Recently I was re-reading Michael Psellus's Chronographia, which covers the years from 976-c. 1075? and was struck by some of the political insight he gives us into his time before the Ducae(his composition from that time on is largely panegyric as he would have said). There are interesting moments in the history where he tells us how much worse his generation is compared with that of Basil the Bulgaroctonus and other information. Some of these insights also leave us to wonder how the bureaucracy became so powerful after Basil's militant rule and to ask how Byzantium gradually restructured itself from the successor of the Roman world to more of a feudal state. What do you think?