THE
ROMAN
EMPIRE
\
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ESSAYS ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY FROM THE ACCESSION OF D O M I T I A N (81 A.D.) TO THE RETIREMENT OF NICEPHORUS III. ( I 0 8 l A.D.)
BY
F. W. BUSSELL FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXtORD RECTOR OF SI2ELAND
VOLUME I
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
All rights reserved
TO MY FRIEND
ALFRED J. BUTLEE, D.LiTT., FELLOW AND BURSAR OF BKASENOSE, WHOSE WORK ON THE ARAB CONQUEST OF EGYPT IS NO! THE LE4ST NOTABLE MONUMENT OF THE INTEREST OF OUR COLLEGE IN THE HISTORY OF IMPERIAL ROME
CONTENTS PAGE
INTRODUCTION
i BOOK I
THE PAGAN EMPIRE: THE CIVILIAN MONARCHY AND THE MILITARY REACTION CHAP.
I. The Reign of Domitian and the Era of the Earlier Antonines (81-180 A.D.)
25
II. The Pseudo-Antonines ; or, the Afro-Syrian House and t h e Regimen o f Women (180-235 A.D.) . . .
43
III. The Moral Revival, the Suggested Dyarchy, and the Illyrian Line (235-285 A.D.)
65
"IV. Centralised Absolutism; or, the System of Diocletian a n d Constantine (285-337 A.D.) . . . .
88
BOOK II PROBLEMS OF THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW SUBJECTS ; OR, THE LIMITATIONS OF AUTOCRACY AND THE BARBARIAN OFFER I. The New System of Caste and Officialism ; the Severance of Civil and Military Orders; and the Influx of Aliens 109 V
'II. Legitimacy; or, the Dynastic Epoch and the Successors of Constantine (337-457 A.D.) 125
III. Liberal Imperialism; or, the Functions of the Emperor and the Proffer of Barbarian Loyalty . . .146 IV. The Era of the Patricians ; or, the Barbarian Protectorate 168 vii
viii
CONTENTS BOOK III
RECONSTRUCTION AND COLLAPSE UNDER THE HOUSES OF JUSTIN AND HERACLIUS: VICTORY OF CIVILIAN AND REACTION TO MILITARY FORMS CHAP.
PAGE
I. The Eastern Rejection of the Teutonic Patronate; and the Adoptive Period of Mature Merit (457-527 A.D.) 195 II. The Restoration ; or, Period of Conquest and Central Control under Justinian (527-565 A.D.) . . .218 III. Success of the Forces arrayed against Absolutism; Overthrow of the Empire (565-610 A.D.) . . . 246 IV. The Protest of Carthage ; or, the Second African House and the Orthodox Crusade (610-711 A.D.) . . 268
BOOK IV ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE MONARCHY UNDER ASIATIC INFLUENCE: ROMAN TRADITION, THE COURT, AND THE FEUDAL NOBILITY I. The Second Syrian House; or, the Attempt at Protestant Reform (717-820 A.D.) 291 II. The Pretenders, and the Establishment of the Dynasty of Phrygia (820-919 A.D.) 310 III. The Epoch of the Byzantine "Shogunate"; or, the Age of Military Expansion and Recovery (919-1025 A.D.) 328 IV. Extinction of Roman Tradition under the Daughters of Constantine I X . (1025-1081 A.D.) . . . . 340 REVIEW OF THE PERIOD
354
ANALYSIS
373
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES A. First " Flavian " House: VESPASIANUS TITUS (son) DOMITIANUS
69-79 79-8i 81-96
B. Adoptive or Antoninian Period : M. COCCEIUS NERVA 96-98 NERVA TRAJANUS (Spain) . . . . 98-117 JULIUS HADKIANUS 117-138 TITUS ANTONINUS I. Pius . . 138-161 /MARC. AuRELiusANTONINUS II. 161-180 \M. ANTONINUS III. VERUS . . 161-169 Luc. AUREL. COMMOD. ANTON-) Q INUSIV f 180-192 HELVIUS PERTINAX . . . . 193. . DIDIUS JULIANUS 1 193 . . PESCENNIUS NIGER (in Syria) . 193-194 CLODIUS ALBINUS (in Brit.) . . 193-197
milit. nom. birth. birth. senat. nom. adoption. ? adopt. adopt. adopt. adopt. birth. senat. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom.
C. Afro-Syrian House and Pseudo-Antonines: L. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS I. (Afnc.) . 193-211 (M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS V.) 1 ("Caracallus,"son) (211-217 (ANTONINUS VI. GETA (brother) j 211-212 M. OPILIUS MACRINUS . . . 217-218 ANTONINUS VII. DIADU- )
milit. nom. ( biith and adop( tion.' birth. milit. nom. birth. MENIANUS | ' ' M. AUREL. ANTONINUS VIII. ) 2l80 222 ( milit. nom. and ('' Elagabalus," son of A. V.) f ~ \ 'birth.' M. AUREL. SEVERUS II. ALEXANDER 222-235 birth, L. JUL. AUR. URANIUS ANTONINUS IX. (in East).
D. Gordian House (from Africa): JUL. VALER. MAXIMINUS I. ) 2 „ (Dacia) f 3S-238 MAXIMUS I. (? or -inus), son. . 236-238 M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS I. (at) 2 „ Carthage) f 3« • • M. ANT. GORDIANUS II. (son) . . 238 . . MAXIMUS II. PUPIENUS . . . ) „ DEC. JUN. BALBINUS . . . . f 3s • • M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS III. (son )2 0 of II.) .} 38-244 E. Period of Disorder: M.JULIUS PHILIPPUS I. and II. (Arab) C. MESSIUS DECIUS (Pannon.) . . HEHENNIUS ETRUSCUS (son) [ HOSTILIANUS (brother) I C. VIBIUS TREBONIANUS GALLUS . VOLUSIANUS GALLUS II. (son)
244-249 249-251 251-252 251-253 253
.
milit. nomin. birth. provinc. nomin. birth. senat. nomin. milit. nom. and ! birth. milit. nomin. milit. nom. birth, birth. milit. nom. birth, milit. nom.
x
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES f P. LICINIUS VALERIANUS I. ... 253-260 . milit. nom. ( P. LICIN. GALLIENUS (son) . . . 253-268 . birth. LICINIUS VALERIANUS II. (brother) SALONINUS (nephew), &c. or VALERIANUS III.
F. The " Thirty Tyrants " :— (a) The Gaulish monarchy: POSTUMUS 258-267 . milit. nom. kills Saloninus at Cologne. Reigns at Treves over Gaul, Britain, Spain; associates— (a reneg. general of) VICTORINUS-; Gallien, slain by own ^265-268 . co-opt. (. troops j b y 2 6 7 . . . mi.it.nom. 'y ^ 267 Oct.-268 Feb. VICTORIA (mother of Victorin). . 268-270?. fgov. of Aquitame;") TETRICUS -[ yields to Aurelian, [• 268-274 . FEMALE nom. I 274 }
{
(6) The Eastern Monarchy: (1) Roman : in Egypt and Syria— BALISTA (?) and CYRIADES . . . . 261 FULV. MACRIANUS . {Vlqureb0yius. ^61-262 MACRIANUS II. (son) QUIETUS (son) (2) Alien— SEPTIMIUS OD/ENATHUS, recogn. by Gallien. . ' imp.' 262 ' Aug.' 264-267 . co-opt. HERODES (son), both slain byl26i;-266 birth. Maeonius 1 ° ( ZENOBIA (wife of Od) 266-273 \ VABALATHUS (son) . . . ' Aug' 270 or 1-272 birth. (c) Brief and sporadic seditions : Pannonia. INGENUUS . . • REGALIANUS, ? Dacian (killed by own soldiers).
hauria. TREBELLIANUS (bandit, predec. of Zeno and Longinus). byTheo-"\ dotus. Sent \ 263 (vanq. by Gallien. J
FIRMUS I. (a'bandit')
274
North Italy. UTREOLUS, Dacian herdsman) 2 , 7 27 (long faithful lieut. of Gallien) ' ° ° •ian " or Pannonian line : G. The "Illyria M. AUREI.. CLAUDIUS II 268-270 . milit. nom. QUINTILLUS (brother) 270 . . . birth. L. DOMIT. VALER. AURELIAN us . 270-275 . milit. nom. M. CLAUDIUS TACITUS 275-276 . senat. nomin. FLORIANUS (brother) . . . . 276 . . . birth.
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES M. AURELIUS VALER. PROBUS . . M. AURELIUS CARUS ( M. AURELIUS NUMERIANUS (son) . (M. AURELIUS CARINUS (brother) _— JULIANUS II ( C. AUREL. VALER. DIOCLETIANUS . ( M. AUREL. VALER. MAXIMIANUS . C. GALERIUS MAXIMIANUS II. . . JULIANUS III. (Carth.). CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS (Britain)
276-282 282-283 283 . 283-285
. • . .
XI
milit. nom. milit. nom birth. birth.
284-305 . milit. nom 285-305 . co-opt. 305-311 . adopt. 286-293 •
milit. nom.
H. The "Flavian" Houses (Constantine, Valentinian, and Theodosius) FLAVIUS VALER. CONSTANTIUS I. ) , (grand-nephew of Claud. II.) . f3°5-3°° • adopt. FLAV. VAL. CONSTANTINUS I. . . 306-337 . birth. MAXIMINUS II. (or III. ?) . . 308-313 . co-opt. SEVERUS III. . . . . . 307-308 . co-opt. MAXENTIUs(bonof Maximian I.) 306-312 . milit. nom. P. VALERIUS L'IANUS LICINIUS III. 1 8„ and IV. (son) ( 3° ~323 • co-opt. FLAV. JUL. CONSTAN- \ 1 337-340 . birth. TINUS I I
FLA.
!
JUL.
T1US I I
1
CONSTAN- } SOJ?S T
/<-.!.
FLAVIUS
VALENTINI-
. mil. nom. (FLAVIUS GRATIANUS I I. (son) . . . . 375-383 . birth. ' | FLAVIUS VALENTINIl ANUS II. (brother) . 375-392 MAXIMUS III. . . 383-388 . milit. nom. EUGENIUS . . . 392-394 . BARB. nom. FLAV. THEODOSIUS I. 394-395 FLAV, HONORIUS . . 395-423 . birth. tT In Britain— -^H MARCUS . . . . 4 0 5 ^| * GRATIANUS II. . . 406 CONSTANTINUS III. 407-411 V mil. nom. j' CONSTANS II. (son) 409-411 J In Spain— MAXIMUS IV. . . 4ro . BARB. nom. At Mentz— JOVINUS (Gaul) . .411 SEBASTIANUS (bro. 412 PR. ATTALUS . . 409-410 . BARB. i (in Rome) nom. FLAV. CONSTANTIUS III. (bro. in-law to Honor.) 421 JOHANNES I. . . . 423-425 . BARB. _\ nom.
j
{ 337-361 . birth.
|
FLAV. JUL. CONSTANS I. J ' 337-350 MAGNENTIUS (Gaul) . . . . 350-353 DECENTIUS (brother) . . . . 351-353 VETRANIO 350 . . NEPOTIANUS (in Rome) . . . 350 . . SILVANUS (Gaul at Cologne). . 355. . FLAV. CLAUDIUS JULIANUS IV. . . ) OI, , (cousin of Constance II.) . . . f3 -3°3 FLAV. TOVIANUS 363 364
WEST
v
, 1
. . . . . .
birth. milit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. : bii milit. nom. • birth. . milit. nom.
EAST FLAVIUS VALENS (bro.) 364-378 . birth. PROCOPIUS . . . 365,366 . birth. FLA.VIUSTHEODOSIUS I. 378-395 . co-opt.
FLAV. ARCADIUS (son)
395-408 . birth.
FLAV. THEODOSIUS II. (son)
408-450 . birth.
Xll
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES
WEST FLAV. FLAG. VALENTINIANUS III. . . . 425-455 • birth, (son of Const. III. and Placidia) PETRONIUS MAXIMUS V. . . . . 455-456 . ? nom. AVITUS (in Gaul) . 456-457 . prov. nom.
FLAV. JUL. VAL. MAJORIANUS . . . . 457-461 . BARB. nom. FLAV. LIBIUS SEVERUS IV ... 461-465 . BARB. nom. [Interregnum] FLAV. PROCOP. ANTHEMIUS . . . . 467-472 . co-opt. East (? birth) OLYBRIUS 472 . BARE. nom. and FEMALE right. FL. GLYCERIUS . . 473-474 . BARB. nom. JULIUS II. NEPOS . 474-475 . co-opt. East. ROMULUS . . . . 475-476 . milit. nom. FLAV.
ODOVACAR
THEODORlC(/a/W.) 489 king in Italy . . 493
EAST FLAV. MARCIANUS (husb. of Pulcheria) . 450-457 . FEMALE right.
I. Later Pseudo-Flavians and Pannonian House of Justin : FLAVIUS LEO 1.1457-474 . BARB. nom. (Thrac.) . . . ./
FLAVIUS LEO II. (son) 474 FLAVIUS ZENO (father) 474-475 . FEMALE right. BASILISCUS (bro. of Leo's widow) . . . 475-477 . FEMALE nom. ZENO (restored) . . . 477-491 FLAV. ANASTASIUS I. (husb. of Ariadne) . 491-518 . FEMALE right. FLAV. ANIC. JUSTINUS I CI8-C27 . 'praetor nom. FLAV. ANICIUS JUSTINIANUS I. (neph.) 527-565 . birth. FLAV. JUSTINUS II. (neoh. ) C61-578 . birth. FLAV. TIBERIUS II. CONSTANTINUS . . 578-582 . adopt. FLAV. MAURICIUS . . 582-602 . adopt. PHOCAS (or FOCAS)' 602-610 . milit. nom
K. The Second African House, or th ; Dynasty of Heraclius : HERACLIUS I. (from Carth. ) . . . 610-641 . milit. pretend. HERACLIUS II. (or Const. IV. ? , son 641 . . . birth, HERACLIUS III. (or Heraclonas bro. 641 . . . birth, birth. TIBERIUS III. ('David'), b o "CONSTANS III." (son of Her. I.) . 641-668 . birth. CONSTANTINUS IV. POGONATU ; (son 668-685 • birth. birth. ( HERACLIUS IV. bros. assoc hirth. \ TIBERIUS IV JUSTINIANUS II. (son 685 695 birth LEONTIUS 695-698 milit conspir TIBERIUS V. APSIMARUS . . . 698-705 . milit. nom. JUSTINIANUS II. (restored) . . . . 705-711 . foreign aid.
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES
xiii
TIBERIUS VI., his son, ?assoc birth. PHILIPPICUS, BARDANES . . . 711-713 . milit. nom. ANASTASIUS II 713-716 . palace nom. THEODOSIUS III. or IV. . . . 716-717 . milit. nom. L. The Second Syrian House, or the Dynasty of the ' Isaurians': LEO III. (Conon) (Isaur. or Syr.). . 717-740 . milit. nom. CONSTANTINUS V. (son) . . . . 740-775 . birth. ARTAVASDUS (son-in-law of Leo j. ^^ _ FEMALE righ(i LEO IV. (son) 775-7So ( CONSTANTINUS VI. (son) . . . . 780-797 I \ IRENE (mother) 797-802 NICEPHORUS I. (Arab) . . . 802-811 STAURACIUS (son) 811 . MICHAEL I. (bro.-in-law). . . 811-813 LEO V. (Armenian) 813-820
. . . . . . .
M. The House of Amorium, or the Phrygian Dynasty : MICHAEL II 820-829 . THEOPHILUS (son) 829-842 . MICHAEL III. (son) 842-867 . BASILIUS 1 867-886 . LEO VI. (son of Mich. III.) . . . 886-911 . f ALEXANDER (son of Basil I.) . . . 911-912 . ( CONSTANTINUS VII. (son of Leo VI.) 912-959 . ROMANUS I. LECAPENUS . . . 919-944 .
(STEPHANUS
)
(CONSTANTINUS VIII
)
< CHRISTOPHORUS
(CONSTANTINUS VII. (sole) ROMANUS II. (son of Const. grandson of Romanus I.) . ( BASILIUS II. (son) ) CONSTANTINUS IX. (brother) . NICEPHORUS II. PHOCAS .
birth. birth. FEMIN. usurp. palace conspir. birth. FEMALE right. milit. nom. milit. conspir. birth. birth. co-opt. birth, birth. birth. milit. nom.
>944 . . . birth.
. . 944-959) VII. ) y3 y fiJ bi h . .) ' 963-1025 . birth. . . 963-1028 . birth. . . 963-969 . milit.
nom.
FEMALE right.
and
JOHANNES II. TziMiscES(neph.) 969-976 . palace conspir.
RO N s
Tx : husb: K)lawto Const:} '°28"°34 • F—* ^<-
MicHAELlV.(Paphlag.)husb.toZoe. 1034-1041 . FEMALE right. MICHAEL V. (nephew) adopted by |IO4I_I042 . FEMIN . adopt. ZOE AND TKEODORA (sisters to- if 4 gether) ) CONSTANTINUS_X. (Monomachus), J I042_I054 . THEODORA (alone) d. ol Const. IX. 1054-1056 . MICHAEL VI. (Stratioticus). . . . 1056-1057. N. Prelude of the Comnenian Age and House of Ducas: ISAACIUS I. (Comnenus) . . . . 1057-1059 . « /-CONSTANTINUS XI. (Ducas) . . . 1059-1067 . o EUDOCIA (widow and regent for— Q (MICHAEL VII. ) <~J < ANDKONICUS I. V her sons 1067
°
2 | *
FEMALE right .
birth. FEM. nomin. milit. nom. civil, nomin.
(. CONSTANTINUS XII.)
ROMANUS IV. (Diogenes), husb. of) 68 ,„ ( FEM. right and Eudocia. . . . . . . . . ^° -*°7i | milit. nom. MICHAEL VII. (with his brothers). . 1071-1078 CONSTANTINUS XIII. son. . . . 1075- ' NICEPHORUS (III.) Bryennius milit. pretend. NICEPHORUS III. (IV.), Botani-1 IO78_Io8l . milit. pretend.
C. PseuAo-Antonines: Spartianus, Geta, § 2. " In animo habuit Severus ut omnes deinceps principes quemadnaodura Augusti, ita etiam Antonini dicerentur."
xiv
LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES
Lampndms Diadumenus, § 6. " Fuit quidem tarn amabile illis temponbus nomen Antomnorum ut qui eo nomine non mteretur, mereri non videretur impenum. ' Capitolmus Macnnus, § 3. "Alii vero tantum desidermm nommis hujus fuisse dicunt,ut nisi populus et milites Antonim nomen audirent, imperatorem eum non putarent" (cum Petschenig). H. The Flavian Houses' The name Antoninus being now obsolete, its place m popularity is taken by the name Flavins, which attained so great a vogue that it was adopted by barbarian kings; and especially by the Lombards, as a title of office- cf. Paulus Diaconus, Gest. Langob.. of Authan's election, 584 A. D. " Quern etiam ob dignitatem Flavium appellarunt, quo prasnomme omnes (qui postea fuerunt Langobardorum reges) feliciter usi sunt" (v. Abel's note, p. 60). Recared the Visigoth assumed also Odovacar had done so on failure of Western line. The same reason as for name Antomnus, or for eager acceptance of title /
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE INTRODUCTION § 1. THE purpose of the following essays, written Scope and for the use of general reader and modern politician, Value. is to add a modest contribution to the interpretation of the imperial system. I have tried to follow the development of the constitution during a period of one thousand years; and I must sooner or later justify this choice of somewhat arbitrary limits; why should the historian begin with Domitian and relax his flagging interest at the dethronement of the third Nicephorus ? I am well aware that all the limits of all historical periods are in truth fictitious and imaginary; and it is an idle task to dam up the current of a river, in the vain hope of obtaining leisure to analyse its constituents or its direction. I am a firm believer in the continuity of the development of mankind; though I do not always accept the assurance or the evidence of those who imagine that their route is direct, their destination certain. It is the part of the student to trace the presages and premonitions of the future in an earlier epoch ; and with a limited power of judgment to suggest rather than to dogmatise upon the real and often subterranean forces, already silently at work but only emerging in a later age. I have chosen the opening date of the period because I feel that other competent critics have already devoted, or might devote, their time with far greater success than VOL. I.
A
•""- »" °. °-*"
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
Scope and myself to the classical age of the empire—I mean Value. the Julo-Claudian house; and I am not without misgivings in addressing myself to the Flavian restoration, and that period of repose endeared to the young student by the half-merited eulogy of Gibbon, the "Age of the Five Good Emperors." It is impossible, however, to dispense entirely with some sort of general appraisement of the method, the function, and the success of the early empire, in its self-appointed task. But the modern scholar— weighted with material steadily accumulating, each year needing more scientific and minute equipment for the simplest task or the briefest monograph— must learn the lesson of abstinence and accept without a murmur the profound and salutary law of the "division of labour." It were in vain to multiply continuous narratives in English dress of the events already told by the four great English historians—Gibbon, Finlay, Bury, and Hodgkin. It would be an impertinence to repeat again the records which are open to all in their stately, sincere, critical, or eloquent pages. Nor is there need for me to reiterate, what is obvious, my constant indebtedness to their patience, care, and suggestiveness. I would only add to these familiar authorities the names of two others, equally well known, who have laboured less in this portion of human records. It has been my privilege at different times to know both these Oxford professors, Freeman and Pelham, who have done so much to encourage an exact and sympathetic knowledge of the past. And this little contribution is in some sense due to their stimulating interest in younger men, which influence hundreds besides myself have felt and appreciated, though perhaps few in this busy and unresting age have had leisure to follow up their fascinating suggestions. But the Oxford tutor cannot forget that besides the rare intervals of learned ease in term, there are six months in the year during which the multifarious and conflicting duties of tuition or administration can be laid aside
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
3
for a concentrated task. When from some of our Scope and younger men such works as Mr. Henderson's " Nero " or Dr. Dudden's "St. Gregory" are produced, one feels not merely pride in their fellowship but a confidence that the utilitarian changes, which many anticipate to-day, will respect even if they cannot understand the devotion and the industry of such scholars, their steady interest in a single obscure page of history. It seems clear that the prejudice against classical studies can only be justified in any degree when the acquaintance with a dead language in its minute structure is thought an end in itself, and no real attempt is made by its use to lay open the treasures or decipher the teaching of the past. In an age like the present, when concentrated and continuous reading is becoming obsolete, it is more than ever needful for the few who have the key and the leisure to turn it, to unlock the door for the general benefit. I do not know any better remedy against the hasty opportunism of amateurs who know only the surface of their own age and none of the hidden causes that have produced it—than acquaintance with the events and lessons of history. There has prevailed to a dangerous extent a complacent idea that about the middle of the nineteenth century there dawned a new era different from any that had gone before; and that the opening of the vote and the closing of the ballot-box have made a mighty change in human nature. This regeneration of mankind may be dated from the popular outbursts in 1848, or the Great Exhibition of 1851—from a violent or a peaceful origin ; but the newest phase of society cannot be said at the present moment to have acquired any very definite or encouraging features. We are still constantly thrown back upon the past for parallels of warning or instruction. Few supporters survive of the theory of an unbroken advance to a certain goal; indeed there are not many who venture a satisfactory definition of progress. It would be the height of folly to reject the lessons
4
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTKO.
Scope and which Roman development can display to us, on Valve. the hypothesis of some permanent metamorphosis which has of late transformed our nature and made all past precedent superfluous and inapplicable. Whether the cause of the change be the Christian religion reaching at last, after dogmatic aberrations, its true social function, or the scientific inroad of unquestioned fact and unerring sequence, or the new humanitarian and cosmopolitan sentiment destined to weld mankind into a sympathetic commonwealth of equal and free citizens—such a mighty influence is often believed to be triumphing everywhere by a complacent critic of a limited span of years. And yet we have not to look far for striking and significant parallels between our own times and the first three centuries; the crowned Communism or empurpled Socialism, which under cover of a fictitious plutocratic census of rank and dignity very cleverly exploited the rich for the benefit of the poor, and turned the personal wealth, power, and pride of the people's representative into genuine democratic affluence ; the professed pacific basis of the State and its stationary limits ; the undying feud between the two conceptions of the emperor, as mature and efficient magistrate in an autonomous State, and as secluded and semi-divine sovereign, wielding as in Neo-Platonism, indirectly and through agents, a sacred and autocratic power ; the retreat of the historic families from the active charges of public life to give place to lesser men, without tradition and often without conscience; the gradual drifting of these intermediate functionaries (whom we should now term by the collective title of bureaucracy) out of control, alike independent of the fury or protests of the people or the frown of a helpless monarch ; the fond attachment to the fiction of a free election, combined with a natural instinct, in the subject no less than in the interested dynasty, for hereditary succession ; the severance of function, or "division of labour," which results from any calculated formulation of the respective duties of
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
government and citizen—the careful partition of class Scope and and interest and function, until the whole business of the State is transferred to experts, and the boasted democratic opening to average intelligence is falsified in the excessive power enjoyed by secret and irresistible committees, of national defence, or of finance or education; the growing irresponsibility of the governors and the difficulty of reform ; the popular and progressive sympathies of the sovereign thwarted at every turn by the intrigues of the palace; the gradual creation of an independent class, sometimes of the rich, at others of the official hierarchy, who claim to be above law, and withdraw themselves by privilege and immunity from the restraints which govern the rest of mankind; the tendency to centralise in a nominal autocrat, who by the very fulness of recognition loses most of his real influence : such are the features of the ancient republic which must to any student of our own time suggest throughout Europe to-day the closest of analogies. For what is true of a despotic State (so-called) is found to be true also of a free commonwealth ; that is, the exclusion of the " people" from any real share in their government beyond the payment of taxes, over which they have little control, and the surrender of power to compact and irresponsible minorities—not like an aristocracy of birth directly amenable and highly sensitive to public opinion, but lacking dignity or conviction as they lack publicity, and during their tenure of power indifferent to its voice. These are serious falsifications of the hopes and prayers so freely showered upon the new age, which dates its era from the middle of last century. Yet no one who, without prejudice as to the peculiar monarchic or representative formula of the constitution, meditates on the actual problems in Russia or in France, in the United States or even in England, can deny that modern society has many features in common with that age, whose history we propose to follow. Nor is the mere analysis of slow and
6
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
cyclic development without value ; our horizon of history is perhaps dangerously circumscribed to-day, and the vague movement of the impersonal forces cannot be easily detected in the short modern epoch we condescend to honour with our attention. § 2. But I am well aware that many critics will find 'Impersonal' treat- ^s didactic or pragmatic writing of history both tiresome and misleading. " History," they will assert, history. " can be manipulated so as to teach any lesson which the writer wishes to deduce ; and you may with equal plausibility prove the failure and the success of the democratic regimen at Athens, the benign or disastrous result of the feudal system." " Genuine history is not didactic or exemplary ; it is critical and statistical— that is, it includes the minute record and verification of facts and events ; and it is economic, to use the word in its wider sense, a careful generalising from data supplied in the former method, as to the impersonal currents and tendencies which underlie and guide them." It is quite true that with the very prevalent denial of free-will, history becomes a survey of dancing automata, plagued with a conviction of their own spontaneity — " wire - pulled " as one of our own emperors would say. We know that Mr. Froude's idea of the claim of historical studies is quite out of fashion : " To discover noble characters and to pay them ungrudging honour." An overt or covert Hegelianism has invaded the already very restricted area of man's liberty ; and each actor is detected as the mere mouthpiece of the Time-Spirit, and not in any strict or decisive sense, himself. And with this in view, most historians (except perhaps the romantic Mommsen) prefer not to distribute praise and blame with the cheap and facile moralising of an older school. Nero is no longer the target of abuse for superhuman wickedness ; and the Caesars are transformed from unrecognisable monsters into the tied exponents of general tendencies. Hence we see today a kindly and universal inclination to rehabilitate;
Scope and Value.
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
7
for by a genial inconsistency, we like to attri- 'Imperbute a man's virtues to himself and spread the sonal' tTeat' .,...,
,.
,.
..
responsibility ftor his vices upon his age, his circumstances, his education. And it must seriously be confessed that the philosophical student of history cannot fail to be impressed with the small and futile part played on the world's stage by conscious and deliberate intent. The symmetrical and calculated constitution falls to pieces at once; and the illbalanced and creaking edifice of centuries of remodelling outlasts every rival and defies every reformer. Hegel writes as if the genuine actors in the drama were the invisible age- or race-spirits, which " gather round the throne of the Eternal"— each having played its part and contributed its quota to the grand design—assembling, as it were, for the last scene, the brilliant ensemble of the final chorus and consummation. For him, man is of value only as a " type," or rather only as an instance of a " type." And it need not be said that to this agrees modern fiction, whether in story or theatre; for the hero is no successful adventurer, but rather one struggling in the grip of aimless destiny; and there is always an undercurrent of irony, the spectator and reader knowing, as in the Sophoclean CEdipus, the vast gulf stretching between his confessed purpose and the real ends he unconsciously subserves. And thus personal history is out of date; we abandon the consular lists, the imperial series, and try to immerse ourselves in the life of the people, or detect the vague current of the time; we snatch eagerly at the least hint of genuine feeling, of daily routine, of economic and social changes. Disgusted with the parade or treachery of courts, we turn away from the industrious minuteness of Lebeau, as a typical chronicler of an age when national life seemed to centre in a palace. And in reaction, we are inclined to invest with unmerited virtues and a fixed public opinion, the great mass of the subject population. We forget that this very public opinion, the test and
ment oj
8
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTEO.
'Impersafeguard of fitness for self-government, is a plant sonal' treat- of modern and tender growth ; and in some countries, ment of as France, it has already ceased to blossom, just as history. in the strangely akin monarchy which is its wellassorted ally, it has not yet begun to thrive. It is a revenge upon the failure of deliberate statesmen and calculating administrators that we set up the ideal of the honest but reserved " Will of the People," the sound heart of the nation—not indeed articulate in personal edicts or manifestos, but beating somewhere and pulsing through the still dormant frame with a vague yet rhythmic movement. § 3. No one, I feel sure, would wish to dispute the Empire reone single indisputable axiom left to us in the wreck of Will of of most positive political belief, as we have perforce the Age.' to start again from the very alphabet of social needs— I mean the good nature, the honesty and the kindliness of the average man. I am indeed confident that upon this basis alone can any future reconstruction of decrepit democracy take a firm place; given over it would seem to-day to general supineness and stagnation, out of which emerge the strange panaceas of scientific biologists, and the secret and (in effect) irresponsible rule of interested minorities—• both uniting in a single fear, that of any genuine appeal to the people, in a single contempt, that of the native loyalty and friendliness of the normal man. Now we are apt to transfer our admiration for this untutored instinct of the individual to the mass; the good sense of the voter to the body of heterogeneous representatives which he calls together. But a knowledge of history does not bear out this hasty generalisation. It is to be feared that assemblies stand for disunion and the spirit of envious partizans, save in some rare moment of national crisis. The reason of the success of the imperial system, its hold upon popular affection, lay in this conviction—that it aimed at strict impartiality, uniform justice, equalisation of burden and of opportunity. But can it be honestly main-
INTRO.
THE
ROMAN EMPIRE
9*
tained, with the whole turbulent history of the Empire reconciliar period before us, from Nice, let us say, ^^f^ to the " robber-den" at Ephesus, that any question the Age.' of universal moment could have been safely intrusted to the people's representatives ? And was not the tacit agreement of the democracy, by no means without intermittent articulateness and plain speech— that nothing could replace the Caesarian regimen, a proof of the soundness of their common sense ? It is quite possible that free government in the genuine sense may imply disorder as an ingredient, not as an exception; just as in Teutonic subjectivity and in feudalism, private war, local justice, and the duel shattered a centralised and uniform government. It would be no real paradox, in these days, when perhaps no formal principles of universal validity are acknowledged in any sphere, to say that much too high a price can be paid for public order; and that the entire liberal yet firm policy of the empire was at fault in not encouraging free-play in those decaying or rudimentary forces which occupied or coveted the charmed area. It might be easy to show that on the whole this judicious restraint, this equalising and humane law, was to the advantage of the weaker and numerous class, who, whatever the precise designation of the State, seem under any commonwealth to suffer alike. To the credit of the imperial line, it cannot be maintained that the single popular representative was ever intimidated into the enormity of class-legislation. (For this is not condemned by any preconceived standard of right and wrong, but merely on account of its imprudence ; for the law of reaction and reprisal is ignored and this old principle is accepted unconsciously, that the final form of social order shall be a perpetual state of civil war and alternate injustice.) Yet on the other hand all law settlement and security tell in favour of the class in power; and it must be confessed that it is difficult to get away from the
L
10 Empire re"f?urift*f the Age.'
i
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
cynical truth of a Platonic formula, TO TOW crv/j.
epov, or the ironical sarcasm of Euripides on Greek law-making, ?rpo? T&V e^ovrcov $oi/3e rov vopov Tidr)
XNTRO.
THE
ROMAN EMPIRE
11
and the heavy and costly weight of centralised unity. Empire reIt is a salubrious maxim of an older school, " Let them fight it out." If the empire preserved with care a fragile and moribund society, if its magical influence tempered and softened and subtly transformed the barbarians—it is clear that it fulfilled a Hegelian mission ; the world-spirit was wiser than its children. To have removed the empire (if it was conceivable) would be to unchain the rivalry of class and race and creed. It would appear that the surrender of rights made quite in the fashion of Hobbes, at the commencement of our era, did in effect represent a genuine human wish. The world at that time did not really wish for self-government; and though doubtless it did not accurately estimate the sacrifice it was making for ease and safely and peace, yet it never seriously withdrew its endorsement of the Augustan system. The emperors did not encroach ; they were invoked. The provinces did not, like Ireland or Poland or India to-day, seek to break off from a hateful allegiance; but the emperors ceased to be able to protect them; and the memory of that indulgent dominion, idealised by time or absence, lingered on with a wonderful afterglow of sunset until, like many other ideals, it faded in the chilly and artificial illumination of the scientific spirit. We may be quite certain from the familiar character and experience of debating and executive assemblies, that this great fundamental gratitude and aspiration towards integrity and control would not have found expression in any system of representation. It is the natural and excusable tendency of such bodies to accentuate points of difference between principles and parties, to separate into'smaller groups, and (as in modern France) present a dazzling kaleidoscope of successive meteoric ministries : and against this disintegrating influence nothing holds the country together but the legacy of the great foreigner—administrative absolutism.
12
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
An idea era§ 4. It is for this reason that we trace one inconbodied in a testable principle of union, which it is to be hoped wu persons: ' never grow obsolete even in the most scientific loyalty cannot and unemotional society—personal loyalty and gratitude to an e uitable q master. It would seem to be a curious task, destined beforehand to failure, to seek to draw analogies between the function of modern European royalty, with its honourable past and its great but indefinite future, and a system which in many and essential points is the direct negation of its every principle. And it would also seem strange for one who has already professed his distrust in the efficacy of reflection, calculation, and personality, to hark back again to the influence of a sovereign. But it must be remembered that the monarch, by a strange revolution such as fate delights in, has become the unique representative not merely of order, integrity, and national solidarity, but of those warmer emotions and strictly democratic sentiments, which must still continue to regulate and influence mankind. Both emperor and king had origin in the unscrupulous (if justified) victory of armed force; and the modern State no less than imperial Rome, owes its birth to the popular captain and the loyal train-band or legion descending upon anachronism in a Senate, or upon effeminacy in a populace corrupted by long years of peace. Yet round both gathers the strange and intangible feeling of attachment and devotion owed to a parent and father, which is not only difficult to put into language, but is more than difficult to justify by any cool logical process. Yet then as now, it is practically the only sentiment that can unite all sections of society in a common aim; elsewhere, it is increasingly clear, grow the forces, the jealousies, the prejudices, the suspicions which make for disunion. If the centripetal aim of the modern State, overcoming and embracing lesser constituents, be in any way justified by the sole test, the general sum of happiness, it would seem to be essential to preserve this feeling; or rather, seeing that love cannot be
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
13
coerced or commandeered, it would seem essential An Idea emthat it be preserved. The language of loyalty and bod^d ™ a profound obedience may to-day seem artificial and overstrained ; yet it is surely better than the passionate loyalty cannot yet equally fictitious invective in which the platform and the popular assembly accustom us to the thought, that all political life is made up of hatred and of disrespect. This pretended indignation and contempt may be part of a farce played by actors, who are in truth the best of friends; but it is played before an audience which is quite ready to believe it genuine. As under the empire, we agree about one single point, reverence for the sovereign ; in all other respects, we are at feud among ourselves. We may reserve for the body of the volume an analysis of the obvious differences in the conception of an ancient Caesar and a monarch of to-day ; but it is not too much to assert that in both these vague and anomalous ideas lay the seed and safeguard of the pacific development of these early centuries, till the coming of the Teuton. Strictly, the loyalty of provincial subject or barbarian settler was directed to the impersonal majesty of Rome ; while to-day (though we speak of the elimination of the personal element) it is character and personality that rather recommends the system. But let us not dwell inopportunely on points of distinction. It is enough now to have noted one matter at least, in which we may learn something of the workings of the average mind through several centuries. And such a study must still to-day have use and interest for us, in spite of the efforts of philosophers and statesmen to supplant the natural emotions by reasoned and deliberate calculation of interest. § 5. Let me now adduce some justification for my Reason of our choice of dates ; an apology so long delayed that some limils '• em~ y , • r 4.4. T4. piredeadby may deem my promise forgotten. It was a passage 1081 in Zonaras that finally decided my selection of a terminus ad quern; he is discussing a prophecy as to the duration of Constantinople, which miscarried. At the bidding of its founder, Valens the astrologer
14
CONSTITUTIONAL
HISTORY OF
INTRO.
Reasonofour casts the horoscope of the new capital and finds limits: em- its duration is fixed by the stars at 696 years ; " which ea time" says Zonaras, "is now long past." "Either," he continues, " we must suppose that the good seer's pre~ , diction was in error and his vaunted art was at fault, or we must think that he gave the number of years in which the ancient usages of the republic were maintained-, —the constitution of the Senate held in honour and the citizens of Constantinople flourished and rule was according to law—the government, I mean, kingly in the best sense, and not downright tyranny,—where rulers deem the public treasure their own and use it for their private pleasures, giving to whomsoever they will the moneys of the State and not behaving to their subjects as true shepherds of their flock,—who should shear off that which is superfluous only of thefleece,and drink sparingly of the milk; whereas these butcher their sheep after the fashion of bandits and take their fill of the flesh,—yea, and suck out the very marrow from the bone." This severe judgment is passed by a retired minister of Alexius I. (1081-1118) upon the Comnenian administration. He is writing as a monk on Mount Athos in the reign of his son, John II. (1118-1143), one of the most brilliant and attractive figures in later " Roman " history; or it may be that such bitter remarks as these were added in extreme old age under Manuel Comnenus (11431181), whose long reign and chivalrous achievement forms so strange a contrast to the downfall and breakup of the system under the Angelic dynasty. But in any case here is the serious indictment, that the imperial constitution was now a thing of the past; a mere -rvpdvvts with its well-defined implication of selfish aim, and not the responsible magistracy of a . free republic, or the fatherly vigilance of the genuine king. Here is very strong testimony to the view that during the most despotic periods the subjects and critics and historians had always regarded themselves as subordinate only to the man of their own unfettered choice, as governed according to settled law and not personal caprice. This sentiment appears clearly in
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
15
Laurentius, who examines the development of the Season of 'our chief offices during the reigns of Anastasius, Justin, Kmits: emand Justinian. This is the note of the rescript of a^osi.6" ^ good emperor, " Though we are released from the restraint of law, yet it is our aim and pleasure to live by the laws." And does not an early Byzantine historian with legitimate pride contrast the servile state of the Eastern monarchies with the favoured and privileged freedom of a subject of the empire ? Again, do we not find in unexpected corners of some obscure and dull-witted chronicler, the expressions respublica, TO Sij/^ocnov; showing how undying was the sense of righteous and responsible government even to the end, as pre-eminently the Roman ideal, contrasted with the exercise of monarchic power among the barbarian settlers ? • Thus if we compute the years from the foundation of the new capital we shall find ourselves in the last years of Emperor Basilius II. The Roman constitution then lasted until the end of the first quarter of the eleventh century; and this conjecture of Zonaras is borne out in every detail by the narrative of Michael Psellus. This work of recent discovery and publication throws a flood of new light upon the Byzantine administration in that age, which Finlay (with his usual unerring intuition) terms the " Epoch of Conservatism on the eve of Decline." For just at that time the great change took place from vigorous personal government to the evils of seclusion and chamberlain-rule. An effective and on the whole conscientious "Shogunate" had marked nearly the whole of the tenth century—that century which in all the annals of' Byzantium stands in most welcome and conspicuous contrast with the riot and welter of contemporary States. But towards the close of the century Basil, half-monk, half-warrior, recovers his full heritage; and the succession of his brother, Constantine IX. (I adhere to Gibbon's enumeration), was as the succession of Arcadius to Theodosius. The outspoken appeal of Synesius of Gyrene to that
16
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
Bea&m of our prince, buried in the penetralia of the palace, would p^Tdeadbu ^ave ^een
INTRO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
17
nant of "republican" tradition. For the annals of Reason of our the principate after the accession of Alexius I. belong ^its: eme y to mediaeval and European history ; but the thread that connects Basil II. with Constantine, Trajan, and Augustus, is not yet snapped. Others may tell of the exploits of the Comnenians and Palseologi ; but I trace the merits, the failures, the achievements of no noble or princely family. It is the impersonal interest in the commonwealth and its destinies which forms the theme, embodied as it is in personal representatives ; and the imperceptible and gradual transformation changing its outline but never altering its countenance beyond recognition. § 6. I feel that something should be said for the Tentative and form of the work. It has been quite deliberately objective chosen, both for this modest venture on political pontical analysis and for an earlier volume of theological theorist. studies. I have myself found the value of such a division — the general and comprehensive survey which in its very nature must be largely subjective and indeed tentative, suggestive, however its sentences may seem to lapse into occasional dogmatism — and the minuter detail, dealing with a special point of limited interest and application, supported by no vague footnote reference bat by the " veriest words" (so far as the textual critic will allow) of the ancient writer. I am fully aware that no amount of direct citation will ever compensate for want of first-hand acquaintance, in the perusal of these writings as a whole ; but the whole emphasis of a subjective appreciation of a period has been too often interrupted and lost in histories by the conscientious pains of the student and the leaden sediment of footnotes — which in our heart of heart we distrust by instinct yet have rarely the leisure to verify. For however important is the strict and accurate recital of campaigns, of embassies, of the rise and fall of ministries, the exact and truthful fixing of some particular date— —it cannot be denied that in the end we are no further after all our pains than Sallust in his airy VOL. I. B
18
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTRO.
Tentative and narrative of the Jugurthan wars, or some later annalist subjective wno might tell us that Heraclius or Leo or Charles political marched against the enemies, Persian or Arab or theorist. Saxon, and after killing " many mortals and capturing many cities " was in the end victorious. It must not be for a moment supposed that I disparage this accuracy, or the labours of Tillemont or of Clinton. I certainly do not believe that vague and d priori • generalities upon an age (of which we have not patience to master the facts) can form a substitute for a genuine acquaintance; nor even a creditable rival. But I would maintain that the objective and the subjective treatment of history form two essentially separate departments of the scholar's activity; yet they should be united in the inquirer, though they must not operate at one and the same time. The limitations and the peril of this subjective—or better perhaps the would-be didactic—method are clear, and must be freely conceded by any one bold enough to venture on the enterprise; yet it is the sole and unique vehicle for what is termed " political philosophy "—the mind working at tentative suggestions upon material stored up and accumulating during many years. We still read with admiration and delight Hegel's "Philosophy of History": who can deny that he has learnt more from one page of his audacious generalities, his subsuming of events coercively under his preconceived categories, than from the dry recital of the most severely conscientious historians ? A writer should know when to expatiate freely in a larger atmosphere, and when to tie himself down with a certain ascetic rigour to exact statement and careful reproduction of competent witness. In the former there lurks always a kind of self-conscious irony : he is well aware that he is then stating the effect that phenomena produce on himself, is not conducting the reader with him into the "core" and the hidden nature of the phenomena. He bears no incontestable passport into a bygone age; he must always remain himself, and the child of his own age. In the survey of the
[NT-BO.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
19
distant landscape huge traits and features must lie Tentative and for ever concealed from his gaze. He is drawn to subjective ,. • i • i -r -j. x task of the generalise upon a single instance, if it seem to sup- political port some pet theory of what " must have been " ; and theorist. to pass unheeding through the silent yet reproachful ranks of witnesses to whom for his own purpose he will remain wilfully deaf. This collection of essays will therefore be a timid attempt to preserve the precise frontiers of the two methods. In the former or larger type I shall be satisfied beyond my hopes if I can suggest, interest, and stimulate, if it only be to question and opposition; for the subjective historian must not expect to do more. A certain epoch is mapped out for a cadastral or ordnance survey; this, in the first place, is an artificial and personal caprice; for time, like existence, is solid, unbroken, and continuous. And the student finds that such a circumscription cannot strictly be maintained ; he will have to recur in a diagnosis of the now clamorous symptom to the " still small voice" of earlier hints and intimations. He will feel sympathy with the conscientious annalist of older days who began from the Deluge or the Siege of Troy. Every period will be found to overlap another, and he must often incur the blame of " vain repetitions." As his confidence in the wisdom of his trenchant limit evaporates, he will look disconsolately at the finished chapter which so imperfectly represents, not the subject indeed (that of course), but even his own opinion of it. Such is the reaction which must be experienced by every genuine student of the wider issues of humanity. The scholar is safer though more fettered in a narrow field ; and fields of inquiry grow perforce narrower every day. Yet there must always be place in the growing impatience at mere accurate minuteness of chronicles, in the stifling accumulation of fresh material, in the extraordinary failure of conscious intention in history, in the ironical play of Destiny with the sapient calculations of chief actors and statesmen, for some such subordinate part as the rdle of the philosophical onlooker.
m A historian's self-control and limited range; lays no claim to universal criticism.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
INTEO.
§ 7. Such a task must in the very nature of the case show traces of amateur-work. Engrossment in a special line is not the best training for adapting the resulting study into the rest of human knowledge. There must be a sort of intellectual " clearing-house." To say that this is the very highest kind of mental work is not to speak the truth. If highest means useful, then it is obviously untrue; for human advance on the present lines of civilisation (I am not saying they are the best possible) depends entirely upon the self-sacrifice of the worker, sharply cutting off, not merely his own tiny sphere of activity, but his own mind as well, from fascinating aberration into " Elsewhere." Clearly, and by any standard, the best and highest should be marked by certainty and by completeness, to which qualities political retrospect and prophecy can lay no claim. It is simply a play of a somewhat serious fancy—dealing, it may be, without profound conviction or even interest with the future of the race, and hazarding in purely human guess-work at the dim forces and obscure development going on behind the scenes, on which kings and warriors are playing their part amidst the obvious interest of "alarums and excursions." And once more, a historian too often lays claim to an impossible omniscience. It is not conceivable to-day, for instance, that any one man can be a trustworthy guide and critic in the development of campaigns and foreign policy; the real question at stake in religious discords, in the art or letters of a given epoch, or in the economic and fiscal issues, which were no doubt almost as obscure and tentative to the actors then as they appear to us; lastly, in the sympathetic elucidation of the matter and spirit of ancient writers, and the discrimination of the genuine text. The following pages will be found singularly lacking in vigorous and sustained narrative, either of battles, of palace intrigues, or of religious controversy. War is a simple matter in its immediate cause or even profounder motive; it may usually be traced to the cynical dislike of a near neighbour and
INTRO.
THE
ROMAN EMPIRE
21
to the silent but effective protest of a bafhed mercan- A historian's tile interest. But to analyse in its stares and its anself-control . 1 , 1 j . i j . x - j . d limited manoeuvres demands the expert, andi the strategist, range; ia,jS and not the student; and I shall not (at least no claim to willingly) surrender myself to the vain and idle function of the Roman youth, who in his academic theses gave grave and well-meant advice to Hannibal, how best he could profit by the victory at Cannse. Nor have I anything to say about the religious debates and discords which form so prominent a feature in the earlier period. That interest would seem to belong to quite a different department of the mind from that faculty exercised in our present inquiry. It is enough to recognise that political interest largely subsided among a population naturally subtle and excitable, because of the eager study of transcendental questions and the strange half-racial and half-religious bitterness which arose from these dogmatic niceties. That this ecclesiastical interest diverted men from direct solicitude for affairs, I cannot doubt; though the charge often levelled at Christianity that it instilled in its votaries contempt for the actual world and left the field open to tyranny and the servile virtues, cannot be for a moment maintained. Indeed, this very point might be taken as an instance of the danger of approaching a special epoch with much modern prejudice, with only a hazy outlook on the vast tracts of history lying beyond the favoured province. It is difficult indeed to simplify and still be accurate; to generalise and yet do justice to the whole array of complex facts. And yet there is substantial truth in the old commonplace that the Eastern mind turns away from the world, and the Western tries to make the actual better. I have elsewhere (in my " School of Plato " and the "Bampton Lectures" of 1905) drawn attention to the very early drift of Greek thought (not to mention Oriental) away from nature and the State, floating upwards through a somewhat chilly and intangible ether to the Absolute; and I trust I may be spared, after this present excursion into a more concrete
22 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE INTRO. A historian's self-control and limited range; lays no claim to universal criticism.
region, to continue to complete and to justify at greater length the thesis there upheld. It is as easy to prove (or rather adduce arguments) that Western Christianity was the unique instrument in the maintenance of all civil institutions, all arts and culture worthy of the name, as it is to show that the Eastern fraction perished in a somewhat lengthy deathstruggle, of the poison of Christian abstentionism. Nothing would have made the Eastern Christian rate ordinary virtues above speculative retirement; and nothing, as it might appear, would fit the Oriental from Orontes to Ganges for the debate and execution of commonplace public business. It lay in the adaptability and sovereign efficacy of the Gospel that it ministered alike to the Oriental love of truth and the Roman love of order and law. It will be interesting to note the comparatively trifling influence which Greece exerted over Byzantium; the brief moments of Hellenic predominance in the administration are rare, ineffective, and only so, significant. It is impossible to attach blame to the Church, because of the modification which a quietist, yet curious and metaphysical temperament, introduced into the creed. This, in spite of its transcendental basis, which is indispensable, is simple and " democratic" in its influence, appeal, and instruction. I have already dwelt too long on this instance of the limitation from which even the most comprehensive of historians must suffer, if he attempt to do full justice to an age in its entirety—in its totality as it stands; to the origin and springs, not merely the phases and aspects of its development. Recognising the prohibitive Socratic warning against intrusion into uncongenial themes, I have resolutely limited by my instinct and inclination the scope of the inquiry pursued in the following pages. And so far as is possible in such a matter where few but notable pioneers are beckoning, I have not essayed a task which has been before successfully attempted within similar limits, nor have I consciously built upon another man's foundation.
BOOK I THE PAGAN EMPIRE: THE CIVILIAN MONAHCHY AND THE MILITARY REACTION
CHAPTER I THE REIGN OF DOMITIAN AND THE ERA OF THE EARLIER ANTONINES (81-180 A.D.) A. First " Flavian " House: VESPASIANUS TITUS (son) DOMITIANUS
69-79 79-8i 81-96
B. Adoptive or Antoninian Period: M, COCCEIUS NERVA NERVA TRAJANUS (Spain) . . . . ^ELIUS HADRIANUS TITUS ANTONINUS I. Pius . . ( MARC.AURELIUSANTONINUSII. t M. ANTONINUS III. VERUS . .
96-98 98-117 117-138 138-16! 161-180 161-169
• milit. nom. . birth. . birth. . . . . . •
senat. nom. adoption. ? adopt. adopt adopt. adopt.
§ 1. THE accession of Domitian, the second son of Difficult posiVespasian, marks without doubt an important date in l™n of the history of Rome, and the development of that fluid and complex idea, Csesarism. He was neither the first plebeian that occupied the place of a divine family—his father and brother had sat there already; nor was he the first youth who without any but honorary office and titular dignity had been lifted to the most responsible post in the State. The intentions of Augustus, that great master of irony and opportunism, had been veiled in obscurity; he had adopted his two grandchildren, he had put a ring on the finger of Agrippa, and he had summoned the reluctant Tiberius to be the mainstay of his declining years. But it cannot be definitely asserted at any given moment that he had decided on a successor; or indeed that his views of a monarchy which looks to us so monumental and secular were sufficiently clear to allow him to arrange for the future with any certain prevision. In the peaceful advent of Tiberius, a tried and notable 26
26
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
we. i
Difficult post- general, a sedate and austere citizen of the earlier type, tton of Domi- a member of an historic house—there was nothing strange. If the commonwealth desired to accumulate once more in a single hand the tangled skein of administration, discerpti membra monarchi, no one would seem more suitable than the " son " of the late prince, who with his splendid record of State-service had no need to appeal to the " adoption of a dotard " and the intrigues of an empress-mother. Augustus had been aware that the constitution of the State was the reverse of definite; he looked forward to a renewal of the struggle for personal power, and in his final words to Tiberius named three or four possible competitors. For nothing in the letter or custom of the State forbade the free election of any Roman citizen ; and the " dynastic " precedent into which the succession thus settled was distinctly contrary to the spirit and intention of the State, in founding this novel and exceptional function. Nor did Tiberius, the unhappy Priam of his house, have occasion to determine between his son by adoption and his son by blood ; death and conspiracy swept away the children of Germanicus and left but one to carry on the line. With Caius enters on the scene a character with which we are all familiar—the " purple-born," the irresponsible Cassar of fiction and dramatic situation. We have no desire to dispel any of the charm or fascination which may attract the modprn mind to a contemplation of the past; but it is a fact that this favourite of romance, who unites unlimited power and dazzling wickedness, appears but seldom in the imperial purple. We may compute the reigns of these spoilt sons of destiny, who combined an early training in the palace, or its immediate neighbourhood, with premature tendencies to vice; but if we take a liberal estimate and include the reigns of Caius, of Nero, of the fourth, fifth, and eighth Antonines, and of Carinus, we shall find, clown to the extinction of the Western line, only forty-two years so occupied out of five centuries. Indeed, for this
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
27
kind of sovereign the Roman constitution had in Difficult positruth no place; and it will be found on closer OT tim of Domiimpartial inspection that many of such heroes of melodrama were in public life adroit, painstaking, and conscientious. And from that list we have withdrawn, in common fairness, all those coldly dignified heirs, like the second Constantius or the sons of Theodosius—all those promising lads, whom by some strange freak soldiers or senate or people sent to occupy the magistracy created expressly for a veteran. Into the list of Caesars, popularly deemed to be typical of the remainder, we cannot admit the brief and pathetic reign of Alexander or the younger Gordian; and it must be confessed that the long minority of the third Valentinian belongs to a different category altogether, and was rendered possible by circumstances which had profoundly modified the primitive conception of Caesar and his function. And we cannot embrace Domitian under this head ; though he laboured under the double disadvantage of plebeian birth and untried merit, he was a personal ruler such as the commonwealth demanded from the outset in the elevation of an Augustus. Other youthful princelings might reign because they were their noble father's own sons, which for the vulgar, naturally loyal to a family, is often quite sufficient reason. But while his father had lived long enough to be the second founder, the " Camillus " of the early empire, and to strike profound respect into the minds of carping senators and sages, his success had not blotted out the memories of his origin. From the decisive recognition of Vespasian to the accession of the third Flavian, barely ten years had elapsed. Men scarcely past middle age could remember the brilliance of Nero's court—that age of the gods, as Pliny the Elder seems to convey, after which men fell with a painful drop into the respectable and humdrum work of middle-class reorganisation. Domitian reigned longer than any other successor of Tiberius ; and in spite of the natural relief felt by the Senate and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Difficult position of Domitian.
Completes Vespasian's task and made Antonines possible.
BK. I
the apocryphal exultation of Apollonius of Tyana, it may be doubted whether the blow of Stephanus was a public benefit. This son of a " parvenu," early accustomed to the immunity of an imperial prince (tantum licentiam usurpante), hated and (worse still for his peace of mind) despised as an upstart by the nobles, exerted a vigilant and unexpected control over the imperial destinies. He entered indeed into all the fatal heritage of mutual distrust and suspicion which embittered the relation of the Senate and its Chief Executive. But he entered too into the great Augustan tradition; and was no unworthy representative of the first political constitution that ever accepted as watchwords—peace, justice, order, and plenty. Emperors of later times and better personal character praised him for his choice of ministers; and in the vapid pages of Augustan writers we find the idle discussion of an insoluble question, whether a prince's private virtues were necessary to the public welfare ? § 2. We are amazed at the curious faculty for painstaking administration and humane consiclerateness, lying so often dormant in a luxurious or lethargic Roman, until the fullness of time came, and the hour struck for the destined saviour of society. With his disabilities, ascending after an untried or suspected youth a throne owed to the dynastic principle yet unacknowledged, Domitian guides the helm with success, and earned the gratitude of the provinces. Tacitus quietly subtracts from his own life the fifteen years during which he lost all claim to be deemed a member of the human race, after which (in a famous simile) he wandered about in a world unknown, a mere ghost of his former self, "his own survivor." Yet there is no trace of settled or deliberate oppressiveness in the government of Domitian. The atmosphere of the Senate alone is sultry; and on issuing from the dignified prison, Tacitus may well have felt like the prisoner of the Bastille, at the sudden recovery of unwonted liberty. The reign of
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
29
Domitian (so far as we may judge) is an integral Completes part of the great reconstruction by Vespasian which ^sf^n'g rendered possible the golden age of the Antonines. made AnWe shall discuss elsewhere (and it may be too often) toninesposthe debated question, whether indeed public order is st the first mandate of the subject to its chosen rulers ; whether it may not be purchased too dearly by the degradation of an historic assembly, by the ruthless and systematic silencing of all protest and opposition. It is a question which is not likely to receive effective settlement here or elsewhere; nor is an idle and perilous fallacy of the earlier eighteenth century, that the sword of public order swings only in the hands of tyrants, likely to be accepted in our own time. A republic is, as Machiavelli would have foretold four centuries ago, quite as stern and inexorable in putting an end to disorder, quite as panic-stricken before the suspicion of a plot. The chief events in the modern histories of commonwealths have been bloodily connected with the extinction of personal or communal liberties. But for the mass of mankind the great deliverance of the years 69 and 70 from the old triumviral, three-cornered anarchy, and from serious barbarian menace, was welcome and recent enough to make impossible any serious fault-finding with a strong and determined government. The class of thinkers, or posers whose lives were spent in a futile and permanent opposition; the discontented Roman satirist; the impractical Hellenic theorist, prating like the Bengali of the rights of man and the beauty of freedom—these might be excused if, after shifting the burden, they essayed to criticise the attitude of one who bore it valiantly. Yet the truth remains—the reign of Domitian (for all the story of the turbot and aristocratic dismay, the black hangings, the sudden summons and the goblin dancers) put the copingstone on the work of his father. For this is the record of the Flavian house: a blunt and straightforward reorganisation on economic and middle-class lines, a wave of personal and perhaps scarce merited
30 Completes Vespasian's task and made Antonines pos-
Position of the Senate ; its revived dignity.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. I
popularity, and fifteen years of thorough and attentive work. "Caesar Borgia," says Machiavelli, "was accounted cruel, but it was to that cruelty that he was indebted for the advantage of uniting Romagna to his other dominions, and of establishing in that province peace and tranquillity, of which it had been so long deprived." The succeeding age of virtuous and plausible princes reaped the advantage both of the work of Domitian and of its reaction. The removal of the pressure caused unbounded relief, but its effects continued. § 3. The Roman throne had been occupied in turn by a madman, a harmless lunatic, an artistic monomaniac, without any serious dislocation ; it recovered, as we have noticed, its wonted good behaviour and equilibrium under the Flavians. Although the terrible year of anarchy taught the notable lesson that Rome was not in fact the king-maker, indeed, could not continue to be even in theory, yet silence and contentment settled upon the provincial armies, residuary legatees of an extinct or effete house; and the Senate has all its rights restored, and ceremonies still dearer. The age of the virtuous emperors realises as nearly as may be the most generous ideal of Augustus; a chief magistrate deferential and courteous to his peers, firm and equitable executive of their decrees after due consultation, yet not given to outwearing their patience with the minute detail of administrative routine. Now with our very modern and new-found distrust of representative institutions, with the spectacle before us of the nullity and fiasco of much honest endeavour to arrive at or give effect to the popular will, we must inquire a little closely into the credentials of the Roman Senate to elect not merely a president of their own body, but a world-ruler; for in this light very early in his career was Caesar regarded. It must be at once allowed, it could claim very little right indeed to speak in the name of the habitable globe! The Senate represents the old exclusive aristocratic clan-government which emerged from the coalition of patriarchs or heads of houses. As elsewhere, so too in Rome this body elected and
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
31
recognised a chief, deposed him, broke up his scattered Position of ^ prerogative among a jealous college of officials ; and ^e Senate;" finally, discovering that the result was in the end civil war, acquiesced like pious Isis in the reaggregation of these powers in one semi-divine, certainly superhuman, repository. But the empire owed its origin to a knightly or commercial reaction against a rival or against incompetence; and to the half-articulate voices of provincial protest against an administration which (to say the least) was in the strictest sense unprincipled. The Indian manifesto of that gifted politician and consummate ruler, Queen Victoria, supplied just the same nameless and intangible guarantee which the dependencies of Rome in East and West demanded and secured from the tactful personality of Augustus. Responsible government was once more a reality ; and the aim of his genuine successor was not to extend the frontier or widen ihepomazrium, but to secure the property and contentment of all classes within the area already acquired. This task,' it would seem, was pursued with steady perseverance down to the death of Nero ; as witness let us appeal to the high character, the sincere kindliness, the sense of serious accountability, which mark the Roman official in the somewhat hostile documents, of the New Testament. Interrupted by the military orgy which ensued thereon, the Flavian reconstruction, as we have seen, took up the task and carried it to a severe completion. Into the labours of these indefatigable men the princes of (he second century entered, doubtless with no very deep sense of gratitude. And the Senate, resuming its privilege, and not dreaming of innovating on the imperial system after the vain attempt on Caius' death, poses again as the arbiter of the world's fate. § 4. But it was the provinces and not Rome or Senate not indeed Italy that had profited by the establishment ' of a fixed and responsible government; and if we look closely we shall find that the effective and inde- succession' pendent control of the Fathers was less felt during the inimPerial period of the tender deference of the Antonines than ° °P wn'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Senate not ' representative ' : succession' in imperial ttion.
BK. I
during that epoch of armed conflict and anarchy which marks the third century. The Senate, so far from being a true spokesman or representative of the world, stood for reaction, for privilege, and for immunity. If feudalism is in some sort a revival of the old family-state and the familiar regimen of a patriarch, the Senate may be compared to a lordless manor. It is equally exclusive ; it has its own courts and officers ; it defies the entry of a foreign trader or a king's messenger; it erects isolating barriers against outside influence. Only by means of the lord does it attain commerce with the outer world; or by the priest, who at least represents a ramifying and penetrative system somehow securing a unity in religious, which cannot be found in civil, affairs. But the emperor was intended by the Time-Spirit who called him to the post, to be the focus of the world, to annul distinctions and weld disintegrant forces into a harmony. And the choice of the universal ruler, even in this age of senatorial prestige, did not and could not fall into the hands of/this narrow and prejudiced order. The imperium, both in republican and monarchical days, was a magical gift which consecrated its possessor and could be transmitted intact. In this transmission was a sort of "apostolical succession " ; and in a very genuine sense, the outgoing magistrate " created " the following. It would not be correct to say that the Romans with Hobbes maintained the irrevocable surrender of plenary power by the people, and watched in passive acquiescence the circulation of offices among the nobles, by a kind of spiritual co-optation. Still there are distinct points of resemblance, in the two theories; and while the votes of the tribes were necessary to point the way, the essential ceremony lay with the officers already charged with a sacred power. A veritable and a real anarchy and arrest of government ensues upon the disappearance and death of the two chief magistrates. Thus the reign of the "five good emperors" is the
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
33
period of adoption or nomination, no doubt amid Senate not genuine senatorial contentment. If an adoptive son ''repres could enjoy equal rights- with a son by birth, the 'apostol emperor was able to transfer this us>age to the political sitccession' sphere — where, in spite of the military origin and disguised basis, his authority tended continually to usurp parental ideas in the eyes of men. During this age, a careful provision for the succession was the rule ; and to ensure the peaceful continuance of the imperial policy was a first duty of the reigning sovereign. Elsewhere in imperial history, there are few signs of such forethought ; the maxim of most might appear to be the apocryphal adage of Tiberius or Lewis XV., eftov davovros yala fJ-i-^dr/ra) -jrvpi. The uncertainty in the character and transmission of the chief office is one of the most startling features in the whole history of Rome. While everything crystallises into hard and fast outline in other departments of life, this centre and pivot of the great artificial fabric is left a prey to chance, to the mutinous caprice of a few soldiers, to a midnight visit of a few senators to some dignified peer, to a hasty nocturnal marriage of some empress-dowager, to the venal clamour of some palace menials. At the death of a sovereign, the whole imperial destiny trembled in the balance ; and it is quite credible that the choice of Julian's successor, amid the famine and distress of the Persian campaign, was a pure accident ; and that the irrevocable salutation of the wrong Jovian by some hasty and ill-informed soldiers was really effective against the careful measures of the army-corps and the truest interest of the realm. When the empire stands to us for law, order, and regular method, it is not a little surprising to read that the Dardanian line, which gives us the world-wide renown and statuesque majesty of Justinian, arose (if we believe the legend) from the audacious fraud of an ignorant guardsman, intercepting for his own use the money intended to secure the election of the chief chamberlain's nominee. But in this age there is no VOL. I. C
34
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
reason to complain of the haphazard; the continuity is amply safeguarded until the moment when Marcus allows his parental prejudice to overpower his sense of public duty. Problem— § 5. Granted that in the freest of communities there efficiency^ w jjj aiways arise a need for a visible embodiment of Evils of Abso- the State, or for a final "sealer of decisions," the lutism: debate will circle continually around the contrasted force of™ advantages of elective and hereditary monarchy. Two modern king- conceptions of government will always coexist, someship. times intermingling, sometimes at variance; the official and the patrimonial, the republican and the royal. These roughly correspond to the significant distinction of Tacitus; the Germans " choose their kings by birth, their officers by merit" (" reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt"). If we have mastered all the meaning latent in this pregnant sentence, we have gone half-way in the understanding of those strange problems of history, the Prankish Majorat, the Japanese Shogunate, the Tibetan regent for the Dalai-Lama. The needs of a State demandj two qualities in a central ruler which are rarely found united—efficiency and stability. Richard I. may be the popular hero of a hundred fights, but he cannot pose as the symbol of national unity, of settled policy, of guaranteed order. The retrenchment of monarchic prerogative is certainly due quite as much to an exaggerated and anxious respect (fearful of bringing the direct power of the crown into play in a dangerous arena) as to any supposed distrust of its influence as limiting and thwarting the popular will. It may be said frankly, and without fear of contradiction, that opposition to monarchic authority has never come from the people; but invariably from the interested section, of birth or science or wealth, who have found it convenient to limit personal government in favour of a "Venetian oligarchy"—such indeed as the Earl of Beaconsfield depicts to us in those novels, which amid all the obsolete political tracts or romances of the last century, alone retain
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
35
the charm of truth and novelty. Yet, it may be un- Problem— happily, the jealous and selfish desire to seclude the efficiency or • /• i_i• u • j it. i , stability? sovereign from public business and the people s gaze EvUso/Absuis reinforced by the general conviction; only by fatten: such elevation above the dusty level of party-fight,^e™/™' the petty issues of finance and coercion, can the safety modern kingand prestige of the monarch and the popular rever- sMPence be preserved. It is true that in the century which has passed since European equilibrium was painfully adjusted again in 1815, monarchy has gained incalculably in dignity and reserve-force. No longer, except perhaps in Russia, is the sovereign held directly accountable for the misdoings of his meanest agent, for the tyranny or exactions of the pettiest official. If the worst as well as the loftiest acts of government are done in the name of the sole constitutional fount of honour and authority, this is perforce entangled in every false step of a minister, every base act of a subordinate; a mighty and unsuccessful war, or an undeserved beating, are alike laid on the shoulders of the mild and humane recluse of Tzarskoe Selo. Elsewhere constitutionalism professes to curtail sovereign power by putting in commission its effective exercise; the result has been only to enhance its prestige. The eyes of the people turn expectantly in the deadlock of reform, the equilibrium of parties, the emergence of menacing and rudimentary factors in the situation, towards the powers dormant it may be but never expressly surrendered. No one who is conversant with average opinion throughout the country will deny that the sovereign of to-day is regarded as benevolently confronting, rather than as representing the government. This result, due no doubt largely to the personal character of English sovereigns since the Reform Bill, is also the natural effect of the policy of curtailment. " How much better," it is said, "would this matter," perhaps national education, " have been settled by royal tact, instead of the conscientious but aggressive and unconciliatory methods of rival parties!" It might well appear to-day as
36 Problem— ejwiency^or S £viLofAbsolutism: '%£ece™f!rve~ modern kingship.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
if the irritable deadlock (already noticed) were the normal condition of parliamentary nations ; and that unpopularity were the natural lot of the chosen of the people! The system of party-government is founded on the negative and destructive theory, that the main duty of the opposition is to overthrow the ministry; and this avowed intention is reinforced by all the artificial malevolence of political commonplace ; which, however, may teach actors and audience alike to take it seriously some day. The good-natured "give and take" of English social life, reflected also in its genuine political business, would become a thing of the past; and acrimonious class-warfare would succeed, with its violent oscillation of reaction, and of abrupt and brief reform. In any case, to-day the " State " stands before us naked and unabashed, as force : it merely coerces or taxes. Wherever an appeal is needed to the warm and impulsive sentiment of loyalty or patriotism, it is sought in the institution of royalty. While the sovereign has technically to endorse the government of the hour, he represents august permanence as against tentative effort, harmony and respect as against spite. Kingship stands "over against" parliamentary institutions with a new title to affection. I am not indeed concerned with the sage tractates of political philosophers, who have strangely supposed that the new voters would but endorse their peculiar and academic views. No one familiar with the temper of the people, with the vogue of the wider press, can doubt that there exists a very prevalent desire, as there emerges an occasional appeal, that a sovereign should govern as well as reign. In the background lies the intense human interest in a person and a family—which at least in some quarters of the globe will continue to attract. Democratic epochs (if my remark be permitted by the falsified prophets and pioneers of the movement) are swayed not by reason or idealism, but by frank selfinterest, which sees no cause for disguise, and by
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
37
sentiment. The stability of our commonwealth de- Problem— pends upon this parental fiction, by which the ej^££y?w sovereign absorbs largely of the characteristics and Ewlso/Absoattachment of a father. And lineage plays an im- lutism: portant part; it throws back the roots of our insti- "fwce^f™6' tutions far into the national history, and interests modern kingtile vulgar in the ordinary happenings of family shiplife. In the revival of the monarchic instinct this latter consideration has much weight; and the social apostle of to-day preaches to deaf ears of the colourless "rights of man," which resolves a community into antagonistic and resilient atoms. For in such an ideal, in this apotheosis of isolation, this fact is overlooked: that man only begins to be human with the family. § 6. The citizen of the philosopher is too often a Fallacy: mere fancy portrait of the noble savage, or of Hobbes' ^ocracy • • 1 , 1 • identified primitive man. It is the serious drawback and indeed with success final condemnation of the "republican" form of of a minority government, that it appeals to a theory instead of a sentiment, to calculation instead of immediate feeling. Now a precise theory of life is beyond the reach and the leisure of the average man ; and I must repeat again that democracy means the active and growingly intelligent co-operation of the ordinary citizen in affairs: it does not imply an unlimited confidence reposed in a Long Parliament, a Committee of National Safety, a " ministry of all the talents," or a scientific directorate of experts in electricity or sanitation. The other scheme demands great patience and forbearance; but it proceeds on the "democratic" assumption that the people's voice, will, and genuine feeling is worth eliciting—that the heart is naturally in the right; and that the cement of a nation and empire composed of strangely compacted and often hostile fragments, is found in free intercourse, in a frank confidence, in the good sense of the people. But, it is said with Hegel, that government is a task for the professional class only and is far above the heads of the mass.
38 Fallacy: ^^^ with success of a minority or scientific committee.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
Nothing indeed would seem to excite greater fear in certain circles than the suggestion of direct "referendum." Now if government is to be the scientific regimentation of the human drove, accord• , , „ . , ,• , . , , , in g *° gradually opening laws of physical development, we must regret the introduction of the delusive franchise, which will suggest to the poor freedom and not serfage. But we may leave this subject of the irreconcilable feud between the scientific and the democratic attitude, and the possibly overt rupture in the immediate future. We may premise that such an episode is by no means irrelevant in a survey of the imperial system; for all systems are latent there, and nothing is here out of place that is modern, and therefore in a sense its offspring. The empire from a gracious, impartial, and ubiquitous supervision of local units, developed into a gigantic and costly scheme of regimentation ; and though we must be careful not to attach blame of intent, or malice prepense, to a natural and inevitable development, we can see the peril attaching to a world of dutiful puppets, trained to look aloft for every movement and principle, and ungratefully resenting this parental tutelage only in the. wild moments of annoyance and of failure. —^ We must return to our contrast of the official and hereditary; dignity conferred by virtue of office, or by right of birth. The Emperor Paul I. represents the revolutionary spirit of Machiavellian Stateabsolutism rather than mere Oriental tyranny, when he denied nobility to^my." boyar " with whom he was not at the moment conversing. This is the conceit of centralism gone mad ; but it represents the reductio ad absurdum of the entire republican principle. Human society is not for them (as in effect we know it to be) a group of families, but an aggregate of hostile units—of the resilient atoms we mentioned above. And power for them does not grow naturally enough out of parental control, but is an artificial expedient due to the inherent malevolence and
CH. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
39
cowardice of man. It depends on no emotional basis, fallacy: and acts by no moral suasion as the expressed will ^^^? of a father; but rests on a reasoned theory of life with success (which may well sadden the generous believer in of a minority mankind) and upon compulsion and force. Alone of f^wutee? authorities in modern times the royal figure operates by this moral sanction and appeal. In other spheres of State is not a government just the short-lived triumph of a vindictive minority ? § 7. Caesar was not slow to clothe himself, at least Moral appeal for the eyes of a large part of the subject-class, in n the dignified robes of parent and father. Yet the under fiction of "choice of the best man," and the experience of the young scions of the Claudian and Flavian families, prevented any overt recognition of influence of this right; and the genuine character of the ancient the Porchadoption atoned for the irregularity, as we should term it, in the accession to the chief post. And Caesar was first and foremost an untiring executive. He was to be Teutonic " duke " as well as " king " ; leader that is, chosen for personal merit as well as succeeding by some mysterious right of lineage or adoption. If, as we have before maintained, efficiency is the State-aim (effectiveness at all costs, and with scant respect or gratitude to the agent who is broken or ruined in the task), government is a mere Temple of Aricia, the emperor the priest who wins, and mus* vacate his place, by a crime. Against this coldly practical and merciless view, the parental or family feeling makes signal protest. At any cost, the abiding sanctity of the embodied State must be maintained—the "king can do no wrong " ; and the centre must remain ever, like the supreme fount of being in Plotinus, unruffled and at rest. Certainly, during the second century everything told in favour of this latter principle. The ground was well prepared (indeed well mown) by the judicial or judicious murders of Domitian's later years—that reign of terror and suspense of which Tacitus has left so poignant an account. The second century
40 Moral appeal and parental attitude under Antonines: elements of decay: evil influence of the Porch.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
is the period for the efflorescence of a new school of Greek letters; which, while it revived almost every branch of literary venture, may yet be said to start in the philosophical speculation of Plutarch, and to culminate in the rarefied altitude of Plotinus. Classical Latinity (if the strange and allusive "Spanish" dialect of Tacitus and Juvenal deserve the name) expires and leaves no trace; until the great Gaulish school, which salutes the early successes of Diocletian's tetrarchy, and lasts on through Ausonius and Sidonius to the chronicles of the deeds or lethargy of Merwings and Carolings. Such a revival is nearly always in history unfavourable to the prosaic value of local liberties. With this age, as Pliny's experience in Bithynia displays, begins the Curial decay, which replaces (as with ourselves to-day) the State-functionary for the local bailiff—and Caesar, as lord paramount, for the obsolete civic pageant of the duumvirs. The brisk and alert intelligence of Italian merchant and man of letters gladly welcomed the unscrupulous "parvenu" to unlimited power. The growth of intelligence is in many natures, classes, and climes largely fatal to the free institutions, which do so little and occupy much time. For interest in public affairs is, it must be confessed with regret, but a transient phase in human history. It is true of democracy no less than of monarchy, with which it has so much in common, that it takes the earliest opportunity of retiring from the active exercise of those functions, for which it clamoured so loudly. The wars and threatened inroads, and above all the pestilence of Marcus' reign, complete a picture which is by no means encouraging. It is easy to detect the signs of weakness and the secret of future misfortune. But this section would be incomplete without a longer reference to that pathetic figure of the Platonic "philosopher-king." The three successors of Nerva represented the Roman genius in its many aspects— the brave soldier, the artistic traveller and minute administrator, the "paterfamilias" in his kindest
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180)
41
mood of fatherly geniality. But with Aurelius we Moral appeal enter a new atmosphere of despondent satiety and morbid introspection. He is the presage of a new under world and of Hellenic influence; he had drained the ^ntoni cup of wisdom, as Tacitus would say, far more freely rf^.. e°u than befitted a Roman and a senator. I cannot but influence of attribute much of the later inaction and pessimism the Porchof the higher classes to the sinister influence of the philosophy of the Porch, and the spectacle of Marcus' scrupulous unselfishness. Marcus did all because it was a duty—a reasoned duty; the application to the given case of some vague axiom of cosmic significance—such as Epictetus bade the practitioners keep always ready and unsheathed for use. But gladness and spontaneity had flown; and the solemn suggestion that the sage alone understood the world was the most laughable pretension. To speak truth, it was to him alone unintelligible. The vulgar got from nature and instinct a working hypothesis which served them very well. But the twin maxims of negation, " Bear and forbear," signified this and nothing else; that the sage abandoned his interest in the State or in the world of nature; he could not reform, and he must not enjoy. Stoicism, a Phenician, anti-Hellenic system, represents not the healthy secularism of the Jew, but the passive abstention of the Buddhist. It was welcomed for a space in Greece and put on a network of logical sophistry and technical phrase; but it found a real and abiding home only in the breast of the Roman nobleman, who fell on evil times when his services were no longer needed. I do not forget the pious apostrophes of the " dear city of Zeus," and the beautiful personal touches which illumine a crabbed style and a negative creed; but the plain teaching of the Porch is indifference—in the most varied application of that term. The gospel of duty must be reinforced by a real belief in the value and perfectibility of man—not the race merely, but the individual. " Duty for duty's sake " is a mere unmanly surrender to Fatalism, or to arbitrary and
42 Moral appeal and parental attitude under Antonines: elements of decay: evil influence of the Porch.
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
BK. i
unexamined dictates of some tyrant in heaven or on earth. It is the chief pride of man only to bestow homage where it is deserved, and to judge securely the inspiration of the oracle by the value of the message. It is ominous of the coming peril that the list of the " five good emperors" is closed by one, who is as wearied of the sameness of this brilliant and variegated world, as any neurotic poet who to-day makes himself out more interestingly morbid and depraved than he is. The cult of this dead and mechanical universe will give place in the third century to the more genial worship of the sun— Mithra and Isis will take the place of Fate; Elagabalus and Aurelian alike (the two antipodes of the whole imperial line) will dress the altars of Phcebus. And Roman spirit, and it must be confessed moral behaviour, will revive—not in the lecture-room of Aurelius or Gallienus, but amid the din of arms and alarums, and in that new seriousness of a regenerate and repentant Senate.
CHAPTER II THE PSEUDO-ANTONINES; OR, THE AFRO-SYRIAN HOUSE AND THE REGIMEN OF WOMEN (180-235 A.D.) Luc.
AUREL. COMMOD. ANTONINUSIV. HELVIUS PERTINAX . . . . DIDIUS JULIANUS 1 PESCENNIUS NIGER (in Syria) . CLODIUS ALBINUS (in Brit.) . .
),,„,„ P8°-192 193 . 193 . 193-194 193-197
C. Afro-Syrian House and Pseudo-Antonines: L. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS I. (Afric.) . 193-211 (M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS V. \ __ •\ (" Caracallus," son) (211-217 (•ANTONINUS VI. GETA. (brother . ) 211-212 M. OPILIUS MACRINUS . . . 217-218 ANTONINUS VII. D I A D U - ) g MENIANUS
' . . . .
KV(h birth
' senat. nom. milit nom. milit. nom. milit. nom.
. milit. nom. /birth and 'adop.^ tion.' . birth. . milit. nom. b,rth
• I
M. AUREL. ANTONINUS VIII. ) 2l8_222 ("Elagabalus," son of A.V.). . i
/milit. nom. and °\ 'birth 1
M. AUREL. SEVERUS II. ALEXANDER 222-235 . birth. L. JUL. AUR. URANIUS ANTONINUS IX. (in East).
§ 1. IN all the annals of the Roman Empire there Anomalous is no epoch so full .. , , ...
of ,
surprises, hazards, and character of .. ,. . .. , ,1 the Pseudo-
anomalies as the half-century following the death otf Marcus Aurelius. Elsewhere we can trace with some security the general motives, felt or expressed, which governed the avowed policy of statesmen or the secret current of affairs; the needs of the empire calling forth a series of devoted generals and unveiling the thin disguise of the military basis of power; the ensuing desire to safeguard the person of the sovereign; the degrees and stages of civilian or soldierly hierarchy interposed between highest and lowest, like the mediating demons of the NeoPlatonist; the natural tendency towards dynastic predominance, or the supremacy of a certain family, by which the free-election of a chief magistrate and 13
m Anomalous characterof
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
embodied executive became the uncontested succesunder tutors and Of some untried youth governors; the sudden outburst of military bluntness and common sense, protesting against the money and effectiveness wasted in the shadows of a palace among unworthy menials; the gradual decline of a reigning house (which we note so consistently in Chinese annals) from an untiring and patriotic soldier, through a respectable civilian son to the inevitable "purple-born," in whom both at Rome and Constantinople the line comes to an abrupt end in a sudden catastrophe. But this period combines all the anomalies of the rest, and adds peculiar features of its own. It is possible to characterise, it in a variety of ways, without finishing the portraiture. We may call it the continuation of the "Age of the Antonines," in which from Pius to Elagabalus (138-222) some eight monarchs enjoyed a title second only in dignity to Augustus and in popular esteem far surpassing it. We might again term it the period of feminine supremacy; for Marcia, Julia Domna, Maesa, and Mammsea are in many respects the real rulers for over forty years (190-235). Or we might represent it as the age of the Jurists,—the period of the greatest legal brilliance in Roman history, one long chain of eminent humanitarian lawyers from Julianus under Hadrian to Ulpian under Severus II. just a century later—the golden age of those principles of civil justice and equitable administration, which formed the basis of all subsequent codes; until under Leo III. in the middle of the eighth century we see an alien and a religious influence striving for the mastery. Again, we might call it a new provincial reaction against Rome and Italy, laying stress on the barbarous Pcenic tongue of Septimius, the pronounced antiRoman tendencies of his son, the fifth Antonine, the grotesque mimicry of Alexander of Macedon, and the hero-worship of Hannibal his compatriot; the Syrian descent and orgiastic cult of Emesa oversjon
OH. ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
45
powering the native deities of Rome, the Hellenistic Anomalous sympathy of Alexander—not to mention the amazing character of ^ , ,• i. ^ • i. i ii , ir the PseudoBacchantic not off the young priest, and the half- Antmines. mad, half-serious menace of Caracallus that he would give Rome to sack, for his Celtic and Scythian hireling troops. Once more, for the earlier portion (180-217) we might point to the significant repetition of the events that followed Nero's death, as if some inner and fatal necessity compelled each crisis to follow a similar development. We have the aged Pertinax, like Galba, stern with inopportune severity ; the rapid disenchantment, and Julianus as another Otho expected to revive the showy brilliance of the last reign; and then the mighty protest from legions North and East, and the lingering struggle of three full years which challenges comparison with the sharper agony of the triumph of Vespasian; and this harsh and homely restorer of public order, whether his family be Septimian or Flavian, leaving two sons, one amiable, the other fierce and distraught, to quarrel over his grave ; and the survivor to vanish by secret assassination after a suspicious and misspent reign. From the accession of Nero this fatal series of events unfolds itself in forty-two years; from that of Commodus in thirty-seven; and in each case the sovereignty is again thrown open for public competition. But it is instructive to watch the different issue of the story; Rome and the Senate reconquer their immemorial right on Domitian's death, often to be overridden but not as yet to be forgotten; but on the death of Antoninus V. power goes with the Eastern legions and their choice, the remnants of the still popular house of Septimius. Thus, while the year 96 opens the period in which the ideal of the empire was best realised, the murder at Carrhae in 217 introduces us suddenly to the strangest and most bizarre episode in all Roman history—the boy Augusti, Diadumenus, Elagabalus, Alexander, and a little later Gordian the Pious. But once more, this epoch, with the notable exception of Severus' reign
m Anomalous charwterof thePseudo-
Antmirm.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
(193-211), is the nadir of that personal government responsibilityJ which was the whole secret of
anc j
f
the unlimited power and unlimited peril of the Roman emperor. It is the age of the Grand Vizierate, and of the retirement of the monarch, to the vigorous sports of the amphitheatre, to the distant frontier campaigns on Euphrates or Tyne, to the curious but costly nature-worship of a perverted schoolboy, to the careful and decorous nurture and education of a young Caesar for a maturity, of which, alas ! the world was never to reap the benefit. These are some of the features which compel our attention and astonishment; neither singly nor together do they exhaust the interest of the period, nor explain the amazing nature of its protest against Roman tradition. Everything that was un-Roman comes defiantly to the front; and in high places sit only the pretty minion of Commodus, the clever freedman Perennis or Cleander, the aged Syrian jurist and the youthful Syrian priest, the dark and malevolent African astrologer, the arrogant African Vizier Plautianus, with his eunuch-train (?) of noble Roman lads, the mad fratricide traversing the realm with his rioting band of mercenaries, like some mediaeval captain or Condottiere, the crafty and bedizened Maesa, and the mild but persevering apprentice at the perilous trade of sovereign rule. And withal, the great machine moves on of itself. We have the strange yet incontrovertible testimony of Dio Cassius that the episode of the Emesene boy-priest did not do any great harm; and we can well believe that the whole period is an instructive lesson on the insignificance of titular autocracy, and a caution to us to seek deeper for the causes of imperial stability amid these constantly shifting scenes of riot and of disorder. We must indeed trace the gradual process of decline; but we recognise with wonder the pertinacious vitality of a system that survived the fifth and eighth Antonine!
CH. ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
4-7
§ 2. We shall often have occasion to notice that Chiefimperial the chief qualification of the prince embodying {nfum>tion; himself the whole executive of the State was personal service; the service. Any disguise of this autocracy, delegated in ' Grand ^ its plenitude by the Senate, was contrary to tradition; the emperor must work, and govern as well as reign. There was nothing patrimonial in the original conception of the empire. Though overclouded by forgetfulness, or deliberately superinscribed by foreign characters as on a palimpsest, there were always visible to a keen observer the lineaments of a citystate and a voluntary commission to a responsible magistrate. The texture of modern society, the technical phrase of government and diplomacy, the tenure of a complicated land-system—all depend to a degree unsuspected, upon the fact or the fiction of territorial lordship. The king is the owner of his realm; he says with truth, "my ships," "my soldiers," and "my subjects"; and the title-deeds of every estate run at some distant point or other into the mythic or genuine postulate of a royal grant of conquered soil. On state occasions, even the English sovereign employs, with the approval of his liegemen, the language of undisguised autocracy; at a similar moment the Roman emperor would sink the personal pronoun, and in spite of all his power would speak as the duly selected and duly charged servant of the commonwealth. It is indeed no small support to our theory of the contrariness and elusive character of political power—that it is always the unexpressed and inexplicit that really holds the reins; and that to secure the quiet torpor or elimination of any dangerous element, there is but one course—openly to proclaim uncontested rights and sovereignty. For, as we must often remark, to recognise a source and seat of authority does not mean to actualise it; and the problem of real moment in any State, granting the negligible or academic question of royal or popular supremacy, is this, where resides the effective power ?
48 Chiefimperial •(unctionj service; the ' Grand Viziers.'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
And those who in ethical or political studies have the courage to acknowledge, the patience to trace, the movements of the real repositories, will be amply repaid by a careful analysis of the history of Rome. It cannot be doubted that one grave reason for the maintenance of Caesar's autocracy, for its continual recovery after degradation or a minor's incompetence, was just this legend (if you will) of delegation and of responsibility. He was never recognised as the source, but only as the executive. Elsewhere, in some abstraction that men talked of, but did not trouble to particularise, dwelt original power that was freely entrusted, but to a removable nominee. Had this wholesome fable or fiction, as it often proved itself, been expelled, as early as our present epoch, by an overtly centralised system of some premature Diocletian, we could not certainly predict under such circumstance the long survival, the frequent rekindling, of the Caesarian idea; not only as a vague principle of cosmopolitan union, but as an effective and vigilant control over rival and hostile races and creeds. No mere statuesque dignity would suffice for such a personal ruler; idleness or secluded indifference was a charge as dangerous and disconcerting as active cruelty. And it is therefore with considerable interest that we see the earliest trace of the Oriental conception of sovereignty in the very system which in its method and principle is the exact reverse. Let us first examine this negative fact, that during the greater part of this intermediate and transitional period the emperor did not control: except (as in the East) by fitful and spasmodic caprice, by the easy or reluctant sacrifice of an unpopular minister; who could not, by the very terms of the agreement between the republic and its chief magistrate, be accounted responsible, in the sense we intend to convey to-day. We have abundant proof of the disinclination of the son of Aurelius, or of Faustina, for the hard work incumbent on a Roman Caesar. To him, supreme office was an opportunity not for
CH.
n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
49
State-service, but for the indulgence of temperament. Okie/imperial Commodus revived the athleticism of Nero without-fM^lon'', his artistic taste: and power fell naturally into the service; the hands of a freedman, as it had done under Claudius. ' Grand ^ But that glutton for work, however secretly open txtersto influence, had at least gone through the form of personal attention; while Commodus surrendered all business as irksome and beneath a prince's condescension. His reign—if it may be called a reign— is divided into three almost equal periods; two he terminated abruptly by the ready sacrifice of an unpopular vizier to public indignation, and the third ended by his own death at the hands of his intended victims. The career of Perennis closed in 185 ; that of Cleander in 189; the chief persons of influence at the court, Marcia, Eclectus, and Lastus, anticipated a similar fate on the last day of December 192. Four years of turmoil ensued, and the administration went on of itself with a certain indifference as to the ultimate winner. The success and the untiring activity of Severus did not however restore to him the personal control. He hastened to forestall a return of the disorder from which he himself emerged triumphant; he created his sons Caesars and in course of time Augusti. And, as he revived the vagrancy of Hadrian, traversing with surprising speed the provinces and visiting the uttermost frontiers, he created Plautian, an African and perhaps a kinsman, vice-sovereign in a capital, which he had learnt to distrust. The reign of Severus has two sides—his own achievements in overcoming rivals, and in restoring public order and peace ; and the court history of the intrigues of the palace, of the influence of Domna, and of the envious hate of Antoninus for the powerful minister, his father-inlaw. Dismissing the tragical embellishments, we may be certain that the uncontrolled power and pride of the prefect during the itinerant years of Severus, excited in the populace the liveliest dislike; that he rebuked the wildness of the elder VOL. I. D
50
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
dm/imperial son; that the unanswerable charge of treason was Junction; trumped up ; and that after a stormy interview, the service; tlie impetuous lad of sixteen first himself attempted, and ' Grand then entrusted to a soldier of the guard, the massacre Viziers' of the minister. § 3. It is hard to decipher the feelings of Severus. Viceemperors: It may be doubted if he was convinced of the guilt legists and of Plautian. But after his son's violence it was too females. late for genuine reconciliation; and there was no place for a discarded prefect who had once enjoyed unlimited confidence. Severus regretted in the Senate the temptations of power, and lent support to the rumours of Plautian's seditious design. But he had now to take charge of the imperial education of his heirs (204); and he found in the control of two envious brothers a fit penalty for his abandonment of a faithful friend. He shared with many emperors of his severe and industrious character, a dislike of the capital. Four hundred years later a compatriot will again save the empire, and avenge the murder of a lawful prince; for it was from Carthage that Heraclius sailed in 610 to deliver the Eastern realm from the incompetent tyranny of Phocas. And both tried to humble or to sober the pretentious and incapable capital by proving that the safety and administration of the empire were independent of its approval or its splendours. Severus spent little time in Rome; and if we may believe Herodian, a scheme of separate spheres for the two young Augusti was debated after his death. It may well have been mooted in his lifetime, in the curiously un-Roman literary and religious salon of the Syrian empress. In any case, the last years of an active life spent in North Britain (208-211) taught nobles and people of the indolent and excitable city that the true duties of a prince lay elsewhere than in the senate or the circus, and that the heirs of power must be trained in the wholesome hardship of a camp. Heraclius, it will be seen, by his humiliating design of reversing Constantine's judgment,
CH. ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
51
begins a notable moral regeneration, which carries Vicehim through the costly campaigns against Persia, with something of the enthusiasm of a religious crusade. Meantime, the pretorian prefecture (oddly termed TO /3afff\eiov fi$o
52 Viceemperors: legists and females.
Lamaism (under Antoninus VIII.)
