Once you grasp that, you will then be amazed by the meticulous skill and good judgment with which Papaioannou has brought it to completion. Here are two reasons why you should check it out and peruse it, even if you had not heard of Psellos before this.įirst, you will be shocked by the sheer challenge that was posed by assembling and editing this collection, specifically by its paleographical enormity and philological complexity. After twenty years of hard labor, Stratis Papaioannou has delivered the first critical edition of all of Psellos’ letters, some 550 of them plus assorted dubia, spuria, fragmenta, and other manuscript detritus. Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, will have to do, though the French, Italian, modern Greek, and German translations are all better). I strongly recommend that you read it too (the Penguin translation by E. He was active in politics and wrote texts in almost every genre of the Greek literature of the time, including a hugely entertaining history of his times, the Chronographia, which is acerbic and autobiographical. Yes, Michael Psellos was a Byzantine intellectual (of the eleventh century).
You’ve made it this far, so give me the chance to persuade you that it is worth your while to at least glance at this new edition, and even read some of the texts in it.
Recent scholars have shattered forever the view that the Byzantine Age was just a shabby and disreputable appendage to the Roman Empire Psellus, a man of striking refinement and humanity, both portrays and exemplifies at its best the Byzantine way of life.An appeal to my colleagues in Classics: please don’t skip over this review just because you don’t recognize the name Michael Psellos and assume that he was some Byzantine or medieval author unrelated to your discipline. His vivid and forceful chronicle, full of psychological insight and deep understanding of power politics, is a historical and literary document of the first importance. For the following half-century of extraordinary decline, our main source is Michael Psellus, one of the greatest courtiers and men of letters of the age. 1025, after fifty glorious years as sole emperor, ushered in decades of turbulence, corruption, and incompetence. For the following half-century of extraordinary decline, our main source is Michael Psellus, one of the gr.
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