When the emperor saw this beautiful sight (he was particularly reverent in his veneration for this ikon) he immediately took heart, and holding it in his hands– but no words can describe how he embraced it, how he bedewed it with his tears, how heartfelt were the words with which he addressed it, how he recalled Our Lady’s kindnesses in the past and those many times when She, his ally, had rescued and saved the Roman power in moments of crisis.
From now on he was full of courage. He who had but lately been a fugitive himself now rebuked others who were running away. With loud cries and the vigour of a man years younger than himself he stopped their aimless wandering, made himself known to them by his voice and appearance, and quickly gathered together a considerable force.
Then, going on foot with them, he retired to a tent hastily erected to shelter him, and there he bivouacked. After a brief rest, at dawn he called for his generals and suggested that they should decide what to do. Without exception they advised him to return to Byzantium. In the capital a thorough inquiry into the whole affair should be held. Romanus agreed with them– it was a course of action likely to benefit himself– and hurried back to Constantinople.
Careful management of public funds
There followed bitter repentance for what he had done, and self-pity for the sufferings he had endured. Then, all at once, his mood changed. His career now entered on a new and, for him, somewhat unusual phase. He hoped that by careful management of public funds he would completely recover his losses. So he became more taxgatherer than emperor. Reviving, as the proverb has it, ‘pre-Euclidean history’, and subjecting it to careful scrutiny, he proceeded to pry into the accounts of sons, long after their fathers were dead and gone– a cruel thing to do.
Verdicts in law-suits were not given according to the evidence submitted by the contesting parties, but he would personally take the part of one or the other. Sentence of the court, therefore, was not so much in favour of plaintiff or defendant as of himself. In his view, the whole populace was divided into two classes. On the one hand, there were the reasonable folk who preferred to live a simple, honest life and took no part in public affairs; for them the emperor cared not a straw. On the other, there were the dare-devils who enriched themselves at the expense of the rest.
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