Discworld Books 16 - 19, by Terry Pratchett

A few words before moving on with the next batch of Discworld books. By this stage in the series, Pratchett has well fallen into a pattern for his flagship series, of repeating cycles of novels based around a recurring subset of characters. For instance, with this batch of books we have stories centred around Rincewind, then another for Granny Weatherwax and the witches, and another one for Sam Vimes and the Night-Watch, and one more for Death (or his human stand-in, by this stage his grand-daughter Susan). Though this order is not fixed, it does demonstrate that from roughly this point on to the latest Discworld instalments we have these various sub-series’ taking it in turns to have the next publication.

          Terry Pratchett’s favourite series is by now filled with familiarity – familiar characters, familiar settings, familiar themes – so one can be forgiven in thinking that perhaps he has taken to churning them out in industrial terms. To me it looks like Pratchett enjoyed certain characters, or felt them to be sufficiently interesting to reuse, that he wanted to see what he could do when he had a longer canvas to work with (rather than the admittedly short length of the average Discworld book). These sub-series’ do evolve over time, with the Night Watch increasing in size and importance, with Rincewind’s travels taking him to exotic new locations across the Disc, and Death’s character being augmented by an unfamiliar new associate, and each book is nicely self-contained enough and still witty enough to keep the series ticking-over nicely. Certain characters/settings have their particular favourites among Pratchett’s readers, and the assurance that characters such as Sam Vimes or Nanny Ogg will return again is something of a comfort.

          Whatever your preference, be it the streets of Ankh-Morpork, the tiny rural kingdom of Lancre, or some fantastic new location offered up by the possibilities of the Disc, there is something here especially for you during this period of Pratchett’s writing.

16. Soul Music

Soul Music is yet another Death-based book, and picks up where Mort left off. Death has had enough, and leaves his job as the Grim Reaper to get away from it all – to forget. This leaves the family business to fall to his only relative, his estranged teenage granddaughter, Susan. Having gone through a modern education which instilled in her a firm belief in the rational, Susan now finds that the world is more peculiar than she believed – with a skeletal grandfather, a family home of infinite proportions, and a new career which involves a scythe. Meanwhile in Ankh-Morpork, a country-born musician ends up channelling a dangerous new force that’s set to take over the world. It’s called Music With Rocks In.

          So this book can best be described as Mort meets Moving Pictures. It retreads ground we’ve already gone through, with little new thought other than a few humorous song or band references scattered about. To say Soul Music is bad is not wholly accurate; it’s amusing, and the characters are as good as ever, but it doesn’t feel quite like the departure the series needed. Pratchett is acting as though he’s not trying to give us Mort 2, presenting us with a new protagonist to supplement Death and his world, but it doesn’t feel any more fresh than it could be. This is the third time in the series that Death has gone off on some tryst, and it’s by far the least interesting yet. Susan herself, whilst a relatively strong-minded protagonist, is not really that engaging as Pratchett characters go, and this is nothing to say of the major problem with this book; how do you present music in a written format? It’s difficult, and one can only do it in vague abstractions and metaphors. Despite his making a fairly good attempt, I don’t think Pratchett quite pulls it off. Then again, I’m not sure anyone could. Music is music, and it can only really stand as itself. It can’t be described or presented in mere written language, and Pratchett is not the first nor the last to have failed in this respect. It’s the same problem with trying to review music. I myself have trouble enough trying to review books, things actually built out of words; but attempting to write about something that can only be written about in a severely specialised vocabulary or nonsensical pseudo-poetry is an incredible challenge. I doubt that there’s actually any real way to do this.

          Soul Music... my advice is to leave it be. Well, the wizards are as good as always, and I particularly enjoyed the casual swipes they took against students. And the beggars of Ankh-Morpork were a good new collective character. But overall Soul Music was one of the weaker entries in the series.

17. Interesting Times

Another Rincewind book, rather than parodying fantasy or Doctor Faustus this instalment instead plonks Rincewind on the other side of the Disc, in the fabled Agatean Empire of the Counterweight Continent. Here he finds an evil, authoritarian and totalitarian regime ruled by a mad old dying emperor and the sinister Lord Hong, where the downtrodden masses would not dare to challenge the unfair state their country is in. But for a new rebel movement who seek to overthrow the regime, inspired by the radical composition of the Disc’s first ever Tourist Twoflower, named What I Did On My Holidays.

