Even if the emperor felt compelled to build on a more magnificent scale than anyone else, it was still his duty to care for his palace, to glorify the acropolis, to repair what had fallen in ruins, to replenish the imperial treasury, and to dedicate the money to the upkeep of his armies. Yet he neglected all this, and in order that his church might surpass all others in beauty, he reduced everything else to ruin. To tell the truth, he was mad on the work.
He could scarcely tear himself away from it. So he surrounded the place with all the paraphernalia of a court, set up thrones there, adorned it with sceptres, hung up purple cloth, and spent the greater part of the year in this church, glorying in the beauty of it and beaming with pleasure. It was his wish to honour the Theometor with some name of more than ordinary beauty. Unfortunately, he failed to notice that the epithet he gave her was in fact more suited to a woman than a saint, that is, if the name “Peribleptos’ does indeed mean “Celebrated’.
Arithmetic or geometry to diminish the size
To these buildings a further addition was made and the church became a hospice for monks, so once more there began fresh wrong-doings and greater excesses than before. He was not [48] sufficiently trained in arithmetic or geometry to diminish the size or the number of his buildings, in the same way that geometricians simplify a complex pattern. So, wishing to have buildings of enormous size, he must needs have greater numbers of monks. The rest was proportionate: as there were multitudes of monks, so there were contributions in multitudes.
Another world was ransacked and the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules**38 was explored; the former was to provide seasonable sweetmeats, the latter fish of enormous size, even whales. Since it seemed to him, moreover, that Anaxagoras**39 had lied when he said the worlds were infinite, he dedicated the greater part of this finite world of ours to the glorification of his church. Piling grandeur on grandeur, multitude on multitude, surpassing the first superlative with a second, and setting no bound nor limit to these things, he would never have stopped adding to them in his boundless ambition, had not the measure of his own life been shortened.
There is a tradition, in fact, that his life was cut short by a certain event. I wish to speak of it, but only by way of preface at this moment. In some matters the emperor showed little respect for the accepted standards of morality. For one thing, he lived with a mistress. Perhaps, at the beginning of his reign, he wished to live chastely. Maybe– and most folk contend that this was the truth– he turned to fresh amours. Whatever the cause for his behaviour, he came to despise the empress Zoe.
Not only did he abstain from sexual intercourse with her, but he was loath to consort with her in any way at all. She, on her side, was stirred to hate him, not only because the blood royal, meaning herself was treated with such little respect, but, above all other considerations, by her own longing for intercourse, and that was due not to her age, but to the soft and sensual manner of her life at the palace.
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