E-viri
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Leidholm, Nathan
Elite Byzantine Kinship, Ca. 950-1204, 08/2019Book Chapter
JOHN ZONARAS, THE twelfth-century theologian and author of a history of the world, delivers an aside in his Epitome of Histories regarding the family and ancestry of Emperor Constantine X Doukas (r. 1059– 1067). In it, Zonaras questions the legitimacy of Constantine’s claim to membership in the genos of the Doukai.¹ The sentiment is an odd one on its own, as no other surviving source seems to share Zonaras’s view of the emperor’s descent, but it is made even more so by the reasons Zonaras gives for his cri-tique. He tells his readers that all the male members of the