  

        Interesting Times is something of a hark back to the first Discworld books, and besides Rincewind inevitably meeting up with Twoflower for the first time since book 2, we also witness the return of the aged barbarian hero, Cohen. Leading a tiny band of similarly geriatric barbarians, Ghenghiz Cohen is mounting what he considers to be an invasion of the empire. His ultimate goal: to break into the Forbidden Palace and carry out the greatest theft of his career.

          Overall, this book is a fairly good example of the Discworld series as a whole. It is amusing, appropriately cynical, pokes fun at many real-world parallels and tells a more or less satisfying story while it does so. It is certainly the best of Rincewind’s adventures thus far, giving the first ever Discworld protagonist a suitable field on which to ply his unique character traits for our enjoyment, while the welcome return of Cohen the Barbarian provides an excellent secondary plot which complements Rincewind’s own story. Especially it is the ridiculous situation of echoing Ghengis Khan’s invasion of China, by having the Mongol hordes replaced by just seven old men sneaking into the empire, which is probably the best aspect to this book; the fact that they get as far as the throne room before any of the imperial administrators realize that they have been invaded by a barbarian menace is a wonderful joke, turning the traditional image of rampaging barbarian hordes on its head. Other subjects include cynicism towards the whole idea of a ‘people’s revolution’ – i.e. does the average buffalo farmer really care or even know if the country is being run for his own good or not.

          If one had a criticism of this book, then it might be its finding humour through stereotyping East-Asian culture and history. A number of traditional aspects of Chinese or Japanese culture, customs and life are mashed together to create the world of the Agateans, but it all comes across as a Westerner’s view of the East. It’s not especially cruel or vindictive image, but it would certainly cause the ghost of Edward Said to rattle his chains somewhat. Certain ideas, such as a Great Wall surrounding the empire, are reused to great effect. The Wall for instance is not actually a defence against ‘barbarian’ invaders, but rather is tool of the empire to psychologically reinforce their control over the general populace within. It’s a wall to keep people in, rather than keep people out. An example of a less intelligent use of East-Asian symbols is with the Discworld equivalent of sumo wrestlers, for here we find a traditional aspect of Japanese culture planted in the Agatean Empire solely for a ‘point and laugh’ type of humour. Oh, look at these funny fat men who spend their lives eating and wrestling, the book seems to say, and leaves it at that. Pratchett is usually a tad better than that.

          So, these caveats aside, this is a good Discworld story. Rincewind is an all-round good protagonist, perhaps not as good as the Witches or the Watch, but still decent, while Cohen the Barbarian propels the story along with gusto. I was hoping that a reunion between Rincewind and Twoflower would have been used to much greater effect than we find in this book, as it was the seminal partnership of the series, but it was not quite as special as it ought to have been.

18. Maskerade

The next book featuring the Witches of Lancre, Maskerade takes hefty inspiration from the Phantom of the Opera. With the third member of their coven having left witchcraft to become Queen of Lancre, the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg find themselves at a loose end. You really need three witches to meet at some blasted heath, not just two. It simply doesn’t work. In order to correct this woeful imbalance, they decide to try to recruit a promising young village girl, Agnes Nitt, to fill the vacancy left by Magrat, only to find that Agnes has made her way to Ankh-Morpork to find her fortune singing in the Opera House there. Granny and Nanny set off in pursuit – especially as Nanny has recently had her cookery book published there, and needs to extract some serious royalties from the publishers.

          Meanwhile in the city, Agnes is now going by the name of Perdita X. Nitt because she

believes it makes her sound more mysterious and exciting, and quickly finds herself in an Opera House in crisis. Murders are taking place within the building, murders perpetrated by the so-called ‘Opera Ghost’, a sinister individual who at once tries to help the Opera, or at random try to bring the operation crashing to a bloody end. Once the witches arrive in Ankh-Morpork, it is up to them and Agnes to get to the bottom of this mystery, unmask the killer, and work out if they will once again be a coven of three.

          Overall, the plot is basically a straight parody of The Phantom of the Opera (a 1910 French novel, famously later adapted by Hollywood and then by Andrew Lloyd Webber). In Maskerade, the beautiful prima donna of the Opera, Christine, apparently can’t actually sing all that well, prompting the management to appoint overweight and average-looking Agnes Nitt to sing over the top of her while Christine pretends to sing the parts. The use of the ‘Phantom’ cliché by not one, but two different characters makes things a little more interesting, and the inclusion of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and a few other Discworld mainstays adds the typically Pratchettean humorous touch, but overall the story is nothing special. Just a case of Discworld characters ending up in a more famous tale, somewhat like Wyrd Sisters only a little less interesting.

