Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus by Michael Psellus

Author:Michael Psellus [Psellus, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Asia, Europe, Greece, History, Medieval, Middle East, Non-Fiction, Turkey & Ottoman Empire
ISBN: 9780141904559
Google: IS8vcCr0QkQC
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 1979-09-26T23:00:00+00:00

THE EMPEROR’S PERSONAL APPEARANCE

It was a marvel of beauty that Nature brought into being in the person of this man, so justly proportioned, so harmoniously fashioned, that there was no one in our time to compare with him. To this symmetry she added a robust vigour, as though she were laying firm foundations for a beautiful house. This strength that she gave him was not manifest in long hands or the great size of his limbs or other parts of his body; rather, I fancy, she hid it deep in his heart, for it was not revealed in the parts that were visible. They, in fact, were more distinguished for their beauty and proportion than for any unusual size. Indeed, his hands were only moderately big, and the same can be said of his fingers: their medium size was most noticeable, but they were endowed with more than ordinary strength, for there was no object, however hard and solid, which he could not very easily crush with his hands and break in pieces. An arm gripped by the man was painful for days. They do say that he rode very well too and was an extremely fast runner, supple and light, and absolutely without a rival in the pentathlon, so strong was he and agile and swift of foot.

His beauty, we are told, was that of Achilles or Nireus.1 But whereas, in the case of these heroes the poet’s language, having in imagination endowed them with a body compounded of all manner of beauties, barely sufficed for their description, with Constantine it was different, for Nature, having formed him in reality and brought him to perfection, with the fine skill of the sculptor shaped him and made him beautiful, surpassing with her own peculiar art the imaginative effort of the poet. And when she had made each limb proportioned to the rest of his body, his head and the parts that go with it, his hands and the parts that go with them, his thighs and his feet, she shed over each of them severally the colour that befitted them. His head she made ruddy as the sun, but all his breast, and his lower parts down to his feet, together with their corresponding back parts, she coloured the purest white all over, with exquisite accuracy. When he was in his prime, before his limbs lost their virility, anyone who cared to look at him closely would assuredly have likened his head to the sun in its glory, so radiant was it, and his hair to the rays of the sun, while in the rest of his body he would have seen the purest and most translucent crystal. His personal characteristics, too, contributed to the general harmony of the man, his refined speech, his charming conversation, and a singularly attractive smile which exercised an immediate fascination over those who saw him.

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