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
for the Syrian dynasty was genuine and unaffected, abhorred the effeminacy of the sun-priest. The potent trio of Emesene ladies, with whom lay the destinies of Rome, decided that the waning popularity of Soaemias' son must be reinforced by the adolescent promise of Alexianus. The emperor's mother, in a curiously significant appeal, overcame his natural suspicion of a pure-minded cousin, his instinctive dislike of a colleague, by suggesting that his divine duties gave him no leisure for the far inferior and yet urgent business of the State. § 4. We are here at once confronted by a situation singularly and typically Asiatic. It is the natural tendency for sovereignty to split asunder into the two irreconcilable elements of which it is composed. For sovereigns must in one aspect be the serene and motionless centre of Plotinus' metaphysics ; and at the same time the vibrating sword or radius of the circle, to which no point in the circumference is unfamiliar. The one is holy, mysterious, and sacrosanct; the other is accessible and efficient. The only remedy which the last can devise against contempt of the stable basis of authority is religious mystery and impenetrable seclusion. This is the conception of monarchy, as something to be caught and held tightly and forcibly, like a palladium or mascotte, as if some magical virtue inhered in the most ignorant man in the realm. Nicolas of Damascus gives a curious turn to Xenophon's odd story about the Mossyni; who shut up their king in a tower, and if he counsel ill for the State, slowly starve him to death (/SacrtXea rptyova-iv ev irvpya) KaraK\ei
CH. n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
53
very effectively coerced by their tradition. But the Lamaism seclusion is also due to a curious blending of the super- (j"^er. stitions of totem and of fetich. The tribal representa- vill.) tive inherits ancestral powers and must be guarded from harm, just like an idol in a shrine. It is a commonplace that large portions, if not the whole, of the East are ruled from the zenana, from behind the purdah ; and here, as in China, effective power comes to flow naturally to a class or sex which seems to labour under severe but nominal disabilities. If religious awe, semi-divine descent, or priestly prerogative surround the monarch, the palace becomes both a temple and a prison for the unhappy repository of celestial power. The caliphate sank into this insignificant holiness and nominal suzerainty as soon as the Commanders of the Faithful abandoned the simple life of the meditative Arabian priest or spirited warrior, and entered the enticing paradise of Damascus or Bagdad. Two ancient monarchies became conspicuous instances of this curious seclusion, and have both issued from gloom to the daylight within living memory. Japan's Mikado represents the motionless centre of the revolving wheel, sacred in descent and altogether too holy for mundane cares. A sincere or interested hypocrisy in a powerful minister establishes side by side or in technical inferiority an effective office, the Tycoon or Shogun; which itself becoming hereditary like the French majorate under the Merovingians, is transmitted to a long line of secular royalties. There was some excuse for the early error as to the relation of the two—which regarded one as the spiritual emperor, the other as the temporal. In fact, the dormant plenitude of the Mikado's prerogative had never been curtailed or abrogated; and a long and at last influential series of reactionary politicians and writers had demanded the restoration of power to legitimate hands. Thus the opposite result was reached to the judgment of Pope Zachary in the middle of the eighth
54 Lamaism (under Antoninus F//7.)
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
UK. i
century. It was the Japanese Childeric III. who emerged from imprisonment to mount a real throne, & , , r T-, • i T-> r and it was the modern counterpart of Pepin le Bref who retired with good grace from a usurped and perilous post. Again, from similar causes there grew up in the Potala of Lassa in Tibet (and perhaps too in the kingdom of Nepaul) a divorce of theoretical and effective sovereignty : the nominal ruler being an imprisoned infant whom the regent never allowed to reach maturity; with what measure of sincerity and odd mixture of hypocrisy and self-deception, it is impossible to ascertain. It would seem that the present Dalai-Lama has succeeded in passing safely the fatal term of adolescence and has overpowered his regent —the same fortunes attending the spiritual ruler (socalled) in both Eastern countries. It is no secret (to those who know the views of the special envoys to Western courts, sent by the palace of Pekin in 1906) that the weakness of the present regimen is largely ascribed to the immurement of the sovereign, to the inevitable ignorance of a ruler who, whether in Ravenna or the Forbidden City, or Tzarskoe Selo or Yildiz, is the worst informed man in his dominions. And if China be allowed, without interference or undue pressure from her Eastern or Western neighbours, to work out her own destiny, it cannot be doubted that a great change may be expected in the attitude of the sovereign to affairs ; in the substitution of imperial progress through the provinces in place of the sedentary indolence of Pekin. Incompatible § 5. We have wandered thus far afield from the with imperial unfortunate youth who was at the same time priest of '
CH. n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
55
of Soaemias was impracticable—the emperor must rule Incompatible himself or cease to exist. Religion was not for the with imperial . . , j. i j- Tt -i tradition: ancients a supreme or a rival department of life: it 'defacto' was, at least among the Romans, a subordinate pro- and'de vince; and had a natural claim (without intrusion or ^^a^ e encroachment on earthly affairs) upon the attention indivisible. of the citizen, the magistrate, and the general. No exclusive caste prescribed a calendar and ritual to an ignorant and awe-struck mass; each man was at liberty to worship his own deity, even (within some limit) to follow the grotesque practices of his own special cult. It was the exclusiveness of the God of Emesa and of Calvary that moved the anger or suspicion of the best of the Romans. M. de Champagny need be at no great pains to show that the Gospel alone could save the empire from the debasing Orientalism, which is his constant theme : this we may readily admit. What is more difficult is to apportion the blame to the statesmen of Rome for lacking all power to distinguish between the genuine panacea and the fraudulent imitation. The worship of Mithra penetrates widely over the empire and within the army; Aurelian is a priest of the sun—but it is a spiritualised worship akin to the rising Mazdeism of the new Persian restoration, and bears small likeness to the rites of Emesa. The claim of religious observance and belief to occupy a transcendent and autonomous sphere was not for a moment tolerated in Rome; everything must be subservient to the general welfare of the State. The mystic philosopher might find repose in meditation without incurring the suspicion of the State ; but an orgiastic proselytising cult was regarded with the same distrust as is evidenced long before in the " SCtum de Bacanalibus." The Roman official was at best a Pentheus; and his wise motto was " Surtout point de z$le" his sympathy with that sobriety, which with the eighteenth century put an equal ban on the railer at religion and on the "enthusiast." Eclecticism was
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i 56 Incompatible permitted if it was personal; Marcia, like Poppaea, with imperial was a patrOness of the Christians: Mammaea may tradition: * have attended the lessons of Origen ; Philip may have 'de facto' and 'de shown some favour or some curiosity in the same jure' rule direction; the well-known lararium of Alexander one and may have contained the busts of Jewish prophets and of the Christian Saviour. But the extravagant claim of the Black Stone ran counter to all the tastes and prejudices of the Romans. The reaction toward archaic simplicity and military frankness which marks the remainder of the century may well have found reinforcement in the disgust at this Asiatic worship— for a moment dominating the capital. Meantime, we would again refer to the impossible if sincere proposal of the feminine conclave. Elagabalus did not become the Dalai-Lama of a new cult. The Roman constitution still required the personal activity and responsible government of its chief; and after two more experiments with a blameless but inefficient minority, the State recurred once more to the elderly and much-tried general. Syria handed on the torch almost at once to Illyricum—the nursery of the strenuous line which saved the empire. § 6. Thus the undoubted reaction towards a plausible Untimely civilian imitation of old Roman virtue did not go far enough. regimen of Still were women at the head of the administration; Severus Alexander. still, as the Goths complained of their young king, Athalaric, the chieftain was not allowed to become a man, kept always in leading-strings; and still the supreme civil authority was entrusted to an Oriental. It was felt that with all his willingness and amiability, Alexander was not representative of the Roman people; and after the first rejoicing at the evident purity of the new regime, a secret and not very articulate discontent arose, by no means confined to the soldiers, who threatened Ulpian so often, and in the end massacred mother and pious son together. We notice the chivalrous pride in the young Caesar passing into indifference and contempt; the Augustan historian essays to give to his portrait the complete
CH. ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
57
ness of an ideal prince, a kind of second " Cyropaedia." Untimely Had Alexander succeeded Antoninus Pius or Marcus c^Mn Aurelius, his weak dutifulness might not have dis- severus qualified him from a successful principate. But the Alexander. legions and the barbarians inside and outside the empire had felt their power, and sterner material was needed. The insolent troops of Caracalla had not careered for nothing across the realm; and with conscious defiance of the Senate and Roman sentiment raised his presumed bastard to the seat of Augustus and Trajan. The mild and civilian tone of the whole reign of Alexander, his solemn and orderly Council, germ of the later " Consistory," his " piety " to his mother and deference to Ulpian's advice—all this came inopportunely or too late. So did the mild and innocent pastimes of Honorius with his feathered pets, or the calligraphy of Theodosius II., or the real artistic tastes and achievements of the seventh Constantine, by which (it is alleged) he eked out his scanty pittance under the hard rule of Lecapenus ; so, in some modern sovereign faced with a crisis that demands the enterprise and daring of a hero, the domestic virtues and the fondness for the quiet hearth, the partner of his fears, the youthful heirs of his sorrow. It is often debated in academic circles whether a nation or a government can have a conscience; but Machiavelli is undeniably right in maintaining, with airy regret, that the virtues which make a good Christian are not those which make a good citizen or a good ruler. " Maj'us aliquid et excelsius postulatur a principe" argued Tiberius, not indeed in this connection, but in deprecating an offer of further centralised and still minuter autocracy which the Senate saw fit to make. The times demanded a ruler of heroic mould, and in spite of our admiration for the docile and amiable son of Mammaea, our protest against the callous treatment by Julian the emperor in his satiric retrospect of the "Caesars," we must admit that Severus himself, Decius, Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius, and Aurelian deserved better of the republic. The
m Untimely civilian regimen of Severus Alexander.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
autocracy was in commission, and the people tired of this veiled disguise. The future lay with a tried and popular leader who could find work for the great mercenary legions and command their respect. The reaction of the years 222-235 kept steadily in view the civilian character of the Roman monarchy which had predominated under the earlier Antonines. Alexander refused the designation, but he adopted the policy. We are not at fault in ascribing to this reign the first attempt to divorce the service of the civilian from the career of the soldier. With the dynasty of Severus, and especially with the first and last of the line, the legal duties of the prefect almost monopolise his time and attention. The provincial governors are reminded by practice and precept that their chief function is to "tell the law"; and the curious persistence of the uncritical Lampridius on Alexander's " severity" to the troops conceals, we doubt not, a perpetual feud between the two parties, in which the emperor and his advisers can hardly be congratulated on success. Another historian, who served a consulate of nervous apprehension outside Rome, could tell a different story. Alexander was firm enough to show favour to the Pannonian governor, the historian Dio Cassius; but he could not guarantee his safety in the capital, and he spent, like Bibulus, his term of office in profound seclusion. After the deplorable murder of the empress-regent and the young prince (he was scarcely twenty-five) the two forces are once more seen in unappeasable combat; and while the reign of Maximinus I. the Thracian belongs to the next epoch of border warfare, of hard fighting, of civil turmoil, and the "simple life," the reigns of Maximus and Balbinus and the third Gordian represent the last expiring attempt to revive genuine Antoninian tradition. There is the concession to the present needs: a low-born and vigorous general for the itinerant and military duties;
CH ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
59
and a delicately nurtured noble to be the fixed point, Untimely the stationary emperor in Rome, in constant associa- civilian tion with the Senate, already as fearful of the absence ^^ as of the presence of the sovereign. For it is clear, the Alexander. Senate, at least in part, realised by this time the nature of the crisis and the tendency of the current—the curia was becoming superfluous. In the election of the semi-consular colleagues as joint-emperors, they obeyed the imperative demand of the times for a division of labour. "Militemus" is the first watchword of Pertinax ; " laboremus " the last of his imitator and avenger, Severus. It is the interference of the Senate in the strictly imperial department of national defence that rouses the ire of the founder of the African house, who had treated the nobles hitherto with marked clemency. There are signs that this specialising of function, this separation of province, might have been accepted, if straightforward. § 7. We cannot forget that the first Severus swept Diocletian's re on s away the interdict of Augustus on a senatorial governor cili'Bddy f " .in of Egypt; that the second raised, not without reason, embry0: the pretorian prefect to senatorial rank, because it military and was not fitting that the highest order should be amen- cm ' able to any one of inferior degree. If our surmise is correct? that the whole tendency of the only two calculated governments of the time made for this distinction, we are also right in attributing the policy of Diocletian to the initiative of the African house. The emperors and the legal advisers desired to reach a modus vivendi between the Senate and the executive ; to define with more or less precision the spheres in which their help was willingly accepted, in which their intervention was strongly resented. But with each reign or dynasty the whole dreary record of these relations follows the same lines—a guarded friendliness, a conspiracy, mutual distrust, wholesale terror and massacre. We read with a shudder the terrible and pathetic account in Dio of the summary execution of the " bald man," to whom some dream or presage seems to point as a pretender; and we are
60 Diocletian's reforms already in embryo: military and civil.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
both relieved and dismayed to find that Severus had nothing to do with this hasty sentence, and that the Senate had merely offered up the first available guiltless victim to distract imperial suspicion. Something in the very nature of the constitution hindered any real understanding. There was throughout the whole imperial history an astonishing absence of personal loyalty; there was no approach to that homely interest in the happenings of the palace and the first family; such as brightens the dulness of modern politics, and in some degree atones to the people for the disappointment of many of its earlier hopes. Such affection has without doubt tided over many crises which otherwise would have been pacified with blood; and the most valuable asset in a modern realm is this indirect influence, this intimate attachment of highest and lowest, which is so hard for the stranger to appreciate and so impossible if destroyed to replace. The Senate had no such feeling for the monarch of the hour; and it was accustomed to look upon any change as an improvement. The provincial pretender, desirous like a feudal baron, of winning some recognition of legitimacy, was usually loud in praising the august body, professing the profoundest respect, deploring the lost or suppressed prerogative. If we can believe Capitolinus, Albinus took up this attitude in a speech of republican outspokenness; and it is evident by his later proscription that Severus regarded in the most serious light this secret understanding of liberal senators with his rival in Gaul. Macrinus wrote in a like humble and deprecating strain twenty years later—the victim of a hasty election he awaits the approval of the Senate, which he overtly recognises as the " fountain of honour" and unique source of authority. Under this dual or consular experiment of the year 238, the Senate seemed to supersede the Dictator and the Master of the Horse (amenable solely to his chief) by twin emperors, whose mutual rivalry might guarantee its own safety
CH. ii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
61
and influence. Their presage was verified, but the Diocletian's outcome was the direct reverse of their hopes. . .... , _ ., . „ , , ,, . \. already m Maximus and Balbmus quarrelled, and their dis- embryo: union led to their ruin. For the soldiers detested military and both the senatorial nominees ; and could not under- ctvU' stand, especially after the reign of Antoninus V., the civil fictions decently concealing the force of arms. They attacked these respectable emperors severally and overcame them ; and we reach the last scene in the promising youth of yet another imperial stripling ; raised in his boyhood by military influence and destined to fall by the same. Here, as was only natural, we mark a still more conspicuous surrender of direct control. Power fell into the hands of an honest man ; and Timesicles, or Timesitheus, the prefect, revives the best memories of Ulpian's ministry. But the time was not ripe for this mild and pacific rule, which recalls to us the modern reign of some heir to an ancestral throne. But while the reigns of Persian Sapor or of Spanish Alfonso, dating from their earliest breath, enlist the chivalrous sympathy of their subjects, the Roman Caesar gained little from this pathetic isolation of imperial childhood. It would be a mistake to regard the violence of Maximin or the treachery of Philip as a mere sporadic outburst of personal ambition and camp-riot. Docile youth or helpless infancy was out of place on the throne of Augustus ; and as Gordian grew to manhood without escaping tutelage, discontent arose. Nevertheless one wildly improbable legend sought to connect the later Flavian line with the Gordian family ; for Victor in his Epitome suggests that Claudius II. was in truth the son of the third of the name. The brief interval makes it impossible, but the chronicler's hypothesis (ut plerique putant) is instructive both of the desire to attach a new dynasty to an earlier line, and of the halo which surrounded and immortalised a departed sovereign. Yet the days of powerful ministers are over ; and the emperor resumes in the trouble that is coming his
62 Diocletian's reforms already in embryo: military and cwt '
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
UK. i
direct and personal sway. The long list of palace officials, of administrative lawyers, of prefectural . ' . . . > A j j. L. vice-sovereigns is closed. And we must except an instance which at first sight looks like a close parallel; for the revival of the censorship under Decius has in truth nothing in common with the delegacy of plenary power to Perennis, to Plautian, or to Timesicles. Reaction to § 8. We have now ended our survey of this aspect military and of an amazing period; of the undying permanence of persona rue. ^e o\^ Roman prejudice against theoretical sovereignty divorced from effective control. We have now to summarise rapidly some further features of the times which herald the dislocation and disorders of the future. To this period belong the premonitory symptoms : the robber-bands of Bullas, of Maternus (under Commodus), of the nameless marauder of Palestine who cheats Severus into recognition, of Numerianus who forges imperial credentials for raising a " company" in Gaul against Albinus, and receives the thanks and the pardon of Severus for this unauthorised aid—lastly, of the " Daemon " who overran Thrace in the guise of Alexander of Macedon with a sort of Bacchantic cortege of four hundred men, and vanished mysteriously at Chalcedon. I am disposed to attach weight in these circumstances to a chance passage in Tertullian's Apologetic, which seems to imply the establishment of regular garrison by Severus in the towns of the empire, to overawe the brigands who profited by the insecurity or brief tenure of the throne. And besides, the provinces and municipal boroughs appear to be losing their desire and power of self-government. We note the tenderness of the Septimian jurists for local custom which is to be respected ; and we mark with interest an early instance of the suspicion which the State is coming to entertain of its agents. Two ominous features of the decay of local feeling meet our gaze; the decurio, still a coveted position under Trajan, has to be brought back by force to his narrow routine and costly duties; and a significant statement is found in the Digest
CH. n
I •'.
:
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235)
63
that " no public activity falls outside the competence Reaction to of the governor." Centralisation is inevitable, whether we are to blame the sloth of the subject or the encroachment of the ruler. Again, there are traces in the rescripts of Severus of the burdens which were imposed by the people upon the so-called privileged class, of the need to enforce the due fulfilment of a hasty promise of some public work, of the extraordinary care which was taken to prevent the increase of taxation—a misery which is the common feature of all states which are overadministered, whether the people are nominally free or in theory slaves of an absolute master. Here, in solution, are all the elements of later disintegration— the insecurity and discontent which will render necessary a more effective control, a more costly system of civil service, the disappearance of the old Roman virtues, the superseding of autonomy by uniform legislation, the humanitarian bias of the law side by side with caste-prejudice and military exclusiveness, a decrease in the respect entertained for the abstract sovereignty of the State; and, with all the impartial regularity of equitable treatment, a significant emergence of subjective caprice both in ruler and in malcontent citizen. It will be seen in the next age that moral ideas are by no means extinct—with all its faults the third century holds tightly to certain antique and honourable prejudices ; and the rapid and sanguinary succession of pretenders is something more than a mere selfish scuffle for place and power. But separatism prevails, and violent contrasts and impassable barriers; of which this epoch witnesses the foundation. The emperor is once more suspicious, not merely of his peers but of his subjects and of his vicegerents j he has had ample reason for this distrust, and to assure himself of efficiency we have the establishment of a recognised service, a bureaucracy, which Adrian had already started, which Alexander reduced to some system ; with certain harmless pedantry desired to clothe in a hierarchic
64
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
BK. i
Reaction to uniform. The military class and the military career military and confront the civilian as a thing apart; the superior ' order in each city is marked off from the rest by onerous privilege and (like the rhetorician, unless specially favoured) is kept sedulously in the rank of payers. The subsequent crisis will be seen to give a stir to a society already crystallising into caste and stratum; but the features of the semi-Byzantinism of the fourth century are to be found in the social and official distinction of the age of the Severi; just as we can detect there also in germ and embryo the characteristic marks of Diocletian's restoration. ADDENDA THE IMPRISONED MONARCH The later writers, DlOD. SlCUL., APOLLON. RHOD., NIC. DAMASC., POMPON. MELA, extend and perhaps exaggerate the account of XENOPHON. His words refer both to a custom and to a fact (Anab. V. 4, 26) : 6 W /3mriXei)s airwv 6 tv T<# nddo/ni/ji:frij> (&r TptQovai v&vrei KOivf O.VTOV n^nonra. K. v\a.TTOV(riv) oiiK ifee\£v et;e\0eiv; and so was burnt, like Valens, in his Tower. APOLLON. in true epic grandiloquence (:i. 1026) : — Aurap fi> vs plx 'I9etas iroXi-efffft 8«4s Xaoiiri s' 1)t> yiip trail v Ktiv' Ijnap iri.K\eiffdvTes
[It seems clear fiom the scholiast here that EPHORUS and NYMPHODORUS originated the legend of death by starvation : &SiKi»> n Kpivavra eyxXetova-i K. \ip.o.~fx<>vov ' fy 8£ r6 "xwp'tov rovro fj.T]Tp6iro\t.s T&V &\\bjv epvfidTue £v $ /f. o |Sa
CHAPTER III THE MORAL REVIVAL, THE SUGGESTED DYARCHY, AND THE ILLYRIAN LINE (235-285 A.P.) D. Goidian House (from Africa): JUL. ^VALER. MAXIMINUS I. "I> 235-238„ . , 1T (Dacia) } MAXIMUS I. (? or -inus), son . 236-238 M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS I. (at| . Carthage) J M. ANT. GORDIANUS II. (son) . . 238. . MAXIMUS II. PUPIENUS . . .j DEC. JUN. BALBINUS . . . . J M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS III. (son\ „ of II.) / 3 **
.... nomin. . milit. . birth. . inc. nomin. . birth. senat. nomin. /milit. nom. and "i birth.
E. Period of Disorder: M. JULiusPHlLlPPUsI.andll. (Arab) 244-249 . milit. nomin. C. MESSIUS DECIUS (Pannon.) . . 249-251 . milit. nom. HERENNIUS ETRUSCUS (son) birth. JHOSTILIANUS (brother) 251-252 . birth. \C. VIBIUS TREBONIANUS GALLUS . 251-253 . milit. nom. VOLUSIANUS GALLUS II. (son) birth. ^EMILIANUS 253. . . milit. nom. P. LICINIUS VALERIANUS I. ... 253-260 . milit. nom. P. Licm. GALLIENUS (son) . . . 253-268 . birth. LICINIUS VALERIANUS II. (brother) SALONINUS (nephew), &c., or VALERIANUS III.
{
F. The " Thirty Tyrants " :— (a) The Gaulish monarchy: POSTUMUS 258-267 . milit. nom. Kills Saloninus at Cologne. Reigns at Treves over Gaul, Britain, Spain ; associates— fa reneg. general ofj VlCTORiNUS""! Gallien, slain by own 5-265-268 . co-opt. (_ troops . . . . J and slain milit. nom. own troops . elev and slain 267 Oct. -268 Feb. MARIUS ( (. own troops . /"VICTORIA (mother of Victorin) . . 268-270? J (g°v. of Aquitaine;1 j TETRicusJ yields to Aurelian, [-268-274 FEMALE nom. *I 274 ...... J 66 E VOL. I.
66
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
(6) The Eastern Monarchy : (1) Roman : in Egypt and Syria — BALISTA (?) and CYRIADES ...... 261 fvanq. by "I FULV. MACKIANUS . 261-262 \ Aureolus. / MACRIANUS II. (son) QUIETUS (son) (2) Alien— SEPTIMIUS OD^NATHUS, recogn. by Gallien . "imp." 262 "Aug." 264-267 co-opt, HERODES (son), both slain by\ 2g 266 birth. Maeonius / ( ZENOBIA (wife of Od) 266-273 \VABALATHUS (son) . . " A u g " 270 or 1-272 birth. (c) Brief and sporadic seditions : Pannonia, Jvanq. by j INGENUUS I Aureolus. J REGALIANUS, PDacian (killed by own soldiers). Isauria. TREBELLIANUS (bandit, predec. of Zeno and Longinus). Egypt.. f("vanq. vanq. by byTheoTheo"V
II.-I dotus, sent I-. 263 [ by Gallien. Gallien. . } FIRMUS I. (a " bandit") . . . 274 North Italy. AUREOLUS, Dacian herdsman"! , 270 (long faithful lieut. of Gallien) / 7 ' G. The " Illyrian" or Pannonian line: M. AUREL. CLAUDIUS II QUINTILLUS (brother) L. DOMIT. VALER. AURELIANUS M. CLAUDIUS TACITUS FLOKIANUS (brother) . . . M. AURELIUS VALER. PROBUS . M. AURELIUS CARUS , M. AURELIUS NUMERIANUS (son) M.
. . . .
268-270 270 . . 270-275 275-276 276 . . 276-282 282-283 283 . .
milit. nom. buth. milit. nom. senat. nomin. birth. milit. nom. milit. nom. birth.
Revival of § 1. THERE is probably no period in ancient history moral stern- whicn js regarded with more disfavour and less simple life. sympathy than the latter half of the third century: and I must plead guilty to sharing this hasty and unfair verdict, when for convenience I designate by the name of the "Great Anarchy" the time which elapses between Maximinus and Diocletian. The
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285)
67
ordinary reader is convinced that beyond the brilliant Revival of and unavailing achievements of Aurelian and Probus moral *tern(270-282) there is nothing but shame and dishonour : the names of Zenobia and Longinus shine out with a faint but familiar light; beyond that all is darkness on the stage. We picture to ourselves a period of mere feudal tumult; provinces breaking loose from the imperial federation and setting up rulers on their own account; separatist or nationalist tendencies rife ; the military leaders with ambitious selfishness seizing in mere caprice the perilous purple, and carving patrimonies and princedoms out of the fragments of the once solid fabric. We seem to see a cowed or empty Senate, gradually fading into complete insignificance; already so far losing its grasp on the administration and on the obsolete traditions of curial rule, that Diocletian's change comes merely to endorse an accomplished fact, not to effect a momentous revolution. The whole world seems a chaos of captains or " condottieri," military adventurers with their train-bands, crossing and recrossing in idle but costly mimicry of war, and spending on useless civil tumult the forces, which might have guarded the frontier and set back the barbarian inroads for some hundreds of years. Rarely, perhaps, was a judgment passed more superficial and undeserved. On closer acquaintance these years of seeming confusion unfold gradually to us several striking features and a consistent policy. In spite of the turbulence and chaos of election and massacre of short-lived emperors, it may be doubted if any age in the Roman annals shows greater public spirit, more disinterested public service and untiring endeavour, on the part of the chief actors. The Senate appears in a novel and serious light : it enters into a real partnership with the heroic defenders of the frontier. It seems clear that in Senate and Army alike the sense of danger and responsibility awoke some spirit akin to the moral earnestness of ancient Rome. We shall again see such a rising from sloth and ease in the seventh
68
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
Revival of century, when Heraclius and the religious or crusadmoral stern- mgs fervour smite with amazing the enemy & courage s ness and o . _, ,, ... ., J simple life. * Rome—the wrong enemy as many will consider ; but a certain prevision of Islam was not among the mental endowments of the patriotic emperor. The moral revival and the new bluntness and simplicity date from Maximinus. Scarcely a breath of scandal stains the memory of his successors; even on Gallienus a more favourable verdict must be passed than is usually allowed; and the annals of continence and unremitting toil in barrack and field are broken only by vague rumours of Bonosus' gluttony, by an astounding but incredible scandal of Proculus, and by the old Caesarian luxury and evil life of Carinus, the last of this series. The spirit of reformation is working in Philippus (244-249), who abolished one form of ancient vice in the idle and voluptuous capital; and in Tacitus (275-276), who with a puritan rigour wholly in keeping with the general tone of society, tries to root out the houses of ill fame. We know from other sources that after the grotesque license of that spoilt schoolboy Elagabalus, a remarkable reaction set in. It was not without significance that the persecutor Maximin and the supposed convert Philip stand at the head ot this very needful purification of high places. For the Germanic virtue took up the rdle of Roman censor; and the wily Arabian, whether a convert to Christian religion or not, certainly shows distinct traces of Christian influence. Thus two streams unite—the stern and patriotic Roman, careless of self; the Christian, selfregarding and moral, in the restricted or technical sense. Nor indeed is it without a suggestive reminder that we find again in this period the heroic devotion of the Decii! However precarious the link in these later families to the earlier houses of the republic, it is not denied that Decius, father and son, perished nobly for the State, just as their fabled ancestors had done. Everything seemed to betoken (after the strange and un-Roman mildness or corruption of the
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69
Afro-Syrian house) an awakened respect for tradition, Revival of for the past glories of a simpler city, when all united mmf«-l^n their efforts and sank their differences in the service simple nfe. of the State. Not without set purpose did Philip celebrate with great solemnity the thousandth year of imperial Rome; or Decius revive once more, as a colleague's dignity rather than as an adjunct or title of sovereignty, the old office of Censor. Indeed, after Severus II. this very sovereignty receives a new interpretation. We are apt to speak of the offer of ,32milianus (253) as if it represented merely the personal proposal of a despondent general, seeking to support with the majesty of Rome and the sanction of legitimacy a usurped and already threatened title. But this deference to the Senate is characteristic of the whole period. There was abroad a genuine desire to make the dyarchy a success, a working solution of the new problems of government. That the old jealousies of Army and Senate were lulled would be too much to assert: but the elevation of Tacitus and the "noble feud," when Senate and Army vied in surrendering their rights to the other, was by no means abnormal. Decimated by Severus I., called into a full partnership by his grand-nephew the second of the name, the Senate seemed in the elevation of Pupienus and Balbinus (238) to have recovered not merely its antique independence, but even the archaic form of government. Then for the first time was set in contrast the military duty, "stopping the dykes" against the barbarian flood, and the pacific civil functions of internal rule. The Senate once more rose to its'full privileges. It sent despatches to the provinces; exchanged letters with the provincial governors, or with the municipal councils in those distant cities, which still preserved a measure of actual or nominal autonomy. The dream was rudely shattered, it is true, by the violence of the pretorians. The Senate held firmly to the principle of the "elevation of the fittest," to the theory which reserved the highest magistracy for
70 Itevival of moral sternness and simple life.
Influence of the Senate once more genuine.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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the elderly grey-beard, who had previously passed through all grades of a civil and a military hierarchy, already drifting apart but as yet parallel. But the army, imbued with a soldiers' love of children, secretly influenced by odd loyalty to deceased commanders, chivalrously devoted to the beauty and innocence of striplings, insisted first on the partnership of young Gordian and at last, on his sole and unfettered rule. But when this " lama "-minority passed once more under palace or petticoat government, as it had in the case of Alexander, once more power was devolved on the most capable of reigning : Philip the " shogun," displaces Gordian the " mikado." § 2. In spite of the apparently unchecked control of the soldiers, the imperial government approached within a respectful distance of the ideal of Augustus. The documents and letters of the time, collected by the best of the quintet of historians, Vopiscus the Syracusan, show us infallible tokens of this great moral and republican reaction. The "patrimonial" and hereditary conception is no longer recognised; and although sons are in practice welcomed as associates, the right or claim to succeed is again and again in theory disallowed; and protests are formally raised against the arrogance of purple-born novices which represent public opinion, unmistakably sincere. Carus, one of the best of these efficient, laborious, and elderly rulers, never forgave himself for installing Carinus, Caesar of the West, with the full prerogative of an Augustus; and it was with this prince, as we see, that the edifice crumbled away. The prominence of the senatorial debates, judgments, and decisions is a remarkable feature of this time. It is not a courtly pretence, as might well have been the deference of Hadrian or Aurelius to an obsequious assembly. The Fathers had in truth recovered something of that old fearlessness, when they awaited immovable in their places the onrush of the Gauls. Besides, as we may observe in later and feudal
CH. m THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 71 history, the greater the apparent violence and dis- Influence of order, the greater the passion for legitimacy. The the Senate momentary captains raised by the irrevocable words genuine. of their soldiers to a dangerous height, sought at once to secure recognition from a body, which beyond its immemorial prestige and dignity had defied Maximin, restored, as it were, the consulate, divided Italy amongst its twenty deputies, and refused to be daunted by the first failure of their African candidates. Just for a moment we are strangely familiar with the cries, the aspirations, the emotions that swayed the Roman Senate. We read of the new pride and courage with which they regarded the restoration of ancient right, not merely to choose a prince, but even to control and advise him. It is easy to say that these republican " velleities" were the veriest mockery, a mere piece of vanity and selfdeception. But it would appear that the Senate was taken at its own valuation. No one disputed these claims, expressed with unusual clearness. The acceptance or recognition of a military Caesar was not made with the alarmed haste that heaped titles on any and every soldiers' nominee in the earlier part of the century—Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus. The military leaders, as a rule, paid a genuine deference to the Senate. The crowding business of the empire was largely transacted in the temple, where the Senate met; perhaps the only criticism we encounter at the time is a letter from Aurelian, who wonders at the hesitation shown in consulting the Sibylline Books: " Did the conscript fathers forget that these deliberations took place in no Christian conventicle, but in the temple of the Gods ? " Winning universal respect, recovering many of its ancient functions, delegating to a distant general the duty of defence, the Senate seemed well on the way to establish that principle of division of labour which Diocletian afterwards effected on very different lines. Minute as was the personal supervision of the emperor, as we see from Valerian's letters, yet
72
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
Influence of large and ample were the surrenders made to the the Senate Senate in civil affairs; and this without jealousy or once more
genuine.
. .
suspicion.
It is true we must distrust the curious and reiterated statement of Gallien's cruelty to the soldiers; but we may well conceive that one possible explanation of that strange character may lie in a vague desire to re-establish a peaceful and civil regime in the interior of the realm, and a vague complacence in making over to other stout champions the more distant and precarious posts of command— which, as it appeared, did not menace the supplies of Rome or the dignity of the emperor reigning in the capital. That Utopian or golden age when soldiers, as Probus, himself a successful general, said, " should be no longer needful," floated as a vision before the eyes of many. Even the well-known prohibition of this same Emperor Gallienus, directed against a momentary resumption of arms by the Senate in a crisis, may be due to no suspicion of their loyalty, but to this new conviction that the two spheres were best apart; and that, even if it was not yet attained, a severance of office and department was the goal for which constructive statesmen should strive. We may here point out that when this divorce was actually accomplished in the next century, when Manchu " banners" and garrisons were set over against accomplished but unwarlike "literati,"—the two contrasted powers were held in leash by a frank and unabashed despotism. Philo had seen that the divine attributes, the kingly (or punitive) and the creative (or benignant), fell under the supreme if anonymous "monarchy." Just in the same way, without derogation to the centralised authority, the two ranks in the hierarchy issued down to the meanest secretary or recruit, from the single fount. But in the system, evolved almost without conscious intent, during the previous half-century, a more republican cast had been given to the whole administration. Perhaps we may read in the lacunae of the
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285)
73
imperfect annals of Aurelian's reign, the abandon- Influence of Senate ment of this project of peaceful partition. He at the once * J i more f least, in contrast to the simple manners, the free genuine. address, the popular methods of these Caesars of the "barrack-room," affected a monarchic splendour and pomp of dress and retinue which presaged the coming orientalism under Diocletian. The suspicions of the Senate's loyalty once awakened in the breast of some able and popular general,the scheme was henceforward impracticable. Mutual confidence was essential, and this was alien to the traditional feud of Army and Senate,—which in imperial Rome, as in France of the Revolution or our own day, seems a natural outcome and an inseparable accompaniment of a republic mainly administered on civilian lines. § 3. Another feature of this time is the mutual Solidarity of friendship and sincere personal attachment of the the lUyrian various princes, the solidarity, if I may so say, of l^gfpublic the training, the discipline, the traditions of the duty. staff-corps, which provided a line of able rulers from the single province of Pannonia or Illyricum. Accustomed as the reader is to dismiss these fifty years as a period of bloodthirsty cruelty and internecine warfare, he must acquire patience for a closer analysis of the successive vacancies in sovereign power. He will be astonished to discover how seldom can the hateful charge of cruel treachery be justly levelled at the successful candidate. The competitors all arose from the great military caste, which the needs of the empire had raised up and consolidated, since the failure of the civilian regime under Alexander (235). A regular school is confidently alluded to as supplying a series of emperors—all whether as generals or lieutenants, familiarly known to one another, all trusted by their superiors, and marked by straightforwardness and devotion to duty. No period is so singularly and happily free from personal rancour, from court-intrigue, or from secret assassination. Vopiscus dismisses as the idlest gossip, as unworthy of the character of both princes, the
74 Solidarity of theniyrian «ewe^/puW«c ditty.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
BK. i
suspicion which some attached to Carus, successor fae mur(Jered Probus. For the frequent vacancies the soldiers are to blame, and the outbreak of sudden disaffection in an idle camp and the fortune of civil war—a civil war which Gallienus refused in many cases to acknowledge by a bold and generous fiction. It is not until we come to the humanitarian prejudices of later Byzantium that we find instances of such clemency: Aurelian spares and honours Tetricus and Zenobia, Probus had no hand in the massacre of Florianus, is unwilling that Saturninus should perish, and pensions with remarkable kindness the widow and sons of Bonosus. It is clear that in the altered conditions of the monarchy and the conception of office, there is not the same jealous and exclusive claim to sovereign position which will not tolerate a rival. Severus II. thanked Ovinius Camillus with pleasant irony for his kindness in undertaking a share of imperial responsibility: and there are several cases in this latter half of the same century in which foreign Augusti are recognised by the sovereign at Rome. In fact, for one and twenty years, nearly a generation, the imperium had been divided; from the association of Gallienus by his father as sovereign of the West to the willing retirement of Tetricus from the insecure throne in Bordeaux. Claudius II. postpones the conquest of personal rivals in face of the more pressing danger of the public foes. Gallienus had already shown a remarkable forbearance towards usurpers, which may at first sight seem difficult to reconcile with his character—a firm repression of military sedition, and a resolute reservation of the military forces of the State for the imperial disposal. In a word, in spite of the frequent duels of pretenders to the empire, "one and indivisible," there is some notable postponement of private interest to general welfare. And this would have been inconceivable had not these princes dimly recognised that the distant rival, though disputing their exclusive claim, was doing of
CH. m
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285)
75
good service. Documents and letters of the period Solidarity of prove to us it was no unnatural welter of selfish thelttynan . . . ,. • , , ,. stiff-corps:
egoism: there are glimpses ofr a consistent policy, seme of public of increased humanity, of a novel attitude to bar- d«tybarians, to prisoners, and to mutineers, as well as to pretenders to the purple. This solidarity of the Pannonian or Illyrian staff-corps may be regarded as a remarkable and significant feature of the time. Decius (who like Titus and Tiberius II. won in a few years a renown disproportionate perhaps to his performance) is the pioneer in the work of imperial restoration. All the host of transient but meritorious commanders, whom the force of circumstance and the soldiers' will invested with sovereignty, might trace to this prince their fortunes, their elevation, and their doom. § 4. For this sturdy and single-minded staff-corps The prowere at the mercy of their soldiers. The real enemies w'nf*al of the emperors, of the pretenders (who guarded or ^p0re«jfe administered in this decentralised separatism), were/or mem/w* not their rivals but their own regiments. To examine truTlSUCCc&o, '^""™*.oj ° and analyse the fate of these usurpers or legitimate rulers, is not to open a page of despotic cruelty or treacherous intrigue, but to accumulate evidence of the dangers of a headless army, without discipline or proper control; of that system of independent local militias, which by several historians has been offered to the Roman Empire as a panacea for all its troubles. One is not in the habit of citing Montesquieu for sound maxims or judgments upon a government he could neither understand nor appreciate. But he is right in representing this period as a kind of " irregular military republic" ; like the regency of Algiers, where the dey was the short-lived and embarrassed puppet of a military conclave; and historical studies will suggest the general analogy of the Mamelukes and the Janissaries. It is the fashion to complain of the absence of representative institutions and of " national guards," when the critic of the study reviews or rebukes the system which Augustus f
76 The pro-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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bequeathed to the civilised world. " Si 1'empire avait su donner aux assemblies provinciales une se"rieuse existence, si les milices communales que nous avons for merciless trouve"es au premier siecle avaient subsist^ au troisieme, unwccew. 1'Espagne aurait eu aise"ment raison de cette poignee de maraudeurs. . . . L'isolement desrite'sles empecha d'organiser la defense commune." But one must remind such fault-finders that the empire was deliberately settled upon a peace footing. The violation of the frontier, the plundering of Thrace or Bithynia, the exposure of the northern limit of Italy, was not within the horizon of the political prophet in the Augustan age. The end of civil strife seemed to be the chief aim of the new monarchy; and it must be frankly admitted that to attain this laudable ambition much that to us seems salutary and even indispensable was sacrificed. The early empire has many restraints upon a full right of association, but very few on that of public congress. There was great freedom of meeting; and as we shall often have occasion to remark, it was the imperial policy which encouraged the beneficiaries in the province; who despised or let slip those half-religious, half-political assemblies which allowed and even fostered the expression of public opinion. But a national or local militia did not come within this wide horizon of imperial liberalism. It was the peculiar pride of the system that it appealed to moral principles, not to force. The interior provinces almost never listened to the tramp of soldiers, rarely beheld the martial pomp of a parade. Respect for the majesty and pacific mission of Rome kept quiet petty envies and neighbourly jealousies in the old city-states. The seeds of decay were sown in the classical peoples and their institutions in the very period of their brilliance; the empire, so far from suppressing, only entered in to undertake the wardship of minors already ageing by a precocious abuse of their powers. And it was a civil and legal tutelage, not a military surveillance.
CH. in
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-885)
77
The barbarian pressure, the unrest of the third The procentury, was not contemplated in the . ]• „,. . , , ....
system of J . regiment*;
Augustus. Ihe maintenance of military garrisons, responsible permanent, and in some degree independent, would fw have seemed a dangerous expedient ; the general peace would be imperilled to guard against an unlikely possibility. We cannot doubt that the standing force was largely increased after the wars of Marcus Aurelius, especially in the needed reforms of Severus I. It was realised, not without sadness, that the civilian r61e of the early empire must be considerably modified ; and the third century represents a kind of duel between the two functions — of administration and defence. The so-called anarchy preceding Diocletian is only a serious warning and protest addressed to the party of " peace at any price." § 5. We have hazarded the conjecture that the state-service suggestion of ^Emilianus did not merely represent "fP™a widespread feeling, but was in some sense feasible. not personal Efficacy might be secured in either department by ambition or a careful separation of duty and function. Such it ^ ^conmust be confessed was not the view entertained by the two most masterful personalities of the closing century, Aurelian and Diocletian. With the re-establishment of security on the frontiers, the outward pomp of sovereignty and military autocracy, so far from being surrendered, was of set purpose increased ; and the apparent revival of the Senate's prestige, so far from leading to any permanent recognition, was the last flicker of expiring privilege. But whatever were the secret tendencies of the time or the avowed projects of statesmen, the clear lesson of the age was the danger of almost independent military commands. It was not the private ambition of the general, but the imperfect control of the troops that roused the " pronunciamentos " of the third century— a curious mingling of patriotic and regimental sentiment. The necessary increase of forces under arms, the
78 State-service of pretenders: not personal ambition or local discontent.
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preoccupation of the central authority with other problems or its own peculiar vicissitudes, the urgency of the crisis in the various detached and isolated points of barbarian attack, the high spirit of the armies and their ignorance of this Roman tradition (which seeks to efface the part in favour of the whole), the undoubted prowess and capacity of the new school of generals—all this combined to make the creation of a new Augustus the common and acknowledged remedy. In the absence of any definite central control in military affairs, it was felt that the general called upon to repress a genuine danger should possess plenary authority. So far from these mutinies representing local discontent and pretensions to independence, it is quite evident that they sought to maintain the majesty of Rome. Roused by a sense of danger, an unreflected instinct of self-preservation, these movements were continued in a highly patriotic spirit. The whole imperial line in Gaul, ending with clemency and credit to both parties concerned in Pisuvius Tetricus, is a signal instance of this. Elsewhere, the tenure of a power (necessarily, as it seemed, supreme) was still more brief and precarious. Without wanton caprice, without the studied cruelty, for example, of the Turkish troops in Bagdad, these regiments inherited the ruthlessness of military life, and pitilessly sacrificed the incompetent or the tottering competitor. It will be noted how large a proportion of these phantom Caesars succumbed to the swords of their own supporters. If their own nominee could not win the endorsement of success, he must be surrendered. Thus the soldiers themselves, heartless and arbitrary as their conduct appears, were preparing the way by this holocaust for the advent of the single ruler. The siege and sack of Autun, finding numberless parallels in the civil wars of later and less humane days, stands out as a single instance of the " Cossack spirit," if I may use the term; which makes the unarmed and civilian provincials the mere sport of
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foreign troops of occupation. From such horrors State-service the later history of Rome is mercifully free. It was °f^Ie~ . the whole aim of the earlier line, down to the first not personal reconstruction of Severus I. (103-211), to keep this ambition or . ,. ., , ., , Y • •/ i local disconmdispensable yet perilous element in its proper place, and confine its influence to its fitting and subordinate duties. One chief title to our esteem in the Emperor Augustus is his steadfast opposition to military demands. But in the distress of this third century the armies feel their power, and are conscious of being confronted by an antique element which fears and distrusts their influence. Probus (276-282) may or may not have given public utterance to his confident hope that " soon men-at-arms will be no longer needed." But in view of the predominance at that time of the military interest, it may have not a little contributed to his murder. The soldiers worshipped success, were brave only in actual danger, and resented the continuous and largely artificial duties in time of peace, which, as Tacitus reminds us, have been excogitated as a remedy against the leisure of camps. We have no desire to screen the renown of Roman armies from the indelible stain of the massacres of Aurelian, of Probus, and of many others ; but the repentance of the army in the former case was at least sincere, and it is possible that the annalist, like the tired copyist of some manuscript, has been too ready to assimilate the doom of princes to one common model, and to assume that no accidental or natural, death was possible for a wearer of the Roman purple. § 6. One more topic of abiding interest to the Qreatproblem student must now be noted, the imperial attitude to °/, **" t"ne~ i, i • i / i •i , .the barbathe new races — a subject to which ever and again riant. the historian must hark back, even at the risk of repetition. Permanent and crystallised as the tradition of statesmanship became, effective as was the control of the instituta majorum, the rigor publicus, over the mere Asiatic caprice of an irresponsible
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Greatprobiem ruler, there was at least in this respect no settled °a>ebarba^~ P 0 ^ C Y> no systematic idea of warfare, alliance, or rians. incorporation. And this can scarcely be laid to the charge of imperial vacillation. It was impossible to employ a uniform method to tribes so various, to crises so widely differing, to inquiries for entrance and admission ranging from abject humility to insolent defiance. Tacitus, who is perhaps neither an unprejudiced critic of character nor a farseeing statesman, is at least a true prophet in his apprehension of the North. His strange sympathy with Chauvinism, with any and every knight-errant escapade on the Rhenish frontier, with the most illconsidered and costly campaigns of some immature imperial cadet, is due in part to his well-founded suspicions of that northerly rampart or river, debatable tithe-land or chain of forts. If in Mr. Ker's happy simile the Norseman throughout his life "hears the boom of the surges of chaos against the dykes of the world," it may truly be said that the Romans of a later day listened in like fashion for the tramp of the Teutonic hordes. This justified apprehension may relieve our historian of this obvious charge, that in the conception of politics he never passed beyond the mere selfish acquisitiveness of the republic, or the privilege and exclusiveness of the dominant clan or caste in an obsolete city-state. But it is this fear which explains his strange yet obviously sincere indictment of Tiberius: "Princeps proferendi imperi incuriosus." It was an odd and indeed unholy alliance of the perpetual militarism of the convinced imperialist with the narrowness of the old city aristocrat. He could understand an Imperator for some venturesome foreign expedition—no doubt Trajan was his ideal; but he could not appreciate the firm hand and liberal policy in the interior combined with a flaccid interest in distant campaigns. His political principles were framed in the reaction of the fifteen years of Domitian's reign and by his own experience in that thunder-laden
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suspense of the Senate. He did not realise that to Greatproblem administer is more difficult than to conquer, to, retain.the °f, th^barba*""«— . , than to acquire. The third P lavian employed excellent agents, and governed well and minutely ; but he had little sympathy with wars of aggrandisement, and could afford to turn the barbaric danger into something of a laughing-stock. Yet it is very doubtful if this apparent supineness and indifference were altogether to blame, either in this case or with the much - abused Gallienus, some century and a half later. Nevertheless, however unfair may be Tacitus' estimate of some great rulers who on the whole deserved well of the State, his pious thankfulness for the internal feud that divided the Teutonic race was a piece of real political foresight. The incorporation of the barbarian in the commonwealth he could not conceive; enfranchisement to his Whig views had already gone too far. He looks on approvingly, with a kind of gloating delight at a gladiators' show, when two German tribes exterminate each other; and recognises in this " lovely spectacle " the hand of a special providence, whose intervention he is not wont to trace in human affairs. The real crisis, clearing up the situation and setting the future , attitude of both parties, occurred under Aurelius. The palmy days of the pacific empire were over ' with the death of the first Antonine. For not quite fifty years (117-165) the imperial ideal was realised, and it is to this period that Gibbon alludes in attaching his remarkable eulogy. The wave was beaten back; and Commodus Antoninus IV. begins the policy of pensioning the barbarians, of assuring his own position or comfort by disgrace, which we may subsequently note in such different princes as Gallus I. (251), Jovianus (363), and Justinian. With the details of the "later" defensive warfare we are happily unconcerned. The annals of this period are distressingly full of marches and countermarches, both in barbarian aad Persian wars ; which, VOi~ L
V
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Greatprobkm do not, however perfectly mastered and analysed, /fo-'fi" **me— lead us one step further in advance towards a better understanding of the genuine relations. It is this patient and minute survey which in this volume we willingly surrender to another more competent to be the chronicler of war and its alarms. Through all these centuries the Rhenish, Danubian, and Euphratic frontier is maintained, with but slight modification. Rapine and raid may pillage Thrace and Macedonia, or capture and lay Antioch in ruins, but no serious measures of final conquest were ever contemplated either by Goth or Sassanid. As late as Harun al Rashid we must complain of the desultory and inconclusive character of the Oriental campaigns; of the utter want of purpose in the slave-dealing ravages, which without settled or constructive policy had the sole aim of inflicting harm and destroying city and village. Indeed in the whole epoch from Augustus to Theodosius, a period of four hundred years, the sole moments of deliberate [ recession are to be discovered under Hadrian (117) and Aurelian (273). Two of the most imperious and successful statesmen in the imperial line surrendered of their own free will a portion of Roman soil. I am well aware of the pathetic emphasis which historians lay on the evacuation by Jovian of the Mesopotamian provinces. But it is difficult to maintain a serious or continued interest in the see-saw of the Eastern frontier; and we cannot forget that perhaps the greatest extent of Oriental territory was acquired in the reign of the weakest of sovereigns (Maurice), scarcely twenty years anterior to the total collapse of the great fabric. The two "moments" of genuine concern in Eastern relations occur indeed under Heraclius I. and Romanus IV. At an interval of four hundred years, Egypt and Syria are finally cut away from the parent stem, and an integral part of Asia Minor, within the bulwark of the Taurus. Apart from these, the general situation, whether
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under Arsacid, Sassanid, or Abbassid, presents features Greatproblem t ne of we- are , studying J-f *** " ~ ,, wearisome . , . identity, whether , „ ^ •> . the barbathe reign of Augustus, of Severus I., of Galenus rians. Maximianus II., of Julian, or of Heraclius; even, I had almost said, of Constantine IV. It would no doubt be perfectly possible to draw out carefully the exact points of difference in the aims, the arms, the methods of warfare at these various times; and it is indeed the duty of one indispensable class of historians to emphasise just the peculiar features of each age. But if our task from the first is rather to trace the continuous and inner life of the empire, we must ask if any substantial result or definite lesson can attend the most patient study of border warfare in the East ? We have throughout the same curious and amicable relations between the monarchs, sometimes even a chivalrous confidence ; the same ineffective tournaments, in which neither combatant is really in earnest. And if we ask for definite policy or result, the answer must be negative. Sapor and Bahrain may sack Antioch and may besiege or hand over Nisibis; Severus, Galerius, and Heraclius may enter Oriental capitals in triumph, pillage royal palaces or capture harems; but there is never any question on i either side of permanent conquest or incorporation. § 7. This is a signal difference from the other Policy of foreign relation of Rome. The barbarian problem exelusionor i- t r • ii ii • welcome! implied some sort of conscious policy; and this iatter course was never demanded or implied in the "razzias," under the which defied or retaliated in the East. The main bette>'princes' interest down to the acute crisis under the sons of Theodosius lay in the receptive or exclusive answer to the ever-present difficulty. How far was the empire really cosmopolitan and world-wide, not indeed in territory, but in citizenship within the magic circle ? The emperors started with the classical bias towards the finite, the limiting principle; they had none of that vague yearning for the infinite, which led Asiatic hordes under an able prince to spread in a few years from the Japanese Sea to Poland and Denmark, only
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Polunj of to vanish in as many months. It was the first conexclmion or scientious attempt to establish a state, other than a welcome? . ^ latter course clan-city, on a peace footing. For hitherto the mmuruier the tary and the civil conceptions had stood opposed better princes. irreconcilabiy> The Oriental monarchies had not attempted any more than the confederation of Delos to incorporate, to instruct, and to amalgamate. It is needless to accumulate words of astonished praise from Polybius and Josephus to the Gaul Namatianus, on this unwonted policy of peace and welcome. Now and again it received a set-back, when the franchise was withdrawn or given sparingly. But the curious privilege of a Roman commander, that of bestowing the citizenship, marks from the first the general tendency. Finding confluent streams of differing voice and effectiveness in the vague theory of the Porch and the genuine practice of the Church, the current surmounted all fragile and reactionary barriers and mastered the whole expanse. We watch with growing interest the barbarian prince as client or feudatory; the Germanic bodyguard of a Roman emperor; the rapid transition from treacherous foe to faithful legionary; for example, in the armies of Julius Agricola. And in spite of Arminius and Varus, in spite of the threats of the Batavians and the menace of those years of terror following Nero's death, we feel sure that there was nothing strictly incompatible between Teutonic personality and Roman law—rather each was the needful complement of the other. Nor can we forget that how. ever profoundly modified in conception and scope and meaning, the imperial idea has lingered as a vital force among the Germans, while among the ' Latin race it is either extinct or travestied into the mockery of a brutal and spasmodic Caesarism. Let us return to the question of including the Teutonic races ; and in the first place, let us remem; her the havoc of the years of plague. Finlay strikes ; a true (and in his age unusual) note by hymning as it were the effect of the pestilences, which slowly and
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tragically traversed the empire under Aurelius, under Policy of Justinian, and again under Constantine V. In the evolution or • j 11 t j.u xi • ii 1 • . ^1 middle or the second,i the sixth, and1 ,the eighth cen- welcome? [attg,. cmrse turies, the population of a large part of the empire was under the entirely renewed. And it is not to be doubted that ^^r princes. the statesmen of the third, when they had leisure, must have witnessed with dismay the dwindling numbers of tillers and countrymen, and the fictitious sustenance of the town-dwellers in the larger centres, by the offer of gratuitous asylum to drones and incapables. The influence of Roman tradition transformed Maximinus I. into a zealous defender of the limes against barbarian attack; he has "forgotten his own people and his father's house " ; he has transferred to his new masters a whole-hearted allegiance, which loses nothing when he himself becomes their lord. The unheard-of catastrophe of the Decii, significantly synonymous with the republican family of typical devotees for the public good, awoke a universal terror. After the feeble interlude of Gallus, the fruitless offer of Emilian, the reign of Valerian witnesses a serious purpose, to defend either frontier by a division of sovereignty. Severus I. in the first decade of this century may have had some such partition in view— a kind of family compact by which not the imperium only (according to the archaic republican usage) but the actual territory should be distributed, and a new capital founded for a new realm. Gallienus, a perplexing enigma, is stationed on the north to repel barbarians, just as the two Valentinians and Gratian a hundred years later. The importance and the uncertain temper of Gaul and its neighbours is a constant theme with Augustan historians. There indeed Latin letters enjoyed a brilliant revival in the panegyrists of the fourth, the poets, princebishops and Christian fathers of the fifth century. And the policy of Gallien would appear to have been most liberal and inclusive. While Titus all but destroyed his matchless and somewhat puzzling popularity by a proposed alliance with Bernice,
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PoKcy of Gallien wedded without comment, as a secondary exclusion or rpartner of his throne, the barbarian Pipa. One can r welcome? . , . ,. . latter course scarcely doubt that during his prolonged sojourn in under the the north, this accomplished and tactful man of the letter princes. WQrjd performed more f eats by diplomacy than by arms. He is a type of the later " barbarophil" or Teutonizer, that saw in the untutored and vigorous races the best recruits for Roman armies, the best colonists of Roman soil. Claudius II. will have no parley with the barbarian; it is the old policy of war to the death ; which was stultified by the inexhaustible and warlike multitudes of the north confronting the pacific and dwindling haunters of the circus—as they took their exercise and the hazard of a cruel sport, like our own proletariat to-day, by proxy. Aurelian is no doubt a reactionary by necessity; because armies just then were tiring of the constant parcelling of sovereignty, and after a period of centripetal license were anxious to show obedience to a genuine monarch. And it is Aurelian who gives up Dacia, engrossed in the one duty of interior unification. But with Probus , again appears a foreign policy of conciliation and j of firmness. He is perhaps the earliest prince to I settle barbarians in thousands on Roman soil. We need not intrude into the era of Diocletian, and may well arrest our notice at this point. The armies of Rome had long been recruited from outside the frontier. The generals of Aurelian read like a Military Gazette of the fourth century rather than of the third. This internal colonising, this new military caste, are just the two most salient features of the later monarchy. The emperors could centralise and govern when civil and warlike functions were kept rigidly apart, and when the control of the departments was in the hands of groups of officials as widely differing as the Chinese literatus and the Manchu bannerman. But we must leave this period of welter and confusion, having marked the glimmer of continuous and conscious policy, of virtuous and ready
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effort which can plainly be detected, if we have Policy of patience ; having also traced its failure in the pre-eaxltuton w • • . , - • 1 - M j .1 welcome! carious existence of senatorial privilege and the latter course difficulty of effecting a satisfactory division of pro-under ihe. vince. We are captivated by the suggestion of betterPrtncciEmilian; we recognise moments when the " dual control" was effectively realised; but we are in the end bound to admit that the overt absolutism of Diocletian in the next age was the sole remedy for the unsettlement of the third century.
CHAPTER IV CENTRALISED ABSOLUTISM; OR, THE SYSTEM OP DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE (285-337 A.D.) ( C. AUREL. VALER. DIOCLETIANUS . 284-305 . milit. nom. t M. AUREL. VALER. MAXIMIANUS . 285-305 . co-opt. C. GALERIUS MAXIMIANUS II. . . 305-311 . adopt. JULIANUS III. (Carth.) CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS (Britain) 286-293 • millt- nomH. The " Flavian" Houses (Constantine, Valentiman, and Theodosius): FLAVIUS VALER. CONSTANTIUS M-,.,^ adopt (great-nephew of Claud. II.) ./ FLAV. VAL. CONSTANTINUS I. . . 306-337 . birth. MAXIMINUS II. (or III. ?). . . 308-313 . co-opt. SEVERUS III 307-308 . co-opt. MAXENTlus(sonofMaximianI.) 306-312 . milit. nom. P. VALERIUS L'IANUS LICINIUS III.\,o8_,a co-opt and IV. (son) /
Inevitable § 1- A GRADUAL and often reluctant advance to tendency to centralised control is the path usually taken by all political systems. To say that control is centralised seems to imply to many people that the administration is civilised; just as many theorists have believed that in the discovery of the exact site or pivot of sovereignty lies the key to the principles regulating the State. And this, in spite of the sympathetic sound on modern ears of the words " federalism " and " confederation." How to acquire the stability, safety, and long life of an organism, worked by a single brain, at the least possible sacrifice of personal or provincial freedom and initiative, is (it need scarcely be said) the chief problem of all earnest inquiry in this field. Against the seigneurial or parochial interest of feudal lord or commune, the drastic scheme of state-supremacy was elevated about the time of the Reformation into a principle, and expanded into a theory by an Italian text-book. And 88
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the one abiding result of that strange uprising of Inevitable mind and matter in 1789 was to fix the triumph not of individual liberty but of central control. The turn. contest in the new world of America after the middle of the nineteenth century likewise vindicated in its result the principle of centralism. The chief effect of the recognition of republican ideas is the denial of the rights of a minority. Yet by a significant anomaly in our representative usages, government for the time being is always in the hands of a minority. Interest and unanimity are lacking in most elections; an incontestable majority of the electorate is a phenomenon of great rarity ; while it is clear in the case of the group-system that the predominance of party or person is almost entirely a matter of hazard and secret intrigue. But the seat of authority once seized by whatever means or right, the modern State inherits the ruthless and autocratic methods of the past. Government is less continuous but it is no less arbitrary. The time being short for the transient reformer or reactionary, every use must be made of a limited opportunity : v& metis! and spolia victoribus are the freely acknowledged maxims of enlightened administration, tempered by the cautious fear that the prostrate rival of to-day may be the master of to-morrow. Indeed, modern centralism is a somewhat curious feature of an age which has lost faith in so many principles. The justification of conviction and conscience saved the older State, even in its religious persecutions, from the charge of tyranny. With the recognised freedom of thought in religious belief and observance (following the overthrow of the ancient idea of a ruler's responsibility and a subject's tutelage) there has emerged no similar freedom in convention or behaviour. And the power which may be exercised for the brief span of the supposed mandate is merely concerned with relieving the harm of the previous ruler—a Penelope's web. In a word, there is in most administration centralism without a centre; and the intrigues or self-seeking of
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Inevitable obscure and irresponsible gangs are concealed under ^2^° a mischievous generality, the Will of the People. tim. Absolutism in the old world meant something more overt, frank, and continuous. However accidental the election, the once elected emperor enters into a full heritage of precedent, sentiment, and tradition, which somehow makes of most rude and unpromising material a national patriot and a careful administrator of the great estate of Augustus. One looks in vain for an absolutely unworthy pretender; and perhaps in the case of Phocas alone is this half-jesting salutation as Augustus wholly unjustified. This direct supervision and initiative saved the Roman world from those discreditable intrigues, whether of palace or of faction, that make the modern constitutional monarchy or representative republic the despair of honest men; have led to that abstention of the worthier and weightier citizens from public life, which is the great and inevitable evil, incident upon the nominal and insincere democracy of modern times. It would be wrong to say that public opinion was in the year 300 A.D. as diffused, as sensitive, as alert, as we find it to-day in the more wholesome European societies; but it was certainly operative. It watched with increasing approval the systematic success of Diocletian, and endorsed the tumultuous election of the crafty avenger of Numerian. The last century had appreciated the mischief of decentralisation ; and the reaction was certain to go too far in the opposite direction. Yet however we may regret the extrusion of the Senate's partnership, the severance of the departments of state and of arms, the heavy cost of a fourfold court, the deliberate orientalism of a shrewd monarch (himself without a trace of personal vanity), we cannot, save in a " thesis," deny the usefulness of this restoration, judged by any normal standard of the minimum of a State's duty to the subject. Nor in spite of Lactantius' angry protest against the whole system in the " Deaths
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of the Persecutors," can we doubt the genuine public Inevitable contentment which applauded the changes of Diocletian, and was upset by the tumults that ensued on his turn. retirement: which once more hailed the reintegrated monarchy of Constantine, and the resumption of the new principles, modified as they were by the novel feature of heredity. § 2. The outward history of the forty years between General Diocletian's choice and the founding of Constanti- ^myofthe nople or the Synod of Nicasa is extremely simple. weight'ofthe With the help of well-chosen lieutenants, an Illyrian Church. commander recovers and once more makes sure the ancient frontier; Gaul, relapsing into barbarism and disorder, is pacified; Persian insolence sobered; Egypt, brought back from a precarious autonomy, is again added to the empire. The Adoptive System, excellent in theory like elective monarchy itself, breaks down under the pressure of parental bias. Twenty years may be given to the painful and prosperous reconstruction ; and twenty again to its collapse and rebuilding on newer lines. The principle of adoptive nomination was in singular harmony with the early Roman conception of imperium — a magical gift conferred by a sort of apostolical succession. The holder is entitled to pass on this power undiminished and without further reference to the sovereign power whence he derived. But it runs clearly counter to two strong human instincts : the prejudice of a father who wants to found a dynasty, and the partiality of soldiers who in the young scions of an imperial family discover unsuspected merit. The early mutinies which assailed the insecure throne of Tiberius were quelled by this semi-feudal sentiment. Ready in a moment of pique and sullenness to follow the noisy demagogue, the army, being essentially aristocratic in texture and tradition, refuses in calmer moments to substitute him for the old names : " Pro Neronibus et Drusis imperium capessent ? " At many epochs in this history of the sterile Caesarate, it is pathetic to see how the limited but loyal intelligence of the troops clung to some
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General stripling of real or fictitious descent from a regnant survey of the fami}y. weight'of the And the sympathy of the average man was Church. with Constantine as he climbed to the same unique position, which Diocletian had seized, had fortified, and had surrendered. Both in his attitude to the new creed, and in his relation to the new races, Constantine represented the larger policy, the wider tolerance and receptivity. Standing ninth or tenth in the great series of Illyrian emperors, he inherits and consummates all their purpose, and he adds to their masterful yet generous scheme the adroit alliance with the Church. There is besides these vague, general features of the years 284-324 no dark and tangled principles at war, no secret and half-conscious force pressing to the light. The world is quite content to acquiesce in a firm government; and had no taste for the renewal of tumult. Society agreed to pay the price demanded. The increasing and homogeneous body of Christian believers hailed m Constantine the "saviour of society" and the bringer of tolerance. In no other section of mankind was there a body of belief so uniform, a public opinion so consistent; and the Church threw her silent but effective weight into the scale :— " Momentumque fuit mutata Ecclesia rerum."
§ 3. The design of Diocletian was simple and straightforward. He had seen the fearful uncertainty 'personalrule; ot the Caesar's life and was determined to safeguard the modern person who embodied the majesty of Rome. In spite royalty. Q^ ^e undoubted revival of moral tone and public spirit after Maximinus I. there had arisen among the troops an absolute disregard of the sacrosanct character of the emperor. This was to be restored at all costs— even at the price of adopting expedients very unacceptable to the rough soldiers of camps. All historians speak in the same terms of the so-called " Orientalism " of this reformer ; to hide away the chief Augustus in mysterious seclusion and surround him with pomp Changes of Diocletian adverse to
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and countless retinue. And of this curious stream of Changes of ceremonial we can trace the course down to the strict Di°cletian and sacred court-etiquette of Constantine VII. Nor is Finlay wrong in assuring us that to the Byzantines modern this empty parade seemed the loftiest of human sciences; its punctilious performance the highest earthly privilege and duty. We cannot doubt that the institution of such formula acted upon the ritual of the Church, and itself borrowed much from ecclesiastical sources. We are just at the point where the very seat and source of earthly power is to undergo a subtle change. No Roman jurist, however arbitrary the exercise of imperial power, ever doubted that the people bestowed and could resume. Justinian himself, whom Agathias calls the first genuine autocrat, prefaces his work with a candid recognition of his delegated authority, as the people's representative or vicegerent. Whatever halo of divine descent might gather round the early Julio-Claudian house, whatever temples and cult the grateful Orient might establish for the peace-givers, however a natural syncretism might identify, perhaps in distant Spain, the Caesar of the hour with some local tutelar,—there was never any serious doubt as to the essentially secular and popular basis of the imperial rule. It is no doubt often pointed out that while the whole prestige and indirect influence of modern royalty depends on antecedent divine right, the Roman Caesar was only God by a free and generous acclamation after a jealous scrutiny of merit when his life's chapter had closed. It is not too much to say that here lies one difference that for ever separates the modern from the classic world : hereditary right, often derided and explained away, yet none the less (perhaps all the more) valid and influential; and official rank. And it is interesting to note that the immediate claim of a dynast, without further choice or recognition, is more and more fully established. The Roman emperor would date his reign from a senatorial vote of tribunitian power ; never for a
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Changes of moment was he allowed to forget the respectable and Diocletian rnagistratial character of an authority unchecked in personal rule; practice. Teutonic royalty consecrates with a mythic modern halo a certain family, but primogeniture is lacking, roy y ' and in this narrow field there is a distinct freedom of election. The reign dates from the popular " recognition " by the armed host, the elevation on the shield, and later, from the joint civil and religious ceremony of anointing, wherein meet Teutonic custom and the tradition of Jewish monarchy. But in the advance towards a new centralism out of piecemeal disorder, in the reviving conception of the State as an organism which marks the later Middle Age, the king, or rather the heir to kingship, seems to rise superior, independent of the tumultuous election of his " leuds " or the holy oil of his coronation. Important maxims of statecraft unite with feudal deference to an eldest son to create that strangest fiction, the royal " corporation sole," continuous and undying. The " divine right of kings," " the king can do no wrong," " the king never dies"; such are the foremost of the new principles. It would be impossible to conceive views more utterly at variance with the maxims of the empire. The "right divine" does not adhere, as with us, to a certain family of mythologic antiquity, "by right" (as King Edward VII. writes to his Indian liegemen) " of immemorial lineage "—it is inherent in the people which confers or abrogates, in the assembly which can canonise and beatify, or condemn to lasting infamy. Again and again we must point out the personal responsibility of the Caesar for good government, and the absence of any fiction of ministerial accountability, which has often shielded in the past (and will often in the future shield) the masterful exercise of invisible sovereign power by the sovereign himself. The emperor was not irremovable, and the right to criticise was never in effect denied. In fact, one chief cause of the apprehensive jealousy of rulers, feeling that their popularity was declining, lay in the
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anomalous position. They bore the brunt of misfor- Changes of tune and failure; it was not recognised as an excuse Dwctetian that " the sovereign had been ill-advised." Lastly, personal rule; the maxim of the indefeasible continuity of the ruling modern line was unknown to the ancients. Behind the calm assumption of the power, as if by hereditary right, lay a civil vote, a military acclamation (endorsed indeed by a civil vote), in any case the fiction of open and unfettered election. § 4. In the transition from the classical to the Government modern conception, Diocletian plays no incon- pa*sedfrom IT r u • • ,, Senate to t siderate part. He realises how insecure is the over- Camp, and weighted official, heavily responsible, ever accessible, now to palace. and all-embracing. The sovereignty reposing in him was liable in a moment to be extinguished by the sword of the assassin ; and needed to be ever and again rekindled, as it were, either from the smouldering embers of a sedentary Senate or the brandished torch of military insurrection. It has been well said that the Roman emperor passes from the Senate to the camp, and from the camp to the palace. At first he is merely the executive, the right hand of an unarmed assembly; which concentrates in itself the wisdom and experience of the State, but being only advibory or consultative cannot give effect to its decision. For it must be remembered that the " prince-president" is as necessary for the safety and integrity of the Senate as he was loudly demanded by the financial classes and by the provincials. The natural feud between a now inopportune clan-government and the imperialism of successful generals had issued into open daylight. It was in the highest degree expedient that the Senate should recognise one of the powerful pretenders as its own delegate; and from one point this recognition is just the most salient feature in the establishment of the Caesar. State-needs too summoned the chief noble of Rome, living among his peers, to be the itinerant warder of the marches; and from the middle of the reign of Marcus this paramount duty only allows infrequent
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Government visits to the metropolis. It was the deliberate intent passed from of our Camillus of the Lower Empire to exchange the ^^,-and barrack-room for the palace, as the centre, the source, now to palace, and the seat of sovereignty. It would have been useless to have restored the nomination to the Fathers, edifying as was the deference of the military caste during the interregnum following Aurelian's death. For the Senate laboured always under this disability; ! that being defenceless and without agents it could j never enforce and indeed had rarely occasion to \ initiate. The system of tumultuous salutation by a chance group of soldiers was self-condemned ; and there was no one to propose the modern panacea, a free and popular election by universal suffrage and the ballot. Once more, after a long interlude, the palace (the divina domus as it is called, even under Aurelius in the second century) becomes the exclusive seat of power ; and the palatine officials usurp pre-eminence over the servants of the State. Thus the nomenclature and the precedence of the rough Illyrian peasant survives in the etiquette of modern courts; and the whole retinue of royalty derives its origin from the Romanising despotism of the Merovingian, and from the conscious revival of Roman tradition by Charles or by Otto III. It was equally derogatory to the dignity of a senator or a Teutonic noble to serve as a menial in the house of the titular sovereign. It was this mistaken pride, as we have noted, and shall j have occasion to repeat, which lodged power under * the Claudian house in the hands of supple and \ subservient Greeks. For it is a uniform tradition of autocracy that it prefers a foreign hand to execute its decrees on its subjects; let the Christian and Georgian agents of early Turkish rule, or the German bureaucracy of Russia to-day, bear witness to this truth. The Teutons, it is true, made an important exception in favour of the "county," the retinue— which assembled for purely warlike purpose and the discipline of arms under a notable chieftain of men,
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no doubt acquired more pacific duties during the rare Government intervals of peace. Tacitus remarks with equal sur- passed from ,,,.,: ,. .. , , , Senate to prise that it is no disgrace for the freeborn to be seen camp,—and among the servitors of a gallant captain ; and that it nowtopalace. is the strange custom of Germany to deier the title and perhaps even the rights of prince to some youthful stripling of royal or ducal birth. In the latter part of the third century the staff-corps, Fetat-majeur, formed an assembly of notable warriors who disposed of the crown. We shall find this practice again when a crisis once more places power in the hands of officers on a campaign, when the " prince," who unites so many anomalous functions, is pre-eminently for the time being an imperator; and such was the elevation of Jovian and of Valentinian. But it was mainly Diocletian's object to rescue the succession from this constant jeopardy. And in bringing out once more the sacred and almost magical faculty lodged in the people's representative, and by him alone transmissible to a successor, he believed he had established a permanent solution of that problem, which awaits all but hereditary dynasts. He lived long enough to confess his error; he saw the inexorable pressure of the family instinct, the natural reverence of the simple for a father's son. And though he saw it not, he may well have anticipated the further development, which will be illustrated in our next period—the supremacy of the courtier and the chamberlain. Indeed, just the same process has, within the past two hundred years, transformed the Manchu sovereigns of China from the warlike and active supervisors of the general welfare into the puppets and prisoners of a palace, where only the sagacity of females can penetrate the deep veil of intrigue. It is indeed possible to fix the exact moment when a policy of mysterious immurement like that of Diocletian succeeded the earlier conception of an accessible if not ubiquitous ruler. Twice in the first decade of last century was the life of the Chinese emperor attempted VOL. i. G
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Government —a rare display of unwonted profanity; and it was to jBo^/mn safeguard the incarnation of the State, or rather the camp,—and universal parent and mediator, that the present system now to palace. was unhappily adopted. Thus the greatest and most ideal monarchy, which, whether in theory or in achievement, merited much of the eulogy lavishly bestowed by the Encyclopaedists, became a mere Oriental monarchy of the customary type—that is, a complete divorce of actual and nominal sovereignty. For there are two vague desires operative (as we have already seen) in the concept of a ruler; men wish to see the head of the State at once safe and respected, and vigorous and personal. That these two features are in reality incompatible is plain to any practical statesman or philosophical theorist. There can be no effective permanence in an office which is exposed to the results of criticism and of failure. Volney, in his " Ruins," has a passage pregnant with unconscious irony, where he describes the enfranchised people, at the very moment of recovered freedom, as delegating all its new-found powers to others. It would be interesting to know how he would have justified this prompt and hasty surrender of the costly privilege of self-government. For to us who can speak with the experience of the nineteenth century, it is this indifference of the people to misrule which constitutes the real menace of an age supposed to be democratic, and gives impunity to unscrupulous and self-seeking statesmen. Now although Diocletian is by no means so explicit and candid, he labours, or appears to labour, under the same delusion. He would like to have maintained both the sanctity and the effectiveness of imperial, as our modern idealists of popular, control. But it is clear that this incarceration of the sovereign is fatal to the old Roman theory of drastic personal supervision. Nothing, in effect, saved the Caasar from sinking into a mere Mikado or Lama but the undying tradition of his inseparable military duties. It is this emergence
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into a busy and perilous society, where formula and Government etiquette are not everything, which makes the softly- J^^/^m nurtured sons of strenuous leaders, Constance II. and camp,—and Gratian, something better than the invisible Honorius. nowtopalace. But meantime, in the long interludes of peace, power quietly slipped into unrecognised hands ; just those men whose personal duties kept them nearest the sovereign, really controlled the promotion of the civilian or the soldier and the general administration of the realm. In fact, this overt acknowledgment of centralism and autocracy then, as always, implied on the practical side a withdrawal of all efficient control from the monarch. As neither one man nor d//men can really govern, as strict monarchy or precise democracy is a pure chimaera, the first duty, whether in a republic or a despotism, is to inquire who will do the work, which in their very nature neither monarch nor multitude can perform. The long turmoil to which the sanguine speculators or conspirators of the last century in Europe pointed as the triumph of liberty and enlightenment, did not substitute the " Will of the People " for the caprice of an autocrat. For both these (with rare and striking exceptions) are mere fictions of interested pleaders. A new governing class forces itself to the front, and the State, without relaxing any of its pretensions to absolute sway, is captured by a new party—of intellect, or of wealth, or of scientific progress. And it cannot be denied that personal sovereignty and monarchic influence has largely gained by this sometimes ignoble transference of power. Just as Hadrian had more first-hand knowledge \ of his empire than Honorius, and exerted that open or indirect influence which belongs to the keen-eyed traveller, so to Edward VII. or to William II. is given in virtue, not of defined prerogative, but of effective and matchless insight, a power unknown to Lewis XVI. or the later Philips of Spain. It is one of the paradoxes of history that as a story's moral interest vanishes in the telling and amplification, so prerogative
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Government will disappear in its promulgation. When you have passed from established the formal seat of sovereignty on a Senate to , . . . . , . . r ,. j.camp,—and logical basis, there is the further question usurping now to palace, all genuine attention, who shall exercise it? Diocletian, like so many great rulers, believed he was founding an enduring edifice. But he had estimated human nature by himself. Strangely above petty ends and selfish aims, he had left out of his calculation two important elements in the average man ; and he it is who is " always with us," while the man of genius or the reformer is (as Alexander I. says of a good autocrat) " a happy accident." He hoped that fathers would pass over their sons, and that sons would forget their father's titles and renown, and sink uncomplaining into a private lot. And he believed that a sedentary and secluded ruler could administer the empire. In both these expectations he was deceived. He had made no allowance for the play of average feeling, or for the disability of the average ruler. Both were intimately connected; for not only the scion of a reigning house but also the people at large believe that he is especially fitted for a certain task by birth ; and these, when they are undeceived, continue to reproach him with failure or misrule, for which, in the nature of the case, he is the last person who is actually responsible. DiocleI tian, while seeking to restore personal rule, in reality j ended it. In the next generation the emperor will be ' known as one who has a certain influence with his I chief minister! Diocletian § 5. From this general appreciation of his policy sums up the an( j forecast of its outcome, we must turn to the ^types the °~ more special treatment of his reforms. And it would silent changes at once appear that Diocletian is no bold innovator, ^*A" like Napoleon or Peter the Great. If we look closely at the preceding age we shall see there in embryo the germ of all ,his revolutionary projects. Nor is it any disparagement to the great talent or public service of the man to show that he recognised and co-ordinated prevalent tendencies into a system,
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rather than destroyed and built up anew after an Diocletian original design. We have, as may be hoped, shown sums up the that the apparent anarchy of the third century is type's the by no means lacking in constructive features; that silent change the protagonists in this scene of confusion are not °£\e devoid of a strong sense of public duty and personal loyalty. It would be unfair indeed to dismiss that age as a mere battlefield of "kites and crows." Diocletian sums up its chief tendencies; indeed he looks backward rather than forward, and is the child of his own age rather than the parent of a new epoch—aurei sceculi parens, as his dutiful historiographer terms him. I suppose that the chief subterranean currents only issuing later into daylight were three: the fissiparous tendency of East and West; the divorce of the civilian and military duties and careers ; and the Germanising not merely of the armies but of the soil of Rome. It will be needful to devote attention to these three problems of absorbing interest; to trace the sundering of the two main divisions of the realm ; to analyse the motives for the separation of the two great services of State ; to revert (without, I hope, wearisome repetition) to the undying problem of the relations of the new and vigorous peoples descending on a depleted empire, which suffered from nothing so much as ) lack of men. And first, it had been long apparent that the unwieldy bulk of the empire surpassed the powers of a single ruler, however vigorous. The tendency to split appears as early as the first serious barbarian menace under Marcus Aurelius. Every succeeding monarch who was something more than the wellmeaning creature of circumstance, reverted to some kind of scheme for halving immediate responsibility without impairing the solidarity of the empire; for the imperium was not a concrete realm in our sense, but a unique; cujus (as Cyprian might say of it no less than of the Christian episcopate) a singulis in solidtim pars tenctur. Itself, since the
j ''
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Diocletian days of kingship, still infinite and comprehensive, T-*«!ew>- i1: was caPable of wide distribution, without the types the general representation losing its integral validity; sitent changes n was a sort of " sacrament" miraculously multiplied m century. ^s integrity without losing its inherent grace. Against centralised power in wrong hands the expedient was to multiply checks and colleagues; and it was to remedy the dislocated mechanism that once more authority was given in the aggregate to a single ruler without a partner. Yet after the close of the second century a partner was often voluntarily chosen, and the duties divided. We vainly desire to know what truth lies beyond the fable of Severus' partition of empire. Would he have forestalled Constantine and Theodosius in choosing a new capital and two stripling princes to succeed to rival thrones ? or again, was it a mere expedient to alleviate the suspicious jealousy of two brothers, like Romulus and Remus ? or lastly, is it a mere suggestion of a rhetorician ? It must be remembered, if it is this last, if Herodianus fancies where Dio Cassius knows nothing, it is none the less significant. If one chief purpose of this volume is to show the hidden and unconscious forces which long before recognition have already accomplished their aim, it is also our design to show the bias of contemporary feeling, and to seek to gather what the actors and writers of the time thought of that wonderful and yet perplexing heritage which they were too near to understand fully. And Herodianus, writing some forty years later, may well reflect a current interpretation of the fratricidal quarrel and of the suggestion which was to cure it. Towards the close of his history comes the dual empire of Maximus II. and Balbinus; and although this regards the discrepant duties of peace and war rather than any partition of territory, yet it certainly contemplates two separate places of official residence. The next reign which has any leisure for a definite policy shows the division of East and West an accomplished fact; under Valerianus and Gallienus
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the severance is as real as under Valentinian I. and Valens, or Gratian and Theodosius. § 6. The example they set seems to have influenced Divisim of the firm but impressionable Diocletian. East and Extern and West had different problems; in the West robber- reaims: their bands, jacquerie, and (to believe the brilliant specu- different fate. lations of Seeck) a predominant population of foreign and Teutonic birth, replacing the void left by -, a plague which cost the empire half its subjects. In \ the East, religious and racial feuds, which in a later \ age introduced triumphant Islam without a blow into Egypt and Syria ; and the long-standing enmity with Persia, of which we have already spoken enough. The character and tone of the two spheres differed essentially. In the West, Rome had introduced her own culture and urban life. Eastern institutions and religions long pre-existed the conquest; and Roman control, leaving alone with Gallic the strange bitterness of rival creeds or neighbourly animosities, partook largely of the nature of a protectorate, which only interferes when affairs reach a crisis. A Roman emperor in Antioch, like Julian or Valens, is something of an alien, an " outsider." He may have and exert power of sword or pen, but he does not enter into the inner life of the people, either religious or social. Indeed he resembles much an Austrian commandant in Venice before the reunion of Italy in our own time. When therefore the Roman emperor passes to a definite seat of his own in the East, he insensibly changes character. Diocletian is still a successor of Augustus and the Antonines, in spite of his jewels, his diadem, and his servitors. But Constantine is not; and this is due not merely to his change of creed, but largely to his novel orientation. With Constance II. the type is entirely modernised ; we have a ruler who in scrupulous behaviour, limited but sincere aims, resembles no one so much as Philip II. of Spain, unless indeed it be Philip III. Thus the divorce of East and West had long been threatened ; and our reformer
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Division of in vain disguised the reality of the separation by his Wt€ternml own native superiority to his colleagues; " to his nod " realms: their (says one historian) "all things were administered." different fate. The appointment of Maximianus Herculius seems to revive the ideal of the Senate in 238; one Augustus to be the brain, sedentary and pacific, the other to be the arm, of the State—in fact, Odin and Thor. But it was really the prelude to the great struggle of the fourth century; Constantino against Licinius, Constance II. against Magnence, Theodosius against Maximus III. and the nominee of Arbogast; to the great rivalries and suspicions of the fifth century, between the ministers of Honorius and of Arcadius, Johannes and Theodosius II.: to the failure of the last expedition of a united empire, against Africa. Nor had the Church been a bond of genuine union : the West had followed with puzzled surprise or indifference the intricacies of the Arian controversy ; the Oriental temper made of the Christian religion a very different matter. We wonder if Diocletian was under any veritable illusion as to the outcome of his policy of two Augusti, each with a separate capital. Whatever his intention, it is clear that he followed rather than initiated. He set his seal to the whole development of the third century, to the subtle and tentative changes, on the new path, when perhaps the African Severus was the pioneer and can justly lay claim to originality. He used the materials which lay ready to his hand, like every great man; for it is only the visionary or the logician who sets up an abstract Utopia and would reconstruct only by tearing down. We may indeed doubt if Diocletian was at any given moment conscious of taking a step in a new direction. Like Augustus, he deemed himself a restorer of old traditions, and he went back to the Antonines for an ideal. Thus in this partition of the republic, "one and indivisible," he was following precedent and obeying the clamorous demand of the State for a multiplied, a more efficacious, executive. I
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His unique contribution is the complicated machinery Division of of the Sacred College, the attempt to bring even into ^^nand the Principate the rigorous discipline and slow pro- realms: their motion that prevailed elsewhere. The future master different/ate. of the world, or at least of one half, must learn in a lengthy apprenticeship, and come late and expert, after laborious wanderjahre, to the place of head of the imperial firm. And while the division became a necessary and permanent tradition, it was precisely this original and peculiar suggestion that vanished in a few years as lifeless and obsolete as the paper constitutions of De Sieves.