          For those who enjoy Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg (and why wouldn’t you? They’re amazing), Maskerade does not disappoint, and Agnes Nitt is a welcome new addition to the ensemble of this particular sub-series. As a stand-alone work it’s not that great, unfortunately – a case of more of the same, with no especially interesting or original ideas at its core. Carry on with it, if you feel like doing so, but there’s nothing more to it than that. 

19. Feet of Clay

As we have gone through three of the main characters of the Discworld franchise already in this batch of novels, it was only a matter of time before Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch would turn up once again. His latest unstoppable crime involves massive walking clay automatons, a critically ill Lord Vetinari, and the infamous Corporal Nobby Nobbs being implicated as a member of the aristocracy.

          So this is the latest Same Vimes book, the third to feature Ankh-Morpork’s cynical

hard-bitten alcoholic watch captain. The Night Watch has come a long way since the days of Guards! Guards!, employing over thirty watchmen (although ‘men’ might be a somewhat redundant title, as most of the Watch are either Dwarfs, Trolls, Gargoyles, or a female werewolf). When two old men on opposite sides of the city are brutally murdered, the finger of suspicion soon points to Ankh-Morpork’s silent cohort of Golems, artificial clay men powered by ancient religious writings who have naturally been shunted to the very bottom of the city’s pecking order. On top of this mystery a larger crisis unfolds when the absolute ruler of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, winds up ill and bedbound after a suspected poisoning. The city is perhaps days away from chaos and from a political revolution, and as usual Commander Vimes has to sort the whole mess out without any helpful Clues left at the scene of the crime. Whatever the crime actually was.

          In this book we have our usual roster of characters from Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms, with one or two interesting new additions. For comic relief we have Constable Visit (short for: Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets), who is a member of the Disc’s equivalent of Jehovah’s Witnesses, while Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, the Watch’s new Dwarfish forensics ‘expert’, establishes her character by gradually becoming the city’s first out-and-proud female Dwarf. Amidst these tentative explorations into the subject of gender identity we have a more direct subject addressed by the story; the notion of slavery and oppression, as raised by the Golems. The Golems are interesting characters, unable to speak and having to follow the dogma literally written into their heads. Many people in Ankh-Morpork do not consider them to be alive, and do not trust them in the slightest. It takes hard-headed and naturally mistrustful Commander Vimes and archetypal ‘good-guy’ Captain Carrot to look at the situation and work out when something has gone seriously wrong.

          Overall, I would say Feet of Clay is a fairly decent entry in the series as a whole. The watchmen are entertaining characters, and the plot is fairly all right – as the Night Watch novels usually are. Vimes himself is a good protagonist, especially his own cynical deconstruction of the murder mystery genre which he makes during the course of the story. As with the other entries in this period of the Discworld series, if you like this particular character, then by all means read this book. Otherwise, as a standalone novel, it’s not that special.

A Brief Conclusion in Regard to these four Books

As far as the Disworld books go, this latest batch of novels is no more complex or adventurous than any of Pratchett’s other works. This is not a bad thing, as the Discworld stories can either be vague and confused, or archetypal enough that the plot plays out how you would expect. As Pratchett got over his teething troubles many many books previously, each latest Discworld story plays the beats it’s meant to and marches inexorably through a good and entertaining plot until it reaches its semi-satisfying conclusion. I call them semi-satisfying because they just end up leaving you wanting more, to quench the thirst they’ve left behind. Discworld books by this stage of the series are certainly a more-ish type of literature, never quite filling you up, but always entertaining you on the way.

          If you’re not already a fan of the series, I’m not sure there’s much here that I would recommend for you. You would be better off reading one of the earlier books, such as Mort or Guards! Guards!. If I had to pick a favourite out of the four I’ve just reviewed, it would probably be Interesting Times, with Feet of Clay as a close second. I very much enjoy both the Vimes books and the Witches of Lancre, but the fact that the latest Witches book is simply a parody of Phantom of the Opera does not count in its favour. So yes.  

