Editing Basil II (section)

==Physical appearance and personality==
The courtier and historian [[Michael Psellos]], who was born towards the end of Basil's reign, gives a description of Basil in his ''Chronographia''. Psellos describes him as a stocky man of shorter-than-average stature who nevertheless was an impressive figure on horseback. He had light-blue eyes, strongly arched eyebrows, luxuriant [[side whiskers]]—which he had a habit of rolling between his fingers when deep in thought or angry—and in later life a scant beard. Psellos also states that Basil was not an articulate speaker and had a loud laugh that convulsed his whole frame.{{sfn|Sewter|1953|pp=48–49}}{{sfn|Head|1980|pp=233–234}} Basil is described as having ascetic tastes and caring little for the pomp and ceremony of the Imperial court, typically wearing a sombre, dark-purple robe furnished with few of the gems that usually decorated imperial costumes. He is also described as a capable administrator who left a well-stocked treasury upon his death.{{sfn|Sewter|1953|pp=45–46}} Basil supposedly despised literary culture and affected scorn for the learned classes of Byzantium.{{sfn|Sewter|1953|pp=43–44}}

According to the 19th century historian [[George Finlay]], Basil saw himself as "prudent, just, and devout; others considered him severe, rapacious, cruel, and bigoted. For [[Education in ancient Greece|Greek learning]] he cared little, and he was a type of the higher Byzantine moral character, which retained far more of its [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] than its [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] origin".{{sfn|Finlay|1856|p=427}} The modern historian [[John Julius Norwich]] wrote of Basil: "No lonelier man ever occupied the Byzantine throne. And it is hardly surprising: Basil was ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, [[wikt:philistine|philistine]] and almost pathologically mean. He was in short deeply un-Byzantine. He cared only for the greatness of his Empire. No wonder that in his hands it reached its apogee".{{sfn|Norwich|1997|p=216}}