Abstract:
This thesis invests how a number of Byzantine authors (Procopius of Caesarea, Theophanes the Confessor, John Skylitzes, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and Niketas Choniates) depicted specific policies and gestures by emperors in order to make moralized statements about their imperial protagonists. My aim is to investigate how the apparent connection between “good” leadership (military and imperial) and “good” movement in the Early and Middle Byzantine periods, starting with the reign of Justinian in 527, until 1204, the sack of Constantinople during the fourth crusade, is to be explained.
