The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 (47 page)

however, that the majority of his subjects felt much sympathy. In the seven years since his accession the young Emperor - he was still barely twenty-three — had acquired a degree of unpopularity previously equalled, perhaps, only by Phocas. His high-handed treatment of the recent settlers had already, as we have seen, resulted in a massive mutiny that had cost him Armenia. The old aristocracy, fully aware of his hostility, had been obliged to stand impotently by while he had steadily shorn them of their powers and privileges in favour of a free peasantry responsible only to himself; and even that peasantry had been antagonized by his insatiable demands for money.

Here was the one field in which Justinian II could equal, or even surpass, his great namesake. He too had a passion for building, on a scale which threatened to reduce his subjects to penury. His tax-collectors - above all his Grand Logothete (and defrocked priest) Theodotus and his
Sacellarius
Stephen of Persia, a huge and hideous eunuch never seen without a whip in his hand - had quickly shown themselves to be as brutal and merciless as John of Cappadocia at his worst, thinking nothing of torturing their victims (often by hanging them over a slow fire and smoking them into unconsciousness) if they could thereby extract a few additional pieces of gold for their master. Inevitably, it was the wealthy aristocracy that suffered most: Justinian made no secret of the fact that he hated them and was determined to destroy them as a class. They bore the extortions till they could bear them no more; then they rose in revolt.

Their leader was one of themselves, a professional soldier named Leontius who, after distinguishing himself in the Armenian and Caucasian campaigns, had been disgraced in
692
- he may have commanded the army that had been defeated at Sebastopolis - and thrown into prison. While there, so the story goes, he had been visited by two monks, one of whom had foretold that he would one day wear the imperial diadem. This prophecy had so preyed on his mind that when in
695
he was suddenly set at liberty and nominated military governor of the new Theme of Hellas, he marched on the
Praetorium,
overpowered the Prefect and released all the prisoners that were being held there - many of them his old comrades-in-arms, who declared for him at once. Together they then moved on to St Sophia, calling on all whom they passed to gather at the Great Church. On their arrival the Patriarch, who had recently given the Emperor some offence and was already fearing the worst, unhesitatingly declared in their favour, with the words, 'Here is the day which the Lord hath ordained!' By morning, thanks to the enthusiastic support of the Blues, Leontius had been proclaimed Basileus and the revolution was over. Justinian was taken prisoner and led in chains round the Hippodrome, while his erstwhile subjects screamed insults and abuse. In token of the new Emperor's long friendship with his father Constantine IV, his life was spared; he suffered instead the by now usual mutilations to nose and tongue
1
before being sent off to eternal exile in the Crimean city of Cherson. His rapacious ministers were less fortunate: tied by the feet to the backs of heavy wagons, they were then dragged down the Mese from the Augusteum to the Forum Bovis - the modern Aksaray - and there burnt alive.

Ten years and two Emperors later, the people of Byzantium would have bitter cause to regret that they had not consigned Justinian II to a similar fate.

The deeply undistinguished reign of Leontius is notable for one thing only: the capture of Carthage by the Saracens and the consequent extinction in 698 of the Exarchate of Africa. The upstart Emperor had done his best to save the situation, sending the largest fleet he could muster to the relief of the beleaguered city; ironically enough, it was this very fleet that overthrew him. Rather than return and report their failure, its leaders decided instead to rebel, acclaiming as Basileus one of their own number, a
drun
garius
- the rank roughly corresponded to vice-admiral - whose Germanic name of Apsimar was hastily changed to Tiberius. When the fleet reached Constantinople, the Greens - who had never liked Leontius - upheld the cause of the mutineers, and their support proved decisive. The unhappy man lost - all too predictably -his nose, together with as much of his hair as was necessary to provide him with a tonsure, and was sent off to the monastery of Dalmatus.

