The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (43 page)

Charles Diehl,
Choses et Gens de Byz
ance

The death of Heraclius, long expected as it was, threw Byzantium into chaos; and the cause of all the trouble was Martina. Not content with persuading her husband to crown their son Heraclonas co-Emperor, she had also forced him to draw up a will entrusting the Empire jointly to his eldest son and true heir Constantine III, to Heraclonas and to herself. One of the first acts of her widowhood was to hold a public rally in the Hippodrome, at which she announced the terms of the will, making it clear to all present that it was she who proposed to exercise the effective power.

But the Byzantines would have none of it. They had long mistrusted Martina for her scheming ambition; many, too, held her responsible for her husband's decline and death. Their worst suspicions now seemed confirmed. How, they demanded, could a woman receive or reply to foreign ambassadors, let alone administer an Empire? The very idea was preposterous. They would be happy to accord her the respect due to an Empress Mother, but their obedience would be given only to her son and stepson. Martina, baffled and furious, had no alternative but to retreat into the palace; but she was not beaten yet. Soon afterwards Constantine, the senior Emperor, fell sick. Possibly for a change of air, but more likely to distance himself from his stepmother, he crossed the Bosphorus to the palace at Chalcedon, but the move was of no avail: he died on
25
May
641,
after a reign of just three and a half months.

Was he killed by Martina? We cannot say for certain. In the absence
of any contemporary records we are obliged to rely, for what little information we have, principally on Nicephorus and Theophanes, both writing in the early ninth century; and of these Nicephorus (whose account is the more detailed of the two) makes no such suggestion. Constantine had long been in ill health, and could well have died of natural causes. On the other hand the circumstances and above all the timing of his death are, at the very least, suspicious. Moreover, as we shall very shortly see, his son and successor did not hesitate to accuse the Empress, in the strongest possible terms, of his murder.

It also seems undeniable that Constantine himself had felt threatened. Why, otherwise, having first moved to the Asiatic shore, should he have appealed to the army from his deathbed to protect his infant heir, Heraclius, and his other children, and to uphold their rights of succession? As it happened, he need not have worried. The people of Constantinople, already overwhelmingly in favour of the senior branch of the family, were outraged by the way in which Martina, scarcely before her stepson's body was cold, openly sent all his ministers into exile and, ignoring her own son, assumed full imperial authority; and they were still more incensed by her enthusiastic support of monothelitism, a by now plainly unsuccessful doctrine which had never found popular favour and which Constantine had been doing his best to sweep away. In the summer of
641,
in response to increasingly insistent demonstrations, little Heraclius had been crowned Emperor, and his name - presumably to avoid confusion with his grandfather - changed to Constans; and in September of the same year, by command of the Senate, Martina and Heraclonas were suddenly arrested. Her tongue was cut out; his nose was slit;
1
and the two were exiled to the island of Rhodes, never to return to the capital. If the Empress's only crime was her overweening ambition, she had paid a heavy price for it; if she and her son were regicides, they were lucky to have escaped so lightly.

My father Constantine reigned with Heraclius, his father and my grandfather, for a considerable time; but after the latter's death for only a very short period. For the envy of his stepmother Martina brought his high hopes to nothing and deprived him of his life - and all for the sake of Heraclonas, the son of her incestuous union with Heraclius. Your vote above all contributed to the just

1
The slitting - effectively the amputation - of the nose was an ancient oriental practice, introduced for the first time in Byzantium when Heraclius had thus punished Theodore and Athalaric for their suspected conspiracy a few years before (sec p.
308).
Its purpose was to invalidate the victim's
claim to the throne since an E
mperor, in the Byzantine view, must be free of all obvious physical imperfections.

deposition of her and her son from the imperial dignity, in order that the Roman Empire should not be obliged to countenance so grave an insult to the Law. Of this your noble eminences are fully aware; and I therefore invite you to assist me by your advice and judgement, in providing for the general safety of my subjects.
1

With these words the eleven-year-old Constans II, now sole ruler of Byzantium, addressed the assembled Senate early in
642,
entrusting it with the care of the Empire during his minority. During the years following the death of Justinian the Senate had grown rapidly in power and prestige. It was now as influential as ever it had been, serving both as adviser to the sovereign and as the supreme court of justice; and it was, in the absence of any senior member of the imperial family, the obvious body to assume the regency. But Constans was to mature into a determined and self-willed autocrat; he was not to accept its tutelage for long.

