Psellos at the age of 16 he had just (precociously) left the study of poetry and was, with pleasure, beginning that of rhetoric, while acting as assistant to a krites, with responsibilities near the capital to the west. He was thus absent when his eldest sister suddenly fell ill and died. His parents, fearful of his reactions, wrote to him, complaining of lack of letters from him, asking him to come straight back, and adding a false note from his dead sister, hoping to save him pain by this deception: they failed. He happened to enter the capital just where the mourning was taking place one week after his sister's death. He asked a relative what was happening, and was bluntly told the truth. He was dumbfounded, fainted and fell off his horse, causing more commotion, so that his parents broke off the ceremony and rushed to him. They revived him: in the encomium he wrote to his mother much later the emotions which followed became formal laments