While the abominable pope with his spiritual peace and evangelic peace, this despot, marched to make war on his own kindred with might and main - the… - Anna Komnene

I, having realized the effects wrought by Time, desire now by means of my writings to give an account of my father's deeds, which do not deserve to be consigned to Forgetfulness nor to be swept away on the flood of Time into an ocean of Non-Remembrance; I wish to recall everything...

Even now I cannot believe that I am still alive and writing this account of the emperor's death. I put my hands to my eyes, wondering if what I am relating here is not all a dream - or maybe it is not a dream: perhaps it is a delusion and I am mad, the victim of some extraordinary and monstrous hallucination. How comes it that when he is dead I am still numbered among the living?

Constantine was Nature's masterpiece, a triumph, as it were, of God's handiwork. One look at him would convince anyone that here was a descendant of the mythical Golden Age of the Greeks, so infinite was his charm.