Tiberius, for his part, proved a good deal more effective. With the help of his brother Heraclius he strengthened both the land and the sea defences of Anatolia, and in
700
actually invaded Saracen-held Syria, going on to regain - though unfortunately only for a brief period -parts of Armenia. Later, in
703
and
704,
he beat back successive Arab invasions of Cilicia, inflicting heavy losses as he did so; indeed, had he only retained the imperial diadem, he might well have achieved still greater things, earning for himself a distinguished place on the roll of Byzantine Emperors. But he did not retain it. In
705
he in his turn was

1
The slitting of the tongue seems on this occasion to have been more symbolic than anything else: Justinian remained, so far as we can judge, an unusually talkative man all his life. The damage to his nose, on the other hand, resulted in lasting disfigurement: he was ever afterwards known as
Rbinotmetus
-
'Cut-Nose'.

overthrown. Justinian, after a decade in exile and despite his hideous mutilations, had returned to the capital - with his ambitions as strong as ever and vengeance in his heart.

The city of Cherson - now known as Korsun - consists today of a few excavated streets with the remains of a central square, a theatre and some rather good mosaic floors of the sixth century. Thirteen hundred years ago, on the other hand, it was a considerable community: a semi-autonomous dependency of the Empire with its own independent Hellenistic traditions, its own governing magistrate and its own senate. The small imperial garrison stationed there existed more for its protection than for its control. It was, however, useful to Byzantium in two ways. First, it was a valuable observation post, from which a watchful eye could be kept on the barbarian tribes - Alans and Avars, Bulgars and Slavs, Khazars and Petchenegs - who still led their old wandering lives through South Russia and the Caucasus; second, its remoteness made it an admirable place of exile - for Pope Martin among many others, who had died there just thirty years before the arrival of Justinian.
1

The Emperor - still, it must be remembered, only twenty-six at the time of his banishment - had made it known from the start that he considered his stay in Cherson to be strictly temporary. Gradually he gathered round him a circle of loyal adherents who, as time went on, grew steadily more outspoken in their hostility to Leontius. When the usurper was dethroned in 698 they made no secret of their delight; and by
702
or early
703
Justinian had become such a liability to the local authorities that they decided to return him to Constantinople. Learning of their intentions just in time, however, he slipped out of the city and appealed for protection to the Khazar Khagan Ibuzir, who welcomed him with enthusiasm and immediately gave him his sister for a bride. The lady's first impressions of her new husband are, perhaps fortunately, not recorded; he cannot have been a pretty sight. But it is significant that he immediately renamed her Theodora
. The two then settled in Phana
goria, at the entrance to the Sea of Azov, to await developments.

Their married life was soon interrupted. Clearly it was only a matter of time before the exiled Emperor's whereabouts became known in Constantinople, and at some point in
704
one of Theodora's handmaidens brought her the news that an imperial envoy had arrived at her brother's court, offering rich rewards for Justinian, dead or alive. Ibuzir, it appeared, had stood firm at first, but as the envoy's tone became

1
The Pope had hated it, and had complained bitterly about the living conditions. He even wrote to his friends asking them to send him bread, 'which is talked of, but has never been seen".

threatening he had slowly weakened; his brother-in-law was now in imminent danger of his life.

This report was confirmed a few days later when a detachment of soldiers suddenly appeared at Phanagoria, purporting to be a newly formed bodyguard. Justinian did not believe them for a moment. He soon singled out two officers as his potential assassins. Before they could strike, he invited them separately to his house; and then, as they entered, he leapt upon them and strangled them with his own hands. The immediate danger was averted; but there was still no time to be lost. Theodora, now heavily pregnant, had no choice but to return to her brother; Justinian himself slipped down to the harbour, commandeered
-
or, more probably, stole - a fishing-boat and sailed off into the night, back round the Crimean coast to Cherson. In doing so he was aware that he was risking his life; he was well known throughout the city, disguise
-
for him of all people - was impossible, and the authorities would never allow him to escape a second time. Somehow, however, he managed to contact his supporters and to summon them to a secret rendezvous -
whence they all set sail together under cover of night, westward across the Black Sea.

