6)IMHO there was a gap running deep into the imperial society. From the one side, there was the military nobility, rich families from the eastern provinces, god-feared rednecks that fought like lions. From the other side, there was the intellectual, highly-educated court nobility, who was pulling all the strings and monopolized the throne and the positions around it.
The first time I 've encountered this separating line was an article in an early-20th sentury encyclopedia that was reffering to the Destruction of Mazikert.
Romanus Diogenis, a typical example of a military noble, overthrew the previous imperial family but was destroyed not because his enemies where stronger but because he couldn't countermeasure the hostility of his Court. His generals betraied him in the most crucial point of his career.
That is the significance of the Kekroporta . All those members of the Court, that plotted more than they fought, made and broke alliances, who spoke and wrote Greek in an elegant way, who preffered the book than the sword and knew Homer's and Plato's works by heart, those were the reason that the Empire was perished. This is what must have been the thoughts of the people that created the legend of the Kekroporta. Kekrops is a symbol, it stands for all those courteers whose classical education distinguished them from the military nobility. And they were the "gate" (vis a vis the Kekroporta) that allowed the loss of the realm.

Any comments are welcome.