His twenty-seven-year reign was overshadowed from beginning to end by his constant struggle with the seemingly invincible Saracens. Already at the time of his accession they were advancing relentlessly through Egypt, which his stepmother during her brief period of power had virtually surrendered to them; and in
642
the Byzantine garrison sailed obediently out of Alexandria, leaving the country in the hands of the great Arab general Amr. When, two years later after the death of the Caliph Omar, his successor Othman recalled Amr to Medina, the Byzantines saw an opportunity for a counter-offensive and sent out a fleet, which managed briefly to recapture Alexandria; but as soon as the news reached Amr he hurried back to Egypt, and by the summer of
646
was once again in control. Razing the walls of Alexandria to the ground, he established a new capital, at the southern end of the delta and consequently less vulnerable to attack, in a village known as Fostat, later to be renamed Cairo. The popular tradition that the Muslim armies put the torch to the famous Library of Alexandria - the greatest in the world of late antiquity - is unfounded; that had already been destroyed by the Christians, in the anti-Arian riots of
391.
Nor did they take any vengeance on the local populations - most of whom, like their Syrian and Palestinian neighbours, seem to have found their conquerors a welcome change from the Byzantines. Having thus successfully deprived the Empire of its richest and most valuable province, they then drove westward along the North African coast -in
647
inflicting a disastrous defeat on Gregory, Exarch of Carthage, who had advanced against them with an army (we are told) of
120,000
men.

The new Caliph Othman was a weaker, less effectual leader than the

1
Theophancs,
6134.

austerely magnificent Omar; in one respect, however, he proved considerably more far-sighted. Omar, with the desert-dweller's deep-rooted mistrust of the sea, had steadfastly refused to allow the building of a fleet; Othman, at the continued insistence of Muawiya, the Arab governor of Syria, gave his consent. Inevitably, the ship-building programme which was immediately initiated took several years to complete: Muawiya filled in the time leading major offensives into Armenia and - in
647
- as far west as Cappadocia, where he captured Caesarea (now Kaiseri). Only two years later, however, his fleet was ready, his seamen trained; and he at once flung the full force of it against Cyprus, with himself in command. The target was well chosen: Cyprus was one of the Empire's chief naval bases, and though Muawiya had not sufficient manpower to occupy it permanently he was able to take its capital Constantia
1
by storm, sack the city, destroy the port and harbour installations and ravage vast tracts of the surrounding country.

In
650
it was the turn of Aradus (now Ruad), a prosperous merchant city on an island off the Syrian coast, which was burnt to ashes and left uninhabitable, its people driven away to seek refuge where they might. After that, Constans was able to negotiate a two-year truce; but this only freed Muawiya to concentrate on more ship-building, so that in
654
he was able to launch a still more formidable expedition against the island of Rhodes. The extent of the damage wrought on this occasion is not recorded, though it must have been considerable; our best source, Theophanes, is understandably more interested to tell us of the fate of the celebrated Colossus. This hundred-foot-high bronze statue of Helios the sun god - one of the Seven Wonders of the World - had been commissioned from a local sculptor, Chares of Lindos, in
304
bc
, and proudly set up beside the entrance to the harbour;
2
but alas, only a century later an earthquake brought it crashing to the ground. The heartbroken Rhodians never tried to re-erect it, but left it for nearly nine more centuries lying where it had fallen. It was only now, during the temporary Arab occupation of the island, that Muawiya had it broken up and sold for scrap. The metal was ultimately sold to a Jewish merchant from Edessa; he needed
900
camels to carry it away.

The capture of Rhodes - and of its neighbour Cos soon afterwards -persuaded Constans that he must take the initiative: left to himself, Muawiya would obviously continue to add island after island to his chain of conquests until it extended to Constantinople itself. In
655,
therefore, an imperial fleet sailed out of the Marmara and southward down the coast. It met the Saracens off Phoenicus - the modern Finike -in Lycia, and immediately battle was joined. This was the first of a whole millennium of sea fights between Christian and Muslim, and it was a catastrophe. The Byzantine navy was shattered, and Constans himself escaped only by changing clothes with one of his men - who was subsequently killed in the fighting.

The situation now looked grave indeed; but the next year saw a momentous event which prevented Muawiya from following up his advantage. On
17
June
656
the Caliph Othman was assassinated in his house at Medina, while reading the Koran. Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, was elected his successor on the spot, and was supported by the tribesmen of Mesopotamia; Muawiya, on the other hand, who had been simultaneously proclaimed in Syria, accused Ali of complicity in the murder and, hanging Othman's bloodstained shirt on the
mimber
1
of the Great Mosque of Damascus, swore vengeance. The ensuing strife continued until
661,
when Ali's own assassination left Muawiya supreme. For the next five years the Muslim world would be in ferment - and Byzantium could breathe again.

The Emperor — whose heavily hirsute appearance had by now earned him the nickname of
Pogonatus,
'the Bearded'
2
- doubtless welcomed the respite, and in
659
was more than happy to accept Muawiya's offer of
1,000
nomismata
in return for a cessation of hostilities, with the additional bonus of a horse and a slave for every day that the peace between them should last. The question arises, all the same, why he had waited fourteen years after his accession, until the year
655,
before taking any action at all against his enemy. Much the same question, it will be remembered, had been asked of his grandfather Heraclius, and to some extent the same

answer can be given: he needed time to prepare his forces. But for Constans there was another requirement too. The ill feeling engendered by the monothelite controversy and the intrigues of Martina had left Constantinople dangerously split. It was of the first importance that he should somehow re-establish - at least so far as he could - religious and political unity.