ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the author of a history or saint's life identifies him or herself in such a way as to authenticate the truth and quality of the material. Positioning counts: that of a courtier or family member or disciple or army-follower. The writer claims to know the subject but modes of asserting this may vary: education, intellect, access to written sources, may count or, in the case of hagiography, may be discounted in favour of a different familiarity. The claim may of course be tacit, as when a writer continues someone else's work and inherits his authority by default. In a well-functioning work, the self-identifying trope is tacitly or overtly matched to need, and this remains largely true of those sophisticated eleventh-century and twelfth-century histories where the historian freely writes himself or herself into events. The difference is that options have increased; the self-identifying can take as many forms as phases of the narrative require and any of these may function in more ways than one. Of course, some functions may be extra-textual: they may be personally or politically driven, as when Michael Attaleiates lauds Botaneiates, or Michael Psellos idealizes Michael Doukas and his son, or when Anna Komnene shakes her fist at Alexios’s successors. In this chapter, I shall leave those to one side and consider modes of self-identification in these Middle Byzantine authors, which work towards a larger textual purpose.
