The child had a swarthy complexion, broad forehead, lean cheeks, a nose neither snub nor aquiline but something between the two, very black eyes which betokened, as far as one can judge from an infant’s face, a quick intelligence. As my parents naturally wished to raise this child to the rank of Emperor and leave him the empire of the Romans as his inheritance, they deemed him worthy of being baptised and crowned in the great church of God. This is what happened to us children, ‘born in the purple’ from the very starting-point of our birth. What befell us later, shall be narrated in due order.
Bosporus and the Northern provinces
IX The Emperor Alexius had driven away the Turks from the shores of Bithynia and the Bosporus and the Northern provinces and made a truce with Soliman, as I have recounted earlier; then he rode off to Illyria where after many hardships he utterly defeated Robert and his son, Bohemund, and thus delivered the West from an overwhelming catastrophe.
On his return from those parts he found that the Turks under Apelchasem [=#Abul-kassim] were not only overrunning the East, but had penetrated as far as the Propontis and the maritime towns there. And this is the right point at which to tell how the Ameer Soliman on leaving Nicaea had left this Apelchasem behind as governor ; how Puzanus was sent into Asia by the sultan of Persia, and defeated and killed by Tutuses [*or Tutush or Toutoush], the brother of the sultan; and how Tutuses himself after the defeat of Puzanus, was strangled by his second cousins.
A certain Armenian, Philaretus by name, conspicuous for bravery and sagacity, had been raised to the rank of Domestic by the former Emperor, Romanus Diogenes, and when he saw the latter’s downfall and heard further that he had been deprived of his sight, it was more than he could bear, for he loved him with an exceeding love, so plotted rebellion and made himself master of the province of Antioch. But as the Turks daily laid waste the surrounding country so that he had no peace, he meditated desertion to the Turks and circumcision, which they practise. But his son vehemently opposed him and tried to divert him from this mad enterprise, but his better counsels were not accepted.
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