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The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century. Introduction, translation, and annotations by Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis F. Sullivan with the assistance of George T. Dennis and Staniatina McGrath. [Dumbarton Oaks Studies, XLI.] (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. 2005. Pp. xx, 264.)
Byzantine civilization has left a rich and varied body of historical writings. The assortment of chronicles, histories, and memoirs provides an almost unbroken narrative of the empire's history from the sixth to the fifteenth century. The early chronicles offer thin gruel to modern historians trying to form a coherent account of the "dark" seventh and eighth centuries, but by the tenth century the growing maturity and scope of Byzantine historiography aEow for a more developed understanding of the dominant events and people of the time. The History of Leo the Deacon, focussing mainly on the reigns of the two great soldier emperors Nikephoros II Phokas (963-969) and John I Tzimiskes (969-976), has long been recognized as the most important source for the military and dynastic policies that shaped the course of events in the later tenth century. Strangely, however, Leo's history has long languished in an outdated edition, without an English translation, and has until...