Biblioworld 5

Pratchett, Terry. Soul Music. Corgi. (1995 [1994])

Pratchett, Terry. Interesting Times. Corgi. (1995 [1994])

Pratchett, Terry. Maskerade. Corgi. (1996 [1995])

Pratchett, Terry. Feet of Clay. Corgi. (1997 [1996])

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

There are certain books which are a battle to get through, but which nevertheless leave you feeling as though you have achieved something. With On the Road by Jack Kerouac, it is a battle to get through each and every paragraph, and leaves you with a sense of having achieved absolutely nothing. I hated every moment of it. I have had my fair share of post-War and pre-War American authors, but for me Kerouac has proven to be the most tedious so far – and that’s including Ernest Hemingway.

The story of On the Road is a little difficult to summarize, because there isn’t one. Essentially we are narrated by a chap called Sal Paradise – a ridiculous name for an otherwise inconsequential character – a young man with a bit of wanderlust who roves around America with his layabout friends for no real reason. The main driving force behind his wanderings seems to be his friend and role-model Dean Moriarty, a habitual petty-criminal, drunkard and adulterer, whose taste for driving or hitching around the States is even greater than Sal’s. Together or apart, the two characters traipse from one coast to another and back again, drinking and whoring along the way, and with no actual purpose on their minds. At first Sal at least has a quest; to hitch his way to the west coast to get a job aboard a ship, but his plans fall through and he has to get back again. That is the rough plot synopsis of the first quarter of the book. Once he’s back home again, having briefly fallen in love with a Mexican girl before abandoning her, he gets dragged off by Dean once more on a journey to nowhere in particular, and that sums up the rest of the book.

So you could describe this book as a sort of travelogue, a story with no purpose other than to give us a backseat trip with a couple of hippie lowlifes as they tour the massive country that is America. Kerouac never ceases to give us the names of the great cities along the route, but seems rather unwilling to show us anything of them. He does not want to spend any time describing the places he travels through, or even give much of a general impression of them. Whenever Sal turns up at a new destination it’s just a case of ‘I go here, do that, drink, buy food, find somewhere to sleep, perv after girls, and move on’. There’s nothing more than that, really.

   That’s perhaps the problem with Kerouac. I know it’s a terrible cliché that a story-teller should Show and Not Tell, but Kerouac definitely seems to be a Tell sort of chap, and he’s not even telling us much. He’s so busy trying to give us an impression of what Sal did in this particular place, and then what he did next and what he did after that, that we never really get more than surface-deep into the story. There’s no poetry to it at all, just some bloke telling you what he got up to on his adventures. Rarely does he pause long enough for you to get any kind of handle on the story, to the extent that you never really get to care about where he is or what he’s doing – and as such, you rarely know what’s actually happening in the story. Not that anything ever happens in the story, this being a crucial part of the problem. It’s just one thing after another, none of which are worth paying attention to, and that’s about it.

So here we have a book with very little actual detail, and no sort of narrative. You’d expect it to be quite a short book in that case, but you’d be wrong, for On the Road is fairly long by anyone’s standards, and it’s a wonder as to why that is. There’s no detail, no story, no sprawling pages of dialogue, so what is it actually comprised of? As far as I can work out, each hefty paragraph is packed with nothing but incidental details, about what Sal does, and half-sketches of people he’s met and places he’s passed. I’d try to reproduce some of it in an excerpt here, but to give you the full picture I’d have to do a whole paragraph selected at random from somewhere in the mass of the novel – and I’m not going to subject anyone to that, least of all myself. The characters spend their time living hand-to-mouth and once or twice having a run-in with the law, meeting up with other layabouts or 'retired' layabouts, and later on having the best time in Mexico by drinking, driving sweatily through the jungle and screwing, because that proud country seems like some sort of 'Beat Generation' heaven for reasons which feel a little difficult to grasp.

Perhaps it would have been cute if we had a protagonist I actually found interesting in any way, or if Dean Moriarty was remotely likeable. Alas we have two irritating, unpleasant individuals that I would purposefully steer clear of if I had met them in real life. Dean in particular is a scumbag, a layabout who conceitedly philosophizes on quasi-mystical bullshit and on how much he loves his women all the while he screws, cheats and steals his way through life, who cares for nothing other than dragging people on his pointless excursions and showing up to wreck order and stability. He is irresponsible to the extreme, which seems to be about the only thing inside his whole character. His friends, Sal Paradise included, casually call him 'mad', but he just seems like a regular dickhead.

