Theodoros Prodromos' poetry depended on imperial and aristocratic commissions, which naturally dried up when the emperor and the aristocracy were away for a long military campaign. In the period 1137-1142 there were two of these campaigns, one after the other, first to Cilicia and Syria then to Pontos, with only a brief (but very welcome) interlude between them of hippodrome races and weddings, with fun, food and drink. Several of his compositions of this period make extreme claims of poverty and desperation. This contributed to his plans in 1140 to leave Constantinople, and merged into his complaints of severe illness in that and following years. At the least, these poems seem to suggest that his expectations of the patronage system were severely disappointed. It is hard to judge how close to starvation he really was