A Byzantine Nobleman In Exile Composing Verses

The frivolous can call me frivolous. I've always been most punctilious about important things. And I insist that no one knows better than I do the Holy Fathers, or the Scriptures, or the Canons of the Councils. Whenever he was in doubt, whenever he had any ecclesiastical problem, Botaniatis consulted me, me first of all. But exiled here (may she be cursed, that viper Irini Doukaina) , and incredibly bored, it is not altogether unfitting to amuse myself writing six- and eight-line verses, to amuse myself poeticizing myths of Hermes and Apollo and Dionysos, or the heroes of Thessaly and the Peloponnese; and to compose the most strict iambics, such as—if you'll allow me to say so— the intellectuals of Constantinople don't know how to compose. It must be just this strictness that provokes their disapproval.