What other characters can be found here? None whatsoever, and certainly not anything like a female character. In fact, of the many multitude sins of this book, I would find its misogynistic mindset one of the least palatable things about it. The many female characters, of whom there are quite a few, are generally treated as little more than objects within the text, little more than playthings for the male characters. We have our eyes firmly fixed on Sal and Dean, and occasionally a lady or two can be brought along for the ride, picked up and dropped off at various times with little consequence, or else happy reactive creatures who occasionally try and spoil the fun by getting angry. This is very much a ‘masculine’ book, and I don’t mean that in a positive way.

Perhaps it would seem better if we looked at the novel in its original context; of a counterculture in 1950s America. On the Road is certainly very different from what we might expect of this time, hurriedly written-out and showcasing the rough and impoverished youth-culture underbelly of the post-War United States, replete with drink and drugs, easy sex and new musical trends, with its middle-finger held up in an almighty “Fuck-You” to those who doubt that a greater truth can be found amidst the highways and slums of this sprawling nation. If anything, this book is at least adequate in trying to get across the true scale of this continent-sprawling country, peppered with near countless cities and towns pretty much identical and uninteresting in their make up, which are in turn separated by vast distances of virtually unspoilt wilderness. Maybe that’s what the book thinks it’s trying to be, and maybe that’s what its fans and zealots believed it was back in the day, and what its modern adherents still maintain it can be in this day and age. To me, however, it looks as though it was little more than a fad, something slightly different and a little bit interesting that nevertheless has not stood the test of time, and is nowadays just a tedious brick whose ‘higher-truths’ don’t really apply anymore, if one can find them amidst the tedious, bloated prose.

So yes, On the Road is not very good, not worth reading, and is probably best avoided. It breaks moulds only by finding fresh new ways to be dull, and you can probably use your time to do something more productive.

Bibliouac

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. St. Ives: Penguin. (1972 [First published 1957])

ByzReview: Michaels Psellos and Attaleiates

It appears that in this review we shall have to come face-to-face with one of Byzantium’s most notorious historians – the 11^th Century philosopher and courtier, Constantine (Michael) Psellos. Psellos was in a unique position to tell the history of the empire during this most turbulent time, having served nearly a dozen separate rulers during his long and messy career in the palace. Psellos’ Chronographia, just one of many pieces of writing of his we still have available to us today, is a long history of the emperors of this century told reign by reign, and as Psellos himself apparently knew and advised many of these Byzantine rulers, he goes into excruciating detail on their general character and vices. As an authority on the 11^th century court and history Psellos is often one of the first considered, though he is by no means the only. 

The Byzantine Empire in one of its most popular shapes

                With the death of the childless Basil II in 1025, the imperial throne was to see a particularly high turnover of emperors during the subsequent decades, including Basil’s brother Constantine VIII, who ruled for a further three years, before it passed into the hands of Constantine’s daughters. The empress Zoe, one of the last descendents of the Macedonian dynasty, brought four separate emperors to power during the first half of the 11^th Century, and after the death of her sister in 1056 the throne was once again up for grabs. The short-lived Michael VI Bringas (r.1056-1057) was overthrown by the military aristocrat Isaac I Komnenos (r.1057-1059), who later fell ill and was persuaded to pass power over to the influential courtier Constantine Doukas and his family. Amidst all these struggles for power, the imperial finances were failing and a number of invasions took place as frontier-security was eroded. In particular the arrival of the Seljuk Turks on the eastern fringes of the empire was to have lasting consequences for Roman and world history.

                Things were to go from bad to worse when Constantine X Doukas (r.1059-1067) died, leaving an underage son as emperor – always a risky thing to do. At first his widow, Eudokia, ruled as regent for the young emperor Michael, but it wasn’t long before another military aristocrat was to lay his hands on the shiny red boots of imperial power. The short but momentous reign of Romanos IV Diogenes (r.1068-1071) was dominated by attempts to check the borders of the empire against foreign invasions, which eventually culminated in the Battle of Manzikert against the Seljuk Turkish invaders in 1071. Hailed as a disastrous defeat for Byzantium, the confrontation at Manzikert resulted in Romanos IV being captured, and a short while later a palace coup back in Constantinople brought Michael VII Doukas (r. 1071-1078), the son of the late Constantine X, back into to nominal power. The young emperor and his government were incapable of holding back the Turkish advance, and before long most of Anatolia had fallen into enemy hands. After years of misrule by Michael VII and

The empire a few years after the Battle of Manzikert.

his ministers, several rebellions broke out against his incapable rule, one in the west led by a certain Nikephoros Bryennios, and one in the east led by one Nikephoros Botaneiates. The next emperor, then, looked likely to be a Nikephoros, and sure enough it was the eastern rebellion led by Botaneiates which succeeded in deposing Michael VII first. 