BOOK II PROBLEMS OF THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW SUBJECTS; OR, THE LIMITATIONS OF AUTOCRACY AND THE BARBARIAN OFFER
CHAPTER I THE NEW SYSTEM OF CASTE AND OFFICIALISM ; THE SEVERANCE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY ORDERS; AND THE INFLUX OF ALIENS
§ 1. LET us now turn to our second feature of Civilisation b oth to interest in the reforms of the age of Constantine. the tends , Cfjfltt'CtltSI} severance of civil and military function. We are on an^ fo Spe. still safer ground in proclaiming the indebtedness of cfafae. the reorganises. Here Diocletian did but ratify and endorse; he completes a tendency working to an inevitable goal, in this century of ferment and confusion. The origins of this separation we may trace as early as the great African house of Severus I., which thus again comes before us,guide and innovator. Rather is it hard to conceive how the two careers could have remained so long intertwined—so far are we from feeling surprise at the change. Here an existing usage is reduced to conscious system; and the hasty student is tempted to believe that the moment of recognition and formula is also the moment of birth. The antique conception of the citizen represents to us an interchangeable peasant- The'Admirfarmer and volunteer-soldier, of which Cincinnatus able Crictton' may well stand as type, passing easily from camp to "o?yW% plough, and from field to council-chamber. The state. revolution in economics and in policy, which rendered a citizen-army impossible, tended directly to the overthrow of civil government without penalty or sanction, and to the reign of force and egoism. We have occasion again to repeat that in the very constitution and nature of the Senate lay two good reasons for its failure in a far from perfect world: it had no agents to carry out its wishes in general
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The ' Admir- administration, and in a special crisis it had no means "SSr**0"' of self-defence- I* may appear to be a paradox to confiding assert that the singular innocence of the early State State. did not, as we do, contemplate the need of police and physical reinforcement of custom and law. Yet the whole political current—the development of Rome and the break-up of the Colossus into the rival fragments of modern Europe—would seem (in one aspect) to take its rise from this generous confidence in human nature. It is quite true that in its primitive stages the code of tribal custom, usage, and prohibition is mixed up, indeed confounded, with religious taboo ; and it may be asserted that this generally implies an immediate physical penalty as well as a moral disability. Yet I do not think most students of our origins will dispute the unshaken dominion over the savage mind of what we must call moral influences; such as are not by any means directly translated into the obvious discomfort of scourging or mutilation. Law and penalty really come into existence, not for the members of the family or the clan (where disobedience and ostracism are sufficient to deter), but to regulate the relation of this group with the new neighbours or inmates, the captives of war whom a growing sense of humanity or of interest preserves for serfdom. The ancient State, in spite of its civil tumults, is singularly slow to establish any effective machinery of control over its refractory members. Though dissension and feud is, at least in historic times, the rule rather than the exception, the State seems always puzzled and taken aback when it is defied. It comes only gradually and with extreme reluctance to recognise the perversity or depravation of human nature, which will yield only to the persuasion of force. It has recourse to coercive measures just at the same time when interest in a narrow city and belief in the divine tradition seem to dwindle and expire together. The old fallacy vanishes that men wjll Qbey law because it " is so written," will entertain
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an instinctive respect for ancestral custom when the The'Admirreason for it is forgotten, the performance incon- a^^hton> venient. Only a few vociferous and sentimental confiding idealists to-day can entertain such a view; but their ill-founded conviction, denied by history and personal experience, constitutes a real danger to the basis of the modern State; and if realised prepares the way for the release of restraint, the quarrels of nation or of class, and—the inevitable outcome—the armed, ruthless, but at least impartial, " saviour of society." § 2. Such was the position of the Roman Senate. The Senate The wider the commonwealth and the more numerous superseded a* the elements of race or creed that refuse to amalga- ^g ^ Of mate, the more urgent is the need of an incontest- permanent able seat of authority, to act, if the crisis demand, milUarycasteinstantaneously and irresponsibly. It was the signal merit of the imperial system that, having won its , place by arms, it began at once to rule by pacific methods and in the interests of peace. It merely held in reserve, and at a great distance from the centre, the armies whose personal loyalty had served Caesar and Octavianus so well. Prompt public opinion upheld Vespasian in his reconquest of autocracy; two years saw the end of a struggle which about a century earlier was painfully lengthened, in the rivalry of Pompey and Caasar, of Antony and Augustus. There was much sincerity in the attempt to make the dual control a working expedient. But if the Senate had no power of direct initiative, and no ready hand of executive, it had unlimited power of conspiracy. Relations were embittered, and the degeneration of the reign of the "bad prince" can be traced invariably to such suspicion. Yet the civil element was still predominant, whatever might have been the emperor's summary right of court-martial and of execution. The essentially pacific character of the Senate is recognised from the outset: Augustus, in appropriating the military provinces of doubtful security, is the forerunner both of Gallienus and of Diocletian. When once the older form of rule was pronounced incom-
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The Senate patible with the newer and more strenuous, the definite superseded asoutcome mayJ take three hundred years to reach, but J arcnaw: . '
late rise of it is merely a question of time. Individual members permanent indeed of the Senate might rise, like Agricola, up a military caste. s^ajrcase of offices, in which civil and military functions were beautifully blended or alternated. But the august body itself becomes merely majestic and consultative—a relic of the old group of elderly clansmen with whom the father would discuss a family crisis. It was in vain that Augustus and indeed Tiberius endeavoured to give it a genuine share in government, confiscated popular privilege to enhance its dignity, and complained, not without real frankness, of its disinclination for business. It laboured under two great disabilities ; it disdained to take subordinate and responsible office under its elected chief, and it had no independent executive apart from the emperor. And now we are confronted with another phase of the eternal problem—who is to blame for the badness or the mischievous measures of a government ? Has a people always the rulers which it deserves ? Is the absence of public opinion due to inherent weakness of the governed or to the despotic suppression of the governors ? At the moment, our problem takes this form: was it the fault of the Senate's insolent and mistaken pride that it refused to serve under a master, retired into a voluptuous or learned seclusion, and left the field open, like the nobles of France at the present time, to a very different class of men; more supple and capable, often more trustworthy, but without traditions, sense of personal or family honour, or that deference to public opinion, which is in truth typical of the aristocrat and not of the parvenu ? Or was it the fault of the emperor's jealousy ? Up to our own days this latter verdict has been almost unanimously accepted; it fitted in with the now exploded belief that national character or prosperity depended on the precise form of government, and that the ruler was responsible for all the sins and shortcomings of his subjects. But in truth, the real
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solution must lie midway; senatorial incapacity or The Senate suspicious reserve, emperor's doubt as to the wisdom *»^«*d as of employing senators, acted and reacted. No one late rise of can deny that the imperial line, whether its members permanent consciously willed it or no, sought the public good, militaryeastethe impartial administration of law, the maintenance of unbroken " Roman peace." It represented, so far ] as the economic, racial, and religious difficulties would i permit, freedom and equality ; and it worked persist- < ently, with incredible industry and patience, sometimes through the strangest of instruments like Caracalla, towards a lofty humanitarian goal. But the Senate always represented a narrow and exclusive oligarchy, and was even to the very last out of sympathy with the aims of liberal imperialism. § 3. After long disuse of arms, the empire was Empire rudely awakened under Marcus to the pressing needs pacific in of self-defence. Severus, a foreigner, was obliged ^d^w to stamp out civil war, and to refuse explicitly the professional offer of a dangerous partnership. The reconstruc- soldierstion of the African ruler is largely a matter of conjecture ; but we cannot doubt that his distrust of the senatorial order was well-founded. He may not have given his children the cynical advice which historians put into his mouth; but he must have seen that the military basis needed strengthening in the interests of peace and safety, and that a school of experts, of professional soldiers, reared and nurtured in the traditions of the camp, was essential to the State. It was to be a set-off, a make-weight, to the other side of Roman and provincial life. And no doubt the good Septimius believed it possible to confine the interests and the activity of the military caste within due limits. He could not foresee, in a reign notably marked by the brilliance of its legal achievements, that it would soon claim and acquire a monopoly of interest. Military revolutions dominate the scene after the extinction of his line; though we have been at pains to show the definite policy and undoubted usefulness YOU i. H,
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of these pretenders. And it was still thought possible Empire pacific in jjeep apart the civil functions of the Senate and aim; n e w , , , . < • f ,i f T-\j. -j t need of the duties of frontier defence. Direct evidence of professional an imperial prohibition for a senator to carry arms is (as is well known) confined to a single passage in Aurelius Victor ; besides, we have a vague surmise that Antoninus V. (211-217) dispensed with the presence of nobles in his eastern or northern camps, and wrote bitter and ironical letters to the Conscript Fathers contrasting his hard and simple life with their studied inactivity. There are besides some traces in epigraphy of personal immunity granted as a favour to individuals, at least as early as the time of Commodus Antoninus IV. (180-192). If the edict of Gallien did not perfectly represent one aspect of a tendency which elsewhere we know to have been predominant, we should never attach such weight to a fragmentary testimony of a late writer in the reign of Valens. But it accords well with our surmises, and forms a presage of the future division. Yet, to tell the truth, it is not quite like Gallienus, who attempted to curb the pride of the soldiers, was a bold and sagacious defender of the frontier, and managed to maintain his throne longer than any Caesar in the third century, from Severus to Diocletian. The passage somewhat resembles the naive aetiology of a chronicler, who has to explain the retirement of the noble class from active life, and wishes to give chapter and verse and a definite moment of time for a long and insensible process. I find it hard to reconcile with his character, a mixture of studied and not impolitic indifference and of real ability both as statesman and warrior. That he was terrified at the rare enterprise and public spirit of the Senate in taking arms to defend Rome, that he trembled lest the "empire should be transferred to the best of the aristocracy," seems inherently improbable. If we may believe the plain teaching. of the third century, this exclusion was already an accomplished fact ; and we prefer to place in the
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years 200-230, in the first quarter of the century, Empire the obscure steps of this process ; which in the end f^ifi0 in left a well-born but effeminate nobility confront- needof ing an army of foreigners and of mercenaries who professional despised them. A definite imperial policy to deci- so ters' mate and enfeeble the Senate only dates from the return of Severus from the overthrow of Albinus; and even Dion praises his clemency in pardoning thirty-five senators implicated in the scheming of the rival camp. With Bassianus Antoninus V. defiance of the Senate became a mania ; and the nadir of their prestige and authority is reached in the reigns of Macrinus and his son, and of the last and unworthiest of the line of Antonines. Never were they consulted as to the transmission of the purple; and the East celebrates its most signal and degraded victory over the West, under the youthful priest of Emesa; then truly, in Tiberim defluxit Orontes, I am obliged to recall, that this section may be complete in itself, the decision already reached in the last; namely, that an entire reconstruction of the principles of government took place under Severus II. and Mammsea (222-235). Then a great reaction swept away the strange foreigners who had shown open hate or contempt for Rome and its Senate, had deified Hannibal, the foe of the republic, and Alexander of Macedon; or had disgusted what still remained of public opinion by the open display of Oriental vices. We attach some importance to the contrast between " prassidial" and " legatorial" provinces (Lamprid., Alex. Sev. § 24). It is difficult not to sympathise with the rapid but tempting conclusion of Borghesi, who believes that henceforward a " president" held the pacific functions, jurisdiction, and administrative work, while a dux controlled the often itinerant forces of alien origin. But I cannot conceal the fact, that at the very moment when presses seems to acquire a special and technical use, Macer, writing under the same reign (Dig. i. 18), tells us it is a general term and will cover all governors
116
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Empire
sent out to administer the provinces (" Prasidis
pacific in aim; new
nomen generate _ . *
est, eoque et proconsules / \ ^ • • „
et legati •»
need o/ Ccesans et omnes (m.) provincias regentes . . . prastdes professional appellantur"). At the same time no reader of third century annals will, I think, deny that the military caste tends to assume a crisp and definite distinction, a needful continuity of function ; in the domestic and foreign perils, which would allow little leisure for the old vicissitudes of office, and the easy and harmless passage from one service to the other. We have besides convincing testimony that the third century was in common life not the scene of confusion which we usually picture. There was in civil and social life nothing of that hopeless and despondent anarchy which marked the reign of Phocas (602-610), the absolute overthrow of old institutions which rendered imperative the work of Heraclius :—nothing of slow and almost unnoticed ebbing in the tide of Roman dominion, such as we must witness in Britain, Gaul, and Spain during the fifth century. It is surprising to find that no disturbance took place during the six months' interregnum that ensued on Aurelian's death. We may indeed assume, in that period of rare modesty and temperateness in the military department, in the now penitent armies of assassins, that the civil service can have relaxed none of its accustomed vigilance, and that the great machine of government continued its task with the same precision as if it had still a visible head. It would be a paradox to style the chief feature of that age an irrepressible tendency to bureaucratic government; yet it is clear that such work was effectively done and that the transient princes had no time to devote to its supervision. Is it not possible that the reign of the second Severus witnessed the careful excogitation of a safeguard to the caprice or minority or uncertain tenure of the sovereign ? After the strange anti-Roman sympathies of " Caracallus," and the still stranger excesses of his supposed son, it was no wonder if more serious minds embraced the oppor-
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tunity of a peaceful interval to establish some definite Empire and systematic procedure.—The pretensions of the FWfoin _ , f i i i • i Senate to regulate and, ,to control, which we rfindi •in nee(l', O'f the Augustan reigns of Tacitus and Probus did not, professional I imagine, represent mere vague recollections of dim sMwrs' republican or early imperial tradition, but a certain reality within their own experience, when the entire body or a committee settled civilian procedure and promotion. Diocletian indeed disqualified the Senate from the competition for power, not indeed with the jealous and set purpose of humbling aristocratic pride and unmasking the power of the sword;—but because the meridian no longer passed through Rome,—a suburban capital with a great past and the present , burden of an idle, needy, and riotous population. He centralised, just as in a later century Basilius I. and Leo VI. will be said to centralise. He made everything issue from the sacred palace, which was now guarded with redoubled care. He abolished the co-ordinate source of authority,—at least in its general recognition or effective control. Civil and military provinces alike were to be accountable solely to the head of the State; but in the severance of these two, into parallel lines which run side by side but never meet, he followed a current which had been flowing steadily for perhaps sixty years. § 4. There has been, I fear, a departure from the influx of usual design, both in repetition of matter from a barbarians; preceding section and in the introduction of detail iegij^. or testimony. Nor can I hope to have convinced division of students, or probed the matter beyond controversy. yts an<1 But it seems important at the opening of a new age, to point out the contrast; what is judged to be original, and what is strictly only an endorsement and continuance of preceding policy. The subject of the separation of the civilian and military careers is by no means exhausted ; but enough has now been said for the general survey, already tending to the overminute and particular. And I will only point to the third and final feature, the Germanising of soil and J
atm
new
118 Influx of land and division of payers and workers.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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of army at the beginning of the fourth century, and the issues with which this transformation is pregnant, Nor need we spend much time now over a subject which has already engrossed our attention and must do so again. Indeed, the entire tendency of civilisation leads to a Platonic specialism of function. The advance of culture and complexity rather narrows than enlarges the vision, sphere, and the usefulness of average man. The greater number are fixed immovably in certain sedentary occupations, whether of brainwork (so-called!) in office and bank, or of manual labour in manufactory and warehouse. As each year passes, some further subdivision of territory is made, some new piece cut off to make a separate study. Not for these are the wider conquests of science, the loftier and more tranquil outlook upon things. We do not exaggerate in saying that to the average mind religion alone gives a sense of value to the person and his work, and a certain integrity to the whole of life,—which apart from this comprehensive faith, is nothing but several atoms and piecemeal happenings, loosely and artificially bound together by the stress of daily needs and the authority of the State. And government, once part and parcel of a free-man's privilege and duties as such, passes more and more into the hands of the expert. This is a statement which few would care to contest, yet it is in manifest contradiction to the complacent commonplaces with which the men of our day disguise their disappointment in the earlier hopes. Even in our own country, the active intervention of the people is limited to a vague approval once in five years of candidates whom they did not select, to the endorsement or rejection of some general policy, sketched for them in broad outline and concerned not with administration but with some moral principle or some secular interest. And this, at the most favourable estimate ; for it seems probable that the case will not be fairly represented to the electorate,
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and that the people, quite ready and able to decide Influx of on matters of right and wrong, or general expedi- *Br*a«««* .... i t ,. , , J ,, • • land and ency, will be cleverly diverted from the mam issue legions: by the dexterity of rival politicians. Elsewhere, division of matters promise worse; and it is impossible for a friend of the people to contemplate without anxiety the dangerous turn towards cynical indifference, which appears the only alternative to a profound ignorance. The world's society which handed over a contractual, and finally surrendered an absolute, authority to the Caesarian head of the State,—suffered ^ from a similar disease. The people and the nobles did \ not wish to administer or to fight. The municipal i councils in the provinces had no real attachment to the petty and onerous duties of finance, police, and public works; and the age of the public benefactors came to an end with the Antonines. Gradually the imperial system, driven by irresistible pressure to fresh duties, assumed with reluctance the task of administering, and governed as well as reigned. It drew to itself (like the later barbarian monarchs) faithful servitors from every class but the highest, loyal soldiers from every race except the so-called predominant nation. And the two main needs of v this colossal task were to defend and to provide J adequate funds for defence. And these two duties should be specialised; as in later days, when cultivation and warfare were separated, the owner instead of guarding his homestead, commuted or compounded with an outside and independent system, which promised to undertake the task. With a similar tendency, and no doubt in the interest of the commonwealth at that time, the freeborn citizen had delegated to some central authority his right of private vengeance, of feud or of " vendetta " : and the more enterprising and restless looked with anger and contempt on the successive surrenders of right by this craven troop to the central power; just as Nietzsche scoffs at the spiritless democracy of our time. Yet the people " love to have it so"; and
120 Influx of barbarians; land and legions : division of payers and workers.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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against the ambition of irresponsible men of talent have welcomed the " Prince " of Machiavelli,—who appears as the Greek or Italian tyrant, as the Roman Caesar, as the gallant soldier of fortune, who has before now righted the grievances of France and may be expected to do so again. Without conscious purpose or open display of principle at any given time, the empire divided its subjects into two classes: those who paid and those who worked; and if after the turmoil of the third century the increase of expert help implied additional expense, those who profited could scarcely complain. May we again recall the analogy of China under the present Manchu dynasty ? To an inquirer about the abuses or corruption of this unique democratic government, an educated Chinese merchant answers, " Do we not then pay our Mandarins enough ? " ; best means of securing good government being not to intervene oneself, but to pay something above a mere " living wage" to a highly disciplined professional; and it might well be an exorbitant and fancy fee to the most notable expert. In the growth of the scientific conception of the universe and human society, the very first principles of government must be trodden under foot. For with the settlement of all the higher moral questions,—the equality of man before the law, the abolition (in effect) of slavery, the raised status of women and the poor,—government naturally ceases to interest the loftier minds. Having no big issue, no Titanic duel of two popular heroes, to set before the electorate, the eagerness of the lowlier must evaporate as well. There are no fresh principles to discover; all that remains is the steady application of the old, vague, and already seriously criticised idealism. And then comes the awakening ; science makes short work of the rights of man, and will only condescend to recognise the individual, as an interesting or submissive instance of a general rule. And then must come the government of the professional
CH. i
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adept: the Russian bureaucrat, the American place- Influx of man, Mr. Wells' "new republican," the modern j^^"* French functionary,—indeed, a centralised abso- legions: lutism under the empty forms of freedom. These, division of it is true, show different stages of the specialising process; which, instead of adding interest and intervention in public affairs to the function of the citizen, runs counter to the whole moral and idealist tendency of the nineteenth century by sharply dividing the official from the mass. The absurd infinality of the old distinctions of autocracy and republic is shown by this precisely similar development, similar agents, similar abuses; nor is it at all clear that wholesome public opinion is in any sense a peculiar advantage of the freer constitution. § 5. But in Rome, where the people made no pre- Society tension to self-government, and only asked to be orydattiseg: saved trouble, spoon-fed and delicately nurtured as experts; they were, the power of officials increased as time admission of wore on, the contrast between the taxpayer and "^^spew collector deepened. And it was to keep the former and spade. at his task of ceaseless and unembarrassed payment that the lines between civil and military were so firmly drawn. It is quite possible that some local militias, suppressed in the interests of peace or economy, even some senators of Rome, fired with a spark of genuine lineage or tradition,—may have resented, when it was too late, peremptory prohibition ; they had once sought such discharge as a privilege. It was essential for the costly system of defence that the paying class \ should be carefully maintained and artificially supj ported. Hence the tyranny over the decurions ; hence the " prison-house " of the curia, whence the unhappy inheritor of ancestral land might not escape into the fresh air of the military class, or the safe asylum of the clerical profession. A general disinclination for effort and hazard, and therefore for the career of arms, set in early in Rome, after its gates were flung open to the dexterous Greek and the undesirable alien. It is impossible for us to
122 Society erystallises: experts; admission of 'wiM spear and spade.
CONSTITUTIONAL
HISTORY OF
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conceive the splendid comfort and magnificent spectacles which the poorest citizen could enjoy under the empire,—not merely in the greater centres, but even in the distant provincial towns; built after the R°man fashion, on the Scottish frontier, where the baths and porticoes seemed to the carping and irresolute critic, Tacitus, a mere engine of serfdom, not a serious sign of culture ; or buried in the sand of the Sahara, melancholy evidence of the great African civilisation which, like that of Asia Minor, seemed to depend on Rome, and to have vanished with its genial influence. Nothing but compulsion could have drawn these pampered paupers from the cheap pleasures of the city to the dangers of a frontier campaign,—where " from the very tent-door fierce and hostile tribes can be descried";—nor indeed was the usefulness or good faith of these urban or " Cockney " levies very conspicuous. We are confident that some sentiments like the modern Chinese contempt for a soldier must have been secretly entertained under the so-called military despotism of Rome. Literary harangues by Hellenistic rhetoricians accustomed ! men to believe in the exclusively pacific mission of < the empire ; and encouraged a large public to confide implicitly in their stolid but honest guardians, and devote the time snatched from games and spectacles to the serious studies of style and grammar. It is a pathetic irony to remember that Marcus Aurelius, on whom "the ends of the world are come," was chided by Pronto for his love of philosophy and his neglect of rhetoric and the niceties of vocabulary and archaism. For him, Aurelius might have been turning a neat phrase, or hunting up an obsolete synonym of agreeable roughness for a jaded palate, when the barbarians had already gained admission, and the integrity of the empire and its Roman character had been for ever ruined. But happily for later generations, there were never wanting notable successors of the old Roman worthies, who from time to time arose to revive a
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dying tradition and invigorate a spirit almost extinct. Society But they stand more and more alone, and have to (^^a^ses: depend on alien help and foreign hands. Ancient experts; Rome, says Ferrari with truth, was a society of admission of military peasant farmers, acquiescing cheerfully in ^^spear aristocratic government, not of merit, but of family, and spade. Both these characteristics had long since disappeared. The Roman citizen wielded neither spear nor spade. A uniform type of urban comfort spread through the civilised world, with its well-known results : a rapidly dwindling birth-rate and an alert but fragile population. The empire was unable to resist the suddenness of the Great Pestilence in the second century; there was no reserve-force, and no recruiting ground. Desolation spread in the rural districts; for the sole known remedy (even as late as Constantine V.) for filling the depleted capital was to transplant vigorous citizens from use to idleness. These ravages, either of barbarian raid or interior policy still more disastrous, were supplied, on soil or in legion, by foreigners. The third century sees a vast increase of settlers and of soldiers ; and the military caste is reinforced either by barbarians or Roman citizens from the distant corner of Illyria. The issues of this policy (or rather this drift) we shall endeavour to analyse in a later section, when the results of this welcome come to be appraised. We may here be content with noting the fact that the most pronounced defiers of barbarian threats, the most convinced champions of the violated frontier, are also those who, in default of other sources, draw largely from these alien races as cultivators and defenders of Roman soil. We need not here discuss the wisdom of this design or necessity ; we merely point out the inevitable division of the Roman world into peaceful and oppressed contributors to the exchequer (the erwreXets or uTroreXets of the historians); the military caste, which forms still an imperium in imperio, and represents more and more influences hostile to the old traditions of the empire ; and again, the settlers of foreign birth
124 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BK. n who took the place of a disappearing native populace, and supplied by their labour the idle voracity of the rule of capital. Lastly, the bureaucracy of adroit and welladmissionof trained civilians, who endeavoured to control with 'wield spear uneclual success the strong hand which had been and spade. summoned to protect the republic.
CHAPTER II LEGITIMACY; OR, THE DYNASTIC EPOCH AND THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE (337-457 A.D.) /•FLAV. JUL. CONSTAN--V birth, 337-340 I TINUS II. , ns -[ FLAV. JUL. CONSTAN- P° ° birth. 337-361 U 1. TIUS II. VFLAV. JUL. CONSTANS I.-" 337-350 birth. MAONENTIUS (Gaul) milit. nom. • 350-353 DECENTIUS (brother) milit. nom. 351-353 VETRANIO 350 . . . milit. nom. NEPOTIANUS (in Rome) . . . 350. . milit. nom. birth, SILVANUS (Gaul at Cologne). . 355 . . milit. nom. FLAV. CLAUDIUS JUHANUS IV. . • \ 6 _,6 birth, (cousin of Constance II.) . . . j 3 3 3 FLAV. JOVIANUS 363-364 milit. nom.
{
WEST FLAVIUS VALENTINI^64-^7^ O f J'J . mil. nom. f FLAVIUS GRATIANUS I I. (son) . . . . 375-383 . birth. | FLAVIUS VALENTINI^ ANUS II. (brother) . 375-392 MAXIMUS III. . . 383-388 . milit. nom. EUGENIUS . . . 392-394 . BARB. nom. FLAV. THEODOSIUS I. 394-395 . FLAV. HONORIUS . . 395-423 . birth. In Britain — MARCUS . . . . 4°5 I GRATIANUS 11. . . 406 CONST ANTINUS III. 407-411 1-mil. nom. CONSTANS II. (son) 409-411. 1 In Spain — MAXIMUS IV. . . 410 . BARB. nom. At Mentz— JOVINUS (Gaul) . . 411 SEBASTIANUS (bro. 412 PR. ATTALUS . . 409-410 . BARB. (in Rome) nom. FLAV. CONSTANTIUS III. (bro.-in-law to 421 JOHANNES I . . . . 423-425 . BARB. nom. FLAV. PLAC. VALENTINIANUS III. . . . 425-455 . birth. (son of Const. III. and Placidia) 125
EAST FLAVIUS VALENS (bro.) 364-378 . birth. PROCOPIUS . . . 365, 366 . birth. FL. THEOD. I. . . 378-395 . co-opt.
FLAV. ARCADIUS (son) 395-408 . birth.
FLAV. THEODOSIUS II. (son) 408-450 . birth.
FLAV. MARCIANUS (husb. of Pulcheria) . 450-457 . FEMALE right.
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Legitimacy § 1. IT is my purpose in this chapter to review and the ^ne government of Rome under the successors of Constantine, down to the extinction of the house of Theodosius and Valentinian in the West, the death of Pulcheria's husband, Marcian, in the East. In these years the system, organised by Diocletian and modified by Constantine, is allowed to work itself out. It may at once be said that the most striking feature is the triumph of the hereditary principle. Definitely banished for a time, this natural human prejudice revives, not merely in the parental fondness, but in the loyalty of the troops, in the approval of the subjects. And with this veneration for descent is closely allied the influence of females ; and in consequence, the predominance of the palace chamberlain over the civil or military official, in the two jealous and strictly separated hierarchies of the new system. History almost everywhere shows us the same development. The needs of the State demand the tumultuary election of some able general; we would prefer to express in this manner the sudden elevations to supreme power, which are usually put down to the vain sallies of ambition, and thus to assert the democratic basis of sovereignty. Personal adroitness may count for much, as in the theatrical stroke by which Diocletian succeeded and avenged Numerian, and so changed the course of history; but the man can do nothing apart from the need of the hour. The family instinct will suggest to him that his own sons are fittest to succeed him, and the public verdict will ratify his choice; for the people cling with pathetic tenderness to the hereditary principle. As I have often remarked, the imperial system turned out an amalgam of birthright and competitive election; and it must be confessed partook of the weakness of either system. The immediate offspring of a great man is often the most inefficient of the entire line; to justify heredity it is necessary to take a wider survey. The Romans fondly expected the same virtues to emerge in the son as had shone
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in the father ; and repeated failures of princes of the Legitimacy blood royal until t h e a g e o f Diocletian made them ? , impatient of any heir-apparent who did not fulfil early promise. All kinds of reasons were alleged to account for a very natural phenomenon — changelings, adultery, necromancy. The period of the early Cassars is unusually sterile in the reigning houses. Only Britannicus is born in the purple ; the successful competitor for the throne has not to dislodge a host of imperial cadets or even poor relations. The way to the palace is comparatively clear ; and the tragedy of the succession is content with a single victim. Under the supremacy of frugality and the middleclass, during the last third of the first century (69-96), one son was good and one was bad ; but the verdict of the story-books or folk-tales was reversed, which recognises merit only in the younger son. In the adoptive period a natural procedure, in a State which professed to revert in some measure to republican usage, was helped out by the prevailing sterility in high life. Commodus or Antoninus IV. appeared to a not very discerning populace to be a monster, a hybrid, or a mongrel. It seemed to them, innocent as they were of experience or Platonic lore, inconceivable that he could be the son of Marcus the philosopher. He was swept away, amid general approval or indifference; and within twenty years the Romans were again bewailing the enormities of another purple-born, who carried the same name and may be termed Antoninus V. The seventh and eighth were mere lads, and are better known as Diadumenus and Elagabalus, — both boasting descent from an actual or a deceased emperor. In the rough and tumble which followed the death of Alexander (235-285), the rapid and gory series did not allow the principle of heredity a fair trial. These simpler Cassars, barbarian or Pannonian soldiers, men of pure lives and such ordinary family attachment as a camp-life could permit, associated their sons in
128
CONSTITUTIONAL
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their brief administration. Maximin, Gordian, Philip, Decius, Gallus, Valerian, Cams,—all had sons in partnership, doomed to the same speedy fate. None but Gallienus (253-268) had any chance of retrieving the bad repute of the " heir-apparent"; and though a more favourable estimate of his character is recommended in these pages, the common verdict sees in him a typical argument against heredity. Still, in the case of Elagabalus and of Gordian III., we see a kind of soldiers' chivalry towards a young and handsome scion of an imperial family,—a partiality on which Senate and army were in absolute opposition, as on most other points. It is curious to contrast the cries of the Senate in the third period, " No more youths born in the purple," with the shouts of the people at Constantinople, "No more old men with forked beards,"—some nine centuries later on the dethronement of Andronicus Comnenus (1185). Twice the brothers of Claudius II. and of Tacitus made the most of a shadowy fraternal claim, which was promptly ruled out of court; the amiable Quintillus and Florian were the victims of the strange silence or inconsistency of the system on one essential point,— surely the most important and cardinal point of all. § 2. But these " transient and embarrassed phanDirect lines in West; toms" passed by without impressing any conscious hereditary later in East. purpose on the State,—-fatis Imperil urgentibus. Only with Diocletian was there given leisure and breathing-space to take serious account of the republic and its assets. He is represented as banishing this lineal or dynastic principle of set design; and yet his quadripartite college of emperors is in some sense a family alliance, and, at least at the outset, depends upon marriage. It was a compromise; the son, often the worst legacy of a good father, must give place to the son-in-law. Nature and Reason might here be said to ally—the Nature which blindly produces, the Reason which calmly chooses the best adoptive son; and like all compromises the system failed. Once more the "fork" of paper-charters, Legitimacy and the imperial succession.
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constitutions, legal obligations, was powerless against Direct lines a natural prejudice. Constantine is what he is, largely J^^L. because he had the training and opportunities of his later in Eatt. father's son ; and after he had removed Licinius from his path, he overthrew the well-planned but impracticable scheme of Diocletian. He reigned as sole sovereign some fourteen years and left a divided empire to his children, partitioned out like a patrimonial estate. How large a portion of this fourth century passes under the nominal or effective sway of princes who were either born in the purple, or could remember no other surroundings than the etiquette of the palace, the reflected glory of an heir-apparent! Constantius II. was the third of his line, and Julian IV. was the fourth ; Gratian and Valentinian II., after the ten years' interval of their father (a parvenu who reinforces the imperial series by a new strain), are typical representatives of hereditary kingship, called perhaps immaturely to an exceptional responsibility. The former marries the posthumous daughter of the son of Constantine, but leaves no issue ; the latter is the son of Justina, the widow of Magnentius, sometime emperor in Gaul. From 305-363 the sovereignty was in the hands of a recognised " first family," and during the greater part, the ruler had never remembered a " private lot" (nunquam sortem privatam experti). The years 375-392 fell under the sway of the two stripling sons of Valentinian I.; and Theodosius is the nominee of Gratian and the husband of his halfsister, Galla. Both in East and West, on a new partition of the realm, minors occupied the throne at the close of the century; the new house rested mainly, no doubt, on the prowess of its Spanish founder, but it might claim some enhanced dignity also in its alliance with the Pannonian line, in the union of Theodosius with Galla. And the second quarter of the next century rests with the latter; for with Placidia remains the real power from 425-450, and in her son expires (455) the last genuine emperor of VOL. I.
I
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Direct lines the West. Thus sons of emperors in the direct line in West; account,> in the West,' for }just half of the fourth cenhereditary later in East, tury (337-363, 375-392, 395-400) and for the full moiety of the fifth (400-455). In the East, matters throughout this period were somewhat different. There was not the same emphasis on the " dynastic " principle; or if such emphasis was laid it was extremely unfortunate. Gallus, the Eastern Caesar, had not been an encouraging instance of an imperial cadet; Valens (364-378) was a novus homo, and neither forgot the circumstance himself nor allowed others to forget it. He had not the prestige of a throne successfully won, nor the dignity of a crown tranquilly transmitted. And hence the anxious suspicions of others' merit, the well-founded diffidence of his own, which made the rule of this conscientious and untiring prince a veritable reign of terror. Theodosius I. is a son of one of his victims, the brave conqueror of the African revolt under Firmus, and a worthy precursor of the excellent Boniface in the fifth century, and of Solomon in the sixth. When Gratian atoned in some degree for his father's murder by elevating him into full partnership with a noble confidence, Theodosius deserved his promotion as his father's son and as a capable general. But he is the first of his line, and it is not until the reigns of Arcadius and Theodosius II. that the East falls under hereditary sway (395-408, 408-450). And here we once again see the curious unlikeness of great men's sons to their parents ; the warrior, pushed forward by popular approval that is never wholly flattery or an accident, leaves behind the respectable, wellnurtured offspring of an orderly but luxurious palacelife. Some paltry suspicions attach to the moral life of Constans I. (337-350) ; but until Valentinian III. (the Athalaric of the decaying empire) not a syllable is breathed against the high personal character of the sovereigns; an austere and decorous chastity reigns in the palaces of Ravenna and Byzantium, and the lives of Pulcheria and of Placidia are as edifying as the
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biographies of the saints. Piety, humanity, modesty of manners and deportment, are to be marked in „ , , . , , these Eastern Caesars, whose throne is never threatened by pretender for more than half a century, whose will is never thwarted merely because it has never been exerted. Thus we may complete our comparison and our picture, by pointing out a slight contrast between the Eastern and the Western realm. The former was not so habituated to " dynastic " obedience, though after the accession of Arcadius the instinct or prejudice in favour of a peaceful succession took even stronger hold. On the death of the pious hunter and calligraphist, Theodosius II., his sister devolved the empire upon Marcian (450-457); and it is an interesting problem whether the subsequent reaction towards an elective or adoptive method, in favour of mature State-servants of tried merit,—was in any sense an intentional reversal of the family or patrimonial system. It is at least a significant accident that from 450 to the death of Heraclius I. (641) no son is called to succeed his father, except the infant Leo II. The highest place may seem struck with barrenness ; or more probably, if we remember the numerous and ill-fated progeny of Maurice, only grave and isolated seniors without encumbrance are chosen—certain it is that the annals of Byzantium from 457 to the great upheaval in 602 reveal a kind of papal nepotism in the nephews of Anastasius, of Justin, and of Justinian ; or a curious recognition, so common in mediaeval Europe, of right descending through the female line, or conferred actually by wedlock with an heiress. It may be interesting, and possibly instructive, to point out in this period the singular absence of direct succession in the male line ; but we cannot, in the dearth of genuine scientific knowledge, build any theory upon it. At any rate, it is the sole duty of the historian to point out such facts, and to leave his readers to form conjecture or hypothesis at will. The future of the great Byzantine monarchy will rest with the dynasties.
Direct lines \n West'> hereditary iater in
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Direct lines The isolated champion, the momentary " man of the ln ^ft' hour " or " saviour of society." tends always to appear J hereditary ' . • • i r later in East, less frequently, and the whole tone and principle of the empire, half-republican and civil, half-despotic and military, will be reversed and annihilated at last by the Comnenian family. For the house of Alexius is neither Roman nor Byzantine ; it is Greek, and already mediaeval. Empire never § 3. But the epoch of which we write is the palmy acquiesced/or period for the heir-apparent and his uncontested sucpromotion of cession; and having established this, we must now untriedyouth. inquire into the probable features and special character of such a government. It is superfluous to repeat here that the subtle, indistinct, and durable constitution of Augustus never contemplated anything of the sort. The empire started indeed not with the blunt dictatorship of Julius, but with the " pious " duty of a youth of eighteen to wreak vengeance on a parent's murderers. But the scheme as it left the grasp of the septuagenarian at Nola was an office, a supreme magistracy, or congeries of offices, and had nothing to do with family or patrimony. Human nature is stronger than republican sentiment: for indeed of all governments, a republic is that which is least conformable to human nature, least intelligible to the average man ; is the work of a calculating and purposive reason, and not the spontaneous growth of years or the free development of national characteristics. And democracy (if it indeed be anything more than a euphemism for a Whig camarilla or a Venetian oligarchy) seems signally disinclined to dispense with the family, or regard with envy the recognised supremacy of a dynasty which is usually foreign. In Rome in the first century, the vague yet powerful current of the popular influence set undoubtedly in favour of the members of a certain reigning house, the regnatrix domus of Tacitus. Thus early do we find applied in bitter irony a title familiar enough to us in these so-called democratic days; for the hardand-fast distinction between the royal line and the
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subject class (unknown to antiquity) is a real guarantee Empire never of peace and freedom. No personal sanctity could ^^^for attach to the emperor in Rome, except as a represen- promotion of tative of the majesty of the people. He was the exe- 'untriedyouth. cutive ; the hand that guided or smote. It was plainly an anomaly when Caius and Nero, who had never served in the field or advised in the Senate, were invested with the supreme power. The emperors of the " year of tumult" were able generals and administrators ; only with the third member of the Flavian house was a youthful novice elevated above the greybeards of the Senate,—owing to the dim but cogent sense of hereditary right. Once more, with Verus or Antoninus III., was youth set above experience ; and with the caprice or playful chivalry of the camp, the star-like Diadumenus, the handsome bastard of Caracalla, the dutiful Alexander, the youthful but serious Gordian, were clothed with the purple, that implied not a princely dignity but the hard work of a responsible and elective office. The imperial system demanded personal government; and to the end of the chapter the sole complaint of the critic or the historian is that the emperor does not reign enough, not that his absolutism is unlimited. The popular origin of this revived monarchy was never forgotten; and the sole remedy against an inefficient Caesar was to elect one who would do his own work and not leave it to subordinates. If we examine without bias the records of the empire, we should find this close alliance between the throne and the people, unbroken. Both were, sometimes perhaps unconsciously, in full harmony of aim ; both were Liberals and Imperialists; both regarded with the same jealous distrust the proud senatorial families, which either wasted their time in idle and arrogant leisure, or seized on office not as a public duty, but as a means of gain,—or possibly, the stepping-stone to a " tyranny." It was clear that this vigilant supervision of a suspected governing class could not be exerted by a lad of ten or even fourteen years. The
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Empire never revolt of Maximin had its deepest cause in the dislike acqutescedfor of civiiians anci of female influence; in a contempt promotion of for a youth who had been the darling of the troops as untriedyouth. a boy, but who had never been permitted to become a man. After a brief reaction, when the senatorial candidates, Balbinus and Maximus II., were slain in their abortive essay to revive the consulate, Gordian III., still under tutors and governors, gives way to Philip ; and in the forty years that followed, no minor reigns without a colleague. The emperor directly administers or guards the frontier, and the distrusted intermediaries vanish into insignificance. Carus on the Persian frontier, bald and roughly dressed, is found by the Persian envoys, eating the supper of an ordinary soldier. It must be confessed that sanguinary and violent as are the annals of this turmoil and military anarchy, it is wanting in some of the defects of that purely civilian government which the last members of the house of Severus strove to set up. The times were not ready for the rule of queens-regent and barristers. Indeed, the meridian of the empire no longer passed through Rome; and the work demanded from the ruler was not the affable, business-like accessibility of a young prince, but the straightforward and, if need be, severe courtmartial of a soldier. Now it is clear that the changes instituted by the reforms of the fourth century, in the direction of the awful and invisible seclusion and ignorance of the sovereign, were harmless to their inventors, but highly mischievous to their successors. The Pannonian soldiers, who restored the empire, from Aurelian (270-275) to Constantine (306-337) adopted of set policy a pompous demeanour and multiplied, not we may imagine without a secret smile or sigh, the number of court functionaries, the preliminaries of an audience. Constantius III. (421-422) was probably not the only successor of Diocletian, in Old or New Rome, who felt the irksome restraint of imperial etiquette,—thought out in strange irony by a Dacian peasant and elaborated by Greek chamber-
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lains. For the first time in Roman history, a palace Empire never cabal or camarilla became possible. The emperor, f(^u^c^/or safely guarded from public gaze, saw and heard only promotion of with the eyes and ears of those whose chief aim was tmtriedyouth. to preserve his inviolable ignorance. The dignity of emperor, paramount though it was, was to the last degree precarious ; but the ring of interested officials who surrounded him was in a large measure permanent. We are tempted perhaps as we chronicle the orderly annals of the house of Constantine or of Theodosius, and the decent sequence of scions of an imperial family,—to attribute a sense of security and assurance to the wearers of the purple, which is inseparable no doubt from the mental equipment of a modern dynast. We are even unfair enough to rebuke the needless alarms and cruelty of a Constantius or a Valens, when they might have known the firm basis of their power, and have foreseen the speedy doom of any usurper. Such confidence, it is needless to say, was never felt (even if it might be displayed) by the uneasy nominee of the staff-corps or the palaceclique. The revolt of Magnentius or of Procopius was a serious menace not merely to the person of the reigning monarch but to the integrity of the empire. The sole aim, indeed the highest ideal of these Caesars, was to preserve the unity of the realm. For this, Theodosius temporises with Maximus III. (383-388); for this, Honorius (395-423) vanquishes his pride and sends the habiliments of empire to the upstart Constantine III. (407-411), who has as much right to claim a place in the Cjesarian line as the dour and furtive Pannonian Constantius III., who provided the West with its last " legitimate " ruler. § 4. In the great world of officials, there was no Prompt and vestige of the modern, I may almost say Teutonic, Perso[Ml sense of personal loyalty, and there was but little prince; as trace of personal honour. The later barbarian kings generalrepreburst into Roman territory, accompanied by a trusty sen a tve' band of retainers who gradually supplanted the nobles of long descent; forming, as later feudalism shows,
136 Prompt and personal • general repretentative.
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an uncomfortable counterpoise to royal authority. -j^e emperors, deterred in the allotment of public office by senatorial sullenness or incapacity, sought their agents elsewhere, and especially in their own household. The influence of freedmen, conspicuous under Claudius or Domitian, must have been very genuine. Historians love to contrast the generous pride of the Roman aristocrat who could not take office under an upstart, or who chafed at the restraints of a central assessor upon provincial malversation. With a show of humility, they point to the low estate of the modern noble, who deems himself honoured, while he is in fact degraded, by the menial and household offices at court, which supply his highest title. Yet to a tranquil observer many of the difficulties of the administration were due to this idle vanity, which would not brook control or the recognition of a master. Indeed, it is directly responsible for the prevalent palace-administration, which everywhere in theory, and largely also in practice, has superseded the diffused and co-ordinate regimen of a decentralised State. The emperors were driven, in their honest care for the public welfare, to select trustworthy agents ; and the meaning of the " military despotism," a title of reproach so often applied maliciously to the Roman Empire, is merely this :— an order was given and promptly obeyed without cavil ; " and to my servant, do this and he doeth it " ; Sallustius' advice to Tiberius at the uneasy opening of his reign in Nola. Now the entire machinery of the republic was almost of design calculated to arrest this promptness and unquestioning obedience ; the various duties of a State-executive were wrested from a single hand and parted out among a number of equal and, in effect, irresponsible officials, whose negative duty was rather to check a colleague's enterprise than assist his zeal for reform. There was a vast expenditure of heat and friction to secure equilibrium ; and the Roman senator sent out to a province with regal powers abused his freedom and impunity, in a very natural
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reaction. And, as we know, it was this reaction that Prompt and carried the armed proconsul at the head of a faith- P?rso*ia,l /UTlCttOfl O7 ful army into the defenceless capital of the world, 'prince; as Centralisation (whether we regret or approve) is the generalrepreinevitable climax in the development of organised sen a me' society; and if the emperor sought among the lowly and unscrupulous for his immediate executive, it was rather the fault of those who could not stoop to relieve him of a portion of his responsibility. The whole imperial system is a denial of senatorial, Roman, Italian privilege : in a word, it is a provincial protest against a Whig oligarchy,—the emperor was a " patriot king," not indeed of the narrower Rome, but of that larger State, which was conterminous with the world, "urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat." It was in the very middle of the Adoptive period that the scattered elements of this unrecognised or personal retinue were gathered into some semblance of a civil service. There was no crafty or studied encroachment of central power; but through no fault of the prince, even against his will, the direct reference of a helpless world to a master had become the rule. Pliny's correspondence will be proof enough of the host of new and minute duties which pressed upon Caesar. Nothing, it would appear, could be settled without him, "Ea sola species adulandi supererat." It cannot be doubtful to any unbiassed student of history that this confidence was both genuine and deserved. We have perhaps happily ended that epoch of criticism which traced all human institutions to hypocrisy and guile ; saw in the willing obedience of the subject only the cringing humility of the slave ; and detected in the endless and artificial broils of a narrow and malicious city-life or the perpetual feuds of savages, the ideal of human existence. The worship of the imperial genius was a sincere if misplaced token of gratitude for a peace and a justice hitherto unknown. From the first, the immediate agent of Caesar had better credentials than the nominee of the Senate; " Onera deprecantes levari placuit proconsulari imperio,"
138 Prompt and personal Junction of prince; as general repre-
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writes Tacitus of Achaia and Macedonia. Who can doubt that the immense Balkan 'peninsula was the . gainer by the indefinite prorogation of Poppagus Sabinus' command under Tiberius ?—or that the easiest way to satisfy the remonstrance of the provincials was to diminish the number of semi-independent governors and unite under a single " servant of the crown," well-qualified and tried in office, but at any given moment responsible to a vigilant master ? The great tragedy of the reign of this second emperor was largely due to the unreceptive "old bottles" of misrule, of which Piso, the Syrian proconsul, was a typical representative. Growing § 5, The c[v{\ service, which thus of necessity grew lionqfagentit- UP *° perform the humbler or more delicate duties of autocracy an ever more engrossing task, became in its turn * the "Frankenstein monster" to its creator. Roman society (indeed all primitive society) had been founded upon the affectionate relations of high and low, the patronus and the cliens. By this device they atoned for the narrowness of State interference and found a salve for the jealous division of classes both in place and in sentiment, which civilisation seems to increase rather than to alleviate. And in this spirit the " intendants" of the Roman Empire began their work. But the dizzy succession of meteor-like princes during the Great Anarchy (235-285) effectively quenched the personal allegiance. Devotion to an abstraction was substituted,—to an Ideal which clothed itself in a variety of individuals and soon tired of these imperfect representatives. It is conceivable that the inmost provinces during that time enjoyed comparative peace, but were ignorant of the name and features of the reigning Caesar ;—with whom indeed only the most patient of historians can keep pace. The abstraction Rome, or the Roman Republic, exerted a far greater influence on the world at large than the personal character of the sovereign. The great machine went.on, even although for a time it was headless.
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The first duty, as we have so often remarked, Growing of any absolute &government is to discover a remedy J . . . . . . . . tionof agents: against its abuse, or a temporary exercise of power autocracy during an interregnum. When the political theorist limited by its is satisfied that he has put his finger on the rec°9nition"seat of sovereignty," he has nearly always discovered a caput mortuum. To say that the people have the power, is to utter a truism or a fallacy ; and of either sense the present age has grown heartily tired. To say that an autocrat exercises absolute authority is to say nothing at all. Absolute monarchy and democracy are convenient formulas ; they are not facts ; and the man of sense instead of gazing awestruck at imposing phantoms will inquire, " Granting your formula, which does not matter to me, where does the effective control reside ? " And in nearly every State, reactionary or progressive, it will be found elsewhere than in the admitted and recognised channels of authority. For nearly all influence is indirect, and to proclaim publicly the irresponsible prerogative of king or people is to rob it of half its power, and to turn men's thoughts to other quarters for the discovery and maintenance of social order. Now the safeguard against the madness or incapacity of a despotic crown lies in the removal of its temporary representative, who only enjoys its honours during good behaviour. Roman public opinion was merciless towards a Caesar who had failed, or proved unworthy of high office. Their code of proportionate criminality is as strange to us to-day as any barbarian wehr-geld. The manly pursuits of Gratian (375-383) were as fatal to his popularity as the cruelty which accompanied the same dexterity in Commodus (180-192), just two hundred years earlier. There is more than mere irony or exaggerated satire in the excuse of Juvenal for Orestes, " Troica non scripsit" ; it was the artistic tastes of Nero that hurried him to a doom which his State-crimes would not have exacted. Roman literature is haunted by this hyperbole, this entire want of perspective, the fatal legacy of the
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Stoic school; recognising no limit or degree in good or evil, and in consequence never finding in this mixed world either the perfect sage or consummate wickedness. In the indictment of an emperor, the last and most damning charge is nearly always some amiable trait, some redeeming characteristic that to our eyes at least makes the sinister figure almost human.—But to return : the Roman emperor held his place " during pleasure" like any other official, and accepted its tenure on these conditions. There is not a trace of "right divine to govern wrong" until we observe Christian influences at work; until power is a trust from above and not an office delegated from below. The immediate retinue of the transient sovereign saw through the weakness of the representative to the eternity of the system. Who has not smiled at the French courtiers, bowing low to the chair of state and jostling indifferently past King Lewis himself ? yet beneath this inconsistency lies a great truth ; which no one saw more clearly than the much maligned Tiberius: " Principes mortales, Rempublicam ceternam esse." § 6. The civil service or the army, with its regular The permanent grades and orderly rules of promotion, has the start official: duel of any monarch, even with the best intentions, bent of nominal on reform. When in a vacancy or a minority the and actual ruler. central authority was in abeyance, the staff-corps or the body of household troops or chamberlains would become charged not only with ordinary business, but with the old patrician privilege of devolving the succession. In a certain sense, the imperial records from Constantine I. to Majorianus (457-461) tell of nothing so much as a long struggle between the supposed sovereign and his ministers, between the nominal and the actual wielders of power. We shall find later that the whole crisis in the years 565-602 is due to the unavailing fight of sovereigns, wanting neither in tact nor ability, against license and privilege in high places. Sometimes the foe will be an unofficial class of wealthy and irresponsible citizens; sometimes the
Growing insubordination of agents: autocracy limited by its recognition.
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subordinate agents in the provinces ; sometimes the The perunscrupulous servants of a monarch's intimacy,— r ,, , , , -, • , official: duel the eunuchs, who become a necessity in a court Of nominal when once the principle of royal and unapproachable and actual seclusion is recognised as chief among the arcana m r' imperil. An absolute monarch is frequently tempted to exclaim with Nicholas II. in our own times, "Will no one tell me the truth ? " Among the most valuable and convincing documents of history lies the speech of Justinus II. (578), when he warns his successor in simple, even broken utterance, against the wiles of the palace-clique. This unequal contest by no means exhausts the interesting crises of this period ; but it may pass unnoticed, because so much is matter of surmise rather than of express record. The palatines share their power with the more honest chiefs of the army-corps, and in fact during this century and a half a vacant throne is filled by military suffrages ; and in the unique apparent exception, Joannes the primicerius notariorum (423-425), who figures as the nominee of a palace intrigue, we may suspect with reason the influence of Castinus, the " master of troops," and the reluctance of one who grasped at the substance of power, to cumber himself with its trappings. So Arbogast, so Gerontius, so Orestes, propose other heads than their own to wear the diadem and endure the ceremony in the obscurity of a palace. But while in this age of Constantine, Valentinian, and Theodosius, the military is very distinctly the final arbiter, the bestower of power, it must be remembered that such intervention is exceptional ; — that everyday matters in the still extensive field of civil, social, fiscal, and judicial activity lie outside (or perhaps above or below) the range of a soldier's interest. "Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit." The real government, concerned with details and routine, is the work of the obscure official. It takes its tone, its spirit and its principles, from this potent but halfunrecognised hierarchy. And while it is easy to trace the career, and estimate the influence of some able
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general, of Theodosius the elder, of Stilico, of Ae'tius, or of Boniface;—or the change of policy, the active enmity or open partnership of Alaric or Ataulphus ;— we often find ourselves at a loss in essaying to appreciate the character, the motives, the policy of Eusebius, Chrysaphius, Ruffinus, Eutropius, Olympius, and Jovius. And again, what shall we say of those supreme instruments of imperial justice, or engines of imperial confiscation, the pretorian prefects, divested of their military power, but in the civil sphere the alter ego of the sovereign and the veritable dispenser of his awards ? To a more careful diagnosis of these agents a special section should be given; it is now high time to pass on to other aspects of the empire during the Dynastic Period. § 7. It must not be supposed that a single family, Mutinies of Dynastic era: by right of election in great measure accidental, seclusion of was permitted to enjoy this unique position without sovereign : influence question. The precedent of the third century was of chamber- too fresh in men's mind, when the imperium was lains and a prize within the reach of any bold adventurer. ' Shogun,' But in justice to the dynastic principle in this first Christian century, the supreme place was never the aim of mere vulgar ambition and greed, never a mere family appanage, the means of enriching needy relatives. Such it became in the age which follows the close of this historical study,—the age of the Comneni. There still survives something of the old Roman spirit of disinterested public service, which ennobles the individual citizen, and merges his personality and caprice in duty to the State. Office is still a sacred trust, not a patrimony; behind the emperor of the moment was the republic. It was therefore with no passionate indignation against dynastic claims that the usurpers of this period set up their banners against the "legitimate" sovereigns. Constantius II. (as Ammian repeats with irksome iteration) was uniformly successful in civil war and in quelling domestic disturbance. Pretenders were rife in the West; Magnentius murders Constans I. The permanent official: duel of nominal and actual ruler.
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(337-350) and heads a barbarian, perhaps a nationalist Mutinies of rising; Nepotianus seeks to revive in the peaceful Dynastic era •i i .1 1 •«.• ,TT i • • ii seclusion of f
capital the days of Maxentius; Vetranio in the sovereign; general confusion and uncertainty assumes the influence purple; Silvanus is tempted by the malicious in- °^^^r~ trigues of courtiers to try this last desperate means 'Shogun.' of reaching safety. But the interest of these military " pronunciamentos " was confined to the armies and generals in question; and the discredit brought by Gallus on the Constantian house was amply retrieved by the Gallic laurels of his brother Julian. Stern necessity drove the staff-corps to a hasty and very possibly erroneous choice on the banks of the Tigris in 363; every one would be first to salute the new emperor, and no one could venture to rectify a mistake by inquiring if this was really the Jovianus intended ? So too with the elevation of Valentinian I.: necessity and the peril of anarchy could not stop to consider precedents or weigh merits. No one was more conscious of his shortcomings than Valens himself; and it caused little surprise that Procopius, a cousin of Julian, maintained himself for some months in the years 365, 366, as emperor at Constantinople. It does not appear that this seizure of the capital threw the general administration out of gear, any more than a similar revolution at the beginning of Constantine V.'s reign, when Artavasdus usurped power (740-743). But the results of the daring of this " pale phantom " (as Ammian suggests) were terrible indeed. Henceforth, the slow and suspicious mind of Valens was open to informers; and from the Gothic alliance with the baffled pretender, on the score of " hereditary claims" and legitimacy, sprang the distrust of the Eastern court, which dared not refuse the suppliants at the Danube m 376, 377; yet gave them only a half-hearted welcome. The disaster of Adrianople was the dying curse of Procopius.—So completely was the choice of a new sovereign the perquisite of the staff-corps, that during the illness of Valentinian I. in the West,
144 Mutinies of Dynastic era: seclusion of sovereign : influence of chamberlains and 'Shogun.'
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his successor is already seriously debated in military conclave ; and no thought is given to the problematic rights of his children to the reversion. On his recovery, the wise sovereign loses no time in presenting Gratian to the troops and securing their approval of a father's partiality. Maximus III. (383-388) voices the public murmurs against Gratian's alien bodyguard and barbarising proclivity ; just as Arbogast is the first of a series of barbarian "protectors," leading about a tame Augustus, not venturing, or perhaps scorning, to assume the purple which they were ready enough to bestow. Eugenius, the pagan rhetorician, is the precursor of Attalus, the artistic Ionian whom the Senate sends out to treat with Alaric; of Jovinus, the " client" of the Burgundians (and for a brief space of Ataulphus also), of Avitus, of Libius Severus IV., and of Ricimer's pageantemperors, down to the extinction of the line in Romulus. This is the significance of the events of 392, 393, and the great battle of the Frigidus. Historians remind us that it is the first time in this later empire that East vanquishes West; hitherto the balance of success has been uniformly with the latter. But it is for our present purpose mainly instructive as being the earliest protest of a proud barbarian minister-of-war against the fancied independence of a purple-born stripling; the last ineffective protest in the West against a Christian government (unless we except the dalliance with Sibylline books and Etruscan soothsayers during the siege of Rome). The last pretender of our list seems at first sight to belong to a very different class: Joannes, chief of the notaries, spectabilis not illustris, seems elevated by a peaceful civilian intrigue ; yet as we have seen above, it is more than probable that pure military influence was in reserve. Now a survey of such facts will lead us to this conclusion : that the reign of immature and secluded youths largely contributed to the establishment of a barbarian protectorate in the West; and it was just
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a question whether the ascendancy lay with the Mutinies of functionaries who thronged the sacred halls, or the Dynastic era.b . . . . seclusion oj barbarians who bivouacked outside. The problem sovereign: which has to be settled in the next period is, " Shall influence the empire accept side by side with a secluded /^/aLT" nominal ruler an effective barbarian 'Shogun' ?" It 'Shogun.' is now time to consider what part is being played in the governments of East and West by this new element; and we are called upon to explain why the Western Cassar vanishes until 800 ; why the crime of Leo I. in the murder of Ardaburius marks for the East a new era of independence.
VOL. I.
K
CHAPTER III LIBERAL IMPERIALISM ; OR, THE FUNCTIONS OF THE EMPEROR AND THE PROFFER OF BARBARIAN LOYALTY Unvarying 'Liberal-
§ j_ RESTRICTION, exclusion, and privilege—such ,1 i • t • ±L -i 1 x t. i•
ism'of were the chief maxims ofc the city-state, when kinMonarchy. ship, genuine or fictitious, constituted the sole tie.
5
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results have ensued does not exonerate the prime- Unvarying movers from selfish and reactionary aim; an aim ^T^~ none the less selfish because united with perfect Monarchy: good faith. It is the pardonable self-delusion of modern small but convinced minorities who often meet in 0"^rty discussion and arrive at idealist conclusion, to con- the success of fuse their own advantage or views with the common aJactlongood. In the past, it is a commonplace which as a truism is often forgotten, that a single rule is the only obstacle to the endless jealousy and recrimination of classes, or the still more odious rancour of religious and national bitterness. While the kings of England strove to unite a people and make justice uniform, a powerful minority fought for special privileges; which through no effort of theirs were destined to become the common heritage of all in the fulness of time. A democratic plebiscite or referendum (which so far as the will of the people can be elicited seems the only convincing method) would have nullified the demands of the barons, the overthrow of the Catholic Church, the deposition of the Stuarts, the supremacy of the Venetian oligarchy through the eighteenth century under cover of popular government. And indeed, the Roman Empire as we interpret it to-day, so far from being a retrograde movement, was a distinct advance,—upon which few modern constitutions can be said to make any substantial improvement. It was a reaction of the provinces \ against the metropolis; such as might well take I place once more between the colonies of the British \ Empire and Downing Street. It would be idle and vain to assert that the chief heroes in this drama of transition played their part with eyes open and fully conscious purpose. Such a theory seriously impairs the entire work of Theodor Mommsen, the first careful, untiring student to suggest a more equitable judgment on the imperial aims. His picture of Caesar, singularly untrue to experience and the possibilities of human nature, merely to-day provokes wildest
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reaction in the opposite direction; the clear-sighted and consummate statesman, who looked steadfastly at an outlined plan of preconceived architecture like a Platonist, becomes for Guglielmo Ferrari the archopportunist, always embarrassed by his unexpected success ; the founder of the line of Cassars and Kaisers and Tzars of all time is merely for him the archdestroyer. Neither account is true ; Caesar is neither the tranquil guide of events towards a predestined goal, nor the worried creature of circumstances. But he represented the larger interests and the wider suffrage, the more spacious opportunity. His curious breach with ceremony and tradition, his neglect of precedent and of prejudice,—taught his followers a much needed lesson. The success of Augustus was due to the clever disguise of Liberalism in the garb of religious and national patriotism. Only tentatively did he proceed in throwing open the world to an impartial administration,—this cautious nephew of the Dictator who made Gauls senators and granted the franchise wholesale. With moderate steps did the great movement advance towards the breaking down of racial barriers; and with a wisdom rarely shown in these days of logical contrasts, it fostered a measure of genuine autonomy and local interest, while retaining an effective but limited supervision and right of interference; it did not hurry, as if only capable of superlatives, from one extreme of centralised control to complete independence. § 2. The emperors were almost uniformly abreast Wise and gradual of the time. Law, religion, public opinion, Stoic liberalism philosophy (in its finer aspect), combined to shake of early empire; the fetters of privilege, to display the natural equality anti-aristo- and likeness of man as man. It was reserved for cratic, antia strange wearer of the title Antonine (212) to register national : necessary or endorse this revolution, by an edict as notable and appeal to theatrical as Alexander II.'s ukase of emancipation. force and interest. Rome ceased some years later to be the centre of gravity, and the last vestige of Italian superiority was swept away by Diocletian. The problem was no Unvarying 'Liberalism' of Monarchy: modern ' triumphs of liberty' the success of a faction.
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longer the supervision of civil magistrates in the Wise and unarmed provinces along the Mediterranean, but the ^^^m defence of the frontier. The ablest defenders are of early the most doubtful in lineage : Maximinus I. v(•2^-2^8). emPire( . . *>. . , : anti-arutoa barbarian, performs valiant service in keeping his cratic> anticountrymen out; Publius Licinius Gallienus (253- national: 268) does his best to let them in. ~^ The new converts to Roman allegiance are more force and royalist than the king, more nationalist than the mterestnation.—Again and again the empire retreated to the ancient limits marked out by Augustus, and resumed its defensive attitude. What at such times was to be the policy towards those who knocked at the gates as suppliants or as marauders ? Was the process of expansion to be indefinitely applied in the matter, not indeed of new territory, but of new settlers ? The imperial idea was of course ( supra-national not anti-national; it did not destroy i a country, but it gave an additional fatherland and j a new pride of citizenship. There was nothing untoward in the settlement of barbarian tribes in depleted districts; and it is difficult for us to-day to appreciate the ravages which the plagues of the second and third century had made in over-populous regions. Extensive solitudes took the place of busy countrysides and thriving towns. The latifundia, by the accumulation of vast estates in single hands, had been the creation rather of necessity and obdurate physical law than of any deliberate greed. Once again the empire had taught men to live at peace with each other; for the gathering at Ephesus in the Acts the town-clerk feared an inquiry only on the ground of uproar; Dio Chrysostom's pages are full of references to the small jealousies and petty spites which only a good-humoured central authority, embodied in such men as Gallio, could hold in check. And during the long repose which followed the reconstitution of the empire under Vespasian (70-180), the interior provinces, unaccustomed even to the sight of soldier or the glitter of steel, unlearnt the
150 Wise and gradual liberalism of early empire; anti-aristocratic, anti national: necessary appeal to force and interest.
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art of defence. As we shall often remark, careful study must relieve the imperial line of the charge of needless intervention and tutelage. The multiplication of imperial duties and, as we saw, of direct imperial agents, was an inevitable effect or resultant of various causes; in which intentional interference played perhaps the smallest part. It is not to the discredit of the system, if it happened, that amid the financial or civil embarrassment of the network of city-states, even the worst of the emperors was trusted above every one else, as an equitable and impartial referee;—if the control of arms (whatever this might entail) was confidently surrendered to a single arbiter, and no further thought was given to national defence or the problem of conscription. The triumphant campaigns of Trajan (98-117), the adroit royal progresses of Hadrian (117-138), lulled the world into a false security. Henceforth after a brief interval, the emperor was to be a homeless and restless vagrant, beckoned hither and thither at the summons of some frontier crisis. The situation was assuredly much changed since Tiberius proposed the maxim, then undoubtedly of highest sagacity, "Non omittere caput rerum" and since Nero in the prime of life and vigour waged war by legates, just as Domitian, the proud and suspicious, paid visits of courtesy by deputy (ex more principatus per nuntios visentis). The Romans grumbled in their usual irresponsible fashion at the wise decision of Tiberius, who sent his sons to hear the complaints of mutinous legions, and refused to leave Rome to superintend measures for repressing the Gallic revolt. But they complained equally of the long absences of later Cassars on important business, anywhere rather than at the capital. Whether the " Folk-wandering " and the reconstruction it entailed took the statesmen of the empire unawares, it is impossible to say; but with the exception of the station of the Rhenish and Danubian legions, everything else had to give way to this new
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pressure on the frontier. The imperial regime was Wise and eminently calculated to satisfy a pacific State or 9^dua,l aggregate of States, whose sole aim was peace and of early the calm enjoyment of material comfort. Around empire; the basin of the inland sea, which Pompey had ^a delivered from its last pirate-vessel, dwelt, or rather national: slumbered, peoples with historic names, and, homes, neces ^rH . . . appeal to carrying on the innocent mimicry of local govern- force and ment under a firm yet tolerant control. In spite of interest. the blind or credulous belief of humanitarians to-day, the race, at least in Western Europe, has not progressed with stately and measured step to the final triumph of Peace from unspeakable riot. Just as coercive measures, police, prison, death-sentence,— were comparatively unknown in the family conclave, or its larger form, the city-state; so war was to all early nations a displeasing if frequent episode in the social life. It was neither a business nor a profession, but a regrettable expedient. Part in its dangers was the inseparable right and duty of a citizen : tro\e^ovfiev iva elprjvrjv a
152 Wise and gradual liberalism of early empire; anti-aristocratic, antinational: necessary appeal to force and interest.
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whether of his present wrath or future displeasure as a maleficent spirit; or of the whole system of unalterable rules, which seem to influence savage life quite apart from any visible sanction of force or penalty. And this we may surely not inaptly call moral. It is as the world grows older that appeal to force becomes necessary in the ultimate resort. This the doctrinaires of human progress on their own lines are reluctant to admit. Yet the fact and the reason should be alike obvious. The agreement upon the father's authority, the content of the legal code which is but family tradition and precedent crystallised, the unseen yet dreadful menace of ancestral spirits, to whom all change in custom is impiety, the entire and significant absence of all compulsion or caprice under the " dead hand " of tribal usage ;— all this is unmeaning in the larger aggregates which go to make up a state ;—different peoples and classes and tongues, each with their own special code and cult, which in their neighbours excite only horror or derision. In the " spacious times " of early society, tribes and clans with the natural instinct of a savage, carefully avoided each other and kept by some unspoken agreement to their own hunting-grounds ("invicem vitabundi" as Tacitus might say). It is pressure and increasing population that makes war; just as it is economic or fiscal distress which precipitates revolution among peoples deaf to the sermons of Idealism and the eulogies of Liberty. War is a natural expedient to prevent overcrowding; the conquering caste will, as humanity and sympathy made way, spare to enslave, their captives in battle; and thus the first great step toward international law is taken. This tribe, welded into compact discipline by the successful leader, imposes its will on the conquered people,—whether as distant provincial, or resident alien, or client, or lastly, as slave. It is only this latter, who in the merciful treatment of antiquity is taken into any real relation, partnership of interest rights and religion. The rest are and must remain
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outside; and in the utter want of any common principle of code usage or superstition, they are amenable solely to an irresponsible force, the will of the superior. There was much truth in Thrasymachus' estimate of State-law, TO a\>nepov TOV «/jetTToz/o?. § 3. Until Alexander showed glimpses of a better Empire way, until Rome effected a consummate realisation reverts to of his dream, the only conception of foreign dominion ^-mi was self-interest. Rome had already progressed far needful; on this road, when the last century before Christ was '^f^'0 en filled with domestic tumult, largely arising from this career.problem, the relation of the subjects to the dominant liberal Policy. race. Once more the far-sighted and liberal statesmen, sages, and jurists of the first two hundred years reverted to the early pacific conception of the State and its duties. It was with surprise, reluctance, and secret alarm that the emperors resumed their arduous post as sentinels on the frontier. It is probable that the revolution which summarily displaced Severus Alexander (235) was, at least in part, a protest of the military against the civil element; a recall sounded by blunt and straightforward soldiers from a policy of barristers, women, and philosophers to a recognition of the real dangers, which lay not in the Senate's rivalry but in the barbarian menace. Yet so sincere, so ingrained is the pacific and defensive character of the empire, that no attempt is made to enlarge its boundaries, except by Probus (276-282); and it is significant that the same emperor who wrote joyfully that Germany would soon be completely subdued, also wrote that in a short time soldiers would be superfluous. Enough, and perhaps more than enough, has been said to show that the whole justification of the imperial system lay in its stoppage of war or domestic disturbance; that the nations who had gladly welcomed the imperial figure, and rested beneath its shadow, were entirely unversed in warlike pursuits; in the profound quiet which was its immediate outcome, and in the deepseated principle to which the empire reverted, that
154 Empire - foto. armies again Teff™1', and Ike open career: liberal policy. reve r
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war is a regrettable episode in the life of nations, to be entered on only as a means to peace. Thus the protection of the frontier or of Csesar, divine but vulnerable, fell upon expert and professional shoulders; son succeeded father in the moral and orderly camp-towns, which recognised and encouraged in the soidier the ties of the domestic hearth, the pursuits and influences of peace. For the army / was the hereditary civiliser of the waste and desolate places, the pioneer not of brutal force but of useful mastery over nature, of the refinements of HellenoRoman culture,—which Tacitus in his malevolent j apotheosis of the " noble savage" called an integral part of slavery. So far was the empire from being a military despotism, with Cossack and " najaika" ; the army was rather the most liberal of all its institutions ; and its commanders the most advanced of statesmen. In merit, in loyalty, in ability, the emperors recognised no distinction of country or of lot; or indeed of religion, save in the exceptional periods when popular suspicion and nervous panic was excited by a secret sect, which refused a simple homage to the generalissimo. Just as the later Teutonic kings displaced an intractable nobility of birth by an aristocracy of efficiency ; so the emperors substituted less arrogant agents for the Senate, and more valiant guardsmen for the disloyal and undersized recruits of Italy. Others have traced the gradual extension both of the civil franchise into complete equality,—and of the coveted right to join the legion and rise to the highest place in the service of Rome; and it is not the purpose of this work to repeat what more competent students have already done. For we have only to call attention to the great but largely unconscious contest in this age, not merely between paganism and the Church, but between barbarian and Roman influence in the State and its defenders. A natural preference for good material turned Constantine and Theodosius into the deliberate
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partisans of the newer races. It is doubtful whether Empire reve s to this ^j .. favour wasr of .necessity .. ,- mischievous. , . . The empire. r > pacifism; the negation of privilege, the redressing of excrescence armies again and anomaly, might reasonably argue, like modern needful; statesmen, that settlers and soldiers of whatever race ^ ^ n were naturalised subjects of equal rights with the career: original stock. If the supreme place was thrown hheralpolicy. open to competitive merit without distinction of race, why not the lower steps of the hierarchy ? If the imperial system had produced desolation in the provinces, and unwarlike if turbulent effeminacy in the great urban centres, why should it not retrieve its unintentional error by grafting new life into the decaying trunk ? Pestilence, the curial system, slavecultivation,—such were the obvious causes of decline. How far, so the question presents itself, is the remedy of barbarian soldiers and colonists an "active element of disintegration ? " § 4. It would appear that this welcome to the Teutonic necessitous but stalwart alien, if extended with eg»ism and , , i • -i i • <• louattv,—an mingled rfirmness and sincerity by a succession of Offsen0 tactful princes, need have implied no sinister conse- bureaucracy quence. It was a natural and logical corollary of the and.c^l'm whole imperial policy. The Roman emperor was bound by no Spanish etiquette to wait immovable in a chair, slowly roasted by a fire which precedent would not allow him to touch. He was under no obligation to guard with stubborn zeal a frontier for a people which was slowly becoming extinct. There is ample proof, beside the notable profession of loyalty by Ataulphus (Orosius, vii.Jin.), that the Goths might have become the stoutest and most trustworthy supporters of the throne and system. It is true that certain usurpations, like that of Magnentius, seemed to constitute a genuine peril not for a dynastic family alone, but for the empire. And yet, if we look back into the third century, the heroic but usurping defenders of Gaul were no nationalist pretenders or anti-Roman separatists. They were Augusti, and doing the work of Augustus, preparing the way for
156 Teutonic egoism and loyalty,—an offset to bureaucracy and conservatism.
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an abler and more efficient sovereign, and yielding, as Tetricus, not without relief. It is, no doubt, poor comfort to a threatened representative of a dynasty to assure him that it is only his personality and not the imperial system that excites hostility; Ammianus reminds us in a notable passage of apology for the vindictive Valens, that a ruler in whom the majesty of Rome is centralised cannot but identify his own safety with the maintenance of the system,—to which (as others view the matter) it is just the standing objection. It is quite possible that the reign and character of Licinius Gallienus (253-268) might be rewritten in a very favourable light; and that the seeming indifference to pretenders and schism was due to the farsighted policy of a statesman, who saw in local stirrings and home-rule no serious menace to the stability or solidarity of the empire. The line of British and Gallic Caesars forms an interesting table; especially the last few names, the obscure Marcus II., Gratianus II., and finally Constantine III.; who with his son Constans II. did good service for the empire, and (as we have seen) secured a tardy recognition from a prince, singularly jealous of his formal exclusive prerogative, and as singularly careless of its exercise. In a narrow sense, no doubt the Gallic sedition in the middle of the fourth century shows the presence of an " element of disintegration " ; but the successful pretender, like many a one before and after, would gladly have sheltered himself beneath the respectable aegis of legitimacy, and like Maximinus I. himself have become "more Romanist than Rome itself," or "more ultramontane." It would, I think, be truer to say that two conscientious princes of weak and therefore stubborn character, were responsible for the great misfortunes which befell Rome : Valens, whose insincere response to the Gothic plea for asylum created irksome and dishonourable conditions, which his ministers had neither means nor intention to enforce; Honorius, whose repeated refusal of Alaric's demands, by no means without
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precedent, turned a champion of the empire into a Teutonic ruthless foe. It seems evident that the whole system ^^™ "^ of Teutonic settlements would in time have profoundly Offset to modified the bureaucratic and centralised adminis- bureaucracy tration then in vogue. But this need hardly be deplored or regretted; and the clear delimitation of the civil and military department by the wise (though not omniscient) reformers of the fourth century might point to a long and harmonious co-operation between barbarian and Roman, soldier and administrator. In a later division of this work, it will be pointed out in justification of the wantonly destructive policy of the great Imperial Restoration (535-565) that there was no principle of cohesion or of progress in the Gothic or Vandal royalties, nor even in the Prankish family, that strove to fill in vain the vacancy in the West. It must be clearly understood that a vague allegiance to Roman suzerainty was never thrown off; and curious instances recur in unexpected quarters of the genuine and abiding affection with which the Caesar was regarded, absent and heretical though he might be. Nor did the imperial tradition ever die, or the reverence for the idea become extinct, until the great event of Christmas 800 gave once more the Western world an Augustus of its own. It must be confessed that the empire, receptive of all that was genuine and efficient, would have found the uncouth barbarians a better agent and a more wholesome influence than the obscure chamberlains of the court, with their nerveless quadrisyllable names and uncertain ancestry. Vacillating between confidence and mistrust, Valens and Honorius gave alternate hearing to the friends and the foes of the larger policy. It must be feared that the anti-foreign or " xenelastic " crises, the "pogroms" aimed against imaginary criminals (as in the drastic treatment of the Stiliconians in 408)—partake of the hatred of interested and corrupt place-holders whose long impunity is threatened. Orosius and Namatianus, Christian priest and archaic Gallo-Roman noble, unite in abusing
158 Teutonic egoism and loyalty,—an offset to bureaucracy and conservatism.
Signal defect of empire (as of all absolutism) : cannot control own agents.
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Stilico; yet if Rome was to suffer an emperor who "reigned but did not govern," it was surely better to leave the helm of State with Stilico than with Olympius or Eutropius. But with the early death of Theodosius and the massacre of the " tutor" he left for his sons, the final breach with the barbarians was merely a question of time. § 5. Again, a whole-hearted welcome to these interesting but dangerous suppliants might have opposed an obstacle to one of the mischievous currents, which was driving the ship of State on to the quicksands. And here we approach a topic which is of signal interest to us to-day. The tendency of all civilised institutions is towards uniformity and centralisation. The local usage, the special immunity, casteprivilege, hereditary office or exemption, district autonomy, are out of keeping with the fully realised modern State and must disappear, unless the present lines of development are arrested. The earlier empires, as the continent of Asia, true officina gentium, grew fuller, gathered the scattered tribes into a precarious unity for the new uses of war, or the gratification of ambitious sovereigns; but they were contented with tribute, acknowledgment of allegiance, and military levies in time of need. It was only with Alexander and with Rome that some inexorable pressure from the unseen tried to force an imperial regimen into a strict and uniform model; and this very gradually. It is a mistake of the recently departed idealism to believe that every ruler must needs be a jealous and interfering busybody;—every unhappy subject a critic and rebel of this encroachment, striving to break the chains and emerge into independence. The exact opposite is, of course, the spectacle which history or experience provides us : the multiplication of duties and responsibility, as a rule, is unwillingly undertaken; and the deadweight and reactionary conservatism of the people is much too supine to assume its majority and look after itself. Little by little the sphere of government enlarges, and takes
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under its protection private leisure and unexplored Signal defect departments of life. ^"fju It has often been said that the empire failed professed when it ceased to govern and began to administer, absolutism): /Tii i j M r i ,• i• i • i -e , 1 1 cannot con1 ne details of organised routine (which if centrally troi own controlled, must be uniform) ill befit the spacious agents. generalities of a protectorate or a " hegemony." And yet subject and prince alike were pushed irresistibly along a path which led to the servitude) of the former, the curial dungeon and the caste-system, and to the overwhelming of the latter by a high-tide of duties, to none of which could he personally attend. And yet it must be confessed that, compared with modern attempts at "empire," the princes of Rome succeeded to a wonderful degree in reconciling the two interests,—what Tacitus calls, " Res olim dissodabiles principatus ac libertas." The empire was notdoubt happily free from the turmoil and artificial feuds and parties of the representative system. No great " council of the empire" gathered together for useless debate small groups of rival or inimical nationalities and creeds. Other and perhaps more effective means were invented or to hand, for the free vent of public opinion and criticism. For this was by no means behindhand in finding expression, in caustic satire or in those riots and tumults, which aimed disloyalty only at the agents of government, never at the system itself. Tiberius, as we have seen, complained very reasonably that the Senate did not take a serious share in the care of justice or administration; he spoke, we must believe, with the perfect sincerity of an ancient aristocratic, even Whig, family. Modern writers point out that very little substantial independence underlay the specious phrases of alliance and autonomy among the more favoured cities in the realm. I would not willingly impugn the municipal honesty of the first and second century; but we need go no further than the New Testament and the tenth book of Pliny's letters to satisfy ourselves that the control of local justice and finance rested more safely in the hands
160 Signal defect of empire (as of all professed absolutism): cannot control own agents.
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of an imperial representative than with the local authorities. The whole end and aim of the imperial system was to secure responsible government, amenable to discipline, to law, to prescribed routine, and (if I shall not be thought paradoxical) to a well-defined moral standard. Let the doubter contrast the serious behaviour of the governors in the Gospels and the Acts, under Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, with the viceroys of a modern State, ruling defenceless dependencies. It is quite likely that really responsible government is only possible either in countries and under constitutions like our own; where the public opinion of the higher classes is the real controlling influence;—where a national and somewhat selfconscious Puritanism (irrespective even of religious orthodoxy) keeps a vigilant watch over public life ; where (once again) the government or the ruling class is not sharply distinguished from the commonalty ; where really momentous issues are settled anywhere else but in the formal homes of debate and executive. Or responsibility may be found under genuinely despotic but spasmodic rule,—that regimen for which Liberals of all ages have sighed so inconsistently. But the benevolent tyrant was in the early days of the Roman system not an exceptional event, or a " happy accident" (as Alexander I. said of himself with pardonable vanity). The real happiness of peoples lies not, as the older Liberalism fondly imagined, in the formula of the constitution, but in the behaviour of the official world. Experience proves that the bureaucrat of an unlimited monarchy, and the functionary of an advanced republic, claim and exercise a power of petty tyranny, an opportunity for dishonest gain, an exemption by "administrative right" from the general rules which regulate a citizen's life. In the disconcerting freedom of the French republic no less than under the " unspeakable tyranny " of its ally the Czar, a private house may be ransacked without redress or reason given, a subject haled suddenly to
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the confinement of a prison and hectored into a con- Signal defect fession of imaginary guilt; a large and industrious of empire portion of the community may feel so outraged by the ^Ofessed indifference of the centre to their interests, that districts absolutism) like Moscow or Montpellier may present all the appear- c^ ance of civil war; irreligious rancour may persecute the agents. conforming Catholic official in France, as in the East the State-orthodoxy may attempt to extirpate Jews and dissenters; and in both we may notice the same evil,—the absence of any outspoken and honest public opinion in the upper classes, and the consequent rule of an insignificant minority. Much has been heard of late of the Grand-Ducal Camarilla ; but this secret and unauthorised influence (even if it exist outside heated, though Liberal, imagination) has its exact counterpart in the coalition of the wealthy in the States of America, in the unaccountable force wielded in France by the anti-clerical Freemasons. The Roman nobles had formed a class apart, immune from many of the restrictions of the average citizen. The exacting standard of moral tone was insensibly relaxed when, like an English cadet in the early days of Indian annexation, he left the society of his equals to rule inferiors. The empire, we have seen, restored in a great measure the idea of government as a trust for which the exercise was accountable to a central tribunal of known impartiality;—not to a venal assembly of men who only longed for similar opportunities. Officials were, in effect, controlled as they had never been before; and the trust of the provincial in the central authority had every reason to increase. When the agents of the sovereignty, still merely supervising, were recruited more and more from the less conspicuous classes, and the State-service presented an open career to any man of ability,—the easy ideal of Csesarism, such as we have it in France at the present moment, was accepted by all. The subjects were saved from the trouble of self-government; and the smallest question was sent up to the personal head of the republic: just as the replacement of a VOL. I.
L
162 Signal defect of empire (as of all professed absolutism): cannot control own agents.
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tile on a French parsonage had to go up to Paris even before the Revolution, which started in a vague cry for liberty, and ended in riveting the fetters of State-supremacy. The exceptional luxuriance of transcendental literature and interest in the first four centuries must strike every student. The din of war and tumult never penetrates into the pages of Plutarch, of Apuleius, of Origen ; and it is hard to believe that the serene and optimistic principles of the Plotinian system were elaborated by a favourite professor at the court of Gallienus ; and that the most troublous epoch in Roman history should be marked by the finest and least austere presentation of the pantheistic hypothesis. The central office became more and more charged with public burdens; and Caesar's functionaries were drilled and organised into fixed rules of behaviour and promotion, irrespective of the caprice of the transient ruler ; a firm check not only upon his arbitrary will but, it must be confessed, on any project of generous reform—indeed, as in every civil service or bureaucracy, a final obstacle to change, whether for good or evil. The members of this official class were thus emancipated from that severe and vigilant supervision, which had been applied under the early Caesars and the adoptive emperors. It is easy to exaggerate the effectiveness of this control; and I have no desire to lose my case by pleading for a verdict of perfection. But the regretful retrospect of those who suffered in later times from irresponsible bureaucrats and a powerless monarch, may help us to understand that responsible government under the empire was something more than a pretence. Men like Laurentius of Philadelphia, like Synesius of Cyrene, looked back to the times of personal government as to a golden age, never to return. And meantime, so conscious was a serious prince of the impossible task, that we again direct notice to the famous offer of ^Emilianus (253), who desired to retain as the chief imperial duty watch and ward on
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the frontier and surrender the whole civil administra- Signal defect tion to the Senate. This premature division of the °^™l%j civil and military sphere very naturally proved abortive professed in the middle of the third century ; and the sweeping absolutism) : reforms of Diocletian and Constantine fell once more cf"^^on' into complete centralisation. The departments were agents. effectively severed, but both were amenable to the overworked emperor. Little was secured by duplicating Augustus and Cassar ; or by multiplying the prefectures, and " cutting the provinces into morsels," as Lactantius calls it. Still the credit or the dishonour of the whole administration, in its failure or success, fell on the shoulders of one. Every one recognised in Diocletian the ruling spirit of the " quaternion " : the years 306-324 were given up to mere anarchy ; Constantine resumed undivided sway after the dismantling of Licinius ; and to the end of our chosen period (324457), in spite of partnership, men respected or detested the chief and single Augustus, as the author of their woes or their prosperity. Something like a rough-andready control, as of a military court-martial, was indeed exercised by princes who rose from a private station ; inured to habits of discipline and obedience before undertaking the difficult task of guiding others, and living in the open light of day the vagrant life of an active warrior. The conscientious but "shadowbred " royalties who succeed these greater men are (as we must often repeat) at the mercy of a flattering • "entourage," who lay aside their hatred or envy of each other for the sole purpose of deceiving their master. § 6. How could the emperor be relieved of this Possible use intolerable burden ? for whether he controlled his °f Germanic agents or not, in the eyes of the world he was solely responsible. It might be hazarded whether Teutonic timty : indesubjectivity might not have formed a salutary alliance with the great Roman objective, — ideal and abstract objective as it was, although ever embodied in a personal ruler. The Teuton was incapable of the classic veneration for law, but he was capable of a
164
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strong personal attachment. I am far from being able to endorse the following generalisation of the J dnd'subjec- Greek attitude to life as a full and complete account tiyity: inde- of a versatile spirit, that had in it at least as con< t of RometCy spicuous an element of subjective criticism and rebellion ; but it undoubtedly represents a phase of mind common enough in East and West alike, and especially in the age we are discussing. "We can" (says Professor Bury, H.L.RI. i. 4) "regard our experience as destiny—fortune and misfortune as alike determined for us by conditions beyond our control. It was in this objective spirit that the old Greeks regarded their experience, and in this way they were content; for it never occurred to them [?] to exalt subjective wishes of their own in opposition to the course of destiny, and grieve because such wishes remained inachievable." Now the whole confident blitheness, if you like boisterousness, of the Teutons lay in the opposite belief ; that the world lay open to the knight-errant, that a strong will can impose its canons on others and win success over material things and human minds. No over-indulgence in the studies of Reason had produced in them the torpor of despondent culture. They formed a novel, sanguine, and enspiriting element amid a prevalent fatalism. Their ideals had little regard for State, public spirit, general welfare,—or indeed with any august but intangible abstraction. They understood and appreciated the sanctity of wedlock, the call of personal loyalty, the silent appeal of helpless infancy, born to inherit the cares and splendour of a great name. Of their simple character it might truly be said mentem mortalia tangunt, if we limit these mortal happenings to the home, the family, the dynasty, the tribe, and « exclude the larger possibilities of nation, race, and universe ; in which many thinkers, born to be agents, have found in seeking peace, only an indolent lethargy. This reversal to the rudiments (as I have elsewhere tried to show) is by no means a step backwards. After a long reign of culture and traditional
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institutions, it makes for healthiness to have an inrush Possible use of the open air and of primitive emotions. The °/r^^ic democratic basis of the imperial system, the lowly and subjecbirth and . .
late promotion of some of its finest *«%•" inde' i-j.r ,1 ,• -r -i ii cisive policy
champions, saved it from the enervating uniformity, the 0fRome. equilibrium of balanced forces, into which a modern State is apt to subside ; unable either to advance or to retreat, to reform effectively or to check remonstrance criticism and discontent. What hinders progress today and leads to apathy is the uncertain relation between human effort and natural forces,—what I may term the democratic as compared with the scientific outlook. Even the Romans had some suspicion of the futility of enterprise, and a deep sense of coming calamity brooded over the mind. To this, Teutonic subjectivity provided a very useful contrast and antidote. Might there not have ensued a new alliance between imperium and libertas, in a sense other than Tacitus comtemplated ? Unquestioning obedience to law, as if sacrosanct and divine, is a mere trait of savagery. Mere acquiescence or pious resignation (whether in an attitude to the world of nature or of man) is not merely the negation of progress but the denial of man, of worth, of reason. The ' Meditations' of Marcus Aurelius happily for the Roman world never represented any but an insignificant fraction. Under the thin veil of abstract pietism, his creed conceals a complete distrust in the meaning and efficacy of thought and of action ; for to no school is the title d\oyoi more completely suitable than to the Stoics, who professed to discover in the universe, and to apply in every department of human activity, the sovereignty of Reason ! —To this fatalistic despondency the Teutons were entire strangers. Into their native mythology, which is one long eulogy of conscious enterprise and reflection against brute force, they had engrafted a peculiar form of Christian belief, which suited their temperament and their earlier legends : even the unquestioned heir-apparent had to
166 Possible use of Germanic tivity: indecisive policy of Borne.
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win his spurs, to be "made perfect through suffering." Their political temper united loyalty with independence. In the same way the Anglo-Saxon race to-day is faithful to hereditary chiefs ; but is suspicious of its own ministers and representatives, and jealous of the encroachment of the central power. It was eminently suited to become the bulwark of a throne, tenanted by an Arcadius or a Honorius. There was the birthright, which excited the wonder of the Roman historian : " Imignis nobilitas aut magna patrum merita Principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant" There was the ample liberty, which Salvd Romce majestate would permit the settlement and the free exercise of gentile and tribal usage, under the valuable conditions of allegiance and military subsidies. Even the suspicious eye of Valens had seen the inestimable reinforcement of the dwindling armies of Rome in the Gothic petition of 376. Ammianus, xxxi. § 4, "Ex ultimis terris tot tirocinia trahens . . . collatis in unum suis et alienigenis viribus invictum haberet exercitum "—cf. § 10. Gratian drafts the enemy into his own legions, "Oblata juventute valida nostris tirociniis permiscendsL"—But it is wasted energy to prove the confidence with which the Romans incorporated the vanquished into their own ranks : the policy which meets us as early as the days of Caesar and Agricola, they never reversed, and never repented. In a word, the barbarian settlers, whom Salvian acclaims as setting a high ideal of conduct to a corrupt civilisation, whose rulers Sidonius paints with favourable brush in striking outline,—might have provided everything that Rome needed: free yeomen, honest officials, and good soldiers. The blame of this failure to incorporate lies not with the " barbarising " party, with Constantine or Theodosius, but with the indecisive and often treacherous counsels which prevailed in the courts of Ravenna and Byzantium. After the extinction of the Stiliconians, and the refusal of Alaric's heart's desire, it was apparent that the two civilisations could not settle down together in amity.
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The West solved the problem by expelling a nominal Possible use Caesar and overrunning Latin culture: the East (as of Germanic , .. . °, .. . . . . ... \ frankness we shall see in our next division), by expelling the an& m^jec. barbarian and rekindling the still glowing embers tivity: indeof Roman life and Latin traditions amid the Oriental peoples.
CHAPTER IV THE ERA OF THE PATRICIANS; OR, THE BARBARIAN PROTECTORATE PETRONIUS MAXIMUS V. . . . 455-456 AVITUS (in Gaul) 456-457 FLAV. JUL. VAL. MAJORIANUS . . 457-461 FLAV. LIBIUS SEVERUS IV. ... 461-465 [Interregnum] FLAV. PROCOP. ANTHEMIUS . . . 467-472
. • . .
?nom. pr°v- nom. BARB. nom. BARB. nom.
