Eulogy versus History

To speak ill of a dead friend is hard.  Harder still is to speak ill of a dead friend who was also the Byzantine emperor.  When we commemorate the dead, we would like not to defile their reputation with tales of debauchery and deceit.  History and eulogy, however, are not compatible genres.  Historical accuracy requires recognition of the sordid details that spice up the sanitary content of panegyric.  Michael Psellus realizes this.  Michael Psellus agonizes over it.  Michael Psellus exults in his own literary abilities.

Michael Psellus, trans. E.R.A. Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers (Penguin, 1966):

I was most anxious to avoid imputing any blame to him.  I did not want to reveal by my words any actions not to his credit and things it is better to keep dark.  I was loath to put before the public a dishonest story, yet at the same time I was unwilling to defame the hero of my former eulogy.  In my opinion it was wrong to exercise literary talents, which I had perfected because of his encouragement, to do him harm.  (166)

What I would like, therefore, is either to commemorate him in a panegyric or to pass over in silence those actions in his life which did not spring from worthy motives. (167)

In the composition of a eulogy, in fact, my subject-matter is not chosen usually with complete indifference to good or bad: the latter I reject, the former I set on one side, afterwards putting it in proper order.  So a homogeneous pattern is worked out, a tapestry of the finest cloth.

Such is the method I have adopted in composing eulogies of Constantine, but now that I have undertaken to write a history, this plan becomes impossible, for I cannot bring myself to distort the facts of history, where truth is of more importance than anything else, in order to escape the reproaches of my contemporaries...Yet no one on earth is faultless, and we judge a man by the trait which chiefly distinguishes him form everyone else.  So why should I feel ashamed to declare openly whatever injustice or indiscretion this man, in common with the rest, may have committed? (168-9)

Naturally I would have wished that my favourite emperor had been perfect, even if such a compliment was impossible for all the others, but the events of history do not accommodate themselves to our desires.  So, divine soul, forgive me, and if sometimes in describing your reign I speak immoderately, concealing nothing and telling the truth, pardon me for it.  Not one of your nobler deeds shall be passed over in silence.  They shall all be revealed.  Likewise, whatever derives not from that same nobility, that too shall be made manifest in my history.  And there we must leave the matter and return to our narrative. (169-70)