Book two notes

22. Constantine was already sixty-four or sixty-five years old, with a wife and three daughters, Eudocia, Zoe and Theodora. Psellus wrongly says he was sixty-nine.

23. Cedrenus (719 ff., p. 483) gives details of persons executed or blinded by the emperor. Among them is mentioned the Bishop of Naupactus.

24. Cedrenus (720, pp. 480-1) mentions six eunuchs to whom the government was entrusted.

25. A form of single combat, reminiscent of Roman gladiatorial contests.

26. Used in the game of draughts.

27. The Eparch, or City Prefect, ranked eighteenth in the first sixty great officials in Byzantium. His duties included the maintenance of order in the city, superintendence of the factions in the Circus, control of the industrial guilds and above all the supply of corn. His office is, in fact, a combination of the old Roman praefectus urbi and praefectus annonae. The Eparch mentioned here appears to have been Constantine Dalassenus (Cedrenus, 722, p. 484) who was at this time in Armenia and to whom the it emperor sent a trusted eunuch, Ergodotes, offering him the Caesarship and the hand of Zoe in marriage. This proposal was revoked, says Cedrenus, because Simeon, the drungarius vigiliae, favoured the claims of Romanus. It seems that Theodora refused to marry Romanus (Cedrenus, lbid.) because of their relationship— they were cousins— and because he had already married Helena. There was some controversy over the divorce but the Patriarch soon settled the matter in favour of the new emperor.

28. Constantine died on 11. November 1028, aged seventy, after an illness of only two days.