. co-opt. East (? birth)
OLYBRIUS
472 . . BARB. nom. and FEMALE right. GLYCERIUS 473-474 . BARB. nom. JULIUS II. NEPOS 474-475 • co-opt. East. ROMULUS 47S-476 . milit. nom. FLAV. ODOVACAR (patric.) . . . 476-491 THEODORIC (fatric.) . . . . 4 8 9 king in Italy 493
Growing in§ 1. THERE are three principal divisions of class and dependence of function, of which even in primitive society traces can V poraKcms^~ ^e detected ; andjthey correspond nearly to our modern Church, Civil list—Church, Army, Civil Service. The process of Service, evolution in society, while it implies a centralising of responsibility, implies also a specialising of function. The career of the citizen in Athens or in Rome displayed the ease with which he served as a judge, fought in the ranks, or as a magistrate took part in those religious rites which were the condition of the divine favour. With the gradual extension of interest beyond the city-walls arose the need of special work and expert concentration. The early empire shows the beginning of distinctness in duty and function. It was particular training, definite if narrow sphere, and clearly marked employment that made Caesar's officials useful and capable ; no less than their immediate accountability to a personal critic, instead of a corrupt or corruptible assembly of peers 168
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or fellow-criminals. The bureaucracy of Rome fell Growing ininto the hands of specialised and unpretentious men dependence of r i • mi f 11 various corof business. The army of Rome followed the same porations : path; it was recruited, at ever-widening intervals Church, Civil from the seat of government. For in the end the military profession became the natural calling of the dwellers in the Balkan peninsula; whence in the hour of need proceeded the long series of emperors who restored the shattered state to solidarity. Beside the local cults, to which Rome showed at all times a kindly indulgence or a tolerant indifference, the State worship consisted in a vague and universal recognition of the sacred mission of Rome and of the emperor. But a new belief or tendency, running parallel and rival to the imperial development, had once more specialised a certain department of human life and interest. At last its claims appear irreconcilable with the comprehensive system, which prided itself on the inclusion and consecration of all mundane business, pursuits, and studies. Unprofitable time is wasted in the inquiry, whether the adoption of the Christian faith by Constantine hastened or retarded the disintegration of the realm. However tempting the application of a moral, the deduction of a significant lesson, from the facts of history, much valuable energy is misspent in this unfruitful idealism. We trace the course of human affairs by attempting to enter sympathetically into the motives and the troubles of the chief agents; and by seeking to trace the secret currents flowing beneath the surface, of which they were often the unsuspecting manifestations. In such a survey, the apportionment of praise or censure on a modern standard is surely out of place. We record with interest the sincerity of the actors, and the steady and irresistible march of unconscious forces. The alliance of the chief but independent powers of the present and the future kingdom was inevitable; and it is idle to speculate upon its beneficent or malign influence on the development of mankind. This emergence of the
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Growing in- Church, as the successful competitor or valued partner dependence of of {ne state, is the final step in the specialising provanouscor. ' , , , ,.,.. ,, •
partitions: cess, which had operated by splitting up the mOhurch, Civil terests and the business of the early citizen. Advance m Army6' culture is fatal, in highest and lowest pursuits alike, to the fable of the " admirable Crichton " ; the good student or administrator or soldier or artisan, must give his time to some exclusive task, well-chosen and congenial, but limited. And the whole tendency of the later empire was towards firmly drawn lines, distinguishing and divorcing class from class, and trade from trade. It is a commonplace of the tiro, in that easiest and most fallacious study, historical aetiology,— that the foolish and isolating policy of the emperors in the matter of finance and of caste caused the ruin of the imperial system. We may, in the first place, adduce strong reason for objection to the phrase " ruin " ; and we might, if we were in a Hegelian mood, show that an institution or organism is not condemned but beatified, if it passes with easy transition into other forms of life :—and that, strictly speaking, the imperial system is with us to-day, modified and transformed, but still potent with a magical charm, as well as the influence of more sober legacies. Our province is limited to noticing the irresistible tendency towards a crystallised society, each class with its peculiar duties, habits, aspirations, and schemes of life and behaviour, owning to little real sympathy with the members of another community or guild. It is no paradox to say that each town or city in the empire, whatever its distance in miles from the seat of government, was in truth nearer to the capital than to its next-door neighbour :—that peculiar topical isolation which is the wonder and the despair of humane workers among the poor, in those districts especially which have a local significance for the ratecollector and the police, but no vestige of organic or articulate life. Each small township pursued its usual unchequered existence in unconscious or deliberate mimicry of Rome or Byzantium itself; and within it,
CH.IV THE ROMAN EMPIRE 171 • each class had its traditional rites, banquets, assem- Growing inblies, trades-unions,—from the once honourable ^peiuienee of ,-„ i .,,,... - 1 , 1 , i i various corcuna, now rilled with distinguished but embarrassed p0rations: prisoners of the decurionate, down to the smallest Church, Civil and meanest corporation of handicraftsmen. It is impossible to saddle individual or system with the blame of this resistless movement to uniformity and to isolation. We may pronounce it in effect mischievous, but we are not therefore nearer appreciation of its origin or effects. Like all facts in history, it is there to be accounted for, not to be censured or made the vehicle of a schoolroom moral.—Thus the specialism, which attends naturally on advancing civilisation, invades and penetrates all relations of life, and all classes in the State ; it marks off sharply and distinctly ; and this atomism made the control of the State still more indispensable, not now indeed as an actual administrator, but as a dominant idea. § 2. For the emperor, representing the State, had Large surhanded over large rights to the two independent renders of powers, that will monopolise all our attention, in the aittoeracy; Middle Ages. Arbogastes, like the French major the pioneers of Grimoald, was some eighty years before his time, Media!™lilsmin the blunt defiance to Valentinian II.: "he had not conferred, and could not revoke, his military commission." Yet the independence of the armycorps or its complete predominance is a feature of this fifth century. But power is usually exercised indirectly, and loses much of its force by public recognition ; and men are ready enough to acknowledge a new master if the old forms are kept, if the fresh influence enjoys the substance without the prerogative. So too with the Church,—its chief officers, becoming more wealthy and more trusted, usurped with the fullest popular approval and imperial sanction the control or supervision of municipal affairs ; but, apart from this wide and generous usefulness, the episcopate was still an autonomous and independent corporation. It derived its powers from no congt d'elire,—which marks to-day in our own country one
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Large surrenders of autocracy; thepioneersof e icBiMi&m.
last expression of expiring Erastianism, of the fallacy Qf a "Christian" commonwealth. Here, acquiring form, esprit de corps and solidarity during the Dynastic period, were two great institutions or corporations,— Qjjurch ancj Army, with whose mutual interaction, alliance, suspicion, lies the future of Western Europe. We may debate, in idle and innocent academic sport, the exact moment when the Middle Age begins ; but it is clear that Constantine in recognising the authentic and parallel credentials of the Church, Theodosius in leaving as guardian to his sons an estimable barbarian general,—are the unquestionable pioneers. These avowals implied the surrender of the old theories; the ideal integrity of the State and of its self-sufficingness, of the unique and indivisible source and fount of authority. Here are powers loosely indeed united, under the still sovereign unifier, the emperor; but they are co-ordinate; and the spiritual and the military force look elsewhere than to the civil authority for their mandate and their duties. We are reminded of Philo's immediate dichotomy of the divine powers into kingly and creative; which together take so much attention that the invisible and secluded Ground of both (like Schelling's Absolute) receives little notice. The supposed autocracy of the Byzantine sovereign, which Agathias attributes to Justinian, which Finlay regards as consummated in the ninth century,—need by no means involve the independence or free choice of the monarch, rather his serfdom by tradition and usage (as in the case of China);—not the supersession of the consilium, which was the legacy from the Roman magistrate who had been transformed into the Oriental potentate, but its paramount influence on affairs. There is a curious passage in Laurentius, the disillusioned civilian, who sheds so much light on some inner phases of the fifth century. We must elsewhere do justice to his estimate of the functions of kingship, worthy to be set beside the outspoken criticism of Synesius; and shall content ourselves here with a brief summary. " The monarch is no
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tyrant, but is elected by the free suffrage of his subjects Large surto higher grade; and his peculiar mission is to shake renders oj none of the laws of the commonwealth but constantly to autocracy; preserve the traditional aspect; to do nothing beyond the the pioneers of , • 7• • i. •/ 7 7 * ,. .. 7 • i * Medievalism,
laws in his own irresponsible caprice but put nis seal to the unanimous decision of the chief men in the State ; to show to his subjects the affectionate care of a father and ruler" (De Magistr. i. 3). It is abundantly clear that step by step with the increase of prerogative, we must note the increase of actual restraint. If the philosophic statesman of Philadelphia had been able to read Hegel, he would, in the picture of the constitutional prince who dots the " i's," have recognised something akin to his own ideal. But we are speaking of the Byzantine half, wherein both Church (in spite of much creditable frankness to the autocrat) and Army (in spite of occasional turbulence) remained duly subordinate;— and the emperor was rather the puppet of civilian or chamberlain, and the slave of custom, rather than the figure-head of military adventurers or even ambitious prelates. It is the Western development rather, which now challenges our attention; and it is obvious that the central authority under successors of Theodosius places sovereignty " in commission" : and, while an oath by Honorius' head is more binding in sanctity than appeal to God himself, effective power, in spite of eunuchs and their cabals, drifts steadily away from the palace to the patrician, the patriarch, the patrimony. § 3. We have called this age the epoch of the imaginary Patricians, and although it is not our wont to burden annals of _ this section with dates and names,—it may be neces- m^^c^ sary to justify the title by a comparative table. In West: its the chapter entitled the " Rejection of the Barbarian Protectorate," we shall draw notice to the different destiny of the Eastern realm, which for two-thirds of this century seems dominated by the same Shogunate; and it is in this connection that we shall notice the importance of the reign, or rather of the crime, of Leo I.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
w ESTERN " PATRICIANS" ARBOGASTES (c. 388-394) Valentinian II. 375392, Eugenius, 394 (395-408) . Honorius (395-423) STILICO A'ETIUS
(434-4S4) . Valentinian III. 425455 IMajorianus RICIMER (456-472) . < Libius Severus I V. \Anthemius GUNDOBAD (472-474) . Glycerins ORESTES (475-476) . Romulus (aidic. 476) ODOVACAR (476-493) THEODORIC (493-526)
BK. n
EASTERN " PATRICIAN " [Pulcheria, 408-450
{
Theodosius If. Martian Leo I.
\Verina, Ariadne,'] Zeno, 474-491 Anastasius I. 491-518
imaginary it would be easy to rewrite the history of the ^Patrician' empire from Honorius to Justinian, after the fashion rule in the of an ancient chronicler, somewhat in this manner : derivative ' Now Jt Pleased Theodosius to leave Stilico as guarmandate. ' dian and regent for his two sons, and especially for ' Honorius, who was married to his daughter. He ' governed the realm well and carefully, until wicked ' men murdered him in 408. And after that certain ' ladies of the imperial family directed affairs, Placidia, 'widow of Constance III., and Pulcheria, virgin ' daughter of Arcadius. They sent Aspar and his father ' Ardabur to reinstate Valentinian on his uncle's throne, ' when for a time a low-born clerk had seized it. And ' in the West, Placidia governs through her Minister ' and Patrician, Ae'tius; and in the East, Pulcheria, ' through Aspar; though in truth Theodosius the ' younger had the emblems of rule and was pious ' exceedingly, so that he copied Holy Writ in fair ' colours. Now when Valentinian was grown a man, ' and had reigned longer than the blessed Constantine ' himself, he slew Ae'tius the Patrician, in a fit of ' passion, thereby, as was said, cutting off his right 1 hand with his left; and, being murdered himself by ' certain henchmen of Ae'tius, he left Rome in con' fusion; for he had no son. Then Eudoxia, his widow, ' called in an alien king, who reigned in Africa, to ' avenge her, and he came and made Rome his prey, ' carrying away treasure, so that all were downcast and ' afraid to choose an Emperor. But in Gaul, Avitus is
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' made Caesar, and Rome receives him gladly. And Imaginary ' Ricimer, who was a son of a Sueve and of a Goth, fp^J^, ' comes and governs Rome as he listed for sixteen ruie {n the 'years (456-472), though one Majorinus wrote many West: its ' laws which were not obeyed, and lost many ships at ' sea to no purpose. And when he died, his nephew, ' Gundobad, of a Burgundian father, has power as ' Patrician in Rome ; until he be obliged to go and take the kingship in his own country. And the councillors ' in Byzantium send over once and again some one to bear the name of Emperor in Rome, and to make Regent whom he would. Then rose Orestes against ' his master, and sent the Emperor away to the palace ' of Diocletian, where the man he supplanted was then ' a holy bishop ; and he made his own son Emperor, ' little Romulus, and got from him the name of patri' cian, without which it is not lawful for a man to do ' anything in Italy. And it is said that he learnt this ' device from a man of Isauria, whose name is not meet ' for Christian ears to hear, so barbarous is it; he ' marrying Leo's daughter became father to the new ' emperor, Leo the Little. And on a day the child, before ' all the people, put a diadem on his father's head and ' called him Emperor. Thus he became more than ' ever Orestes could become ; for he was Emperor for ' seventeen years (474-491), and held his place, though ' many tried to turn him away,—and above all his ' mother-in-law. But this Zeno, as the men of Byzan' tium were taught to call him, liked not the pride of ' Orestes, who had set up his own son as Emperor ; ' and he sent against him a true Patrician, whom he ' named himself, to rule over Italy and Rome—a brother ' of one of his own bodyguard, Onoulf. And Romulus ' being but a boy, asked leave to put off the crown ; and ' a great house and much money were granted to him. ' And Zeno took over the affairs of the West, and the < Senate sent to him all the purple robes and diadems ' which Romulus had worn ; for they said, ' one em' peror was quite enough at one time.' And some say ' that Zeno thought to send back Julius, his kinsman,
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Imaginary annals of ' Patrician' rule in the West: its derivative mandate.
BK. n
' who was governing his own realm in Dalmatia, instead ' of Odovacar ; and others say that Odovacar first over' threw Orestes, and then prevailed on the Senate to ' make Zeno name him Regent of Rome. But Zeno ' was a prudent man and full of wiles; and I think that ' the device was his, that he might get back Italy ; as ' our Lord Justinian hath again done in our own time. ' And Odovacar ruled well; but pride lifted him out, ' and he engraved his face on a coin, contrary to the ' law of the Roman commonwealth, which will have ' none but the visage of the Emperor alone on its 'money. Then Zeno, though aged, was wroth, and ' sent Theodoricus to overthrow his wicked servant, ' who had lost shame and knew not his place. And ' he made Theodoricus Patrician ; and for a reward of ' his labours promised him the government, ' until,' ' said he, ' I come myself and take the crown.' And ' he got the mastery of Odovacar, and governed well ' for thirty years (493-523). For he was faithful to the ' emperor; and when he overcame, he sent to tell ' Zeno, and to take from his hands the right to govern. ' But his envoys were downcast, for Zeno his lord was ' dead and another reigned in his place, who had taken ' his widow and the kingdom as well; for this too is ' a notable law among the Romans. So they returned ' and saw not the countenance of the new ruler; and ' that is the reason why Theodoricus on his moneys ' engraved the head of a young girl and not of an old ' man of seventy years, though the superscription,' Our ' Lord Anastasius,' is right, if the image be false. Yet ' they so loved Anastasius that long after he was dead, ' and when the regents of Italy were rebelling against ' their master, they put his head on their pieces, to ' show they were still servants of the empire. And ' the Frankish king, Clodovicus, who overcame the ' Wild Boar who rose against the emperor in Gaul, ' sent humbly to Anastasius ; and he sent him gifts in ' return and made him Patrician, and as some say, even ' Consul too. So he ruled the Romans and the Franks, ' and the land had peace, and was obedient to the
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' Emperor "who reigned in the city of Constantine. And Imaginary ' indeed to Zeno before had the Senate and ^. people of 'Patrician ?""«* °f , r ' Rome put up many statues. But Theodonc grew rule in the ' old, and was a heretic; and this same Senate and West: it ' people sent over to Byzantium to demand help from ' the ruler there. And his name was Justin, and he ' could not write, but he was wise and prudent above ' others. Then Justin told his nephew, who is our lord ' to-day, that he must deliver Rome from the evil ' regent who persecuted the Church, and killed those ' who were friends with the Emperor and the true faith. ' But in time he died, and a wicked man, Theodatus, ' forgetting whose servant he was, slew his daughter, ' and put his head on coins, which are to be seen ' to-day, as proof of his rising against his lawful master. ' And after many days and much fighting under Beli' sarius the general, Narses is sent by the Emperor to ' be the Regent and Patrician in Italy.' So far by a writer in the very middle of the sixth century; but we might complete the fictitious chronicle by the words of a " continuator " in the first half of the seventh :— ' Now it came to pass after the death of the great ' Justinian, that Narses, being but a eunuch, dealt ' treacherously, and called in the Lombards, because ' the Empress Sophy had sent him a distaff. So they ' spread over the land ; and the Emperor sent Patri' cians who ruled in Ravenna, and were sometimes ' called Exarchs. And to Carthage, too, were rulers ' sent, bearing the name Patrician ; and though in ' Italy the Lombards had much land and cared nothing ' for the Emperor, and in Africa many Moors ravaged ' the open country, yet was the greater part faithful, and ' sent tribute and cornships to the city of Constantine, ' —until Heraclius the Patrician refused to give food to ' the wicked Phocas, and sent his own son to become ' Emperor instead of him. And too, in Spain, great ' cities and havens were obedient to the Emperor, ' and sent tribute and heard Roman law; but within, ' the Goths held the land and took counsel with the ' bishops how they might administer the country and VOL. I. M
178
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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' elect their kings. Now the Prankish king was more ' faithful to the Emperor ; and when Heraclius sent his rule in the ' edict that the Jews be made Christian all over the West: its ' world, Dagobert the king, as in duty bound, carried derivative ' out the emperor's will.'—This mythical history was mandate. never written in effect; but it might well have been written. The title " Patrician " implies the position of regent or viceroy in the fifth century; and although at its revival by Constantine it involved no official duty, only titular rank, its very indefiniteness was of use in concealing the enormous powers wielded by an Aetius, a Ricimer, or an Aspar. And it was under the garb of this decent fiction (as we have essayed to show) that the Western Empire slowly expired; or rather by insensible gradation, detached itself from the Byzantine system. The entire history of this transition is better written under the title " Patrician" than any other heading. Vespasian, himself a plebeian, when he enrolled Agricola among the patricians, could never have guessed the exclusive and dignified part this title would have to play in the future. Until the middle of this century, its use is vague and purely honorific, as it became in later Byzantine history. We cannot doubt it was borne by Aetius, as by his contemporary Aspar, " first of the patricians." It emerges into a precise meaning and a technical use in the famous rescript of Majorian to the Roman Senate : " I, with my parent and patrician Ricimer, will settle all things well." It is far more definite in West than in East. Here it tends to become unique and exclusive; as there could be but one empire (though the emperors might be two or many), so there was one patrician claim to the title. This was the tendency, not any legal limitation. Is not Ecdicius, the brother of Sidonius' wife Papianilla, named patrician for his military services in Gaul ? and do we not learn from that passage (Ep. v. 16) that in popular esteem it occupied a position midway in the hierarchy of dignities between prefect and consul ? The special mission of Odovacar and Imaginary annals of
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179
Theodoric turned them into plenipotentiaries of the Imaginary Byzantine court ; High Commissioners for the settle- f^^f , ment of Italy and the re-establishment of order. ruie in the There was no question as to the strictly derivative West: its , ,1 ,. •, derivative nature ofr their authority. mandate. § 4. The ruler of the Roman commonwealth inter- Tribal fered in no way with the barbarian choice of " king " ; chieftain he did not even at present claim to invest feudally the elected barbarian ruler, as he did later in the land of official. Aetes, Colchis and Lazica. But the Western hemisphere was largely occupied by Teutonic immigrantSj — settlements made by imperial sanction, allotments given to alien veterans, and the gradual "infiltration " rather than hostile inroad, which had taken place since the opening of the third century. The Latin population, that society into which Sidonius or Paulinus introduces us, held aloof and apart ; and as the tastes of the two communities lay in opposite directions, they agreed amicably to differ. The Latin peoples had long been used to respect any and every official, indifferently, if only armed with imperial credentials. Even in the disorder of the fifth century, the success of the exploits and bold deceit of Numerianus under Severus would be inconceivable. — But it was a matter of supreme inconsequence to what nation or race the emissary of Caesar belonged. It is true that the savage pulpitinvective of Salvian suggests a virulent hatred of the whole venal and oppressive system ; from other sources we know that this was not the general feeling ; I need not quote for the hundredth time the language of Rutilius, who in spite of the fame of Claudian or Ausonius, is really the most familiar poet of this age. Indeed, the impeachment and condemnation of Arvandus, prefect of Gaul, described by Sidonius, reminds one how little in outward circumstance the imperial system had altered since the earliest days of the empire, — that is, of responsible rule in the provinces. Still, as under the vigilant Tiberius, a culprit was haled before his peers ; and
180
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Tribal still, as if " an image of their former independence," chieftain a f ree genate weighed the evidence and convicted the imperial criminal, without any reference to august inclinaofficial. tions: still a powerful friend could obtain remission of an extreme sentence by pleading with the sovereign's prerogative of pardon. Yet gradually the tide of imperial officialism ebbed in retreat; first, Britain saw the last of the Roman eagles, then the north of Gaul. But in the towns there was little change in the outward features of administration; and when an anomalous Roman usurpation in mid-France of ^Egidius and his son Syagrius was overcome by Clovis, in the last years of the fifth century, the Latin provincials, so far from seeing in it the end of Roman dominion, settled down once more under the rule of a man "whom the emperor delighted to honour," Clovis was nothing to them but a chieftain of a barbarian army and judge of a barbarian settlement; until the title vir illuster and the consular insignia and largess informed them that Anastasius, the distant but unique lord of the world, had recognised in him the legitimate ruler of all he could get. It is another story to show, with the help of the careful and convincing studies of De Coulanges, how largely Merovingian royalty borrows of Roman absolutism; and how this curious and inopportune policy of imitation led first to the rot faineant, and next to the Teutonic reaction of the majorate; and lastly, how this vigorous Shogunate itself fell a victim to the centralised pretensions (which it borrowed from its fallen predecessor), and to the disintegrant wave of local particularism, which finally in the tenth century submerged the imperial ideal.—Thus, authority was derivative; and the craving for legitimacy led to some curious postures and problems. As when the Norse ruler seeks ratification, in all sincerity, from a monarch he heartily despises and can insult with impunity; and his cousin in the south of Italy humbly pays homage for the Neapolitan realm to
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a baffled and defenceless pontiff, whom he has just captured in fair fight. § 5. But we are not yet in the tenth or eleventh Connotation century: and we must draw attention to the part of parent' . , . ,, , ,, ,,, , ,-, i_ ,, and lpatron ; played in the restoration of a Western Caesar by the tlte said title. The significance of the word is by no 'advowson.' means yet exhausted. First, a comprehensive name for the heads of houses, whose coalition formed the kinsman-State ; it became a generic designation for the older families ; and afterwards by a legal fiction dear to the Roman mind, this exclusive aristocracy was recruited by arbitrary selection, so that there might never be wanting " patrician " families in the Senate. The formulators of the new tables of precedence in the fourth century, casting about for titles which should express dignity rather than office, happily not yet aware of the sonorous resources of the Greek tongue invoked seven centuries later by Alexius, — revived the word as a personal rank. It denoted neither ancient family nor official post, but recognition of past service and a titular dignity. In later Byzantine usage it forms the inevitable complement of every list of hierarchic distinction, — thus continuing the precedent of Constantine. But in the period just reviewed, a special connotation was undoubtedly attached. It may have now carried with it in the usage of Ricimer's age the further idea of " father of the emperor," as Stylianus was termed by his grateful son-in-law, Leo VI., basileopator. Majorian, we have seen, couples it closely with the word parens ; and there can be no doubt that gradually with the title patrician became associated the further notions of adopted father, and of patron. Weighted with these pregnant ideas, the term was launched in the West for a further period of usefulness. The secular traditions of republican Rome, never utterly extinguished before the middle of the fifteenth century, allowed and fostered periodic revivals of obsolete nomenclature. Thus, in the tenth century we find the term " senator " and
182 Connotation of parent' and 'patron' the modern 'advowson.'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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" senatrix" used in a special sense by those who claimed to represent genuine Roman aristocracy, and to hold in check the clerical pretensions; and many students have been puzzled to trace the connection between these self-dubbed " fathers " and the ancient Senate, which can never have survived the wars and desolation of the sixth century. In like manner the gradual aversion of the Pope from the religion and the policy of the Eastern emperor, led to a fresh use of our adaptable title. Constantly borne by the exarchs, it must have represented to ordinary ears incapacity, intermittent meddling, and sometimes overt oppression ; for even in the fifth century is the term grcsculus applied with Juvenalian scorn to the Byzantine nominees, Anthemms and Nepos, and Italian experience of the exarchate after Narses can scarcely have improved the unfavourable connotation. But, as applied by the Pope to the Prankish "Shoguns," speaking in the name of the still autonomous city of Rome, it revived all the earlier association of lay support and patronage. Just as the emperor leant on the arm of a patrician in the period of fifty years from Valentinian III. to Romulus, as the indispensable and effective supporter of the throne,—so later the pontiff appealed to the secular and armed championship of the orthodox Frank. And in this conferment of an ancient title, we see glimpses of that furious conflict which agitated the Middle Age,—the precedence of pope or of emperor. The moral sanction, represented by the successor of S. Peter, needed the arm of flesh in a wicked world ; but it did not thereby confess its dependence, its inferiority, or its derivative character. Rather, as with the Brahmin conception of royalty and its use, was the protector of the Holy See to take title and mandate from it, and act merely as the blind and loyal executive to its decrees. The whole issue (as among many others Pope Pascal II. clearly saw) was compromised and all hope of definite delimitation abandoned, by the immersion of the
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Church in territorial concerns and ownerships. As Connotation the Apostles selected certain men to "serve tables," ^^^>. so the defenceless Church appointed protectors to the modern guard and even to administer. But the celibate caste tadvowsm.' of ecclesiastics, with the elective character of the office, permits frequent vacancies and interregna, even snapping the continuous thread of policy: and there is nothing to hinder the transmission of the laypost of defender from father to son, with increasing wealth and means of encroachment, until the quondam servant is transformed into a redoubtable master. § 6. In the choice of a civic Defensor in the CKentship, reign of Valentinian I., or of an "Advocate" orj?"™^ Vidame of later benefice bishopric or abbey, of society where patrician in the eighth century,—there is much that State-duties • . -j.i i i r. i -xi • hmitedor is congruent with old Roman usage, and with an in- rudimentary : stinctive demand of human nature. The need of the superseded. correlative position of patron and client is not felt when the world is young ; the tie of kindred and the custom of the tribe is all-sufficing. But war destroys a primitive equality, and sets in isolation or mere unhappy atomism the captives who manage to escape. Usage, kinder than man's intention, makes the slave a true member of the family he serves, a partner in its religious rites, and a bearer of its name. Later, the intermediate condition is devised, and the " freedman " marks the earliest instance of alien enfranchisement. Without, in hopeless estrangement, are the metcscs or " plebeians," whereas the released slave is a member, integral though subordinate, of the house. When the functions of the State (only just issuing from domestic duties and councils to larger interests) are still scanty and illunderstood, a natural tie between great and small grows up of itself, whether among Latin or Teutonic races. The frequent and gaping interstices in the ruling of the city-state are filled up by -voluntary relations, entered into for mutual defence, or for the exchange of dignity and protection between rich and poor. Where everything else moved along the rails
184 CKentsUp, ?ea^nresociety where State-duties rudimentary: superseded, e
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of strict precedent, with a heavy and fatal slowness, **"s sPontaneous ^e was a matter of free choice : the Roman client, whether individual or distant city, might select and even change the patron ; and the ^aYs °* R°man gl°ry were bound up with the honour paid to this relation. So the German youth was free to choose his Count, and enter the retinue of the strongest, bravest, and most generous chieftain. Thus the essence of the personal tie of Feudalism is found equally in Latins and Teutons; and it becomes for the student an idle or misleading problem to inquire whether the germ of the system is found in Rome or in the forests of Germany. It is indeed useless to find a special origin or habitat for a sentiment which is as old as human nature itself; which will always be strong when the State is weak. We may say that the empire dealt a fatal blow at this primitive relation of faith and affection ; or that it was already disappearing in mutual distrust and malevolence. Certain it is that the empire charged itself with functions which hitherto had been matter of private venture, confidence, contract. So pleased was the society of Southern Europe with this offer of uniform administration and treatment, that it seems eagerly to have surrendered the various unauthenticated safeguards which had been devised, against the absence of police, legal code, religious unity, impartial referee and standing army, in the old cousinly State. The history of the new imperial functionaries, who came to fulfil all these manifold duties, is a melancholy record. At the outset, welcomed and revered as the bearers of justice and clemency hitherto unknown, they end by incurring the dislike and jealousy of the master, who cannot control them, and of the people, who cannot escape. The institution of the Defensor has been well described as the first instance of a government setting up of fixed intent a counterweight to its own power : '•' Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?" and the surprised interrogation is echoed
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when we see the Merovingian threatening the Counts, CKenisMp, tt now presumably J his own chosen agents, if they dare <-? " . f , , . , , 3. il 11 j feature m to encroach and intrude on the hallowed areas society where of privileged estates. The Defensor was freely state-duties chosen ; and we cannot doubt that, like hereditary ^^^g^,™, patrons of pre-reform boroughs, like noble high- superseded'. stewards to-day, this office ran in certain families, and was transmitted by a natural instinct or prejudice to the heir. So too, when the imperial power and prestige was giving way before the martial vigour of the new settlers and recruits, the emperor was free to choose his regent or protector. So once more (and here we rejoin again the main current of the argument) the Pope and people of Rome were free to choose their patrician. In a humble way, the owner of a modern advowson (advocatio) stands in the same relation to the Church, to which he can present, as the patrician Charles to the See of Rome; and it must be regretted that the mortality of families, the unrest of migrating landowners, the partition of estates, and finally, the whole modern conception of mere contract as the basis of every relation, has altered this honourable and responsible post of advocate or patron into a matter of purchase ; though, in passing, we must deprecate any attempt to remedy a natural and perhaps inevitable development, by raising a ludicrous and artificial charge, the legal fiction of simony. When the early disinterested pride in a loyal retinue, a grateful bishop or chaplain, a devoted borough council, is corrupted by the modern query, " What direct advantage shall I reap from this duty ? "—then the ancient titles become mere disguises for a relation purely, contractual and mercantile. For it cannot be stated too explicitly by the impartial historian or philosopher of history, that it is primitive human nature and earlier ages which are under the sway of Ideas,—and not, as is fondly supposed by superficial Meliorism, our own days: for these demand, with dispassionate accuracy, the casting-up of accounts
186
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of profit and loss. We may here conclude this already long section on the later development of the patriciate. Theodoric was clearly recognised as charged with the right of passing on this title and dignity ; the anomalous and indefinite relations with the Eastern suzerain and with "his Senate" were never crystallised; but it is clear that no resentment was felt at the faithful copying of imperial fashions, officials, etiquette, by the court of Ravenna or Verona. And when in Italy there ceased to reign a " patrician " exarch who had taxed but not protected, when the detestable Lombard race paid the penalty of their insolent behaviour to the Holy See,—this was the most natural solution of the matter ; that the Pope, ruling and representing a capital largely autonomous by tacit agreement, under Heraclius as under Theodoric, should appoint a new and effective protector. In the term " patrician " once more, the old idea of earthly parent and gratuitous champion or patron was found as an integral part of its use and meaning. § 7. We have surveyed the rise of one of these Western realm relin- two independent powers into which the ancient State quished to rival factors, divided. As the Middle Ages represent the struggle Church and of the two leash-mates, Church and Army, so in our Army : modern time the conflict is waged between Church future in and State; and even if we make large allowance hands of priest and for religious indifference, there is ample scope for knight: East new and serious developments in this interminable retains civilian duel. While the strictly civil power disappears ( = imperial) and central in the West, except as unconscious machinery at the disposal of the first-comer,—the Church and the control. Army (or its fragments) are left in sole possession. In reading the history of Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia, we are already in a mediaeval atmosphere. He is the great mediator between insolent barbarian king and trembling Augustus, between Augustus himself and his overbearing task-master, the patrician regent. One short scene in a chronicle (representing nearly coeval opinion) is for us of profound significance : Clientship, common feature in society where State-duties limited or rudimentary :
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John the Pope has died after the fatigues of a fruitless Western mission to the Eastern emperor ; and before his body ™^™^n~ laid out in state for burial, a man, suddenly seized rival factors, by a demon, is cured by contact with the bier and Church and leads the funeral troop. "And when the people andy^^'in senators saw this, they began to take relics of the hands of Pope's cerements ; and so with great joy is the body Cf/!"^^ taken outside the city." It is with such a scene retain* and with the death of Boethius and Symmachus, ciwtoi that the history of imperial and classical Rome ends, ana central and the records are opened of the mediaeval and control. ecclesiastical town. Having thus ushered the reader into the full story of clerical interest, it is no part of our purpose to pursue either the development or the methods of the new spiritual power. Neither the niceties of dogma nor the intrigues of prelates will find a place in these essays, dedicated as they would fain be, to quite different topics. Our concern is not with Church nor with Army, neither with councils nor campaigns. For these, a straightforward narrative is sufficient; and however difficult to trace the detail of dogma or discipline, there is but little genuine complexity in the issue. Starting with a certain and closely circumscribed aim, it is enough in this connection to recognise the patent facts; that the Church has already great power, and will have still more; that the armed forces abroad in the Western hemisphere, loosed from any central control, will fight with each other; and that from this welter the conception of the civil and secular State will once more emerge and put an end to the feudal era. For us in this epoch, our task would lie rather in extricating some tokens of the strange and anomalous survival of ideas,—other than those of spiritual tutelage or the strong arm. The concern of a mediaeval historian who is not a mere chronicler is to trace the continuity of the imperial tradition, the break-up of Christendom (later synonym of the older empire) into fragments, and the present system (which can scarcely be a final State) of jealous
188 Western realnirelinrival/actors, Church and futurein hands of priest and fcmght: East retains civilian ^central control.
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and militant nationalities, oppressed by urgent perils, are simple, social, and economic, rather than profound or political. Let us therefore leave the future of Western Europe to the priest and the knight, to the pope and the emperor. Centralism and the Roman Idea will find an heroic exponent in Charles the patrician and Augustus ; but it does not & . £ ' . gain more than momentary recognition. We must wait until the fall of the Eastern throne, until the opening of the sixteenth century, before the conception of the civil State emerges once more from the background. Long the obedient vassal of the Church, or the puppet of baronial particularism, the State comes forward under the aegis of Monarchy, to demand once more the absolute subordination of both its late masters. Strangely § 8. It is now time to compare the destinies of different lot East and West, significantly unlike. From the abdication of Romulus until the last decade of this s; Zeno century (476-491) there were ruling in both Roman and Odohemispheres two men, whose history and character vacar: in . , , , . . , , ,,this contrast anc* fortunes present in strange mixture startling secret of points of resemblance and of contrast. Both are, *° sPeak candidly, barbarians from an uncivilised verge or "march"; Zeno (son-in-law of Leo I.) is captain of an Isaurian train-band, with whose effective but dangerous and costly assistance the emperor threw off a Teutonic (?) protectorate;—perhaps saved the realm from the fate of Rome, not by leaning on alien arms, with alternating confidence and suspicion, but by the bold policy of identifying this company of wild mountaineers with the whole majesty of the Roman tradition:—and Odovacar, brother of one of Zeno's henchmen, at first captain of mercenaries from the banks of the Danube, Rugians, Scyrians, Herulians, Turcilingians, and hailing from that quarter himself, claiming for his troops a more definite land - allotment than the patrician Orestes was inclined to bestow ; finally, no worse than Philip in 244, merciful supplanter of the which
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last handsome boy-Augustus, and viceroy and dele- Strangely gate of this very Tarasicordissa, son of Rusumbleotus, different ^ who by a happy accident is now Zeno and Augustus.
190 strangely different lot 'barlmrians,' Zem "•oacarTin this contrast, "diversf destiny.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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sallies of spasmodic and personal spite. In the East, both circumstances and intentions were altogether different. The advisers of the crown had definitely Under Arcadius there wished to be rid of the Teuton. na cl been the affair of Gainas and of Tribigild,— told for us in the curious mythical and fabulous form ^Y Synesius. Then there is the long paradynasteia, as it was termed, of Aspar the "king-maker"; and the expedient of Leo, which at first sight seemed so unpromising, as he called in one barbarian captain to oust another. Yet while Odovacar remains to the end of the chapter " one who secured a third of Italy for his troops," Tarasicordissa is transformed into a very respectable representative of the imperial line,— which as we must not forget, has already included the two Maximini, first and second. No doubt one effective reason of the stability of the Orient was the influence of family tradition and of feminine prestige. Galla Placidia had left no successor; and the imperially connected "Greeklings" sent over by the Eastern court were unacceptable to the Romans and founded no house. Detached and isolated are the last strictly Roman figures in Roman history; there is no bond of union or of sympathy between them except the now almost unmeaning title of Augustus. But in the East, Pulcheria had ruled till the middle of the century, and after the astonishing elevation of Leo, Aspar's bailiff or intendant, a similar veneration soon grew up for the imperial ladies, Verina and Ariadne,—or at least they acquired a similar power. For sixty years Ariadne inhabits the palace of Constantine; her dowry is the empire, and Marcian, Zeno, and Anastasius alike inherit through the wife. We shall record a similar tendency in the eleventh century, when the Senate and people accept without a murmur or a doubt the rapid succession of Zoe's husbands. We may perhaps wrongly surmise the complete servility and indifference of the capital and the palace to the person, the character, the nationality of Augustus ; we should be forgetting the outspoken-
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ness of the patriarch to a heretical ruler, the license of tongue and action in the Byzantine populace. It diff*rent lot is clear that very obvious limits to sovereignty still <&0r*aexisted in the fifth century ; when Anastasius had «'««».' to gain by a pious fraud the account-books of his amcar:°in own officials ; and sat humiliated and penitent for this contrast, all his eighty years in the circus to hear the verdict *e.cre< °f of the people on his proposed abdication. It may destiny. be that the Eastern mind was more inclined to a peaceful succession and acknowledgment of the rights of dynasty and even of distaff ; while the West held on with mistaken stubbornness to the fiction of an open and competitive magistracy. But be this as it may, nothing is to our modern minds so surprising as the successful reign and peaceful demise of such sovereigns as Zeno, Justin, or Basil I. some three centuries later. Here then, whatever the reason, is Zeno the Isaurian confronting as Augustus Odovacar the Scyrian (?), and the history of the two portions of the empire is bound up in this contrast. With the one barbarian, the imperial idea is strengthened and so transmitted to a successor ; with the other, it is extinguished, and nothing is left standing of the institution or the policy of the man, who is said to have " overthrown the Western empire."
BOOK III RECONSTRUCTION
AND COLLAPSE
UNDER
THE HOUSES OF JUSTIN AND HERACLIUS: VICTORY OF CIVILIAN AND REACTION TO MILITARY FORMS
VOL. I.
N
CHAPTER I THE EASTERN REJECTION OF THE TEUTONIC PATRONATE ; AND THE ADOPTIVE PERIOD OF MATURE MERIT (457-527 A.D.) I. Later Pseudo-Flavians :
FLAVIUS LEO I. (Thrac.) . . . . 457-474 . BARB. nom. FLAVIUS LEO II. (son) ..... 474 FLAVIUS ZENO (father) ..... 474-475 . FEMALE right. BASILISCUS (bro. of Leo's widow) . 475-477 . FEMALE nom. ZENO (restored) ....... 477-491 FLAV. ANASTASIUS I. (husb. of) Ariadne) ......... [491-518 . FEMALE right.
§ 1. THE Eastern empire never accepted the " divi- East retained sion of labour" proposed by the new settlers. The *™J£jj[ ££ emperor never sank into the mere president of a Army: the civilian hierarchy, leaving to barbarians the defence decisive of the realm and the military force ; which in the last resort is the ultimate appeal of authority in all States, murder. however highly civilised. The Roman system was to an extent undreamt of to-day founded upon moral influence, upon confidence in the subject's loyalty, which events justified. It betrayed the same almost laudable weakness before foreign aggression as China ; because these two monarchies alone in human history contemplate peace as the normal condition of mankind. Around the favoured area of their realm they drew a line of real or imaginary defences to protect their fortunate citizens. It is impossible then to repeat, except as a paradox or academic " thesis," the fiction of a military despotism. Yet, on the other hand, the sovereign was imperator ; commander-in-chief as sole fount of honour ; and while the Western Cassar forgot, the Eastern always remembered. A barbarian protectorate was proposed and rejected. The Byzan-
196
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tine annals alone among long linesL^ ^ ^ no pu ppets or helpless nominees. That centralising of power, inevitable in civilised States, was; secured under the'fonn of a popular absolutism. A firm hold k t over the various departments . the Churcn, Te AiSv and the Civil Service. The old fallacy of he 'diarchy/' the dual control, was wisely abandoned. Hitherto, the emperors had shared their power with some colleague; till Diocletian, with She Senate; after Constantine,wiih the Church afte Theodosius, with the barbarian generals. The sons of Theodosius, as we have seen, represent just that nild secluded sovereignty of a well-nurture1 civdian of which we have abundant instances in later European royalty. It is our task to inquire into the cause and perhaps the conscious motives of the sturdy resistance of the Byzantine C*sars. Why did not the successors of Theodosius II- follow the example of the successors of Valentinian III., on the path of painless extinction ? Why did not a series of crowned phantoms, appointed and dethroned by a powerful minister or foreign general, pass noiselessly across the stage and d° appear as uneventfully as Romulus, son o Orestes ? For the century following the accession of Marcian is an unbroken record of solid work and reorganisation • and each mature sovereign, winning experience as a humble subject before being misled by the splendour of office, built something of pennanen value into the great Eastern rampart. We must acknowledge the fact, but the explanation is not SO
Indeed, the answer lies partly in the nature and character of the peoples included m the Eastern emmre • partly in the absence of any definite barSsetLJnts as they moved on with the fatal impulse of destiny, always westwards; partly in the peculiar and successful policy of adoption, which dominated with the notable exception of the great Snian, in the councils of the Court and Senate of Constant nople. The sovereigns come to the throne
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in middle life, some approaching the verge of old age; East retained theyJ are without conceit or ,Jyouthful illusions. '; they P"mr , -' Church and are no travellers or generals, and care nothing for Army: the the parade of office ; they toil with ceaseless personal decisive • , j • ,i < r • • ,, ,1 • moment in
interest in the work of supervision; they are their ^spar's own ministers of war and of finance, their own murder. foreign secretaries; they are content to remain the invisible and responsible centre of administration, whence the threads of government issue east and west. They can remain firm and impassible in the midst of a riot; and sustained by their conscience, despise the misrepresentation of their policy and overlook the insults of idle factions. War they delegate, as a modern constitutional king, to generals who are never allowed to become their masters. In this whole epoch there is no " power behind the throne." They are less deceived perhaps than a modern autocrat by their own officials; they resign nothing, surrender nothing. It is true that the epoch must open with a crime; but it is done for the sake of the empire; Leo the "butcher" kills Aspar his benefactor. But the personal crime is an imperial benefit. "Aetmm Placidus mactavit semivir amens" ; Valentinian III., like his unhappy namesake sixty years before, had tried by a similar murder to release himself from tutelage. But he could not bear freedom ; and he had no policy. Born in the purple and ignorant as a Chinese monarch or the heir-apparent of the Ottoman throne, he knew nothing of affairs, of the state of the realm which still acknowledged him. But Leo had learnt economy as steward of the foreign general's household; and his ingratitude seemed to save the empire from a pernicious precedent. The attempt to seclude or to coerce the sovereign had failed in the time of Arcadius; it failed again under Leo. Perhaps that action settled the question, whether the Caesar of New Rome would follow the way of the Western. § 2. Old Rome in the third century had revolted against a woman's influence, and henceforward we
198
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Century of hear nothing of female usurpation, if we except the glorious venture of Victoria in Gaul. Indeed, until Helena, mother of Constantine, we do not hear of aught but the names of imperial ladies; and her pious cares are confined to religious interests. Under Constantius, Syria dreaded the wife of Gallus Csesar ; but the tyranny was soon overpast, in the emperor's usual success in all civil and domestic sedition. Justina has some power in the West and a marriage unites the houses of Valentinian and Theodosius. But in West and East alike, the fifth century is guided by females ; Placidia, wife of Constantius, and mother of Valentinian, was the successful regent in the minority of a wayward son ; and Pulcheria, with unobtrusive sagacity, guided the ingenuous Theodosius II. and chose the elderly and effective Marcian as his successor. Henceforth, some vague right to the purple is transmitted through females. The perpetual interference of Verina, during the troubled reign of Zeno, was mischievous to the State; but Ariadne chose her second husband well, the Silentiary Anastasius. The accession of Justin opens up a new chapter; but Theodora is soon empress, not merely consort of Cassar; and of her influence in public matters we know nothing but good. Up to the disastrous year 602, the mothers and wives of the rulers come frequently before us in the historians' page. The Empress Sophia selected Tiberius, and perhaps had reason to resent his coldness or ingratitude: and once more the Caesar Maurice received the right of imperial succession as a wedding-gift. In the seventh century all is changed; we read of Leontia's coronation, of Eudocia's happy marriage to the knight-errant Heraclius, and of her early death, of the luckless second nuptials within the prohibited degrees, of Martina's abortive attempt to associate herself in the government; of the respectful rebuke of the capital. Afterwards, there is scarcely a mention of Caesar's consort: the nameless wife of Constans III., we know was detained
feminine influence: law of succession never laid down.
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as a kind of hostage with her sons during his long Century of absence in the West: JJustinian II., like Gallienus/"«« . influence: in the third century, marries a barbarian princess, fawof but we are ignorant of her character and influence; succession and it is not until the close of the " Isaurian " house that we find Irene, the Athenian, following the precedent of Pulcheria and Placidia in this fifth century:— and we may note that this usurpation becomes disastrous both to the dynasty and to herself. The monstrous regimen of women is a familiar feature in all centralised monarchies which have attained a certain measure of civilisation. National affa ; rs are conducted in the security of the palace rather than on the field of battle or popular assembly; for it is only with the so-called advance of culture that the primitive methods of democratic debate are discarded in favour of swift and secret measures. It is noteworthy that such influence is greatest in countries where the official status of women is lowest; the Sultana Valide, or queen-mother in Turkey, the conspicuous power of Mohammedan princesses " behind the veil," and the regency of a Chinese empress will readily occur. This influence is thus greater where it is uncovenanted and unrecognised; indeed, just in proportion. And this may serve as a caution to reformers, who believe that recognition of full prerogative ensures substantial power. For the sole question of interest is not how the sovereign shall govern, but who shall govern for him. The recognised claim to omnipotence, whether in heaven or on earth, is at once discounted, and men pass by to do homage to meaner but nearer agents. In the course of the evolution of Roman imperialism we have often occasion to remark on the rigid principles and fixed methods which restrain caprice or accident in the administration of law, in the choice of officials, or in the routine of executive. A permanent civil service, we have seen, acquires and jealously maintains its own code of rules, of honour. The
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Century of feminine influence: law of succession never laid down.
uit.ni
sovereign cannot at any time be ubiquitous and is often non-existent; yet the government must be carried on. The " Romans" had not unlearnt the wholesome lesson of Roman law, of Roman peace; and if we could penetrate some of the gloom and of the Great Anarchy from Maximin to Diocletian, we might find a curious and unexpected calm in ordinary social life, a peaceful provincial routine, in spite of the constant civil wars and massacres. But the election of Caesar himself, pivot of the whole, was left throughout to accident. The wide and genuine democratic sentiment, which can be descried through the flattery of courtiers and behind the trappings of autocracy, would never tolerate the presumption of an unquestioned or hereditary title. The Augustan compromise or hypocrisy, with its train of fortunate and unfortunate results, continued to the last, at least during the first millennium. The emperor is still in theory the people's nominee, the people's delegate : the conception of a royal house of immemorial and perhaps sacred origin, is peculiar to the Germanic races; and in spite of the protests of equalitarians the peace of Europe must largely depend upon the recognition of this unique and valid title. It is true that such legitimacy implies a very large curtailment of effective power, even of usefulness; the sovereign and his family may not be placed in any but assured position ; they cannot be exposed to the risk of error or of failure. It is by no means a petty envy, but rather this perhaps mistaken respect, which excludes royal princes from responsible posts, for which they may be eminently qualified. Now it was precisely this heavy responsibility which the emperor undertook : it was for this task that the people chose him. A second delegation was well-nigh impossible; he continued to be his own prime minister and generalissimo. Many of the prerogatives of a magistrate under the republic depended on his actual presence in person; just as the grant of pardon to criminals depended on the chance meeting with a Vestal. The
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centring of different offices in a single ruler meant Century of the shifting of the entire burden: the temptation to{^^. encroachment upon local rights and liberties came law of from below : it was due (we saw above) to the idle- succession . \ .' ,. never Imd ness, the mismanagement, or the supine confidence down. of the subject, not to the grasping ambition of the ruler. In theory the emperor is always the first official of the republic and cannot shirk his duty. Again and again, the principle of free and unfettered election comes up to secure the State against the perilous effeteness of a once strenuous house: the people resumed its dormant but undoubted rights; just as the lord of a manor resumes possession over a wasted or "ruinated " copyhold. But it is to be noticed this is a last resort in a desperate emergency. The popular sympathy, the unspoken yet effective popular sentiment, was in favour of a peaceful transmission of hereditary right. The " Roman " people jealously guarded its privilege as ultimate repository of all power;—a principle only revived in a half-hearted manner of late years. But being after all human, it looked with affectionate interest on those born in the purple, and never questioned the right of a son to succeed a father. But the elective principle was never given up : the son must be solemnly associated in the presence and with the consent of those who by a decent fiction still represented the scattered millions of " Romans." Protest was made in the constant rebellion against the person of the monarch, never against the system of the monarchy. § 3. Thus in the Roman Empire there was always Uncertainty, at the root of things a certain precarious element, a source of a measure of uncertainty;—which, though a constant If^ealmess: source of peril and disorder, was at the same time emperor a a " reservoir of vitality." The " Romans " never gave a meaningless homage at the temple of a house, doomed to slow and lingering decay; they had no Merovingians, no Abbassid califs, no mikados immured for centuries in the wooden city of Kioto. A stagnant, reactionary, effete family was recruited
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Uncertainty, by a brilliant adoption, a barbarian marriage; or a source of violentlv but seldom set aside by a wholesale exstrengthand . . . .,, , , -,- , r t i c termination. Abstract legitimacy, in default of every emperor a other quality of a ruler, had no charm; the conresponsible ception of government, we must repeat, was strictly agent. utilitarian. A Roman emperor was expected to do, not merely to be. In the period before us, the personal activity of the monarch is conspicuous, though, as Agathias rightly reminds us, the fulness of absolute power was not enjoyed until Justinian. The " Roman " people was no more servile in its attitude to the sovereign than the American people to-day in its genuine admiration for a tireless and outspoken president. It is impossible not to believe that the permanent civil service with its realm of officials, the bureaucracy, and the fresh vigour of some blunt and unlettered general formed a judicious balance of order and life; that a system so prolonged met in a way that few modern constitutions can claim to do, the needs of society and the wishes of the people. We cannot say, however, that the Byzantine rule represented in any strict sense the national will, and to-day this would be perhaps the one indispensable title to approbation. Neither Rome, nor the Christian Church, nor its rival Islam, recognised nationality as the basis of a State. It has been well said of a later epoch, that the Eastern empire was a "government without a nation"; and it is even true of this century before us. We have seen in the past annals of the empire that the supreme place was thrown open to competition long before the titular caste-predominance of the Romans was merged insensibly in the wider State. In the third century the " Pannonian" emperors, of doubtful parentage in the Balkan peninsula, completely saved, and in saving profoundly modified the constitution. The Russian peasant of to-day looks upon the Czar as a foreigner and a German, who cannot speak his language; but the sensitive and highly-cultured officials of the Eastern empire saw no anomaly in
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receiving the commands of a Thracian Leo, of an Uncertainty, Isaurian Tarasicordissa, of a Dardanian peasant, who a, source of ij i •i i • • i ,1 i i i_ i i. • strength and could only write his signature through a tablet speci- Of weakness: ally prepared and perforated. A modern State, with emperor a all its pretensions to absolute freedom of com- r s l e petition, to a clear avenue for merit,—the marshal's baton, the woolsack, or Canterbury within the grasp of competent ambition,—sets out nevertheless in framing its fundamental laws to exclude the chief place from the list of possible prizes. It is our main concern to-day to make a disputed election impossible. Now the " embracing" nationality of the " Romans " was an ideal one : it was independent of parentage and place of birth ; it was additional to that which these accidental circumstances conferred; St. Paul is no doubt first and foremost a Jew, next an inhabitant of Tarsus, and finally, a Roman. It was essential to this theoretical equality, this ideal nationality, that there should be no set or formal qualification for the chief place; that no surprise should be felt or expressed at the sudden elevation of a guardsman, a steward, a centurion; that the Senate, the polite world, the official host (to take the signal instance of Basil four hundred years later than Zeno), should acquiesce in the capture of the autocracy by an ignorant and ungrateful murderer, who had enjoyed neither the training of a soldier nor the experience of a civil servant. The result of this strange union of formula and caprice, of routine and accident, was the avoidance of two dangers: the menace to a free people of a selfish feudal nobility, who cut the royal power into minute fragments, and parcel up the State; and the stagnation of an inert bureaucracy. The central power in its admitted ignorance of sound finance and true fiscal policy might oppress, but it allowed no one else to compete in the work. Conscientious according to its lights, it showed a real sympathy for the people at large, and a well-founded distrust of its
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own agents. Especially do these post-Theodosian emperors turn their attention to the distribution of fiscal burdens, to the abolition of unfair taxation. The growth of a powerful " optimate " influence was emperor a responsible checked, and will not appear again until the disagent. closure of the strange weakness which lay behind the splendid mask of Justinian's system. Sovereignty throughout history springs from the people and depends on their goodwill. The single desire of the average man is to be « saved from many masters.' Whatever the title or form of government, he knows well how limited is his power of protest, remonstance, interference. His unspoken wish is to be left alone; he prefers a distant but effective despotism to the pride of a feudal noble or the undue and indirect influence of a merchant "ring." The strongest testimony to the genuinely representative character of C;esar lies here; that the formation of a National Council was never once suggested. Yet Ccesar was not infallible, and no strange doctrine was accepted of the "divine right" of kings, that "the king can do no wrong." In the most despotic periods we find the plainest speaking to the inefficient monarch. The people never surrendered their right to criticise and to remove. For to the last, Czesar was "the chosen of the people," as well as the "anointed of the Lord." § 4. The historians of our epoch, garrulous about Disappointthe trivial or the transcendental, supply us with singuing character of coeval re- larly scanty news on topics of real importance: the cords: claim of emperors condition of the poorer classes, the social life and to speak 'for habits of the subjects of the empire, their interest the people' (other than theological), their studies, their agriamply culture and economics ; the relations of workman to justified. guild and to employer, the proportion of freeman and of free tenants to slaves; the obscure general causes that were insensibly changing the face of the empire ; the state of Thrace and of Thessaly, gradually depeopled and exposed to the hostile attack, or perhaps still more unwelcome settlement, of
Uncertainty, a source of strength and
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barbarians from beyond the Danube. We would Disappointwish to know more of the constitution and functions in? c^ader of the still active Senate ; of the bureau and de- cords.- claim partments of officials; of the rules which guided of emperors the training, the duties, the promotion of the civil ll^peopie'^ servants ; of the sovereign's initiative,—how far an amply illiterate emperor without experience was at the Jmtifie(lmercy of his private chamberlains or his official ministers; how far he took counsel with his advisers, and what means they had for compelling his attention or guiding his choice;—again, of the condition of the garrison, of the outstanding armies, of the frontier troops, of the composition of the imperial forces, and the proportion of foreigners and mercenaries ;—and lastly, of the power of the provincial satraps, with barbarous names and ancient republican titles, of their dependence on the personal will of the sovereign, or on the vigilant interference of a colonial secretariat; of the remnants of local autonomy, how far respected, how far extinguished either by careless indifference or the governor's high hand. And, to conclude, the greatest problem of all, why a moderate scale of taxation and the goodwill, ceaseless supervision, and unbounded generosity of the emperors should have resulted in a fiscal system, acknowledged by all critics to be mischievous and oppressive. On all these and similar questions, of paramount value to the student of humanity, we are singularly ill-informed. Even the impersonal interest of the Church is largely reduced to the personal rivalries of Timothy the Weasel, Timothy Salophacidus, Peter Mongus, Flavian of Antioch, Macedonius, and the solitary but imposing figure of Simeon on his pillar. Nor does it become a writer of the twentieth century to disparage this interest in the personal; for in this age we are coming back once more to the concrete, the actual, the individual, and leaving behind the Utopia, the ideal, the unsubstantial abstraction. Yet genuine history cannot be
206 Disappointing character of coeval records: claim of emperors to speak 'for the people' amply justified.
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written with the childish naivete" of the chroniclers: a portent, an earthquake, an imperial edict, a great war, a palace-scandal, an ecclesiastical synod,— all is told with equal emphasis and good-faith ; we pass discursively from one to the other, and lose sight of the movement and development of mankind and of the large features of the State, in the empty list of court cabals, or the curious gossip on an emperor's personal habits or suspected vices. We find ourselves suddenly in a new country, a new society; we cannot trace the steps that lead to this transformation without the greatest difficulty; we pass as it were blindfolded and without clue into a strange land, and the familiar names and titles still in vogue are seen to cover features and persons that we fail to recognise. Into such a scene are we ushered in Italy for example, at the opening of the tenth century: novel faces and characters, of which the previous age has given but scanty hints; general disarray and a masquerade of satyrs under the dignified dress of older gods. So in our own history we shall note the gulf which separates the reign of Maurice from that of Heraclius I.; the conspiracy of ashamed silence which keeps secret the details of the unspeakable Phocas' rule ; the terrible intimation of Theophanes, twice repeated, which assures us of the total extinction of the Roman army in eight years, two soldiers only being saved like the more faithful leaders of the children of Israel. When the curtain rises again the old landmarks have disappeared and we do not know our bearings. These complaints are part of the stock-in-trade of the modern historian ; it is his task to create anew a plausible theory of the current or tendency whither things are setting. He sees the goal, the end, and is alive to scanty facts or detail which may help to explain. He magnifies (while warning himself against over-certainty or pragmatism) a single observation into a general statement, and builds his fabiic of hypothesis with the slenderest of material. He does
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not seek to chronicle and to record, but to interpret tentatively ; and if he be wise, he will not dogmatise ™ but suggest. Finlay not seldom shows a real power of insight and intuition into the probable cause of a certain development; he has not accumulated data for a conclusion, but he feels that he must be right in his assumption, and puts forward his views, on the aristocratic reaction after Justinian, or the effects of conservatism and reaction in the eleventh century, on scanty evidence, but without hesitation; and he is justified. The limits and strict duties of a professed historian will always be canvassed with dubious result. Few are competent (although unfortunately many profess) to examine all sides of a single age, a special period. It is unlikely that in detail or in principle the accurate chronicler of a campaign can guide us without slip through the tangles of a heresy or the labyrinthine palinodes of Church councils. The art and architecture may be a sealed book to a patient and sympathetic student of the literature. The political and constitutional development, in itself a special and a comparative science, cannot be rightly traced by one who is unfamiliar with the evolution of mankind in general; and to-day, specialism (with whose demands the span of human life has not alas ! kept pace) cannot allow such a leisurely and impartial survey. In confining our attention mainly to the political development, which is above and beyond the springs of personal motive or character, we are indebted for our superior knowledge to the fact that the result and the issue lies on the page of history before us. We can trace the rudiments of the weakness which beset the successors of Justinian, not merely in his own policy, but in the very conception of the Caesar's office. In taking for our subject so large a portion of accessible human history, we are aware that the treatment must seem superficial; but it is after all well-nigh impossible to deal successfully with a period in strict isolation ; and the defects of premature specialism are too clear in the industrious
Disappointj! char^r OT C06VO,l YP-' cords: claim of emperors fhe^peopte' amply Justified-
m
208 Disappointing character ?orTaclaTm of emperors to speak'for ±//7 justed.
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toils of others that we need surrender the one signal British historians, — a large canvas ana sympathetic if subjective colouring. That much in an epoch so remote and obscure must rest on surm[sQ {s iQ bg regretted ; but, while we complain of the meagre treatment of contemporaries, we may justly i ire if it is possible for a writer to understand his own age ? Will any one to-day be bold enough to prophesy the social and political development m the century which is before us ? And can we expect historians of the fifth and sixth centuries to understand the drift of the current that carried the critics along together with everything else ? For the stream of time does not permit the voyager to disembark and gam the bank at his leisure or convenience, to take accurate measurement of the rapidity of the stream or the destination of the vessel he has just quitted. With all our ignorance, we must feel ourselves better qualified to appraise the work of these princes than their own subjects who watched them at their task We shall not fall into the error of Carlyle or of Hegel • we must neither depreciate nor overrate the personal initiative. We cannot doubt the true representative character of the imperial line of Rome; no ignorant and moribund dynasty, ruling long, as some Eastern family, in a country to which they had come as alien conquerors, to which they remained ever since complete strangers. But they spoke for the people, from whom they sprang; they inherited and reverenced the traditions of Rome, the mstztuta majorum; in their most daring innovations, they still assumed the humility of pious restorers, and believed themselves instruments of a purpose not entirely their own. If we may believe m a Race-Spirit, continuous and undying in a nation or a great political system, we can recall at once the instance of Rome From it receive inspiration and guidance princes drawn from the four quarters of heaven and almost every known race. It was a favourite boast of the "Romans" that they lived under a consti-
merit of
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tution and were ruled according to law; while the DisappointPersian, slave yesterday, general to-day, and headless m.9 character trunk to-morrow, could only watch with anxiety the cords: claim capricious moods of a master. It is this general con- of emperors tft VWOn" T(Y1* tinuity of principle from Augustus to the end of our the people' chosen period, that renders the history of the empire amply not only instructive, but to a large extent certain, fa^fiedThere is nothing arbitrary or personal in this development ; the oneness of the empire; the grandeur of Rome (long after Rome had ceased to belong to its own realm); the welfare of the subject (TO VTT^KOOV) ; the purity and uniformity of religious belief and practice ; the orderly succession to office; the welcome extended to loyal foreigners ; the resolute surrender of aggressive warfare ; even (in its defect) the constant tendency in the enjoyment of profound peace, to relax the care of the military chest;—in a word, the pacific, tolerant, and civilised aim which Rome in the West was the first to propound to an astonished world; many centuries after China had stereotyped the idea of their celestial civilian, the emperor ; and shown the truth of the motto, " L'empire c'est la paix." § 5. The period before us is one of quiet recovery, Easternrealm of which we see the fruit in the expansive policy of sharply T ,• • TIT are mercifully -r 11 relieved r i for f a space ofr urban divided, Justinian. We and the tedious and unmeaning campaigns on the Persian rusticpopulafrontier. For more than seven centuries these wars tlon' had been waged with varying issue and with no result; the changes on the map are insignificant; for neither Arsacid nor Sassanid dealt a serious blow to the substance of the empire ; and the falling away of the South-east under Heraclius was due to the spiritual zeal of Islam and the new forces of disintegration in disaffected schismatics. But at this time there is an almost unbroken peace on the Eastern side ; and the raids of the trans-Danubian tribes have not assumed the menacing significance, which they will have after Justinian's death. The sagacity of Anastasius constructs the Long Walls,—a strange monument of VOL. I. O
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Easternrealm strength and of insecurity, which recalls to mind a
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insoluble problems which delight the child and the savage. Fickle and spasmodic in their political interest, they betray no knowledge of affairs, no sympathy with the difficulties of a ruler, on whose shoulders they put the whole burden of government. The Nika riots, which seemed likely not merely to end the dynasty of Dardania but to herald the dissolution of the whole imperial system, found their counterpart in the other great capitals. Sedition, on pretext the most transcendental, personal, or purely frivolous, convulsed Antioch and Alexandria, and found material in the envious divisions not of sect merely, but of religion and of nationality. This breach, on what then seemed the fundamental and essential of life, was the chief cause of the dismemberment of the seventh century. It cannot in fairness be too often asserted that the spirit of the Gospel reinforced rather than weakened the empire ; but the constant inspection of its dogmatic secrets was an obvious element of dissolution. It is not easy to overestimate the part played by this constant debate in opening the gates to the Infidel. The countryman, aloof from the prevailing absorption in the insoluble, continued his plodding way, unvisited except by the tax-collector, and leaving no trace in the record of historians. In spite of the admirable system by which the most distant parts of the empire communicated for imperial purposes with the centre, there was no real unity or uniformity, of creed, of culture, or of interest. There was ready intercourse with the capital, but little with neighbours. The decay of the township which set in mysteriously enough in the second century was by no means arrested by the reforms of the third and fourth. It may be presumed that the small occupier was almost completely ousted; and that while the great centres were thronged with the idle and unprincipled, a deathly stillness settled on the country, tilled by slaves or "colons" and spreading out more and more into large estates. How little the anxious
Easternrealm ^^ urban and rusticpopula-
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Easternreaim sympathy and foresight of the emperors could effect Sderf *° check these tendencies, we may gather from the urban and acknowledged incompetence of statesmen to-day to rustic popula- deal with similar evils. Both parties in the State are fully alive to the growing evils which seem inseparable from an over-mature civilisation,—the desertion of the country districts, recruiting ground of arms and of health ; the crowding of poverty, disease, and crime into unlovely suburbs of great commercial centres. But goodwill is powerless to cope with these evils; and above the benevolent schemes of small holdings or compulsory purchase hangs the veto of an irresistible law. We are less ready to blame the failure of older nations, when we are gradually but surely learning the lesson of the impotence of reason and conscious purpose. With the best intentions we press in vain against the force of circumstances which only a later generation can estimate ; because before it lies the whole tendency worked out to its logical end, by some other power than that of man's device, Problem,— § 6. Indeed nothing remains for those who criticise was integrity ^e iater empire but the somewhat barren question, worth while! , ,. .. . .. . . , , whether it was for the genuine advantage of the provinces and subject-races that this strange and largely unmeaning semblance of unity should be preserved at all ? It is perhaps an unprofitable conundrum, clearly incapable of solution, to inquire if the day of the once precious protectorate of Rome had not passed ? Yet it is one which must ever and again recur to the student of history. When we trace the heroic efforts of these rulers of alien race to enter into the heritage of imperial Rome and live true to its traditions, we are sometimes tempted to ask, was it worth while ? Should not an epoch of disintegration have been allowed to succeed, in which might be formed and at last set free, a genuine national life in the several limbs, held so firmly and yet so artificially together by the empire ? Now in the common censure of despotic methods, it is difficult in the
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extreme to distribute the blame. Until quite recent Problem,— times, it has been taken for granted that citizens, vas integrity . . ' , , ,, i - i i / r . f worthwhile? pining to be free rfellow-workers in the fortunes of a State, have been held in chains to a tutelage, wholly mischievous and inopportune. But it is now contended with much greater plausibility, that a people usually deserves and creates its government,—and it is abundantly clear to-day that the revolutions which replaced autocracy in Europe in the nineteenth century were the work of a small knot of resolute and voluble Idealists, whose influence was of short duration and questionable value. The heterogeneous races which took their orders from Byzantium have at any rate not since shown that tolerant patience of routine and of opposition, which is the prime essential of successful self-government. And it is impossible to say whether the centralised authority of Caesar produced these nations of slaves intermittently disorderly ; or whether this very temper made necessary and justified, first the unwilling encroachments of Caesar upon local liberties, and lastly, the entire system which kept the reluctant team in the leash. It is certain that Constantinople did not arouse the same warm feelings as we find expressed in the eulogy of Aristides in the second, or of Rutilius in the opening of the fifth century. Finlay, with amiable inconsistency, overrates sometimes the hatred of the Byzantine oppressor, sometimes the blind devotion of the provinces to the capital and the system. Yet it may fairly be said that the conception of the true remedy was to alter the " personnel" and not the system ; and that wherever the calm judgment of the community found expression, it endorsed the principle and only sought to remove a representative who abused it. No one perhaps at the present moment would venture to reproach Caesar with denying a parliament to his realms, at one time the rough-and-ready panacea for all social evils. We are indeed interested to find that so far from interdicting assemblies for the discussion of local affairs and general welfare, the emperors
CONSTITUTIONAL Problem, was integrity worth while ?
No seed of national freedom or pouter of self-government : alternative, chaos not autonomy.
HISTORY OF
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were (as it might seem) the only persons who encouraged or suggested them. I am inclined to agree with those who see in the worship of Augustus in the provinces, a check and restraint upon the authority of the governor, by no means negligible; and a sound influence which, mainly no doubt religious, was also largely political in the best sense. It is impossible to deny the plutocratic basis of society in the Roman Empire: but it is difficult to prove that the rich oppressed the poor, or that the latter suffered by this nominal inferiority. Caesar's officials at least might be chosen from any rank; and the burden rather than the honour of office fell on the "privileged" classes. The only definite proposal of self-government came from the advisers of Honorius, in the famous edict to the cities of South Gaul, about the close of his reign. There was certainly no fear of popular assemblies; or the delights of the circus would long ago have been suppressed. Indeed through many centuries the rulers fostered of set purpose that bugbear of monarchical or republican police to-day,—an idle and pampered proletariat. Yet the proposals for local responsibility met with no response; and the scheme of reform failed; not merely because it was applied too late, but because it was out of harmony with the people's requirements. I cannot attempt to explain the reason why the suggestion of a great Debating Council excited no enthusiasm in the highly civilised inhabitants of South Gaul; but it is worth while bringing the fact of their coldness before the notice of the over-zealous parliamentarist of to-day,—if indeed he is still to be found. § 7. As to the suppression of nationality,—a charge often laid at the door of the empire, we must candidly confess that the conception is modern, and is perhaps not lasting. We have pointed out that the greatest systems or " objectives " that have swayed the world : Rome, the Church, Islam,—set themselves to abolish it as a narrow and unworthy prejudice, or to rise
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superior in a loftier sphere. Idealists have regretted No seed of the break-up of Christendom or the HolyJ Roman Em- national . . . . , . _XT . . .. .freedom o r pire into jealous fragments. We are assured by the power of optimist that the resulting burden of militarism is self-governdestined to disappear, but we look in vain for any ^titernative warrant for this pious hope. It is the essence of chaos not nationality and of patriotism to be exclusive and autonomy. suspicious ; though we may not grant with Mr. H. G. Wells that democracy spells ignorant war. An empire implies a central power, able to keep the peace among the feuds of race or of religion. A conquering caste, the Normans, the Ottomans, the Manchus, settles into peaceful civilian duties; forgets, it may well be, the manlier virtues of the camp and the field, but at least ensures peace among the factions. There is no sign in Eastern Europe and Asia at this time that there was either conscious desire or opportunity for national sympathies or national councils. That the unwieldy aggregate resisted the centrifugal tendency so often, and arose after each curtailment or deliquescence into a fresh integrity,— was due to the traditions and the appeal of imperial Rome, finding an echo in the heart of a Justinian, a Heraclius, or a Leo. I have no wish to magnify the debt which such restorers laid on their own or subsequent generations. It is quite possible that such rigorous welding together may have stifled some local aspirations, preserved some fiscal features of costly government in districts which would frankly have preferred to be let alone. But it is doubtful if such sentiments were ever expressed, or even consciously felt. A pacific civilisation implies costliness and centralisation,—two very obvious disadvantages, when it is remembered that the burden of taxation always falls in the end on the weaker and poorer ; and that a centralised government cannot afford to allow them liberty in the single sphere which these classes can understand or pretend to influence. Yet if it be allowed that this blessing is worth all the sacrifice it entails, the imperial administration, in
aie No seed of national freedom or power of self-government : alternative, chaos not autonomy,
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refusing to surrender, its dormant rights (as over Italy under Justinian) in resolutely forcing back into the fold the straying members, in struggling to recreate the antique ideal or its shadow against the pressure of outward circumstance,—was only performing its imperative duty, and being true to itself. The alternative was political and social chaos, not the emergence of free and self-respecting nationalities. The interest of the meditative Asiatic lies elsewhere than in the humdrum routine of life. If they cast a glance at political conditions, they secretly approve the caprice and haphazard which places supreme power in the zenana or the vizierate, that is, in the alien and the slave. We have seen that this element of chivalry and hazard was by no means lacking in an imperial system; nay, it was often the source of rejuvenescence. But another side was a silent protest against this insecurity. The discipline of the civilian and the soldier, severed by the wise specialism of Diocletian's reforms, remained alike severe, precise, and methodical. It was upon the loyalty of its officers and the steady work of the civil servants that the empire depended for its stability during the frequent vacancies; interregna which in other elective monarchies, as Persia and the Papacy, have been scenes of disorder and permitted license. Wide as was the personal influence, great the initiative of the sovereign, the " republic" was not a prey to riot and plunder, because there was no visible director of its policy or champion of its laws. We must conclude then, as we have done so often before, that the system was adapted to the needs of its subjects and to their welfare, and that nothing else stood between a permanent chaos of racial and religious animosities. We have not been careful to apportion the blame for this lack of centripetal spirit in the dominions of the East; whether autocracy stifled local consciousness and effort, or merely arose because it was conspicuously absent. There may be those who regret the costly reconquest of Italy, and
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perhaps of Africa, where some semblance of a modern No seed of nationality under a ruling caste was in process of j^^f formation; but we cannot withhold our sympathy power Of and appreciation from the efforts of the seventh and self-governeighth centuries, which without doubt secured Chris- ^ternatfe*, tendom and the promise of our present age from chaos not Islam. That this result would not have been attained autonomvby a wider welcome to the provinces to share the burden of government, is evident to any impartial student of the time. Whatever merit is due in opposing a rampart against the Muslim, belongs entirely to the narrow and conscientious circle of administrators ; and in spite of the necessary power of a centralised bureaucracy, or of a standing army, the sovereign for the time found in them faithful instruments of a continuous design and purpose. And the sovereign himself in succeeding lost much of his own capricious individuality, and became an inheritor and a simple exponent of the undying policy of Rome.
CHAPTER II THE RESTORATION ; OR, PERIOD OF CONQUEST AND CENTRAL CONTROL UNDER JUSTINIAN (527-565 A.n.) The Dardanian House: FLAV. ANIC. JUSTINUS 1 Fl
(nlph )
ANICIUS
518-527 . 'praetor' nom.
JUSTIN ANUS
'
l
- j 527-565 . birth.
Fahulmis § 1. THE reign of Justinian has been compared to figure of Its a fortunate island in the midst of a raging sea. prevalent' chronicles are full, its interests wide and its achievedecay of ments conspicuous. No longer confined to the Teutonic obscure intrigue of the palace, the student is taken from East to West in a rapid series of triumphs. Justinian himself belonged to the school of Tiberius. He never left the capital or commanded in person ; it was " his settled policy not to abandon the seat of government" ; fixum . . . non omittere caput rerum. But he controlled everything with minute, sometimes jealous care; and the victories of the Roman arms, the codification of Roman law, and the fortifying of the Roman frontier, must all be referred to his untiring initiative. During his long reign he never ceased for a moment to be the chief actor, the ruling spirit. Belisarius fought, Tribonian compiled, John the Cappadocian and Alexander the Scissors collected revenue, Solomon governed and built, Narses administered,—but throughout Justinian was the master. Yet we know the emperor only through the deeds of his ministers ; the central figure is a singular mystery. It is clear that he left a very strange impression upon the men of his time and their immediate successors. His ascetic and secluded life, his sleepless vigils spent in deep metaphysical debate, his unwearied attention to cares of State, his 218
i
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curious avenues of secret knowledge, his nightly Fabulous pacing through the corridors of the palace (sometimes, ff*™ ?/ •, 11 i i • i i i i \ ^1 Justinian: it was alleged, carrying his head under his arm), the prevalent terror he could inspire in the officials of his closest decay of intimacy, when as they gazed upon his face every mmarcjlies. feature seemed to vanish in dark red blur, and after an interval gradually struggle back into outline,—all these facts or fictions point to a genuine atmosphere of nervous mystery which surrounds, for us as well as for them, the greatest and the least known among Byzantine Caesars. About him there was something supernatural and occult: we may dismiss the violent prejudice of the pseudo-Procopius, when he tells us that he was the " Prince of the Devils" ; but we cannot doubt that he was regarded in an age gradually lapsing into superstition as an incarnation of " demoniacal" force. One-seventh of the whole work of Theophanes is devoted to his reign of forty years, though his chronicles cover five and a quarter centuries (285-812 A.D.) ; but we read only of the exploits of the emperor's lieutenants, little or nothing of himself. Even for the empress, with whose mythical childhood the Procopian memoir is so painfully familiar, the news is scanty and altogether incompatible with this record and with her alleged character ; and it has been well pointed out that one who prolonged her morning slumbers till well-nigh noon, and her siesta till after sunset, could not have been a vampire, preying upon the life of the empire, and encroaching unduly into every department. The certain and historical resolves itself in her case into the bold decision to resist to the end during the Nika riots, and a charitable interest in an unfortunate class. Thus the history of the reigns of Justinian and Theodora is the history of his lieutenants; and the subjects' inquisitiveness that was never a personal loyalty satisfied itself with the same vague hints of horror that we find in Tacitus or with the more good-tempered gossip of Suetonius. When we turn to foreign politics, the first half
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Fabulous of the sixth century marked the early dissolution of figure oj the barbarian monarchies in West Europe. The Jwtiman: . ^ victories of Behsarius and Narses were perhaps prevalent dec ay of already won, at least ensured, in the languid society
°^ court intrigues, which ruined Vandal and Goth alike, in the failure of the compromise between the two nations. The barbarian protectorate was singularly short-lived as a political expedient ; it implied just that dangerous "dyarchy" which had caused trouble and ill-will in the earlier empire. In Italy, there was the Roman Senate with its immemorial traditions and that curious provincial autonomy and dilettante Hellenism which it enjoyed and displayed since Diocletian. Opposed to the Arian belief of the dominant caste was the steadfast orthodoxy of the rising papacy. There was political and religious disunion, as well as the discontent of warriors who found their king (like another temporiser, Alexander) too much inclined to conciliate the more cultured and critical part of his subjects, and to imitate the absolute methods and prerogative of the emperor. It must be remembered that a barbarian monarchy on classic ground implied the reversal of all barbarian ideals. Wars of aggression were sternly forbidden ; the comitatus had to be content with an honourable title and ample leisure. The king became, in addition to his dynastic claim to a nominal supremacy, a representative not merely of the conquered peoples, but also of the vanished and absentee Csesar. While he could not satisfy the greediness and discontent of his own peers, he could not disarm the suspicion of those whom he did his best to protect. Historians complain of the reconquest of Italy, that it made a desert and disappointed for thirteen centuries all hopes of Italian unity. But it is easy in a laudable admiration of the great Theodoric, to see permanence and stability in an entire system, when the success lay solely in a single commanding yet tactful personality. It is difficult in the later wars to withhold our sympathy from Totila Vitiges and Teias. But it is
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evident that such characters were exceptional: they Fabulous rose to power onlyJ when the stress of conflict de-•$'"!??' Justtntan: manded and brought to light the best man. In the prevalent anomalous system of Teutonic royalty which clung rfec°.v °f to a family, without recognising the right of the eldest son, they had no chance except in these moments of peril. The ruling stock, which it was sacrilege to thrust aside, had become degenerate both at Carthage and at Ravenna. That the wars of restoration inflicted serious mischief cannot be denied ; that the political system, which they replaced at such dreadful cost, had the seed of peaceful and prosperous development cannot be maintained. To go to the root of the matter;—it is never possible to settle the age-long dispute between the Realists and the Nominalists of politics. To the one, supreme value lies in the Church, the Empire, the State—in the objective and ideal, that is to say ; and the welfare of the whole is too often measured in the aggregate by the dignity and wealth of the centre, which seems to entail the atrophy or the conscious distress of the limbs. To the other, all wideness and vagueness of scope is abhorrent; the sole and genuine test must be the happiness and comfort of the individual, the freedom of the citizen; or at least of the smallest and narrowest group which the statesman condescends to recognise,—the family, the manor, the parish, the commune. If the central authority drain the vitality of these for its own unknown purposes; if it sacrifice ruthlessly the constituent members in war and commerce, with the sole consolation of being an unhappy part of an imposing whole,—it stands condemned. We but lately contrasted the grandeur and effectiveness of Russian foreign policy with the misery of the famine-stricken peasant. We may well understand that the outward glory of Justinian's reign concealed a similar weakness, unease, and discomfort. But the reconquest might well have suggested itself as a plain duty ; and it is difficult for rulers, whether monarch or multitude, to
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Fabulous figure of Justinian: prevalent decay of Teutonic monarchies.
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abandon schemes of vain or mischievous ambition and to apply industriously to petty detail and the welfare of persons. We can forgive Justinian's mistake, if mistake it was; the empire to Caesar was a solid and integral whole; the recovery of lost provinces was a recall of subjects long neglected to the joys of civilisation, an enforcement of undoubted rights, never explicitly abandoned. Of no great undertaking is the age which undertakes and achieves an impartial witness ; for in achieving it must suffer. We have again and again occasion to mention the blindness of the most sagacious politicians on questions of immediate interest; and the historian who passes verdict on the worthies of the past, is often an incompetent judge of the duties and of the tendencies of his own day. Politics must be largely a science of opportunism; and its chief maxim is, " Do the next thing." To-day the number of certain aims and principles has grown alarmingly scanty; and the great disputes range round the question, how far are the sacrifices to Imperialism to be justified ?—Our recent war in South Africa destroyed for an Ideal the past fruits of civilisation and retarded their renewed life.—It is easy to point out the defects of Byzantine policy and administration. We may like Juvenal's schoolboys advise Justinian to deal a decisive blow at the rotten fabric of Persia,—that strange rival and foe of Rome, so often her close personal ally, her suppliant and humble friend. We may see to-day that a " scientific frontier" on the East might have spared the most populous and civilised part of Southern Christendom from the unceasing and unmeaning raids of Persians and Arabs, from Chosroes to Harun al Rashid. It is easy to point out the folly of achieving costly victories thousands of miles away, in provinces that would never repay the cost of maintenance,—while the capital itself (but for the " Great Wall" of Anastasius) stood at the mercy of any barbarian horde, who could effect the passage of the Danube. Easy too
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to contrast the incongruous splendour of the triumph Fabulous u of Belisarius. the submission of Gelimer. the constant fa ™ °f . , . . Justinian: and ceremonious " mfeudation of converted princes prevalent as vassals of the empire, with the almost incredible decay of panic of Constantinople at the close of the reign; monarcfiies. the hasty fitting-out of slaves and domestics, the inglorious last success of the great general over a band of disorderly savages. § 2. Yet the policy of the court is eminently intel- Religious ligible. The integrity of the empire, unbroken, as we Pretextf°r know by the insignificant event of 476 (which unified rec0very; rather than dissolved), was an incontestable article of Catholic and faith. The motive for reunion was in a great measure nan' religious; it was not national sentiment, as in the Pan-Germanic or Pan-Slavic tendencies to-day; nor was it the mere pride of a ruler. The issue of the restoration might be unfortunate : the Italy of Alexander the Scissors; the Africa of Solomon no longer garrisoned by Vandals and exposed to the Berbers. But the initial enterprise is dignified and Roman; a deputy had proved inefficient and mutinous, and a Catholic people sighed in their bondage to Arian persecutors. And no secret of political advance or national unity lay with the foreign protectorate. It was, as we have asserted, out of sympathy with its own followers and the classic nations which it essayed to govern justly. The new position was indeed quite anomalous. While the king aspired to the double dignity of barbarian king and Caesar's delegate, he failed to enlist the loyalty of either party. It is perhaps significant that the most successful of barbarian royalties was the earliest to conform to orthodoxy, and the most obsequious in recognising the distant suzerainty. The Prankish king accepted the Catholic faith just a century before it occurred to Recared of Spain to proscribe Arianism, and yield to the influence of the Roman Church. The Lombard dominion in Italy received a new lease of life, after they had made peace with the Pope. Wherever this change occurred, it may be said to indicate much
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Religious pretext for
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more than a mere personal conversion ; it meant the permeation of Roman and Hellenic ideas, the advance of administrative centralising, the capture of the recovery; Catholic and monarchy, still confined to a Teutonic family, by Arwn. Roman influences ; it implied subservience to central clerical authority at Rome. Frank and Visigoth and Lombard, in spite of this opportune alliance, showed unmistakable traces of decay, both in the reigning dynasty and in the entire governmental system of compromise. Ostrogoth and Vandal owed their much hastier exit to their Arianism,—implying, as it did, a complete divorce, not merely of religious but also of political feeling. That heresy might stand for particularism, for nominalism, for a compromise with Teutonic hero-worship ; but in the Catholic faith was an air of finality and of unity, which ministered insensibly to reaction. We are dealing with religious questions in this volume, on the side only of their connection with political development; but it is permissible, indeed inevitable, to call attention to this fundamental difference between Arian and Catholic belief. The conversion of these nations to full orthodoxy marks a step not merely in their religious enlightenment, but in their political education, in their complete fusion with the conquered races. Justinian restored the empire, Catholic and centralised, in Africa and in Italy. He recovered some of the most prosperous cities of Southern Spain. Had the empire been less unwieldy, had his successors enjoyed leisure from pressing perils in East and North, the reoccupation of Spain might have become an accomplished fact; and it must not be forgotten that it was only owing to the invitation of an imperial officer that the peninsula was at last opened to the Arabs in the eighth century. § 3. The Annalists, and even Procopius, throw little Scanty evidence on light on the sentiments and secret motives of the public feeling: agents time, whether in the policy of the Centre or in the withdraw public opinion of the subject. But it is not imposthemselves from control. sible to reconstruct a probable attitude of mind. A
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permanent estrangement of the Western provinces Scanty was inconceivable. It was well known that Zeno "*%£%,£ had graciously accepted the insignia in 476. He had, ing: agents some thirteen years later, commissioned Theodoric to withdraw • i , « , i ii i • 11 themselves punish an arrogant deputy, and occupy Italy m the from cmtrol. name of the empire. The resumption of rights, indeed of full ownership, if the copyholder should " waste " his portion, was perfectly natural. Such " wasting " had indeed, as we have seen, taken place both in Africa and in Italy. In spite of her acute tendency to engross interest at the Centre, Constantinople was satisfied with a recognition of suzerainty over the more distant provinces ; and the freedom and loyalty of Naples, Amalphi, Venice, Cherson, is a pleasant chapter in the annals of Byzantine despotism. It is not mere vanity that still included renegade provinces in the total of the empire; the Church of Rome has her system of prelates in partibus infidelium; what has once belonged can never be wholly lost. Nor was this century entirely hostile to local privileges and autonomy, as has been maintained; the supposed destruction of municipal liberty is an obscure transaction, and seems to be contradicted by the very evident desire of Justinian's immediate successors to consult local feeling, and to encourage local preference in the choice of administrators. So far as we can interpret public opinion (often most intense when most silent), the " Roman " world endorsed the policy of Justinian, without perhaps counting the cost. It is impossible for the vindicator of Byzantine policy to justify the system of finance; but it is equally impossible to explain, from any known figures, the oppressive incidence of a taxation in its general sum so moderate. With the best intentions, the revenue was collected with difficulty, and left a constant deficit. Yet it would ill beseem the citizen of a free State to-day to criticise too contemptuously, or pass judgment too harshly. We are on the point of overhauling the entire system of national finance. We are conscious of the unequal burdens, of vexatious VOL. I. P
226 Scanty
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inquisition, of the discouragement of enterprise by 'Oca^ mJustice or extravagance, of the wanton mismanagement of amateurs, of the gradual extinction of withdraw the lesser middle-class, whether in town or country. fromlontrol Putting aside the common indictment of all centralised governments, the irresponsible venality of officials, there is little that we can lay to the charge of the Byzantines that cannot be re-echoed in modern times. Still, as ever, those who pay do not control; and the supreme voice in raising or apportioning national wealth for national purposes lies, as always, with those who directly contribute least. " Taxation without representation " ; this, and not the pursuit of an imaginary ideal, has lain at the root of revolutions, which always betray economic rather than political origin. It is no new thing to-day, whether in England or in Russia, whether the discontent arise in the mind of a virtuous and hard-working middle-class or respectable "rentier," or in the stagnant intelligence of a sturdy proletariat. It will always be true : " Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi," the great middleclass; between a vague and irresponsible multitude and a cabal of courtiers or of plutocrats. But no advocate can exonerate the Byzantine government from this grave charge—that it could not control or supervise its own agents; and whether administrator or revenue-officer was in question, malversation and petty oppression were only too common. Yet this tendency to extricate an office from such supervision is universal at this time. While we look in vain for any distinct nationalism, such as would separate from the empire, we see in individuals a well-marked centrifugal tendency. Feudalism is a curious union of the old patriarchal system, reinforced by the novel and perhaps selfish desire for irresponsibility and petty sovereignty. From the third century onwards this spirit is abroad. It culminates in the baronial independence under the Carolingians; the bureaucratic power under the Byzantines ; the fissiparous emirates which divided and subdivided like sects in the Chris-
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tian Church, the once integral Caliphate. The con- Scanty quests of Justinian may be said to struggle in vain ev^ence on n . , J , . , J , ,,. , .,ss . ,. publicfeel-
against a certain form of this centrifugal particu- ing; agents larism. His administration, like that of Constantine withdraw or Theodosius, strove against the abuse of power in j^^trol subordinate officials. It is easier, however, to acquire than to retain ; and to conquer than to govern. § 4. We have traced some of the chief motives and Transient principal results of the Imperial Restoration in the "nd personal sixth century. The barbarian monarchies in a pro- ^thJsupcess of slow decay were unable to offer a final solu- pressed tion to any political problem. Certain conspicuous ^^fes: personalities, like Gaiseric and Theodoric, make one justified. lose sight of the want of purpose or of merit in the protectorate. The difficulties began with its recognition. When these strong characters were removed, the seeds of decadence seem to ripen at once and bear almost immediate fruit. There is the same rapid decline in the Visigothic monarchy; in the house of Clovis barely a century after his death; in the caliphate, rent by civil war within fifty years after the Hegira; in the house of Charles, with whom the Caroline Empire may truthfully be said to begin and end. The recuperative powers and robust vitality of the " Roman" Empire throughout this period challenge our attention and our homage. A great concentration of force accumulates under a masterful will; but lasts scarcely longer as effective and operating, than the empire of Attila or of the Avar Khan. The empire saw their rise and decline, and outlived them all. It could not surrender its ecumenical claim; it drew the repentant provinces into the fold once more, and governed them with that archaic Roman system, which at least guaranteed to the subject a security of life and property elsewhere unknown ; a justice, so far as the imperial will could enforce, steadfast and incorruptible; a freedom of commerce which in spite of obsolete prejudices and restrictions, made Constantinople the changing-house of the world's trade, a marvel of almost mythical riches, and the
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Transient goal of all the pirates : Avar, Arab, Russian, knocked and personal jn succession at her gates, happily for the pride of character of Western culture, -11u,ir«> in vain !—Still '.—Still the the empire preserved the supits traditional attitude of peace: and herein lay the monarchies t secret of its longevity. Other political essays implied conquest the momentary triumph of a dominant caste or a justified. kingly family, or a single will, which ceased to be efficient in the very moment that its dignity was legally secured and transmitted. Everywhere else, institutions fell into premature decay : there was no principle or policy, no cohesion. The next four hundred years are for West Europe and the Arab Empire alike, a continuous retrogression, a return to the embarrassing simplicity of the primitive rudiments. Not that the ideals of unity or of Christendom, with its common aim, had disappeared or ceased to attract. But as so often happens in history, they were recognised only to be at once forgotten ; like an orthodox lip-service, that repeats and enforces formulas, but will not trouble to translate them into practice. Justinian, the Janus of his time, as he has been called, looks backward and forward. He is a pious restorer, and a daring innovator. But he is throughout true to the old Roman belief in a single empire, a single church. In spite of the heavy burdens which it imposed, his rule secured for the subject one chief aim of a civilised commonwealth,—peaceful development upon historic lines. In other nations law ceases to be a bond of union, and local custom and usage replace the uniform administration of a code. We must repeat that it is often hard to answer the question, who is the ultimate gainer in the complex and centralised government, to which all civilised society approximates? The unifying conquests of Justinian, the regular procedure of law, the incidence of a scheme of taxation, somewhat ill-adjusted indeed, but in theory and principle equitable, the rigid formula of Catholic confession,—seem to carry with them a heavy atmosphere of finality. And it may safely be maintained that while the world lasts, a
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large number of men will prefer insecurity, hazard, Transient and hope to the most consummate organisation. j . , A, ... . ... s , . ,.
