In the past, a young relative of Tzetzes had written iambic verses at the end of a bureacratic document. His superior, the tax official Ioannes Smeniotes, had refused to sign the document, putting the bureaucratic process in danger. Tzetzes had written to calm the situation, and Smeniotes had relented. Now there were rumours that in the theme governed by Batatzes (the unworldly Tzetzes did not know which it was), Tzetzes' relative and Smeniotes would again be working together. Tzetzes now wrote in advance to prepare the ground, in case his pseudo-intellectual young relative repeated the offence