                As I tend to do in these reviews of Byzantine historical narratives, I’ll include here a short roundup of the emperors covered by these histories especially, though the accounts mentioned here do begin with earlier emperors: 

Constantine IX Monomachos   (1042 – 1055) – Last husband of the empress Zoe

Theodora                                 (1055 – 1056) – The empress Zoe’s sister. Last ruler of Macedonian blood

Michael VI Bringas, ‘the Aged’ (1056 – 1057) – Theodora’s appointed successor

Isaac I Komnenos                   (1057 – 1059) – Overthrew Michael VI in a military rebellion

Constantine X Doukas              (1059 – 1067) – Appointed successor by Isaac I

Romanos IV Diogenes             (1068 – 1071) – Married the empress Eudokia, widow of Constantine X

Michael VII Doukas                  (1071 – 1078) – Son of Constantine X, overthrew Romanos IV

           

Nikephoros III Botaneiates     (1078 – 1081) – Overthrew Michael VII in a military rebellion

The long and exciting Chronograhia of Michael Psellos begins with a short account of the reign of Basil II, juxtaposing him with the subsequent and less glorious reign of his brother Constantine VIII (r.1025-1028). Basil is generally shown to be a great and firm ruler, putting down rebellions and leaving the treasury full of money, which his successors foolishly squander. The biographical portraits drawn by Psellos are often rather complex, showing us a side to these emperors which other histories tend to not. The empress Zoe’s lusty attachment to Michael IV the Paphlagonian, whom she marries and grants the imperial position, Michael V’s foolishness in trying to oust Zoe from power , the many quirks and vices of Constantine IX Monomachos – the emperor to whom our writer devotes the most space and perhaps most nuanced story – all are treated with a peculiarly Psellosian flavour.

Psellos, with Michael VII

The aspect of Psellos’ work which makes it especially intriguing to both the historian and the general reader is the extent to which our dear friend Psellos inserts himself into his own narrative. How often does Psellos appear as an active protagonist within this history, telling us of his life story, of his immense intelligence and rhetorical abilities, or trying to cover his own arse by explaining himself and his circumstances? Quite a lot, let me tell you. If one is to believe his words, then Psellos was not only a chief advisor and close friend to Constantine IX, but was also present at the blinding of Michael V beforehand, was one of the chief negotiators for Michael VI to the rebel Isaac Komnenos, subsequently getting in as a senior member of Isaac’s court, was present at the exact moment that Romanos IV Diogenes became emperor, and then became a principal advisor to Michael VII Doukas. Wow. This man was there at all the big moments of the middle 11^th century. If he really was everywhere he tells us, I wonder how much he’s not telling us. Perhaps that he was involved in the coup against Romanos IV Diogenes, for example, and that it was necessary for him to prop up useless, foolish and incapable emperors such as Michael VII. 

So, after years of moving his way through the corridors of power, briefly winding up in a monastery only once (and voluntarily at that), Michael Psellos’ narrative finally judders to a halt. Psellos’ account is left without a definite finish, and comes to an end precisely when a certain Nikephoros Botaneiates was leading a rebellion against Michael VII. The last pages consist of an oration or letter from the emperor Michael, imploring Botaneiates to cease his insurrection – an ominous end to the text, considering we know exactly what happened thereafter. Psellos’ ultimate fate is unknown, while Michael VII was to end up consigned to a monastery after Nikephoros Botaneiates took the throne. What happened to our beloved narrator we don’t really know. Was he killed during Botaneiates’ uprising? Perhaps he was blinded, suffering the same grisly fate as Romanos IV or else being consigned to a monastery. Maybe he ingratiated himself to the new emperor, or was sidelined in government only to die sometime later. Or maybe he quit politics once again, and headed back to monastic seclusion for the last years of his life. Nobody knows, sadly. All we know is that he left behind a substantial body of literature, not just his Chronographia but also letters, orations, scientific and theological texts. He was a true polymath, and he himself knew it. 

