Most likely of Scirian ancestry
The pattern Odoacer represents will be familiar by now. He is marked as a barbarian even though his success was entirely Roman. His father, Edeco, was a Hun; his mother, we are told, was...
Sidonius tells the story of a brave Roman war
The landscape was not without alarms and overreactions, betraying the tension in the air. In a poem of praise for the emperor Majorian, whose reign was short, Sidonius tells the story of a brave...
Transit Gloria Mundi
After Aetius’s death, twenty years unfold in a sequence of events of little interest except to specialists. The historian Procopius, writing 100 years later, drew the curtain on this page of Roman history: “There...
Michael IV part 26
His respiration was laboured already and he was beginning to breathe his last, so he again went to his couch and lay down. For a little while he was silent, for he had lost...
Michael IV part 25
The Emperor’s Tonsure52. The emperor, before the decease of his body, sought another more spiritual, change. He disdained the imperial rank which he was in so short a time to relinquish, mastered all his...
Michael IV part 24
This proposition being acceptable to the emperor, further communications passed between them, in great secrecy, as Alousianus had desired. In accordance with the terms of agreement, the latter advanced, apparently with the intention of...
Michael IV part 23
He referred to his father in an impersonal way, as though he himself was a member of another family. He then proceeded to speak with pride of his father’s ancestry, and made some tentative...
Michael IV part 22
The Escape Of Alousianus To Bulgaria45. The war had not yet broken out when a most astonishing thing happened — something nearly as amazing as the emperor’s action.The more agreeable of Aaron’s sons (Aaron...
Michael IV part 21
The Emperor’s Bulgarian Expedition43. This thought afflicted the emperor much more than physical suffering, and the harm it produced in him was quite different, for whereas the disease caused his body to swell, the...
Michael IV part 20
He did not claim to be the legitimate heir of these kings, but he either invented or proved that he was a collateral relation. He readily convinced the people with his story, and they...
