The original source for Tzimiskes’ Balkan campaign (971 AD) and the emperor’s classicizing propaganda

Abstract

For their account of Ioannes Tzimiskes’ Balkan campaign of 971 AD against the Rus, Leon the Deacon and Ioannes Skylitzes independently used a common source that was written soon after the emperor’s triumph in Constantinople. This source classicized the emperor and his actions, drawing upon figures from the Roman Republic and including speeches and geographical digressions. This source accounts for the bulk of what we know of Tzimiskes’ reign.

The Byzantine conquest of Crete (961 AD), Prokopios’ Vandal War, and the Continuator of the Chronicle of Symeon

“…Leo, for example, and later Skylitzes used a panegyrical and highly classicizing source for their account of Tzimiskes' Balkan wars that was probably written in 971 in connection with that emperor's triumph (albeit now lost). 20 And no one would have guessed the existence of an idiosyncratic text such as Theodosios the Deacon's Capture of Crete had it not survived in one manuscript. It is possible that the Continuator (i.e., likely Symeon himself) had written a separate, fuller, and classicizing (Prokopian) account of the conquest of Crete that he later used when extending his Chronicle down to 963.…”