Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 136, the White Death of the Saracents.

Nysephara's focus was born around 912 AD, the same time that Emperor Leo VI passed away.

He grew up on the sprawling focus estates in Cappadocia, and despite their loss of prominence

during the reign of Romanus Lecapinos, they remained one of the leading families of the Empire.

Their location in the Borderlands and their numerous dependence relatives and animals

made them essential to the Byzantine military. As soon as he could balance on a horse,

Nysephara's would have been taught to ride, to fight, to hunt, and to do all the other things

that aristocratic outdoorsmen enjoy. Despite their wealth and status, the focus family did not

pay others to do the hard graft for them. All of their sons were made to work and to lead armies.

This meant adapting to a life of endless campaigning, spending all day on the saddle,

sleeping on the ground, eating rations. Endless summers of traversing through rough mountain

terrain, always scouting ahead, always a low level buzz of danger in the air.

We're told that Nysephara's was tough and brave, a particularly powerful warrior in his youth.

We'd expect to hear no less, but there shouldn't be any doubt about the constitution required

to thrive in this environment. The folkards also seem to have taken their Christian faith seriously,

and given the hardy routine they were forced to maintain, it's no surprise that they were attracted

to the ascetic life. Nysephara's uncle, Michael Malayinos, was a celebrated monk. He had abandoned

the secular life and retreated up a mountain in Bethinia to live in semi-isolation.

The future emperor admired this dedication and visited his uncle on several occasions.

Sources claim that Nysephara's himself would have become a monk, had not life intervened the

way it did. And though we should be careful of potential hyperbole, the strict disciplinarian

who insisted on his heavy cavalry praying before a charge, doesn't seem an implausible novice.

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