There was plenty of rough work for him to do yet.
There were Novgorod and her sister-republic Pskof to be wiped out, and Sweden and the Livonian Order on his borders to be looked after, Bulgaria and other lands to be absorbed, and last and most important of all, the Mongol yoke to be broken.

And while he was planning for these he had little time for Greek manuscripts; he was introducing the _knout_,[1] until then a stranger to his Slavonic people; he was having Princes and _boyars_ and even ecclesiastics whipped and tortured and mutilated; and, it is said, roasted alive two Polish gentlemen in an iron cage, for conspiracy.

We hear that women fainted at his glance, and _boyars_ trembled while he slept; that instead of "Ivan the Great" he would be known as "Ivan the Terrible," had not his grandson Ivan IV.
so far outshone him.

That he had his softer moods we know.

For he loved his Greek wife, and shed tears copiously over his brother's death, even while he was appropriating all the territory which had belonged to him.