For the future all our outlook was in confusion and tempesttossed, our normal course of life was disturbed, and fear and danger hovered together over our heads. Yet even amidst these imminent dangers, the Empress retained her brave spirit, and during this crisis she shewed her courage most, for she curbed her passionate grief and stood like a conqueror in the Olympic games wrestling against those terribly cruel pains.
For she was wounded in soul and anguished in heart at seeing the Emperor in such a state. But she pulled herself together and remained firm in face of these sufferings, and, though she was mortally wounded and pierced to the marrow with grief, nevertheless she bore up. And yet her tears fell in floods and the beauty of her face became withered, and her soul seemed suspended in her nostrils.
Emperor’s head
It was the fifteenth of August and the Thursday of the week during which the death of our Immaculate Lady, the Mother of God, is celebrated. In the morning some of the Asclepiadae had anointed the Emperor’s head, for so it seemed right to them, and then they went away home, not idly nor because of any pressing necessity, but because they knew that danger was closely impending over the Emperor. His principal physicians were three, the excellent Nicholas Callicles, and the second, Michael Pantechnes, who got his surname from his family and the . . . the eunuch Michael.
As for the Empress, the whole band of relations crowded round her and compelled her to take food . . . she had not had any sleep . . . but had watched several successive nights . . . nursing the Emperor . . . she obeyed. But when the last fainting fit attacked the Emperor … she expecting the . . . threw herself down on the [floor] and kept on [lamenting] and beating her breast and bemoaning the ills that had befallen her, and wished to pour forth her life on the spot, but could not. Then, although he was dying, and pain was overwhelming him, the Emperor proved himself stronger than [suffering and] death, as it were, and was distressed about the Empress, and tried with one of his daughters to subdue her excessive anguish. This was the third one, the Porphyrogenita Eudocia.
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