Istanbul

5. In appearance he resembles an old man somewhat, with something about him of the thinker or pedagogue. His eyes are intent, his brow neither haughty nor beetling, like that of a man who...

He knew all about the mint, the exact weight of a stater, how a touchstone functioned, what proportion of precious metal was included in every gold coin. In short, his information on the whole...

And I would ask my readers not to distrust my account, nor to regard with suspicion the words that I shall presently write here, because they are penned during this emperor’s lifetime. The very...

42. So far the story has proceeded without a hitch: I have taken you along ‘the royal, smooth highway’, as the Holy Scripture has it. To pass on to what happened thereafter is a...

40. Diogenes’s army was broken and routed. Andronicus, meanwhile, returned in triumph with Crispinus to the tent which had been prepared for him. Later, one of the knights came up, bringing to the general...

His second object was to escape Diogenes’s notice when he drew near the passes into Cilicia, to make his way quietly through the tortuous mountain defiles, and after traversing all the difficult parts, to...

34. As a matter of fact this defeat marked the beginning of Diogenes’s downfall. With a handful of his followers, he took refuge in a minor fortress,**276 and he would very soon have fallen...

31. In matters of this kind, history is apt to repeat itself. You find the same sort of things happening, the same sort of things being said. In this case, men differed widely in...

28. That was the state of affairs, when Michael, fearing for his own safety and distrusting the cruel nature of Diogenes, decided on his own course of action. The plan he adopted undoubtedly saved...

Again and again I managed to effect a settlement between them, but Michael was so obsessed with the idea that he must never oppose his mother, that even the thought of meeting her face...