ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author investigates time to investigating the reign of Basil II and as a result has become extremely well acquainted with the Synopsis Historion of John Skylitzes. She continues her appraisal of the construction of Skylitzes' text by analysing his narrative within a context that takes account of the precepts and practices of Byzantine rhetoric. In his preface Skylitzes portrays himself as the active architect of his narrative in full control of his underlying texts. If we want to see how far Skylitzes meets his compositional goals we need to look at how his ambitions play out in the rest of his text. Another way of assessing Skylitzes' text in an explicitly rhetorical context is to draw attention to a key distinction in rhetorical handbooks between diegesis. Skylitzes also tries to realize the aims of his preface through the use of omission.
