a minimum price to the despairing owners. And when he had done this on the side towards Mesopotamia, where the supply of grain on account of the absence of the mice was greater: the amount of corn that he had equalled the amount of the sands of the sea. When, therefore, on account of this vile transaction, famine was everywhere shamefully raging, he brought together eighty thousand men under pretext of a military expedition; and he sold to them, during one whole month, for two gold pieces what he had bought for one. These, my master, are the reasons which compelled Nicephorus now to lead his forces against the Assyrians. But what sort of forces? I ask. Truly, I answer, not men, but only images of men; whose tongue only is bold, but whose right hand is frigid in war. Nicephorus did not look for quality in them, but only for quantity. How perilous this is for him he will learn to his sorrow, when the multitude of unwarlike ones, brave only on account of numbers, shall be put to rout by a handful of our men who are skilled in war—nay, thirsting for it. When ye were besieging Bari only three hundred Hungarians seized five hundred Greeks near Thessalonica and led them into Hungary. Which attempt, inasmuch as it succeeded, induced two hundred Hungarians in Macedonia, not far from Constantinople, to do the like; of whom forty, when they were retreating incautiously through a narrow pass, were captured. These Nicephorus, freeing them from custody and adorning them with most costly garments, has made his body guard and defenders—taking them with him against the Assyrians. But what kind of an army he has ye can conjecture from this,—that those who are in command over the others are Venetians and Amalfians! But no more of this! Learn now what happened to me. On the sixth day before the Calends of August (July 27), I received at Umbria, outside of Constantinople, permission from Nicephorus to return to ye. And when I came to Constantinople, the patrician Christophorus, the eunuch who was the representative of Nicephorus there, «ent word to me that I could not then start to return because the Saracens at that time were holding the sea and the Hungarians the land—I should have to wait until they retired. Both of which facts, oh woe is me, were
