"Indeed, the rumor was already being bruited about, that Alexius was having sexual intercourse with the young Emperor’s mother and that he planned to depose the young monarch, to mount both mother and throne." (128)

"The protosebastos Alexius raged furiously; confident of his own power and his great influence over the Empress, he was like the serpent which, having fed upon an abundance of evils herbs, is terrible to look upon. [Iliad, IX, 238] Nothing whatsoever could be done except through him. And if someone accomplished something in secret by begging a favor from the Empress or by having his petition granted while the Emperor [Alexius] was engrossed in playing with nuts or casting pebbles, even this did not escape his attention. To assure that the accomplishments of others would be returned to him for review like the whirl of eddying waters, he had the Emperor promulgate a decree that henceforth no document signed by the imperial hand would be valid unless first reviewed by Alexius and validated by his notation "Approved" in frog-green ink. He made his moves freely as though playing a game of draughts, and all the revenues which had been collected with much sweat by the preceding Comnenian Emperors who, I might add, stripped even the indigent, were channeled to the protosebastos and the Empress; and that was fulfilled which Archilochus [the ancient Greek mercenary and lyric poet] plainly wrote, that what has been amassed at the expense of much time and labor often flows into the belly of the whore." (130)

During the revolt of Maria porphyrogenita in the spring of 1181, Nicetas says that "[t]he protosebastos clung to the palace apartments like an octopus clamping its suckers on a rock." (131)

After relating the start of Andronicus Comnenus’s revolt in late 1181, Nicetas says the following about the protosebastos’s response:

"The protosebastos did not completely ignore these events, even though he was unmanly and not only spent the early morning in sound sleep, but also wasted most of the day sleeping. So that the sunlight, welcomed by other men, should not force open hsi eyes because of its brightness, he darkened his bedroom with opaque curtains and made the darkness his secret place whenever dealing with important matters. It would be closer to the truth to say that, delighting in dark deeds, he dispersed the nocturnal darkness with artificial light, and when the sun rose in the eastern horizon, nudging the wild beasts from their alir, he shut out the light with carpets and purple curtains. An effeminate dullard . . . . he used the Emperor’s mother as an advance fortification [ at least he didn’t say "breastwork" – A.J.] or, to tell the truth, as an irresistible mollification (for she pulled in everyone as though on a line by the radiance of her appearance, her pearly countenance, her even disposition, candore, and charm of speech) winning over with bribes those who had suffered arbitrary treatment and lulling them to sleep with lavish gifts so as to gain their allegiance to himself as second in command to the Empress." (317)

Of Alexius’s ultimate downfall, Nicetas says the following:

"Thus ended the joint reign of the protosebastos ore, rather, his tyranny, which was never firmly established. Had his hands been armed for battle and his fingers instructed for war, and had he not been a weakling warrior and a stammerer spending half the day snoring, he could have barred Andronicus’s way into the City and preserved himself from the evil of that time. He could have used the imperial treasury as he liked, he could have employed the triremes, manned by Latin troops, to subdue his adversary Andronicus, as the Latins, wrought of bronze and delighting in blood, were superior to the Roman naval forces. But in their confrontation with destiny, the protosebastos, so it seems, lost his nerve, while Andronicus, exerting himself greatly, tripped him up at the heels as he came running against him and carried off the splendid victory." (140)

All page references are to Harry Magoulias, ed., O City of Byzantium, Annals of Nicetas Choniates (Wayne State Univ. Press, 1984). For two reviews of this book, click here.

[Author's Note: This is the seventeenth in a series of posts tracing the rise and fall of the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus. These posts cover the period from the death of the Emperor Manuel I in September 1180 to Andronicus's own death just under five years later. The first post in this series -- which is part of a fictional autobiography ostensibly written by Andronicus Comnenus himself -- can be found by clicking here.]