Chronographia

An excerpt from the:

INTRODUCTION

GIBBON'S legend of a decadent East Roman Empire dies hard in ordinary English circles. But research of the last half century should by now have made it abundantly clear that Byzantine civilization can hold its own in the medieval world. That is not to deny that it had its ups and downs and changed a good deal in character in the course of more than a thousand years. The eleventh century, in which Michael Psellus lived, was a crucial time, not because of the f...