It andPersonill , character of
is urged against the cold impartiality and justice of the mtpthe British rule in India that it has taken the romantic element out of life. The citizen who returned to the empire under Justinian could forecast justified. his future ; the place of his children in the social hierarchy; the prescribed formulas of belief and of worship; even the necessary deductions for imperial taxes (though here perhaps he might find at times an unwelcome uncertainty). Elsewhere, separatism was rampant; and as a consequence, arbitrary caprice had free play. Where a modified success was attained in the art of governing (as among the Lombards of north and central Italy) a great debt was due to Roman traditions and the Roman Church. We may conclude, then, that the empire was justified in demanding the personal sacrifice of its subjects in the matter of taxation; in attaching once more to itself its scattered fragments; and in maintaining that preoccupation with peaceful pursuits and administrative routine, which so often seemed like culpable negligence. Yet while we desire to do ample justice to the motives, the industry, the success of Justinian in carrying on these traditions with unflagging hopefulness, we cannot disguise the weakness, whether the fault of circumstance or of design, which exposed the empire after his death to disloyalty within and wanton attack without. § 5. The reign of Justinian is the age of great names irreconcilable and great achievements, vivid personal pictures, and features of biographies almost complete. But when the student l^nflicting endeavours to conceive for himself or portray to testimony. others the motives or the character, the aims and the policy of these actors, or to comprehend the period under some general formula, he finds himself confronted by insoluble problems, and forced to the utmost extremes of dissent and approval. He advances gaily and securely enough for some time, guided by a certain group of writers who offer themselves as
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Irreconcilable pioneers in a tangled forest; he is prepared to gather features of up rjjjs conclusions, when he is confronted with another t h e age:
conflicting
'
1
1
-
1
1
set of witnesses, whose evidence he is unable to adapt into his plan. It is the custom for the historian, baffled and perforce inconsistent in his statements or his verdict, to take refuge in the hypothesis of a " period of transition." This universal excuse is perhaps more admissible in this reign than on most other occasions. Changes, not the result of deliberate intention or conscious power, were passing over human society. Pestilence, stealthy migration, hostile inroad, imperial welcome of foreigners, or a slow process of natural decay, well-nigh extinguished during this reign the ancient population of the empire. The archaic names and titles survive; but their wearers are of a different race, and have little understanding of the original meaning and implication of the offices they hold. Within the shell of the ancient fabric a new structure arose; and in the dearth of general knowledge, in the admiration squandered, it may be, upon the prowess or the intrigues of persons,—it is impossible to do more than guess at the actual issues slowly but certainly working under the artificial excitement and glitter of the surface. The generalisation of one path of research must be hastily withdrawn by {testimony equally authentic which carries one steadily against an earlier conviction. And the historian cannot help creating on the reader's mind the same impression of helplessness and irresolution, which the epoch has somehow left upon his own. Finlay, the most gifted and eloquent of English chroniclers of this reign, and the deepest student of the obscure tendencies which are gradually supplanting in interest the records of camp and court,—displays here as elsewhere erudition, sympathy, insight, and political acumen. Yet his pages are crowded with anomalies and inconsistencies; and within a few lines the verdict on the same evidence is reversed or suspended, the judgment on matters of fact or
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behaviour contradicted without shame or excuse. Irreconcilable Earnestly candid, scrupulously patient and honest in J™tures °f his detail, generous and sympathetic in his estimate of conflicting long-past men and things, he is utterly powerless (and testimony. doubtless through no fault or negligence of his own) to present us with a convincing picture of the time. Justinian, the genial and accessible, is also the " Mystery of Iniquity," the " Prince of Demons," the obscene " Dweller on the Threshold"; Theodora, the incomparably corrupt, is the devoted wife of an austere and simple husband; and is known outside private correspondence and secret memoirs, as the brave defender of a throne, the untiring ally of misfortune, the determined foe to official wickedness. Now, in our treatment of provincial matters, we seem to approach the final dissolution of the artificial framework of empire ; everywhere the hatred of the central power and the government, and the rapid formation of effective local centres and new corporations, heralds the approaching detachment of the several units into novel and independent organisms. And again, the slow and determined process of centralisation goes on its way like the Car of Juggernaut, crushing autonomies, closing schools, persecuting heterodox, confiscating municipal revenues, forbidding the use of arms, and striking deadly and irretrievable blows at all local freedom and institutions. Greece in particular is alternately represented as full of impotent hatred and defenceless decay, and as showing every sign of prosperity and good order. Now his favourite encomium, safety of life and estate, and equity of .administration, is still the undisputed title to the general esteem of the subject; and again, venality and cruelty in the official world, the heartless grinding of the poor, and the determined " war against private wealth," or the least trace of noble independence,— constitute all through the Roman dominions a sufficient pretext for the "general hostility" felt towards the " Roman administration." The bureaucracy carefully built up by Diocletian and Constantine
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Irreconcilable against the violence of the soldiers and the caprice of "ttc^T-^ an aut°crat> now appears as the sole guarantee of conflicting order and the friend of State and subject alike; now testimony. as a « distinct nation rather than a privileged class," with interests, hopes, and aims utterly at variance with the welfare of the citizen. While they are recognised to be the " real nucleus of civil society in the Roman world," the people aloof and antagonistic " stand completely apart from the representatives of Roman supremacy ... in a state of direct opposition." The number of functionaries taking their orders from the capital can now be conceived as costly and overwhelming, no less venal and incompetent than the bureaucracy conceived by the irreproachable middleclass regimen of Louis Philippe, and bearing the same outrageous proportion to the number of impoverished citizens who lag outside the magic circle of " administrative right." While on close inspection, we find a careful supervision maintained over this "corps" of functionaries;—their limit is frequently fixed by imperial decree; and if we may rely on the figures given, we must allow with a sigh that the Romans far outstripped modern rivals in the art of cheap and effective control with the least possible waste of men and material. At one time we see in Justinian's abolition of schools and consulate, the jealous tyranny of a despot, striking at the memories of the past with colossal vanity, like the Egyptian Rameses, so that his own name alone may appear upon a heap of ruins. At another, a wise and kindly prevention of an extravagance which pressed heavily either on individuals or on the State, and an economical endorsement a^id recognition of facts, by suppressing professors who could no longer command an audience :—who indeed like some favoured emulators to-day, drew golden salaries for preserving a discreet or enforced silence. Sometimes the whole financial system of Justinian seems to us a gigantic blunder, and we know not which to blame the most, the costly and needless extravagance of his public works, or the futile in-
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consequence of his fiscal designs, or the incredible Irreconcilable rapacity of his agents whom he encouraged, or at fea*ures of least failed to control. Yet from other sources, we conflicting know that he set before himself the ideal of a simple testimony. life, that he was careful and saving even beyond his predecessors, and managed to effect without serious disturbance of commerce or interference with individual rights, enterprises and conquests for which his ministers prophesied only disaster and ruin. Now, the emperor appears as an inopportune successor of Trajan in a bold and aggressive policy, as " lifting " (in Ammian's picturesque phrase) "the horns of the military caste," and wringing taxes from the poor to sustain a policy of costly " Chauvinism " : at another, he is summoned before the bar to receive sentence for starving the army, for jealousy of the commanders, for halved or belated pay, for preference for that civilian office which in its new Chinese pride demanded the humble obeisance of the staff-corps at the imperial receptions. Even the mission of Alexander the Logothete to Italy may be depicted as extorting the last farthing from a country already ruined by civil war; or as wisely putting an end to lavish expenditure, reducing the troops of occupation, and abolishing the useless pensions which, with the corn distribution, turned highest and lowest alike into the paupers of the imperial bounty. Once more, in military matters is Justinian a heartless victor at the cost of innumerable lives and the devoted loyalty of an ill-requited friend ? or is he the continuer of that especially Byzantine policy of wise and humane parsimony which reposed the safety of the empire, rather in defensive measure than rash hazard, rather in a careful system of forts and palisades than in the constant heroic exposure of the troops on every provocation ?—And in this connection let us pose a question not of judgment but of fact; how was it that the splendid chain of northern fortresses offered no check to the marauders of his last years ? was the scheme carried out at all, as in Africa we know it to
234 frreconci/able features of the age: conflicting testimony.
Simple and conscientious energy ofJ.: malevolent witness of disappointed placemen.
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have been, by the magnificent reliques of Solomon's masonry, or were the guard-houses emptied of their necessary garrisons ?—And again, in the abolition of local councils, militia, and franchise, can we detect the true motive or measure the extent of this gratuitous crusade against tradition ? Is it envy or economy, or a wise provision against tumult, such as raged in his own capital in the " Nika," and almost overturned the throne ? or is it a necessary step in centralising all effective forces under a single (and that a civil) command,—which is confessed to be an indispensable measure for the safety of the civilised State in modern times ? May not the vague complaints, which our historians repeat, of the wanton destruction of local liberties, be due perhaps to the malignity of " Procopius," when he might attribute to the direct policy of Justinian the Hunnish overthrow of the Hellenic municipalities in the Crimea, which indeed occurred in his reign, but for which he can only remotely be held accountable ? § 6. This section is by no means an ungrateful indictment of the mental distress or incompetence of the great and generous Hellenophil, to whom Byzantine studies owe so much.—Some, indeed, of the problems posed will not be found in his pages or are rather implied and suggested there than placed in naked contrast. Finlay is not the only writer who cannot make up his mind, whether Roman rule at this stage in human development was a' boon or a curse to mankind: and every earnest inquirer must confess that a study of this period, beyond any other in Roman history, leaves him dizzy and baffled, fatigued by the endless and futile task of reconciling the competing testimony. In the last resort, we shall find our verdict both of character and events, according to a personal bias in favour of autonomy or centralisation. Our view of men and things must in the end be subjective;—perhaps more so in dealing with the problems of Justinian's era than in surveying the revival of
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Heraclius or of Leo, the wars of Basil, or the feudal triumph of the Comnenian clan. I must then, while 'freely confessing my inability to conceive or to portray the age as a whole, reconciled and self• . • „ <• • e t_i consistent, offer my reasons for passing a favourable judgment on the personal character and the political wisdom of these two famous rulers. I conceive that both Augustus and Justinian have suffered from the peculiar and unique air of majesty, with which their durable achievement and consummate success have enshrouded them. We are apt to think of Augustus, not as the homely and simple man of business, clothed in homespun garments and begging for votes like any other candidate, but as the inaccessible sovereign, founder of an almost endless series, author of the proudest of earthly titles. We read back this posthumous splendour till the rays of Byzantine, German, and Russian Caesars converge in a focus and dazzle our eyes. Justinian too has been enthroned by jurists in a serene and matchless dignity which we are sure he never enjoyed. That tendency to regard the great ones of the past as a superhuman race and to exaggerate their foibles and anomalies into something of the " monster," has been fatal to any correct or sympathetic estimate. We have endeavoured to portray to ourselves, to heighten the dramatic interest and thrill, a colossal figure or genie of Arabian Nights; and our ideas are largely imbued with the foolish and superstitious prejudice of the Procopian writer. But if we try and move away the curtains from the draped and sinister figure, we shall find another simple and sedulous chief magistrate, who is neither the "empurpled Nihilist" of Hodgkin, nor the "merciless reformer" of Finlay. In his voracity for public business, he reminds us of Philip II.; and he had unfortunately one further department of curious inquiry which was closed to the orthodox mind of the Spanish king, in the theological discussions,
Simple and ~yn^s. malevolent •"ftmssoj disappointed placemen.
c
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Simple and which kept him up night after night unguarded consetentwus^ with grave churchmen. Hypatius and Pompeius malevolent'' were slain by the soldiers after the " Nika"; but Justinian himself shows that humane and forgiving disposition to personal foes, which after Phocas placemen. will desert Byzantine annals for two hundred years, only to shed lustre again on the striking contrast of Eastern and Western methods in the tenth century. His behaviour to Vitiges and to Gelimer is on a par with the most generous instances of later chivalry; and he pardons the clumsy conspirators who in 548 tried to profit by his wellknown dislike of a military retinue and his passion for metaphysics ;—with which, it may be, he consoled his solitude and bereavement after Theodora's death in the same year. We cannot withhold our admiration from his attached loyalty to his prefect, the "infamous John of Cappadocia." He tries to protect him from the keener insight and well-deserved indignation of Theodora; he leaves the sentence to the Senate; and recalls the tonsured criminal from exile on the empress' demise. We may accept the constant warnings of Laurentius that Justinian knew nothing of his minister's cruel oppression. Some will aver that he was not ignorant, but wilfully indifferent to the methods employed, so long as the money was forthcoming. But there are not wanting in other quarters signs of Justinian's limited ability, which while it hindered him from reposing implicit trust in an absent general, made him at times the victim of an unscrupulous attendant. And here we may perhaps notice an injustice to his partner. Historians, able to detect the simple character, the occasional indecision, the innocent vanity and kindliness behind the traditional lineaments of the autocrat,—have yet set down his errors to the influence of Theodora. Yet is not her wise and firm intervention at two signal crises the best testimony both to her character and policy ? Theodora determined to remove John from an office which he disgraced,
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from a sovereign's confidence which he abused. Simple and We admire Justinian as a man for his kindly feeling ^J^r". for the fallen vizier; but the palm of statesman- malevolent ship must be given to Theodora. And beyond the «»<we»» °f r -i i c ii. * 7 i i iu i- disappointed negligible rancour of the Anecdota, what authentic proof have we of her mischievous and haughty interference ? Theodora indeed would to-day be termed a social reformer and a firm and outspoken friend ; and that she humbled the pride at her levees of some office-holders and magnates of the capital, cannot stand seriously to her discredit with those who read between the lines, as to the character and merits of the official class in the sixth century. One might hazard, indeed, a likely conjecture, that the real grievance against these rulers was due to their forward foreign policy and their domestic economy. It would appear that the reign of the good old Anastasius was the "golden age" of a pampered civil service; and that the treasures of the realm were gradually accumulating in the hands of a small official class, uniting to shield each other and to restrict the central power. Now we have written in vain if we have not contrived somehow to elicit this fact ; that throughout Roman and Byzantine history the enterprise and policy of the sovereign and the welfare of the State have been identical and synonymous. It is no secret that the reign of Justinian witnessed the decay of the civil service as a lucrative career, the emptying of the law-courts,—which might be said to have become, in a very genuine sense, " the Halls of Lost Footsteps." There is a certain similarity between Justinian and the great Chinese emperor Hwang-Ti, who built the Wall, destroyed the books, and persecuted the Literati,—just as his European successor spent enormous sums on the fortress-system of defence, closed the Schools, and curtailed the profits or abolished the sinecures of notaries and barristers. It may be that the whole obscure movement of opposition and disintegration under Justin II., ending in his melancholy
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Simple and complaint and warning to Tiberius, was due to a conscientious determined effort on the rpart of the Bureaux to energy of J.: . _ . . .. . ., , . recover influence and gain. It is quite easy to inmalevolent witness of terpret from pretexts of sound economy the new control over municipal Hellenic exchequers, the placemen. mission of Alexander to Italy (as we saw above), the stoppage of pensions rather than of salaries in the case of the Neo-Platonists, the substitution of a central garrison for the dangerous or intermittent patriotism of a local militia,—and (gravest indictment of all in the eyes of the classical and republican student) the ending of the consulate,—which, as every reader of the annalists knows, had become corrupted into a mere synonym for " largess," and may not inaptly be translated by the modern " baksheesh." Justinian refused to multiply comfortable offices; and I should trace to motives of economy the occasional and deliberate reunion of civil and military functions which Bury has so well elucidated. Justinian had two main objects on which he expended revenue : his agents may have extorted from reluctant penury, but at least he did not squander upon place-hunters and sinecures ;—the recovery of " Roman " prestige, and the security of the frontier. That the one victory was deceptive and ephemeral, the other precaution to some extent ineffective, cannot be set down in his disfavour. We claim singleness of motive but not striking political intuition for the emperor, whose unwearying if somewhat misplaced devotion to public business deserves our wonder and approval. A solid phalanx of civilian resistance lay behind the "pacifist" speech of John the prefect, when he dissuaded the emperor from his transmarine enterprise. Yet it will hardly be maintained that it was the prefect and not the emperor who had at heart the real welfare of the people ! § 7. But a still more difficult task lies before the apologist,—Justinian's treatment of the army and his generals. And I am here quite willing to allow the
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justice of that charge (which is at the same time an Firm mainexcuse),—that the imperial vigilance, forethought, con- i^na^e, °^, fidence and perseverance relaxed in the later period, trol over which may be dated from his illness or from his armyand , j. m • • ji i• r « j civilian : bereavement. Two princes in the line of Augustus increasingly have been singularly unfortunate in their longevity: corrupt Tiberius and Justinian. The sword or the dagger which cut off the Caesars of the third century in their prime, was kindly to their reputation; and Justinian reigned and lived too long. The " Nika" riots and their sanguinary settlement established absolutism in the capital, where Anastasius had humbly pleaded with his people; they mark, as has been well said, the " last convulsion " in the passage from classic to mediaeval times. The turbulence of the Demes revived indeed in the next period of decline, and will be there noticed as they dispose of the crown and bestow an easy patronage on the sovereign. But the massacre of Mundus and Belisarius establishes for the lifetime of Justinian the central supremacy ; " order reigns in Constantinople" as it reigned later in Warsaw. Undaunted confidence marks the second epoch (532-548), decisive measures without foolhardiness. But in the third (548-565) there is a sure and gradual relaxing of the tension, there is an atmosphere of mediaeval gloom and ecclesiastical preoccupation. A conspiracy shakes his trust in men if it does not, as with Tiberius, spoil his humanity ; his faithful consort leaves him ; and the plague strikes him down among meaner victims. It were as well for his renown that he had not recovered ; "provida Pompeio dederat Campania febres" He had lost heart with his bodily vigour, and he is no longer confident in his mission. And it is to this period that we may without hesitation refer that general policy towards the defences of the empire; which, after Africa and Italy had been recaptured by his armies and the Mediterranean scoured by his fleets, had to depend for the protection of the capital itself upon private enterprise. In his earlier and more successful epoch when
240
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Firm main- he was rather the pioneer than the creature of cirtewmceof cumstance, Justinian had a double aim in relation central con' J . trolover to the forces of war. TT He was as determined as and Diocletian or as Constantine to maintain the supremac Y of tne civi1' that is tlle imperial, power over corrupt the military leaders, who had overthrown the stability 'manThe danger was of ^ne reaim m the third century. J & darmate.' , , . ever-present ; for the army was the " residuary legatee" of any extinct reigning family, — as witness Jovian, Valentinian, and the successors not merely of Valentinian III. but of Theodosius himself. This fancied submission of the military element lasted just so long as the Caesar was himself a competent general. Diocletian no less than Theodosius could boast that he bequeathed a stable throne, founded on the pre-eminence of a civil ruler and a civilian hierarchy, — that word (civilis and civilitas) which meets us with significant emphasis alike in the pages of Eutropius and of Cassiodorus. But events falsified this sanguine expectation ; and the emperor sank as in other centralised monarchies, into the puppet of a palace-faction or a creature of the military caste. We have seen the various issue of the dissonant policy of East and West : Byzantium, as of conscious design and clear purpose, set itself with the lettered Mandarinat of China to thwart and control the element of force. It is still a disputed point, of the utmost interest to the political speculator, whether national welfare is better consulted under civilian or military regime. It may be suspected by some that the sleek and comfortable corruption of middle-class bureaucrats is not more wholesome for a people's morals than the overt supremacy of the war-lord of chivalry and of the sword. Byzantium, like China, made its choice and no doubt was largely indebted to this firm decision for its long spell of power ; in the steady intercourse between capital and province, in the wise conclave of that central corporation, whose resolve, as Laurentius frankly tells us, it is the sovereign's business to ratify and endorse. This potent yet un-
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obtrusive influence spared the records of the Eastern Firm mamempire from pretorian riot, from Turkish mercenaries. ien
242
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Distrust of the army, both in numbers and in spirit, until it was army m annihilated in the .dismal reign of Phocas,'— & latter penod jo§^ was due as much to the civil policy or the successors grounded: of Leo i. as to the despondency and relaxed energy °f Justinian's later years. The exploits of the motley elements: hosts of Belisarius form an interlude of undisputed his merits. glory, in which both monarch and viceroy must have an equal share. But towards the middle of the century, Justinian resumed the suspicious attitude of a secluded ruler to an imposing force, which he did not personally control, whose exultation on the successful field might find vent in the disloyal shouts of " Belisarie tu vincas!" There is something strange and hardly Roman in the feudal retinue which followed this general ; like a curious private bodyguard of gladiators in the northern camp under Tiberius, 7000 attached personal servants looked to Belisarius alone for orders, and recognised in the doubtless " Teutonic " simpleness of their loyalty no vague allegiance to an invisible state or emperor. Here is the comitatus of the early German ; and a premonition of the great armed households of mediaeval barons, finding even a parallel in the trusty dependents of Basil, who in 963 placed by their means Nicephorus Phocas on the throne. The great civilian officers hated and discouraged a warlike policy. They diverted the wealth of the province by a ceaseless flow to the lion's den of the central exchequer. In distant conquest John of Cappadocia sees nothing but an idle gratification of vanity or of honour. The etiquette of the court demanded the humble reverence of the military leaders to the prefect ; and the composition of the army secured little respect in a corrupt and overrefined society. Something like the unnatural and long-fostered scorn for a soldier's profession existed among the wealthier and official classes. The halfbarbarian allies, the art of war, and the tiresome renown of a great leader, were no better than
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necessary evils. The recruits were rude and ignorant Distrust of and spoke in strange tongues : they (like a f^>m . , & J obeyed ^ & , , - J , u- r latter penod mediaeval army) their own chosen or national chief; welland the danger of a united mutiny was averted, but grounded: ,, rr r -x i • i i ,1 j inhairnwnAous the efficacy of a united army impaired, by the strange feudai system of independent and divided commands. The elements: mercenaries, as Procopius shows, formed the most hu meritseffective contingent; and the emperor may have preferred the cheap reinforcements of tributary kings to the dearer sacrifice of his cherished tax-payers. They fought under their own chiefs and were uninterested in the person of the occupant of the throne. Indeed, as in the Italian republics, and under the Sai'tic dynasty in Egypt, mercenary generals were preferred, partly because they threatened no revolution, partly because the foremost nobles preferred the less perilous service of the palace and the ministry; Narses and Peter are both Persarmenians, and the pages of Procopius bear ample witness to the alien birth of the chief defenders of the Roman Republic. It cannot be denied that in this most brilliant of aggressive reigns, a policy of anti-militarism was pursued. Pay (as in Eastern armies to-day) was rarely forthcoming; the commissariat (which still fell within the department of the prefect) was craftily dispensed, so that the real controlling power might be felt to rest with the civilian bureaux at the capital; and the army itself, as we have seen, was broken up into independent and unsympathetic battalions, at times quite irresponsive to the single will. It must be pointed out that the malicious envy and suspicion which thwarted the plans of Belisarius was by no means the work of a jealous and timid emperor. It was the outcome of the policy of the civilian hierarchy, which during the previous reigns had declined the officious barbarian protectorate, and aimed in the Juristic period, 200235, many centuries before it was possible, at creating and profiting by a purely pacific State. The legislation of the time lays continued emphasis on the
244 Distrust of Ttterm r' d wellgrounded: inharmonious feudal elemcnts: his merits.
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severance of class and interest: while the citizen *s f°rbidden to bear arms and cannot throw off the responsibility of his station and well-defined duty, the military and the clerical element is discharged , , .. „. ,. , ,. , trom taxation. Thus is there recognised that prmciple, pregnant with evil, and destined to issue in ^e French Revolution, which distinguishes with dangerous precision the rdles of the official and the tax-payer. The general character then of the Roman army under Justinian, amounting perhaps in all to 150,000 men, presents strange and anomalous features. Soldiers were brave, and generals were skilful; but there was no discipline; sedition was rife, and mutiny avenged on the government arrears of pay, retrenchment of supplies, and a wayward or niggardly system of promotion. It was small wonder that Justinian superseded, so far as was possible, these living but uncertain walls by durable stonework. These armies indeed which copy or anticipate the hazardous daring of Teutonic chivalry and resent the obsolete control and strategy of the legion, will give further trouble under his successors, and will disappear (to credit a current story) under Phocas. The reorganisation under Heraclius and Leo III. will follow different lines.—With this brief appreciation of the military problem which Justinian found and bequeathed to his heirs we must end our general survey of the reign. Even in this department the policy of the emperor must be held blameless, the difficulties well-nigh insuperable. Still does this epoch, in our judgment, deserve the tribute of Hase, with which we started; with all its weakness it has a serene and tranquil air which cannot be found in the previous or succeeding periods. And while all cohesive and centripetal influences seem suspended, and every class and order bent on violating the integrity of the State, the emperor, magnificent and isolated in his hard work and steadfast purpose, stands alone to represent the Roman unity. For this he laboured according to his lights, and without
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counting the cost to himself or others. In an age Distrust of ym which has witnessed the pathetic impotence of a "*?™ . , r f latter period benevolent autocrat to heal his country s woes, weiibecause the time and the society are out of tune, grounded: we shall not speak harshly of the efforts or of the lfe^^<mimi failure of this most laborious sovereign in the whole elements: his merits Roman line. -
CHAPTER III SUCCESS OF THE FORCES ARRAYED AGAINST ABSOLUTISM ; OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE (565-610 A.D.) FLAV. ANIC. JUSTINUS 1 518-527 . ' praetor' nom. FLAV. ANIMUS JUSTINIANUS I. birth. (neph.) p-/-i"s FLAV. JUSTINUS II. (neph.) . . . 565-578 birth, FLAV. TIBERIUS II. CONSTANTINUS 578-582 adopt, FLAV. MAURICIUS 582-602 adopt, PHOCAS (or FOCAS) 602-610 milit. nom.
Rare instance § 1. IT is obvious to the most desultory student that of'personal' th Roman Empire had to be founded anew in the r momentum: nadir of beginning of the seventh century. The secret cause Rome and of the collapse of great systems, whether of Charles murder of or of Justinian, is one of the most abstruse problems Maurice. of history; and the latter case is specially obscure. Not seldom in Roman history we tremble on the brink of a catastrophe. What seems like pure accident alone wards off the fatal day; the cry of the geese on the Capitol, the sanguine temper of Camillus, the charms of Capua, the strange daring of the nervous Octavian, the clear sight of Diocletian, the sudden inspiration of Constantine, the spasmodic patriotism of Heraclius, the protestant and worldly spirit of Leo, and (to pass over several centuries and make generous allowance) the chivalrous influence of the house of Comnenus or Palseologus. But the hour of the most acute crisis may be fixed in the first and second decade of this seventh century. Heraclius is the " second founder " of the Eastern empire, with more indefeasible claim to the title than any other. We are at present concerned with the steps leading to this rapid decline. The institutions of Justinian stand before us a mere heap of ruins. The whole territory of government has to be reconquered and reoccupied. 246
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The obscure and often puzzling annals of the Herao Bareiwtance liads disclose dimly to us a new empire ; military ^'j^^ff themes supplant civil provinces as areas of adminis- nadir of tration ; the archaic and more genuine features of ^tome and T-I 1 1 1 1 i , iI T , n murder of Koman rule have all but disappeared. It is often Maurice. hard for the historical critic to apportion weight and value between personal and impersonal influences. We have seen how universal and how well justified is the suspicion now entertained of the former. But we may easily carry our deference to the Subconscious too far. Occupied in reading subtle changes in a people's life, in tracing subterranean economic currents, we distrust the vociferous and voluble motives and policy of statesmen. We believe that even the most sagacious is carried like the rest on a stream, which he illustrates but does not control. Yet even in a modern State, the personal equation counts for much ; the accidental interview ; the change in a strictly constitutional throne ; the tactful and sympathetic message or visit of ceremony, the appropriate birth or love-match which brings the throne and the first family within the simple understanding of Democracy. Power and influence, it is true, have been dissipated and weakened, when extended over a vast multitude ; but this ultimate source of authority is but rarely found acting in unanimous concert or with any certainty of aim. Nor have a people's ministers a monopoly ; great issues are still to-day decided in the depths of a palace or a zenana ; the " high politic " of Europe is sometimes settled in a Tyrolese shootingbox. Now it is impossible not to connect the downfall and the peril of the Roman Empire in that age with the murder of Maurice and the grotesque and fatal accident that carried Phocas to the throne. Maurice had restored the king of Persia to his kingdom; and the grateful sovereign was bound to him and his house by very genuine ties. The brutal murder of his benefactor, the extinction (as it was supposed) of his line, set Chosroes on a policy in which ambition and vengeance bore perhaps an
248
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Rare instance equally mingled share. The signal weakness of *"""""""* Rome in the absence of the dynastic principle was nadir of here displayed. Chosroes was the friend of Maurice Rome and and not of Rome; and all sense of obligation to the murder of Roman republic or Roman army was overwhelmed in his passionate desire to retaliate. The inert monster raised by a freak of fortune offered no resistance ; he never issued forth to protect his capital; and the beacons of the Persian host might perhaps have been seen by the more venturesome outposts of the Avars. The provinces refused homage, and Heraclius the elder, a curious but more fortunate parallel to the elder Gordian, withheld with impunity the tribute and corn owed to the expensive helplessness of the pauperised capital. The sole records of a reign passed over by chroniclers in shamefast silence, are murders of the partisans of the previous reign,—of that entire adoptive system which from Justin II. (565-578) to Tiberius II. (578582) and Maurice (582-602) had struggled manfully against the general decay, and what is stranger still, the general disaffection. It is perhaps fanciful to reconstruct the result of the peaceful abdication of Maurice, the elevation of Germanus or Theodosius. But we may safely affirm that the whole fabric of empire would not have collapsed; and that no impassable chasm would separate the age of Heraclius from his predecessor. The continuance of the Maurician line might have preserved Rome and Persia from the needless conflict; which reflected indeed a transient glory on the new house, but at the same time opened the heart of both kingdoms to the fanatics of Arabia. It was no regular process of decomposition that all but ruined Rome, but the paralysis of the central power under Phocas, and the hatred of Chosroes, which found colourable pretext for an aggressive war in the pursuit of filial vengeance. Forces of But having done justice to the personal and disintegra- largely accidental element in the crisis, we cannot tton and i , ,, i • , , ± , • 1 - 1 • TT. dissent overlook the hidden tendencies, which in (Persia as
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in Rome alienated the sympathies and interests of Forces of subjects and sovereign, and made both realms an ^^fj^ easy prey to foreign invasion. It is clear that after dissent. Justinian the "Romans," unaware of their debt to the central authority, resented control and allowed the monarchy to continue on sufferance. The single test applied by a pampered body of irresponsible critics was success ; and the latter years of the aged emperor had shown the weakness and despondency that lay behind the imperial pretensions. Under Justin II. and Maurice the northern barbarians hung like a storm-cloud over the capital, and with the sense of insecurity, the discontent grew among those who had long ago surrendered every privilege, save the right of passing captious sentence on their rulers. There was abroad a sense of impending ruin, of coming catastrophe ; Maurice for his piety is given the choice of suffering the penalty of sin in this present life; Tiberius is saved from the wrath to come, and the judgment is delayed for his sake. It was felt that the blow had fallen with Phocas; and the seventh century will witness a great moral recovery among the people of the capital; just as in the eighth a kind of Protestant Asiatic reaction gives back some of the blunt and sturdy confidence of the old Roman character. But the history of the last half of the sixth century is the record of a dissident aristocracy, an estranged public opinion, and rulers' best intentions defeated or perverted. For the system of Justinian, like many other carefully devised schemes, had grown old with its author and could not survive him. The empire had always taken a most serious view of its manifold duties and burdens. Since even the semblance of a dyarchy had been abolished in the fourth century, there was no restriction to the prerogative, because there was no limit to the responsibility. An honest ruler could not divest him of this responsibility. As we have often noted, there are no rots faineants, no mikados in the imperial line. We are still divided
250 Forces of
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to-day on the question of the proper function of government; and it is idle to condemn either the performance or the motive of those who were confronted with the urgent duties of reconstruction and defence. The emperors entertained a profound distrust of their own agents. To commit the task of supervision to the subject, as we endeavour to do to-dayf might well appear to them a cowardly and a dangerous measure. We are here face to face with a very real problem—that of sustaining a healthy interest and a strong vitality in public concerns without sacrificing discipline and continuity, without opening the fundamentals of the State to the attack of a noisy and unanimous minority. Historians with democratic bias may assume that all stir is life ; and may condemn a government for believing that to maintain order is its primary duty. The empire was fundamentally and confessedly defensive and conservative. Few, if any, questioned the ultimate and ideal character of its institutions or of its religion. In the happy coalition of Church and State, the identity of interest in Christian and in citizen, men fancied they had reached the final and perfect form of human society. And this belief continued triumphant even among the dark clouds and obvious and sinister prophecies of the sixth century. But this unalterable form of government involved autocracy and depended for its success on the personal vigour of the autocrat. We may well doubt if the inhabitants of the great centres known to us only for turbulence in the circus, for subtlety in metaphysics, were able to form a correct view of a political crisis or take measures for the welfare of the State. What is clear is that they never claimed this undoubted privilege of the free; and that they were contented, as in the past, to delegate their rights to the emperor. Centralism can scarcely be avoided where an artificial system (and in many respects an empire is always artificial) holds together by a network of tact or of force a variety of races and creeds. There was
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rapid and easy intercourse with the capital: but Forces of communication was infrequent and constrained be- ^^fja" tween the several provinces. We are brought round dissent. once more to the insoluble problem': was it worth while to defend and hold together this unwieldy aggregate ? to value order above liberty, traditional routine above spontaneous initiative ? If we incline in any degree to applaud the imperial policy, if we waste no regrets on the tutelage of peoples perhaps for ever unsuited for self-government, we must acquit Justinian of error ; he could not have done otherwise. If we grant that the vigilant supervision of civil service and of army is the duty of the sovereign and not of the nation at large, not merely his policy but his method was commendable. Perhaps to the "Roman," the distinction would have been unmeaning. Caesar was elected to be the representative of the people and to save them trouble, to feed and police them, to watch over the governors and officials, who were at best a necessary evil. And yet it is easy to see what danger lies in this tranquil surrender of duties and responsibilities to other shoulders. The vigorous and disinterested monarch finds no genuine successor ; power falls into the hands of pedants or court-favourites; the army, even more necessary to pacific and defensive States than to militant and aggressive, is reduced and starved; and the people, unused to public cares and charges, becomes incapable of the smallest effort at self-defence. § 2. The counterpoise to the excessive power of No' ephorgovernment is found in various sections of the body alty'to politic. The seat and character of this " Ephoralty " ^m unconwill vary with the temper and traditions of the people, trolled Hegel, as we have already noted, passes by with ^S*^' contempt the sounder prejudice of Fichte. Absolute feudal power is no less mischievous in a number than in a unit. The manifold duties of government have been seldom exercised by one man, never by a million ; and the sole difference between a nominal autocracy and the most unrestricted freedom lies in the spirit of the
252 No 'ephoralty' to guard people from, uncontrolled centralism: services of feudal nobility.
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intermediate group who administer, who control and create (or pervert) public opinion. It may stand out as a distinct class or official hierarchy over against the mass of the people; or it may rise from it and merge insensibly in it again. The faculty for genuine self-government is gauged in this way; if administration is largely in the hands of amateurs who conceive public business as a necessary episode in the life of every citizen, and not the special duty of an expert caste. "Ap^eiv Kal ap^ecrOat, ev fjtepet, is alike the maxim of the free Hellene and the modern Anglo-Saxon. Either will lay aside, without complaint, a r61e which he is at any moment at the bidding of his fellows prepared to undertake again. In nations "born for slavery" the official remains always an official; and the functionary seems to spring from an altogether different stock, to be made of another clay. The advance of a nation towards true political freedom is tested by this easy transition from office to private life. If the line of demarcation between rulers and ruled is hard and steadfast, no great purpose is served by changing the label of government; the people remain equally inert and dependent upon a court, a feudal nobility, a bureaucracy, or a powerful and perhaps unrecognised mercantile committee. The increasing complexity of government in modern times, the growing rivalry of nations, the needful secrecy of movement or offensive invention, the vastness of imperial aggregates—all this has worked mischief with genuine democracy and the pretensions of the people to direct control. The average modern citizen is both ignorant and dependent,—in spite of the press and the wide franchise which seem to equalise all men. The central government is no less than under Justinian, a matter for experts; and although the ideal is still recognised,—easy interchange from office to privacy,—yet it becomes each year more difficult. Thus the character and " personnel" of the expert class becomes a matter of supreme interest alike for the citizen and for the
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student of history. He will be more or less indifferent -ATo 'ephorto the precise formula of government, and will look ^^r^° ec / with pity upon the spirited struggles of the past from unconcentury to change one master for another, to oust tolled TT r j. rr<-,i i TT -ii c. j it. i centralism: King Log to set up King Stork. He will find that services of liberty survives best, where public service is rather a feudal natural but transient episode than a life-long pro- nobilui'fession ; where there exists a class nurtured on hereditary traditions, which has no objection to office, and, from private retirement or recognised opposition, no hesitation in criticising the official world. In the " Roman" world the line between the official order and the mass was sharply drawn. There existed no outspoken and impartial class of landowners to act as a makeweight or counterpoise. But the rise of an independent influence has been detected with much ingenuity by modern historians. It is shown that the activity, the judicial firmness and military promptitude of the monarch, was thwarted and hampered by a dangerous rank which nullified the diligence of the three successors of Justinian. They precipitated the anarchy under Phocas and were only humbled by the degradation and weakness of the empire, for which they were largely to blame. § 3. The younger Justin was by no means a con- Justin's temptible successor of his great uncle. His rpolicy of confession , ,j . , ,, ,, . ,. . ofhisfailure bold resistance rather than ignoble ransom, was wise and its and dignified; but his malady and mental confusion causes: made him the easy prey of courtiers, against whose wiles he warns his adopted heir in one of the most mob: stern sincere and convincing speeches that antiquity has lfsson°ftl'e y handed down, along with many mythical and academic iex C ' harangues. The two following sovereigns show an apologetic attitude to the forces which silently arrayed themselves against the central authority. Tiberius II. relaxes discipline and squanders the treasures in an attempt to conciliate. He earned an unmerited fame for liberality when he was merely weak and shortsighted; and he handed down to Maurice a difficult task, with impaired resources to achieve it. Nothing
254 Justm's confession of his failure and Us causes : arrogance of bureaux and mob: stern lesson of the next century.
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short of a crisis could cure the general disaffection. Long before Maurice refused to ransom the captives whom he suspected, perhaps with justice, of being merely renegades and deserters, the army was seething with mutiny. We have full records of the inconclusive campaigns in Thrace, and the nervous changing of the imperial generals, Peter and Comentiolus. Whatever the cause of the altered temper, whether personal dislike or general grievance, the army was insolent and undisciplined. The capital might conceivably have become the scene of a military tyranny, like that which disgraced Bagdad under the later caliphate and the Turkish troops. The Senate begged the emperor not to venture his sacred person in the field; and Maurice, unnerved by omens and gloomy looks, soon returns to the capital, though as a subject he had fought bravely in Persia. The official ring demanded that the emperor should remain in that seclusion which ensured his impotence and their power. The army despised the civilian sovereigns, and nothing but the extirpation of the " Roman" forces under Phocas, and the personal prowess and initiative of Heraclius, could save the State. The mutinous element was annihilated in that obscure and disgraceful interlude of eight years. The business of Heraclius was to create anew a loyal army, a patriotic Church, an effective administration. This task he performed in the silent and, as it seemed, slothful years of his first decade. The new monarchy is not the monarchy of Justinian, but something novel and original. By a salutary threat, he convinced insolent nobles and seditious factions that they were but the menials of a central authority which was in no sense beholden to them. The supremacy of Constantinople was artificial, and by no means definitely established. It had not yet assumed its recognised position as sentinel,—Warden of the Eastern Marches of Europe. The locality of the capital was not assured. From the time of Anastasius it had been regarded as unsafe ; the latter years of Justinian had
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shown the difficulty of defence without a strong Justin's M Danubian frontier '; and the reign of Phocas had cofo /*f ? *> hts failure been fatal to its prestige. The unexpected resolve and Us of Heraclius sobered the Byzantines ; but as we shall causes: , . , ., , ,, . ., , , arrogance of see, his family were never at ease in their midst, and fmreau,l, a^ his last descendant was the first Roman emperor who mob: stern reconquered the capital by the help of foreigners. Here we anticipate the course of events ; and have encroached, perhaps improperly, on the records and the policy of the African house. But we are compelled to judge of an obscure tendency by its undoubted issue in fact. The aristocracy that trembled before Phocas, the army that was crushed by incessant defeat and vanished without a trace, the Church which preached orthodoxy, but not manliness, — these were the malign influences which rendered futile the task of Tiberius II. and Maurice. Tiberius yielded to official selfishness and popular clamour. The idle demes believed themselves arbiters of the fate of the empire and the imperial line. The factions of the circus gradually resumed their sway, — and indeed monopolised political power and joined gladly in the revolution. Throughout this period of forty years, the capital, as the residence or the prison of the sovereign, drew to itself all vitality. The official class, — inseparable evil of orderly government, was corrupted by the general prosperity and by the deference and the complaisance of the emperor. An untimely severity, a want of judgment and tact, made the reforms of Maurice unpopular, and exposed the weakness of the fabric of government. The capital, in spite of its pride and bureaucratic tradition, cringed before the nominee, or rather spokesman, of a few disorderly soldiers. The wholesome influence of distant provinces put an end to the disgrace, and showed the malcontents their true servility and dependence. Nothing can be more obscure than the causes of this estrangement of sovereign and subject, of this selfish insubordination. But perhaps (as we noted at the outset of this brief
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survey of a critical time) more than in most important movements, personal qualities and defects were to blame. Had Tiberius II. been spared, he might have learnt the lesson of moderation, firmness, parsimony;—had Maurice been more considerate to classes long unused to coercion, had Germanus seized the falling diadem, had not Chosroes exchanged a lively gratitude for bitter hatred,—the history of the ensuing century would have proceeded on very different lines. Nevertheless, we may safely assert that the capital, with its mob and ruling classes, needed a severe lesson ; it was not indispensable to Cassar, but Caasar was indispensable to it. The revival came from the provinces; and the hereditary principle, shaken by the elevation of Phocas the centurion, disused through many years of adoptive succession, is recognised once more as the secret of strength and stability. § 4. I may be pardoned perhaps for dwelling still Dissenters in all classes : longer on this eventful period of fifty years, with greater religious detail that can be usually permitted in this division of divisions: peril of the work. The judicious reader will still insist on the functionary advance of more certain evidence, to bear witness and the corporation to the current of disintegration, at which historians of civil darkly hint. Nor am I doing an injustice to the rest servants. of the work, introducing a disproportionate study of a single brief half-century. For it is here especially that we can clearly detect the constitutional difficulties which beset the Roman throne;—the weaknesses which led to its final overthrow in the seventh century. A war in the East, the perils of the Danubian frontier, may be dismissed by the historical theorist in a sentence ; but it requires all his acumen and his erudition to explain the change of Justinian's majestic and imposing fabric into a shapeless heap. It would be an error to suppose that any one class represented and monopolised the centrifugal tendency. In the highest and most perfectly .organised corporation, the Church, there was the same internal dissidence, which we may notice in the Middle Ages, before the salutary and Justin's confession of his failure and its causes: arrogance of bureaux and mob: stern lesson of the next century.
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sobering influence of the Reform produced the central- Dissenters in ising Catholic reaction. Not yet had the menace of all classes: . , religious Arab fanaticism welded into a compact and patriotic divisions: whole the body of Christian believers and Roman Peril °f subjects, at the costly sacrifice of the dissenting ^^ary provinces. The seventh century will prove a start- corporation ling contrast to the sixth; misfortune had taught the orthodox a much-needed lesson. The religious fervour and crusading spirit of a holy war reinforced Roman imperialism at a critical moment. But, if we had time or patience for a distasteful task, the latter years of Justinian and the reigns of his unhappy successors were distracted by that bitterest of human rancour—the theologian's hate. And a historian has some ground for the venturesome and suggestive statement that Nestorians and Eutychians desired to form separate States, and to cast away for ever the cords of Roman dominion. Indeed, we may conjecture that the loss of Egypt and Syria was no unmixed detriment to the State; and we have the later evidence of Paulician sectaries in the East, and Albigensian heretics in the West,—to prove that political anarchy can employ the disguise of religious conviction. But I must hasten past the noisy and yet metaphysical arena of ecclesiastical feuds ; I shall endeavour co penetrate the feeling of the army, the denies, and the official class. It will be possible to show what were the difficulties, which Justin II., Tiberius Constantinus and Mauricius so manfully confronted ; and even if religious belief and interest had united subject and ruler, reason enough for their ill-success will be seen in the rich harvest of disloyalty which was sown in the gloomy silence of Justinian's last years. Justinus, the curopalates, ascended the throne with a full sense of the heavy task which lay before him. He was alive to the many abuses which crept into every department in his uncle's dotage. His eulogist, who gives us so vivid a portrait of the ceremonious accession of a Byzantine ruler, makes no VOL. I. R
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Dissenters in secret of the odium which slowly grew in those inactive years, and gathered with angry clamour round Justinian's nephew and successor. Justin himself is divisions: peril of the first to acknowledge these shortcomings; " nulla functionary fuit jam euro, senis; nam frigidus omnis Alterius vita and the corporation solo fervebat amore." He endeavoured to seize the of civil reins with a firm hand ; he was hold before barbarian servants. arrogance where his uncle had purchased a disgraceful immunity; he was tender to the subject in the remission of arrears or in actual diminution of imposts. He tried to enlist the sympathies and patriotic aid of the three classes which controlled the capital,— the Senate, the military leaders, and the demarchs; and like Honorius before him, encouraged again that local opinion in the provinces which circumstances rather than policy had led the emperors to stifle. I should prefer to trace the important concession to the bishops and principal inhabitants of the right to nominate their governors (Nov. cxlix. or v. ed. Zacharias) to a generous desire to consult local interests and revive a flagging patriotism than to any fear of vigorous particularism,—such for example as led Frederic II. in the West to recognise as an imperial favour what had already long been claimed and exercised as a feudal privilege. I can discover, indeed, much unreasonable and childish turbulence, in Church and in circus, but no clearly-defined defiance or policy of separatism. The movement which extends to all classes of society is essentially anonymous and instinctive; it is not articulate with legitimate demand for the redress of grievance; and it is clearer in this epoch perhaps than in any other, that the emperor represents the advanced and liberal opinion; and the public tone, the superstitious, the barbaresque and the reactionary. Here indeed, signally, the sovereign is the best man of his time. And we feel sure that exigence of State as well as religious intolerance (to which chief virtue of the age Justin, it would appear, was insensible) guided the curious edict for the conversion of Samaritans which heralded
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their gradual extinction as a distinct nationality. We Dissenters in need not in this reign concern ourselves with the all^ses: democratic factions of the Hippodrome ; they will divisions: emerge in the next, and culminate in the catastrophe Peril °f of Phocas' election. Nor indeed with the disaffection and^1^ in the ranks of the army, which though slowly forming corporation finds as yet no utterance and no spokesman. ^ ctml The struggle of Justin II. is consistently maintained against a single class : the official aristocracy. While he endeavours to relieve the masses of an unequal taxation, he seeks to control under the uniformity of law a caste which arrogated a privileged and exceptional position. The empire was from the outset, just the denial of immunity; and the social inequalities which it was seen to create or to countenance by no means implied the evasion of the wealthy or official class from central control. It was rather invented in order that at any moment the emperor might know how and where to lay his hand upon the object of his search. Now if the evidence be carefully sifted for this bureaucratic claim for special treatment, we must confess it reduces itself to a story and a speech,—to which I have already alluded. Justin avows his own failure and admonishes his Csesar to profit by his unhappy example ; he points to the functionaries which surround his throne as the authors of his calamity. And although the story tells, in the fashion of the " Arabian Nights," of a prefect's rash promise to restore order in a given time, of a rich noble's contempt of authority, of an appeal to the emperor and his insistence on the execution of justice even if he himself be the culprit,— yet the legend tallies (like a similar tale about Theophilus) too closely with our guesses and intuition to be neglected. The powerful scorner of equity is either a magister or one "of the more prominent senators"; and it is clear that we must seek our greedy or oppressive criminals not, as in a later day, in the ranks of the landed gentry but among the official hierarchs. It is against these that the vague yet merited indictment of historians is directed; as 11
7
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Dissenters in they deplore the curtailment of the autocracy in this all classes : period,—and the forces of dissolution and disorder, religious peril of functionary and the corporation of civil servants.
found in a " wealthy and influential aristocracy " and " turbulent and licentious nobles." The popular and equitable part played by Justin cannot be gainsaid; and the offer to submit the person of the legislative monarch to his own tribunals reminds one strangely of a similar proposal made by Decius in 250 : when that reforming and antiquarian prince revived the ancient censor's office, to be a kind of ephor to bring prince and people alike to a sense of their duty. It may well be pointed out at this juncture to all who see a vindication of freedom in such-like vivacious sallies of contumelious defiance, that the final form of this privilege spells anarchy and revolution. The French king had conceded immunity and exceptional right in order to secure real control; the Russian monarch has evoked, in the civil service which thwarts and deceives him, a spectre which he cannot exorcise. A monarch may be tempted to conceive that the best bulwark of his throne is a hereditary nobility, whose chief pn'de is to serve his household;—or a civilian officialism, which is entirely dependent on his word and favour. But the essential condition of monarchy is its truthfulness to its popular and democratic origin. Nowhere has kingship emerged in human history, except at the summons of the popular distress, often inarticulate or audible only to the detached yet penetrating historian in his library. Apart from a monarch no sound conception of the State has been possible,— a commonwealth in which all are equal. The striking and cynical immunity of the wealthy in the American republic is recognised by all; but it is seen by few that the war against privilege and abuse can never be carried on with effect except under monarchical institutions. It is by no means in an ironical spirit that Dr. McQueen of Iowa has lately urged the elevation of president as king to the throne of the United States; and his reasons are just those which in the sixth century led the wiser portion of an ignorant and
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disaffected people to desire the increase rather than the curtailment of centred sovereign prerogative;—he arraigns the fallacy of "self-government" as to-day practised, and exposes the dangerous arrogance of the rich, peculiarly insupportable among the mocking formulas of free institutions. § 5. Nothing is more instructive and significant than Democracy the condescending and perhaps reluctant patronage 9™™ n^ns with which Liberal statesmen and press- writers by exchanging awkwardly conceal their astonishment at the modern bureau for revival of kingship. The reason is surely not ^superior: to seek; that in the general evaporation of the old civil service, shibboleths and old hopes, in the serious dilemma ' and dead-lock of partisan- or group-government, the eyes of all turn to the immemorial and traditional representative of equity and of unity. If any hasty student of a neighbouring republic seeks to adduce the contentment of France to-day against this plea, I would seek the strongest confirmation of my thesis in that very country. For the single principle which the French Revolution seriously proposed and genuinely understood was "equality"; and with all the drawbacks of partisan and representative system the surface only is ruffled by these corrupt democratic pastimes, and the stern impersonal monarchy in the background really ensures, so far as is possible, the reign of justice and the expulsion of privilege. For all that is stable in the constitution of republican France is monarchic; and the sole abiding legacy of the Revolution is the firm centralism of the Corsican avenger of monarchy. Yet, even there, under the impersonal despotism which until Caesar shall arise controls France, the ministers of the people live at their heavy expense. The democratic officialism, which supersedes the clan-aristocracy of birth, soon acquires all its defects. The cheapest government is that of a nobility, because the public service is not merely the sole career but the duty and pride of a recognised governing class. But if this disinterested labour and strenuous efficiency gave
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Democracy way before the selfish pride of a slothful or oppresIn^eZfm'9 sive corporation, as in the Roman Senate or a later by exchanging feudalism,—the conception of the State revives under bureaufor a monarch who distributes to all impartial justice an superior: d opens the ranks of the official world to merit civil service,^ without restriction. When in its turn monarchy ^ as decayed into dotage or been corrupted by juvenile follies, this new hierarchy, once of merit over against birth, becomes the controller or gaoler of the monarch and the despoiler of his people. Emperors § 6. Justinian's vigilance did not survive his fatal seek counter- iuness . an d T us tin was met by the deferential resistsupport in <• i ' • vain: servile ance of a body, closely knit by common ties of a bodyguard: somewhat sordid interest. If we are to believe the scurrilous lampoon which John of Ephesus has preserved, the ungrateful people put the blame of the general disorder and unease upon the last person who should be held accountable. In the dimmed splendour of this second Adoptive period, we reach the now respectable name of Tiberius; and we see new elements of discord and of hostility. It cannot be denied that he renewed the discipline of the forces, which sensibly relaxed under the suspicious " pacifism " of Justinian's later policy ; and we read with interest that the whole military force of the empire directed against Persia amounts to 150,000 men. But history tells a very curious story of Tiberius Constantine; his purchase of 15,000 slaves to create a body of "Federates" devoted personally to the imperial service, over whom Maurice the future emperor was placed as commander. Against the regular forces of the realm he sets as a counterpoise (unless we jump at a too hasty conclusion) a full tithe of its number. Now this policy is the uniform line adopted by despotic and military rulers. The Turkish guard at Bagdad under (or must we say, over ?) the successors of Harun, the Janissaries of Christian birth who from the mainstay became the terror of the Ottoman throne,—and the curious traces to-day in old and new Rome, the Swiss and
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Albanian Guards of Pope and Sultan;—such is the Emperors company in which the servile battalions of Tiberius seek co"^terfind themselves. Without believing that the armies vain: servile reorganised under Justin II. and his successors bodyguard: presented the same mutinous features as the Roman provincial armies in the period of the "Thirty Tyrants; " there is some basis for this hypothesis of a counterpoise. The " Federates " were neither so costly nor so dangerous; and in the absence of any national or patriotic feeling in the professional ranks, there was at least in these hirelings the barbarian attachment to a person from whom they derived everything. Finlay rightly traces in this remarkable venture tokens of the "isolated position and irresponsible power" of the emperor; and it is difficult to decide which is the more strange, that he should feel himself compelled, or that he should have been permitted, to take such a step. We may dismiss with a sigh the reign of this unfortunate but well-meaning monarch. He used the resources of the State to conciliate the classes who least needed the outlay, and who badly repaid his generosity. With his frequent largess to soldiers, to scholastics, and to senators, he left society demoralised and the commonwealth bankrupt. If in the curious phrase of Theophylact, he preferred that the subjects should reign with him, he made an unhappy choice in the precise element for the basis of monarchic power. The military order, " spoilt" by his gifts and leniency, pursued with relentless hate the Maurician essays at reform. Of this prince, most pathetic figure perhaps in all the stately procession of the Cassars, we cannot forget his noble indifference to popularity, when with usual imperial humanity he rescued a suspected Marcionite from the stake, to which patriarch and people had with warm unanimity condemned him. He was perpetually hampered by financial need; and even his personal prowess did not reconcile the troops to his retrenchment of pay
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and rations in the Persian campaign, to his severer methods of discipline during the wintry expeditions against the Avar Khan. He was suspected of an anti-military bias; and the revival of the fighting ingratiation force of the empire was merely the signal for another by doles. phase of the great duel, wherein civilian and soldier fought for pre-eminence. And Roman society had need of both, but only in loyal submission to a central sovereignty. A warning of the great mutiny of 602 was seen two and twenty years earlier, when Maurice, still a subject, was met by a serious sedition on the Iberian frontier, which effectually checked this distant campaign. It was in vain that he remitted imposts; the Pope taunts him with the venality of the chief offices of State. To no purpose he wrestles with the due control and proper equipment of the forces; he cannot execute his reforms, and uncertain of the allegiance of the military leaders, he employs members of his own family in the highest post, and barbarians like Droctulf Ipsich and Ilifred. The camp and the court were hostile, and the revolution of a mean and craven centurion was hailed even in the better circles of society as a relief. § 7. A very pretty and attractive theory has been Obscure policy of Tiberius built out of a phrase of Theophylact, a simile of and Maurice: Evagrius,—the democratic basis on which Tiberius appeal to Demes and Constantine sought to repose the tottering auto' nobles' '• the suggested cracy ; and the emergence from a long but not inactive partition: obscurity, of the subterranean and popular factions Western of the Hippodrome. Looking about for supporters eulogy of in a corrupt and lukewarm society, the prince could Phocas. scarcely neglect the frank and outspoken "demes," whose vivacious conversation with Justinian's Mandator formed in the previous age the most amusing of historical incidents. The civil service were confining the sovereign in silken fetters; the leaders of the camp defied his discipline and laughed at his reforms. But the demes might be recognised as enjoying a certain political franchise; their chosen leaders, the Emperors seek countersupport in vain :
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"demarchs" or tribunes, were officially present at the Obscurepolicy salutation of Maurice; and in the troubled events of ^J^^,e his overthrow the animus or sympathy of the faction appeal to decides the issue. So then, Tiberius made friends Demes and with the organised and well-drilled factions, who may the mggegte(i find their exact counterpart in the association of partition: America and the trades-union of the older world. J^lf^ Maurice, on the contrary, reverted to " aristocracy,"— Phoca*. that is, to the aid of the official and civilian hierarchy. Each found allies in a different quarter; but the support in each case was precarious and useless. The civilian element retired with regrets or secret rejoicings from the succession controversies of 602; and the soldiers and the mob decided the most eventful election in Roman history. Both the factions were hostile to Maurice ; and even the Blue opponents of Phocas contributed only the unlucky menace which resulted in the massacre of the emperor and his entire family. In the disaffection of his reign, it is pathetic to remember that an early salutation from these same benches saluted a proud father ; when he was greeted at a son's birth with the cry, " Thou hast freed us today from subjection to many masters" :—and the further curious trace of the testamentary essay at patrimonialisin in the remarkable division of the Roman world between his children. In the dearth of significant details, we are perhaps inclined to treat too seriously these isolated facts. But we may presume that Maurice started his reign with a certain popularity due to his upright and strenuous character, that the people honestly hailed the prospect of an unquestioned succession, and that he felt himself at some period strong enough to bequeath a divided empire much as an estate. If this is the case, it would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of the silent revolution which worked in those twenty years of unavailing public service. His low-born successor, raised by a jest to a throne, finds in his dangerous elevation the same solitude and apprehension. He appoints a
266 of Tiberius and Maurice: appeal to Demes and 'nobles' : partition : Western eulogy of Phocas.
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nephew curopalates and gives important office to his brother Domentziolus; and as a bulwark to his throne, he marries the prefect of the city, Priscus, to a daughter Domentzia,—an alliance which proved his ruin. So uneasy was the post which he accepted amid the rude congratulations of his fellow-soldiers or the shouts of a mob in the circus, that his reign is little more than a record of conspiracy and summary justice. One incident may give some idea of the squalid horror of the new regime. Narses, a general at the Persian frontier, is forced, as many other worthy leaders, to revolt, in order to save himself from Phocas' suspicion; Edessa becomes for a moment the scene of a brief sovereignty; and like his greater namesake in Italy, perhaps forty years earlier, he is charged with summoning the enemy's treachery into an unguarded country; when at last he is taken he is burnt alive,—the same death, which as we saw was to have been inflicted on a dualist renegade. We suddenly pass into barbarism in the beginning of the seventh century. No principles or traditions of purer times seem to survive, either on the throne or in the palace or the camp. The civil service, abashed and dismayed by the reign of violence and the degradation of the empire, may have felt a vain remorse for their fallen champion; and the Senate will welcome a deliverer and indeed regain some of its ancient influence and dignity under his sons. But we leave the throne of this world occupied by the gloomy and incapable tyrant, whom Eastern subjects pass over as an unspeakable monster, and the Western rulers, Pope and Exarch alike, delight to honour by the most ironical eulogies in all history. Gregory salutes the bearded effigy of the centurion with the words, " Gloria in excelsis!" The well-known column of Smaragdus in the Forum still to this hour records the gratitude of the West " for the benefits of the imperial piety, for quiet procured for Italy, and liberty preserved." The elements of society and the world itself were breaking up : the very notion of the organic life of a common-
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wealth has disappeared. Nothing but the instant Obscurepolicy menace of the Persian and the Arab in the next jJJJSk,. century will recall the subject and the believer to appeal to that loyal sympathy with his rulers, on which alone ^en'es a,nd nobles * the durable and beneficent State must be founded ; a tflg mggfgtea sympathy, it may be noted, which is by no means partition: the exclusive privilege of popular and representative J^f?l government. Phocas.
CHAPTER IV THE PROTEST OF CARTHAGE; OR, THE SECOND AFRICAN HOUSE AND THE ORTHODOX CRUSADE (610-711 A.D.) K. The Second African House, or the Dynasty of Heraclius: HERACLIUS I. (from Carth.) . . . 610-641 . milit. pretend. HERACLIUS II. (orConst. III. ?), son 641. . . birth. HERACLIUS III. (orHeraclonasj.bro. 641. . . birth. TIBERIUS III. ('David'), bro birth. "CoNSTANS III." (son of Her. II.) . 641-668 . birth. CONSTANTINUSIV. POGONATUS (son
668-685 .
birth.
( HEHACLIUS IV. bros. assoc birth. \ TIBERIUS IV birth. JUSTINIANUS II. (son 685-695 . birth. LEONTIUS 695-698 . milit. conspir. TIBERIUS V. APSIMARUS . . . 698-705 . milit. nom. JUSTINIANUS II. (restored). . . . 705-711 . foreign aid. TIBERIUS VI., his son, ? assoc birth. PHILIPPICUS, BARDANES . . . 711-713 . mil. nom. ANASTASIUS II 713-716 . palace nom. THEODOSIUS III. or IV. .. . 716-717 . mil. nom.
Second ^ 'Afrtcan house: same
§ 1. SOME four hundred years before the accession Qf
Heraclius, a saviour of the republic had arisen out , ., . ',. . **. ,. ,
contempt of of Africa. After a succession of princes, which rethe claims of peats with curious fidelity the history of Nero and the turmoil after his death, Septimius Severus had quieted the tumult, had restored public order with some severit Y ancl much overriding of precedent, had dissolved the pretorians, had insulted the Senate, and in a word had unmasked the stern military basis on which the autocracy had to rest if it meant to secure public order. The elder Severus and Diocletian are the two princes who impressed the still pagan empire with their masterful personality; who ventured to treat with disdain the courtly compromise of Augustus and to suggest a change of capital or at least a division of the empire; who treated with careless
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indifference the claims alike of the Senate and of Second Rome. With Septimius Severus I. and the blunt M/Hw j, i • i house: same cruelty and military directness oft his rule, a new era contempt of opened and lasted until the murder of the second the clnimf °f Severus in 235, when the forces of disorder again ^^smA appear to run riot. Severus I. by birth, Gordianus I. subject's by office, hailed from Africa; the one succeeded in his task; the other failed and with this failure the Roman world fell to pieces. In 610 Heraclius, the Exarch of Africa, bolder than the elder Gordian, despatches son and nephew to attack the tyrant Phocas in his own hideous lair—Phocas, who was then playing unworthily to them the part of Maximinus. Historians hurry over the disgraceful episode of this " tyranny," and show the ease with which the revolution was effected. The capital quietly acquiesced in a new master, with whose election it had nothing to do. The province, recovered just eighty years earlier, dictated to the metropolis, or rather was alone bold enough to voice the general indignation. The seventh century marks the lowest point in the fortunes and prestige of the imperial city. It is no doubt difficult to extricate the thread of public opinion ; but the stability of the Heraclian house, its indifference to the peculiar interests of the capital, may perhaps convince us that the provinces endorsed their policy. Misfortune made the Romans ready to accept any deliverer; for the remarkable feature of the late usurpation had been the incompetence of a military reaction to look after military affairs. The early years of Heraclius I. are buried in obscurity ; but we need no psychological analysis of a morbid temperament to tell us how they were employed. In preparing for a Persian campaign, the emperor found everything in confusion, the army extinct. It was his difficult task to recall the Roman spirit and rekindle the embers of patriotism. We have already noted the method by which he brought the capital to reason. The threat to abandon the city of Constantine reminded the idle and the
270 Second Africansame house: contempt of the claims of Iruler^and subjects
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official class of the fate of the older Rome. A certain religious fervour &gave. the war all the enthusiasm of » 3. crusade. The patriarch exacted from the emperor a solemn oath that he would not desert the city. The subsequent victories in the East, the recovery of the "life-giving wood" of the Cross deepened this
interest ogam revjvai of f erv our and secured the permanence of the r identical.
dynasty. The danger of shifting the imperial centre of gravity was averted ; though the problem recurred later in the history of his grandson. It is perhaps unprofitable to speculate on the possibilities latent in Heraclius' proposals. He wished to substitute Carthage for Byzantium, the " window which looks on Asia," the "doorkeeper of Europe." Could'he have transported the imperial tradition and dynasty intact into a new home, the history of Islam might have been reversed. The province of Africa was loyal to the family of Heraclius. Enormous sums had been spent on forts and walls, still exciting our wonder to-day but betraying one signal weakness of the Byzantine rule,—its dependence on mechanical safeguards. Later, the torrent of Arab conquest swept across Africa, subdued the Roman province in the last years of this century, passed over Mauritania, crossed to Spain, submerged an inconsiderable islet of Ceuta, last " Roman " appanage in the West, covered the peninsula, and within a hundred years from the death of Mahomet, rose with a sudden neap-tide to the level of the Loire and Poitiers. Had the design of Heraclius taken effect, the road to Europe would not have lain open on the South; Charles Martel might have lost the credit of repulsing the invader; and the claim of religious champion of Western Christendom would have been wanting to the imperial title of his grandson. History might have been profoundly modified ; and Islam might have entered Constantinople just eight centuries before the event. Enlightened Moslem caliphs might have reigned there instead of Bagdad; and the tolerance and culture of Cordova and Granada
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might have flourished somewhat earlier in the East. Second For the peculiar and reactionary temper of the 'African' r _. .. . ..„ , •' house: same Osmanlis is very ditterent from the lenient and adap- contempt of tive spirit of the first Arabian leaders: and the the cfaims of fortunes of Eastern Europe might have been better mle^alid if the fated blow had fallen earlier. It is no doubt subject's in te 8t impossible to hazard a surmise as to the rprobable identical. , ™ fffam r extent of Moslem conquest towards North and West, had they succeeded in seizing an empty capital; we may doubt if the vague and already decaying empire of the Avars could have opposed any effective resistance, or much temptation for further advance. But in any case, the compact of patriarch, people, and sovereign was a notable event, pregnant with important issues. It was a new and a solemn treaty between ruler and subjects, ratified by the only independent power, and consecrated with a religious sanction. Once more the interest of ruler and subject were welded together; or rather the eyes of the citizens were suddenly opened to the dangers that menaced the State, to the need of discipline, obedience, and unselfishness. Yet in spite of this, it cannot be said that anything approaching the modern and perhaps Teutonic feeling of personal loyalty was aroused. § 2. The line of the Heraclian house passes before Official class sm mto us with breathless rapidity. In a period of one hun- mdden ^ m , , . • j* j 2. iu dred years, six emperors in direct descent occupy the significance: throne ; a singular contrast to the last age of our personal recital, when a father and two daughters, Constantine ^^^tunatc IX., Zoe, and Theodora, account in the imperial issue of heroic records for almost a similar period (963-1056). Yet conquest of this remarkable swiftness of succession leads to no long minorities or ineffective regencies. The emperor occupies, during the dynasty of Heraclius, the whole stage. The military element is once more in the ascendant; that is, the emperor must lead in person, and cannot delegate his highest duty. After the Senate had insisted on the exclusion of the odious posterity of Martina, they perhaps, as some writers maintain, kept hold of the reins during the early
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OffuMclass years of Constans III., who in his boyish speeches SKl Preserves an attitude of well-tutored deference. But significance: that sovereign was wilful and energetic; he bepersonal came his own first minister, his own chancellor fnondfcny , £ ,* unfortunate ot tne exchequer; and until Justinian II. we hear time of heroic nothing of the secondary agents of authority, or of 0/ the heads of the chief departments of State. Two curious incidents are quoted (though their significance is anything but obvious) to show the attitude of the "Romans" to the reigning family: when Constans III. sends for his wife and children to rejoin him in Syracuse, the Senate, dreading the revival of his grandfather's project, refused leave: and again, at the accession of his son, Constantine IV. (as he is inaccurately called), the army insists on a triad of emperors ; for, said the superstitious soldiers, " there are three that bear witness in heaven," and the number of rulers on earth must copy the heavenly model. The bare mention of these strange prejudices excites our interest; but it is difficult to found any theory upon them. Constans III., before he travelled West, must have felt at least secure of the allegiance of the capital; and he must have dismissed the Moslem peril as for the moment contemptible, or have reposed entire confidence in that fresh arrangement of provincial rule, which forms for the student one of the chief interests in the New Monarchy. We cannot justly conclude that the regents in his absence despised his authority; and it is probable that both in the fabled cause of his long absence (remorse for a brother's murder), and in the circumstances of this curious refusal,—we have a onesided and mistaken account. The story of the military mutiny in favour of a trinity of rulers has a suspicious ring, and it is difficult to see in it any question of principle: clearly it was a wayward and spasmodic outburst, easily pacified by firm measures, to which it would be an error to attach serious political importance. For seventy years the " Roman " world was governed by the personal initiative of princes, born
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in the purple and crowned associates of empire in official clogs int childhood. The line ended in a strenuous and not *"**? ? .. sudden inmcapable tyrant, whose acts reveal something of the significance: distraught and wayward strain of the Claudian blood, personal And after his murder (or we may say with truth, J^Site after his deposition, sixteen years earlier) the edifice issue of heroic again collapses, and has to be rebuilt from the <%£%£t nf very foundation. And this will be the task of the " Isaurian " family ; the chief watchword of reform and reconstruction will be Iconoclasm ; the whole movement will partake of a Protestant character, anti-dogmatic and perhaps anti-Hellenic. The present epoch is a revival of orthodoxy and the preaching of a religious crusade, while the later century is hostile to Greek culture and superstition, and is perhaps a second wave of Islam and its puritanism. The strength of the Church is to be noticed in the new vigour of Heraclius' Persian campaigns ; and its weakness in the continuous estrangement of the turbulent and metaphysical populations in the great Eastern centres. The Persian wars were further aided by the intrinsic disorder and disloyalty which prevailed no less in that country. Heraclius, whose merited renown nothing can tarnish, would have allowed his debt to these domestic revolutions. But there is no cause for astonishment at the success of the " Roman" arms. We have noted the unreality which pervades the whole series of Parthian and Persian campaigns, and forbids us to attach serious importance to the costly and unmeaning tournament. The vindictive enemy of one year becomes the bosom friend of the next ; and from Augustus' time, no guardian of a young prince was so well trusted as the Roman emperor, his hereditary foe. Arcadius was offered, and Maurice accepted, this curious legacy; yet these close ties never seemed to hinder the annual excursion and foray which laid waste Syria down to the middle of the sixth century, and penetrated under Phocas to the very shores of the Bosphorus. VOL. I.
S
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The whole series of Persian wars from repubiican times presents a puzzling problem. Elsewhere, ^ , t_ .u ,u I we fancy, we can trace by patientA search the secret motives or inner stimulus of warfare and national collision ; and for the most part we find the explanation in the economic sphere. But this special class a ne l° > like border conflict in the feudal epoch, seems to be explained by the mere fact of contiguity,—a natural outlet for the spirit and vigour of two peoples, or perhaps governments, at different stages indeed of advance, but both alike condemned within to a policy of inactive conservatism. It cannot be denied that some have attempted, and will again attempt, to draw the Partho-Roman conflict of over seven centuries into the economic category, and explain how it was due to the same commercial jealousy that drove Rome to destroy Carthage. The setiologist, like the lawyer and the philosopher, has a rooted distrust of the exceptional; and will not believe that any movement can lie outside his formula. But it would be a hard task to force these campaigns under such a definition. They seem to have fought on the frontier, because they were close and unsympathetic neighbours; no great principles or interests were at stake. Heraclius did what Severus I., his great African predecessor, had done; nay, what Trajan, last of aggressive warriors, had effected. He humbled the pride of Persia; he did not attempt to annex. So in former times, Arsacid and Sassanid had made a freebooting foray, but had never incorporated the provinces they ruined or overran. Rome, whether under Hadrian (117) or Jovian (363), freely relinquished what she did not wish to retain or administer ; and perhaps the sagacious precedent of the former will redeem the latter from the charge of mere cowardly surrender : Jovian was not wholly in the wrong when he could appeal to this wise and moderate example. The futile insults of the Persian monarchy reached an intolerable height in the reign of Phocas ; Heraclius avenged and retaliated ; and
smks into sudden msignificance: personal 'unfortunate issue of heroic
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the two exhausted peoples (or, once more, rather the Official class two governments) fell before a common foe. We ^^n^_ have already noticed that no useful object was secured significance: by this transient revival of military glory. Heraclius personal might have turned his army reforms to the permanent ^^ortundte defence of the Eastern frontier, and his crusading issue of heroic enthusiasm to the conciliation of the bitter religious feuds. § 3. But, as it was, the momentary impulse was Religious exhausted in fruitless though perhaps inevitable campaigns. The empire could not raise a second army; the royal family of Persia were discredited strange and the fabric disorganised. Syria and Egypt and Ofempire Persia fell to the successors of Mahomet, whose firm in this tolerance and religious and domestic simplicity centunJgained the indifferent consent, perhaps even the warm allegiance of the provincials. The frontiers of Rome retreated to the mountains of Cilicia; and almost without a blow the Arab won an enduring ascendancy over the richest portion of the empire. It is impossible to explain away the prevailing disaffection, the easy acquiescence in foreign and heathen yoke. Persia had already during ten years administered by deputy the Granary of the Roman capital; Egypt had been happy and contented under the Mokaukas. It passed with equal facility to the Caliph; and sympathised no doubt with the relief of its proconsular Patriarch :—who at last owned a master who could not take a side in religious disputes. The crusading ideal was rudely shattered. It had for a moment united the "Romans" in a holy war for the recovery of the Sacred Wood. Centuries before, the hearts of the indolent citizens (and even the pulse of erotic poets) beat with a common enthusiasm for the recovery of the standards lost with Crassus at Carrhae. Roman society was for a time serious over the Eastern peril under Antony and Cleopatra, and Augustus built his dominion more securely on the national victory at Actium. But none of this spirit
276 East to Islam : strange vicissitudes of empire in this century.
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seems to have survived in the third decade of Heraclius' reign. Cyrus, the Alexandrian Patriarch, desired to come to terms with the infidel, and suggested a truly "amazing marriage" with one of the emperor's daughters. Internal treachery or indifference completed the conquest. Syria, seething with religious feuds, welcomed an alien protectorate ; her polite and capable sons, pressing into the civil service of the Arabians, enjoyed a long monopoly of the administration. Little was changed by the conquerors, but the taxes were lightened, the religious ferment allayed, justice was honestly distributed. The civil or religious dissension which rent the caliphate after the death of Othman (656) put an end to the hopes of further conquest. A much needed respite was given to the " Roman" Empire ; and good use was made of the reprieve. Nothing in history can well be more obscure than the achievements, the policy, the ministers of that prince, whom we must in deference to custom continue to call Constans III. But we do not believe that he quitted the Eastern capital because, like his grandfather, he despaired of its safety. Whether superstitious remorse for a brother's murder or a high political aim drove him to Italy, it cannot be doubted that he left Byzantium secure. In a few years, we shall witness the caliphate paying tribute to his son ; and we have to grow accustomed to these sudden vicissitudes of pride and humiliation. To the throne of Constantine IV. flocked the chiefs of the wild Danubian tribes, the leaders of Italy, the "gastaldi" of the Lombard towns. In him was recognised one who by set purpose or happy accident had become the arbiter of Eastern Europe, and (in spite of the continued progress of the Arabians westwards through Northern Africa) was still the chief power in the Mediterranean. The lengthy and terrible siege of the capital by the Arabs had completely failed; and Christendom breathed freely again. This confession of inferiority
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or alliance is repeated towards the close of the centur y. Justinian II. receives the respectful homage and Mam: costly tribute from the caliphate; and the con- strange tinued and wholesome progress of the diminished Ofgmpire empire was only arrested by his madness, and by in this the twenty years anarchy which succeeded his first centurydeposition. Once more, the forces of blind disintegration are supreme. The steady work accomplished by the Heracliads is almost in a moment destroyed. Under the usurpers Leontius and Tiberius V., the whole of Africa is lost; and before Leo III. arose, an imperial official opened the Spanish peninsula to the Arabs. Asia Minor, no longer a compact province to the Amanus, is repeatedly overrun ; Justinian II. is restored by an unholy alliance with a barbarian, and is the first Roman emperor before Alexius IV. to reconquer his capital and take vengeance on his own subjects by the aid of foreign arms. And Leo the " Isaurian " himself is suspected of coming to an impious understanding with the Arabs in the heart of Asia Minor, that he might have leisure to pursue his ambition. In any case, before the second great siege of the capital, all the work which awaited the African champion just a century before had to be done again. Nothing remained but the great Roman tradition of the memories of Heraclius' campaigns, and the sobering fear of the Moslem. None of the five sovereigns who interposed some fifteen years between the Heracliads and the " Isaurians," were wanting in some measure of vigour or ability. But the absence of dynastic stability was fatal to any continuity of purpose, any glowing inspiration of personal loyalty. An ironical accident or a practical joke suddenly placed, of all unlikely candidates, a revenueofficer of Adramyttium on the throne. He was given the popular name of Theodosius, which together with Tiberius seems to have had an especial attraction for the " Romans" of this age.
278 Decay of earlier complex a n d civilian system: preeminence of the soldier and the
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§ 4. That a tax-collector, a lineal descendant of the detested "rpublican," should have enjoyed such popu. . . . . . , ' ,J , , , lanty is a surprising circumstance. It may lead us to the not improbable conclusion that the entire system , • r -n T<- i i- x °* oppressive finance was either modified or extinct. The Balkan peninsula was overrun by Slavs and
admmissettlers of other tribes, owning a nominal allegiance. trattve court.' » .;b ,,
martial: ' Themes.'
and in practice defying any central authority; the Greek towns of Dalmatia, and we cannot doubt of Hellas proper, paid an insignificant "quit-rent" in acknowledgment of imperial claims which were rarely enforced, of a "Roman" protectorate which was rarely efficient. As the Emperor Maurice advised the liberal Pope to use the rich gifts despatched to the capital rather to purchase peace from the Lombards than enrich his own treasury, so the Illyrian townships were allowed to pay their fee-farm-rent to the barbarian settler, who lived around them and interposed a real barrier to any regular intercourse with the metropolis. In Asia Minor we may question if the routine of civil administration, the punctual taxcollecting, survived the long Persian occupation and Arab inroads. At any rate, in the latter half of the seventh century the system of " themes" replaced the organisation of Diocletian, Constantine, and Justinian I. A military government, with its inevitable attendants, compulsory but irregular taxation, and a large measure of internal autonomy, replaced the careful and methodical civilian regime, which had been the pride and the security of the Roman Empire. The Western campaigns and visits of Constans III. were conducted without apparent system or principle. The Byzantine monarchs partake largely in this age of the features of feudal sovereignty; the intervention of the sovereign power is strictly personal, unsystematic, and incoherent. The emperor paid or received tribute without exciting the indignation or the pride of the subject by these startling changes of attitude. In a word, the seventh century is an age of barbarism and of supersti-
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tion, and is the fixed " nadir " of " Roman " fortunes Decay of in the entire period before us. A servant-girl is^JJ^ burnt for an unwitting insult to a dead empress' bier; civilian an emperor's mother is chastised by an insolent system.- pre• • j ,1 wealthy i t are exposedi to , the ,-• tortures , i eminence of minister; the orr tflg soidier the monk and the eunuch who monopolise power and the under Justinian II.; pretenders and usurpers, instead ^/ of meeting the mild penalties which characterised martial: Byzantium, suffered the full rigour of high treason; ' Themes.' a whole imperial line is extinguished in the person of an innocent lad of six; and to bring to justice a powerful noble, Butelin, for a felony, the emperor like some insecure Merovingian, has to resort to craft. This savage conduct reflects not the studied barbarity of a governing class or a mad dynasty; it reflects the whole tone and temper of a people. The entire fabric of government was out of order; pestilence and earthquakes, superstition, religious metaphysics, and abstention had almost annihilated the "Romans." The effective work of the Heraclian family can scarcely be overestimated in holding together this crumbling edifice. Yet the inherent weakness of the Roman constitution robbed it of all lasting value. The " Isaurian " dynasty represents a new principle of reconstruction, and a Protestant reaction against subtlety and asceticism. The slight records of anecdotes and conversations under the Heracliads take us into an unfamiliar and primitive atmosphere. We are frankly out of sympathy with what we read; we seem to have returned to the rudiments, a society terrorised by cruel priestcraft. Social intercourse and religious controversy seem alike unreal and unconvincing. Political ideas, though we may fancy we can descry their outline through the gloom, seem grotesque and incoherent. Yet we can safely assert that this second African dynasty performed a service to the State, of which we cannot exaggerate the value and the consequence. All might have been lost but memories and regrets at the accession of Leo III.; but had it not been for Heraclius, Constans III., and
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Constantine IV., not even these could have survived from the wreck, which threatened the Roman commonwealth in the reign of Phocas. Primacy § 5. But before we can finally dismiss this barregained over barous and uncertain period in our general survey, element™™ certain further features of interest or perplexity 'Statemust be included. We have often declared or imarmtes' once plied that the mos(. serious menace to the civil or WW?y c *&f)tQiCG feudal secular authority lies in the power of the Church militia. This, like so many anc j ^e power of the sword. summary phrases or conclusions of history, is in itself but a commonplace truism. Yet it will be necessary to keep it in mind and to apply the principle to the obscure movements of national or political life. We have noted how in the West the arena is divided between these two rivals and sometime allies ; while the supreme arbiter, who in the Roman system sat aloft impartial over all,—the embodiment of the State,—had now disappeared. The feudal age could somehow arrive at a dim conception of that mighty abstraction, the Church; but its enthusiasm was incapable of being stirred by an appeal to the common welfare. Nearer interests, immediate needs and crises flocked in like the rout of Alcibiades in the Symposium, and distracted an attention by no means lacking in generous thoughts and unselfish motives. But the rights and allegiance and prejudices which had once belonged to the State, the body politic, became disentangled from such an airy conception and clustered round persons, in genuine Teutonic individualism. And Church and Army (to sum up in brief phrase the two chief factors of mediaeval Europe) divide or usurp between them the spoils and prerogative of the fugitive sovereign. The notion of the " commonwealth " will not revive until it is reinforced by the strong presence of a monarch. And it is by his personal influence or prestige or daring, that he wins back the scattered rights of the civil power, and paves the way for the (perhaps ungrateful)
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impersonal republic; which profits by his service Primacy and supplants him. Only in the Eastern realm was r^^dr^ this conception steadily maintained, through evil elements: and good report alike: and the critical moment 'Statei ,, , , , T-, ,armies' once when the people or government of Byzantium were more rep!ace summoned to make the fatal choice between feudal feudal or central rule, arrived in the years which witnessed mihtiathe rise, the exploits, and the decline of the Heraclian house. Nothing is more dim, yet nothing more persevering, than the conviction expressed with vague eloquence by historians, of that aristocratic reaction, which overthrew the work of Justinian and nearly buried in its ruins Roman institutions, Hellenic culture, and perhaps even the orthodox faith in the East. We have an abiding intuition (in default of certain knowledge) that Heraclius had to struggle against disintegration and inefficiency in the civil sphere, encroachment in the domain of religious or ecclesiastical influence. We are sure that the empire owed as much to his efforts at securing a real control of the official world, as to his unflagging confidence, zeal, and capacity in military matters; that he was called upon to fight against many tendencies subversive of unity, equity, and public order. And once more we must refuse to be led astray upon the tempting modern issue, whether it was worth while ? We have perhaps too often surrendered to the lures of this debate, and wasted time upon an imperishable dispute, which in the nature of things can never be settled. Let us be content with the knowledge that Heraclius thought it his duty no less than Leo, his perhaps greater followe1" in the task; and that the strongest current of the age set in his favour and carried him in safety over rocks and quicksands. For the dangers which beset the ship of State were both conspicuous and unseen ; it was easy to point to the Persian and later to the Saracen menace; it was not so easy to diagnose or to prescribe for the hidden ailments or chronic weakness of the State. The Heraclian, like the sue-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Primacy regained over dtsmtegrant elements: ' state- ^ morfrepfae feudal militia.
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ceeding dynasty, maintained with unflinching courage f n e central supremacy against nobles, officials, and , , , ^ • churchmen; and once more a Roman emperor is seen boldly refusing to become a puppet. This PerhaPs « the earliest and most striking phase,— Heraclius insists on leading his own armies. Almost aj- fae same moment in the great Middle Kingdom, the same scene was enacted. Here as it were in a parallel column are two episodes in the lives of Heraclius and of Lichi, the second of the Tang dynasty, whose reign began in the middle of the Persian campaigns (625). It is recorded that the civil mandarins were much shocked at the emperor's interest in the army, and complained of his impropriety in witnessing the reviews and drill of the troops. Not twelve years before, Priscus, the son-in-law of Phocas, had remonstrated with Heraclius for deciding to break with the tradition of seclusion. An interview was accorded to the emperor after many excuses and much reluctance at his post of command in Cappadocia; in which, as if with desire to insult, he pronounced it illegal for the sovereign to quit the palace, and visit the distant forces far from the capital (OVK egbv /3acri\el. . . Kara\ifj.irdvei,v fiacri\eia K. raiy Troppta eVt^w/jta^ew Bvvd/J,etnv). It is possible to build upon a slender phrase an over-weighty hypothesis ; yet the student cannot help seeing in such the whole pretensions of a warlike feudalism, as in China of an over-refined civilian bureaucracy. And the separatism and disintegration from which the Heraclian family for a time rescued the commonwealth, cannot be better illustrated than by the words of Heraclius himself,—when he addresses the half-mutinous Cappadocian regiments of the latelydisgraced Priscus, with all the winning confidence of Richard II. to the London mob: "The good Father Crispus had you as his henchmen up to now, but we to-day name you the household servants of sovereignty itself" (from inrovpyol to a man, they were transformed into oliceiaicol r»J? ySao-tXeda? viryperat).
J
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It would then appear that in the great disintegration Primacy of the reign of Phocas, every man fought for his SgJJjJ^f own hand, without regard to loyalty towards person elements: or abstraction; and that in summoning Heraclius ' ^ate, j i • • -i 1 r LI i ,/ /~i • i, armies onee to supersede his impossible father-m-law, " Cnspus more r^fae (as Nicephorus calls him) had no intention of sur-feudal rendering the immunity or private influence which milltiaPhocas' misrule had bestowed. The title "henchmen " may be a mere convenient term, but it suggests the whole atmosphere of the German comitatus, mediaeval right of private war, and the epoch of the " condottieri." Such was one of the many difficulties against which Heraclius contended. The armies of the State had vanished, as we are told, in the misrule of Phocas, except the Caleb and Joshua of the future reorganisation. In their place had arisen men attached to a person, like the armies of Caesar or of Pompey, but ignorant or careless of the wider interests of the State. To substitute an impersonal tie of regimental tradition, dutiful services and implicit obedience, apart from private sympathies, was the great work of imperial Rome,—and no emperor, even in the days of Claudius II. or Aurelian, was confronted with a harder task than Heraclius. § 6. Another half-autonomous power was the Church, church still as represented by the patriarchs of old and new Rome, independent If the civil service were interested in preserving the gpo/t^.' sovereign in a permanent minority, if like Arbogastes Constans III (392) or Aetius (454), the military staff or the feudal ^ Frederic chieftain of the province desired to repress this inconvenient vigilance,—the Church withdrew a large tract of public and private life from the central control. It could boast a far more definite and written constitution than the State, not subject to changes in its continuous policy by vacant See or even interrupted series; and it availed itself of the weakness of an elective monarchy and extorted concessions from the secular power, at a very inopportune moment. At every new election, the patriarch demanded from the emperor a profession of orthodoxy, and made this a condition
284
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m
of the Church's favour and support. When firmly seated, the emperor on his part lost no time in taking his revenge for this urgent inquisition; he could «7«* sreuenc remove the bish°P who had ventured to make terms //. for his coronation. For however much the sovereign, and Heraclius in particular, might depend on a wave of religious emotion and the favourable influence of the metropolitan See, the great aim of the dynasties of the seventh and eighth centuries was to recover the paramount authority of the civil power over the dissident elements,—whether clergy or soldiers. The descendants of Meroveus or of Martel might sign away to abbey or noble the "regal rights" and remain content with a formal and often an ironical recognition. But the empire strove with manful consistency against clerical or military encroachment ; and although Heraclius availed himself of the good offices of Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria and of Patriarch Sergius of his own capital, he was determined to maintain the supremacy of the State, and to secure over his realm uniformity of faith and worship on lines chosen by himself. Thus he arrested the feudalising tendency already at work in the East; which, specialising and isolating men according to their chief business, as it were bifurcated society into the "brahmin" and the "chatriya" : "Thou to fight and I to pray." The chief centres of human activity in the West are already the monastery and the camp,— or rather the castle. Cyrus, as we saw, attempted to make terms of alliance in which the victim or Andromeda was the emperor's own daughter; Sergius is left regent during the Persian wars (622-628) and supplies large funds for these costly campaigns by sanctioning a loan of Church treasure. Nor is it without significance that one weighty embassy at least, to the Persian Court, is sent in the name of the Senate; and that this anomalous body of officials, which inherited the tradition and perhaps some of the ancient spirit of the Roman prototype, controlled the succession after the death of Heraclius,
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banished Martina, Heraclius III., and Tiberius III., Church still and directed affairs during the minority of Constans. Independent TT 11 iu- i 4. r j ut and outHOW well this last emperor performed his stern gpoken: solitary and centralising mission, how bitter was the Constans III. odium he incurred, may be seen both by the security "" re enc and by the ill odour in which he quitted his capital for ever. The decade 650-660 may be one of the momentous and critical periods in the history of the constitution; but it is also the most obscure. How he welded the State into an integral organism again, what forces or influences he arrayed against nobles who clamoured for immunity, against clergy who demanded supremacy,—we cannot tell. He is far more tenacious of Erastian principles than his father or his son; for it is not unlikely that Constantine IV. (668-685) is indebted for the favourable treatment of his reign and character by Church historians, to his indulgence and courtesy to the dominant creed and party. Constans is tolerant or indifferent; and like his greater Sicilian brother-Augustus nearly six hundred years later, is concerned more with public order and the abatement of the nuisance of religious feud than with the letter of speculative orthodoxy. But in vain was the wide net of the imperial appeal spread in the sight of the sects; and the south-eastern parts of the realm fell a prey to religious and national disaffection. And Constans was born too early; both in old and new Rome clerical and theological interests were dominant, and the demand for tolerance and uniformity under the imperial authority was unheeded. Against the independent and critical attitude of the " nobles," the open defiance of provincial commanders, the encroachment of the Church,—Heraclius wished to create a compact family-party, and like Vespasian, like Justinian, sought faithful adherents for chief posts in his circle of kinsmen. A despotic or centralised system where everything depends on the monarch's life, is apt to vacillate between inordinate confidence in kinsmen and inordinate mistrust; there would seem to be roqm for no moderate position. Mauricius and
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Phocas resemble each other in nothing but this, — the trust they reposed in fraternal loyalty ; and Theodorus who succeeded to the dangerous influence of Priscus, is the brother of Heraclius. Collapse of § 7. We have attempted to give some dim and theHeracltan sgenerai idea of the forces, feudal, racial, and eccleedifice: . . ' ' . Isaurians' siastical, which noisily or in silence were tearing mmt rebuild apart a system of government, in its origin unique anti-national and integral. The task is not done so territorial effectively by the Heracliads that a repaired structure continuity. can safejy (jefy the future onslaught of disintegrating influence. Leo III. will find himself confronted by much the same problems ; and perhaps the secret of his more permanent solution will be found in this ; — the metropolis once again recovers its proper place as the focus and centre of a substantial and continuous unity. By the time Leo had leisure to rebuild the ruined fabric of Heraclius, all strange designs to shift the capital to Rome or Carthage had vanished into the world of curious myth and tradition. The aim of Leo is to solidify, and to found a realm upon the basis of territorial continuity rather than ecumenical hegemony. We are surprised to find Heraclius at the moment of his supreme weakness and despondency negotiating with the powerful kings of Spain and France, with all the exceptional air of a recognised suzerain. One of the incidents of the crusading fervour and religious revival of the seventh century was an intense anti-Semitic feeling. The clever and scientific versifier, Sisebut the Visigoth, the last of the real Merovingian rulers Dagobert, — are represented as bowing respectfully to the behests of Constantinople and the emperor's personal wish ; there is to be no mercy shown to the Jews ; and Fredegarius, the chronicler whose earthly Zion is the Eastern capital, records without surprise the recognition of the imperial decree in provinces long severed from the parent trunk. At a moment when, from the walls of the helpless and beleaguered capital, the camp-fires of Avars and Persians could be seen, the writ of a Roman
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emperor still " ran " in the Teutonic monarchies. The Collapse of respect and prestige of the new Rome was unimpaired in the West; and the barbarians were truer to the fixed seat of government than the emperor himself. m^t rebuild For all this desultory pretence at overlordship, Leo cared nothing. The dream of Heraclius to carry with territorial him the empire to Carthage must have seemed to him continuity. a futile myth; for Carthage was no longer Roman. The Western designs and policy of Constans III., the visionary scheme of a capital in Italy or Sicily, must have appeared pure quixotism. The " Isaurians " having stopped the drain of " Peter's pence," let slip the West with no visible reluctance. Such were the altered circumstances of the seventh and eighth centuries; and the reason of this novel attitude is to be found in the new function of the Eastern city and the Eastern Roman monarch,—the bulwark and the warder of Europe.—We may very briefly dismiss the significant features in constitutional development during the last days of the Heracliads and the transient " tyrannies " of their successors. Justinian II., conscious imitator of his greater namesake, employs like him evil agents; and the military revolution of 695 is largely reinforced by the common hatred of the monk and the eunuch, whom the " king delighted to honour." The capricious cruelty and exactions of his finance minister recalled the behaviour of John the Cappadocian or Alexander the Scissors: and by his side sat no Theodora to counsel firmness in the moment of danger. The Heraclian throne fell with startling abruptness; with all its proud retrospect and tradition, with all its claim to national gratitude. We shall not here describe particularly the motives and events of the five elections which succeeded the fall of the Heracliads. Philippicus the Armenian heralds the great Armeniac predominance which marks the next age ; and forms a brief and troubled presage of that later pacific and civilian policy to which the ultimate decay of the system may be certainly traced. Like the Constantines of the eleventh
S88 Collapse of the Heraclian edifice: ' Isaurians' must rebuild anew on novel principle: territorial continuity.
