Niketas Choniates stands at the cusp of the period of the late twelfth century, which was considered in the last chapter, and the period of the Frankish conquests. He is an impressive writer, and an exemplar of the educated Byzantine Roman, writing complex Greek in the ancient style, and referencing the classics as well as Biblical sources in a display of extreme erudition. He served the Komnenoi and Angeloi emperors at the highest level, and lived through the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and subsequent exile. Choniates can therefore serve as a marker of much that was typical in Byzantine Roman attitudes at the dawn of the thirteenth century, while also giving valuable insights into the shock of the events of 1204. This chapter is the only one which looks at a single source, and it is intended to serve as a model for the approach to be followed in future chapters, showing how the usage of particular items of vocabulary can be used to elucidate patterns of thought. Additionally, Choniates may in this way be used to illustrate the patterns of thought outlined in the last chapter, and at the same time be set as a template against which we can measure developments in later writers.

Niketas Choniates was born around 1155 in Chonai, a small city in the Maeander valley near the modern Denizli in western Turkey, which was very much in the frontier zone with the Seljuk Turks (it would be lost to the empire within his lifetime).