[3] He was a younger contemporary (possibly even a student) of Michael Psellos and likely an older colleague of John Skylitzes, the two other Byzantine historians of the eleventh century whose work survives.

Prominence on the judge's bench also brought him to the attention of a number of emperors who rewarded him with some of the highest honours available to civil servants (patrikios and anthypatos).

This vivid and largely reliable presentation of the empire's declining fortunes after the end of the Macedonian dynasty, offered Attaleiates the opportunity to engage with political questions of his time also addressed, albeit often from a different point of view, by his contemporary Michael Psellos.

He therefore had no chance to rededicate his work to the founder of the Komnenian dynasty, Alexios I Komnenos, whom The History treats as a potential saviour of the Byzantine state.

Their bodies, along with those of the judge's two wives, Eirene and Sophia, were put to rest on the grounds of the church of St. George of the Cypresses in the southwestern side of Constantinople.

At the same time history-writing allows Attaleiates to reflect on the empire's troubled present through the prism of the past in a manner that hints at his ability to plan for an uncertain future.

[9] History-writing in general, and The History in particular, cast Attaleiates as an ambitious, patriotic, and astute observer of political developments in his time, denouncing the failings of Byzantine administration, while engaging in close dialogue on current affairs with his contemporaries about the Roman world unravelling around them.

At the same time, Attaleiates' invocation of the divine is frequently vague enough to evoke the classical notion of fortune (tyche) rather than the Christian God per se.

[13] One would do better, however, to think of the judge as part of the fascinating world of intellectuals from Michael Psellos and John Mauropous, to the Xiphilinoi (both monk and patriarch) and Symeon Seth.