The story is told of how, on their journey, their frail vessel was caught in a fearful tempest; and of how one of their number suggested to the Emperor that the divine anger might be assuaged by a promise that, if he regained his throne, he would spare all those who had formerly opposed him. Justinian's reaction had been entirely characteristic: 'If I spare a single one of them,' he had replied, 'may I be drowned on this instant.' Nothing happened; the storm subsided; and the little boat was carried safely to the Bulgar-held lands around the Danube delta.

The Bulgar King Tervel received Justinian as warmly as had the Khagan of the Khazars a year or two before, and readily agreed to his proposal: that he should provide all the military assistance necessary for the Emperor to regain his throne, in return for the title of Caesar and the hand of his daughter
1
in marriage. Thus it was that in the spring of
705
the exiled Emperor appeared, at the head of an army of Slavs and Bulgars, before the walls of Constantinople. For three days he waited, while his peremptory demands for the gates to be opened to him were answered with derisive insults; then he took action. During those three days, his scouts had discovered an old water conduit, long disused, running beneath the walls into the city. On the night of the third day, accompanied only by a few picked volunteers, he managed to squeeze

1
The child of his first wife Eudocia, who had died young.

himself along it, finally emerging just outside the Palace of Blachernae at the northern extremity of the walls. The sleeping guards were taken by surprise, and within a few minutes the building was his. When the word spread the next morning that the Emperor had returned and had taken possession of his palace, Tiberius fled to Bithynia; and the citizens of Constantinople, faced with the alternatives of surrender or the immediate sack of their city at the hands of the barbarian hordes, very wisely chose the former.

If the Emperor had indeed sworn that fearful oath during his crossing of the Black Sea, those who had accompanied him would have had good cause to remember it in the days that followed. Tiberius himself was soon captured, and his predecessor Leontius was dragged, protesting, from his monastery; then, on
15
February
706,
the two were paraded in chains through the city to the Hippodrome - just as Justinian had been ten years before - while their erstwhile subjects hurled abuse and pelted them with ordure. The prescribed circuit complete, they were flung down before the Emperor, who symbolically planted one purple-booted foot on the neck of each while the crowd chanted the Ninety-First Psalm, verse thirteen of which had seemed particularly appropriate:

Thou hast trodden on the asp and the basilisk:

The lion and the dragon hast thou trampled underfoot.
1

Then they were taken away to the place of execution, where their heads were severed from their shoulders.

Meanwhile the Bulgar army was waiting at the gates. Not without difficulty had Tervel restrained his men from bursting into the city and giving themselves over to the rapine and looting to which they had been eagerly looking forward; and Justinian was well aware that his new ally would not lead them home before claiming his reward. Of the projected marriage of Tervel to his daughter nothing more is heard; since the chroniclers make no further mention of the girl herself, we can only conclude that she had followed her mother to an early grave. But the other half of the bargain was inescapable; and so it was that shortly after his return, in an impressive ceremony held before a vast concourse of spectators, he draped a purple robe across the shoulders of the Bulgar King, seated him at his side and formally proclaimed him Caesar. Many of those present were
horrified: here was the higheste
title after that of the Emperor himself, one which had hitherto been invariably reserved

1
The point here is the play on words: '
the lion' is Lcontius, 'the asp’
Apsimar. (The English Authorized Version prefers 'adder' to 'asp', which rather spoils the joke - such as it is.)

for senior members of the imperial family; must they now be obliged to watch in silence while it was conferred not even on a citizen of the Empire, but on a barbarian brigand? Yes, was the short answer: they were. All too soon it was to be made plain to them that their Basileus was no respecter of tradition; and that whatever they felt about his decisions, they would do well to keep their opinions to themselves.

