land of Asia at all, even with their toes.
XI But why am I writing of these things? for I notice that I have turned off from the high-road. The subject of history I have imposed upon myself necessitates a double duty, both to narrate and to lament the events that befell the Emperor, that is to say, to narrate his achievements on the one hand and on the other to compose a monody on the events which have wrung my heart.
With these I would range his death and the destruction of all earthly fortune. But indeed I remember some words of my father’s which disparaged history-writing, but incited one to elegies and lamentations. For I often heard him, and Once I even heard him checking the Empress, my mother, when she ordered wise men to write a history, and thereby hand down to posterity his labours and all his conflicts and trials, saying they had better lament over him and deplore his misfortunes.
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