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century, he represents an anti-military spirit; he starves the army, and although Artemius or Anastasius II. sets himself to repair this signal error, the years which follow testify to a natural reaction. The Obsician regiments control the situation ; and we are back once more in the days of Otho Vitellius and Vespasian. After the elevation of Theodosius III.,— as fanciful or ironical as the salutation of the fugitive Claudius,—the direct military interests and the commanders of legions reassert their claim to control affairs. The new warrior and Protestant dynasty reaches power through the pitiable state of Asia Minor and the Arab inroads, through the general demand for a firm policy and the direct rule of a capable soldier, of a thrifty and far-seeing statesman. —Yet with all this serious task confronting Leo, with the spectacle of the complete ruin of the Heraclian edifice, of the apparent failure of the aims and hopes of the once popular champion from Africa,—we must conclude by repeating, that there would have been no task for Leo III., no plan or model, and no material for the new structure, but for the courage and pertinacity of the Heraclian dynasty.
BOOK IV ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE MONARCHY UNDER ASIATIC INFLUENCE: ROMAN TRADITION, THE COURT, AND THE FEUDAL NOBILITY
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I THE SECOND SYRIAN HOUSE; OR, THE ATTEMPT AT PROTESTANT REFORM (717-820 A.D.) L. The Second Syrian House, or the dynasty of the " Isaurians " : LEO III. (Conon) (Isaur. or Syr.) 717-740 . milit. nom. CONSTANTINUS V. (son) . . . 740-775 . birth. ARTAVASDUS (son-in-law °f\74I_74s . FEMALE right. Leo III.) J LEO IV. (son) 775-780 . birth. ( CONSTANTINUS VI. (son) . . . 780-797 . birth. ( IRENE (mother) 797-802 . FEMIN. usurp. NICEPHOKUS I. (Arab) . . . 802-811 . palace conspir. STAURACIUS (son) 811 . . birth. MICHAEL I. (bro.-in-law). . . 811-813 • FEMALE right. LEO V. (Armenian) 813-820 . milit. nom.
§ 1. THE murder of Justinian II., the extinction of Leo III. wars the Heraclian house, left the empire on the brink of . i • t i i i f 11 rum. The very province which had sent forth a and deliverer a century ago had been finally torn away. « Puritan Palace intrigue, a Bulgarian army, a justly indignant Greek colony, a band of riotous soldiers at Adramyttium,—such were the accidental instruments in the elevation of Justinian's successors. The greatest prize in the world was once more thrown open to military competition. This time the knight-errant who is to release the enchanted princess comes from the East. Whether of I saurian or -Syrian descent, Leo III. is the very antipodes of the late disinherited dynasty. He represents a distinct reaction against the Greek Church, against metaphysics and superstition, against that anchoritic ideal, which allied with plague and pestilence tends to empty the realm of the tillers and defenders of the soil. He is deeply incensed at monastic selfishness, and profoundly convinced of the extreme peril of the State. He has all the laborious perseverance of an emperor of the old 291
292 Leo HI. wars against superstition and sterility : a Puritan and an Englishman.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Roman type ; and he will not idly delegate either work or responsibility. Once more, the central government was in disorder ; the Arab armies were at the heart of Asia Minor; and the region, practically dependent on the feeble administration, seemed strictly confined to the shores of the ^Egean and the precarious Danubian district. The exarchate was terrified but not appeased by the vengeance of Justinian II., and the long line of Greek pontiffs was already showing that no " pope can be a Ghibelline" ; and that the election to the Holy See changed a timid subject into a rival and perhaps a foe. The one hope of the republic lay in the "themes" and their generals. Leo III. brought frankness, simplicity, and authority from the camp into the heavy air of the court; and he never shrank from personal burdens. We cannot doubt that in his campaign against images, as in his heroic defence of the capital, he had the hearty support of a very large body of his subjects. The return of Hellenic influences under Irene the Athenian was distasteful to enlightened opinion; and the restoration of images was not effected without difficulty. The principate, lying open to the successful candidate without respect to class or race, was now captured by an outspoken representative of Iconoclasm, of the military spirit. We shall not here attempt to trace the precise affiliation of Armenian heresy, or its relation with Nestorius or the Paulicians ; but it is no hard matter to discover its underlying principles. The Hellenic mind had been, from the very dawn of its history, abstentionist and anchoritic. When it became fully aware of itself, it quitted the concerns and the domain of the civic life with genuine or simulated disgust. We are apt to associate the Greeks with a lively and immediate interest in the politics of a busy society; it is not easy to regard their conscious thought, as in its essence and tendency, supremely mystical. The spirit and vocabulary of the philosophers was made subservient to the Christian Church; and theologians will to the end of time be divided
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on the wisdom and utility of this alliance. And this Leo 111. wars a mm ( interest was largely \ fe J metaphysical ; and concerned the 9 i superstition relation of the conscious mind of the sage to the great and sterility: reservoir of mental activity, which was the most real, « Puritan or the only real, thing in the universe of being. The Englishman. duties of the common life were disparaged ; and the same lethargic indifference, as the highest virtue attainable by man, marks the Indian Gymnosophist, the Stoic thinker, and though in a less degree, the more genial Platonist and the Christian believer, in certain forms of his apprenticeship for eternity. Religion was to such, largely an intellectual matter ; for the excellence of man, the sole chance of union with the Divine, lay in the exercise of thought. The Church, with its claim to universality, had found a place for every station and business, every faculty and talent; and was not' behind the more humane of Cynic and Stoic philosophers in ascribing a dignity even to the slave. But there was the same mischievous hierarchy of merit, in which an absorbed logical cleverness or rapt devotional meditation was allowed to usurp the chief place. And the common people, robbed of the natural complacence of hard work, were taught to look up to apathy or subtlety ; just as in India to-day it is not the reformer or the humanitarian that commands respect, but the hermit. Yet it may be noticed that Christian anchoritism is never wholly contemptuous of the vulgar. A familiar poem has presented us with the picture of self-immersed meditation as the end of life. Yet S. Simeon Stylites is praised by the Greek historian for his "practical" interest; and his solitary pillar became the resort of those who needed private or political advice. But the retirement of the most enlightened and conscientious from active service in the State, from the cares and duties of domestic life, produced a real void in the Eastern empire as in mediaeval Europe. A selfish and decadent civilisation, whether amongst ourselves to-day or in the Roman world under Augustus, is found to produce the same ebb as a rigid asceticism ;—viz. a shrinking
294
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Leo III. wars birth-rate in the classes where stability and equiagamst librium is most to be desired. We have not the superstition and sterility: means of forming a trustworthy census of the doma Puritan inions that still owned the Roman sway ; but we Englishman can we^ believe that the continuous record of disaster and disease, the dismal story of wanton rapine and civil war, and the very remedy itself, founding of new convents and monasteries, must have very seriously impoverished the " citizens" since the end of the reign of the first Justinian. Culture and a settled life, monotonous rather than orderly, lingered on in the sequestered oases, the cities which formed a diamond network from Ceuta to Cherson, the real substance of the Roman Empire. Foreigners tilled a perilous or neglected country ; barbarian hordes settled in the Balkan peninsula; " Sclavinia" ate out the very heart of the European realm. Great debt § 2. So then these causes combined to bring to to 'Iconothe front a new view of life and of religion,—a very C dunast\i • distinct reaction against the old standard, an ideal rupture with of Hellenic asepsis and the meditative ease of unWest Leo III. displays the temper of the rpatriotic monks. inevitable. ._,... f , i i,average Englishman; averse to abstruse speculation on the faith, holding fast to a few plain and practical truths, intolerant of the superstition, which peopled once more for the poor and ignorant a pagan pantheon in the threadbare disguise of martyrs, or dispensed in the tutelage of a special saint with every need for personal exertion. He did not, with the Oriental mind in general, accept the utter vanity of human effort; and he was convinced that we could be far more certain of controlling the present, than of penetrating the mysteries of the future. Above all, he was an imperialist; and in this respect was impatient of any supineness or indifference. The true life was the life that the Emperor Augustus had in vain tried to restore to favour seven hundred years ago: that of the sober, contented citizen, giving children to recruit the State and fight the needful
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battles of the peaceful commonwealth. He resembles Great debt indeed far more nearly a Roman of the antique re- to'l^>public than his predecessor Heraclius. He knows dynasty: no moments of nervous despondency; he forms his rupture with design with patience and calculation; he perseveres jj in it to the end. So far is he from sympathy with older Rome, now a purely clerical city, with its orthodoxy and traditions, that he may even be suspected of almost entire ignorance of the whole Roman epic. His duties were so obvious, defence and restoration in the provinces really controlled from Byzantium, that he has scanty respect for a distant territory which he had not time to visit, and a distant Church which he could not understand. Iconoclasm saved the East, and infused new vigour into the commonwealth ; but it lost the Western provinces. No one could have set about the task of estranging these from the centre with clearer or more pertinacious policy. The two most masterful personalities of this age showed no inclination to conciliate or coerce their rebels. We are astonished at the indifference of Leo III. and Constantine V. to the gradual separation of the Western realm. Just a century before, Constans III. had pursued the not altogether visionary design of reducing the whole of Italy under the empire. Nothing but his early death, and the urgency of the Eastern peril, prevented a serious attempt to recover and to consolidate the lost provinces. But with Constans expired the last Roman emperor who had viewed his ancient capital. Constantine IV. was fully engaged in the not inglorious work of defence. The violent and wayward Justinian II. received friendly visits from Greek pontiffs of Rome; but the anarchy of the century's early years seems to have extinguished all sympathy with the Roman subjects in Italy. We are tempted sometimes to believe that the blunt soldier knew nothing of the older Rome and its imperial legend, so complete is his indifference. And again, we seem to detect a wise policy of consolidation, which in the interests of the larger part can surrender
296 Great debt
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the useless or the diseased : " Ense recidendum est ne ars s ncera f * trahatur'' At another time we see merely Elastic' ' the stern necessity of the emperor's position, which dynasty: rupture with bound him to the supreme task of defending the city of Constantine, and reviving something of the old inevitable. vigorous spirit. He could not help if in so doing he had no forces left to protect the West, and no sympathy with a religious creed in complete alliance with the enemies of his patriotic policy at home. It is quite possible that we waste our time in seeking to analyse ignorance or impute motive. The exarchate had long been in practice independent ; and very imperfect information filtered through to the central government, by routes equally perilous perhaps by land or sea. In spite of the predominance of Hellenes on the chair of Peter, we have already remarked on the notable estrangement or divergence of interests, papal and imperial. The Pope looked westward and northward ; he could not expect effective protection from a distant sovereign, who perhaps found that these provinces did not reimburse their maintenance. The militia and the civil and religious government of Rome had for some time tended towards complete autonomy. Iconoclasm was the ultimate cause of a disruption, which was in any case inevitable under emperors of Syrian descent, to whom the records and renown of ancient and of Christian Rome were little more than a name. § 3. The period covered by these reigns may be The two divided into two unequal halves. Constantine V. reorgamscircarried on with unwearied perseverance the policy of tion and enjoyment. his father ; and for sixty years there was a steady reconstruction, which the prejudice of the Catholics cannot disguise. This epoch of vigorous revival, as we so often find in Byzantine history, is succeeded by a time of quiet conservatism ; in which the empire is feeding upon its resources, without adding to its capital or its strength. Of such a character were the years covered by the invalid but high-spirited Leo IV., the minority and brief personal rule of his son, 10
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and the bold usurpation of Irene; which in a short The two space upset the principles and calculations of the r^fanisa " Isaurian " family, and paid off the grudge which the tion and Greek race and the Catholic Church bore against this enjoyment. foreign dominion. For rather more than a quarter of a century (775-802) the realm remained content with the peaceful enjoyment of the re-established order. We are thus, in our survey, mainly concerned with the former; how well the work was done may be seen in the prosperity, betokened in the latter by the overflowing treasury, the palace intrigue, the government of chamberlains. Such petty interests or feuds, such pacific rulers, are the unvarying harbingers or attendants of a conservative reaction, the certain tokens of peace, contentment, and abundance. They succeed and flourish after a period of unnatural vigour; while at the time of crisis or peril they fall discreetly into the background. So, on the death of the first and of the second Basil, we have the amiable but autocratic reigns of luxurious sovereigns, who in the immortal words of Ammianus, may be said to have possessed some influence with their chief ministers. The rule of the palace succeeded to the drumhead court-martial in the open camp; the regular visits of the tax-gatherer supplant the patriotic call of the recruiting sergeant. It is not Amurath who " to Amurath succeeds," but Honorius to Theodosius, or Constantius II. to Constantine the Great. It is thus that every Oriental dynasty runs its course; but we may point out once more that the " Roman " families felt less than any other the lulling influence of this conservative security. There was no unquestioning homage paid to descent and birth ; each prince had to make good his claim to be the worthy representative of the great abstraction, 17 T&V 'Ptap-aiav iroXireiaConstantine VI., with whose swarthy and low-browed countenance we are familiar as he presides at the Great Council of 787,—is as brave as his grandfather; and issues forth as a matter of course to hard campaigns on the Eastern or the Northern frontier.
298 The two periods: reorgamsation and enjoyment.
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What sort of character was ruined by the neglect or deliberate ill-will of a mother, we can only } guess: ' ° ' nor can we say how far a life was blighted by the failure of a boyish romance. But there is some reason to believe that he would have showed the same vigour and personal spirit that marked the earlier members of his house; and that a good ruler was spoiled in the disappointed suitor of Rotrud, in the reluctant husband of Maria. We may then leave this latter period and turn our notice once more to the years between 717 and 775 when the empire was being slowly and painfully built up again into integrity. Pressing The chief positive work of Leo III. and his son needs; army, besides the obvious and permanent duty of frontier'^Thematic'8' defence was to reorganise the armies, the finance, system. the laws of the State. We are too much inclined to look on the negative features of Iconoclasm,—its war against the externals of religion, its want of sympathy with the strictly Roman or strictly Catholic tradition, —its persecution of the celibates, its tame surrender of the exarchate and the older capital. But within the reduced and manageable limits of the new empire of the eighth century, an achievement of untiring energy and hope was being carried forward,—often hidden behind the malice or the silence of biassed historians. It is not our purpose in this wide and sweeping survey of the Iconoclastic period to enter closely into the fascinating and intricate problems of the Thematic system. It will be enough to lay down as established one or two conclusions for which we may assume sufficient proof. The civil administration under Diocletian's hierarchy had almost vanished in the anarchy of Phocas (602-610). The central authority, already weakened by the very proclamation of its absolutism under Justinian, and soon by the removal of the absolute monarch himself, had been powerless to control its own agents. Both orders of the State-service showed an entirely mutinous spirit during the last years of the sixth century. We have
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yet to learn that Phocas made any pretence at Pressing government; and the foreign inroads, confining the T^ imperial influence to the bare walls of the capital, 'Thematic' may well have united to dislocate and to overthrow a system. pacific and equitable rule, which had been successful in very different times. Heraclius, who was destined to reconquer one half of the empire and lose the other, substituted martial law throughout the provinces. I do not say that the whole calculated system of Themes was completed or even consciously adopted in his reign ; but the natural rudiments were there in the very nature of the case. Nothing is clearer than the strict indebtedness of Leo III.'s reforms to a previous policy or tendency. Like Diocletian, he adapted material already lying ready to his hands, into a building of which other architects had drawn a sketchy yet suggestive outline. The paramount importance of military directness and responsibility was recognised by the able monarchs of the seventh and eighth centuries; the imperium reposed once more on the power of the legions and the loyalty of the troops. And these might again begin to claim the proud title of national and citizen forces. First, as an obvious measure, permanent local armies were placed in the reclaimed territory under capable leaders, for the purpose of provincial defence. Next, by an insidious but inevitable process, the general in charge either ousted the civilian " judge " ; or combined, as in the earlier Roman system, the duties of military champion and civil arbiter. These regional armies gave their name to the departments ; and the titles familiar to the war-office became the names of geographical and administrative areas. We may contrast this wise, durable system with the tumultuary levies of the age of Justinian and Belisarius; with the seditious and exacting soldiers of the time of Mauricius. Necessity introduced its early adoption ; prudence recommended its maintenance; and sagacious policy reduced it to a complete formula,— such as we have it throughout the eighth and ninth
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centuries,—such as we have it in the nattering and somewhat archaic survey of Constantino VII. Finance: § 4. Closely connected with the reconstruction of personal fae imperial defences was the care bestowed upon r control of „ _, . . . . , .. . . sovereign: finance. The principle of centralism and unique on the whole authority, as in a well-ordered camp, was here too eneficia. invoked ; the emperors henceforward are their own ministers of finance. Taxation (as Bury shrewdly suspects) had an attraction for the masterful mind of Constans III., who stoutly upheld the Roman ideal of personal government against the abuses of indolence and of delegation. The " Count of the Sacred Largesses" disappears noiselessly, and his place is taken by the " Logothet" (destined to rise to the throne in Nicephorus the Arabian, 802). We may suppose that this change implied the transformation of a splendid and " illustrious " official into a mere secretary of the imperial pleasure. Certain it is that the control of the exchequer, weakened as early as Justinian's reign by the irresponsible oppression of the Cappadocian, was restored once more to the sovereign. It is equally clear that the change was for the better. Throughout the imperial history, the chief magistrate stood for the universal interest and the people's advantage; but never more conspicuously than under the Iconoclasts. The wealth and abundance of the following centuries, the very evils of luxury, when childish and impatient hands stretched out to pluck the ripe fruits of the present without thought for the future,—are striking testimony to the wisdom and efficacy of the financial system, which we must dimly surmise from scattered evidence. The condition of the " contributors " (erwreXefc, uTroreXet?) was brought under the direct cognisance of the sovereign ; and there is clear proof of wise and minute solicitude for their welfare in the Isaurian laws. For Leo III. simplified and adapted them for the altered times and the new inhabitants of the realm. Hitherto, responsibility for the amount assessed fell heavily on the local authorities. The Curia had
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pursued its steadily decadent path since the time of Finance: Constantine and Theodosius: the one aim of the personal • • i . , , . . ,, control o f privileged bankrupt was to escape from durance, sovereign: of the government to keep him a prisoner. While on the whole a hasty critic might censure Leo for a prejudicial benefictalencroachment on local rights and a fatal step towards a malignant centralism,—we must conceive that the surrender of the " publicans' " office to a regular body of State officials, was hailed by the cities as a measure of profound relief. So long as the vigilance of the monarch over the most important department in a civilised State lasted unimpaired, the relief continued ; but as in all unduly centralised government, too much depends on the personal energy and unflagging patience of the titular ruler. The emperor had through past ages secured his unique position by his " infinite capacity for taking pains"; just as the lasting achievement of Napoleon's genius is not an ambitious reconstruction of the map of Europe, but the minutely centralised government which exists down to the present day in France. This tendency to gather into one's own hand the tangled webs of disordered rule, is a temptation that comes strongly to an industrious and conscientious man. We may sometimes indeed question whether the bad princes like Domitian, who appointed good governors, did not deserve better of the State than untiring believers in the " eye of the master." If we are to take a modern instance, a great ruler of a public school is not necessarily one who either teaches or administers or controls in person; and it is a mark of an oversensitive conscience or of supreme vanity, when a chief in any sphere of life sinks to the r61e of a perpetual watch-dog or a permanent typewriter. Yet we cannot question that the measures of Leo III. suited his time; his masterful and interfering alertness was as welcome and acceptable to the ideas of Roman monarchy, as the whole-hearted aloofness of a British sovereign from the details of strictly domestic politics. Quite evidently, the mass of the " Romans"
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Finance: distrusted no agency so much as themselves; and personal nQ Qne was more popular than the sovereign who did swereign: everything: although at rare intervals we have the on the whole opposite motive for popular idolatry;—affection for a beneficial. monarch who like Theodosius II. or Constantine VII. did nothing. Law: § 5. The most striking evidence of the empire's religious internal condition is to be found in the legislation of Leo I I L Here a ain he is no ^ptoZts S > violent innovator, classic rather a "restorer of ancient paths." He simplifies equity: fae JJustinian codes, in large part unused, inapplicable. simplification ' „ ?, . • -, ~, to suit new or out of date : to cull the vigorous simile ofc Tertullian of Carthage, he passes the " axe of the imperial warrant through the tangled thicket and overgrown brushwood of praetor's law." Yet he is in one sense only an original lawgiver; for his agricultural and maritime codes have well and justly been styled "registers of custom" rather than "novels." This is the new and Christian or rather ecclesiastical spirit which animates and pervades this new edition. Under Justinian the tone is "still profoundly classical and pagan." It is no longer nature or reason or equity, to which appeal is made to provide an ultimate sanction, but the authority of Revelation ; social relations take on a peculiarly Christian garb, and the final arbitrament is neither usage nor the " rights of man " nor the reasonableness of the sage, but the word of God and the tradition of the Church. It behoves us then to be careful in representing the overt " Protestantism " of Leo III. as the sceptical or humanitarian defiance of some ancient Joseph II., primed with the vague enthusiasm of the enlightenment. Even the wild heterodoxy or cynical carelessness of his son (740775) never implied a denial of Christianity; only of the churchly or hieratic form, which despised the Scriptures, deified tradition and the Blessed Virgin, and emptied the State and the army of capable men. Whether we take Heraclius I. or Leo III. as the " doorkeeper " who admits us to Byzantine mediaevalism, it is clear that Leo III. especially is the child
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of his age. He is no Frederic II. in spite of the Law: charges of the priestly historians. No doubt, like r£j^™e many religious reformers, he saw in himself the supplants destined recaller of apostolical simplicity, of the pure gospel: he had a military and perhaps Armenian aversion to the worship of relics and of the Cross, to suit new A pregnant phrase of Bury reminds us of his moun- su^ectstainous origin ;—he was indeed sprung from " sturdy highlanders averse to symbolism." He is therefore not the Joseph II. but the Cromwell of the imperial line. It is not too much to say that he secured a new lease of life for Roman law. In the turmoil of the Heraclian reconstruction, we dimly descry a condition of society to which only the sword or the strong hand could apply. We read with amused wonder the complaints of Laurentius on the decline of the litigious and quarrelsome spirit, which forms a conspicuous feature of the " classical" age. This emptiness and perpetual " vacation" of the courts may be a good or a bad symptom. It may merely imply a decay in the irritable and narrow civic life, which in the larger horizon of the empire was no longer the chief pride of the citizen; the influx of foreigners, bringing with them tribal code and usages, thinking scorn (like the conservative schoolboy amongst us to-day) of a constant and whining appeal to authority for the settlement of trifling disputes. It may no doubt also tell of the interrupted communication of a disturbed period; of frequent breaches of regular routine in court-sessions, even in the appointment of the governors, whose chief duty and pride it used to be amid more peaceful circumstances, to " tell the law." But lastly, and the worst symptom of all;—it may involve such entire distrust in the equity of the judge, that like St. Paul advertising his converts, men admonished themselves not to implead one another before unbelievers. Indeed, there appears reason to believe, whatever the precise cause, that the systematic administration of law was in practical abeyance; and that local usage or tribal custom
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Law: had taken its place ; while in the infrequent field of religious imperial decisions, caprice and "good pleasure" had r & influence '.r . , ., T, . supplants usurped the function of impersonal equity. It is classic recorded of Septimius Severus with marked disaptimpKfication Proval> that he transferred suits from the openness to suit new of the forum to the secrecy of the palace; and it is said of a very different ruler, the present Czar of Russia, that justice has been to some extent unsettled by the constant "evocation" of important cases before a higher, and in the end arbitrary, tribunal. It was the special pride of the Romans that their prince ruled by law and not captious predilection; and it is significant of the spirit of the unlimited prerogative, that the greatest personal ruler Justinian is also the one who reduced to order the methods and the codes of administration; and, in so far as it was possible, invented by autocratic will remedies and checks to the abuse of autocratic power. Agriculture: § 6. The practical and adaptive character of the disappearLeonine reforms is well seen in this simplified jurisf J anceofserfs: , , . , », precise limit prudence. It has been ably pointed out by M. of class Skabalonovitch that the religious prejudice of the nd later ju%ction " Basilians " led to the « anachronistic resuscitafirmly drawn, tion" of laws, which could no longer be applied to the special case. It is from the Ecloga that we gather precious details of knowledge on the state of the empire, the condition and prospects of agriculture,—indeed, upon the conscious ideal pursued by the frank and straightforward soldier, who saw that an emperor's duty was to defend and to recover lost dominion, to regard State-custom as a guide, and to err on the side of indulgence. As to the picture of rustic life unveiled by the Georgics, we must content ourselves with briefly pointing out the gradual but certain disappearance of glebal serfdom,—the probable extinction of the "colonies" in the northern and eastern inroads of two hundred years,—their replacement by Sclavonic settlers in peasant communities or by vast estates tilled by barbarians. The peril of the empire had largely contributed to this
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emancipation : the armies were again filled by those Agriculture: disa who PPofearserfs: , , exchanged .the precarious career of husbandry , once for the certain dignity and possible prizes of military ]rrecise limit life. And we may here remark, that the soldier is of class c. j u j c -t. i • i L-ii • j-u • interest and again fixed by definite legislation within the precise functwn limits of his profession ; he is forbidden to devote firmly drawn. his leisure to other avocations, the pursuit of the merchant or the farmer; he can no longer stand surety. Thus the "high calling" of the Christian soldier is marked off clearly from the other social ranks or classes; and while our Protestant zealots resent the aspersions of the orthodox on the murderous business and heinous sin of the warrior, they are quite prepared to make his discipline strict and to consider even a charge of adultery a sentence of dismissal. The same practical aim is seen in Leo's decisive movements against the Thracian bandits,— men of a type by no means infrequent even in our own time. Like the " Bagaudse " of Gaul in the disorder of the third century, the Scamars had profited by the foreign preoccupation of the emperors in the seventh, to establish prosperous brigand communities. Leo and his son pursue these with ferocious resolve and unprecedented cruelty; for the methods of Byzantine penalties, though they have not reached the mildness of the Amorian epoch, are still far more humane than contemporary codes or indeed any that have prevailed down to a quite recent period. We cannot dismiss this period without tracing in it one at least of the chief clues or interests we have set before us,—the character and "personnel" of the agents of government. Recognising even in the surprising activity of the direct imperial control, the need felt by the autocrat for loyal friends and trusty delegates,—we attempt in each epoch to trace where lies or slumbers the nominal sovereignty, where the real and effective influence operates in a demure 'disguise. And in the functionaries of the reign of Leo III. or of Irene, is the same difference that we have already pointed out in the character and spirit VOL. I. U
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Agriculture: of the time. The early dignitaries of Leo III. remind t^eofTerfs. us of a " family compact" ; and the power bestowed precise limit' on Artavasdus, general of the " Obsicians," will have of class interest and
a
dangerous issue on the demise of the crown and • , ^, , . , , ,, , . ,- ,,
function amid the uncertainty of the transmission ot the firmly drawn, sceptre. We may hazard and surmise that in the long and prosperous reign of Leo III. two classes had become permanently disaffected,—the orthodox and the old aristocracy. It is impossible to trace positively in the revolt and " tyranny " of this Armenian kinsman a mutinous scheme against the firmness of a wise and simple autocrat. He may have placed himself at the head of the party of privileged nobility. He might lavish promises of a limited and constitutional sway while the issue was doubtful, which he had no intention of fulfilling after success. But again, this tumult may be nothing but vaulting ambition, backed by popularity with the soldiers under Artavasdus' command,—a lesson of the danger as well as of necessity of standing armies. We cannot determine whether this usurper represents any interest but his own. Nor again is it easy to determine the precise cause of the unusual solemnity which attended Leo IV.'s appeal to the people; when from representatives of every class he demands and obtains allegiance to his infant son,—the future Constantine VI. Energy cook § 7. Certain it is that in the great prosperity and in later years undoubtedly buoyant trade of the sea-girt realm during the last °signifaant quarter of the eighth century, the open-air features: interest of the earlier "Isaurian" reigns vanishes eunuchs m jn^o fjjg seragiio,—into the apartments set aside for Casars ' the use of the titular Caesars and nobilissimi; whose seclusion: dignities, like the skill of the informer, were preic judicial to many and in the end to themselves. Here policy of once more, we are not justified in tracing any certain chamberlains. pOiiCy or principle underlying or inspiring the constant plots to substitute the uncles for the nephew. With the accession of a minor and an empress-regent, we are of course treated to the spectacle of an empire ruled from the zenana, from behind the "purdah."
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The years immediately before the salutation of Charle- Energy cools magne are marked by a sensible cooling of imperial ™ later years energy, by the decay of that great ideal of the chief significant' magistrate of the commonwealth, which each every member of the African or the Syrian house had tried so bravely to realise. The seat of government, Casars the real font of authority, retreats into the waiting- m ^dtt rooms of eunuch-chamberlains. No more scions of Germanic the reigning family are entrusted with posts of high policy of command. Irene the regent remembers the success c ameramsof Narses in a field where Belisarius himself had been baffled. A eunuch-general is sent from the tiringchambers of the palace to take command against Elpidius, a Sicilian rebel. The entire regency and reign of Irene (briefly separated by the sole rule of the brave and wayward Constantine VI.), comprises not the great matters of universal interest, but the feuds of menials, the shifting influences of the servants' hall. Irene's favourites, such as led her white-horsed chariot with humble haughtiness on rare public progress, make of the duties and the profit of administration a monopoly. The career of the Eunuch-Patrician Stauracius, Grand Logothet of the Course, or Postmaster General, is an instructive chapter in Oriental manners ; it can find a parallel in any century and in any court east or south of the Danube. We have travelled far from the old Roman ideal ; we have acquired, as in the reign of Antoninus the Eighth and Last, a profoundly debased " Orientation " ! Yet it would be unfair to disparage the services of these strange ministers of a free people. We have not infrequently to chronicle the real valiance or the adroit strategy of some menial commander suddenly called upon to confront the foe; — abandoning, as Juvenal would say, the unreal and imaginary rivalries of the court for serious duties and honest warfare. Stauracius defeats the Sclavonians ; and is embroiled with a brother in celibacy and in power, Aetius, whose name strangely recalls the statesman and general of Galla Placidia's regency, whom some style the "last
308 Energy cools in later years of dynasty: significant features: comS^r Caisars m seclusion: Germanic policy of
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of the Romans." The result of the quarrel is so that it is worth admitting to a place even . , , . , , , , ,. • t m this abstract and general section. TT Here is one ot those strange facts to which the historian, as he eagerly searches for fitful illumination, is tempted to attach serious meaning. A silentium is held, anc j a jj m jiit ar y persons are forbidden to hold any intercourse with the minister. Was then this vigorous limit of frontier maintained even under Irene ? was
s j n g u i ar
chamberlains. ^ pQSsible
for a palacfi
offi^ without losing his
civil rank or falling into disgrace, to be prohibited from communication with the staff-corps ? if so, what was the meaning of this strange precaution, and what was to be apprehended from the intrigues of Stauracius ? Soon after he dies, without serious or permanent loss of favour, and his rival succeeds to a place which, like our prime minister, at last seems to receive official recognition and an authentic place in the hierarchy. The "TrapaSvvacrrevtov" is well known already in Byzantine historians, but it appears worth while at this point to chronicle gravely the succession of an empress's favourites, just as in later times the vicissitudes of the king's mistresses. Aetius becomes " grand vizier"; and forms one of the capable but time-serving cabal of immediate menials, who finally in 802 deposed Irene and gave the empire to Nicephorus by a bloodless revolution. As to their sinister influence on affairs, a singular feature must be noted before we leave the grandeur and the pettiness of the " Isaurian " age. It will be remembered that it was the steady and persevering influence of the invertebrate quadrisyllables of the Ravennese recluse, that ruined the promising chances of an alliance with Alaric before the siege, or at least before the capture, of Rome. Opinions may indeed differ as to the wisdom of that alliance. I make no secret of my firm conviction that the Visigoths were prepared to meet a straightforward prince more than half-way with genuine and much-needed loyaltyRome and the West never recovered the prestige lost
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by that greatest event of the fifth century, which Energy cools echoed, as we know, through the meditations of the injater years distant anchorite in the cave of Bethlehem. And significant once more the intrigues of the household favourite features: spoil a scheme for the union of the East and Western ^^jn realms, by the marriage of Charles with Irene. The Casars whole disposition of Constantine had been warped fn^clusion: and embittered by the failure of that earlier proposal, Germanic which had so strongly caught the ardent and romantic policy of imaginations of a boy. The sedate and mature Irene chamberlainswas perhaps not seriously tempted by the subsequent offer; but the failure of the design lies at the door of the chamberlains, who saw perhaps in the frank authority of the new and warlike husband the doom of their own influence. As to the prudence of their intervention, I am not so clear. We tread on more uncertain ground when we discuss not the relation of a suzerain to a vain, powerful, and obviously sincere vassal in Alaric, but the question of a sympathetic union of Aachen and the city of Constantine. The capitals of East and West were to remain for several centuries longer in a complete isolation; indeed, the barriers were only broken down by the marauding host that styled itself the Fourth Crusade, by the most ancient and most loudly protesting feudatory in the Adriatic.—With this singular proffer and strange thwarting influence, we terminate this survey of the turning-period (if I may use the term) of the Byzantine annals. The "Isaurian" dynasty is not merely the most important link in the chain which binds Basil II. and Alexius to Constantine and Justinian; but there goes out to it a sincere feeling of gratitude from Western and Christian hearts, deep as our sense of indebtedness to Charles Martel himself. The appointed sentinel of Europe never performed its duty better or more loyally than during the eighth century; and for this vigilant attitude we must thank the bold highland spirit and the Armenian Protestantism of Leo and his son.
CHAPTER II THE PRETENDERS, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DYNASTY OF PHRYGIA (820-919 A.D.) NICEPHORUS I. (Arab) 802-811 STAURACIUS (son) 811 MICHAEL I. (bro.-in-Iaw) . . . . 811-813 LEO V. (Armenian) 813-820 M. The House of Amorium, or the Phrygian Dynasty MICHAEL II 820-829 THEOPHILUS (son) 829-842 MICHAEL III. (son) 842-867 BASILIUS 1 867-886 LEO VI. (son of Mich. III.) . . . 886-911 f ALEXANDER (son of Basil I.) . . . 911-912 \ CONSTANTINUS VII. (son of Leo VI.) 912-959 State consistently distrusts family influence : eunuchs in East, celibate churchmen in West.
palace conspir. birth. FEMALE right, milit. norn. milit. conspir. birth. birth. co-opt. birth. birth. birth.
§ 1. TWICE only in the long annals of the empire was the sceptre swayed by a female sovereign in name as well as in fact. The accomplished Athenian Irene, regent for the sixth Constantine, kept her place for nearly five years, and yielded to an obscure palace-revolution (797-802): Theodora, daughter of Constantine IX., more happy, died in the full enjoyment of her dignity, after a brief but prosperous reign, 1054-1056 (although tradition asserts that she was vexed and astonished at the claim made upon her by dotage and by death). For the obscurer influence of feminine intrigue we need look no further than the competent Syrian ladies, who named emperors and guided affairs in the first thirty years of the third century; than the sister-regent and empress-mother of the fifth century,—than the strange and restless career of Verina, or the almost mythical figure of the first Theodora. Such influence follows naturally on the stationary character of sovereignty. When as with Trajan or Hadrian, the emperor moves among his troops along the frontiers, in actual or anticipated cam310
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paigns, — or like some German suzerain conceives that State eo«a ruler's chief duty is to form an itinerant Court of ^^^ Final Appeal, — there in the nature of the circumstance family is female interest on the wane. But in the peaceful influence: interludes and occasional minorities, in the centred e^^ celibate palace-sway, there was room for the policy and churchmen adroitness of the sex. It may be that Justinian owed m WesL not merely his throne but his lasting and imperishable renown to the daring advice of a woman. The Western realm, just a century earlier, is perhaps indebted for its very existence to the supple firmness of Placidia, widow of a Gothic king and a Roman emperor, and mother of the last of the Theodosian and Valentinian house. But in these fifteen centuries, barely seven years is marked by an empress reigning alone in her own right. And whatever might have been the genuine or feigned indignation of the West, it is clear that the accession of the queen-regent in the last years of the eighth century excited among her direct subjects no resentment. The great machinery of administration moved on its predestined path, quite indifferent to the altered title, sex, and age of the primum mobile ; and indeed Irene herself in the full enjoyment of nominal absolutism must have felt the shrinkage of her former influence. In the stirring times and serious perils of the Heraclian and " Isaurian " families, the older ideal of the monarch had been revived. He was personally charged with the whole burden of the State and bore on his shoulders the weight of civil and military responsibility. But with the advent of peace and security, comes the weakening of fibre and the relaxing of interest. Nothing is so creditable as the Roman conception and performance of public service ; nothing so curiously incongruous as the pastimes of their frittered leisure or enforced retirement. Yet while the noble abandoned all the manlier virtues and real business of life (whether ousted by his own sloth or another's envy), the principate, as we have so often remarked, never lost except for a brief season the
312
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State con- strenuous personal character of its duties. With the cr ses 'dtetrust i °f ti16 seventh century the military power of family the long secluded sovereign once more emerges; or influence: to speak more truly, the only possible sovereign is a eunuchs in , , , ° JHut, celibate competent general. churchmen For nearly two centuries the Byzantine sovereigns m West. were accustomed to the light of day and the dangerous intercourse of a camp; and we are quite of Finlay's opinion that the last " Isaurian" sovereign showed to better advantage among his soldiers than his courtiers. But that epoch of vigorous personalities has now closed; and the advent of Irene is significant of a change that will come later and in more definite form after the two most prosperous centuries of the Eastern realm. Like Constantine IX., the luxurious brother of the warlike monk Basil II., Irene can only see with the eyes and hear with the ears of her attendants. As in China of to-day, the scruples of an Asiatic mind confined the privilege of the immediate personal service to eunuchs; just as (for quite other reasons) the chancelleries and civil jurisdictions, as well as autonomous bishoprics, fell in the West to the voluntary celibate. It is not difficult to explain this preference by some motive a little more profound than an obvious precaution. The whole tendency of the State is to destroy all associations but itself, even the family. The central power, whencesoever it may claim to derive its title, prefers to confront isolated units, disintegrated atoms. The truth of this may be proved in the ceaseless warfare which the New Monarchy waged against intermediate corporations when at the close of the Middle Ages the ancient conception of the State revived. A Liberal minister in the beginning of the twentieth century may perhaps sincerely deprecate the expression " children of the State"; yet he is in virtue of his training, circumstance, and often inexplicit conviction, carried irresistibly into the ranks arrayed against the Family. The earliest and greatest political " Utopia " contemplates its destruction ; and it is quite plain that there is but
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a single great obstacle to the establishment of cen- State contralised absolutism in favour of scientific Socialists ;— ^!«!?fs the prejudice and tenacity of human instinct. The family imperial system and the Roman Church are in their influence: , , ,, , , , , . , . eunuchs ^n several spheres the grandest and most consistent East application of this principle, hostile to the claims churchmen and favouritism of the family. Both desire the m Wesi~ widest and most unfettered freedom of choice; their trusted agents and commissaries must be men of personal and individual merit, and must derive their sole recommendation from the State. In the later post-Reformation Absolutism (synchronising with and largely depending upon the success of Protestant belief and the removal of a strong rival to the secular power), the unknown birth of some capable Melchizedek and complete independence of family suggestion, was a passport to highest office. For the new Machiavellian commonwealth, by immaterial accident monarchic, Socialist, or Caesarian,—has a profound distaste for genealogies and for the founding of families of territorial influence, commercial success or political prestige. In our own period the resentment of the Roman critics and historians is constantly directed against the unrecognised power of the palace chamberlains. Their crafty and secret control of the webs that converged in the palace and once more ramified abroad, was distracted by no rival sympathies; they would give affairs their whole-hearted devotion. As peril and menace surrounded the Eastern realm, the middle-class vanished, and left the territorial magnate and his clients or colonists in possession of the field. The very limited scope of well-meaning reform is shown in this fatal tendency of property as of political power to centralise and to accumulate. The Eastern half of the old Roman realm has its story of feudalism as well as the Western. At different periods, nations wake to the danger of land or riches massed in a few hands; of the extrusion of the small proprietor or tradesman in direct relation to the State;
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of the secret and rival organisation which, careless of so-called political influence, really sways at will the whole social life. It may take the form of the local family influence: predominance of a family, the founding of some eunuchs in East, celibate mediaeval principality; or of a mercantile committee churchmen or combination; or of some unauthorised underin West. standing of social influences, which in spite of all the adroit machinery of a democratic State, might very well nonplus the efforts of reformers by a frank and cynical non-possumus. § 2. The typical chamberlain of an Oriental court Triumph of the ideal will found no family; in him, whether under theory of the Arcadius, or Abdul Hamid II., or Kwang-Su, is pure State: government personal ability considered without respect to a by disinfather's place or anticipation of a son's claim to terested succeed. This is the true "State" ideal; and to be consistent, all rulers of " Utopia " should be welltrained and disinterested aliens. It is a commonplace that nearly all races are under foreign domination; and the ideal administrator, as of the Italian town, is a man without prejudice or partiality, without birthright or hopes of posterity. Of such the later empire availed themselves largely; as the early Caesars employed their freedmen, or French monarchs substituted for the erratic and irresponsible chivalry of the noble class the fustian competence and obscurity of the roturier intendant. What is attractive is the pliable temper and perfect subjection of these instruments, entangled in no meshes of affection or kinship and amenable to no other master or influence. The churchmen-administrators of the Middle Ages represent indeed a somewhat similar phase, but there are obvious points of disagreement. We have already spoken of the schism of public service into the Mediaeval Dyarchy of Army and Church,—and the significant heralding signs of this in the distinct departments of the later empire. In effect, the State ceased to be,—as a paramount civil order, holding in leash alike the soldier and the priest. Dimly venerating this distant Ideal, State eon-
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the two subordinate powers made terms with each Triumph of other, and the Middle Age is largely the history of the ideal e this accommodation. Thus it was not jealousy but st^r/. confidence which reposed the civil duties in episcopal government chancellors ; or as early as the seventh century sur- *>y d^s^nrendered without intending it large royal functions aliens. to monastic communities. A closer parallel to the precautionary spirit of the East will be found in the urban and provincial powers of bishops, invented by sovereigns as a useful counterpoise against the magnate, who built up with his clansmen or adopted retainers a hereditary sway. And when the official, spite of his direct relation to a sovereign, purchased or seized a permanent tenure, the bishop or abbot who would found no family was the favourite adviser or guardian of the king. § 3. The election of Nicephorus (802-811) must chief place have been carried through by means of the same open again eunuchs who had expressed their devoted loyalty to Irene. The revolution supplanted an imperial lady in by a well-trained Minister of Finance; and ended of machine without bloodshed. The extraordinary humanity of the Byzantine court at this time is worthy of remark; and far from exerting the jealous cruelty of a " parvenu," Nicephorus extended a mild and ironical sympathy to all pretenders. Yet the " secret of the empire" is again published to the world, that any one with courage and a few bold adherents may become emperor. The ninth century is marked by the success of usurpers (often of Armenian origin), and by the unexpected renown of one of these temporary monarchs as the founder of the most durable dynasty in the whole of Roman history. We should not be far from the truth if we marked this age by the title, "Epoch of the Pretenders," as we may term the next century " Epoch of the Shogunate." The one title shows the open road and untrammelled candidature ; the other the irresistible fascination of a family. It is true that Staurace and Michael I. (811-813), ^e legendary Theophilus (829-842), and
316
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the typical young Caesar, Michael III. (842-867), — succeed in virtue of the never formulated but well adventurer: understood rule of family preference. But the most indifference effective sovereigns of the epoch literally rise from ihe ranks or seize the sce tre with > P adventurous controller. hazard before a mildly wondering world. Nicephorus himself continues to be what he was before, the vigilant personal superintendent of the empire's finances ; and perhaps behind his selfish ambition lay an unspoken protest against a slackened or a penurious administration. Leo V. the Armenian (813-820) supplants the humble and incapable Michael, who gratefully retires ; and the same suspicion attaches to this general as did once attach to Gallus ; that he secured the throne by treason on the field and a base understanding with the foe to betray the cause. It must be confessed that the story in either case appears unworthy of credit ; and one would be inclined to trust the frank minds of the Anatolic soldiers, who saluted their general and marched to the capital to install him, as so many regiments had done before. Michael II., a Phrygian from Amorium (820-829), is a brother-in-arms and a rival of Leo : to his succession belongs the dramatic tale of the sudden " peripety " from dungeon to throne, which here at least will not bear retelling. But the unpreparedness and caprice of the advent of the sovereign is still more signally illustrated by the career of the " Macedonian " groom, Basil I. (867-886), which displays the almost incredible stability of a centralised system without a centre. We associate the name of this strange sovereign with the tightening of the chains of despotic control, with the final phase in the irrevocable tendency towards absolutism ; the prince, long without rival or peer in the executive, now bids a contemptuous farewell to his age-long partner in the task of legislation. But it may surely be called the choicest irony of history that this change should have been effected by one who was neither a noble, a civilian, nor a Chief place open again
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soldier; who possessed neither personal popularity Chief place nor family prestige; with whom, outside the narrow ^^gatn circle of Michael's boon-companions, few officials adventurer: were familiar; none perhaps of the chiefs of the indifference . . . , , , .. , , of machine army-corps. I am inclined to believe that the success to its nomina of Basil's ungrateful crime was largely due not to controller. personal daring but to the very dynastic principle which it overthrew. It may be questioned whether the capital was aware of the massacre of the emperor, or that the naked explicitness and horror of the pitiable story as we have it, represent in any degree the vague rumour and silent suspicion which must have prevailed darkly in Constantinople. A "Caesar" legitimately created and accepted, would succeed without opposition; and the plausible penitence of Basil, his solemn atonement for the crime, may not have been so public as we are led to believe. In any case, the Church, horrified by the public scandals of Michael's irreligion, welcomed gladly enough an ignorant and a subservient monarch, anxious at the outset to ingratiate himself with all classes,—and above all, with that great clerical body which, in the most degraded times and with the most mistaken motives, represented the frankness and detachment of public opinion, elsewhere sought in vain. We can but regret that just on this occasion the patriarch, who might have been bold as S. Ambrose with the question, " Had Zimri peace ? " compounded the felony and assoiled the criminal, without demanding restitution and penance. After a long period of repression, under the revived Iconoclasm of the earlier ninth century,—the Church reasserted her rights. Somewhat after the fashion of John of England, Basil consents or proposes in curiously mediaeval spirit, to surrender his crown to the altar and receive it back again, as if by Divine commission as a sacred trust. We who in these latter days are sometimes startled by the swift news of a monarch's violent death are wont to hear the details of the crime within a few hours. But it may be doubted if intelligence
.
318
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travelled further than the palace ; and the undisputed accession of Basil to full sovereignty might be due adventurer: to the indifference of the people and the governindifference ing class, to the undoubted legitimacy (if caprice) of his appointment, and (among the more pious) to his welcome deference to religion after a curious controller. interlude of ribaldry and excess. In the annals of Byzantine history, this Sclavonian groom of remote Armenian origin stands as the founder of a dynasty. It must be confessed that he did not occupy the proud position in contemporary eyes. I must admit that the subject is a delicate one, and that children born in wedlock must be accepted by the historian of a royal line as their father's offspring. Yet the evidence is very strong in favour of the continuance of the Phrygian line in the person of Leo VI., — and not merely a sordid computation of months but the character and temper of the new monarch, his peril at the hands of his putative father, and the universal belief of the time, point to him as the son of Michael III. Not indeed until the pious patience of Constantine VII. was the name of Basil reinstated as the recognised head of the house. This is a matter which is obviously out of the reach of conclusive proof; yet in studying the dynastic succession of Eastern sovereigns we are obliged to mention the painful and indecorous hypothesis. Such it must always remain ; yet at the risk of dogmatising on an unpleasant subject, I strongly adhere myself to the belief that the Amorian house expired, not in the gory and pathetic murder of Michael III., but on the honourable imperial couch of Theodora ; and that the reign of Basil was a useful but not a serious break in the continuity of the longest of Byzantine dynasties. § 4. No particular interest or problem attaches to the succession of Leo VI. (886-911) or his son Constantine VII. who in the darkest of all European centuries sheds a genuine if pedantic lustre upon his throne, his court, and his age. We are approaching Chief place open again
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very near the confines of our self-imposed task ; for Canonisation the constitutional changes, which worked a silent °/ie#^f. . . . -i • macy: imrevolution in the system without abrupt convulsion, munity of are intimately connected with the seventh, the ninth, the hierarchy the tenth, and the eleventh wearer of the name and em*»w st the purple of Constantine. The seventh titular to- stands for gether with the long Augustan title of his grandson, peop!e'st f od> « i i . i • i i r i i 1 1 against his
held the nominal sceptre for a hundred and seven- Own agents. teen years, — a record approaching the length of the combined reigns of the fourteenth and fifteenth Louis, and outvying the almost Arganthonian duration of the earlier Manchu rulers of China (911-1028). The history of that period must be considered by itself ; new features and new problems are presented, closely bound up with the whole question of dynastic succession, with the comparative merits of elective and hereditary rulers. We will here confine ourselves to an epoch of one hundred and ten years. During this time the tiresome and continual interrogation of parvenus, as they offer themselves as fit candidates for the chief place, gives way to a fatigued recognition of legitimacy ; which needing with us something like a millennium of kinship and attested genealogy, seemed to be well established in that society in a brief space of fifty years. Our period opened, as we saw, unfavourably for monarchical stability; Stauracius, loudly protesting his detestation of the parental methods, failed to win confidence ; and Michael I. succeeding through his wife Procopia (as did Zeno just four and a half centuries back), yielded not merely to the clamour of an insane woman perpetually reminding him on all public occasions of his unfitness, but to his own convictions, and the resolve of the soldiers that the time was not ripe for a too pious and indulgent prince. (Indeed it must be confessed that the period of firmest solidity and splendour coincides with the determined secularism of the Iconoclasts, with the reduction of the Church to a subservient and well-drilled department of the State instead of a co-ordinate and rival
320 Canonisation of Legitimacy: immunity of the hierarchy of power: emperor still stands for nis own agents.
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power, as in the West.) But the close of our period, the accession of the tiny Constantine VII. ushers in the most triumphal epoch of Legitimacy. And amid the strange vicissitudes of the central power, the barbaric and unfamiliar figures that press to the front,—we must inquire what influence lent unlooked-for stability to the system ; which veiled the inexpertness of a statesman, and enabled him to recast the principle of sovereignty in a mould of pure absolutism. We must again point out that two parallel or rather contrary tendencies may be observed in any commonwealth. While the State draws new duties and functions to itself, an increasingly large portion of life falls outside its competence. Every subordinate agency which the State creates, to execute its wishes or to ease its burdens, becomes in time a rival, and perhaps a supplanter. A State may well be centralised in theory, and in practice particularist. The whole drift towards monarchy is not the result of ambition, but is the unconscious work of forces which are strictly social,—love of organised and regular routine and hatred of disorder, prejudice in favour of the concrete and visible. The monarch, like the early Cagsars, attempts to perform in person and without deputy. The eager confidence of the subject imposes ever new burdens; and the delegates multiply, at once the agents and the restraints of sovereign authority. Not that the officials of the empire claimed such uncontrolled liberty as the later Counts secured from the weaker Carolings. But the immunities and "administrative right" which the Byzantine bureaucracy secured, if less formal, were at least as effective. The reigns of these monarchs comprised a struggle for impartial justice; and the Oriental legends of Theophilus, untrue perhaps in the letter, represent accurately enough the current feeling,—that the emperor stood for the people's interest against his own functionaries. The mills of the Byzantine system, like the magic stones in the Norse Saga, ground on when once started, whether the miller was there or not. And by far
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the larger part of life, as we said, lay without the Canonisation direct imperial jurisdiction. Had not centuries of uniform usage crystallised behaviour, class-relation, religious ceremony and belief, the rule of civil pro- the hierarchy motion and precedence, into hard-and-fast outline ? ^^or^till Was it not, even in the most turbulent times, the stands for chief pride of the empire that the arbitrament oi peoples good, ...... , ii j j - 1 - 1 - i against h i s civil justice went on unaltered and unprejudiced, amid own agents. the quarrels of pretenders or the dread and din of foreign invasion ? Thus it comes to pass that the very methods for carrying the central designs into effect, become also the means for curbing its caprice and misuse, for rendering it, in a word, to a great extent, superfluous. The more complicated a government, the less need for the perpetual intervention of the sovereign. Moses, acording to the counsel of Hobab, delegates and divides and finally attenuates authority. Personal government is possible only in the exceptional circumstances of the early empire ; or in limited but direct intercourse of family or clan, as in Montenegro of to-day. Elsewhere, wherever despotism is the formula of the constitution, the unique preoccupation of the absolutist is to save absolute power from itself ; and to remedy in some measure the incurable paradox of a system, which rests the impersonal State and its destinies upon the erring or ignorant judgment of a single mortal. § 5. It need not be pointed out that exactly the same Absolutism course follows v(unconsciously) upon the recognition checks itself; , ,, , ... j i Basilian of another and very similar paradox,—popular govern- Centralism ment. For the whole care of the administration, when = curtailonce the choice of rulers and the final judgment on political issues is made over to the mob, is directed towards cancelling this dangerous authority by elaborate system of check and countercheck, and by displaying in every dictum and expedient the profoundest distrust for a really popular verdict. Thus it is, as we have so often occasion to remark, that the two most similar forms of government—despotism and democracy, are destined never in effect to attain VOL. i. X
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Absolutism checks itself : Centralism =curtail~
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genuine existence ; and they are never fully recogexcept at their obsequies. The supposed absolutism of the earlier system of Diocletian, providing as in duty bound, against riot and caprice, actually deprived the sovereign of much of his prerogative. From this system of Constantine issues quite naturally the ignorant if conscientious seclusion of Constantius II., the powerless chafing of Gratian and Valentinian II. against alien control, the pious and cloistral retirement of Honorius, Arcadius, and the younger Theodosius. The legal powers of the prefect are extended, although the unique military control is taken away. There lies no appeal to the sovereign in the fourth century; and edicts are full of vain regrets on imperial inability to control imperial agents. While the central reconstruction of the fourth century aims principally at securing the empire against individual caprice, the similar movement of Justinian placed the ideal of government in the vigilance of an elderly civilian, with Philip II.'s unwearied love of administrative routine. The complaints of his nephew and successor, Justin II., show exactly the momentary effect of a well-meant reform, which did not outlast the life or rather the vigour and sanity of its author. The weak control of the sovereign is never seen so clearly as in the half-century following the death of the greatest of " Illyrian sovereigns." Everywhere decay and decomposition, and a polite but firm resistance of the interested classes to the generous and popular proposals of the emperor. Once more in the latter part of the ninth century, significantly enough under a sovereign per saltum, comes this inevitable if mistaken tendency to unify all the threads or wires under a single hand. It is clear that in practice this will lead in all but the one hundredth instance, to the strengthening of precedent and routine. Very few sovereigns have the minute administrative patience for detail which is shown by the illustrious line of Roman emperors : or by Napoleon I., alien recon-
n j sec j
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structor of despotic machinery for a spurious republic. Absolutism To centralise is far more to safeguard from caprice ^^fe^; and local usage than to put any fresh or sharper Centralism instrument in the hands of a monarch. The greater =curtailthe theoretical centralism, the wider and more unsympathetic shall we find the departments of State, the more numerous the various hierarchs or hirelings who await with anxious and attentive reverence the expressed will of the sovereign on a matter already long ago settled. Thus we may trace the further step towards absolutism, which the upstart Basil takes, quite as much to the well-grounded apprehension of the imperial council, as to any haughty ambition or active distrust of the previous machinery. § 6. If in these changes we see rather a limit than Decay of an extension of dangerous wilfulness, we may perhaps ^^^ in turn our notice upon a question continually grazed departments but never penetrated in the course of our survey, — oj state: anh the character, methods, and training of the func- influence of tionaries of government. For it is undeniable that the expert. it is in this later period, especially in the reign of Leo VI., that the archaic features of the old Roman civil service vanished ; so stubbornly surviving as a tradition and "secret of the empire," amid the disappearance of nations, the advent of parvenus and the wreck of transient dynasties. It is the fashion to connect the duration of the Eastern empire with the unrivalled discipline and certain promotion of the civilian department. And it is worth while to cast an eye on the development and changes which it underwent. A profession of State-service is found only in highly civilised (it may be, moribund) communities. True democracy modelled on antique citizenship is the apotheosis of the amateur. Specialism, inseparable from a complex social life, has no place in commonwealths, which as opposed to the spurious free states of modern times, can make a genuine boast of freedom. The duties of a simple justice, administration, police, flow without conscious effort, from the natural relation of father,
324
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Decay of husband, or brother; the heads of the associated careful families meet for the discussion of public business; training in an . .. . . 1 1 j. n. j departments " the titular monarch, who is seen at the dawn of State: anti- of Hellenic, Roman, and Teutonic history, is but ^ffStf the expert.
" first among Peers'" and PerhaPs recalls a semidivine ancestor and a closer intimacy with divine secrets. It would have been inconceivable for such men to have set up, as servant and master at the same time, an organised body of public officials,— created indeed by the mass of citizens but superior to the individual or capricious will. When the single subjective will overcomes, in Alcibiades or in Catiline, the traditional reverence for the purely moral sanctions of the State, and the two great evils of centrifugal or feudal society emerge,—private war and private greed,—the need of a central arbiter becomes apparent, armed with forcible as well as religious power for the coercion of this impious eccentricity. The empire attempted this task side by side with the original council of Fathers and of Peers. The growth of the civil service in Rome has been already traced in broad general outlines and in particular detail,—from the freedmen of Claudius, Nero, or Domitian ; through the reorganising vigour of the great juristic period of the Antonines; down to the sudden and well-nigh fatal blow to civil government, the murder of Severus II. (235). We have seen that beneath the turbulent surface of the halfcentury that followed, tranquil depths may be descried where the old routine was still pursued, even amid the alarming aberrations of the central pivot. The hierarchic gradations of the great reform of the fourth century certainly had in view the severance of the civil functionary or bureaucrat (directly amenable to the prefect), not merely from the military contingent, but from the great body of contributing citizens. Thus arose that highly efficient and specialised body of government officials who meet us continually after Constantine, as a distinct class in the State. And indeed, although Plato in the
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Republic allows a free passage for ability up and Decay of down between the various orders, yet there is ^^L in observable the same Hegelian maxim, which un- departments consciously the Roman government adopted, that of state: antigovernment should be confined to the circle of i^emeof officials. the expert. § 7. Most criticisms of the Roman Empire are an Indictment undesigned indictment of the darling projects of °fe™Ptre>« 1 0 - 1 A j o • ix x/ma/conmodern Socialism. And Socialism entrusting un- damnation of limited power to the State (represented as it must extreme be by a committee of experts) is the very denial state™mniof free local and personal life. The Roman sove- poteme worse, reigns, facing much the same problems as a modern *f '"?*. . nation, undertook the guard of the frontier, the an accessible maintenance of order within, a uniform judicial ana reprocedure, and the supply of provisions to the chief centres. It is true that neither religion nor education came within the scope of their solicitude. The empire was, however durable, an artificial creation of beneficence : and the unity between the various tribes, cities, races, and creeds was a fictitious unity that arose from this common relation to the metropolis. From the first the strictly Roman government stood out in clear distinctness from the population. There is no sign that the provinces resented this monopoly; there is evidence enough on both sides to make us hesitate before deciding between a corrupt surrender and a wilful encroachment. This distinct character of a service, which was open to all, is maintained through the whole of Byzantine history. While the Church and its prelates remain Hellenic in temper, metaphysics, and sympathy, the old Roman tradition and character is kept up in that curious Asiatic and Armenian class, who supplied the empire of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries with brave champions and earnest reformers. On this peculiar and it may be artificial product, public virtue and capacity of the older Roman type, Finlay has a passage marked by his usually correct insight, when writing of the " con-
326 Indictment of empire, a final condemnation of extreme Socialism : State-omnipotence worse, if not embodied in an accessible and remonarch.
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version" of Basil II. But a certain change in the highest rank of the hierarchy is to be noticed in this very period we are now discussing: Oriental caprice and not lengthy and tried service fills the chief posts. Below, the subordinate officials maintain their place and duties, but with lessening respect for the chief virtues of a bureaucracy, equity, and a real sympathy with the subject-population. The annalists are full of complaints, which begin in this period of comparative prosperity, of the insolence of officials as a privileged class apart, of the fiscal exactions, and the gradual decay in the distribution of impartial justice. A special section must be devoted to the sad task of reviewing these shortcomings in the imperial agents; and the record is the natural outcome of the extravagant promises made by the empire, and by the very dexterity and competence of the agents which it carefully trained to execute them. But the chief strictures are kept for the suspicious favouritism, which entrusted the principal stations of duty to the nominees of the palace; and the historians who allow themselves the liberty of free reflection, like Psellus and Zonaras, are greatly concerned at the arbitrariness of appointment to the chief places, even if they are not shocked at the barbarian nationality of the candidates. The records of all wide and despotic monarchies are full of instances of this fondness for alien agents—the caliphs, the Seljuks, the Mongols. And the supranational and idealistic Byzantine system is no exception. Gradually, the emperor vested with powers nominally unlimited, cannot afford to place confidence in any one outside his own family or circle of attached servants. § 8. The jealous reservation of great offices to kinsmen or to dependent eunuchs is a prominent feature of the later age, but is by no means uncommon in this period, and has its warnings or intimation long before. Did not Vespasian create Titus prefect, and did not Justinian with his unerring sagacity summon
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Narses from the shadowed life of a palace to a Growth of command which had overtaxed the energies of ancarelessness T-> i • • i• i/ . i • .• i i "> abuses Joelisanus himself ? And it is this tendency to under identify the State with family or with servile de- -£*» VI- •' pendents which will wholly alter the lineaments f^th between of the liberal empire. The employment of corrupt Feudalism or ineffective chamberlains on military service will ®™
irritate the military caste, which owing to the pacific equally selfaims of the prosperous successors of Iconoclasm had seeking suffered both in practice and in prestige. Militant and chivalrous feudalism respects indeed the prejudice for the family, but will have none of those base and supple agents so dear to an apprehensive central power. Hence the veiled but perpetual strife between the Feudal and the Oriental temper; and the open discontent and revolution which succeeds the extinction of the Amorian dynasty. And it must be confessed that the success of the military caste is not reassuring; for with the Comneni the whole ideal and disinterested conception of the State breaks down and gives place to pure "patrimonial" selfseeking, as with the Merwings. For if we seem to anticipate, it is because the reign of the supposed son of Basil (886-911) shows all the later vices of an intermittent and arbitrary government, proceeding without knowledge or any real control of its agents, and of set purpose elevating the civil or palatine official above the military interest. But the succeeding age witnesses a reaction ; while the respect due to the " purple-born" is in nowise diminished, the soldier or admiral receives recognition not merely as the highest servant but as the equal of the legitimate sovereign. A period of military glory under Phocas, Tzimisces, and Basil II. himself dispels in the open daylight and peril of the camp the intrigues of a luxurious court. It is this period which will form the subject of our next essay; and we have ventured to call it by the now familiar title of the " Shogunate."
CHAPTER III THE EPOCH OF THE BYZANTINE "SHOGUNATE"; OR, THE AGE OF MILITARY EXPANSION AND RECOVERY (919-1025 A.D.) 919-944 . milit. nom.
ROMANUS I. LECAPENUS. /•STEPHANUS < CHRISTOPHORUS. . . . ICONSTANTINUS VIII. . . (CONSTANTINUS VII. (sole) .
birth. .
944-959)
ROMANUS MANUS II. 11- (son of Const. grandson of Romanus I.). /BASILIUS II. (son) \CONSTANTINUS IX. (brother) . NICEPHORUS II. PHOCAS.
VII. VH. > fi bir(h _ . . ) "* 963-1025 . birth. . . 963-1028 . birth. . . 963-969 . milit. nom. and FEMALE right, palace conspir. JOHANNES II. TZIMISCKS (neph.) 969-976
Regency side by side with Legitimacy : efficiency consulted as well as stability.
§ 1. THE last two periods of our survey comprise the obscure phases of a remarkable struggle,—between the interest of the soldier and the civil official, the landed or feudal interest and the court. But the immediate section from the accession of Constantine VII. to the death of Basil II., presents us with an early stage in which the issues and the stakes are not as yet clearly defined. After the slothful and somewhat corrupt peace of Leo VI., there is a strong reaction in favour of a " forward " policy. In spite of the abuses which had crept into the Roman administration, the general prosperity had been great under the Amorians, and the resources had steadily increased. Perhaps the worst indictment of the reign of Leo the Wise is that he was preparing too early to beat his sword into a plowshare, and to enjoy the whole rich imperial realm as his own private domain. Such indeed is the temptation of all youthful monarchs who succeed by an indisputable title without the previous discipline of a private 328
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station. The earlier system of perilous and precarious Regency side competition gave way to a frank recognition of hereditary claim,—and indeed Leo might well satisfy efficiency in his ambiguous origin both the Amorian and the consulted as " Macedonian" faction. In this tenth century the splendour, the culture, and the wealth of the capital and the more favoured provinces, stand out in startling contrast to the miserable and riotous condition of the rest of Europe. It was impossible for a prince brought up as in the "Happy Valley" of Rasselas, amid pleasant sights and sounds, to appreciate the frequent want and distress of the outlying districts. To him favourable bulletins were always issued; and he might well be the most ignorant as well as the most responsible citizen in his dominions. Catherine II. herself found the deceptive atmosphere of a court followed the monarch even on a distant progress; and mistook the stage apparatus which unknowingly she carried among her own luggage,— the maypole, the village-inn, the merry peasants,— for serious evidence of plenty and contentment. Yet in spite of the cloistral ignorance of the monarch and the natural decay of institutions which demanded and implied strict personal attention, in spite also of the horrors of the famous capture of Thessalonica in the last years of the reign,—the forces, natural and human and economic, had been slowly and surely recruiting; and in the minority of the youthful son of Leo, the thoughts and sympathies of men turned to more strenuous rule. And inasmuch as the affectionate allegiance of the capital was enlisted for the dynasty and for the helpless minority of Constantine,—the supplanting by a military leader of a palace-cabal was attended by no overthrow or revolution. Yet if the accession of Romanus Lecapenus to power (919) ushers in the period of the Byzantine " Shogunate" and the glorious careers of Phocas, of Tzimisces, and of the legitimate Basil himself,—how strange and anomalous is the circumstance of his triumph and the character of the man !
830
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Regency side Philip the Arabian (244), according to current rumour, had wilfuI1 Y created a scarcity in the commissariat that he might shift the onus to Gordian III. and consulted as take his place: Gallus (251) was suspected of sacrificing his master to the invader that he might himself stability. seize the throne; Leo V. (813) seems to have profited in an unexpected fashion by his own incompetence or doubtful faith in the field; and Lecapenus, after a sorry display of treachery or cowardice, returns in triumph to the capital to play Napoleon to the Directory! Byzantine history is indeed full of surprises ; and we are constantly wondering at the qualities, the policies, and the men whom the wayward citizens delight to honour. But perhaps here is the most surprising instance of inexplicable success ; Romanus returns with his fleet to confront, as one might suppose, the painful alternative, a confession of timidity or treason,—is able to dictate his own terms to the palace, to seize the ominous and significant title of Grand Heteriarch, and in the end to seat himself side by side with the legitimate ruler. This is a strange prelude to the effective and personal chivalry of the three imperial warriors in the remainder of the period. But we are not concerned with the details of this warlike prowess but rather with the political feeling of which it is the chief symptom. Romanus without doubt profited by the general discontent with a feminine regency, by the intrigues which divided the imperial council. He stood for the bluff frankness of a seaman; he had no pretensions to polish ; his son-in-law, Constantine himself, speaks of his limited attainments with spiteful contempt; he entered, like a breezy gust of north wind, into the hothouse air. As in the French Republic to-day, it is the hour which cannot find the man; so the way was prepared at Byzantium for any one who had the courage to seize the forelock of Time. Not that a revolution was contemplated ; the dynasty was popular and the whole temper
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of the age was humane; the leniency of the Byzantine Regency side court is never more striking than in this half-century ty tide with when the rest of Europe is sunk in barbarism. But efficiency while no one disputed the rights of the emperor by consulted as descent, while on occasion men could loudly complain of the ousting of the heir,—a capable and personal ruler must share the dignity as well as the burden of office. § 2. The unwarrantable elevation of Romanus was a Astonishing protest against the suspicious secrecy of chamberlain- ^uceessand rule or a divided and incapable regency ; it forms one 9Romanus I. : additional proof (if evidence is needed) of the inexor- Theophylact able Roman principle of personal government. And so the solitary and giddy pedestal is thronged with new figures; there are five emperors at the same moment; the young heir, buried in the palace with his books, his music, his painting; the rough sailor Lecapenus learning awkwardly the strict and indispensable formulas of sovereign behaviour; and his three sons, Stephen, Christopher, and Constantine VIII.,—whose ungrateful and ill-timed ambition proved fatal in the course of years to this renewed attempt at an imperial " college." Meantime, the citizens reserved their love for the ruler by " right divine " and resented his seclusion; Romanus, like so many surprising elections in time past, proved a careful and efficient coadjutor,—certainly preferable as a vizier or •jrapaSvvaa-Tevmv, to an intriguing menial of the palace. We shall draw attention at the suitable moment to his wise policy with regard to the great landowners and the overgrown estates,—which by a tendency not wanting altogether in sound and wholesome features, created a counterweight against the centralised absolutism wielded by the court. But Romanus was lacking in modesty and in moderation; he grasped too eagerly at the entire harvest of his unlooked-for victory. Not content with placing three of his sons on the throne, he made a fourth, Theophylact, still a minor, patriarch of the metropolis. It is perhaps no very instructive pastime of the
332 Astonishing success and greed of Eomanus I. : Theophylact and John XII.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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historian, to trace vague and secret currents and tendencies, which are as it were "in the air," and exercise over wide areas the same influence without any visible connection or known intercourse. Yet it would be impossible to pass over the career of Theophylact without drawing attention to his—I had almost said, heir and successor in the rival capital, —John XII. So have we seen the type of anomalous prince-prelacy in Sidonius, sportsman, bishop, urban-prefect and consummate stylist, in earlier model at Barca and Gyrene: we find a prototype in Synesius, the Platonist, the priest, the bold rebuker of royalty, the eloquent hymnodist. Our two "princebishops " are widely different from the amiable contemporaries of Leo I. and S. Augustine. They are types that can only be met with in a wholly secularised Church ; when the apostolic virtues have given way before the wealth and mundane duties, pressing on abundantly, when the chief place is seized as a prize by the feudal cadet. During this tenth century in the older Rome, down to early Teutonic reformations from beyond the Alps under the first and third Otho,—the Holy See loses altogether its sacred and ecumenical character. It is an appanage of the more powerful nobility,—just as in some exiguous English borough a great magnate from his neighbouring castle might control the burgesses' election and nominate his son to the rectory. Under Theophylact, as a few years later under Octavian, son of Alberic, the stable is the centre of attraction for the patriarch. Michael III. had, like Gallienus or Honorius, resented when intent on pleasure the distracting news of a Saracenic inroad, and had actually intermitted or even destroyed the elaborate system of beacon-fires through Lesser Asia. But it was reserved for the patriarch Theophylact to interrupt the service of the cathedral in order to be present at the " accouchement" of a favourite mare. This feudal interlude is of brief duration in New Rome; but it has all the features of the Western type of secularised prelacy,—the same want of apprecia-
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tion for the ideal and objective State and Church, the Astonishing same belief in office as a patrimony and privilege ^oeessand ^ QT66U O/ rather than (with antiquity at its best) a difficult trust, Romanus I. : the same immersion in innocent but exaggerated Theophylact , ,. , . ., , , , ,,• and John country pastimes. TIt is impossible not to sympathise X1I more with this temper than with the dark or cruel intrigues of priestcraft. Even the modern counterpart, the keen sportsman in the family living, is perhaps more popular than the ascetic celibate however devoted, with whom the priesthood becomes a caste.—In Byzantium, this frank worldliness soon passes away, though Theophylact survived and was tolerated by court and people, for another twelve years after his father's downfall. And he is the unique example of a type common enough in the feudal West. § 3. The foolish and unfilial treason of the three Feud of sons of Lecapenus rebounded against themselves, military and rr,i • iL c ii • ,- -i civilian 1 he rights of the reigning family were once more castes, asserted; and for fifteen years Constantine VII. enjoyed the responsibility as well as the title of Augustus. In the reign of his son and successor, Romanus II., 'Sasiliusand the feud between the chiefs of the civilian and mili- Jo^n tary departments again emerges,—Bringas the minister is jealous of Phocas the general. Once more, a vigorous and personal ruler is preferred to an able civil minister; and Phocas and his nephew revive the most brilliant lustre of Roman glory. Once more, a successful general presents himself, as Vespasian or Napoleon, before a wearied or enthusiastic capital. The nephew, who subsequently ended by an abrupt murder the reign of Phocas, insisted on its beginning ; the recall of Nicephorus by the minister was the signal for his salutation as emperor. He was in no sense unfaithful as the husband of Theophano to his young step-sons : he became the regent-emperor with full powers during their minority,—perhaps with some implicit understanding as to a voluntary retirement, which unhappily he was never called upon to fulfil. Quite in the manner of the French "majorate" or
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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the Japanese "shogunate," this regency bid fair to become as hereditary and as charged with anxiety and peril as the legitimate sovereignty itself. John II. (for we must not forget the Notarius who ruled for nearly two years in Ravenna after Honorius, 423-425) supplanted his morose and ascetic uncle by a single crime which indelibly stains a career otherwise almost free from reproach. Under him the policy of expansion is further pursued on the lines set by Nicephorus II.; and it would ill become me to seek to imitate or to rival the graceful and picturesque redundance of the able Frenchmen who record this Indian summer of Byzantine renown. Let us be content with remarking that the same silent duel continues between the civilian interest and the military caste. Legend may usually be trusted for interpreting the spirit and misreading the letter of an epoch; it is a far more valuable guide for the speculative historian than the spiteful scandal or didactic pragmatism of the academic writer. And the death of John II. (969-976) was in popular rumour connected with a frank and unwise remark, on the growing estates of eunuchchamberlains and palace-favourites. He had passed through fertile but deserted tracts in the heart of the great Asiatic promontory, and on inquiring for the owner of these remarkable estates, heard wearisomely repeated the name of a single imperial servitor, the " Marquis of Carabas " of the folk-story,—who without venture or toil had entered into the labours of the soldier-caste. The usual suspicion of poison is recorded; and the now mature sons of Romanus II. by universal consent take up their rightful heritage. § 4. But the tradition that the sovereign reigns but Personal energy oj does not govern, dies hard; and the customary legitimate attempt is made by the now dominant faction of monarch : ' conversion' civilians to immerse the emperors in youthful indulof Basil II. gence. Side by side with the imperial general, the marks epoch. son of Romanus I., the chamberlain-president Basilius, had possessed complete control over the civil administration. It has been contended, not without Feud of military and civilian castes, Bringag and Nicephorus II. : Basilius and John II.
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335
reason, that his physical condition alone prevented Personal him from imitating his father's example, and assuming e™rgy °-f ° . i i legitimate f the imperial title. But the times were not favourable monarch: to civilian regime, or to the duration of chamber- 'conversion' lains' influence. Once more the natural envy of the °mar1^epoch. two departments emerges ; and the remainder of the century is occupied by the exploits and open treason of the two Bardas, not with the subtle intrigues of a courtier. A fresh feature of complications had to be reckoned with, in the " conversion " of Basil, the elder of the two brothers. Suddenly he threw off the precedents and traditions of his house, and girt himself up not merely for the task of personal supervision, but for the hardships of the camp and the campaign. The government of Leo VI. nearly a century before may have been despotic in name ; but the philosopher was clearly at the mercy of his ministers : though he had the last word to pronounce, it was rarely that he framed the decision, which it expressed. The reign of Constantine VII. had seen a gradual blurring of the sharp outlines of responsible sovereignty. The people regarded the artistic and handsome emperor, born (so short were their memories) of an ancient, "honourable lineage," with a feeling akin to the modern loyalty and affection, entertained by a free nation towards a good-natured ruler who never troubled them. Evils and abuses were put down to the wilfulness of agents and ministers ; and the titular monarch is somehow safe throughout this century, though the active regent, even if he bear the title, is held accountable and removed from office, by compulsory retirement or secret assassination. Basil broke the tradition of " constitutional" or perhaps Oriental sovereignty. He reverted to the older usage and became the captain of a victorious army, the relentless pursuer of a hazardous policy. He determined to be both in title and effect, the master; and he emerges the conqueror of the twin and rival departments which had encroached on the personal executive. Exhausted by internecine conflict they
336 Personal SfmaC monarch: 'conversion' 0/BasilII. marks epoch,
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became an easy prey to a ruler who knew his own - Yet apart from the magical title of legitimacy and the natural sympathy of a warmhearted people f or a boy-king, Basil at first had but little chance of rr.l_ x n A1 l r -r success. The great Byzantine noble-f amines were inured to the practice of arms. The long security of the Iconoclastic age, while it had not blunted the passion for genuine or artificial celibacy, had conferred a degree of certainty on the transmission of title and estates, which was unknown in the Oriental monarchies and was maintained in feudal Europe only at the point of the sword. And the Armenian and Asiatic magnates, who combined the privileges of landlords and of generals, had acquired in spite of palace intrigues, something of the exemption and immunity which their compeers were just then extorting from the dwindling monarchy of France. The Oriental realm is ignorant of the grades and distinctions of nobility; a pure religious democracy levels up all converts to Islam in order to bow them again in a uniform subservience to God's vicegerent. And in India the social system is entirely independent of the exact political formula of the constitution ; it is indeed superior to it and antecedent; and the issues of real import are settled and fixed by immemorial tradition, with which no sovereign, Mussulman or Hindoo, would venture to interfere. Birth in India counts for everything, in China for nothing; and in neither country is there in the strict sense an aristocracy. Asiatic nobles § 5. Although the Roman Empire, being like Islam, wnrfZtion in PurP°rt and design democratic, waged unceasing ofScierus warfare with the overweening claims of privilege,—it and Photos. w ijj be seen that these claims revive from time to time. Immunity and distinct treatment created an exempt class, at variance with that impartial uniformity, which is the highest pride of a civilised State. This class might be composed of spoilt bureaucrats or of chivalrous nobles, whose pastime was war. The great Armenian invasion of the " seats of the mighty " had arisen from the needs of the empire. In the mind
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contest with Islam the old Roman spirit awoke from Asiatic nobles the a long The Eastern realm caught some- and .. & slumber. fe usurpation thing of the strenuous tone of Western Christendom, of Soleras A nobility of the sword was formed, a silent rival of and Phocas. the bureaucracy. Once more, the imperial centralism rose to crush both these subordinate but now wilfully independent delegates of its power. But effective personal government on Roman lines was doomed after the fatal and formal recognition of autocracy under Basil and Leo (867-911). Basil first overpowers the military pretenders Bardas Phocas, Bardas Sclerus, and then turns to rid himself of the wise but irksome tutelage of his namesake. The influence of the Lecapenian family lasted throughout the greater part of the tenth century: and it did not run in the legitimate issue alone. Basilius the chamberlain, a natural son of Romanus I., arms three thousand household slaves like some Clodius of the late republic or baron of medieval Rome; and he places Nicephorus II. on the throne. He bears uncontested sway in the civil department through the sixteen years of the regent-emperors. He acquired enormous wealth and territory, which he doubtless farmed by the everready supply of Sclavonian colonists. It was rumoured that at his suggestion a poisoned cup was administered to John II., when he tarried at the Asiatic palace of a grandson of Romanus I. Against this powerful minister and king-maker, Basil, now secure of his military rivals, turns his indignation. He was disgraced and his estates were confiscated; henceforth Basil was his own premier and commander-in-chief. § 6. The last thirty years of the reign and life of Monarch's rmtleg s Basil II. were spent in this strenuous personal mon- Jcampaign . r * archy. It is not our intention or aim to follow the against victorious standards of the highly organised body of family and J ,. , . . s J °. , . dynastic r _ . natives and mercenaries under a sovereign of Oriental influence : descent, who destroyed the nascent hopes of the new feudal disBulgarian State and nation. This is the last aggres- '%^t™*% sive war of the Roman annals; and it may be, the Kan caprice, last really effective attempt to fulfil the imperial ideal, ensuing on r bellicose era. VOL _ ^ Y
338 Monarch's Jruitless campaign family and dynastic influence : feudal discontent with corrupt civilian caprice, ensuing on
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Yet amid these untiring campaigns how large a portion of the administration must have fallen hopelessly outside the cognisance of the emperor! Basil II., besides his achievement as a warrior, may lay claim to the foresight of a genuine statesman,—unavailing though it proved. He follows the anti-feudal policy of his great-grandfather, the first Romanus : he takes measures to discourage the vast castellated mansion, typical of the state and influence of the Asiatic noble. For here was congregated until the inroad of the Seljuks, all that was most vigorous and well-born in the empire. " I am no Roman from Thrace or Macedon, but from the Lesser Asia." Here spread the latifundia which, centred in the hands of a few magnates, bound by strong family ties and a common interest,—had replaced the modest estate of the yeoman. Basil may confiscate the estate of Eustathius Maleinos, and may raze his castle to the ground,— like a later feudal king overcoming particularism and refounding the State. But he is powerless to arrest the tendency which at certain periods of decadence or of advance destroys the middle-class and the smaller owner.— And the very vigour of this stern but unattractive personal rule has its reaction. We open the records of our last half-century with a consciousness that the value of Basil's example of ascetic and relentless work was lost upon his successors. Caprice, which like " free living " or " free thought" means not power but impotence, not liberty but thraldom, not knowledge but ignorance,—caprice will guide the rare moments when Constantine IX., already some sixtyfive years an Augustus, puts his hand to the helm. The question recurs again and again,—Shall the government be efficient or secure ? The " Shogunate " of the tenth century provided able rulers, who devoted themselves unsparingly to the public service, while the senior Augustus was shrouded in obscure tranquillity. The world is always witnessing a similar attempt; the bey of Tunis, the " nomokhan " of the
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Tibetan theocracy, the prime minister of Nepaul,— Monarch's are all signs of this attempted compromise. It [scampaign fmitles_s r & *• impossible to foresee whether the Byzantine admini- against stration, still Roman in spirit and tradition, would family and long have tolerated the pious abstention of the reign- influence: ing sovereign. Yet the continuance of this dual feudal discontent m system might have .saved the world from the unhappyi corrupt ^ J & eragentleness of the ninth and tenth Constantmes; and nan caprice, have still ensured the veneration commonly felt for ensuing on the members of the long-lived but ambiguous dynasty e icose em' from Phrygia. Basil removed all competitors of military renown or civil capacity; he reigned as unique and unapproachable as Aurelian. His solitary and funereal splendour marks the end of the Roman empire in the strict sense; and we may again remind our readers of the strange prediction of Valens and the commentary of Zonaras. The days for efficient supervision were already numbered. The avenues of certain information were corrupt, the sovereign could not be ubiquitous, and the number of those interested in keeping the emperor aloof from a real world, were too closely allied. His successors, dimly conscious of the serious perils which menaced the State, strove in vain against the current or abandoned in idle leisure the unequal contest. And while the territorial magnate still preserved his semi-independence, the warlike and chivalrous spirit decayed. Basil had destroyed his rivals and had humbled the officious vanity of his minister; but he left no successor to carry on his work. The realms of finance, of justice, or of military equipment, were disorganised; a weak successor and a period of thirty years of female sway were sufficient to exhaust the well-filled treasury, to relax the traditional and systematic frontier-defence, to transform the once dutiful and conscientious civilian into a wolf or a serpent, and to surrender almost without a serious encounter, the last and most flourishing home of the Roman spirit and of a chivalrous feudal nobility,—to the incursions of the Seljuks and the desolating influence of a Turkish government.
r
CHAPTER IV EXTINCTION OF ROMAN TRADITION UNDER THE DAUGHTERS OF CONSTANTINE IX. (1025-1081 A.D.) ROMANUS III. (son-in-law to Const. FEMALE right. IX., husb. to Zoe) . . . . . FEMALE right. MICHAEL IV. (Paphlag.) husb. to Zoe 1034-1041 MICHAEL V. (nephew) adopted by FKMIN. adopt. Zoe ZOE AND THEODORA (sisters together) CONSTANTINUS X. (Monomachus), ^ husb. of Zoe JI042-T054 . FEMALE right. THEODORA (alone) d. of Const. IX. 1054-1056 . birth. MICHAEL VI. (Stratioticus) . . . 1056-1057 . FEM. nomin. N. Prelude of the Comnenian Age and House of Ducas LSAACIUS I. (Comnenus) . . . . 1057-1059 . milit. nom. CONSTANTINUS XI. (Ducas) . . . 1059-1067 . civil, nom. EUDOCIA, widow and regent for— (•MICHAEL VII. -\ \ ANDRONICUS I. sher sons 1067 v CONSTANTINUS XII. 1 f FEM. right and ROMANUS IV. (Diogenes), husb. of\ Eudocia. . . . . . . .}«*»-«>7i • \ milit. nom. MICHAEL VII. (with his brothers) . 1071-1078 CONSTANTINUS XIII. son . . 1075- ? milit. pretend, NICEPHORUS (III.) Bryennius NICEPHORUS III. (IV.), Bot-"\ milit. pretend. aniates . . . . . . . )*°78-io8i.
Mistaken and § 1. WE have now reached the final stage,—the unpatriotic noiseless dissolution of the Roman system. The policy of realm, in spite of the seeming solidity which the civilians: envy of the successes of Basil had given, was exposed now as feudal always to serious dangers. Still its chief mission was magnates. defensive and protective; and there was gathering on the East a new enemy, whose permanent occupancy of the Lesser Asia was far more disgraceful and more formidable than the raids of Persia or the caliphate. In the revival of a warlike spirit among the provincial nobles there lay great promise for the 340
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future; but this was dissipated by distrust, by open Mistaken and neglect of patriotic interests, by the civilian rivals, unpatriotic by intestine feud. The emperors who succeeded civilians: Basil II., down to the seizure of the capital by the envy of the Comnenians, laid claim to the graces of learning and ~^ ^a( letters, lived in inglorious ease and became the mere instruments of ministers and females. They betrayed the most apprehensive suspicions of the great military caste, which as we saw had grown up with a curious mixture of Roman courage and public duty, and of chivalrous daring and family pride. The vigilant defence of the frontiers was relaxed by measures of short-sighted parsimony; whole bodies of gratuitous allies were estranged from the service of the empire ; and the forces which during the Iconoclastic period had nearly deserved the proud title of a citizen-army, were reduced and starved: to give place to the Varangians and Machlabites who fill the stage with obscure significance after Basil's demise. Nor did this emphasis on the civil side of the empire imply a strict and equitable administration of justice, or a fair distribution of burdens. We must complain of the mistaken fiscal system and erroneous methods of later Roman finance; but it is not often that we can charge it with ruinous and wasteful extravagance. But in the fifty years now before us, the resources of the empire were squandered on the capital and the palace; and the footprints of the tax-collector and the publican set exclusively towards the lion's den. It has been pointed out that after Basil had, as it were, " solidified " the Balkan peninsula out of chronic deliquescence, nothing was more essential than a broad and liberal policy towards the new subjects; who had with the easy welcome or careless acquiescence of the age, settled down under their new masters. Yet any device of making the Roman yoke light and acceptable is conspicuously wanting. Both the Byzantine and the Bulgarian monarchies were "governments without a nation," to use Finlay's happy phrase. In the success of Basil
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or of Simeon the mass of the people were no more concerned than in the contest between Belisarius and Vitiges which the cloistered student follows with breathless interest in the pages of Procopius. The divested royal family would rise to Byzantine honours, and the Sclavonian settlers who grazed or tilled the waste places, might have become faithful subjects. Once more, as in the critical days of the Illyrian emperors, the unwieldy peninsula might become under careful management the nursery of soldiers. But the loyalty of the North was not secured; the frontiers of the East were left exposed in the lukewarm attitude of once precious allies; the moneys still levied on the pretext of national defence by a government which had ceased to defend, were poured into Constantinople and there disappeared. The palace, centre of all authority and life, became the asylum for strange and unrecognised " barbarians," Sclavonian favourites and blue-eyed Danes. Government was conducted altogether through the agency of the emperor's menials; and the triumphant successes of a noble captain in the West, George Magniac, were interrupted by the cabals of the palace. § 2. By far the larger part of this period (1028Dramatic and romantic 1081) is occupied by feminine ascendancy. The record features. of the reigns of Romanus III., of Michael IV., of Constantine X., is briefly dismissed as " the husbands of Zoe " ; and the single exception is her adopted son, Michael V. Theodora, now a septuagenarian, holds the sceptre alone in a prosperous reign which extinguishes the glories and the dynasty of the Phrygian family. And while the gravest issues trembled in the balance and hung on the question of the indispensable " Shogunate " in 1067, it was the fondness of Eudocia Macrembolitissa which suddenly raised Romanus IV. from the jeopardy of a criminal impeachment to full partnership of the throne. And indeed this halfcentury supplies, of all periods of Roman history, most abundant material for romance. The vicissitudes of fortune are so rapid; the crises which create or ruin Mistaken and unpatriotic policy of civilians: envy of the feudal magnates.
