«L’incanto del letto» svelato: ancora su Niceta Coniata, Historia 17, 1, 1 (549, 5-9 van Dieten)

Speaking of the hasty flight of Emperor Alexios III Angelos from Constantinople on the night of July 17, 1203, the historian Nicetas Choniates laments the damage done by the "enchantment of the bed", with an enigmatic reference to "a fellow who was in trouble in his kingdom because of the advice of a prokoitos woman". There has been much debate about the identity of this individual, and uncertainty about the correct translation of prokoitos. However, as shown by close verbal contact with a passage in Cosmas of Jerusalem's commentary on the poems of Gregory of Nazianzus, Nicetas Choniates is thinking here of Solomon, and the term prokoitos is used in the sense, coined for the occasion, of "favorite bedfellow," "favorite concubine".