The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (37 page)

From the outset, things went badly for Byzantium. In November
573
the Persians seized Dara on the Tigris, one of the most important Christian bishoprics in the East; and at much the same time they invaded and ravaged Syria - whence, the chroniclers assure us, they returned with no less than
292,000
captives. Of these,
2,000
of the most beautiful Christian virgins were personally selected by Chosroes for presentation to the Khan of the Turks, whom he hoped to enlist as an ally; but the maidens, when they reached a great river within fifty leagues of the Khan's camp, sought permission from their heavy military escort to bathe, separated themselves a little from the soldiers on grounds of modesty and then, rather than face the simultaneous loss of their religion and their virtue, deliberately drowned themselves.
1

By this time the Emperor had abandoned his earlier policy of guarded toleration of monophysitism in favour of open persecution - a decision made more reprehensible by the fact that he and Sophia had both been monophysites themselves in their youth, having later adopted the orthodox faith for purely political reasons. There were, so far as we know, no executions or tortures, but monks and nuns were driven from their monasteries and convents and the monophysite clergy were no longer recognized. This abrupt change of attitude occurred in
571,
and some historians have attributed it to the beginnings of the mental disturbance which, over the next three years, reduced Justin to a state of hopeless insanity. In his calmer moments, John of Ephesus tells us, his chief amusement was to sit in a little cart and be dragged round his apartments by his keepers; but he was often subject to fits of extreme violence, during which he would attack anyone who approached him
2
and try to hurl himself out of the windows, which had to be fitted with bars for his protection. In these moods there was only one way to pacify him: to

speak the name of Harith, the leader of a minor Arab tribe known as the Ghassanids. For reasons that were never altogether understood, this relatively unimportant chieftain inspired him with such terror that he instantly became quiet.

Sophia had meanwhile taken over the government of the Empire, and in
574
she persuaded Chosroes to grant a year's truce in return for a payment of
45
,000
nomismata;
but at the end of that same year, finding the burdens of state too heavy to bear alone, she took advantage of one of her husband's brief spells of lucidity to persuade him to raise Tiberius

For Tiberius, it had not been an easy regency. The Turks, furious at the peace with Persia about which they had not been consulted and which they considered a betrayal, had repudiated the alliance and seized a Byzantine stronghold in the Crimea; and in
577
a vast horde of Slavs -their numbers were conservatively estimated at a hundred thousand - had poured into Thrace and Illyricum and settled there, the few and insignificant imperial garrisons being powerless to stop them. A more immediate problem than either, however, was that presented by Sophia herself. Not for nothing was she Theodora's niece. Having secured her colleague's promotion, she immediately began to show a marked reluctance to share her authority with him - especially in financial matters, in which he was, she claimed, unnecessarily extravagant. For as long as her husband lived, she insisted on keeping the keys of the imperial treasury herself, granting the unfortunate Caesar only the most meagre of allowances on which to keep himself and his family; she also jealously refused to permit his wife Ino or his two daughters to set foot in the Palace. Only after Justin's death did Tiberius finally dare to assert himself: Sophia, despite several unsuccessful plots to dethrone him, suddenly found herself deprived of her court and placed under close surveillance, in which unhappy condition she was to remain for the rest of her natural life while Ino, now rechristened Anastasia, was at last able to enjoy the privileges so long denied her.

The new Emperor, who assumed on his accession the additional name of Constantine, was - in marked contrast to his two predecessors -outstandingly popular with his people. He was also a pragmatist who, throughout his short reign, did his utmost to stem the steady decline in Byzantine fortunes. Persecution of the monophysites was stopped at
once; being himself a Thracian, he instinctively understood that with Greek influence everywhere on the increase it was above all the Greek-speaking provinces of Asia that must be kept loyal and contented, and if that meant antagonizing the West it could not be helped.
1
At the same time, in a deliberate reaction to the haughty aristocratic style favoured by Justinian and Justin, he tried to broaden the base of government by increasing the powers both of the previously moribund Senate and of the demes - the Greens and the Blues - which had been suppressed by Justinian after the Nika riots. The principal focus of his attention, however, was the army. The moment he had control of the Exchequer he set out to strengthen it by every means within his power, and in
581
he established a new elite corps of
15,000
barbarian
foederati
2
which, centuries later, was to evolve into the famous Varangian Guard.

With all his excellent intentions and his unremitting effort, Tiberius Constantine might have proved a great Emperor. The fact that he failed to do so can be attributed in a large degree to the fatal weakness against which Sophia had so forcibly reacted - his uncontrolled liberality. Not content with remitting, soon after his accession, one quarter of all taxes levied throughout the Empire, at various times in his reign he dispensed huge amounts of largesse in every direction. In his first year alone he gave away no less than
7,200
pounds of gold -
800
of them to the army in Asia - to say nothing of silver, silk and other luxuries in almost insane abundance. The next three years saw further distributions on a similar scale; and it was perhaps just as well for the imperial treasury that by the end of the fourth he was dead - of poison, it was rumoured, taken in a dish of early but particularly succulent mulberries.