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so startling and unexpected. While Constantinople Dramatic can boast a populace, keenly interested in matters ^ romantic t •j • t 1 * 1 1 * • - i « t * 1 i JGQ.UU'F&S, political, while the provinces in their baronial castles can show noble families to match the flower of Western chivalry, while wealth and learning and piety have each their meed of public honour and influence,— all classes look on with a kind of amused or detached interest, when the merest accident or caprice raises to the loftiest throne in the world, a respectable nobleman, a low-born eunuch's brother and nephew, an aged nominee of the chamberlains hurriedly summoned to the indignant Theodora's death-bed, the gallant but discredited general on whom the impressionable Eudocia cast eyes of favour. And while not once nor twice the Senate reappears, as taking a forward part in the imperial councils or the question of the succession, the people are singularly conspicuous in the epoch of undoubted decline. Their devotion to the person of their lady-sovereigns, their dogged and stubborn defence of divine right and legitimacy, their rough-and-ready principles of justice, their complete acceptance of the theory of the State as the appanage of a privileged family,—all this is new in Byzantine history and gives a modern and a romantic flavour to the stirring events which overthrew the ungrateful " Caulker " or set up (or again displaced) the sisters on an equal throne. Of dramatic incident there is no lack. We see the aged Constantine IX. deciding on his successor ; and making a mistake and hastily recalling his judgment, both as to the husband intended for a daughter, and the daughter whose dowry was to be the lordship of the world. We have the strange story of Michael's infidelity, and the crafty intrigues of the powerful chamberlain, his brother; the bald, disappointed, and deluded emperor, the fatal Agamemnonian bath, and the sudden summons to the official world to come at midnight to see, without astonishment, the newly enthroned and wedded paramour. Then follows the morbid and ascetic penitence of
344 Dramatic
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Michael IV.; his strenuous task and military courage ; estrangement from his wife; and (perhaps most striking of all) the courageous walk of the empress through the public streets to visit her dying husband, only to encounter silence and bolted doors. Then the reluctant adoption of Caesar Michael that the Paphlagonian reign under the adroit eunuch may last indefinitely; his deep ingratitude and the famous riot on behalf of "the beloved mothers" of the mob. And the next scene,—the swift galley reaching the anxious Constantine, perhaps with the message of death or darkness, only to summon him to a throne. Then his amazing reign; the court jester's plot to seize the purple and kill the emperor, who laughs heartily and takes no notice ; the ludicrous spectacle of Constantine in the mutinous assault of Tornicius, sitting in perilous but imperturbable dignity at his balcony to watch the conflict below. And the pedantic pretensions of these sovereigns of a pantomime ; the sigh of Constantine Ducas, preferring to be known rather for his literary gifts than for his rank; the misplaced activity of the student Michael VII., who under the teaching of Psellus seems to have unlearnt all the virtues of a traditional emperor, and fitted himself like Glycerius six centuries before for the quiet security of an episcopal chair. But through all these scenes of innocent and good-tempered tumult, the uncouth visages and unfamiliar tongues of the ministers of the palace,—raised to absolute power from the dust like Daniel or like Joseph in a single night. And the hard unflinching gaze of the Varangians who appear almost without warning on the scene, as they looked out upon a world which filled them with surprise and amusement. Such is a general impression of these times of brilliant unreality ; sovereigns who are play-actors, ministers who are the viziers of "Hamlet" or a pantomime, a well-trained stage-mob who come in opportunely with loyal cries just in time to save innocence, injured if not conspicuously youthful. The serious his
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awakening comes in the crushing defeat and dis- Dramatic of Manzikert, the horrors of the siege and f^ romantic b ' features. mercenary assault of the capital by the Comnenian henchmen. Truly in this short span the last trace of Roman institutions and legality, the last remnant of Roman duty and disinterested service, vanishes. And in its place we have only a mimicry of Western feudalism in the great families of Comnenus or Palseologus, who conceal their private aims under the majestic disguise of the extinct commonwealth. § 3. It must be confessed that the beginnings of the Wellchange may be traced in the later days of Basil II. him- disciplined self ; and this is by no means without parallel,—for the bureaux author of a great personal reconstruction sows broad- ruined by cast the seeds of decay. In the Roman Empire the ^f^ood absence or the undue emphasis of this personal ele- features lost. ment was alike mischievous: the great ruler and overseer left no successor to his rigid devotion to duty, only to the outward splendour of a court; and the vacillating monarch who knew no mind but his minister's was unmasked without delay as a counterfeit. Basil is a striking figure,—solitary and austere. In the hard fight with the pretenders to win back his own heritage, in a vindictive and cruel war against a foreign foe, in the still harder efforts of self-mastery,— he had forgotten or unlearnt the kindlier and more amiable virtues. His later years were full of suspicious distrust; and he surrounded himself, to the great discontent of his subjects or historians, by a motley crowd of alien favourites. And the worst feature of his declining policy was sedulously copied by Constantine IX., who was careful not to attempt to recall any of Basil's virtues. Absorbed in pastimes, innocent and otherwise, he abandoned the control of affairs to his slaves; just as some luxurious Roman noble in olden time might surrender the cares of a vast estate to a trusted bailiff. It is especially noted of his brother, in those early years of the eleventh century, that he overthrew by his caprice the entire method and routine of the civil service,—that fragile grace &
CIV^iilQ/fi
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fabric which takes so long to erect and is upset in a few years. Promotion came neither from the East cimlian nor from the West; and good service in the gradual bureaux ruined by ascent of the hierarchy was no passport to favour or caprice : employment. It had been the primitive danger of the all good features lost. Roman commonwealth, strange amalgam of freedom and imperiousness, that the agents of the central power would gradually confront the subject-classes, foreign in sympathies and aspirations. The troubles and perils of the empire, the national appeal which was sometimes not entirely futile, had from time to time arrested this tendency. But in all periods it was latent, inherent indeed in the very system; the estrangement of the governing class from the interest of the mass and at times from the welfare of the whole. It must in fairness be remembered that the subjects could at no time have been trustworthy critics of the central policy. We may regret, but we must recognise, the isolated seclusion of the cities of the empire, strangers to their adjoining neighbours and bound by close ties of intercourse to the fountain-head. The ideal of a pacific State, protected from foreign assault by the untiring effort of rulers, amenable to the traditional discipline, passing on the torch of a welldefined policy of generous and "democratic " outline,—• this lived or lingered even in the darkest hour of peril or corruption. At this moment we are watching the gradual extinction of this Ideal. We may sympathise with those nationalist devotees, who decline to recognise value in a forcible protectorate of merit or capacity, exercised over the tumult and faction which is the essence of national life. There is indeed much to be said for the moderation, which in the terms of the older and perhaps exploded Liberalism refrains of set purpose from imposing good laws on others, unless they first invoke, appreciate, and endorse. Such a principle is favourable to that most priceless of human blessings, freedom. It is fatal to the very conception of empire,—regarded not indeed as in WeU-
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China, as the moral hegemony of a caste and system, Wellbut in our Western sense, in India, in Egypt, perhaps in Ireland, the ruling of a people for their bureaux ultimate good against their will. ruined by It would ill become the complacent British citizen, ^f™^/ secure in an acknowledged superiority, which gives features lost. him no personal trouble,—to dispute the grandeur of the Roman and Byzantine Ideal. Indeed, unless the writer is an avowed anti-imperialist at the outset, he must, from the English point of view, be a champion and apologist of the very conception of empire. In spite of the yawning divergence of aims and sympathy, in the general public and in civil and military circles, we must applaud the devoted efforts of the imperial line to keep the structure together at all costs; and must confess that the sacrifices they enjoined on the commonalty (as well as on themselves) were justified, at the not always unanimous bar of reason, of patriotism, and of advantage. Those, who for democratic China, or despotic Russia, or socialist Roman Empire of old, regard bureaucracy as an unmixed evil, will see in this class the unscrupulous oppressor of the poor, the desolators of empty provinces, the selfish agents of an unscrupulous tyrant. But amid all the facts of history and the complaints of historians, we may find much to praise in the system which gave equity and unity to a seething mass of rival races, and stability to the most beneficent government the world had yet seen. And it is in this epoch that the civil service, with its traditions and sense of corporate honour, is extinguished. This is the true Orientalism,—which in the eloquent pages of Champagny is the " King Charles' head " of that amiable historian of the early and later Caesars. § 4. The true Orientalism, in which the institutions of Rome perished, was neither the worship of Mithra and the sun, nor the so-called absolutism of Diocletian, nor the expensive splendour of the court of Constantine, nor the rigorous etiquette which concealed
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majesty from the meaner world, nor even the castesystem which apportioned society into fixed strata influence of without communication or genuine sympathy,—the successors: mischievous Orientalism of which Champagny dreamt, puppets of favourite or came only in the eleventh century. In place of a minister. hereditary nobility, or a noblesse of merit or of "the robe," pure accident and caprice bore sway. And in the Byzantine court with a sort of cynical irony;—for no sense of direct theocratic inspiration, no dogma of fatalism, precluded the constant criticism of the capital. The bygone civil service might indeed have been an arrogant caste,—the army might on rare occasion prove rather a menace than a defence to the subjects,—but neither was entirely foreign. Something of a vague national spirit had revived in the seventh century; and the Iconoclasts had combated manfully a world-renouncing superstition that populated the monkeries, impoverished the soil and the breed, and taught that the duties of a soldier defending his country involved grievous sin. With pardonable and exaggerated emphasis, all the ministers of Constantine IX. are barbarians, to the disgusted writers ; just as later all the tumultuary levies of Alexius will be mercenaries. We are indeed nearly approaching that dangerous period in the life of a modern State, when to use the expression of Tacitus, " Nulla publica arma" ; when the defenceless palace, head and centre of the whole, is at the mercy of the first adventurer. Nicephorus II. (963) rises to power through the train-bands of a base-born son of a former emperor ; and he has learnt a useful lesson; for he fortifies the palace hitherto singularly open and accessible ;—and we may doubt which is the more significant of the time,—the suspicious yet needful action of the monarch or the undoubted resentment which his well-founded diffidence aroused in his subjects. The centralised and effective control of a personal ruler fell to pieces, or masqueraded as the most laughable pretence, as soon as the strong will disappeared that summoned it into precarious being. It is clear that Basil's sueSmall
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cessors proved one and all the most remarkable Small er automata in the whole line of *?princes. Power was Pinfluence ^°™1 of vested no longer in a regent or joint-emperor, but in a chamberlain. John, the official " nurturer of orphans " successors: or President of the Foundling Hospital, exercises for P^pe^°/ nearly twelve years the only real authority. The 'minuter. presumptuous interference of the titular sovereign is resented, whether it be the serious and conscientious reforms suggested by his brother the fourth Michael, or the mere ungrateful arbitrariness of his nephew, the fifth. John is able to keep the emperor in complete ignorance of the course of events ; and in the well-known humanity of the time it is difficult to apportion responsibility for the summary and merciless justice, which appears now and again even in this insincere and indulgent age. The direct initiative of the Augustus was suspended during the interregnum of Irene's rule, when the empress, " plaything of her favourites," watched with interest but without influence the deadly rivalry of Staurace and Aetius. It cannot be denied that the administration of John was oppressive ; that it submerged the smaller owners, whom it is the chief interest of a State to maintain and to safeguard. Romanus III. had acquired a popularity second only perhaps to that of Anastasius, at the close of the fifth century : he had abolished the corporate responsibility (a\\r)\eyyvov), as his aged predecessor had by craft and command not merely ended the imposition of the jcpva-dpyvpov, but prevented any chance of its revival. But like Nicephorus I., Romanus III. was driven by ill-success and pressing needs to become a typical tax-gatherer, no doubt under the admonition of John ; and it is perhaps difficult to say which portion, the Balkan and European or the Asiatic, suffered more from his exaction. The ascendancy of John was terminated by Michael V. (1041), and the Empress Theodora was suspected of tardy and unofficial vengeance when the fallen minister was blinded under Constantine X. This monarch, whose reign in the brisk and scandalous chronicle
350 Small personal influence of successors: puppets of favourite or minister.
Protest of military element under Comnenus: countermovement under Oonstantine XI. : reaction under Eudocia and Romanus IV.: silent passing of the ' Roman' Empire.
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of Psellus reads like a story of some comedy-king, was noted for the evil character and slender credentials of the minister to whom he entrusted affairs. The elevation of a certain Boi'las to the rank of senator seems to have excited particular comment; while in the appointment of a capable eunuch of his household to command an expedition against Sicily he might plead either his undoubted success against the rival Magniac, or the historic precedent of Justinian in the sixth, of Irene at the close of the ninth, century. But the crowning error of the selfish or maladroit statesmen of the palace of Constantine, was the disarming of the Bagratids and the exposure of the Eastern frontier. The ninth of the name, like our James I., could not bear the sight of a naked weapon, discountenanced the pageants of military reviews, and had a rooted dislike of anything which might suggest an invidious comparison with his warlike brother. Both Romanus III. and Michael IV. had appeared at the head of their troops, according to the precedent of most Byzantine sovereigns; but with the ease-loving Constantine X. the military skill or prowess of the emperor was in complete abeyance. A determined policy was now initiated of starving the army and undermining, not merely the influence of the warrior-magnates of the suspected Asiatic families, but the indispensable defences of the empire itself. § 5. After the short but glorious reign of Theodora upon whom fell the entire renown of the great house, the discontent and justified resentment of the military caste flared into open rebellion. Michael VI. ingratiates himself with Senate and rabble, while disparaging the brave defenders of the empire, who lived aloof from the pettiness and intrigue of a court. We have a full account of this very interesting and significant reaction; we can trace the meetings of the conspirators in the now ruinous fastnesses of the Lesser Asia, the popularity of a noble scion of a house soon to be famous or rather notorious and the
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elevation of Isaac I. We hear of the ironical promise Protest of of a stern patriarch to the feeble Michael, and the military ele,. , , ,. , . ... .,, ,, . ' ,.., ment under retirement of the aged civilian with the bellicose title, Comnenus: in face of a storm of military prejudice such as counterbefore now swept Severus II. (235) or Mauricius (602) ^^ent from the throne. In this unhappy and disastrous Constantine duel of the two great departments of State, in this XJ- •'m*c~ c i ^ i -r u ^ ^1 i e -i-i tton under A
final war to the knife between the spheres of military Eudocia, and and administrative influence, the earliest representa- Romanus tives of the mailed hand and of the frank and straight- p^no forward policy of "no surrender," are strangely '•Roman unsuccessful. The reasons which led to the abdica- Empire. tion of the first Comnenus are shrouded in obscurity; like Claudius II. (268-270) he appears for a brief two years to point the way for the dynastic success of his house. We may judge from the inconclusive surmises of the historians that the dead and inert mass of silent bureaucratic or palace prejudice was exerted to make abortive all the schemes of reform. He became " hated by all," as we are told mysteriously; and we are left to suppose that the dislike was partly due to his openness in ascribing his power to the sword. His coinage represented an armed and mounted figure; and this rude unveiling of the hidden source or basis of sovereignty was distasteful to an age which prided itself on its civilitas.—The elevation of Constantine XI. Ducas is a conscious protest and a deliberate reaction against the brief military interlude. The severe penalties and confiscations which Isaac I. had sanctioned were all revoked; and it was sufficient title to dignity and esteem in this reign to have suffered disgrace or mulct during the last. Everything was directed towards the replenishment of the treasury, not for the war-chest but for the enrichment of officials and the payment of pensions. The civil service, or what was still left, might thus insure themselves against the accident or caprice which had replaced by purely precarious tenure the old security of deserved promotion. The ladder no longer rested steadily on earth to lose itself in the
352
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splendour of the imperial presence, to the neighbourjjood of which the lowliest aspirant might rise in a r n . ment under Comnenus: fixed series of gradations. Already had begun the counterpillage of the public funds for private purposes, — feudal patrimonialism without its chivalry or family pride. Gonstantine The military interest was exposed to cool and systeXI. : reac- matic neglect ; and the death of this vain pedant left tion under ° ' ,. . , . r Eudotiaand the empire once more in the hands of an empressRomanus regent and several Augusti in minority, — once more ex ose P d to a serious foreign inroad, this time the 1 most dangerous and permanent of them all. The Roman' Empire. choice of Eudocia, like Theophano a century before bestowing hand and partnership on a regent-emperor, fell upon a great Cappadocian nobleman, as we have seen ; and her predilection, though it was perjured, broke the decrepit and corrupt fetters of civilian rule, and perhaps gave a momentary check to Seljukian advance ; just as the ambiguous issue of Chalons (451) stopped the irresistible current of Attila. The revival came too late ; the exchequer was empty ; the army discouraged and demoralised ; the commissariat dislocated ; the practice and ideal of the soldiers, as in the Chinese Empire, might perhaps carry a certain stigma. Now after the defeat of Manzikert, an unexpected arbiter rouses itself from its long slumber of subservience ; it is the Senate that takes charge of affairs, and wreaks vengeance on the hated and now beaten representative of the military faction. In the reign of Constantine's sons Michael VII. and Constantine XII., the civil faction enjoys a brief ascendancy, and a last respite. But forces strange hitherto to the development of the imperial system, are gathering around ; unfamiliar Western vocables, betraying their alien origin by their awkward gait in Hellenic dress. The walls of partition so long and so carefully maintained between Western enterprise and Eastern fanaticism, are now breaking down ; the last foot of ground in Magna Graecia ceases to own a " Roman " sway ; everywhere is there confusion and dismay, though
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the matchless central position of the capital gives it Protest of a lulling sense of present security. We are no longer mihtary elei -j • TI •,-.,t_ x I. ment under seriously considering Roman institutions; but the Comnenus: scuffle of ambitious pretenders, for the still ample counterrelics of a system, not moribund but dead. Three ^^ military pretenders as in the days of artistic Nero, Cmstantine start up to oust the feeble Michael VII.: with \he*L:reft. • r t *., ±, • i i r ,, XT, , tion under brief success of the third and fourth Nicephorus, who Eudoda and assumed the imperial title, we are not further con- Romanm cerned. The Roman Empire, whose features however f disguised and remodelled by successive reformers, '•Roman have throughout been recognisable, has passed away. EmPireAlexius I. Comnenus opens both a new dynasty and a new age.
VOL. I.
REVIEW OF THE PERIOD Empire not work of individuals; emperor representative.
§ 1. IT is now possible to cast our eyes back over the span of human history which we have endeavoured to traverse; and to gather some general principles from a rapid survey. What light does the entire system throw upon political theory or social development ? It must be left in doubt whether the aim of such speculation is that of the student or the humanitarian; do we inquire to increase merely our theoretical knowledge, or to equip ourselves for the improvement of our present lot ? I have suggested here and elsewhere the very obvious limits to the rational and calculating interference of man. Political institutions are very clearly a growth of nature, not a building of a conscious architect; and even in our modest survey we have intimated that the great innovators have gathered up the past more than invented. So we have drawn special attention to the caution needed in estimating the past; we must not be led astray by the voluble eloquence and conceit of those agents who believe that they lead when they do but follow; who fancy they are laying the foundation-stone of a great achievement, when they are only drawing the curtain and exposing a longfinished work. The historian comes to distrust instinctively the momentous dates and crises of past ages. He is always burrowing back to ascertain in what obscure and subterranean manner such and such changes were brought about; and, disregarding the edict of a king or the jubilation of a people, he has eyes only for the dim glimpses of silent forces, which then received public recognition though their task had been perhaps long accomplished. Now in an Introduction, I endeavoured to convey the peculiar 354
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interest of the imperial epoch from this point of view. Empire not It is not a record of personal ambition or of arbitrary r J *?*"*?•£ , individuals: caprice. Ir I can venture to convey any lesson or emperor moral, it would be the fact of the representative char- represenacter of sovereignty, the truthfulness and faithful tatm' performance of the series of honest rulers, in their great popular mandate. The modern State, as we must see, issues from an alien and invading royalty, rules by right of conquest and possession, and only later takes to itself and wears somewhat awkwardly the parental and representative habiliments. And it is reinforced by the suspicion and timidity of our national separatism; which since the break-up of ecclesiastical or imperial Christendom, divides men according to territory into hostile camps, and crushes civilisation with the military burden. In every sense, the empire of Augustus had a more generous origin and a more liberal policy. It was pacific in aim and not indefinitely expansive or aggressive. And it was impersonal and idealist,—the idea embodying itself forth in chosen instruments for its task; not the work of any one man's inventive originality, like the system of Peter or Napoleon, but the issue of the " common sense" of the age. And to this its long duration and still abiding romance bear incontestable witness. He who from time to time, at the cost of peril and often thankless labour, personified the idea was truly representative; and tended by no vanity or ambition but by the stress of an outward appeal to absolutism. It seems probable that in these four words, which apply either to the system or to its exponent, lies the secret of its permanence and its development, of its problems and its dangers. But before I can proceed to illustrate my meaning clearly, I must preface this study with a few words on the theory of the State. § 2. Frequent objection has been taken to the time wasted in purely academic discussion on the " seat of sovereignty." For to penetrate beneath the surface of a purely logical and symmetrical structure to
356 Exception to general rule forbidding 'absolute' government: control.
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real life, is to discover that there is no such thing. Government is the resultant of many J forces, and the most conspicuous are not the most potent. Indeed, O n a retrospect of the annals of mankind the only admissible generalisation might appear to be this : that the "Will of the People" will always find expression and satisfaction. But this must not be taken in the vague superficial meaning which we attach to such a phrase to-day; rather in the sense that behind the nominal ruler stands the great solid force of conservatism, typical of genuine democracy, the moral approval, dull but effective, the "general sense" of the community; which itself silent and indefinite issues somehow in the agency which from time to time controls the State. This Will is not the academic programme of partisans, but it is something more primitive, fundamental, and unanimous. It seats Julius or Napoleon on the throne, and scans with suspicion the pretension of modern " representation " to express its inner meaning. Unhappily democracy must find vent in a personal Csesarism, or lose all its force and significance in the tumult of rival and passionate voices. In times past, the great idea of the general welfare has not been left entirely "without witness," as modern reformers arrogantly imagine; and it has worked through the willing or unconscious agency of many instruments. But it has never been so potent as when it worked in stealth and secrecy, or so contented as when it found an able spokesman in an ambitious statesman, whom it carries past a mere selfish aim and ennobles by entrusting with the common safety. By a significant verification of Hegelian formula, authority in the moment of its technical recognition " passes into its other" and is disarmed. No careful student of national development will deny that effective control over national destinies is exercised elsewhere than in the titular seat of power. In the superficial and misleading distinctions of governments, by one, by many, or by few, we over-
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look these plain facts, that the ruler is the spokesman Exception to of the whole, unable for all his vanity to rid himself jj^™j.™/e of his serious and representative character; and that 'absolute' the more numerous the titular owners of political government: , ., .. . . . , . .. real personal
f power, the more facile the reign of a resolute minority. controi I have stated without misgiving the view that actual despotism and genuine popular government is only possible "in the very simplest surroundings," in the most primitive and archaic conditions. Before us, when we have settled our formula, lies the genuine task of discovering where influence lies, and what secret interests control the actions of a government, whose duty is limited to an endorsement of the fact accomplished. To the student the Roman Empire forms an apparent exception to this rudimentary truth; I have frequent occasion to note there the vigilant personal monarchy, which existed longer than in any other country and continually revived in obedience to the ideal, after delegation and surrender had taken place. It would be no paradox to assert that the personal active tone of the imperial function was due in large measure to its impersonal character. It may be roundly stated that every government must fall under one of two types; the one is the family, natural and moral, the other is the State, artificial and forcible. An opportunity is happily provided for the ruler of this latter form to assume the benevolent attitude of the patriarch ; and the reverent affection felt for a monarch is a precious asset in the present state of society. But in origin the two are widely apart: in most European countries, kingship is foreign and introduced by the conquest of a military caste: only in course of time has the king acquired the guise of an impartial representative. So early as the primitive institution of the Germans, the rex and the dux were clearly distinguished,—the tribal father by birth designated as the arbiter among kinsmen, the chieftain chosen for merit and forming by free choice an artificial society around him. To this division
358
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Exception to corresponds the further distinctions of " civil and forKddinIe mmtarv> moral suasion and forcible coercion,—and ''absolute' (of greatest interest for our present design) stability government: ancj efficiency. These artificial extra-tribal groupings control. need very different and special qualities in a ruler: and in the exigence of battle and stratagem, merit and ability supplant old privilege or birthright. War (due to no " original sin " but to economic displacement or rapid filling of territory) is a different science from the calm settlement of kinsfolk's disputes, according to tribal custom. The modern State, it must be confessed, starts with very few moral prepossessions, beyond the sense of honour and chivalrous faithfulness to a leader. But in its very nature it is beyond and aloof from any local or partial creed or usage, and has to carve out its own principality and its own code. The Christian (or perhaps Roman) Church reinforced the instinctive virtues of the Teutons, and guided the young nations as they exulted in the possession of the Promised Land. Upon the divorce of things secular and sacred, openly proclaimed in the early years of the sixteenth century, it was seen how alarmingly scanty was the moral equipment of the utilitarian State, of conquest reinforced and unified by a new spirit of suspicious nationality. Pure utility and pure force stood forth naked and unabashed as the end, and the means to the end. Nor has the much vaunted "transference of power to the masses" effected any change. Religion and a secular humanitarianism, which is its direct but ungrateful offspring, have till recent days thrown a decent veil over the forcible and non-moral basis of modern society. But Science has rudely dispelled the older illusions ; and amid our tenderness for the worthless and our pacific if Platonic affection for other nations and races, continually reminds us of the single duty of the organism, social or human, to survive at all costs. § 3. The counteracting and instinctive forces, religious feeling or humane sympathy, are no doubt 9
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strong enough to last our time; and to have no Empire not theoretic or reasoned basis for State or for -mfo_ founded like modern State vidual conduct, does not imply the reign of un- Onforce: state hostile tempered caprice or pure savagery. But it is well , . , , , , i ji r 1-i j to family and in an age which talks loudly of morality and to freedom. despises the dark ages of superstition, to recognise that modern society rests on force and self-interest, whatever disguise sentiment and instinct may hang around it. All moral notions spring from the relations of family life and their gradual extension to others in a wider but still concentric circle. But the modern State, however civilian and "pacifist" in appearance, is a direct descendant of a military conqueror; and knows none of the softer emotions, the uncompelled homage, the thoughtful and affectionate care of the family. A republican State is only a headless and disorganised militarism, in which the vacant autocracy of the commander-in-chief is exploited by different intriguers. Only in monarchies, where the " ducal" lineaments are lost or merged in the " regal" (that is, paternal) is there any reserveforce of sentiment and respect, to appease the bitter class-warfare, heritage and raison d'etre of the free commonwealth. The State, accustomed to the tradition of the drill-ground and the barrack, is inherently hostile to the family, as well as to its later imitation, feudalism. It is clear to-day, whatever the professions of an almost extinct Liberalism, that the State regards citizens as isolated units ; they may be members of a regiment, a guild, a caste, a trades-union, but they crouch before the towering altitude of the State as individuals. " As when the physical body suffers dissolution [so Hegel writes], each point gains a life of its own, but it is only the miserable life of worms; so the political organism is here dissolved into Atoms, that is, private persons." All favourite modern theories contemplate the substitution of a central control for these lesser associations; or, by their efficacy, a direct authority over the separate units. We accuse the Roman system of centralism and over-taxation, and
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we idly blame the costly ambition of an imperial line. We regret that the people had not entered into their modern State rights and protested effectively against the loss of on force: State hostile local freedom and the pressure of intolerable burdens. to family and to freedom. Yet this is precisely the tendency of the most popular States to-day; and we have to seek elsewhere than in princely pride or tyranny for its origin. The modern State, it would seem, can no more avoid the current which sets toward expensive machinery than the empire. Man's protests, remedies, reforms, devices, were unavailing. All suffered, but it was nobody's fault; merely the native weakness and complexity which comes in the train of an advanced civilisation. We shall find it impossible to question the "liberal imperialism" of Rome, its gradual immersion in more engrossing duties, without bringing a fierce and indeed final indictment against the modern State, and any prevalent reconstruction on Utopian lines. It is best therefore to withhold our censure, and merely assign our approval to the rulers who strove in vain against the current; who endeavoured to lighten the ruinous burden of citizenship and, in a very excess of conscientious zeal, lent themselves in an unwise expenditure of self, to the support of centralisation and the discouragement of local and personal initiative. Yet it is difficult to see that Socialism has any other aim to-day than to bring about such a condition of society, as the Roman world judged and condemned by its fruits hundreds of years ago. § 4. The imperial Ideal had a nobler side, by Empire pacific and which it stands contrasted with the modern State, parental: in spite of its thin veneer of Christianity. It was forced into a revival of the pacific and parental conception of centralism : the' Prosovereignty. The Senate might represent the narrow tectionist ' and exclusive circle or family conclave, resenting State. the loss of privilege and the opening of the civic gates to various classes of newcomers. But the father might extend the rights of children by the fiction of adoption; and the generous treatment of Empire not
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the provinces, even at the expense of the metropolis Empire and Italy, is a commonplace of history. It will be p^^^d readily conceded that there was strictly no repre- forced into sentative element in the Senate; and that there was centralism: good reason to suspect the vague debates of elected tectjonisi> bodies as an instrument of government. This state. paternal and benevolent character of Caesar is reflected in the worship of the emperor, in which reverence for the Ideal and respect for the person were skilfully blended. And we have now to face the problem, why this august figure was seduced into the sordid intricacies of administrative routine, and sacrificed the dignity of an impartial Court of Final Appeal to mingle through his agents in the daily turmoil ? The conception of parental sovereignty, on which perhaps the fate of Europe may depend in the future, is not that of meddlesome interference or hourly vigilance. The aim of all lovers of freedom must be, not to curtail the supposed prerogative of princes, but to ensure and safeguard the liberty of the meanest subject. If this is to be more than a mere pretence, the area of civic influence must be restricted; the interest and control a genuine reality. An idle passion for symmetry and uniformity must be abandoned; and local developments, mistakes and corrections alike, must be awaited and borne with patience. It was no fault of Csesar, but rather his merit and the public confidence that summoned him into this unwelcome and fatiguing task. Like some unwise headmasters, he plunges into boyish quarrels and makes an ultimate arbitrament cheap and familiar. Modern royalty has avoided this danger : it lies in a not inaccessible reserve, and is never frittered by constant intervention, or degraded by every petty abuse of the official, who claims to act in its immediate name. We come at last then, to the real interest of this period; the attempt to combine efficiency and stability. We can conceive the acme of stability in
362 Empire pacific and forced into centralism : the'Protectionist ' State.
Conflict of independent agencies thereby created (Church, Army, Civil Service), in end ruinous.
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patriarchal government, because it would occur to no one to question a father's command or rather expressed wish; and it would be an inconceivable impiety to suggest a substitute. But the " ducal" or efficient ruler is respected and obeyed in default of other title, only so long as he capably fills the post to which he was chosen. In origin, the emperor was a magistrate, elected for a definite term to perform precise duties; his omnipotence was derivative and might be circumscribed by the same power that created or surrendered it. Outside Rome and the pomcerium, the emperor was " king" to the Greeks, with all the early classical connotation of the majestic title, untarnished even through the scuffles and scandals of the Diadochi. We have before us several anxious problems awaiting settlement. The empire was singularly reticent about its secrets; it loved not to explore the names or source of office or the compromise they imperfectly concealed ; it never suffered the precise outline and formula to come to daylight and be rudely handled by lawyers; it was content with dimness of origin and certainty of power. Yet the attempt to maintain this abstract indefiniteness cost many noble lives, and brought much disorder and civil warfare into a system, which aimed solely at the welfare, peace, and order of a diffused and populous realm. § 5. There existed too in the womb of the imperial Ideal two hostile powers, representing the civilian and the soldier, destined to issue forth in fraternal rivalry as Jacob and Esau. Again round these two words might be built a long and embracing argument, which should comprise the fortunes of the whole imperial line. But let us first examine the anomaly or the collision and conflict of interest, in the expected ubiquity and personal efficacy of Caesar. The problem has been often noted in the text,—how to make the chief magistrate safe and dignified, yet responsible and effective ? At one time the former thought seems the idea, at another time, direct and personal work
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is exacted at all hazards. In its deference to both Conflict of interests, order and security, vigilance and vigour, the independent system took the ominous turning that leads to central- t/Lret,y isation and absolutism, as we have already seen. The created period we survey shows clearly the irresistible force ^r^"c^ivii of the current; Diocletian, Justinian, Leo, Basil, service), in cannot help themselves. When personal initiative end ruinous. is dangerous, new safeguards are invented and the different orders of the State are made more directly accountable to a central control,—which, as these unifiers fondly imagined, would be always synonymous with the sovereign himself. As we recognised, they were profoundly mistaken. Each solemn proclamation of unlimited power^ loosened the grip of the isolated ruler on the helm. Our history is full of attempts on the part of the ruler to relieve himself of irksome responsibility; and on the part of the " general sense" or some conscientious reaction, to fit once more the burden on his shoulders. In our second period we have a succession of expedients for acquiring, like other nations, a king who does not govern :—the Vizierate of the great prefects under Commodus and Severus ; the influence of the Jurists ; the proposed "division of labour"; the influence of queen-mothers and empress-dowagers ; the suggested Lamaism of Elagabalus; the recall of the Senate to partnership in affairs ; the palatines and chamber* lains ; and finally in the West the barbarian patronate* and at a later period, the systematic " Shogunate " in the East, side by side (in either case) of a dignified but idle legitimacy. But from this Oriental leisure or penumbra, the Ideal was again and again dragged forth into the glorious sunlight; and personal rule was resumed with all its perils and crises. If the prince unite in his sole person civil and military power, to which element shall the primacy be given ? We can trace the feud of the soldier-caste and the civilian hierarchy throughout the whole period; and its annals might be rewritten, without serious omission, from this single standpoint. For the more
364 Conflict of independent agencies thereby created (Church, Army, Civil Service), in end ruinous.
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integral and colourless with excess of quality and virtue the central omnipotence, the greater will be the need below for distinct specialism of function and careful training. And each of these well-tutored corporations, servants or agents of the sovereign, assumes in time all the airs and graces of complete independence; while in the fourth century a fresh element of complication emerges in an unexpected quarter,—the Christian Church. Later Roman history records the attempt of the Centre to maintain its supremacy against these three powers ; once subordinate but now each clamorous for mastery. If power was in theory unified, life was subdivided and specialised ; and three corporations yielded a reluctant and often unreal homage to the emperor. In the West the very idea of the commonwealth disappears in the expulsion or rather disappearance of imperial authority, to give place to Church and feudal army. In the East, the titular autocracy is maintained, but it leans successively on one or other of these powerful but untrustworthy supports. Our period terminates in a very significant phase of the duel; it is no longer a conflict between the civilian and the staff-corps, the corrupt or abrupt methods of exchequer or court-martial, —but between the alien menials of an Oriental despot and a feudal nobility who borrowed some of the chivalry of the Teuton. But in such an atmosphere and in such a form of the dilemma, no place could be found for the Roman spirit or for Roman institutions; and we rightly place in that epoch the extreme limit of our work.—Here then ended the greatest and least explicit political ideal that has swayed mankind, and has for the longest period performed unfalteringly its promised task. The Ideal hovered perpetually between the policy of hard work and inaccessible majesty. Conscientious reactions from titled idleness were frequent and praiseworthy; and it perished only when its own children of the bureau or the camp abandoned
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in self-seeking the true classical spirit of duty, and the conception of office as a trust. § 6. But I cannot conclude without a mention of So far the great external problems which amid these domestic ^mesOa: disputes pressed " Liberal imperialism" for an im- %$£?*" mediate answer.—If the empire is liberal, pacific, barbarians: re representative, what attitude will it take upr in regard 9™t--ft>r o extinction of to fresh applicants for admission? Our epoch starts Western line. with the first distant rumblings of the Teutonic movement, the unwelcome certainty to the far-sighted of a coming tempest from the north, in the last years of the first century. And after Aurelius a hundred years later, we have the barbarians always with us; and two urgent duties are added to the peaceful functions of Caesar in the interior,—the defence of the frontier against the most violent, the settlement in Roman soil and employment in Roman armies of the most trustworthy, of these newcomers. I have ventured to express openly my regrets at the vacillating policy of Valens and Honorius,—or rather of their advisers. There was no reason to refuse a title of honour to Alaric; for such influence as he exerted is best disarmed and made harmless, according to our usual formula, by a complete recognition. Teutonic kingdoms and settlements under imperial suzerainty would have no doubt acquired a greater measure of autonomy than we can find in the earlier provincial system. Western Europe would have approached more nearly to the ideal of mediaeval Germany; and it is yet to be seen whether the decentralised particularism of the modern empire is not after all the healthiest type of national life. Ataulphus would have reigned as a loyal vassal; Alaric have defended as a brave champion; and the wistful glances directed by chroniclers and monarchs to Byzantium in the Dark Ages would have been arrested and satisfied in the nearer splendours of Ravenna or Rome. The whole era of the Patriciate bears witness to the genuine feeling of the barbarian for the majesty of the purple. Their offer was something different from the policy which settles, by the
366 So far domestic: main foreign problem, barbarians: aSeijon of Western line.
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HISTORY OF
side of an Oriental or Turkish misruler, an agent or resident or high commissioner,' and flatters national *> vanity by the maintenance of a titular nominee who js denied any effective power. The same century which listened to the firm yet respectful demands of Alaric witnessed the accession of an Isaurian brigand, —a member of that race not unlike the Miaotze in the south of China, which in their mountainous fastnesses had defied Roman armies and pillaged Roman provinces, not a century before. It is clear that Roman history has thus two springs of movement: the internal development toward bureaucracy, centralism, and caste-distinction, inseparable from any advanced civilisation; and the exterior pressure of the new races. In the crystallising strata of a stationary commonwealth, there were needed a professional army, an expert civilian caste, a dutiful class of peasant cultivators, an order of regular contributors to the increasing cost of administration. In the German influx there was present just that spirit or vivacious element which would have formed an invaluable counterpoise to fixity and sloth, a stimulus to a petrifying society. The objective classic ideal, with its exaggerated respect for law and order, was confronted and balanced by a welcome subjectivity. Nor would the majesty of the empire have suffered hurt, if the Teutonic chivalry towards an overlord had reinforced the formal and chilly deference to the impersonal system. The venturesome and petulant sallies of half-autonomous chieftains would have broken the mournful and conscientious monotony of Roman institutions. "British rule," writes Dr. Fitchett, " it cannot be denied, has bleached into commonplace the picturesque side of Indian life. It has eliminated the old element of adventure which made it dear to the lawless classes." Personal virtues, honour, and loyalty, and a brisk personal initiative, would have replaced or tempered the classical deference to authority and the surrender of the trouble or expense of self-rule to an absolute power, overwhelmed
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with its responsibility. Fresh air would have burst So Jar into the chamber where adroit machinery had realised domestic: the Socialistic ideal,—that is, reduced every man to problem, a type, every instance to a law, and guarded in a barbarians: practical casuistry against every emergency. And in l^t^, of time even the indolent populace of the capitals would Western line. have been supplanted, or shamed into exertion. In any case, the pendulum would swing once more in the wholesome direction of the estate, the villa, and the manor; and a wider, more equal distribution of refinement, letters, and comfort would be reached. The Meroving monarchy was an abortive and untimely simulacrum of later Roman imperialism ; the chieftain of the shattered vase becomes the secluded potentate, who rules subjects from a palace without jury or appeal. It was a poor imitation of such methods as we usually dismiss into limbo as " Byzantine " ; but the mayoralty or Shogunate which arose on its incompetence is never found in its strict form in the Eastern realm. A Western emperor might be a dignified recluse and distant suzerain ; but such affectation was ridiculous in an ignorant Prankish chieftain, whose sole function and justification lay in an active and bellicose life. The elevation of Charles was no priestly intrigue or ambitious sally, but the resumption by the West of a dignity which it should never have surrendered, which it never ceased to regret. Some writers will waste time on an idle discussion of the legitimacy of this momentous step. But the canon of legality is one which we can apply to every Roman institution except the chief of all. The source of law is itself above law; and comes into being through accident or destiny. A legal title was won solely by tried efficiency; not by any formal consecration, popular applause, or hurried endorsement of success by an anxious Senate. But in any case Charles stands on the same level as Heraclius: both are summoned to protect or to deliver the capital; both build up painfully the new fabric of central
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So far control. Legitimate or not, self-crowned autocrat or pa al vassal £rinjto*n P >—i1: matters little; the important point is problem, the witness of Christmas Day 800 to the undying barbarians: reverence of the Germanic races for the imperial extinction of Weal, to their long regret for the noiseless passing of Western line, the Western Caesar. And although history pursues its solemn course without conscious human intervention, and the historian idly surmises what might have been, as he seeks to unravel the web of impersonal motive forces,—it is difficult to suppress a wish that this Western line had not expired in Romulus, first and last of the royal and imperial series of Rome. Criticism § 7. I am reminded at this point of a significant of Hegel denial of the representative character of the emperor, Emperor °f ^ne "liberal imperialism," which, as I have venrepresentative tured to submit, not only did give expression to (Sho^hble the mute aPPeaI and half-formed aspirations of the Casarism, time, but could welcome and include without loss like Socialism, of dignity or principle the wanderers who asked for denies maturity and shelter. Hegel seems in his criticism of the imfreedom, and perial system to have reversed his usual position ts at once an( j f or g O tten his favourite axioms : " In the person CdUSB O/fyd \ symptom of of the emperor isolated subjectivity has gamed a decay). completely unlimited realisation . . . individual subjectivity thus entirely emancipated from control has no inward life, no prospective nor retrospective emotions, no repentance, hope, fear—not even thought. The springs of action are none other than desire, lust, passion, fancy—in short, caprice absolutely unfettered." The reverence of the philosophical historian for Hegel must be great; for he is no vague and misty declaimer, and behind his general statements lies a solid background of careful study and inductive detail. But it is strange that he detects no difference between a savage Oriental monarchy and the Roman constitution. Caprice and subjectivity, —this is precisely what the historian does not find, except in the mere garrulous and scandal-loving storybooks, in the palace rumours of a Nero or a Comjnodus. Closer inspection reveals the discipline and
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traditional method and policy, the beneficent design, Criticism the deference to increasing precedent,—which mark of^egel even the most " subjective " of these princes. Hegel is emperor blind to this perhaps unwilling, but not the less real representative conscientious, and representative character; or rather (^^t/ e he recognises it in a passing sentence and does not Ccesarism, stop to reconcile his antinomy. For he says : " Under Me Socialism, that coarsest and most loathsome tyrant Domitian maturity and • . . the Roman world, the historian tells us, enjoyed freedom, and tranquillising repose." It is clear then that the merits g^/"^ of the system, and the public cares and activity of symptom of Cassar, were independent of his capricious moments and private vices. It is an accident that has preserved these malicious chronicles ; the natural reticence of contentment has left few monuments of the general prosperity. Again, he asserts that " the concrete element in the character of the emperor is therefore of itself of no interest, because the concrete is not of intrinsic importance." The emperors " of noble character" he dismisses with indifference as a "happy chance" which "produced no change in the State,—and passed away without a trace." A system which, with a strict personal government, produces "tranquillising repose" under the "worst" sovereign, and is so stable that not even good rulers produce a change,—may well deserve a closer and more sympathetic study than is given in these sweeping statements. We are quite ready to admit that the concrete (which must here imply the idiosyncratic and peculiar) is not the essential. But the conclusion, which meets us more than half-way, indeed leaps out of the evidence, is surely this : whatever his character and training, sympathies or equipment, the prince of the hour was irresistibly clothed with a representative function and was entrusted by the Time-Spirit with the general welfare,—a duty which no other person, class, or corporation could fulfil.—It is time then to close a retrospect already approaching undue length. We have attempted to do justice to the conscientious VOL. I.
2A
370 Criticism of Hegel unfair: emperor representative and laudable (although C<esari#m,
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executive which is the pride of the imperial line : we j^ave macje no apology for the sloth of the peoples that . •, u j • i i, place this perilous burden on a single man, nor have we entirely approved the set and precise hierarchy of , t i j. i• i • J.AU^°° powerful agents, which grew up in response to this widespread invocation of absolutism. We do not conceive tnat Caesarism (as understood in modern times) is maturity and the last word in political wisdom, though it may well freedom, and be the ultimate appeal of a disappointed democracy or 'cause ami an impatient Socialism. For only an absolute ruler like symptom of Alexander can cut the Gordian knot, which social and decay). ultra-political influences bind tightly round the modern State, prohibiting reform apart from revolution. If we criticise the Roman world for yielding to Cassar, we aim an indictment against the supineness of our own people : a higher class tempted to retire from the ungrateful task of public life, and a lower entirely content to look on at the artificial duels of party, or submit (as the alternative) to comfortable but autocratic regimentation from above. The Roman Empire tried to satisfy democracy in its lowest and most obvious requirements ; it was a crowned Socialism. If it is at all permissible to trace decisive lessons in the happenings and tendencies of the past, we can only read a caution against the surrender of individual and family rights, against the extinction of that needful ephoralty in a centralised State, an independent landed class ; and a solemn warning against the pauperising policy of mistaken humanitarians. But for the great line of rulers, whose success or failure we here dismiss, we can have nothing but praise and astonishment. They overtaxed their strength in relieving idleness and incompetence of its natural fate and burden ; they aimed their suspicions against an " aristocracy," which in any State is an indispensable counterpoise to a centralised government ; they reposed an excessive trust in those agents and emissaries of a benevolent policy, who, once sent forth to their work, defied effective control ; and they vacillated between favour
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and neglect of the two great branches of the State, Criticism the civilian and the military class. But so far as duty °J'Hegel Uflfttll' * implies the following of one's own lights and private emperor conscience (even if they be but a will-o'-the-wisp), the representative unselfish adherence to corporate tradition and fidelity to an ancient heritage,—they deserve our closest study and our impartial praise. They gave a new meaning and solemnity, honourable but burdensome, to the maturity and sovereign dignity: and we close our records at the freedom, and point, when this acceptance of a trust has de- ^aMse^nd veloped into the easy and irresponsible enjoyment symptom of of a private estate.
ANALYSIS INTRODUCTION § 1. All periods in human history arbitrary : all development continuous : pure historical narrative not contemplated : debt to the English forerunners: Oxford historians : value of " classical" studies : uncertainty of all political theory to-day and recurrence of old evils and problems believed obsolete : points of resemblance in the imperial system and current theories of the State : close analogies in the state of society or the conception of government: value of the analysis of cyclic development. § 2. But is not this didactic or pragmatic use of history misleading ?: history either statistical or economic : the discovery of the chain of events, of the causes which produced, the tendencies which underlie : denial of man's free-agency, tool of impersonal forces : absence of moral censure or praise: (or a tendency to rehabilitate character): Hegelian view of history,—the race-spirits : feebleness of calculation and design : personal history out of date : records of courts neglected : attempt to detect the " Will of the People." § 3. Fallacy of transferring to the mass or its assembled representatives the " good nature" of the average man : problematic wisdom of entrusting general welfare to the debates of rancorous partisans : acceptance by the people of Cassarism : representation impossible, witness the Conciliar period : cannot too high a price be paid for order and uniformity ? : " all such legislation in favour of the class in power": "attempts to hold Colossus together a crime against freedom and nationalism " : we lack data and principle for settling this question : defence of particularism no paradox: yet (from the Hegelian standpoint) the mission of the empire is justified by its result: Cassarism represented the will of the age, in spite of the sporadic mutiny of the parts. § 4. Imperial system represented the Idea by a Person, not by an Assembly, by a principle of unity, not of discord : loyalty to-day to modern kingship : origin of emperor and king in armed force: but sentiment and allegiance gather round: unique factor in modern government capable of exciting the warmer emotions : forces in modern society strongly centrifugal, though Imperialism may provide artificial unity : language of loyalty, even if overstrained, better than the fictitious invective of political party: 873
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attitude to Monarchy witnesses that all political life is not exhausted in hatred, disrespect, and self-seeking. § 5. Choice of limits to the period : the Comnenian " tyranny " not a true continuation of the imperial system : Zonaras' severe indictment of the recent development in the constitution : the empire founded on law not caprice, the emperor a chief magistrate of a free people : the final change to seclusion and irresponsibility took place in the first half of the eleventh century: object to search in cultured critics or in popular opinion the real views of the native population on the system, and to detect hidden springs of action. § 6. Form and plan of the work: general survey of a period, tentative, suggestive, and subjective: art of passing judgment on an age something different from the patience of the minute explorer : the two necessary for the student, but may be separated in working: dangers and limitations of the subjective historian and the general impression : he confines himself to suggestion : the account, like the period embraced, arbitrary: yet a place still left amid accumulating material, for the philosophical interpreter of tendencies. g 7. This kind of half-intuitive criticism not the highest form of mental work : the real contributor to human advance, the worker in an austere and narrow field : in subjective studies, no certainty and no completeness: yet this type of mind, aware of its limits, lays no claim to an impossible omniscience: seeks to bring out one aspect only of an age : does not profess to rival the specialist in his own department: neglect of war and religion : (reply to unfair charge against the spirit and influence of the Gospel: as instance of the limit of a historian's acumen) : strict limit and selfrestraint observed.
BOOK I THE PAGAN EMPIRE: THE CIVILIAN MONARCHY AND THE MILITARY REACTION CHAPTER I THE REIGN OF DOMITIAN AND THE ERA OF THE EARLIER ANTONINES (81-180 A.D.) § 1. Peculiar position of the third Flavian, a plebeian and untried in active employment: this combination hitherto unknown : actual rarity of the favourite Cassar of romance: Domitian a strong personal ruler in spite of his disadvantages: the untested son of a parvenu, whose middle-class reorganisation had not made men forget the brilliance of Nero's age.
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§ 2. Faculty for personal and painstaking administration found in unlikely characters: peril of the Senate and prejudice of Tacitus : yet Domitian completed his father's work : he rendered possible the golden age of the Antonines : unswerving maintenance of public order and central control: the Flavian restoration (in which Domitian bore a share) saved the world from triumviral anarchy and the barbarian: Antonines reaped advantage of Domitian's work and of the reaction against it. § 3. The good emperors realised the ideal of Augustus in his most generous mood: Senate recovered dormant rights : its title to elect a world-ruler: Senate represented the reverse of cosmopolitan ideas, or uniform government: provincial welcome to the liberal policy of Augustus: personal guarantee given, as in Queen Victoria's manifesto to India : the New Testament bears striking witness to the responsible government then introduced, from Augustus to Nero. § 4. The Provinces benefited, not Rome or Italy : Senate stood for reaction and privilege : in no sense representative : the Emperor created to annul distinctions : in effect, the Senate exercises less influence in this period of deference than amid the turmoil of the next: " apostolic succession" : the imperium transmitted by its possessor : " Adoption and Grace " : one chief duty to provide for the succession : (this elsewhere strangely neglected in imperial annals): elsewhere haphazard, here policy and order reign. § 5. Problem and alternative of elective or hereditary monarchy : the official and the patrimonial conception : two needs not readily found combined, efficiency and stability: limitation of kingly prerogative often due to respectful anxiety for its safety : elevation above daily business needful for prestige and security : advantage of not holding monarchy accountable for official aberration : a despotic absolutism entangles the sovereign in every false step, every unjust blow, while it removes him from any real control : reserve-force of constitutional monarchy to-day : veritable deadlock of parliamentarism: the king, representative rather of the nation than of ttiz government: occasional and significant appeal to the sovereign to govern as well as reign : human and family interest in kingship, adapted to democracy. § 6. Final condemnation of the republican form of government: appeal to theory rather than to sentiment: true democracy implies the increasing interest and co-operation of the average man, not a scientific committee with unlimited powers : conflict of the two ideals, patient consultation of the people and Regimentation : Liberal fears of a " referendum " : (empire developed from gracious supervisor into scientific administrator: the loss obvious though the development inevitable): official view (in a republic) regards men as an arbitrary aggregate of atoms, the patrimonial and
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hereditary, as a collection of families : power (in the modern State) not parental, but an expedient to deal with man's native cowardice and malice : force, not moral suasion, basis of political life. § 7. Csesar soon assumed the parental attitude: but he never forgot his chief duty—efficiency of an untiring executive : therefore removable in case of failure, as in Temple of Aricia : against this merciless State-view, the parental idea makes protest: and of this the adoptive emperors are typical: efflorescence of Hellenic, extinction of Roman letters : substitution of imperial functionary for local autonomy: decay of the Curia, and of interest in public affairs : signs of weakness evident under Marcus : character of Marcus, satiety and despondency : sinister influence of the Stoic philosophy : an endorsement of the common tendency to abstention : in truth, the sage alone had no theory, no working hypothesis of the world : the last word not duty but indifference : profoundly decadent cult of a dead and meaningless universe.
CHAPTER II THE PSEUDO-ANTONINES ; OR, THE AFRO-SYRIAN HOUSE AND THE REGIMEN OF WOMEN (180-235 A.D.) § 1. Anomalous and surprising character of the half-century following Marcus' death : various characteristics,—the Age of the Pseudo-Antonines, of the female influence, of the Jurists, of a provincial and anti-Roman reaction, of the boy-emperors, of the " Grand-Vizierate " : in spite of the confusion, steady working of the administrative machine : the wildness of titular autocracy and the stability of the system : vitality of the empire. § 2. Chief qualification of the Emperor, —personal service : where a modern king uses the language of frank absolutism, he employed modest tone of a delegate : formal recognition of power endangers its efficacy, political influence being in the main indirect: cause of the long continuance of the system,—Cassar not the source, only the executive : frequent rekindling of the Caesarian Idea, personal rule : this age marked by delegation: Antoninus IV. disinclined for hard work: a Nero without his artistic temperament: the Viziers, Perennis and Cleander: Plautianus the African vicesovereign under Severus: the two former sacrificed to popular clamour, the last killed by the heir-apparent. § 2. Imperial dislike of Rome: the proposed partition of the empire between Antoninus V. and VI.: frequent absences of Severus taught Rome true function of a prince lay elsewhere: regular power of the Crown exerted by Papinian and by the Syrian empress-mother: Domna succeeded by her sister Msesa and her two nieces in the control of the government: definite
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surrender of public business by Antoninus V I I I . : acceptance of a colleague on the ground of " divine duties." § 4. Asiatic Lamaism : two incompatible notions in sovereignty, motionless pivot and ubiquitous executive : the conflict of sanctity and efficiency: the immured sovereign of the Mossyni: the Potala: the purdah: the later caliphate: emergence of the Mikado and the Dalai-Lama : suggested reversion in China to the older Manchu tradition of imperial accessibility. § 5. The proposal of Soaemias foredoomed to failure: the emperor de jure must personally exercise his rights de facto : the invasion of Roman temples by a foreign cult a mere episode : religion not an independent domain but a department of State : exclusiveness of Christian and Emesene claims provoked resentment : both refused an autonomous sphere : dislike of extremes by the best Roman statesmen : hate of the Black Stone of Elagabalus may have reinforced the moral revival of the next age. § 6. Unhappy issue of the experiment at reform under Alexander : inopportune mildness of female and civilian government: very merits of a private citizen, the vices of a sovereign ruler : people tired of an autocracy in commission, as of a freehold in perpetual abeyance : Alexander refused the title, but pursued the strictly civilian policy of the Antonines : early intimations of the coming divorce in civil and military functions : futile struggle of the pacific element. § 7. The distinction of function and reforms of Diocletian suggested and anticipated under the Afro-Syrian house : deference to the Senate in certain important branches of State : fruitless attempt to define the sphere of Senate and Emperor: dreary record of mutual distrust repeated in each vigorous reign : no personal ties of devotion to the sovereign of the hour: the pretenders, until safely enthroned at Rome, commonly posed as the restorers of Senate's prerogative : the reign of Maximinus I. a period of senatorial activity : revived " consulate " of Maximus and Balbinus : conspicuous surrender of direct control under the third Gordian : no abiding influence (as with modern monarchs) of pathetic appeal of royal infancy : with Timesicles, the days of powerful Viziers are over: resumption of personal and perilous rule. § 8. Premonitory symptoms of decay and confusion: the robberbands: the town-garrisons under Severus I.: the failure of the municipal system, and the growing powers of the governor: mild and humane legislation of the Septimian age: gradual disappearance of Roman features in uniform administration: subjectivity in ruler and malcontent: yet the beginnings to be found of social distinctions of the fourth century as well as of Diocletian's severance of civil and military spheres.
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ANALYSIS CHAPTER III
THE MORAL REVIVAL, THE SUGGESTED DYARCHY, AND THE ILLYRIAN LINE (235-285 A.D.) § 1. Injustice of the usual verdict on the age of the "Thirty Tyrants ": the period of misfortune marked by a general revival of simplicity, energy, and Roman spirit: devotion to perilous public service : the claims of the Senate again seriously heard : puritan rigour and enactments against vice: close of the Asiatic House signal for reaction: stern morality of Maximin : heroism of the Decii; the millenary of Rome: yEmilian's offer (253) of divided duties ; represents the tendency of the time : denial of hereditary rights and aversion to minors. § 2. The claims of the Senate something more than a mere pretence: respect paid to the defenceless body that defied Maximin : documentary evidence of the Senate's activity : civilian sympathies of Gallienus : hopes of Probus, " soldiers soon to become superfluous": the famous prohibition to carry arms (under Gallienus); capable of another interpretation : republican cast of the administration : Diocletian's different solution, civil and military orders accountable solely to the Emperor: Aurelian began the tendency to pomp and absolutism : traditional feud of army and civil assembly too strong. §3. Solidarity of the General Staff: the discipline and training of the staff-corps : since the failure of Severus 11. rise of great military caste, with uniform traditions : in spite of the frequent vacancies and massacres due to soldiers' mutiny, few instances of treachery, and many of generous pardon and humane treatment: recognition of foreign Augusti: the period by no means a riot of egoism : notable cases of postponement of private interest: new influence of the Pannonian staff-corps. § 4. The real culprits the soldiers : evils of a decentralised army: fallacy of the local militia: analogy of the Algerian government: Janissaries and Mamelukes : empire definitely settled upon a peace-footing at its birth : end of civil strife and internal dissension the great aim: the perils and inroads of the third century not foreseen in the first: provincial armies did not come within scope of original liberalism of the emperors: moral suasion, not force, upheld Roman sway in the interior : city-states already in decay : Rome exercised a civilian tutelage : after 200 A.D. realised that civilian regime needed profound modification : increase and turbulence of armed forces. § 5. Extreme danger of independent military commands : the pronundamentos of third century, mixture of patriotic and regimental sentiment: a general called on to meet a crisis must have plenary power of an Augustus : did not represent local dis-
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content: Roman spirit displayed in the line of Gaulish emperors : but the soldiers sacrificed incompetence without pity : very rarely oppressed the provincials : discontent of powerful armies at hard camp-tasks: repentance sincere at least in the case of Aurelian's murder. § 6. Imperial attitude to the new races : warfare, alliance, or incorporation ? no consistent policy: attitude of Tacitus the historian to the Barbarians of the Northern frontier (c. 100 A.D.) : his anomalous Imperialism and sympathy with the free : he admired but he could not welcome to citizenship : problem acute after middle of second century : yet riparian frontiers (Rhine, Danube, Euphrates) maintained from Augustus to Theodosius : no permanent loss, three cases of voluntary cession : real and momentous changes of frontier and loss of continuous territory on East under Heraclius (t 641) and Romanus IV. (tio7i): wearisome inconclusiveness of aimless tourneys: signal difference from Northern problem demanding a clear policy. § 7. Shall the Barbarian be received or excluded?—empire cosmopolitan with certain reservation, no desire for unlimited expansion, as in Mongolian hordes : offered peaceful home to immigrants : instances of liberal policy in early empire, bodyguard of Augustus and armies of Agricola : nothing strictly incompatible between Teutonic personality and Roman law: depopulation by plague: terror after Decius' death, 251 A.D.: serious purpose of Valerian, divide et impera: liberal policy of Gallienus (253-268): his Barbarian wife, his tact and diplomacy : Gallienus a type of later Teutonizer : best recruits and best colonists : Claudius 11. revives older attitude, war to the knife : Aurelian abandons Dacia: Probus renews policy of firmness and of conciliation : earliest (c. 280) to settle Barbarians in thousands on Roman soil: two most salient features, settlers and cultivators of alien race, semi-foreign military caste.
CHAPTER IV CENTRALISED ABSOLUTISM : OR, THE SYSTEM OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE (285-337 A.D.) § 1. All political systems as they develop tend to centralisation : State-supremacy revived as a principle about the time of Religious reform : Machiavelli's text-book, apotheosis of autocracy; abiding result also of French Revolution, not personal liberty but central control: "Centralism" vindicated in American Civil War: odd result of (so-called) enfranchisement, seizure by minorities or unrepresentative factions of this uncontrolled power : government not less absolute but more frank and continuous in empire:
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however elected, each emperor inherits and preserves Augustan tradition : public opinion approved success of Diocletian : though the reaction excessive in the direction of Centralism, we must praise the work. § 2. Record of this half-century simple : recovery of central control and safety of frontiers (284-305): downfall of the artificial system of co-optation (305-323): " apostolical succession " ; falsified by the instincts of a parent, the sympathies of the troops : reaction under Constantine (323-337) to the hereditary principle regarded with favour: his liberal and cosmopolitan policy, to new creed and new races: nowhere public opinion and belief so well defined as in the Church : her weight thrown into scale in favour of personal monarchy and regular succession. § 3. First aim of Diocletian to restore sacrosanct character of the ruler: Orientation deliberate; to rescue from the roughness and peril of a camp: subtle change comes over the sovereign power: its avowed source in earlier times from people's delegation : secular and popular basis of Caesarism: elective principle still recognised in later Teutonic royalty : absolutism of the new modern State independent of recognitio and anointing: " the king never dies, and can do no wrong," such modern views utterly at variance with Roman principle and procedure : Cassar is personally responsible : no indefeasible right in a royal family. § 4. In transition from classical to modern conception Diocletian marks an important stage : he removes emperor from camp to palace : Caesar at first acknowledged executive of an unarmed assembly : State-needs summoned him to the distant frontiers, as "Warden of the Marches": infrequent visits to Rome after 200 A.D. : impossible (in change of imperial function) to revive Rome as seat and centre of empire : divina donms: household servants usurp pre-eminence : influence lodged elsewhere than in the State-officials or magistrates : next epoch will show the secret power of courtiers : the recent seclusion of the Manchu sovereign : Diocletian seeks to retain effectiveness as well as security : emperor still must lead armies in person : in peaceful interludes power slipped into hands of palace-favourites : value of itinerant sovereignty (Hadrian and Edward VII.): Diocletian seeking to restore personal rule, ended it. § 5. Yet he is no bold innovator (Napoleon or Peter) : germs of his reform found in earlier period : he sums up chief tendencies of last era, not wholly unconstructive amidst its disorder: three chief features, divorce of eastern and western realms, of civil and military function, barbarian as farmer and soldier: partnership in the imperiwn; legend of Severus' scheme of partition : not less significant if apocryphal: repeated divisions after Decius (t 251) : different problems of East and West, § 6. Diocletian followed precedent in severing East and West:
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German replacement in Gaul; but strong Roman culture and tradition survived : the East always alien, the Roman emperor a stranger there : protectorate over racial feuds and an earlier, more perfect civilisation: never penetrates into real life of East (which is not political): indefinable change in Constantine due to his "Orientation" : Diocletian disguises completeness of the rupture, and may have been unconscious of it: he consummated the policy begun under the African Severus : the clearly original contribution of Diocletian, the first to disappear, viz. apprenticeship of the Augustus and regular promotion by merit, as in other ranks of State-service.
BOOK II PROBLEMS OF THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW SUBJECTS ; OR, THE LIMITATIONS OF AUTOCRACY AND THE BARBARIAN OFFER CHAPTER I THE NEW SYSTEM OF CASTE AND OFFICIALISM ; THE SEVERANCE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY ORDERS ; AND THE INFLUX OF ALIENS § 1. In the fourth century is completed the specialising process : guide and pioneer here also Severus I.: distinction of civilian and soldier ; could be no longer delayed : natural tendency to secure expert opinion in a limited province : early Roman was peasantfarmer and volunteer : revolution in economics : impossible task of Senate, lacking agents and force : moral sanction and penalty form basis of earliest community : law, penalty, police, a later and degenerate development: no effective machinery of control in ancient state : reluctant admission that the use of force is necessary : in decay of religious and tribal tradition, egoism questions and despises convention. § 2. Rise of self-interest (against public service): expansion of the horizon, and variation of tribal sanctions : force (under early empire) secures peace: arms lodged with the emperor: pacific function of the Senate : difficulty of arranging a " division of labour" : was it jealousy of emperor, or the indolent pride of Senate ? supple and trustworthy agents of despotism oust the older ruling class: Senate an impossible co-operator with liberal imperialism. § 3. Military revival under African dynasty in the interests of public order: warranted distrust of the Senate: school of professional soldiers essential, detached from other interests : gradual withdrawal of noble or wealthy class from active service : immunities granted to individuals : the tendency merely culminates
ANALYSIS in Gallien's edict : the exclusion, there depicted as piece of tyranny, already an accomplished fact: tempting to fix division of civil and military command in the provinces under Severus Alexander (222-235): need of the continuous and undistracted activity of the specialist: no chance for easy interchange between the rival spheres: social life in third century comparatively undisturbed: curious peace of the six months' interregnum (275-276): this stability referred to orderly procedure of Senate or Senatorial Committee or Privy Council, dating from minority of Severus II. § 4. The "Germanising" of soil and army of Rome : tendency of civilisation to specialise and isolate into narrow and unsympathetic spheres : government (once part and parcel of each citizen's life) passes to experts : alarming indifference or ignorance of popular government: nobles and people under empire did not wish to administer or to fight: decay of Municipal System after Antonines : emperors invoked to administer as well as supervise) govern as well as reign : not a tyrannical encroachment: two distinct needs as two distinct orders in State, defend and provide money for defence: tiller and warrior separated earlier: rough division between those who paid and those who worked : increase of taxes : worth while to procure most notable expert by offering not a "living wage" but a prize: sharp division of the official world from the mass. § 5, Contrast between taxpayer and tax-collector deepens: aim to keep the civilian at his undistracted task of making honey, sic vos non vobis: artificial support of the paying class, not tyrannical but on lines of mistaken economy: the curia a prison-house : in the centres of urban life great comfort and luxury : pampered paupers, disinclined for active work: we may suspect a certain scorn entertained for military calling: serious studies rhetorical: leisure snatched from spectacles devoted to style not to public business: singular carelessness and detachment of letters : old Roman spirit confined to the industrious princes and their emissaries : governing class through no fault of its own, stood aloof: citizen wields neither spear nor spade: tillage and legion recruited by foreigners : the most determined champion of order and the frontier are most inclined to welcome external aid : Society in the fourth century, taxpayers, military caste, alien colonists, and official hierarchy. CHAPTER II LEGITIMACY; OR, THE DYNASTIC EPOCH AND THE SUCCESSORS OF CoNSTANTINE (337-457 A.D.)
§ 1. Most striking feature in this period, the triumph of the hereditary principle : revival of feminine influence : resulting predominance of the chamberlain over civil and military element
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inconstancy of the Romans as to birthright in the imperial line : failure of direct succession in the early empire : Antoninus IV., V., and V I I I . : sons in partnership under the military emperors : fraternal claims of Quintillus and Florianus disallowed. § 2. Diocletian substitutes the son-in-law for the son : right of succession passes through females : a compromise between Nature and Reason: Constantine overthrows, reverting to the patrimonial conception of the State : the rest of the fourth and half the fifth century occupied in the West by sons in the direct line : new families seek further legitimation by alliance with earlier: Eastern realm had unhappy experience of Gallus, c. 353 : hereditary sway only begins in the East with Arcadius : henceforward sister or wife of Augustus exerts influence and devolves the sceptre : this followed by " nepotism" or free election, until after the death of Heraclius (t 641). § 3. Character of the administration in this palmy period of Legitimacy : the early principate did not contemplate elevation of untried merit: demanded vigilant, personal government and was in touch with popular will: its duty to supervise nobles and functionaries in the interest of the whole : basis utilitarian not sentimental: this task impossible for youth : discontent at the earlier feminine influence (200-235) : changes initiated at opening of fourth century harmless to inventors, dangerous to immature successors, who knew only dignity of office : palace-camarilla : and danger of revolution, even during Dynastic period. § 4. Personal loyalty found only in their own households : fault of senatorial pride and absence of the modern gulf between sovereign and subject: emperors driven to select trustworthy agents : whole republican system aimed at arresting, as imperial at facilitating, prompt obedience to command : great expenditure of friction to secure equilibrium and resist advance : status quo the ideal: perilous reaction when Senator as proconsul armed with regal powers : but the emperor, as "patriot king" aimed at the general interest, and recruited his bureaux and armies outside the higher circles : Civil Service crystallises into definite form from 130 A.D. : pressure of new duties on Csesar a proof of loyalty and confidence : imperial rule less costly and more just. § 5. The Civil Service in its turn became a " Frankenstein's Monster" : decay of any personal sentiment during the Anarchy (235-285): the great machine moved independent of the sovereign of the hour : first duty of reconstruction is to guard against evils of personal caprice : formulation of absolutism invariably implies its practical restriction : real .influence in a State nearly always elsewhere than in admitted " Seat of Sovereignty": Romans merciless towards a ruler who failed : even through meritorious pursuits (Gratian's hunting, Nero's art): want of moral perspective a legacy of Stoicism : responsibility of the prince : Christian in-
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fluences ("a trust from above") introduce "right divine to govern wrong." § 6. Permanent officials (army or palace) have the start of any prince: this period a long struggle between actual and nominal wielders of power; monarchs' suspicion of their agents and retinue : in this period, general-staff of army final arbiter but only in exceptional crisis : secret influence on ordinary administration : openness and frankness of military intervention : obscure intrigues and problematic policy of palace favourites. § 7. Long list of usurpers and pretenders in the Dynastic period : often a vigorous protest against youthful or incapable rulers : some principle can be observed besides mere ambition in these mutinies : first appearance of the barbarian influence and protectorate : seclusion of the sovereign led directly to such insurrection : struggle for supremacy between officials of the palace and Mercenaries outside : question to be settled (on different lines by East and West), "Shall a barbarian Shogun exist side by side with a Mikado?"
CHAPTER III LIBERAL IMPERIALISM ; OR, THE FUNCTIONS OF THE EMPEROR AND THE PROFFER OF BARBARIAN LOYALTY § 1. Narrow exclusiveness of the City-state: monarch stands for liberalism and expansion : he is compelled to represent the public welfare : feudalism (a revival and a retrogression) distrusts and thwarts monarchy: foe of class-privilege and exemption : attack on monarchical institutions from sincere but reactionary minorities: triumph of "Liberty" usually implies victory of a class: Magna Charta or the Revolution of 1689: universal suffrage would have negatived all the supposed Liberal movements in our national history: empire the creation of the age, not of personal ambition : the liberalism of Julius too overt: disguise of policy under religious nationalism and reaction under Augustus : wise moderation in opening the world to uniform government: no false deference to superlatives and logical exactness. § 2. Emperors well abreast of their time : gradual disappearance of special privilege (Rome and Italy): fresh requests for admission : policy towards barbarians: new duties of the principate on the frontiers : success of the imperial regimen in the Mediterranean basin: war once a part of the citizen's duties, as yet unspecialised: profoundly pacific condition of primitive communities : Hobbes' mistake: moral basis of early society: as world grows older and fuller, appeal to force becomes more general, in absence of other agreed code: emptiness of the early world and rule of tribal custom and use : in a motley aggregate
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385
all these conflicting conceptions neutralise each other: thus an empire must appeal to arbitrary Will, not to precedent. § 3. The Roman empire alone supplanted greed and caprice of dominant caste by humanitarian principles : relation of subjects to imperial race : early empire reverted to pacific tradition for two centuries, and maintained order in city-states, without suppressing autonomy : altered needs of the third century: thus chief witness to value of the system in its pacific aim : when warlike need befell unawares, arms became monopoly of a class : army the most liberal of all the imperial institutions : models of domestic faith, pioneers of culture, reclaimers of nature : gradual inclusion of barbarians ; all the better emperors friends of the new races : "naturalised subjects with equal rights to the original stock" (territorial v. civil conception): was the remedy of barbarian soldiers and settlers a disintegrating force ? § 4. Welcome extended to barbarians a logical outcome of the whole imperial policy : ample proof of Gothic loyalty : the pretenders of the third century never anti-Roman: value of the Gallic and British usurpers: against this feasible policy of generous admittance, two emperors of weak and stubborn temperament set themselves ; Valens and Honorius : Teutonic influence would have undermined bureaucratic supremacy : this not a disadvantage : the Teutonic monarchies, unable to found abiding systems in West because direct Roman influence removed, yet looked with affection on Eastern Caesar. § 5. Advantage of Teutonic individualism, to stem tide toward corrupt centralisation : gradual enlargement of sphere of government : genuine confidence reposed in emperor : welfare depends not on formula of constitution but on national character and behaviour and control of officials : functionaries of absolute monarch or free republic alike need strict supervision : similar feeling to-day (1907) in France and Russia : difficulty of controlling governing classes : emperor supplants a venal Senate : growing complexity in the official world: conservatism of this well-organised and unanimous body, fatal to any project of reform, as well as to hasty change : yet credit of failure or success fell upon shoulders of one man ; the later emperors at the mercy of their advisers. § 6. Might not the fresh element of subjectivity have allied with conception of Roman law and unity : inspiriting force of Teutonic chivalry, incapable of devout respect to abstraction, only of affection to persons : this reversal to rudiments and simple things of life by no means a retrogression : inrush of the fresh air into stifling atmosphere : antidote to prevalent fatalism in knighterrantry : new alliance suggested between imperium and libertas : evil of unquestioning obedience to law—a trait of savagery : the Teutons happily unacquainted with Stoicism : failure of the alliance lay with the indecisive and treacherous councils of Theodosius' successors : in the West the barbarian expelled Cassar, in the East Caesar expelled the barbarian. VOL. I.
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386
ANALYSIS CHAPTER IV THE ERA OF THE PATRICIANS; OR, THE BARBARIAN PROTECTORATE
§ 1. Three main divisions—Church, Army, Civil Service : success of early empire largely due to specialised capacity of the private imperial agents : unpretentious and trustworthy men of business : the Army; the Church (speculation as to value of its alliance to empire unprofitable): emergence of Church as independent is the final step in the specialising tendency : finely drawn lines of distinction—class, caste, and task: solitariness of the provincial towns, full intercourse only with the capitals: tendency to uniformity and isolation. §2. Large surrender of direct imperial authority : independence of army-corps and Church, a prelude to the Middle Ages: episcopate an autonomous corporation: Constantino allying with Church, Theodosius leaving a barbarian general guardian of the realm, two pioneers of medievalism : implied a denial of Stateautocracy and uniqueness : actual restriction of plenary power of sovereign by these two foreign allies : curious decline in imperial influence in the West during the fifth century : three significant words, Patrician, Patriarch, Patrimony. § 3. List of Western Patricians (or Regents) (386-526) : imaginary chronicle of this period on the lines of an annalist : Stilico, Ae'tius, Aspar, Ricimer, Gundobad : Zeno appoints patrician to govern Italy with the consent of the Senate: systematic control and supervision of the "Regency" in Italy: use of term "patrician" as regent or viceroy, in Gaul, in Italy, and in the Exarchates of Africa and Ravenna : implied full delegation of sovereign power except the recognition of independence : witness of the coinage: under this decent fiction Western realm slowly and peacefully expired : Odovacar and Theodoric = High Commissioners sent to govern Italy : their authority strictly derivative. § 4. The large and gradual colonies of barbarians in the West freely chose their own " king" : side by side existed " Roman " population, inured to deep respact for imperial emissary: trial of Arvandus a witness to survival of earlier methods: Syagrius a rebel: Clovis had direct credentials from the emperor: craving for legitimacy satisfied by the union, tribal king and Roman official: curious anomalies of this tendency to seek ratification from a weaker but more dignified potentate. § 5. Summary of history of title " Patrician " : connotation gradually arose of father, parent, patron: new use of an adaptable title: applied by a deliberate policy and the popes to the Frank " Shoguns" : association of lay-support and protective patronage : the Regent not acknowledged as master, and his title derived from
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Pontiff speaking in name of ancient city and of S. Peter : gradual rise of claims of lay-protectors, patrons, and advocates of ecclesiastical property: post transferred from father to son in Middle Ages : loyal protector becomes beneficiary, trust a prize. § 6. Need of " patronage " instinctive : found among all peoples when as yet pretensions and efficacy of State small: kindness to captive in war : the grades of freedmen and serf: tie of "patron" and "client" dictated by Nature (among Romans and Teutons alike): voluntary and personal relations: sentiment of feudalism common to both : always destined to be strong when the State is weak : the empire charged itself with all duties and ousted private patronage : Southern Europe gladly abandoned these safeguards : perversion of the new State-agents into oppressors,—hateful alike to prince and people : " Defensor " = State's counterweight to itself: anomalous " immunity " under Merovingians : the emperor free to choose his own protector, regent, or patron : so Pope free to choose his patrician : a noble and generous relation : corrupted in time by demand for personal gain or advantage from trust and patronage. § 7. Church and Army left in undisputed possession of West: mediseval atmosphere of Epiphanius : worship of relics in the old capital: we now leave the survey of the West, and bid farewell to the empire : in hands of priest and knight: not till seventh century does State reassert her authority over these co-ordinate and rival powers. § 8. Strange and significant difference in destiny of Odovacar and Zeno : both barbarians: mere accident Tarasicordissa becomes full Augustus : why solution so different in East and West ?: no settled anti-barbarian policy in West: spasmodic fright and massacre (408-454): definite desire among privy councillors of East to be rid of the Teuton : influence of Pulcheria: Byzantine "loyalty" : in this contrast lies secret of future development.
BOOK III RECONSTRUCTION AND COLLAPSE UNDER THE HOUSES OF JUSTIN AND HERACLIUS : VICTORY OF CIVILIAN AND REACTION TO MILITARY FORMS CHAPTER I THE EASTERN REJECTION OF THE TEUTONIC PATRONATE; AND THE ADOPTIVE PERIOD OF MATURE MERIT (457-527 A.D.) § 1. Easterns refuse "division of labour" suggested by the new settlers already triumphant in West: the Augustus at Byzantium never sank into a puppet or a mere civilian : retained the supremacy over Church and Army, already dividing between them the
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Western hemisphere: solid and constructive work after Marcian (t457): maturity of the sovereign and the adoptive principle the most striking features till Phocas (t6lo) : firm control and personal government: almost no " power behind the throne": Leo's crime relieved East from barbarian tutelage: decisive character of this act. § 2. Feminine influence revives: contrast with earlier and later periods : prominence of women during the fifth and sixth centuries : female influence greatest when indirect: (but this is true also of all authority) : election of monarch amid all the order of Roman law, never reduced to system : left to pure accident: perhaps in deference to fiction of republican magistracy : " dynasty and lineage," Teutonic not classical: leads to sacrosanct aloofness of modern royalty: emperor must govern in person: ingenuous popular sympathy in favour of heredity (Maurice, 584): fiction of free election never formally abandoned. § 3. This uncertainty, a source of peril and strength : elective principle a reservoir of vitality : conception of government utilitarian : the union of permanence and conservatism with fitful reform suited the age : the Byzantine monarchy no expression of nationality : our chief concern to-day to make succession certain, disputed election impossible : yet the Roman method excluded the evils both of feudalism and of bureaucracy : care of Marcian, Leo, Zeno, Anastasius, for fiscal reform: average man to-day prefers firm personal rule, to noble or mercantile tyranny : Caesar truly representative. § 4. Disappointing character of the annalists who record the age : silence on nearly all topics of public interest: difficult to trace slow and secret development, which issues in a later condition of society : e.g. the tenth century in Italian history: or the collapse in the seventh : the modern historian reconstructs from slender evidence : he is never competent to represent the age in all its various aspects—military, literary, religious, financial: excuse for coaeval writers : impossible for a contemporary to understand current: the emperors spoke for the people from whom this sprang : whatever their race or training, become exponents of Roman tradition : a " constitutional monarchy " and continuous. § 5. A half-century of quiet recovery and defensive measures: the populace divided between town and country, with widely differing character : turbulent and metaphysical: potent influence of the Colour-factions: fortunate absence (in religious and racial feuds) of "Representative" Institutions: ceaseless dogmatic debate tore asunder the empire and opened the gates to the infidel: the country—a silence of unrecorded decay: municipal weakness: small owner ousted: as to-day, anxious reformers unable to arrest decline : good will then, as now, powerless against operation of law.
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§ 6. Criticism of later empire in default of certain data for indictment, resolved into this question,—was survival and integrity of realm necessary for peoples' welfare ? : were the manful efforts of the imperial line justified, worth while ? : at least races then under Byzantine sway not since manifested aptitude for freedom : Finlay represents sometimes devotion, sometimes hatred, to the central government: no one suggested a substitute for the imperial system : emperors fostered and encouraged local assemblies in vain. § 7. " The empire suppressed nationality " : the conception is modern: nor is it bound to be lasting : essence of nationalism, exclusive and suspicious : an empire implies protectorate of many diverse races : Rome justified in its efforts to restore integrity and maintain unity: alternative, chaos not local freedom: emperor losing his own individuality in the Roman tradition, finds faithful agents in the task in civilian and soldier alike.
CHAPTER II THE RESTORATION ; OR, PERIOD OF CONQUEST AND CENTRAL CONTROL UNDER JUSTINIAN (527-565 A.D.) § 1. Mysterious figure of Justinian, centre of his reign and master of his ministers : singular impression left upon the men of his time: scanty and mythical evidence as to his personal character: his reign = the records of his lieutenants: dissolution and premature decline of the barbarian kingdoms : seeds of disunion and discontent in Teutonic monarchy on classic soil: success of Theodoric due to personal tact, not to lasting merits of system : early degeneracy of the ruling stock : no doubt wars of restoration costly and desolating : weakness underlay the splendid surface : even to-day we are by no means decided how far sacrifices to imperialism are justified ? § 2. Yet the steadfast policy of recuperation intelligible : motive for reunion largely religious : the protectorate in Italy was in decay and held no secret or germ of future advance : Gothic and Vandal Arianism specially prejudicial to a final settlement: the finality and integrity of Catholicism ministered to the spirit of reaction : conversion to full orthodoxy marks a step forward in political as well as religious life. § 3. Scanty evidence as to general feeling throughout the reign : the Roman world endorsed Justinian's forward policy: authors agreed on the mischievous system of finance : its oppressive incidence hard to explain, nor can a modern critic throw stones : Byzantium did not control its agents : "feudal" tendency already rampant to subtract office from central oversight: Justinian's reconquest one form of protest against centrifugal particularism : he found it more difficult to govern than to conquer.
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§ 4. In sum, barbarian monarchies still at mercy of great personalities (Gaiseric, Theodoric, and later Charles): no impersonal tradition as reserve-force : steadfastness of the empire to its mission : no cohesion elsewhere or organic development: Justinian looks backwards and forwards : true to the past but also an innovator : no doubt many preferred and still prefer hazard to orderly organisation : monotonous and rigid caste : atmosphere of finality : we cannot deny the latent weakness which afterwards emerged. § 5. Baffling and anomalous features of this era: " period of transition," a universal excuse : yet admissible for this age of silent change: population of empire replaced: novel institutions under old titles : irresolute hesitation of the historian ; forced to arrive at parallel and inconsistent conclusions : conflicting verdict on state of subject, of provinces, of bureaucracy, of imperial character, of value of entire imperial system. §6. This indecision no discredit to historian : all final judgments of an obscure age must be largely subjective : verdict of these pages favourable to character and wisdom of rulers : Justinian and Augustus at a personal disadvantage because of the enduring grandeur of their achievement in politics and law : both simple and industrious men, not superhuman figures : their fabled autocracy dazzles and misleads : simple personal virtues and untiring energy of Justinian: is the unfavourable verdict due to disappointed placemen ?: economies in the civil service : riches of realm accumulating in official class : decay of civil service as a lucrative career in this age: Justinian curtailed profit and abolished sinecures : their power disastrously renewed against the central authority in next age : two main aims ; recover Roman prestige, secure the frontier : solid phalanx of bureaucratic opposition lay behind the "pacifist" speech of John of Cappadocia. § 7. " He starved the military defences" : misfortune of Justinian's longevity : declining energy of his latter years : relaxing care in the last period (548-565): determined to maintain submission of military caste to civil power: Byzantium set itself to secure the precedence of the " mandarinate" : value of the Byzantine bureaucracy : permanence of empire largely due to it: yet needed control and the discipline of adversity: often a corrupt and unduly privileged class. § 8. Subservience of autocracy in the last three reigns to the civilians : tradition that emperor must not leave palace: military renown reaped by a subordinate : sinews of war already relaxed before accession of Justinian : in the period of vigour he supported army, but reverted to suspicious civilian attitude at close: reason for distrust: strange Teutonic comitatus of Belisarius : jealousy of civilians towards army : small independent commands : alien birth of chiefs each with national levies : curious paradox, aggressive
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yet anti-military reign : hindrances to Belisarius outcome of recent policy not of imperial envy : mutiny and caprice avenged arrears of pay and bad system of promotion : Justinian tried to substitute stone defences : these dangerous forces disappear within next fifty years : different lines of Heraclian and " Isaurian" reorganisation : final tribute to the labours and policy of Justinian.
CHAPTER III SUCCESS OF THE FORCES ARRAYED AGAINST ABSOLUTISM ; OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE (565-610 A.D.) § 1. Chief crisis in later Roman history, opening years of seventh century : Heraclius the second founder of the empire : what led to this abrupt decline ? : institutions of Justinian a heap of ruins : personal influence ; still counts for much in the higher political issues : the turning-point the massacre of Maurice and his family (602) : gratitude of Persia turned to bitterest hatred : absence of the dynastic principle : the elevation of Phocas precipitated wars which opened Persian and Roman realm to Islam: sense of impending doom : despondency of Justinian's latter period : dissident aristocracy, estranged peoples, unpopular rulers: how far ruler bound to invite co-operation of people : seemed craven to shirk responsibility: the people largely to blame for tranquil surrender of rights to an over-worked and over-conscientious magistrate. § 2. Greatest problem of government, not how to maintain uncontrolled working of sovereignty, but how to secure a counterpoise to autocracy: Fichte's " Ephoralty " : dangers of an expert governing class: democratic ideal, personal interest of each citizen: complexity and crises of civilised government fatal to democracy, in any genuine sense: supreme concern, what is the tone and character of the expert class ? : value of an independent (semi-feudal) class to criticise and control official world : this the secret of English stability: sharp line under empire between the mass and the bureaux : emperor's efforts thwarted. § 3. Creditable policy and character of the younger Justin: ineffectual attempt of Tiberius to conciliate silent but steadfast opposition: Maurice's want of tact and untimely harshness : official recommendation (as Priscus to Heraclius) "emperor not to lead army": army despised civilian-emperor: stern lesson read to the capital by Heraclius: " not indispensable to the empire": Constantinople not yet the Warder of Europe against Islam: impertinent conceit of Demes in claiming and exercising political power: unique and unseemly emergence of the mob, as arbiter of the throne: once again provincial feeling, more whole-
ANALYSIS some and patriotic, reacts upon capital: would wiser personalities have averted the downfall of the system ? § 4. This period shows most clearly constitutional difficulties of the empire: disintegrating influence at work in all classes: the Church: rancour of religious dissenters : possible treason among the heretics: but even if Church united, disloyal elements elsewhere made governing impossible: Justin's wise firmness and moderation ; checked by ill-health, the result of helplessness: offers to appoint governors nominated by the provinces: the sovereign in this period unmistakably the best man of the age : unequal struggle against official privilege, reducing people to servitude, monarch to impotence: danger of this exceptional position greater in an official, than in a purely feudal, class: honourable condition of monarchical success, to represent the people: truthfulness to its original popular origin: cynical immunity of wealth, office, and privilege in republics. § 5. Significance of monarchical revival in modern days ineffectual attempt to explain away : emblem and guarantee of an equity elsewhere unattainable: monarchical legacy of Napoleon to France, most abiding result of Revolution: harmless parliamentary pastime: people do not gain by substitution of democratic officialism for a feudal governing-class: successive decay in sense of public duty, — corrupt oligarchy to whom office is profit: imperial officials become gaolers of sovereigns and robbers of the people. § 6. Difficulties of Tiberius II.: his bodyguard of slaves: was it as a counterpoise to existing armies, on which he could no longer depend ?: barbarian attachment to persons: foreign mercenaries nearly always surround despotic throne,—Turkish guard, Janissaries, Swiss and Albanians: misdirected attempts to conciliate other classes by doles: society demoralised: "subjects to reign with him ": unfortunate choice: perpetual financial distress of Maurice : his reforms abortive: employs relatives or foreigners in chief command: relief felt even in better circles at the mutiny of Phocas. § 7. Theory of the "democratic" appeal to Demes, by Tiberius II.: recognised position of Demarchs, their "tribunes": while Maurice reverted to "aristocratic" assistance: vanity of both reinforcements : curious and pathetic incident, showing popularity of heredity succession: Maurice's strange will: empire partitioned as an estate: same uneasy apprehension dogs Phocas: we pass suddenly into pure barbarism: irony of eulogy from Pope and exarch on the worst of Byzantine rulers.
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393
CHAPTER IV THE PROTEST OF CARTHAGE ; OR, THE SECOND AFRICAN HOUSE AND THE ORTHODOX CRUSADE (610-711 A.D.) § 1. The second successful champion of the Roman polity from Africa : triumph of Septimius Severus (193-211): abortive attempt of Gordianus I. (238): quiet acceptance in capital of provincial nominee: Heracliads show indifference to its claims and traditions: any deliverer welcome: strange incompetence in war of a military mutiny : armies extinct; patriotic spirit to be rekindled: proposal to leave the capital: solemn compact of emperor, patriarch, and people, ratified by a religious oath: (possible result of a transference of empire to Carthage: Arabs would enter Europe by south-east and Constantinople, not by south-west through Africa and Spain): signal interest of the public compact, subject's and ruler's welfare once more identical. § 2. Early maturity and breathless rapidity of the Heraclian House: insignificance of the official class: emperor in this century holds the entire stage: no ministers or secondary agents: (curious incidents, the wife of Constans III. and the brothers of Constantine IV.): personal initiative of "purple-born" princes: revival of orthodoxy and patriotic feeling: the Persian wars, their long and tiresome inconclusiveness: result of triumphant campaigns, the downfall of Persia before Arab attack, Rome too much exhausted to preserve Egypt and Syria. § 3. Another cause religious disaffection: welcome extended to an alien protectorate by Eastern dissenters: death of Caliph Othman succeeded by respite for empire: accounts for the secure absence of Constans III. in the West: power and prestige of Constantine IV.: bulwark against the infidel: the Caliphate tributary to the empire : anarchy during and after the reign of Justinian II.: loss of the achievements of the Heracliads, of North Africa: unholy alliance with Terbelis of the last Heracliad. § 4. Curious irony places a revenue-officer on the throne in Theodosius III.: was the earlier system of minute and vexatious taxation wellnigh extinct ?: suggested disappearance of the civilian official through Balkan peninsula and Lesser Asia: system of " Themes " replaces earlier method of provincial rule and signifies the pre-eminence of the military: intermittent and precarious nature of authority: barbarism of the age and cruel penalties: yet in spite of incoherent polity and ultimate failure of dynasty, incontestable debt to the Heraclian House. § 5. In West we see Church and Army (in the disappearance of the State) usurp and engross all human interest: only in Eastern realm steady maintenance of imperial primacy: clear that Heraclius had to strive against clerical encroachments and maintain the
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independence of the secular power: central control preserved against official world ; refuses to become a puppet: same emergence of sovereignty in contemporary China: Priscus' reproof of emperor for visiting provincial forces and garrisons in person: feudal independence of provincial governors: armies of the State had vanished to give place to personal retinues: Heraclius aimed to substitute impersonal tie of State-duty for loyalty to individuals. § 6. The Church half-autonomous: a large tract of public and private life withdrawn from sovereign control: demands conditions before coronation: subsequent vengeance of civil power: endeavour of African and " Isaurian" dynasties to preserve central ascendancy: prominence of Patriarchs : reviving influence of the Senate: personal monarchy restored under Constans and rival elements ousted : his tolerance (or indifference ?) reminds the student of his counterpart Frederic 11.: he was born too early; clerical and ecclesiastical interests predominant: in struggle against dissident elements, confidence in kinsmen, under Maurice, Phocas, and Heraclius. § 7. Temporary success of this attempt to recover central control: much the same task confronts the "Isaurians" of the next epoch: one cause of this greater permanence: territorial continuity in place of ecumenical hegemony: the lost provinces in some sense a gain ; greater solidarity: Leo indifferent to the West and to pretensions at overlordship: Western schemes and "occidentalism" of the Heraclian House to him unintelligible: new function of Constantinople :—abruptness of fall of this dynasty : ensuing " see-saw " of civil and military parties ends in welcome to a strong champion of order and centralism : spite of failure great debt to Heraclius and his family.
