THE EMPEROR'S LETTER TO PHOCAS**299

18. In this letter the emperor began with a reference to the harshness of Phocas's exile,**300 and to the time he had wasted. He recalled the desolation of his friends, the financial difficulties, the filthy tunics and tattered garments. After this preface, he wrote of Phocas's restoration, a change of fortune for which he (Michael) had been personally responsible, and of the great honour accorded him at his reception in the palace (here he reminded him of favours 'worthy of a satrap' and of indescribable scenes of welcome). He pointed out how quick he had been to confer on Phocas all the greatest and most coveted honours of the Roman State;**301 how, from the first, he [289] had exalted him to positions of power, both in the civil and in the military sphere; how he had promoted him above all others and assured him of an income which, everyone would agree, was commensurate with the high office he enjoyed. To quote his own words, 'Who has received at my hands a greater reward than yourself? Who has adjudged to be the emperor's friend, his ears and eyes, but you? Who but you obtained from me his every desire? With whom did I share the most important functions of government? There were secrets, kept hidden from my brother and my mother, which I disclosed to you alone. And who now has the power to give away or withhold the highest offices in the realm? Those offices, remember, have brought you great renown and much aggrandizement. I will not speak of the favours I have conferred, for your sake, on your father and brother and kinsmen; I will not mention all those whom I have promoted from obscurity and indigence to high rank, merely to please you; nor will I speak of the many who have acquired not inconsiderable riches, and now, instead of existing in the penurious manner of their forbears, hold commands in the army and fill responsible posts in the civil administration. Their injustices, whether committed in secret or in the broad light of day, were purposely ignored by me, for I knew these malefactors were legion and held my peace at their wrong-doing, being prepared to tolerate anything for your sake. My one comfort in the hour of trouble was, I believed, yourself — after God, of course. I chose you to stand by me throughout the time of my tribulations, and elected you to supervise my affairs constantly, because I thought that in you, alone of all men, I had won an ally and a partner, and because I was confident that the perplexities which assailed us would be settled by your aid. But my plans — how vain they appear now, how groundless my hopes! Through your senseless pride, the treasure that I sought has turned out to be nothing but rubble. Hope will not always spring eternal: a host of evils takes the heart out of a man. But there — we have brought this trouble on ourselves, deluded into thinking that fire can be extinguished with oil.

19. 'In place of the comfort that I looked for, you bring on me disaster: instead of an ally, I find in you an open enemy, instead of a fellow-worker, a destructive agent. So, at least, it appears, if the rumours that are spread abroad about you are true. Men say that you are arming yourself for the fray, intent on vengeance, as if you had [290] suffered at my hands the vilest of wrong-doing, the supreme disservice. They tell me that you are earnestly striving to thrust me forth from my home, the palace of an emperor, and preparing to win it for yourself and make it your own. I beg of you, magistros, with all my heart and soul, never, never to contemplate such a course. A plague on the rumour-mongers and the inventors of idle tales, the wicked who sow tares among the wheat, who magnify into prodigies what does not even exist, inspired only by their jealousy! Their monstrous absurdities are beneath contempt, lies fabricated, I am sure,. with one special intent — to break up our unity of purpose and to smash the harmony that binds us together. These evil men are nothing to us. If the adversary speaks again, let him not rejoice at our discomfiture. And as for yourself, I pray that you may for ever cast from your mind the thought of a deed so abominable in the eyes of God, so utterly depraved. I plead with you not to show yourself so unfeeling, so unjust as to attack those who have treated you with kindness and are blameless. Do not allow yourself to become an object of loathing to men, a model of wickedness!'

20. The emperor went on to remind Phocas that he had called on God as his Witness, with oaths most terrible. He pointed out that Divine Providence each day scans the whole inhabited world, but with unsleeping eye it also watches over the affairs of individual men, and metes out to them the just recompense for their deeds and to each of them renders measure for measure. Those who walk in the path of unrighteousness are caught in the net of Providence, and through the working of Providence even the dictates of Fortune are reversed. 'If you stand in awe of the Judgment of God, if you expect Him to pass sentence on your deeds, then tremble for the success of this enterprise. Let wisdom guide your steps, let prudence direct your plans. Discretion before disloyalty! He who follows bad counsel plots, from the very beginning, his own destruction!'

(At this point the Chronographia ends abruptly. Psellus never completed it.)**302