Tiberius Constantine died on
13
August
582,
in his palace of the Heb
domon.
3
A week before, he had appointed as his successor a young Cappadocian named Maurice, to whom he had simultaneously given his second daughter Constantina in marriage. Maurice could already boast a distinguished military record; he had just returned from four years at the Persian front, during which time he had largely reorganized the army, breathing new life and hope into its dispirited ranks. 'Make your reign my finest epitaph,' were the last words of the dying Emperor; and for

1
It must, however, in justice be recorded that he was a good deal less sympathetic to Arianism -presumably because, being a heresy favoured almost exclusively by barbarians, it did not in his view deserve similar respect,

2
See p.
108.

3
A suburb of the city which lay at the seventh milestone.

the next twenty years Maurice was to rule the Empire with a firm and competent hand.
1
Coming to the throne during one of those brief lulls which occasionally interrupted the long drawn-out war with Persia, he was able to give serious thought to the situation in the West and to what was left of Justinian's conquests in Italy and Africa. The result was the two great Exarchates which he created - Ravenna and Carthage; organized on strict military lines under an Exarch who wielded absolute power over both the military and the civilian administration, they were long to remain the principal western outposts of imperial authority.

All too soon, however, hostilities with Persia flared up again. Old Chosroes had died in
579,
a few months after Justin, and had been succeeded by his son Hormisdas, who had inherited to the full his father's love of battle. He had sustained a grave defeat at the hands of Maurice in
581,
after which he had needed time to rebuild his shattered army; but by the end of the following year he had returned to the attack. A detailed account of the subsequent course of the war would be tedious for writer and reader alike, and is in any case unnecessary; suffice it to say that, despite a serious mutiny of their army in
588,
the Romans somehow managed to hold their ground for two more years, until a
coup d'etat
in Persia led to a civil war. Hormisdas was killed; his son Chosroes II fled into Byzantine territory and appealed to Maurice for help. Despite the almost unanimous advice of his ministers, the Emperor saw a chance and seized it: he told the prince that he would be happy to provide the assistance he needed - but only in return for a treaty of peace between the two Empires, by the terms of which both Persian Armenia and eastern Mesopotamia, including the two great cities
of Dara and Martyro
polis on the Tigris, would be restored to Byzantium. In
591,
with his support, young Chosroes overthrew the opposition - and kept his promises to the letter. The Persian War was over, sooner and on more favourable terms than anyone had dared to expect.

Now at last Maurice could fling the whole weight of his army against a foe which, during the past two years, had become every bit as dangerous as the Persians had ever been. In
571,
the Avars had won their first major victory over Tiberius - by then Caesar and effective co-regent of the Empire. Next, in
581,
they had captured by trickery the key city of Sirmium on the river Sava, which they were soon able to use as a base for the mopping up of several poorly-defended Byzantine

1
Our main primary source for the reign of Maurice is the
History
of Theophylact Simocatta, an Egyptian whose name literally means a flat-nosed cat and in whose style -
1
quote Professor Bury -'bombast, in all its frigidity, is carried to an unprecedented extreme'.

fortresses along the Danube. Meanwhile they continually increased their demands for tribute, until by
5
84
Maurice - whose propitiatory presents of an elephant and a golden bed had been contemptuously rejected by the Avar Khagan - was obliged to agree to a revised figure of
100,000
pieces. By this time the Emperor had appointed as general of his army in the West a former commander of his bodyguard named Comentiolus; but the army itself amounted to a mere
10,000
men, of whom only slightly more than half were capable soldiers; and apart from one significant victory at Adrianople he had little success in stemming the barbarian tide.

The peace with Persia meant that Maurice suddenly found himself with a far greater force at his disposal for deployment in the West;
1
and such was his exhilaration that he announced his intention of taking the field in person. The Patriarch and Senate, to say nothing of his own family, implored him not to risk his life in such a manner; he refused to listen. As it happened, they need not have worried. The Emperor had got no further than Anchialus - on the Gulf of Burgas, in modern Bulgaria - when the unexpected arrival of a Persian embassy in Constantinople recalled him hurriedly to the capital; and by the time the ambassadors had departed he had lost interest in joining his army. Perhaps it was just as well. Despite his new-found strength the war was to continue, against both the predatory Avars and the immigrant Slavs, for the rest of his reign; and was to prove, indirectly, the cause of his death.

Maurice's difficulties in the West were further complicated by the fact that his relations with the Papacy were deteriorating fast. There had been several minor points of contention over the years, but the serious trouble began only in
588,
when the Patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster, adopted the title of 'Ecumenical' - thereby implying universal supremacy over all other prelates, including the Pope himself. John was not the first Patriarch to make this claim; the title had been used at various times for the best part of a century and until now had passed apparently unnoticed. This time, however, there were angry expostulations from Pope Pelagius; and still more vigorous protests followed two years later, when Pelagius was succeeded by one of the most formidable

1
As Theophylact puts it: 'And so, now that the day smiled upon affairs in the East, and made not her progress mythically, in Homeric fashion, from a barbaric couch, but refused to be called "rosy-fingered" inasmuch as the sword was not crimsoned with blood, the Emperor transferred his forces to Europe* - a fair enough example of the literary style admired at the time, through which the luckless historian is compelled to wade.