A SYNOPSIS OF HISTORIESBEGINNING WITH THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR NIKEPHOROS, THE EX-MINISTER OF FINANCE AND EXTENDING TO THE REIGN OF ISAAC KOMNENOS, COMPOSED BY JOHN SKYLITZES, THE KOUROPALATES WHO SERVED AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE WATCH

After the ancient writers, the best compendium of history was written, first by George the monk, synkellos to the most holy patriarch Tarasios, then by Theophanes the confessor, hegoumenos of the monastery of Agros. These men carefully read through the history books, making a précis of them in simple, unaffected language, touching exclusively on the substance of the events which had taken place. George began with the creation of the world and continued to [the time of] the tyrants, Maximian and Maximinos, his son. Theophanes took the other’s conclusion as his starting point and brought his work to an end with the death of the emperor Nikephoros, the ex-minister of finance. After [Theophanes] nobody continued their effort. There were those who attempted to do so, such as the Sicilian schoolmaster and, in our own time, the supremely honourable consul of the philosophers, [Michael] Psellos. There were others too but, because they took their task too lightly, they all failed to write with the requisite degree of accuracy. Many important events they omitted altogether and their works are of little value to posterity. They are little more than calculations of the duration of each reign and reports on who held the sceptre after whom – no more. Even when they appear to mention certain events, these writers do their readers a disservice and no good because they fail to write about them accurately. Theodore Daphnopates, Niketas the Paphlagonian, Joseph Genesios and Manuel, these two of Constantinople, Nikephoros the deacon from Phrygia, Leo from Asia, Theodore, bishop of Side and his nephew of the same name who presided over the church of Sebasteia, Demetrios, bishop of Kyzikos and the monk John the Lydian – these all set themselves their own goals: maybe the glorification of an emperor, the censure of a patriarch, or to extol a friend – each attains his own ends under the guise of writing history and every one of them falls far short of the mentality of those godly men of whom we spoke.