Psellos addressed Ioannes kaisar, asking for imperial favour for a man who, after early promise as a kourator, met an unlucky disaster that left his wife and children starving. As he was as good as any of his peers, why not make him krites of a theme? All would benefit in that case: the theme (he would be just), Konstantinos X (he would enrich the treasury), and Psellos, on whom he had battened, like the frog he resembled (?)