Customer Reviews

The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and his Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium (Cambridge Paperback Library)

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This book is a wonderful introduction not only to Emperor Romanus and the various challenges he faced in his reign but also to the state of the east Mediterrianian world in the first half of the Tenth Century. Runciman manages once again to apply energetic prose to sound scholarship. He also navigates the reader through the complicated intrigues at the Imperial Court in Constantinople which can be hard to understand for the beginning Byzantine Scholar. Runciman makes the reader conscious of the fact that the soldier-emperors Nicephorus Phocas, John Tsmiszes and Basil II of the second half of Tenth century benefitted from the leadership of Romanus and the well- oiled Byzantine administrative and military machine he guided for twenty-five years. I warmly recommend this book.

What more can be said (looking at the other reviews)about a brilliant author giving us superb insight into a man and time where a lack of original source material is glaring. Lecapenus, much maligned by his son in law and Gibbons, now comes to light as a wise and sensible ruler exactly when he was needed....

I don't know, maybe i am not objective with Runciman's work, i considered himself the most extraordinary historian,although he is not the "modern type of novelist historian" he still is the person that most successfully brings me in the period that he describes. It is unbelievable that he was so young when he wrote this book. Never before Lecapenu's period was analyzed so well by the historians like Gibbon or Finlay and their judgment was so negative, after this all historians wrote for the Lecapenu's period the same exactly opinion that he gave more than 75 years ago.This has to mean something. It is so beautiful to think that Lecapenus, the ninth century of byzantium is living trough the book so well written by the biggest historian ever.