For now came the Terror: an orgy of blood-letting worse even than that initiated by Phocas a century before. As Paul the Deacon
1
unpleasantly put it (in a snide reference to the Emperor's noselessness), 'as often as he wiped away the drops of rheum from his nostrils, almost as often did he order another one of those who had opposed him to be slain.' Tiberius's brother Heraclius - the best general in the Empire, a brilliant soldier whom Justinian could ill afford to lose - was hanged with all his staff officers on a row of gibbets erected along the Land Walls; others were tied up in weighted sacks and thrown into the sea. Patriarch Callinicus, who had crowned both the usurpers, was blinded and exiled to Rome - as a warning, it was murmured, to Pope John VII if he did not ratify the Quinisextum - and the countless other cases of torture and mutilation were by no means confined to those who had opposed Justinian in the past. To
his contemporaries only one ex
planation was possible; the Emperor was mentally unhinged. By now he seemed totally oblivious of state affairs, or of the ever-worsening situation along the imperial borders. He wanted only two things. The first was blood - and if that blood were the life-blood of the Empire itself, he cared not a jot. The other was his wife.

It was two years now since he had seen her; he may not even have known whether she and her baby were dead or alive. Nor could he be certain that her brother would allow her to leave his court. In the event, however, he need not have worried. On hearing of the Emperor's reinstatement the Khagan Ibuzir had repented of his former faithlessness; he was now eager to resume their former friendship and to enjoy the perquisites of an imperial brother-in-law. Theodora arrived safely in Constantinople with her little boy - named, rather unfortunately, Tiberius - the first foreign-born Empress ever to ascend the throne of Byzantium. Justinian was at the quayside to greet them; and now the watching crowd gasped again as the truth slowly dawned: this ogre who was their Emperor, this monster of inhumanity who seemed to breathe only bitterness and hatred, was in love. Inevitably, there were those who shook their heads as they watched the Emperor lower the diadems on to

i
Hist
oria Langobardorum,
VI, xxxii.

the heads of his wife and son in St Sophia. The woman was, after all, not just a foreigner - though that would have been bad enough. She was a barbarian to boot - and her son, whom Justinian had named co-Emperor at the same time, was half-barbarian too.
Mesalliances
of this kind, they whispered, would have been unthinkable in former times.

But then, so would an Emperor without a nose. Such old-fashioned prejudices were no longer acceptable in Justinian's Constantinople. It was significant that he had not cut the noses of either of the upstart pretenders; having proved by his own example that an Emperor could be an Emperor whether he possessed a nose or not, there was simply no point in doing so. The only way to make sure that they would cause no further trouble was to eliminate them completely - which was what he had done. In consequence of this, the abominable practice of
rhinokopia,
as it was called, is hardly ever heard of again. By the same token, Theodora the Khazar was only the first of many Empresses born beyond the furthest confines of the Empire.

The Byzantium of the eighth century would be, in short, a very different place from the Byzantium of the seventh; and for that difference Justinian II was, for all his violence and his brutality, to be very largely responsible.

Justinian's elevation of Tervel was not his only attempt to improve relations with his neighbours. Soon after his restoration he liberated 6
,000
Arab prisoners of war taken by his two predecessors; and a year or two later he sent the Caliph Walid I a vast quantity of gold, a team of skilled workmen and a huge consignment of mosaic
tesserae
for the embellishment of the great Mosque of Medina, then a-building. In return, Walid is said to have bestowed on him a whole 'houseful' of pepper, valued at
20,000
dinars.

But alas, no amount of extravagant gestures could keep the peace for very long on the imperial borders. Justinian's neighbours to both east and west soon realized that by his wholesale purges he had eliminated all his best officers, and they were not slow to take advantage of the fact. In
708
the Byzantines suffered a serious defeat at the hands of certain Bulgar tribes (who were, however, almost certainly not subject to Tervel) at Anchialos near the mouth of the Danube; and in
709
they sustained an even graver blow: the loss of the key stronghold of Tyana in Cappadocia to the Arabs, whose victory was to encourage them to make further and still deeper incursions into imperial territory.