Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium.

Episode 123.

Dramatists, Persona.

This is your recap and preview episode to help get you ready for the resumption of the

narrative.

We also have a few bits of business left over from the end of the century.

And that includes a couple of listener questions.

Listener GP, wonders who are our sources for this time period?

Are we up to more than just the two we had for the previous century?

I had avoided mentioning sources during the narrative because the answer is complicated,

but here we go.

First thing to remember is that although Nysephyrus and Theophani's were our only two manuscripts

for the 8th century, they were not the only sources as such.

They both used the writing of earlier chroniclers to put together their manuscripts.

It's just that the work of those older writers has now been lost.

The same applies to the men I'm about to mention.

So Theophani's chronicle cut out in 813, just when Crum was running wild in the Balkans.

The next closest source in time comes to us from George the monk who was writing in the

860s during Michael III's reign.

George was more interested in Christian history and the purpose of his work was to glorify

the restoration of icons, ending his work in 842.

One of the major benefits of his account is that he lived through the civil war between

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