We began by pointing out how some of the most common images of Byzantium are grounded in negative gender stereotypes imputed to that civilization by Western European commentators. Byzantium the exotic, decadent, cruel, corrupt, superstitious, Oriental empire is imagined as a place ruled by power-hungry women and eunuchs whose flaccid men fought by means of treachery and bribes. While this image derives largely from Byzantium's status as the negative foil that reinforces the positive values Western Europeans attributed to themselves, we have seen how Medieval Roman texts do contain descriptions of powerful women and cowardly men. I hope that you now will be able to read those texts with some understanding of the authorial intentions behind them. Texts were designed to tell readers both who to emulate and who to revile. Images of powerful women were intended to reinforce the value of female deference to male authority while stories of craven men taught the value of courage.

Since so many Medieval Roman texts depict traditional patterns of behaviour in order to teach men and women how to behave, we can reasonably suppose that at least some of the time they actually acted that way, or at minimum believed that they ought to. They seem to have been well aware that which roles they played, and how well they played them, determined whether they were seen as good or bad men, eunuchs, or women. Our texts revealing provincial disputes show people jockeying to avoid getting pushed into playing a negative role or deliberately taking on a role that would likely spark a particular behaviour in another. We have seen in the previous pages numerous examples of women and men apparently getting what they wanted through the deliberate performance of a particular gender role. The stock roles do not seem to have been straightjackets but rather a wide repertoire of behaviours that people could mimic or embody in order to craft the responses others would have to them. The traditionalism of Medieval Roman society and its love of modelling behaviour on ancient architypes seems in practice to have provided people with a rich toolbox for creative self-expression.