I shall now discuss, for the remainder of this review, yet another historian of the 11^th century – and another one who goes by the name of Michael. The History of Michael Attaleiates is rather different to what has come before, both Psellos’ work and other previous historians. Attaleiates himself was a wealthy judge of aristocratic origin, active in the later years of the 11^th century who went on to write a history for the reign of Nikephoros III Botaneiates. Beginning in the reign of Michael IV the Paphlagonian – an arbitrarily chosen emperor, from what I can tell – Attaleiates examines the reign of each subsequent emperor mostly through the eyes of military events. We get less of Psellos’ in-depth character assessments of the 11^th century emperors, with condemnations and praisings, and instead get more of a focus on what happened in terms of world events, border conflicts and internal rebellions, being brief and lacking in detail. At least, that’s how it starts. After the reign of Constantine IX, Attaleiates begins to spend more time and more care discussing the events of history, which makes a certain amount of sense – after all, he would have a more intimate knowledge and more reason to talk about more recent history, and as his intended audience is none other than his new imperial patron it would make sense. The lions’ share of the book is dedicated to the events surrounding the reign of Romanos IV Diogenes and the decade after, and two thirds into the narrative we finally see the main impetus for Attaleiates’ work – to be a shameless panegyric.

Nikephoros III with his wife, Maria of Alania

This particular emperor, Nikephoros Botaneiates, was a relatively minor and unimportant ruler in the grand scheme of the 11^th century. An aristocratic usurper who deposed the useless emperor Michael VII Doukas in 1078, Botaneiates was only to rule for about three years before he likewise fell prey to another aristocratic usurper, Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081 – 1118). The interesting thing is that Alexios was to prove significantly more pivotal in the grand scheme of history than his immediate predecessor, ruling for nearly four decades, establishing his family as the unassailable ruling dynasty of Byzantium, and seemingly pushing back the tide of enemies which was engulfing the empire. It is therefore little wonder that this emperor, and not Nikephoros III, who was to become the greater and more famous to posterity. Botaneiates really accomplished nothing during his reign, and is perhaps one of the most forgettable of all the emperors to rule during the troubled 11^th century – yet he appeared at one of the most interesting moments in this entire historiographical schema.

With the accession of Botaneiates, Michael Attaleiates chose this exact moment to write his own history of Byzantium in the 11^th century, and just as Psellos shamelessly praised the emperor he was serving at the time of writing, so Attaleiates did likewise – but more so. The entire last third of Attaleiates’ work is dedicated to describing the life, family, ancestry and reign of Nikephoros Botaneiates, showing this one emperor in particular to be a shining example of a magnificent, heroic, just and generous ruler. It is sycophantic to say the least, and a little bit cringe-worthy to read – but worse than that, it feels even a little bit passionless as far as panegyrics go. He hits every note he needs to, as though he’s following a textbook on how to write sickening love letters to your all-powerful  autocrat with whom you want to ingratiate yourself, from the claiming that he’s descended from an illustrious ancient Roman family and that his father and grandfather were mighty and wise heroes who helped previous emperors to greatness, to saying that every act and policy he carries out is wonderful and perfect and will help everyone, to basically stating that he has never done anything wrong and can never do anything wrong. It’s all the more sobering when one remembers that this man had only ruled for two years, and was to be deposed less than a year later having achieved nothing of any lasting consequence. It’s sad, but this is the way history goes.

Besides praising Nikephoros III, the History of Attaleiates is interesting in other regards. As a detailed narrative of the events from the death of Constantine X to the accession of Nikephoros III this work holds a certain usefulness, considering that this period deals with the all-important Battle of Manzikert – an event which Psellos essentially decides to hurry over, for dubious reasons. We gain a little peak at the mechanics of government at the time which could result in power changing hands violently like this, and as a stage-setter for Alexios I Komenos’ assumption of the throne. Aside from this, Attaleiates is a relatively interesting read which doesn’t get bogged down in the author’s own desire to explain himself, as Psellos does. All in all, it’s a relatively good historical narrative which offers a fascinating glimpse into one specific moment in Byzantine history, sandwiched inside a passionless note-perfect panegyric.

So this then is a series of histories of the 11^th century, an era which saw the need for several different historical accounts. The end of the Macedonian epoch, the Seljuk invasion, the Doukas emperors, the brief rule of Nikephoros III Botaneiates, and the eventual accession of Alexios I Komnenos all served to alter the Byzantine-Roman empire from what it had once been. It is fortunate that we have such interesting and varied historical sources available to us for this most important moment in world history. Next time, we shall delve into the work of Nikephoros Bryennios and, more importantly, that of his wife – the famous Byzantine authoress Anna Komnene.

