The long expressed doubts about the value of narrative sources for the writing of history seem only to have spurred a renewed interest in the historians of Byzantium. Recently, there has been a stream of studies of historians, such as Michael Psellos, Nicephorus Bryennios, Anna Comnena and Nicetas Choniates. It is true that the focus has been on their literary qualities or their function as a mirror of their times, reflecting social and moral values, rather than as a record of the past. These studies make virtually no reference to two major projects on Byzantine historiography – by Apostolos Karpozilos and Warren Treadgold respectively – which aim to provide the study of Byzantine historiography from late antiquity to the final fall of Constantinople with the solid foundations that it has been lacking. Karpozilos's first volume came out in 1997 and with his third volume the series has reached the fall of Constantinople in 1204. The parallel project by Warren Treadgold started rather later, in 2007, with the Early Byzantine historians. The book under review is the second volume, which also reaches the year 1204. It accords due weight to a tradition of historical writing stretching back to classical and biblical times and enables us to put individual histories into context, in a way which was not previously possible. Warren Treadgold is happy to remind us, for example, that the majority of the historians normally regarded as of the greatest importance, such as Michael Psellos and Anna Comnena, were, to judge by the manuscript tradition, little read or known in their own day. Far more popular were the world chronicles, such as those of Theophanes, George the Monk, George Cedrenus and Constantine Manasses. The Byzantine readership/audience seemed to find the distant past preferable to contemporary history. General observations of this sort are, however, not Treadgold's main concern, which is rather more pointed: it is to provide an objective evaluation of the whole body of Byzantine historical writing. He establishes author, context, period covered, choice and use of sources, accuracy of fact and chronology, soundness of judgement and literary level. He applies this across the board. He shows no preference for the great names of Byzantine historical writing. In fact, it is a method which works best for the more obscure histories, preferably those only surviving in fragmentary form whether embedded in later texts or included in collections of excerpts. One of the great strengths of this volume is the exhumation of lost histories, which affords a much better balanced appreciation of the development of historical writing in the period under consideration.

Treadgold begins this volume with Byzantium's ‘dark age’, when, from the mid-seventh century, historical writing came to an abrupt halt, as Byzantium was left fighting for its existence in the face of Islam. Western medievalists might, however, take issue with Treadgold's claim that ‘the Byzantines’ darkest age never plumbed the depths of the Dark Ages of Western Europe’ (p. 37). The West could at least boast a historian of the stature of Bede (died 735), whereas no historical works survive from Byzantium until the appearance in the early ninth century of the compilation known as the Chronographia of Theophanes along with the Short history of the Patriarch Nicephorus. Admittedly, both owed a debt to the lost history of the Patrician Trajan, who was writing around 720.

Beginning with these rather basic chronicles Treadgold plots the recovery of almost the full range of historical writing, as it had existed in late antiquity. It was a matter of rebuilding the tradition. Treadgold disinters lost histories, such as the Secret history of Nicetas the Paphlagonian and the History of the emperors Basil i and Leo vi, composed in the early tenth century. In doing so he provides a background to the work of Constantine vii Porphyrogenitus as the coordinator of a series of ‘historical enterprises’, which included the encyclopaedic Excerpts, which placed the wisdom of classical history at the service of a Byzantine present, and a dynastic history, culminating in a Life of Basil i, Constantine's putative grandfather. Treadgold establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the author of this biography, and of other historical works commissioned by Constantine, was Theodore Daphnopates, who held the post of protoasecretis. He goes further and shows that there are good reasons for believing that, in the tenth century, the production of official history was part of the remit of that office. It is in establishing matters of fact, like these, that Treadgold is at his strongest. He does his best to steer clear of more general considerations. Not the least of his achievements is to trace the marked improvement in the quality of historical writing from the middle of the eleventh century. This was not just a matter of historians writing about their own times, for example Michael Psellos, Anna Comnena and Nicetas Choniates, but also of chroniclers, for example George Skylitzes, George Cedrenus and John Zonaras, who were distinguished by the care that they took over their sources. Treadgold notes the high quality of Zonaras's researches into the history of the Roman Empire, which among other things allowed him to construct a detailed and accurate narrative for the poorly-attested period running from 229 to 353. Though giving due weight to that interest in imperial Roman history characteristic of Byzantine historical writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Treadgold is wary of reading into it any wider political and social significance, as some have done. It is part of a reluctance to engage in more general questions, such as the motivation behind the writing of history, which, in his opinion, was a matter of personal ambition or of a desire to set the record straight. Nor is Treadgold anxious to engage with recent work in the field, except over matters of fact. This book has to be taken very much on its own terms. Treadgold is at pains to keep speculation to a minimum and to make as few assumptions as possible. The result is a book which establishes what can be known with reasonable certainty about the middle Byzantine historians. The shift of focus away from the great names paradoxically allows a much better balanced account of their histories, because Treadgold sees no need to dwell on the misleading accusations so often made that they were deliberately distorting the record of their age.