Alliance with this family conferred on the young man extraordinary brilliance, but he still held no important office. Basil’s advisers, because of the hatred they nursed for the father, vented their spite on the son, and Sclerus’s revolutionary designs had an unfortunate effect on the emperor’s relations with Constantine. That was the reason why neither Basil nor Constantine, his brother, ever promoted him to any responsible post in the government. Actually, they did him no harm, but he was slighted, and they certainly never dreamed that the man had a glorious future.
16. Even the accession of Romanus did little to help Constantine in his career, so mistaken was the new emperor in his estimate of the young man’s qualities. However, Romanus did at least keep him at the imperial court, and if for no other reason, he was very much in the public eye through his near relationship with the emperor. His fresh complexion (to the men of our generation he was as unspoiled as spring fruit) and his graceful manners and his conversation, in which he excelled all others, these were the things that won the heart of the empress.
She delighted in his company again and again. He for his part made himself thoroughly agreeable to her, and by cleverly adapting himself to please her on all occasions, he captivated her completely. By these arts he obtained favours from her, but at the same time both he and she were assailed with calumny from the court. There were times when their clandestine meetings were not much to the liking of most courtiers.
Island of Mitylene
17. At any rate, these activities made him a likely candidate for promotion to the throne, and Michael, who succeeded Romanus, viewed him with suspicion. In fact, Michael, even after his own accession, remained stubbornly jealous, although not unfriendly at first. Later he trumped up false accusations, suborning witnesses unjustly, and Constantine was driven from the city. His punishment was relegation to a certain determined area, in this case the island of Mitylene, and there for seven years — the exact length of Michael’s reign — he endured his misfortune. Michael Calaphates, like Paphlagon, inherited the emperors’ hatred of the young man.
18. Zoe’s first reaction, when for the second time she found herself at the head of the Empire, was, as I have already said, to protect herself against any sudden reversal of fortune in the future. To strengthen her position, she proceeded to look for a husband, not a man from abroad, but someone in the court circle. However, as one had been discredited through misfortune, another rejected because of his ignoble lineage, a third suspected as dangerous, and stories had been invented one after another to bring into disrepute her various suitors, she renounced all of them and again considered the claims of Constantine.
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