Bibliozantium 14

Psellos, Michael. Chronographie ou Histoire d'un siècle de Byzance (976–1077). Emile Renauld (ed). In two volumes. (Paris, 1926/1928).

Imperatori di Bisanzio (Cronografia). Salvatore Impellizzeri (ed). In two volumes. (Vicenza, 1984).

Michael Psellus. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers – The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. Translated by E.R.A. Sewter.  [Penguin], (St. Ives, 1966).

Michaelis Pselli Historia Syntomos. W.J. Aerts (ed). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae], 30, (1990).

Michaelis Attaliotae Historia. I. Bekker (ed). Bonn. [Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae], 4, (1853).

Michaelis Attaliatae Historia. Eudoxos Th. Tsolakis (ed). Athens: Academia Atheniensis. [Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae], 50, (2011).

Michael Attaleiates. The History. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis and Dimitris Krallis. Washington D.C: Harvard University Press. [Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library], 16, (2012).

[A Brief Explanation: The number of different editions and translations of Psellos various works is probably too great to attempt an exhaustive collection here, in this humble bibliography. Every edition of everything written by Psellos is far too much. I’ve just included a couple of editions of his Chronographia here. The first one is one of the earliest useable editions of the text, with French. The second entry is an updated edition, complete with Italian translation. The third is the standard English translation by E.R.A Sewter, which can be easily and cheaply acquired as a Penguin edition – or instantly and for free, as the entire translation can be found online. The last three entries are for Michael Attaleiates – the first being the old Bonn text, the second being a modern CFHB edition, the third being a modern English translation with facing text, which is probably the best one to dig up if you’re interested.

                Also included in the list is a certain Historia Syntomos, another text attributed to Michael Psellos. Though not of especial relevance in this review, I did want to write a brief word on this last text and include it in this bibliography for no other reason than that I quite like it as a source and a text. As it was too weighty to include in the main body of this review, I have added it down below in case anyone has the slightest interest in this curious little text].

The Historia Syntomos attributed to Michael Psellos could be described as a brief chronicle of the Roman state from its foundation in ancient times up until the reign of Basil II. As with Psellos’ more famous work, the Chronographia, the Historia Syntomos concerns itself almost exclusively with biographical snippets of all the emperors from the earliest days of Rome down to the beginning of the 11^th century. It is arranged in a strictly chronological order, though this shorter work which deals with a much greater period of time – mentioning just about every Roman ruler from Romulus onwards – means that each emperor is given a much briefer section of writing. In most cases an emperor is given just a short paragraph, in which a general biographical picture is painted, one or two historic deeds are described, and one or two quotations supplied. The writer of this ‘history’ is not seeking to compose a complete universal history of the empire, but rather to arrange a series of short biographical blobs in order of chronology.

                The information found within this text is largely culled from earlier sources, and is probably not of especially great historical value. It could be considered a general instruction book for future emperors – for which they can read and gain a brief overview of their predecessors, what they did wrong, and any wise words they could share to a current ruler of the empire. It is interesting to read, just because it attempts to bring together a list and brief history of all the Roman emperors from legendary times. The list begins with the founding of Rome by Romulus, includes all of the legendary seven kings of Rome, and then moves onto a few of the consuls of the early Republic. Unable to find many things to say about the Republican consuls – who were, after all, not actually monarchs – the list picks up again with Julius Caesar and Augustus, and then moves on in a rational order from there. There are a few factual errors, such as family connections between emperors, but the basic image of a uniform Roman state which begins in 732 BCE and carries on without interruption up to the 11^th century is maintained throughout the text.

                This is most interesting for the Byzantine historian, for it brazenly and unquestioningly reinforces one of the great pillars of Byzantine ideology – that their empire is one and the same with the old Roman empire of antiquity. The Roman state began when Romulus and Remus founded the city of Rome, became a republic, built an empire, converted to Christianity, moved its capital to the east, and continued unbroken down to the days of our writer. That Basil II is the last emperor mentioned in this text is also very interesting, for if one does believe that Michael Psellos composed this text, then it serves as something of a prologue to Psellos’ Chronographia, ending with the emperor who serves as the starting point for that work. It’s mostly conjecture this, but it’s a point I find interesting.