BOOK IV ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE MONARCHY UNDER ASIATIC INFLUENCE: ROMAN TRADITION, THE COURT, AND THE FEUDAL NOBILITY CHAPTER I THE SECOND SYRIAN HOUSE ; OR, THE ATTEMPT AT PROTESTANT REFORM (717-820 A.D.) § 1. General disorder at the moment of renewed Eastern supremacy: Leo III. revives the old Roman spirit of direct control: wars against superstition : directness and simplicity of a militant Puritan: Armenian position in religious matters: opposes the anchoritic tendency and the Hellenic methods of the Church:
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metaphysical and unworldly interest: the sterility of the more cultivated classes, defect inherent in all civilised society: only recognised remedy of the distress of the time, to found fresh monasteries: urban culture, lethargic and polite: agriculture in the hands of aliens : " Sclavinia." § 2. Novel and practical view of life and religion : Leo " Ironsides" represents English temper: control and reform this world rather than peer into next: his serene composure knows no intervals of nervous despondency: ignorant of the great Roman Epic and suspicious of the Roman Church: Iconoclasm saved the East: indifference of Leo and his son to the fortunes of the Western realm: was it due to ignorance or to policy ?: the rupture in any case inevitable: Iconoclasm merely the last cause. § 3. Syrian dynasty falls into two periods, steady reconstruction and conservative enjoyment: luxury and order of the reigns of Leo IV. and Constantine VI.: yet even here no indolent seclusion : error to regard Iconoclasm as negative and destructive: behind religious disputes untiring work of rebuilding : " Thematic " system replaces provinces : probable overthrow of the civil administration in early years of seventh century: rudiments under Heraclius of later deliberate development: directness of military rule, regional armies : titles familiar to War Office used to denote administrative areas. § 4. Finance brought under special and personal control of the emperor: minister of the Exchequer becomes a secretary of the imperial pleasure: witness to the beneficent intervention of the sovereign in renewed prosperity: future luxury and security due to the reorganised finance of early "Isaurians": measures to lighten and alleviate burdens : local bodies relieved from oppressive change of collection: undoubted danger in Centralism, the temptation of every able and conscientious ruler; yet Leo's measures suited his time: popularity of the sovereign who did everything himself. § 5. Legislation: Christian and ecclesiastical temper: the Bible and tradition of the Church: Justinian's tone, still classical and humanitarian: Revelation v. Equity: error to represent Iconoclasm as irreligious: recalls (as they thought) Apostolic simplicity: complexity of earlier Roman law and litigiousness no longer applicable: decay of Court-practice since Justinian: may imply distrust of judges, influx of aliens with tribal usage, or improved public spirit: systematic administration of law in abeyance: important cases no doubt "evoked" for emperor's own decision: Septimius Severus and Nicolas II. § 6. Agricultural condition of the empire: glebal serfdom disappears: barbarian and Slavonic settlers till the land, on a communal system, or in the service of great landowners: soldier once more a citizen, forbidden to pursue other callings: rigid
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line of caste-partition: decisive measures against Banditry: "le roi des Montagnes": unexampled severity: interpretation of Artavasdus' revolt obscure: representative of a party and a reaction, or of mere personal ambition?: curious appeal of Leo IV. for allegiance : significance underlying constant plots to substitute uncles for nephew under Constantine VI. and Irene. § 7. In latter years of dynasty, sensible cooling of imperial energy : palace-rule substituted for direct supervision : scions of reigning family immured in suspected obscurity: great commands given to eunuchs: Irene's reign shows the feuds of menials: military leaders forbidden to hold intercourse with Stauracius: he is succeeded by Ae'tius, who dethrones Irene in 802 : curious resemblance to policy of chamberlains of Honorius: once again household favourites spoil scheme for reunion of East and West: indebtedness to "Isaurian" House, sentinel of Europe: this age the turning-point in Byzantine history.
CHAPTER II THE PRETENDERS, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DYNASTY OF PHRYGIA (820-919 A.D.) § 1. Feminine sovereigns: the influence of women greatest when sovereignty is stationary: accession of Irene excited no resentment in the East : machine of government indifferent to the change of ruler : strenuous and personal character of the empire : advent of Irene harbinger of the later change : employment of eunuchs, as in West the voluntary celibate : motive political rather than domestic : constant aim of the State to destroy or supersede the family : envious of all other groups and associations : as scientific Utopias from Plato to present day : democratic family instinct opposes stolid barrier: Roman Empire and Roman Church are grandest applications of this principle : sole recommendation, personal merit and State-commission: hostility to birthright and distaste for genealogies and fear of local and patrimonial influence: East exposed no less than West to the peril of feudalism. § 2. The palace-chamberlain is the triumph of the ideal theory of the State : Utopia (like the Italian cities) best governed by a well-trained and disinterested alien : no entanglement of kinship or prejudice : dependent entirely upon the " State " : the reign or immunity of Churchmen in Western Europe as civilians and chancellors rests on somewhat different basis : but same principle in royal appointment of bishops to thwart [and supervise local magnates whose aim was to found a family. § 3. Accession of Nicephorus I. exposes secret disguised in two former centuries,—empire open to any adventurer : epoch of
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the Pretenders, especially Armenians : most effective rulers rise from the ranks : elevation of Leo the Armenian : dramatic seizure of power by Michael the Amorian : anomalous creation and unexpected success of Basil: incredible stability of Centralism without a centre: was Basil's acceptance due to his " legitimate " appointment by Michael III.? influence of Church also in favour of a subservient parvenu : the Amorian line resumed sway in Leo VI. § 4. Legitimacy recognised and welcomed : two Constantines account for 117 years between them : problem of the motives and causes of this development: Centralism invents new agents to execute its commands : reaction when servant becomes master : immunity of the functionary : Oriental legends of Theophilus (829-842) bear witness to claims of emperor as people's representative : large part of life lay hopelessly outside imperial control: crystallising of rule, usage, and precedent placed limit on sovereign caprice : rare occasions for personal intervention : unique preoccupation of the Absolutist to save Absolutism from itself. § 5. -Same tendency visible in (so-called) Democratic constitutions : anxiety to secure against outspoken utterance of popular will by elaborate mechanism of checks: actual despotism or direct popular government only possible in the simplest and most rudimentary surroundings : Diocletian's system effected a sensible curtailment of direct prerogative : impotence of the well-meaning sovereigns after Constantine : brief revival of immediate control under elderly civilians: helpless failure of the successors of Justinian to seize the helm : again appears the tendency (867-911) to unify and centralise ; at expense of real power: interest of sovereign as well as of people divide et impera : precedent checks arbitrary power and vigorous reform : was the step taken rather by the Imperial Council itself than by an ambitious upstart ? § 6. At close of this epoch begins gradual decline in training and culture of the civilian hierarchy : all this expert discipline a denial of true democracy, which is the apotheosis of the amateur : stealthy advance of the official class to complete control: power lodged in hands of prince as a remedy against noble or mercantile tyranny : growth in distinctness of outline and definiteness of function : civil service opposed both to military class and to body of productive tax-paying citizens. § 7.' Indictment of the imperial system a damning condemnation of Socialism : same dangerous principle,unlimitedpowerallotted to the State : artificial if benevolent character of the Roman hegemony: held together various nations by the creation of yet another: in this Byzantine civil service lingers Roman spirit and tradition : anti-Hellenic and anti-orthodox features in Armenian and Asiatic : regular rules of promotion overthrown by caprice and favouritism: confidence solely in barbarian emissaries.
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§ 8. Lineaments of the system destroyed when empire identified with family and menials : annoyance of the still vigorous military caste: strife of parties henceforth under the empire, a contest between Feudal and Oriental methods of government: the final success of the military faction at close of our period not reassuring : —meantime a reaction is impending, in which a vigorous Shogun is seated side by side with a legitimate prince. CHAPTER III THE EPOCH OF THE BYZANTINE "SHOGUNATE"; OR, THE AGE OF MILITARY EXPANSION (919-1025 A.D.) § 1. Corrupt peace of Leo's reign succeeded by a more vigoious policy: frank recognition of hereditary right: accumulation of treasure and resource in the empire led to the revival: the dynasty not overthrown, but a regent added: strange circumstance of Romanus I.'s success: seemed, as Leo V. (813), to profit by incompetence : returns from a campaign of treachery or cowardice to dictate terms : a sailor's bluffness and ignorance : no revolution contemplated or permitted : no more palace-ministers but a partner with equal rights. § 2. Proof of inexorable demand for personal government, side by side with new feudal respect for descent: a " college" of emperors, two Constantines, Romanus, Stephen, and Christopher : Lecapenus makes an efficient ruler, preferable to an intriguing chamberlain, because his influence overt and responsible : insatiate greed of Romanus for monopoly of power, his son made patriarch : curious parallel instance in John XII. of Rome: appanage of feudal cadets: highest offices in Church secularised: office in Church and State, patrimonial: brief period of frank worldliness in Byzantium: Theophylact unique example of common type in West: prince-bishop and " squarson." § 3. Emergence of the military and civilian feud under Romanus II. (959-963) : Bringas and Nicephorus Phocas : a straightforward general accepted by the hero-worship of the capital (Napoleon or Vespasian) : loyalty of Nicephorus towards his young stepsons : Shogunate assumes itself a semi-hereditary character: crime of John II. (969-976): continues his uncle's policy of military expansion and recovery: his death attributed to civilian jealousy : resents that the labour of soldiers should enrich eunuchs of the palace. § 4. Unquestioned accession of Basil II. and Constantine IX. (976-1025) : the tradition of the non-interference of legitimate sovereign with affairs not easily overcome : influence of a natural son of Romanus I., the Chamberlain Basilius : but moment inopportune for courtiers' supremacy : rebellion of the two Bardas and
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" conversion of Basil to military and ascetic sternness : throws off the traditions of his house, constitutional and secluded sovereignty : in the end the master both in effect and title. § 5. Insubordination of the great military caste of Asiatic nobles: revival among the aristocracy of warlike pursuits : obscure formation of a semi-feudal nobility : Basil rids himself of the military pretenders, Sclerus and Phocas : tutelage of Basilius thrown off: Basil, the legitimate heir, now for thirty years the prime minister and commander-in-chief: yet in tireless campaigns of Bulgarian wars, vigilance of imperial control relaxed : one significant aim at reform, a war against the castellated mansions of the Asiatic nobles. § 6. Sovereign powerless to arrest advance of local and family right which defies central control and ousts the small freeholder : Basil's example of unremitting toil lost upon his successors : intermittent caprice of Constantine IX., for sixty-eight years Augustus (960-1028): new phase of the undying problem, shall the centre be motionless or efficient ? : Basil destroyed the Shogunate of set purpose, although it kept sovereignty sacrosanct and yet maintained control: he reduced all possible rivals and reigned unique and unapproachable: with him the Roman tradition expires. CHAPTER IV EXTINCTION OF ROMAN TRADITION UNDER THE DAUGHTERS OF CONSTANTINE IX. (1025-1081 A.D.) § 1. Eastern menace of the Seljukians : in spite of the military revival, civilian rivalry destroyed the arms and defences of the realm : inopportune culture and literary vanity of the August!: soldiers' caste alienated and frontiers exposed by short-sighted economy: substitution of mercenaries, the Varangian Guard : fiscal system vexatious and ill-timed: alienation of new Balkan subjects : no attachment of " Bulgarian " loyalty to overcome ; but oppression fatal to obedience : strange barbarian and Danish favourites : success of feudal noble (Magniac) dogged by envy and official hindrance. § 2. Feminine ascendancy : the daughters of Constantine IX. (1028-1057): the " Shogunate" revived by the Empress Eudocia : mere accident or caprice elevates, in this romantic era of sovereignty : conspicuous interest of the populace in these vicissitudes : abundant material of dramatic incident: atmosphere of scenic effect and unreality : meantime the last vestige of Roman institutions vanishes. § 3. Suspicion and distrust of Basil's latter years ; surrounded by alien confidantes : he overthrew method and procedure of civil service by undue promotion; agents of power without personal
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i
honour or national sympathy : imperialism and its problems ; it often involves the doubtful policy of ruling a people for their good against their will (India, Egypt, Ireland) : English critic can scarce avoid approval of the imperial ideal : the bureaucracy with its corporate honour and well-trained functionaries extinguished in this age. § 4. The abolition of routine and precedent the true " Orienttalisin " on which ship of State foundered : law supplanted by favourites : army and civil service had at no time been entirely foreign : curious automatism of Basil's successors : powerful administration of John, President of the Foundling Hospital, brother and uncle of successive emperors: favourites of Constantine X. (1042-1054) : crowning error, disarming of the Bagratid vassals : he aims not merely at the pride of the great Asiatic nobles but at the very defences of the Eastern frontiers. § 5. Overt military reaction and revolution under Michael VI.: lively narrative of the conspiracy by Psellus : strangely unsuccessful issue of a soldier's bid for supremacy : Constantine XI. restores civilian influence: he revokes the pains and penalties imposed by Isaac Comnenus : pillage of public funds for private purposes already begun: patrimonialism without chivalry : systematic neglect and insult of the warrior-faction : wise choice of Eudocia: the new military regent for Michael VII.. and Constantine X I I : the revival too late under Romanus IV., Diogenes : civilian misrule had done its worst : triumph of the Senate over the fallen champion of the empire : new and strange features come to light under Michael VII. : last foothold in Italy disappears and novel factors enter from the West : with the scuffle of pretenders (Nicephorus III. and IV. and Alexius I., 1081-1083) the Roman Empire passes away.
f
REVIEW OF THE PERIOD § 1. Has the study of human development any utilitarian value ? : does a scientific knowledge of the past enable us to control present or future ? : fallacy of momentous dates and dramatic events : great issues work out silently : the imperial system not the work of individuals : no arbitrary caprice : sovereignty here is representative : generous origin and aim of the empire, pacific and impersonal: its agents embodiments of the Idea and tend to centralise, because the Idea is itself unique. §2. To discuss the precise "seat of sovereignty" idle and academic : government resultant of many independent and conflicting forces : "Will of People" (if ever unanimously expressed) must always have its way : moral force behind rulers : democracy (in genuine sense) not "without witness" in the past: except on
1 i \
ANALYSIS
401
very rare occasions and in very rudimentary surroundings, absolute monarchy or absolute democracy, a pure chimsera: Roman emperor did in fact exercise direct control: due to his impersonal and representative character : two original types of society, family or clan ; artificial group : rex, dux : moral suasion and parental authority, forcible coercion and tried ability : the modern State belongs to latter class : released from moral aims or prepossession about the time of the Reformation : utility and force the basis. § 3. No terrorist prediction as result: social life largely independent of any reasoned basis or moral conviction : modern State and nationalism (territorial and economical rather than racial or sentimental) has origin in military conqueror : is not an extension of family authority, although modern royalty assumes a parental attitude : so State contemplates abolition of lesser groups and disputes the claims of the family : substitution of Utopian central control: indefinite increase in cost of government and number of officials: in these schemes, modern Socialism joins hands with empire and even exaggerates its defects : we are not then free to censure it until we have purged ourselves. § 4. The imperial ideal revives pacific and parental notions : the Senate could not hope to rival its representative character: wise limits of parental control: does not imply jealous or minute supervision : patience with idiosyncrasy and tolerance of local peculiarity : passion for uniformity as mischievous as devotion to law for its own sake : Ctesar forced to undertake the task : ability and success, sole tests of fitness : hence sacrifice of noble lives in fruitless effort to unite efficiency and stability: intentional indefiniteness of the imperial position. § 5. Under the now centralising monarch, two orders of agency— civil and military : the various revivals of personal and direct control may for a time increase absolutism but in the end check its exercise: continual proposals for vice-emperor: rejected by reaction : if power unified, life and its functions specialised: independence of the three corporations, Church, Army, Civil Service : curious and significant phase of this feud in our last period: feudal nobility and alien favourites of an Oriental court: extinction of Roman spirit and tradition. § 6. So far domestic development: pressing exterior problem : limits to " liberal imperialism " ? : a " White Australia " : genuine respect of barbarian for Rome: valuable aid and counterpoise in Teutonic spirit: subjectivity v. petrifying society : rural interests and healthy pursuits : possible influence of a continued Western line : inept simulacrum of Merovingian royalty,—counterfeit of the empire: elevation of Charles witness to the value and tradition of Caesar. § 7. Curious and unsympathetic attitude of Hegel to the imVOL. I. 2C
402
ANALYSIS
perial system : no sense of its conscientious or representative character: inconsistent verdict,—the "triumph of subjectivity": yet "the personal character of Cassar immaterial": evidence shows Csesar stood for the whole and (as in modern Cassarism) carried through reforms and measures of public welfare, beyond scope of any other class or corporation : centralised Cassarism not the best form of government because it does too much : but may be considered the single remedy against dangerous equilibrium and deadlock of modern democracy : Roman history constitutes an indictment of over-interference and tutelage ; but holds up the conscientious and personal service of the imperial line for our admiration.
END OF VOL. I
Printed by BALI AI-TYM, HAHM.II *• Co. fcdtnblirf h *•
THE
ROMAN EMPIRE
THE ROMAN . EMPIRE
ESSAYS ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL
HISTORY FROM THE ACCESSION
OF DOMITIAN (81 A.D.) TO THE RETIREMENT OF NICEPHORUS III .
`
(I08 I A .D.)
BY
F. W. BUSSELL FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD RECTOR OF SIZELAND
I
VOLUME II
f
LONGMANS,
GREEN AND CO .
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1910
';
All rights reserved ,1(
F
CONTENTS PART I POLITICAL INFLUENCES MOULDING THE NOMINAL AUTOCRACY OF THE CMSARS (400-1080) DIVISION A FROM PRESIDENT TO DICTATOR-FROM DICTATOR TO DYNAST CHAP.
I . The Prince, the Senate, and the Civil Service in the Eastern Empire (400"550) II . The Failure of the Autocratic Administration (535. . 565) under the Successors of of Opposition III . The Elements . Justinian (565-618) IV . Revival of Imperialism and of Military Prestige under the Heraclians : Resentment and Final Triumph of Civilian Oligarchy (620-700) .
V. Period of Anarchy and Revival of Central Power under Armenian and Military Influence ,. VI. Character and Aims of the Pretenders and Military Revolts in the Ninth Century . Gradual Accept. ance of Legitimacy (802-867)
PAGE
3 33 67
82 98
127
DIVISION B TRIUMPH OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LEGITIMACY V I I . Changes in the Administrative Methods of Autocracy and in the Official World from the Regency (Michael 111-) VIII . The Sovereign and the Government under Basil I., Leo VI ., and Alexander (867-912) o ,
.
138 178
CONTENTS
Vi
the IX. The Sovereign and the Government during the Regency Struggle for Tenth Century : the and Conflict of the Civil and Military Factions . Rise of the Feudal Families and IX. X. "Legitimate" Absolutism, or Constantine
CHAP.
his Daughters (ioz5-io56) .
PAGE
195
. i56
DIVISION C
MONARCHY GRADUAL DISPLACEMENT OF THE CIVIL BY FEUDALISM . 287 XI . Conflict of the Two Orders of Misrule : The Nicephori XII . Conflict of the Three Borilas ; and the Revolt of the Families of Ducas
and Comnenus (io78-io8t)
317
PAR'r II THE ARMENIA AND ITS RELATIONS WITH (520-1120) EMPIRE
ELEMENT THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE ARMENIAN DIVISION A GRADUAL ADMITTANCE (540-740)
" General Introduction . First Period the down to I . Early History of Armenia . . o¬ Justinian I . (530--540) to Justinian from Armenia II: Relations of Rome and Heraclius (54o-620) . Eastern Vassals . III . The Dynasty of Heraclius and the . IV. Under the Herachads and Isaurians
L
335 343 357 371 379
DIVISION B I
!''I
(740-1040) PREDOMINATING INFLUENCE WITHIN Empire from V. Armenians Within and Without the 740-840) " - 390 (c. Constantine V. to Theophilus
vii
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAP.
VI . Armenians Within and Without the Empire from Michael III . (842), to the end of Romanus I . . 407 (944)-(84o-94o) . to the Empire, VII . Relations of Armenia and Armenians from the Sole Reign of Constantine VII . (945) to the Deposition of Michael V. (1042)-(940. 419 Io4o) .
DIVISION C ANNEXATION, RIVALRY, AND ALLIANCE WITHOUT (1040-1120) VIII . Armenia and the Empire from Constantine X . to the . 437 Abdication of Michael VI. (1040-1057) IX. Armenia and Western Asia from Isaac I . to the . 450 Retirement of Nicephorus III. (1057-Io8I) X. Armenians under the Empire and in Cilicia during . . 465 the Reign of Alexius I . (Io8o-iI2o)
APPENDIX The Aristocracy and the Provincial Regiments ; or Emperor, Senate, and Army during the " Great Anarchy (690-720) .
INDEX
.
[It should be noted that the Index is only to Volume II., and that there is none to Volume I.]
485
497
Ft
o
o
, o 0
0
0o
n
n e
,.o
.
, o ,
ANALYSIS PART I POLITICAL INFLUENCES MOULDING THE NOMINAL AUTOCRACY OF THE CASARS (400-1080)
DIVISION A FROM PRESIDENT TO DICTATOR-FROM DICTATOR TO DYNAST CHAPTER I THE PRINCE, THE SENATE,
AND THE CIVIL SERVICE IN THE
EASTERN EMPIRE (400-550)
§ 1. Immobility of the Classical State : Reign of Law. § 2. The Civil Service and routine. § 3. Later decline of Civilian influence (boo-8oo). § 4. Civilian pre-eminence in Vth century. § 5. The Theodosian academy for officials : function of the Senate. § 6. Respect for precedent : autocracy suspicious of itself. § 7. The Russian Czardom : its limitations. § 8. Efforts to control the lesser agents (450-500) : wise influence of senior officials in Senate. § 9 . Official responsibility : no demand for popular control. § 10. Public opinion and nationality unknown : the middle-class and the mercantile interest. § 11 . Oligarchy under formula of Absolutism : careful training for the Bureaux : State-service the sole career. § 12 . Venality of office ; its excuse : - legal fiction of Simony modern conception : "place of profit : " failure of monarchical supervision .
'
ANALYSIS e CHAPTER II THE FAILURE OF THE AUTOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION (585-565) with a § 1. The witness of contemporaries : (A) the Notary grievance.
Con§ 2. The Prefecture degraded successively under (a) . (S) the Dardanians stantine, (,8) Arcadius, (y) Anastasius, § 3 . Lydus as critic of the imperial policy : the ultimate ruin of the office under John. § 4. (B) Procopius' °` Secret History," evidence ruined by hyperbole and inconsistency . § 5 . Procopius as witness to (i.) domestic disorders : (a) civic riot, (b) religious schism. § 6. Procopius as witness to (c) fiscal oppression, (d) impoverishment of realm, (e) penury and strait of the exchequer. § 7. (ii.) External policy : (a) military enterprise and extravagance, prevalent misery and despair, the reign of Antichrist (b) defensive system : (I) invaders bribed : (2) chain of fortresses built : (3) deficient support of Army : (iii .) internal policy : jealous centralisation and curtailment of franchise : modern critics at fault : Justinian's acts ; their excuse and motive : real character of the emperor emerges clearly from Procopius' diatribe.
EVIDENCE FROM THE CONSTITUTIONS OF JUSTINIAN (535-565) The Emfieror and Dais Offidals
§ 1 . (C) Justinian judged by himself : (a) his conception of his post ; universal supervision : (,3) difficulties of this claim ; the bureaucrats out of hand ; their insolence and exactions : Justinian reduces fees payable on institution to office, abolishes Vicars, raises stipend and dignity of governors . § 2. (y) Counterpoise to mutinous hierarchy in (I) Bishops and (2) magnates : (3) popular supervision never suggested : imperial attitude to the people, cynical but indulgent : (I) costly displays for gratification of urban mob ; (2) solicitude for countrymen ; (3) wages of artisan : wisdom of these provisions : striking analogy with modern Socialism. § 3. Special classes : (I) the Military. § 4: . (2) The Monks. § 5 . (3) The Senate. § 6. (4) Justinian's appeAl to his people .
ANALYSIS
ai
CHAPTER III SUCCESSORS THE ELEMENTS OF OPPOSITION UNDER THE (565-618) ` OF JUSTINIAN
(Being a continuation of " The Prince, the Senate, and the Civil Service") § 1 . Opposition of privileged class to Liberal Imperialism. powerless. § 2. Dying avowal of Justin II . : reforming zeal a counter§ 3. Conciliation of local authorities : episcopate as
poise. § 4. Isolation of the emperor : no public support. § 5 . No desire to restrict titular prerogative : private interest and contempt for law. § 6. Complete failure of Maurice to restore order (6oo) : intervention of the demes. § 7. Official tradition extinguished under Phocas . CHAPTER IV REVIVAL THE
OF
AND OF MILITARY PRESTIGE UNDER RESENTMENT AND FINAL TRIUMPH OF
IMPERIALISM
HERACLIANS :
CIVILIAN OLIGARCHY (620-700)
'
; §1 . Position of Heraclius insecure : officials, army, provinces disaffection . their § 2. Senate resumes influence : prerogative reasserted during wars . § 3. Dependence of Heracliads on Senate. § 4. Autocracy revived by Constans (650) : armies and priests the military revolt (670) : armies and priests. Jus§ 5 . Imperial prestige under Constantine IV . (68o) : . tinian I I . hostile to official class (69o) ' imperial control of finance over: of magnates : revolt §6. Ministerial irresponsibility throw of central power . § 7. Triumph (loo) of the civilian and official oligarchy . CHAPTER V PERIOD OF ANARCHY AND
REVIVAL OF CENTRAL POWER
UNDER ARMENIAN AND MILITARY INFLUENCE
A. The Rejected Candidates (695-7 17)
§ 1 . Benefits conferred by the Isaurians : perils of Elective Monarchy . § 2. The revolutions of 695, 698 .
aii
ANALYSIS
§ 3. Vengeance of Justinian (restored 710) : revolt of the Armenian Vardan . § 4. Civilian's profit by shortsight of military conspirators : reprisals of army under Theodosius I 11 . § 5 . Striking success of Leo III . : support of Islam . § 6. This development analogous to earlier revolutions : Roman tradition revived by plebeians and aliens . B. Religious Reform and Political Reorganisation (717-775) §I. Obscurity and bias of " Isaurian °' Annalists : popular approval at revival of Personal Rule. § 2. Some events in Leo's reign (7 I7-74o) . § 3. Rebellion of Artavasdus : conflicting accounts of Constantine V . (750). § 4 . Summary of chief events (740-775)" § 5. Indirect evidence entirely against this disappointing result. § 6. Recovery due to resumption of direct monarchic control, especially in Finance .
C . The Emfieror, the Church, and the aim of Government in the Period of Iconoclasm (7 I7-8o2) § 1 . Barbarism of the empire after 55o : influence of priests. § 2. Orthodox opposition to Iconoclasm : Leo seeks to weaken Church's influence . § 3. Anti-Clericalism and State-supremacy : value of counterpoise to State-absolutism . § 4. The Protestants of Armenia against Hellenism : success and reaction under Constantine VI . (c. 8oo).
CHAPTER VI CHARACTER
AND
REVOLTS
IN
AIMS THE
OF
THE
NINTH
ANCE OF LEGITIMACY
PRETENDERS CENTURY :
AND
GRADUAL
MILITARY ACCEPT-
802-867)
§ 1 . Suspension of dynastic principle : throne open to Armenian adventurer. § 2. Socialist "° Jacquerie" in Asia Minor (c. 820), § 3. without definite political aim : intolerant spirit of the age. § 4. Feuds of monk and soldier : emperors ignorant or heterodox : weakening of regimental spirit . § 5. Revolt of Persian contingent at Sinope : close of the Era of " Pronunciamentos." § 6. Restoration of Image-worship : . intolerant dread of heretics. § 7. Paulician persecution largely political : successful revival of central prestige (c. 84o) .
ANALYSIS DIVISION B TRIUMPH OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LEGITIMACY CHAPTER VII CHANGES
IN
AND
IN
THE
ADMINISTRATIVE
THE
OFFICIAL
METHODS
WORLD
FROM
OF
AUTOCRACY
THE
REGENCY
MICHAEL III .)
the Develoiment A. Economic and Social Causes determining : personal § 1. A new departure : Regency and Legitimacy . in abeyance monarchy claims of undis§ 2. Palace-government : the people press the Autocracy. guised in population ; § 3. Obscure economic causes at work : (I) change villages : encroach(a) communal changes ; Agricultural § 4. (2) ment of the Magnate. § 5. (2, b) Private estates . in character . § 6. First definite reforms (c. 74o) democratic and Magnate Church interest of 85o) in § 7. Reaction (c. soldiers' fiefs absorbed . encroachment of § 8. Estates of officials : struggle against grandees. § 9. Attempt to restrict Monastic property (c. 965). B . The Government and the Landed Interest Bullionism : land, § 10. Economic fallacies of Byzantium ; unique investment for capital. Nicephorus § 11 . Lecapenus (c. 93o) and the landed gentry : (c. 965). § 12. (3) Legislation of "° Isaurians'° against Plutocracy aloof from rich kept Capital : the and of State § 13 . Problems affairs under earlier empire. goo : mercy in § 14. Legal reforms of " Isaurians" repealed by influence : (5) revival of the Code : (4) revival of Ecclesiastical private wealth .
t
under Michael III. C . The Sovereign and the Governing Class always wed § 15. Family of Theodora the Armenian : emperors subjects . III . § 16. The Regency : character of Michael and State. Church in enlightenment Cynical § 17 . Michael II I . § 18. Murder of Caesar Bardas and of
Armenian inflyence. § 19. Accession of Basil further strengthens
XIV
ANALYSIS CHAPTER VIII
THE SOVEREIGN AND THE GOVERNMENT UNDER BASIL I ., LEO VI.,
AND ALEXANDER (867-912)
§ 1. Transfer of throne to the " Arsacid," 867, supported by official class . § 2 . Domestic reforms and foreign policy of Basil . §3 . His family : relaxation of moral restraint : secular and imperial Patriarchs . § 4. Byzantine public service free from conditions of nationality : rise of the great Eastern families : perils of divided command. § 5. Abortive conspiracies against Basil and his son (870-910)§ 6 Leo VI . under Stylian and Samonas : remarkable Saracen favourite. ' § 7. Wasteful ease of the Court (c. goo) : disregard of precedent and due promotion . § 8. Defects and merits of the new pacific Conservatism (Finlay) .
CHAPTER IX THE
SOVEREIGN CENTURY :
AND THE
FLICT OF THE
THE
GOVERNMENT
STRUGGLE
CIVIL AND
FOR THE MILITARY
DURING THE
TENTH
REGENCY AND CONFACTIONS :
RISE
OF
THE FEUDAL FAMILIES
A. Ducas and Phocas to Lecapenus (912-92o) § 1. The Palace-Ministry under Alexander : the Bulgarian peril and the Council of Regents . § 2. Popular demand for a strong man : failure and death of Ducas . § 3 . Zoe's Regency and vigorous anti-Bulgarian designs. § 4 . Zoe's policy thwarted by dissensions of military leaders . § 5. Competition of Phocas and Lecapenus. § 6 . Success and rapid promotion of Lecapenus : separation of the imperial functions ; active Regent and legitimate Recluse. B. Romanus and his Sons (9I9-945) § 1. Family of Romanus I . : popular Legitimism . § 2. Conspiracies against Romanus I . : public indifference at his overthrow. § 3 . His diplomatic conduct of foreign affairs : Bulgarian alliance . § 4. Curcuas and his long control o¬ the Eastern frontier. j 5. Parental supervision of Romanus .
f
!
ANALYSIS
go
and Restored (963-976) C . The Regency in Abeyance (945-963) the two Basils. 1, The Great Chamberlains : Bringas and of Constantine VII . amiable character and § 2. Literary culture diplomacy. § 3. His ministers, cabinet, gifts to officials, new Regency of J4. Romanus II . and his advisers : the . Theophano § 6 . The East and the family of Phocas. : Patriarch's decisive § 6 . Duel of Bringas and Nicephorus action. war : his §'j. Nicephorus II . takes personal command of the errors . valour, unpopularity, and political § g. John Zimisces and the settlement of Bulgaria . § 9. John and the Eastern campaigns . conflict in the § 10. Suspicious death of Zimisces (976) : hidden Roman Empire . Personal Monarchy D . Abortive attemfits to revive the Regency : and Military (99oCivil Defiartments, over both triumfihs 1025) (976) : Asia Minor § 1 . The young Augusti : revolt of Sclerus detached from the empire. Phocas (restored to § 2. Defeats of the Imperialist forces : favour) overthrows Sclerus . of Phocas . § 3. Military annoyance at Basil's initiative : revolt : amnesty of Phocas § 4. Extinction of revolt by sudden death Sclerus. and high honours to true Coesarian § 6. Personal government of Basil II . (99o-io25) : one . control of effective ideal : rare phenomenon ; West. § 6. Overthrow of New Bulgaria in the Basil : change in the methods reserve of §'j. Masterful spirit and government . of
CHAPTER X . LEGITIMATE" ABSOLUTISM, OR CONSTANTINE IX DAUGHTERS (1025-1056)
AND HIS
Ufistarts A . John the Pafihlagonian, or the Cabal of the (1025-1056) § 1 . Reign of Constantine IX . : his indolent and capricious temper. § 2. Romanus Argyrus and his Paphlagonian bailiff. 3. Catastrophe and humiliation in the East : lieutenants retrieve imperial failure (Io3o). 4. The hasty marriage of Michael the Paphlagonian.
,
xvi
ANALYSIS
§ 5. The anxieties of Michael IV. : adoption of an heir .
§ 6. Loyal feeling towards dynasty under Michael V. : indignant populace storms the palace and reinstates princesses. B. Central Policy and Pretenders' Aim during the Reign of Constantine X. (1042-1054) § 1 . Zoe's choice of a third husband : anomalous relations of Monomachus and Sclerxna. § 2 . Usual series of ineffective revolts : Magniac°s attempt : various futile plots. § 3. Rebellion of Thornic and the troops of Macedonia. § 4. End of Thornic : excuses for the military party. § 5. Ludicrous palace-intrigues : clemency of Constantine X . § 6. The Ministers, Lichudes and John : death of Constantine X. (1054 .) § 7. Character and scope of Psellus' contemporary chronicler. § 8. Indolence, courage, and favouritism of Constantine X .
§ 9. His merits underrated .
DIVISION C GRADUAL DISPLACEMENT OF THE CIVIL MONARCHY BY FEUDALISM CHAPTER XI C6NFLicT OF THE TWO ORDERS
i
A . The Military Protest and the Counter-Revolution : the PeaceParty and the Soldiers (Comnenus and Diogenes), Io57-Io67
j
.
§ 1 . Theodora and Michael VI . (creature of a faction) . § 2 . The Warriors slighted by Prince and Premier : retire to Asia Minor (1057)§ 3 . Hasty insurgence and failure of Bryennius . § 4. Catacalon joins Comnenian mutineers : futile negotiations with Michael VI . § 5. Triumph of the Comneni : origin of the family. § 6. Strong clerical opposition to Isaac 1 . : his abdication . § 7. Civilian influence predominant under Constantine XI . misplaced energy and chivalry. § 8. Emperors' brothers during Xlth cent . : the two Johns : disgrace and sudden elevation of Diogenes (io67) . B : The Military Regency and the Casar .Yohn : Beginnings of Latin Intervention : the Misrule of Nicefihoritaes (Io67-1oq8) § 1. Novel influences : Varangians and Latin soldiers of fortune. § 2. Civilian reaction after defeat of Manzikert : Romanus deposed by Caesar John .
I .i
xvii
ANALYSIS
§ 3. Ministers and generals under Michael VI L: Nicephoritzes
Russell revolts and captures Caesar John, and proclaims him emperor . : seized by Turks, Russell regains his freedom, § 5 . But is reduced by Alexius : movement in the Balkans : disappointment of Bryennius, who prepares a revolt, § 6. And assumes the purple : the Capital invested and relieved. § 7. Strange situation of the empire in Europe and Asia (1078).
CHAPTER XII CONFLICT LAS j
OF
THE THREE NICEPHORI :
AND
THE
THE MISRULE OF
BORI-
REVOLT OF THE FAMILIES OF DUCAS AND
COMNENUS (1078-1081)
§1 . Union of Alexius with the house of Ducas : insurrection of Eastern troops under Botaneiates. § 2. Abdication of Michael VIL : Borilas enters the palace and takes vengeance on Nicephoritzes . §3. Weakness and extravagance of Nicephorus Ill . : Alexius ends the revolt of Bryennius at Calabrya. § 4. Revolt of Basilacius in Illyria : misgivings of Alexius, once more victorious . § 5. Restless state of European and Asiatic provinces : futile rebellion of Constantine XII . : like earlier Slavonic immigrants, § 6. The Turks penetrate into Asia Minor : "° Nicephorus V." founds a Turkoman principality. § 7. Alexius declines to serve against him : West Asia independent and aggressive . § 8 . The Ministers plot against Comnenians : Alexius invested sack of the capital and resignation of Botaneiates (Io8I) . PART II
ARMENIA AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE EMPIRE (520-1120) THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE ARMENIAN ELEMENT DIVISION A GRADUAL ADMITTANCE (540-740) General Introduction § 1 . Interest of viiith century . Eastern Dynasties of Rome and Armenia . § 2. Early Armenian history : Arsacids and conversion of Tiridat (c. 3oo) : decay of Roman influence in viith century . VOL. II .
Xviii
ANALY9IS
§ 3. Armenian Nonconformity, obstacle to union : not to entry of Armenian into Roman service.
§ 4. Armenian prefendets and sovereigns (boo-850) at Byzantium. § 5. Summary of conclusions. I
I
EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA DOWN TO THE FIRST PERIOD OF JUSTINIAN I. (530-540) § 1. Armenia in the new expert service of Rome .
2 . Christianity, source both of alliance and of estrangement.
3. Origin and early history of the Armenians : rivals Assyria : the Arsacid dynasty (150 B.C.-200 A.D.).
of
§ 4. Romans and Persians in Armenia : independence extinguished (385) : the religious difficulty (4oo-5oo). § 5 . Cabades the Socialist renews the war with Rome . § 6 . Feudal policy of Justin (52o), and eastern campaigns of Belisarius. § 7. Cause of Justinian's failure in East and West : fiscal system . II RELATIONS OF ROME AND ARMENIA FROM JUSTINIAN TO HERACLIUS (540-620)
i j
I
§ 1 . Loyal service of Armenia to the empire : in the East and Italy : the Vassal State of Lazic and sub-infeudation. § 2. Armenian valour in Africa : first Armenian plot : recall and conspiracy of Artaban (548) . § 3. Persarmenia under religious persecution joins the empire. § 4. Doubtful issue of the quarrel over Persarmenia (575-580)§ 5 . Tiberius' offer to resign Roman claims to Persarmenia mutinous state of Persian and Roman armies alike. § 6. Chosroes dethroned and restored by Rome in concert with Armenian nobles : welcome peace broken by the murder of Maurice. § 7 . Chosroes' war of vengeance against Rome : mutinous independence of Taron.
III THE DYNASTY OF HERACLIUS AND THE EASTERN VASSALS a. To the Death of Constans Ill. (62o-668)
§ 1 . Heraclius' attempt to secure religious conformity in Armenia. § 2. Ambiguous position of Armenia between the two powers : advent of the Arabs : patriotic resistance under the Vahans.
i
ANALYSIS
XiX
§ 3. Nationalism ruined by feudal paralysis sack of Dovin (64o) : steady northward advance of the Arabs (64o:sqq .). 4. After the visits of Constans III . Nationalists aim at autonomy. § 6. Waning of Roman influence : Armenia tributary to caliph.
IV UNDER THE HERACLIADS AND ISAURIANS
~. From Constantine IV. to the Death of Leo III. (670-740) § 1. Revolt of Armenian princes in East and West : Sapor and Mejej (668). § 2. Recovery, of Armenia under suzerainty to caliph : secret compact of Justinian I I. and the caliph : removal of the Mardaites . § 3 . Troubled state of Armenia after the visit of Justinian II. : Arab inroads and removal of the capital. § 4. Terrible vengeance of caliph (loo) against Romanising party : Armenian exiles flock into Roman service. § 6 . Early adventures of Conon in the East : two Armenian emperors ; problems (I) of Armenian settlements and (2) origin of Leo III .
§ 6. Unqualified submission to the caliph (from 71O).
DIVISION B PREDOMINATING INFLUENCE WITHIN (740-1040) V ARMENIANS WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE EMPIRE FROM CONSTANTINE V. TO THEOPHILUs (G 740-840)
-
§ 1 . Revolt of Artavasdus and transplantation of Constantine V. Armenian monopoly of military command. 92. Vigorous policy of Harun ; constant duel at Byzantium between Armenian generals and Orthodox reaction. § 3. Treason of Tatzates, owing to hate of courtiers : violent Armenian and military opposition to Images (785) : first deposition of Constantine VI . frustrated by the Armenian troops . 4. Constantine VT . estranges his Armenian supporters : his removal ; plots of the sons of Constantine V. : peril of the capital and removal of Irene by the Stauracian party . S. Exceptional post created for Armenian general in Asia his discontent and revolt : his Armenian officer Leo joins Nicephorus : Armenian conspirator only overcome by Armenian aid.
$x
ANALYSIS
§ 6. A false Constantine VI . supported by Harun : Armenian ministers and conspirators : success and elevation of Leo the Armenian (813) . § 7 . Serious menaces to the State under Michael II . : Armenian help and alliance indispensable to Rome . § S . Services to the empire of Armenia under Theophilus ; Alexis and Theophobus : Armenia itself attached to caliphate. VI ARMENIANS WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE EMPIRE FROM MICHAEL III, (842), TO THE END OF ROMANUS I. (944)-(840-940) § 1. Roman expeditions to north-east ; Bardas and Theoctistus
rise and elevation of Basil the Armenian : Basil invested by the new Bagratid monarch. § 2. Notable Armenian families emerge ; Maleinus, Curcuas, Phocas, Argyrus . § 3. Intimate and tactful relations of Leo VI . with Armenia expansion of empire towards East. § 4. Multiplication of petty sovereignties in Armenia in decay of caliphate . § 5. Appeal of Armenian king to empire (911) : consistent Imperialism of Armenian royalty : nobles and people thwart alliance . § 6. Submission of the Taronites to the empire (c. 93o) : extension of Roman influence by diplomacy and by war. § 7. Universal suzerainty of Rome in Armenia : exploits and success of Curcuas the Armenian. VII RELATIONS OF FROM
ARMENIA
THE SOLE
AND ARMENIANS TO THE
REIGN OF CONSTANTINE
EMPIRE,
VII. (945) TO
THE DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL V. (1042)-(940-1040)
§ 1 . Religious differences separate Armenia from Rome : rise and elevation of Zimisces the Armenian . § 2 . Zimisces and the Crusading Ideal ; his eastern exploits and close relations with Armenian royalty. § 3 . Armenian actors and influence in rebellion of Sclerus (976) : displeasure of Basil and outbreak of religious persecution : Armenia suffers from the Moslem and is reconciled to Basil 11. § 4- Legend of Armenian origin of Samuel the Shishmanid Armenian officers of Basil I I . (99o) : Taik bequeathed to Rome ; Basil II . removes religious disabilities . § 5. The Great Durbar of 99 1 ; Basil II, receives fealty of Armenian kings : valiant resistance in Vasparacan to Seliuks ., Sennacherib of Vasparacan surrenders to the empire : feudal fiefs within the empire.
t
ANALYSIS `
axi
§ 6. Discontent and rebellion in Georgia (1022) ; proposal to
surrender kingdom of Ani to Rome : curious delay in completing the transfer ; varying accounts : anarchy and treason in Ani Michael IV . (io4o) prepares to enforce the claim : furious resistance of Bahram the Nationalist. § 7 . Bahram raises Gagic, last King of Ani (to42) : straightforward dealing of the emperors : relatjons of the Armenian kingdom to the empire (c. 1o42) . § 8. Close connection of Iberia with empire under Romanus III. 01034) : Armenian governors for the empire : principality of Tarsus .
DIVISION C ANNEXATION, RIVALRY, AND ALLIANCE WITHOUT (1040-1120) VIII ARMENIA AND THE
EMPIRE FROM CONSTANTINE X . TO THE
ABDICATION OF MICHAEL VI .
(1040-1057)
§ 1 . Voluntary cession of King of Ani (c. 1045) ; exploits of Catacalon, Roman governor, against emir of Dovin . § 2. The Seljuk advance : its significance in world-history . § 3. First pillage of Vasparacan : division in the Roman councils ; they wait for Liparit : (feudal character of Liparit). § 4. Defeat of Liparit ; negotiations for peace with Rome : the Patzinaks create a diversion in Europe ; Eastern armies weakened strange trio of generals against Patzinaks (Io5o) . § 6. The courtiers charge Armenian princes of Arkni with disloyalty : curious plot to annihilate Armenian °` Huguenots" : Normans posted in East, owing to distrust : attack of Togrul fiercely renewed (1053) but baffled : Catacalon, Duke of Antioch. § 6. Fresh Seljuk attack ; treason of the son of Liparit : pillage of Chaldia : Emir of Akhlat extinguishes revolt of Hervey the Norman .
.
IX ARMENIA AND WESTERN ASIA FROM ISAAC I. TO THE RETIREMENT OF NICEPHORUS III. (1057-1081)
§ 1 . Catacalon and Armenian military faction again in power (1057) : Armenian influence on Rome : desultory raids of Seljuks with varying success (1057-59). § 2. Religious and political dissensions of Armenia and the empire : Armenian alliance with infidel and Seljuk advance : fall of the Principalities of Sivas and Arkni . -
_
i i
ANALYSIS
§ 3. Serious aggressive policy of new Sultan (Io62) ; capture and sack of old Armenian capital, Ani : secret cession of last independent state to Rome : further range of Seljuks unhindered. § 4. Armenian disaffection : treason of the captain Amerticius : evil effects of civilian parsimony : no adequate Imperial forces on Eastern frontier. § 6 . Lukewarm support extended to Romanus IV . : his campaigns and Armenian officers : suspicion ofSivas princes : catastrophe of Manzikert (1071) . § 6. Scanty results of Manzikert (Io7I) : Michael V1 I . still receives cession of land and awards principalities : Ani, content with Seljuk rule, refuses to restore royalty : the interval used by Rome for domestic sedition : triumph of the Military faction over House of Ducas (1078). §:7. Revolt of Armenian Basilacius in Macedonia : revolutions at Antioch : seizure by Armenian Philaret : events in Armenian kingdom of Cilicia . § 8. Disappearance of natives in Armenia : foundation of independent kingdom of Cilicia : the Patriarchal Sees . § 9. Western migration of Oriental Christians : Asia Minor overrun : Cilicia an outpost of Armenian nationality and Imperial tradition . X ARMENIANS UNDER THE EMPIRE AND IN CILICIA DURING THE REIGN OF ALE%IUs I. (1080-1120)
§ 1 . Anomalous position of Empire under Comnenians : fluctuating success of Seljuks in Asia Minor, severed from East by Roman territory : strange exploits of Philaret, Duke of Antioch. § 2. Adroit diplomacy of Alexius ; jealousy and divisions of Seljukids : Armenians high in the Imperial service . § 3. Mild rule of Malek in Armenia proper : conciliation of Armenians : his wise reign followed by civil strife (Io92-IO97). § 4. Seljuks at Nice : Armenian plot against Alexius ; the Duchy of Trebizond : general state of East on the arrival of the Crusaders. § 6 . Reconquest of Nice ; Latin replace Armenian principalities : Latins fraternise with Armenians : their services to the Crusaders . . § 6 . Rivals to Seljuks : Latins at Antioch and Edessa ; the Danishmand : Imperial recovery in East, expedition to Cilicia, 1103, I Io4 : curious treatment of the Roman general . § 7, War of Seljuks and Armenia of Cilicia : amity of Armenia and Tancred of Antioch : Boemund becomes Vassal of the empire : (changes in Roman administration : the Duchy) . § 8 . Another Armenian conspiracy : desultory fighting in East between Franks and Armenians : difficulties of Rum : Alexius checks an inroad from Khorasan .
ANALYSIS
xxiii
§ 9. Armenian sovereigns and the earthquake : Baldwin of
Edessa reduces the Armenian principalities : state of Asia Minor, 112o, restless policy of Rum : homage to Alexius ; his death .
1 .
APPENDIX THE
ARISTOCRACY EMPEROR,
AND
SENATE,
THE
PROVINCIAL
AND
ARMY
REGIMENTS ;
DURING
ANARCHY (690-720)
THE
OR
GREAT
§ 1 . Predominance of the provincial regiments : the empire now Asiatic. § 2. Permanent Thematic armies : revolutions of 695, 698. § 3 . Justinian restored : revolutions of 711, 713 : shortsight of military conspirators. § 4 . Mutinous troops and revolt under Theodosius I 11 . § 5 . Civilian capital defenceless before new military concentration . § 6. Armeniacs and Anatolics upset Obsician influence (716, 717)"
INDEX TO VOL. II .
k
6 F u F
S
F.
I
1 I Ii
'I
i
PART I POLITICAL INFLUENCES MOULDING THE
!'
NOMINAL AUTOCRACY OF THE CIESARS (400-1080)
P
v`
r
a
VOL . ii.
A
-
s
i
I
i
i
i
i I,
-
i i i
I i F' t{~ 'i I
r-f
DIVISION A FROM PRESIDENT TO DICTATOR-FROM DICTATOR TO DYNAST CHAPTER I THE PRINCE, THE SENATE, AND THE CIVIL SERVICE IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE (400-550) l. WE approach the central problem of this entire immobility of period in an inquiry into the function and the aims the C"ie" &ate : R*n of the Civil Service under
the empire of the East. of Law. A supplementary inquiry might indeed discuss (a) the composition and dignities of the Byzantine Senate, and (b) the strict and well-defined provinces of the various civil departments . It was the chief endeavour of the princes in the era of reconstruction to assure the central control over all other branches of the administration . Constantine, while recognising the independent sanction of the Church, seeks to preserve its integrity and unanimous belief as a valid instrument of government in the new State . The profession of arms constituted a distinct career, and was open to the sturdy foreigner. The Civil Service, the special creature of the imperial system, looking to Hadrian and Severus Alexander as its chief patrons, was now still further reduced to order, method, and routine ; in the education and training of future officials, in the regular stipend, promotion, and pension, which followed and repaid devoted service in some field of the administration . It is often remarked that the classical ideal is a stationary rather than a progressive society . « That State,"
says Aristotle, ~' is the wisest and best administered s
-
4
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
immobility of which gives most to the Law and least to the perState: Bdgn
of Law.
sonal will of the ruler."
A religious sanction was
invoked to secure legislation from the tampering interference of reformers ; the legendary hero who produced the uniform and consistent code, was himself divine, or was at least inspired by a god. When the secular and critical spirit looked with cool inquiry on this pretension, Plato sought by religious fiction or dogmatic illusion to bind his neophytes to a blind obedience . In effect, every citizen is to be born in a Hellenic community with a rope round his neck, such as was worn by the proposer to deliver Salamis. The legislation of Rome opened and expanded from a narrow tribal code, under the genial influence of Imperial, Christian, Stoic, and juristic doctrine . The Ecumenical State could repose safely on no other foundation but the law of nature and of reason ; and it was a commonplace of the time (as of many subsequent schools of shallow enlighten- . ment) that the two were identical. While we are following the restless wanderings of Hadrian, the ascetic musings of Marcus, the wild vagaries of Commodus, or the pitiless repression of Severus, we are apt to forget the quiet but systematic justification for the imperial system, which the jurists proposed. The equity, which should be the basis of the world-wide State, as it realised the idle dream or academic thesis of dialectical and abstentionist Stoicism, was to be found under the empire, and was the unalterable pivot of the whole. Some indeed might regret the methods adopted to secure freedom and equality,-man's original condition, dictated by the powerful law of nature and the approving sanction of his own heart ; or might regard the emperor as the unique means of attaining and preserving a " golden age ." The content of this law was constant and inviolable, and could not be altered when once unfolded before mankind . To it the edicts of princes must conform, and there was abroad some
,
ex.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
5
vague notion on the right of insurrection, in case zmmovtdity of the sovereign defied or contradicted it . The Decla- the Classical State: Reign the
-
mations of elder Seneca, and a hundred lesser passages in first century writers, extol this law of nature above the partial and transient enactment of princes or peoples. § 2. We must remember that the whole tendency of the reconstructive age (285-337) was to save the central power from alien encroachment and its own weakness . The ideal was not the will of the emperor for the time being, but the permanent and abiding policy of the State. Everything hitherto tentative and indecisive in outline, a compromise of intentional vagueness, was brought forth into open daylight and given sharply cut features, often rude, blunt, and unsuspected. The autocracy no longer depended upon Rome ; why then should the empty and misleading pretence be maintained that from the Senate emanated all power in the State ? The law was by then made clear and uniform ; and the next three centuries will see the codifying process at work, which is to place the maxims and principles of government above the reach of individual caprice . Similarly, the agents of government were marshalled in order ; the various characters and duties set forth in distinct relief, quite as much in the desire for swiftness and uniformity as in anxious apprehension . The Civil Service attains important proportions, and by a curious freak, the sworn ministers and lieutenants of Caesar are summed up and collected, at least by the reign of Theodosius 11., in the ancient and . honourable title of Senators. Between the ancient house and the imperial agents there had always existed a standing feud ; the aristocrat tended to become an irresponsible amateur, the praetor or lieutenant of Caesar was careful and business-like as under the eye of the master. But the centrifugal force was now conquered ; there is but one order of public servants, directly amenable to the emperor .
ofLaw.
The Civil Service and routine .
,
-
6
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
vrv. n
We are dealing in this section only with the Civil Service of the Eastern realm ; and we may here well start with this identification . These officers form a hierarchy with definite training, precise duties, and regular precedence ; the Senate, still the informal council of- assessors which custom rather than law bade the magistrate consult, was composed of the chief acting and past ministers of the Crown . And it was the aim and object of the reconstructive age in adapting the scheme of government to its new and unexpected needs, to make its method fixed and its procedure certain . This fixity of outline, as we saw, is a heritage from the past ; the Hellenic idealists conceived it possible, like modern prophets of Utopia, to reach or to recur to a perfect and immobile condition of society, in which reform and improvement would have no further use. To us who recognise the helplessness of man's judgment before inexorable laws, and the cyclic development which forbids us to cherish hopes of an eternal equilibrium, it seems incredible that these Illyrian or Pannonian sovereigns, themselves darting out of nothingness into dazzling light, could have imagined that it lay within their competence to stereotype and to crystallise mankind . « A spirit of conservatism," says Finlay, '1 persuaded the legislators of the Roman Empire that its power could not decline, if each order and profession of its citizens was fixed irrevocably in the sphere of their own peculiar duties by hereditary succession." We are about to examine the application of this principle in the administrative sphere, and to inquire into the influence of this new body, as it slowly built up its policy and tradition to overmaster the moment's caprice in the ruler, or unhappily succumbed to the rudimentary instincts of self-seeking and greed. Lam' decline § 3. The needs of the empire were twofold f order and ~'rd against foreign inroads . domestic influence
The Civil Sem4ce and routine.
(600400).
Sooner or, later the most carefully devised plan for
fit.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
7
securing civil supremacy was destined to fail . The Later decline artificially protected area, with its also artificial Of 0ivilian influence
governing class (never, as in other countries, a domi- (600-soo) . nant caste), frequently had to postpone internal reform to the pressing need of military defence . I am inclined to believe that the years 40o-8oo, from Theodosius II. to Nicephorus I., witness the zenith and decline of the civilian spirit, of that predominance of the bureau, which the sturdy soldier Diocletian established, in the vain hope that unarmed and peaceful officials would remain always in dutiful obedience to the sovereign . I would suggest the following division of years in an attempt to estimate the vicissitudes of its influence . (a) From the New University of Theodosius II . to the end of Justinian (430-565), during which the collective Civil Service represented by the Senate, acquired by merit and preserved with success a commanding position in the State. (b) From Justin II . to the solemn compact of Herachus (565-618) . Here we see emerging the elements of opposition to the vigilant control of the prince,-the interest in most things civilian and the emoluments of the notary and the advocate have declined, and while society rushes blindly into superstition and barbarity, the advisers and agents of the sovereign do their best to thwart his well-meant reforms and exempt themselves (like a feudal "noblesse ") from the uniform operation of law. (c) From Heraclius to the deposition of Justinian 11 . (618-695). Here the conflict of the official class with the monarchy takes a different complexion in an altered age ; the old civil hierarchy breaks down, and in many regions of the empire becomes extinct ; for since 618 two new and important factors have been admitted into partnership, with independent right, the Church and the Army and the official class of 'I Senators " (persecuted, as Bury well says, in the "drastic but inept" measures of this latter sovereign) bear a different stamp to the _
8
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. A
Later dwane disciplined agents of his greater namesake, and have of OWzan something of the selfish independence of the feudal nobles, something, too of the crafty greed of an (no's (soo-soo).
Eastern vizier, not a little of the genuine (if misplaced) piety of the devotee . (d) From the elevation of Leontius to the accession of Lea III. (695-7I7) ; a period in which the permanent armies of Asia Minor combat not indeed with an effective monarch, but with the officials of the capital, who, like a Venetian oligarchy, attempt to engross political power and secrete their gains behind the majestic figure of a puppet Caesar . (e) From the accession of Leo to the downfall of Irene, the epoch known as Iconoclastic and Isaurian (717-8oa) . Here the personal monarchy of Constantine again emerges, and the civilian interest has to submit to military law ; a « state of siege," as it were, is proclaimed, and sharper and sterner measures are adopted against the ascetic celibate and the corrupt functionary : it is the victory of the " Themes," of the army, and, above all, of the Asiatic spirit, which, assuming in distant Armenia the austere lineaments of ancient Rome, revives the falling State and ensures not only Byzantium but the rest of Europe ; the civilian body dwindles in importance and esteem, the Senate deferentially ratifies the sovereign's decrees in formal « beds of justice" ; the palace, the camp, the monastery are the centres of influence and interest. Civilian pre-1 § 4. We will confine ourselves at present to the min first period (c. q.30-565 A.D.), which owing to the rh century. remarkable change in the energy and fortunes of Justinian's old age might well be shortened by some dozen years . Here Senate and Emperor co-operate ; the interest of ruler and subject are identical, and mature merit, passing through the useful lessons of a private lot, arrives leisurely and by no sudden _ leap at sovereign power. There is no definite antiimperial feeling among the ruling class, though we detect dire presages of the coming conflict . For
s. r
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
9
the difficulty of our problem lies in this ; we have Czvilianprein abundant evidence of the wise influence, the con- sh Yt century. tinuous policy, the steady pre-eminence of the civilian element in the fifth century ; and especially in the long and impersonal reign of Theodosius II . Yet we do not lack traces of selfishness in greater and minor agents alike, of the resentment roused by imperial firmness, of the claims of rank to exempt from liabilities. Now in the Roman Empire it is not possible to fall back upon the facile distinction between a military and feudal nobility, and the sovereign's agent expressly created to coerce them . Elsewhere we find the same political development the king and his band bursting gaily into a rich and smiling country and dividing the spoils ; the king, drawn over against himself into popular sympathies, curbing the petty tyrannies of the lords, and gradually (as Plato saw) assuming the character of a popular champion ; hence the various offices invented to curtail local power in the common interest of prince and people, '1 comites " and '1 palatines " to watch 1' dukes " ; " missi " and " gastald " to stand up for the centre against the circumference . But, in spite of the long survival and certain influence of great families in Greece and Rome-in spite of the dynastic tendency from the very outset underlying the scheme of Augustus-birth never constitutes by itself a claim to distinction or power among the classic nations . Nobility was of rank not of blood ; and although nature will again and again 11 recur " to combat or reinforce civic Idealism, the theory survives to the end of our period that only standing in the service of the State gave rank, title, or precedence. Thus we have some of that Teutonic subjectivity, the feudal baron, sometimes the defender, sometimes the oppressor of the district ; and the commonwealth never surrendered a large measure of its duties to private enterprise . (For, in passing, it may be explained why England is to the present
10
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
C'ividian pre- moment an aristocratic country : it is because a very eminmce in ya century. g reat part of the duties elsewhere exercised by paid functionaries of the centre fall to the gratuitous
.
discharge of those whose birth summons them to certain office and functions ; who are trained in that anomalous yet successful school of English education to be the natural leaders of a great community, or the impartial rulers of less civilised races. Elsewhere we have intimated that the attitude of such a class is always largely hostile to the government and loyal to the titular sovereign ; for it cares little for the favours of the former, and for its standard of public rectitude and devotion it borrows nothing of its tradition, invokes none of its definite laws ; but it values the lightest honour which the latter bestows, an ample reward ; lastly, it depends, as the nobility must in modern times, upon the esteem of the people at large, also animated by a general feeling of distrust of those anonymous central cabinets where power resides to-day, and by a vague terror of State autocracy, never so dangerous as when cloaked under democratic forms .) To the bad and to the good side of feudalism alike the empire was a stranger. The State was impersonal; subjectivity was ruthlessly crushed or forced in the imperial figures to act an impersonal role. It was constantly attempting to reduce independent departments under the central sway ; Diocletian did not rest until he had secured the submission of army and administration to the central unit, which, like Schelling's Absolute, was at the same moment both and neither . It would be'an error to assert that the system strove for logical symmetry like a modern paper constitution. But it developed, as do all ideal (that is, artificial) systems, into centralism and uniformity . And indeed there had never been any doubt of this ; though office might come, like Santa Claus, in the night to the cradles of slumbering politicians, yet in the end it was office, not the accident of birth, that bestowed
cg. i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
11
power and admittance to the Senate. When we find Civilian prein some notable fretting against restraint or common einence V0 century. justice, some boasted or claimed immunity, it is no feudal peer ; it is a creature of the State who has become, like the "monster," stronger than its author . 5. The Civil Service of China is examined but is The not taught by the State ; the growth and early train- Theodosian 1~:f ing are spontaneous, and only the mature result is of taken under its patronage . In Byzantium since the Junction the senate . reign of Theodosius II. there existed a college for the discipline of future officials (Cod. Theo., xiv. 9, 3
just., xi . 118, 1).
A high test of merit and ability was exacted for a professor's post ; the ',Senate" were the examiners ; and the lucky candidate might expect, after a certain term of service, to enter the official hierarchy with the title of Count . It is to us not a little singular to see an 'emeritus " professor from Germany in the habiliments of a Privy Councillor, or an honorary Court Chamberlain ; but such recognition by the monarch, acting in the name of the State, is quite in keeping with Roman practice and tradition . We may well believe that the Senate as an advisory as well as an examining body possessed large powers in the reign of Pulcheria. In spite of the charges of Eunapius that offices were venal, it is clear that assembly and executive worked well together ; and that the constitution under an amiable hereditary prince, a conscientious empress sister, and a competent imperial council, resembled later and better forms of that absolutism which supplanted Feudalism and disorder in Western Europe. Bury well points out that the early empire steered a doubtful course between Scylla and Charybdis-a cabinet of imperial freedmen, Dio's rcac(rapeioc, and a sheer military despotism . Remedies for each peril were discovered in (a) permanent council and Civil Service ; (b) severance of the civil and military careers. But the
12 The
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . A
double danger recurred in a novel form-the new f~, cabinet of chamberlains and dependents of the Constantinian Court, and the foreign and preponderating o01cial8: function of element in the armies . It is impossible not to forethe senate' cast the secret influences of 1' aulic cabals ." Yet as the earlier princes charged with the responsible government of a world found it necessary to put trust in faithful domestics, so the later influence of the Court Chamberlain, however distasteful to the patriot and the civilian, had some intelligible ground . For the most public-spirited assembly insensibly alters its tone, and acquires features of individual avarice and collective resistance to all change however urgent. The tone of civilian society is not the same under Anastasius asunder Theodosius 11. Now and again the "Senate" appears by name in some more important relation than a court ceremony . It seems to have disappointed the hopes of Verina, who in 475 drove out her son-in-law to place her paramour Patricius on the throne ; it elevated her brother Basiliscus, the unsuccessful admiral of the great expedition to Carthage . Longinus, Zeno's brother, is appointed president of the council to reinforce the Isaurian counterpoise to the German auxiliaries . And when Anastasius has overcome the peril arising from this dangerous alliance in the Isaurian mutiny, it is once more the Senate who proclaim Vitalian an enemy of the State. He is no 1' breaker of the king's peace," no 1' comforter of the king's enemies," but aaa61Tpcos Tis woaiTeias, a foe to the just and impersonal system of the City State. Once again it is the Senate who inquire into the conspiracy in Justinian's last days, when, with the leniency we come to expect in an emperor, all who seem guilty are pardoned and set free. It is clear, then, that Justinian gave it a judicial function, which may have lasted or been from time to time revived down to the final abrogation of privilege in the latter half of the ninth century.
cA, x .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
16
6. Where earlier critics saw nothing but unmis- .Respect for takable decay under feeble and capricious princes, precedent : auMcraey modern research has disclosed manifest tokens of
Finlay, as he itaef. recuperation and steadfast policy. struggles between his evidence and his intuitions, presents no very, clear picture, and is constantly impaling himself on the horns of a dilemma ; yet he does justice to the "systematic exercise of imperial power," the identical interest and common aim of sovereign and subject, and the gradual internal recovery which followed the clear decision of the Eastern world to tolerate no Teutonic protectorate. All these princes seek to follow precedent dutifully ; and Anastasius is in singular agreement with Tiberius I. (Cod. J., i. 2a, 6), when he writes to the governors and judges not to allow a private rescript to override the law ; the imperial will may be disregarded if it does not tally with usage. Tiberius, it will be remembered, had likewise attempted to guard autocracy against its idler or incautious moments : « minui jura quotiens gliscat potestas, nec utendum arbitrio cum de legibus agi possit ." Where shall we find the true critic of an often faulty executive, an often hasty legislature? The emperor is warring against himself ; he is attempting to guard against abuse of prerogative by an exercise of it. In the United States, the Constitution is sovereign over popular impulse ; the Supreme Court decides if a measure is consistent with its provisions. It is the standing complaint of liberal historians that no such safeguard or division of function existed in the empire ; that the executive and legislature and judicature were often at one ; that the private subject had no redress in the courts against oppression ; that the governor was also judge in his own cause. It is not easy to see how this system could be successfullyamended while retaining the hypothesis and formula of the Commonwealth : for this paradox was essential, that which combined with a minute
14 xespZetfor zt8ef
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY Off'
niv. A
subdivision of labour and function the most imperious centralism . During an epoch of comparative peace of a respectable civilian body may safely be charged with imperial duties ; but at a crisis, the single will and its trusty military retinue must be once more invoked. Such a period of civil rule marks the fifth century,-marks again the latter portion of the sixth. There was no initiative, and for the moment no need of initiative, in the Emperor Theodosius II . The machine could go on very well of itself. There was abroad an honest desire to reform, retrench, and rule wisely . The groundwork and stability of the next reigns-Marcian, Leo, Zeno, Anastasius, and Justin-were laid firmly under the last of the Dynastic series . If the emperor was weak or '1 constitutional," the Senate, a permanent body with continuous traditions, assumed the control of public business. Of the sovereigns who succeeded Theodosius (450-578) no less than six hail from those northern parts of the Balkan peninsula which for centuries supplied Rome not merely with recruits but with an unbroken line of princes . Whether Illyricum or Pannonia, Dardania or Thrace, it is remarkable that for over three and a quarter centuries (250-578) these provinces should have so exclusively provided rulers for the world . It cannot be doubted that Marcian (450-457), in whose nomination Pulcheria, Aspar, and the Senate seem to unite amicably, was a notable member of that body, who supported under the last reign the prudent policy that lay behind the fugitive personality of her brother . The chief aim of this policy was to enthrone law above caprice, to circumscribe despotic or fitful power by fixed institutions and uniform procedure ; the motto of these sagacious civilians might well be the Horatian advice to the playwright, Nee deus intersit. 7. It is scarcely out of place to remark that there is a similar tendency even among the professed sup-
-E.I~7La~,
TIE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
15
'- porters of modern autocracy. We cannot forget the The Bm n apology which the late M. Pobyedonostseff made for m~ mita his sovereign in the matter of the Kieff affair. Prince tiow. Kropotkin had with much waste of sentimentality objected to students being sent into the army as a disciplinary measure ; a measure just suited to the young Russian, which with us would take the form of sending a spoilt and precocious boy to learn his place in a public school . For this step the Procurator makes a really needless apology. But when it comes to placing the responsibility, he is, as Tacitus would say, « sounding the depths and publishing the secrets of empire ." The- emperor was not responsible, it appears ; the action was taken solely by the Ministers of the Interior and of Education. "The decree," he writes, "concerning the military service of disorderly students was published independently of any initiative on the part of the emperor. The ministers in a cabinet meeting, summoned in consequence of these university disorders, deemed it necessary to have recourse to this punishment, and this resolution was submitted for the emperor's approval . The application of this penalty in each case was to depend on a special committee . . . and its decisions were to be valid in law without needing an imperial sanction . The Kieff affair was settled in this way, and the will of the emperor had no share to it. . . . It should be remembered that our emperor never issues such orders on his personal responsibility . He contents himself with confirming the decisions of the various executive councils and the resolutions of his ministers in cases prescribed by rule. . . . I was totally ignorant of the Kieff affair, which concerned two ministers." This must mean that the emperor, like the ideal sovereign of Laurentius, only confirms the decisions of his cabinet, and is not responsible for their mistakes . We need not sympathise with the pacificist scruples of the prince about the drafting of disorderly youths into a sphere of much-needed discipline ; nor do we
16
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
2'&e Rmsian exactly agree with him in seeing here the embryo of Czardom: constitutional g overnment and responsible ministries! is dimitadon . Indeed, the above seems the very worst system of government the heart of man could devise! The autocrat is powerless, although in the eyes of the world solely accountable for every slip or misdeed; The ministers, so far from being responsible either to him or to the nation, are practically omnipotent in their several departments ; and do not even trouble to consult the sovereign, although he has to bear the brunt or odium of their injustice. And, like the official class in our period, '1 they increasingly assume the right under the shelter of the emperor's signature, of modifying by mere decrees the fundamental laws
+'
of the empire ."' But at Byzantium, we notice the better features only. The. age might well be regarded as the triumph of bureaucratic government. The dignified assembly was well served by trained and organised officials who had learned not merely general lessons in the Theodosian academy, but the minute duties of their future career . Nor is it without significance that just at this time appears the Code as a further support to a just and uniform administration, of which Finlay well remarks, "that it afforded the people the means of arraigning the conduct of the ruler before the fixed principles of law ."
Efforts to 8. The legislation of the time bears ample witness control the to a sincere desire for the reform of abuses in the lesser agents
(45o50o).
.
higher circles, to the prevalence of an unscrupulous or antinomian spirit in the lesser agents . Marcian found himself besieged by complaints, '1 catervas adeuntium in,finitas," of the imperfect distribution of justice' ; the judges were neither strict nor impartial (Novella, i.). There was complete accord between the elderly Senator, called like some Doge of Venice to be chief among his peers, and the conclave who had ratified or proposed his election. No fault was found in the pompous phrases in which he couched
'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
1'7
his sense of imperial responsibility : '~ Curce nobis est utilitad humani generis Providere" (Novella, ii .). He remits the follis, as somewhat later Anastasius will
abolish the Chrysargyron, beyond chance of recall ; and thus relieved the senatorial class from a heavy burden, which even the emperor himself paid as a member of the order : for the modern gulf between the sovereign and the proudest subject, which is a symbol of State absolutism, did not exist for the Roman emperor . He also lightened those liturgical offices, like that of the Greek Choragus or our own High Sheriff, which subjected wealth to certain liabilities for the people's amusement : hitherto Senators of the provinces were called up to act as prwtors in the capital and provide games for an idle proletariat . The two original proetors of the city had been increased to eight, all bound to some costly contribution to public works or public ceremonies ; for the ancient world, in spite of (or shall we say because of ?) its plutocratic basis, exacted much from the opulent, and had no patience with the cynical luxury, the immunity and aloofness of the wealthy which is so significant a trait of « democratic " States. Marcian no doubt reduced the number of exhibitions, and he refused to summon from a remote district a rich proprietor to squander his means on a people who scarcely knew his name. Residents alone were in future eligible to these onerous and archaic posts ; and the consuls were invited to share with the praetors the charge of the public works and buildings, which had pressed heavily on those who were not required for the less useful expense of the games. Leo I., following the same wise policy of simplicity and retrenchment, reduced
. these ceremonious offices to three ; and Justinian completed the work of relief in the abolition of the consulate. This act, idly supposed to mark an ignoble jealousy of antique Roman glory, seems to the dispassionate student to have been dictated by VOL. II .
Eprts to eowrodthe (agents (45
.~00--500).
18
CONS'FITUMONAL HISTORY Off'
DIV. n ':
Bss to the soundest motives . Emperor and State were contool uit of a dignity which entailed nothing but a conkeget thenet8 q venience for the chronicler and a disorderly '1 lar(45o-5o). gess" ; to the mass of the people indeed the term urareta, robbed of its proud associations, bore no other significance, and we do not hear that even the usual rumblings of discontent 1' inani murmure ademptum jus questus," follows this revolutionary economy. Zeno (474-491) maintained the same attitude ; like Leo the Thracian, he lightened fiscal burdens in the interest of the landed proprietor ; and the preoccupation of their sovereigns with this class is not a little significant of the critical position of agriculture and of economics . It is hazarded that his dependence on the 1' official aristocracy" is proved by his refusal to nominate his brother Longinus as successor ; it may well be that both emperor and Senate had already come to the same conclusion that he was unfit to rule ; for he had for several years occupied the chair of President of that Assembly. . Wise injwThe abolition of the Chrysargyron and the curious ence ofsenior approval aroused will demand special notice . We in need only note here the consistent policy of -moderaSenate. tion and economy shown alike, no doubt under senatorial guidance, by the elderly palace official from Dyrrhachium and the mature Guardsman, who succeeded an Isaurian chieftain as Roman emperors. It must be remarked that this imperial council enabled princes, chosen almost at hazard, to play a useful and dignified part without any previous special training ; it respected precedent and maintained a continuous and unbroken policy . Yet in justice to these conscientious rulers, who availed themselves of their advice, the more liberal and . beneficial measures were owed to the independent thought of the sovereign himself . A wise suppression of sinecures also marked this era, and a restriction of the excessive influence of certain high offices. ,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
19
We do not know how far these civil reforms were wise inltudue to the spontaneous action of the monarch ; but ence of senior offlaiak in we are well aware how this judicious
retrenchment was viewed in the prejudiced eyes of Laurentius or Procopius. Amid vague blame or overt calumnies, the genuine desire of the emperors (including Jus.tinian) for a wise check on public expenditure is clearly marked . The unavailing regrets of the Lydian for the past glories of the prefect's office and retinue, mark not the jealous suppression by the monarch of- an inconvenient partner or rival, but rather a natural process, which extinguished with the litigious centralism of the courts of the capital the effective civilian control of the outlying provinces. The Civil Service indeed has passed its palmiest days. It is subject to an insensible decline, for which no single actor is responsible . The Senate, when we open the records of the next period, does not reflect high public spirit, a sense of duty, a corporate tradition . The ,princes " of the Court of Justin II. are stigmatised by him as selfish placemen and dangerous advisers, against whose influence he warns his successor . By what gradual and silent steps this transformation was effected we do not know ; but we may safely infer that the change was hastened by the despondent lethargy which overtook Justinian in his later years. The marvel of the endurance and stability o of the Eastern realm has fascinated historians. To 'e-,b4ity . what can we ascribe the startling contrast in the fortunes of the two capitals ? It has been well said : « While the West crumbled, the East saved not itself only but the world ." These adoptive emperors organised that system, which being hastily dismissed as Byzantine, has been so 1' unjustly calumniated." The successors of Diocletian coquetted with his scheme ; but the real consummation was reserved for the princes who follow the extinction of the Theodosian house. Constantine introduced
-
20
"
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv . n
heredity and favoured the barbarians ; the elder offloal respons"ity . Theodosius endorsed this policy, and left behind him a working scheme which the feeble stubbornness of his son, or the intrigues of ministers, soon destroyed. At the best, the Roman constitution in the fifth century is incoherent and opportunist ; a definite system was the merit of the immediate predecessors of the great Justinian . They laboured for that State or centre-supremacy which was achieved under his energetic rule, and vanished in his lethargy . Officers of the civil and military hierarchy were made amenable to " ministerial departments," and thus ultimately all depended on the sovereign, according to the fixed principle of modern times. The sovereign was safe and inaccessible. The treasure was guarded against peculation . Conspiracy, rebellion, theft-such are the dangers of a feudal society ; to a large extent pretexts and opportunities for these crimes against public peace were withdrawn . No demand forpopular control.
Finlay, as becomes a Grecian liberator, indicts the Byzantine Government for not placing some
effective safeguard in the hands of the people against the malversation or petty oppression of subalterns. He is convinced that in the highest class the public opinion was wholesome, and the Senate in its aims and methods patriotic ; the « Illyrian " emperors " whom they supported, vigorous and well-meaning. But a vigilant watch over the obscurer instruments of the "sacred will and pleasure" was impossible . And in spite of murmurs, it would not appear that the people at large demanded control ; and still the overworked princes struggled in vain with an Atlantean load . He well says that "legislative, executive, and administrative powers of government were confounded as well as concentrated in the person of the sovereign " ; and he remarks with justice that « despotism can ill balance the various powers of the State, and is but ill qualified to study with effect and sympathy the condition of the governed or the ,
9
CH" I
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
21
disorders of society." But these strictures of nine- No demand teenth-century liberalism do not suggest any genuine °nto~tar alternative to the imperial policy . The whole cul-
ture and ability of the empire was cleverly gathered together on the side of the government ; and there is no sign whatever of a strong or sullen country opposition, such as silently thwarted the Whig administration in our own land during the early Hanoverian reigns ., To us who have before our eyes the experience and the lessons of the post-reformation development in the field of politics, it seems a truism to assert that it is a profound error (i) to accumulate the wealth of a country in the coffers of a State (as Constantius Chlorus wisely (Dio C. contin .) : aiuecvov 9lapa Toig LOtwTa[q Tf]v To6 ,8ao-z1Aecos civopiav eivac ,u(rcp" 7r6Pcicercaeio-dac Xmpiw) ; or (2) to concentrate
power without counterpoise and balance elsewhere . The best feature in the doubtful success of modern Representation, has been the serious character and responsibility of the recognised Opposition, of those critics of a ministry whose work and function they may at any moment be called upon to undertake. But in the fifth century such a method of securing the people against their petty tyrants was inconceivable ; and the sole remedy appeared to be to aggrandise the central prerogative, as alone equitable and impartial. We praise the attempts of these sovereigns, from Marcian to Justin I., to control autocracy and supply the final will in the State with ample precedent and guiding lines not to be overstepped without danger . It would have been idle to have then suggested to a statesman or a Senator to elevate a Supreme Tribunal (as in the United States) over the' executive and legislative powers . There is little sign that the artificial system known as the Roman Empire possessed outside the church and clergy a body of independent opinion with fixed principles which would act in this manner . And it would . have seemed a cowardly shifting of responsibility
-
22
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . a
for a prince to advocate such a curtailment of his own authority as to render impersonal law wholly superior to the will of the sovereign and the needs and crises of the State! So far as it was possible (as we have seen) the emperors of the sturdy Illyrian line desired to simplify and to regularise ; the codes of Theodosius 11 . and of Justinian were in a sense a kind of constitutional guarantee. Indeed, like Severus I., the prince frequently professed his obedience to law and his deference to custom and tradition ; but the attempt was never made to reduce government to a faultless and mechanical procedure irrespective of personal vigilance, or to relieve the elected ruler . of the ultimate duty of deciding on the best course . The widowwoman was right ; if the emperor refused to hear her complaint she could retort with justice, W pwixeve. Public § 10. The modern critic is not to blame in laying opinion and down such general maxims as these : " Patriotism nationality
No demand Jo' PoPd`r control.
unknown.
and political honesty can only become national virtues when the people possess a control over the conduct of their rulers, and when the rulers themselves publicly announce their political principles." But the emphasis of this sentence, quite unsuspected by its author, lies in the word "national." Now the East has never made nationality the basis of public institutions ; and there is no indication in our period of any genuine and homogeneous opinion, representing that sentiment for country and tradition, which we term patriotism . It would seem that the empire, like the Russian autocracy to-day, held together and gave a precarious and artificial unity, to a curious assortment of interests and to a medley of creeds . It will always be debated on this side and on that, whether a beneficent hegemony is better than the restless strife and wrangle of small autonomous districts. Here we have hope, disorder, and developwent ; there assured comfort and a stationary, perhaps
, x. r
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
9.3
;petrified society . Modern Utopias, often without public suspecting their sympathy with archaic ideals, again 'Pinion reinstate the latter conception ; and the States-General unknown . of Europe, or the more poetical " Federation of Mankind," really revert in theory to the Roman Empire, pagan or mediaeval, seamless, one and indivisible. But this conception, which shall stop the blind strife of democracies and abolish the competition of trade, is strongly anti-national, as the imperial system was supra-national . The true tendency of democratic States is to be seen in the protectionist colonies or commonwealths of the Anglo-Saxons, with their permanent or spasmodic " Xenelasia," or in the curious hesitation which admits pauper aliens into England and yet finds an apology for the anti-Chinese or anti-Japanese campaign ; such, for instance, as lately issued in riot and bloodshed on the west coast of America ; in republic and monarchy alike. The spirit of nationality, indeed, is not liberalism, but its negation ; and we term the empire liberal because it kept before the eyes of warring sects and heresies, of disaffected yet helpless provinces, the ideal of a larger Unity, and did its best to break down the barriers of race, district, and creed . We may say that the codes realised one condition of sound rule laid down above by our critical historian ; the general lines of policy and administration were made public ; and as regards the first, we cannot in fairness ask that greater confidence should be displayed than is shown by Emperor Justin II ., who desires the chief men and clergy of a province to help in choosing their governor. The critic stands on more secure ground The middle-
when he accuses not the rulers but the unseen el"8 snit the mercantile tendencies of the age, both physical and economic. interest.
If the welfare and freedom of a country depend, as we may .readily admit, upon its middle class, thrifty, industrious, and proprietary, it must be confessed tlbat ;the Eastern realm was in a parlous state. 'The
4
24
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
The middle- State," says Hegel (Ph . d. R., 2q7), "if it has no elms and the middle class is still at a low stage of development. mercantile interest . In Russia, for instance, there is a multitude of serfs and a host of rulers . It is of great concern to the State that a middle class should be formed." '1 The middle and upper classes of Society," says Finlay, it were so reduced in numbers that their influence was almost nugatory in the scale of civilisation ." We approach here a problem alike of ancient and modern times, the blame of which cannot be set down to the errors or the absence of human interference. Natural causes and voluntary surrender of rights changed mediaeval Europe from a federation of free towns, gathered into peace under a just hegemony, into a vast and desolate country-side, peopled by petty sovereigns and serfs. It was nobody's fault. Natural causes again press out today the small proprietor, the yeoman, and the petty salesman ; and once more seem to divide society into the two halves, the trust (or the government) and its dependents . The decay of the intermediate rungs in the social ladder cannot then be laid at the door of this oligarchic autocracy, which reduced the burdens of the middle class and sought to include even the « powerful" within the control of law . Indeed, we are tempted to suppose that, in spite of fiscal exaction, the Byzantine monarchy was throughout its history supported by the goodwill of a silent but influential mercantile class ; such as in the end directs most civilised policies, under all kinds of vague and indifferent formulae of government. We have somehow to account for the vitality and recuperative powers shown by the Eastern empire . Pillaged by Persian and Saracen, drained by the monastic system, impoverished by erroneous if wellmeant finance-it rose again and again into opulence, such as drew upon it the envious and greedy eyes of successive invaders. If Octavianus was largely indebted to the knightly class for his triumph, his
'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
25
heirs never forgot this sage alliance. The stability of the realm and its government depends on its satisfying the conditions of mercantile exchange ; it guarded property, it kept clear the lines of intercourse between the various centres of traffic, and it patrolled the seas ; nor do I conceive that the emphatic words of Constantine VII . are wholly a piece of archaic pedantry or conceit, when he tells us that the Byzantine ruler is master of the sea to the Pillars of Hercules.
11 . Thus in this age the constitution tends through oligarchy under a wise oligarchy to the forms of absolutism. And formula of
this implies, not caprice but routine ; not perpetual Absolutism. recurrence to a personal will, but a very infrequent appeal . A civilised State is in the fetters of tradition and usage ; it defers needlessly to precedent. For in spite of the stirrings of advanced thinkers and noisy politicians, the inert and conservative 'mass of the people enter into a semblance of power only to stereotype the conventional . Under Justinian, the prince as representing the State, mature and sagacious, maintained control over all departments-the military leaders, the civil administrators, and the clergy . After the African disaster under Basiliscus (whose very failure or treason, as elsewhere in Byzantine annals, made him seem worthy of a throne !) nothing venturesome was attempted for more than fifty years ; efforts were directed solely to domestic reform down to the memorable " Nika " riots, which closed the door on the classic period and confirmed the monarch in his bold forward policy and his stern measures of repression. There was to be no repetition of that dramatic scene of aged and apologetic royalty, when Anastasius sat discrowned waiting for the people's verdict . In spite of the odd incident of Vitalian's rebellion, order and system had been introduced into the State ; in the subordinate ranks 'Of government, discipline ; in the treasury, wealth in the highest and most responsible circle, wise
26
CUNSUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Carefultrain- measures and consistent schemes. The training and the functions of the various grades had been Bauxe stat"erdee specialised . State-service was not an episode in the the sole ordinary life of a citizen ; but an engrossing procareer. fession which demanded expert skill. - The very deftness of the adept needed for the intricate details was fatal to any claim for popular control. The emperor's Council represented a Universal, of which the several parts, isolated in their local interests, could form no conception . Nothing could well be conceived more antithetic to the demands of .democracy than this government by the expert . Hegel derides this vain claim for personal intervention : '4 Another assumption (Ph . d. R., 3o8) found in the prevalent idea that all should have a share in the business of State, is that all understand this business . This is as absurd as it is widespread-despite its absurdity ." Once more (315) : « There is widely current the notion that everybody knows already what is good for the State ; and that this general knowledge is merely given voice and expression in a Stateassembly. But indeed the very reverse is the case." The Byzantine bureaux were as carefully organised as the legal profession to-day . The empire depended upon the employment of tried and trained ability ; and stood opposed to the Oriental despotism, where the influence of favourites, slaves, and aliens is superior to native forces. To this constant tradition and discipline it owed the singular duration and recuperative power which it so strikingly displays. A modern parallel might indeed be found in the Roman priesthood. Taken at an early age from the middle and lower classes of society, they are imbued with a systematic educational tradition, a tested and final system of dogma and philosophy, and just that supranational spirit and sympathy which unites them as a corporation in an allegiance other than that which birth or country supplies. Neither system is easily adaptable to novel conditions of society. A
t
c$., ! :
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
27
bureaucracy is almost incapable of reforming itself ; and tie venal stagnation of an official class is perhaps a heavy price to pay for public order. When it is boasted that the singular merit lies in the supremacy of system to capricious will, it is forgotten that in human history the impulse to reform is nearly always supplied by a St. John Baptist, not by a privileged corporation. The world-spirit stirs first the individual conscience, the Gemeinde only through it. The record of imperial governments, from Rome to, modern China or Russia, is often the story of unavailing personal effort, against respectful but stubborn officialism . The supremacy of law, which is to secure the subject against the arbitrary exercise of the central power, may sometimes become identified with the interest of a class . It is the tendency of long-dominant bodies to identify and to confuse in all good faith their own welfare with the general good. Nothing is gained by recognising the formal proposition, that law should be superior to the executive, or to the momentary wishes of the prince, unless we constantly analyse and examine suspiciously what we imply by law. This dignified term may not seldom connote a thoroughly obsolete code, or the stealthy manipulation of general maxims for private ends. The supremacy of law, devised as a remedy against disorder and oppression, may become on occasion the chief hindrance to muchneeded reform. The Roman Government drew to itself and took under its patronage all that was anywhere excellent ; it admitted of no rival ; everything must enter into its magic circle and serve its end, or perish . When the pagan crusade against the Church failed, uncompromising hostility gave place at once to imperial favour and trust. The elements that could not be overcome must be absorbed or assimilated . There was no independent or semifeudal nobility to criticise or to thwart . All titles of nobility were official. Outside the service of the
carefudtrainthe Bue state-service the sore career,
28
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
Carefultrain- Commonwealth, there was no calling open to inyfor the ambition or to merit ; it was part of the imperial Bureaux :
Stat"erlrice system to see that this was the case. The cultivated the Bole ranks of society were bound to the system by every career . sentiment of sympathy and self-interest. It has been well said that the Byzantine bureaucracy formed rather a "distinct nation than a privileged class" ; and it is no wonder if the inheritors of great traditions and a culture then unique should have believed that the safety of the whole was bound up in their corporate prestige or individual comfort . So in later times, when the palace has engrossed or engulfed every minor rivulet, the careful maintenance of State-ceremony will appear a " divine science" ; and like the preservation of exact ritual and formula in a primitive tribe, this « liturgy " will seem the mysterious and imperishable secret or palladium of the public welfare .'
'
Venality of office : excue its
§ 12. "Formerly in France," says Hegel (Ph. d. R., 277), "seats in Parliament were saleable, and this
is still the case with army officers' positions in the English army below a certain grade . These facts depended or depend upon the medicsval Constitution of certain States, and are now gradually disappearing." I am not here concerned with the accuracy or the scope of this remark ; I am using his phrase as a suitable opening to a short inquiry into the venality of office. It is clear that such a system has not excited in the past, even in civilised societies, the odium and contumely directed against its still surviving vestiges to-day. The most curious and frank provisions are to be found in the code for the payment to the Emperor Justinian .or to his consort a fee on entering office.' Now the horror excited even by the suspicion of paying rather than receiving money for official ' Lyd, ii. 13 ; C. Theod., vi. 5 ; C. Just., xii. 8 ; ut dignitatura ordo servetur. $. Coed.Just., i. 27, 1, 2 ; Cod.Just., xii. 24, 7.
t
cx:1
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
29
rank is amusingly strong with us to-day ; but it must venadity of -not lead us wilfully to distort the past or to hold up Office : its pious hands of protesting innocence . The sum demanded might be regarded as a preliminary deposit, a guarantee of good faith and competence, a fee on registration or institution, such as with our sensitive yet easily cajoled conscience conceals much the same practice to-day . A company rightly demands that a director shall have a certain stake in the enterprise he controls ; and one reads without alarm the judicious warning that the holding of a prescribed number of shares qualifies for a seat at the directoral board . Yet put in another form, all sorts of respectable scruples would be aroused, if it were to be publicly announced that these places could be purchased . As regards political rather than mercantile dignities, it is only the voluntary blindness of the puritan ostrich that can fail to detect a close parallel in modern times, and in a State justly renowned for high morality and sense of honour in its public life. Yet we indulgently tolerate the purchase of official rank and that very real political and social influence which a .peerage conveys . It should indeed be noticed, in further extenuation of the ancient practice, that there is no pretence to-day that the State has benefited by the lavish contribution to the party-chest ; it is cynically acknowledged that the money has been subscribed to add the sinews of war to a faction, which for the time may stand for the nation, but at no given moment is strictly representative of anything but itself. And it must be candidly stated that, however harmlessly such a recognised venality of title may operate in practice, it is a serious menace to the genuinely representative character of the sovereign, who is thus compelled by custom to confer honours not for national but for factious and factitious services, and to recruit the 1' senatorial " order only from the ranks of prejudice and party. It may be hoped that in the not unlikely enlargement of the -
CONSTITMONAL HISTORY Old'
30
nrv. A
LPgaa,ltaon direct and personal sphere of monarchy, some safeIf simony. guard will be devised for the precious independence of the sovereign ; since it stands above party, and is not merely the spokesman, but also the best judge of general good. The same lamentable puritanic confusion of thought has opened one form of practice in ecclesiastical matters to universal obloquy, while retaining another unnoticed . It is in vain that the purist or the logician proves that the sin of simony can strictly be committed only by a prospective member of the episcopal bench, who has to deposit certain moneys before the State will authorise consecration. It is clear that in this case such payment is the indispensable condition, or at least preliminary, before receiving a spiritual gift. No such stigma can possibly attach to the purchaser of an advowson-right with the intention of presenting himself to the bishop on a vacancy . A benefice is not a spiritual gift, and no spiritual gift is purchased . No limit whatever is put upon the judgment and discretion of the diocesan . Only a right is conveyed to exercise a function (presumed to be already valid), subject to a prelate's sanction and institution, in a particular district. The term simony (a legal fiction which has imposed on many candid minds) has no application in such a case. As in other instances, an office is venal, and ho doubt in a sphere where such a premium on wealth ought not to exist ; but the opponents of clerical patronage, one safeguard at least against over-centralisation, should be careful to discover the really weak parts in the harness, and refrain from setting up imaginary crimes to tilt against . The modern conception of office is in its very Modem conCeptim : nature antagonistic to this practice. The tendency lpidee 0.2 0J of olitical reform is on the surface towards a somep
what watery democracy, but beneath the current sets strongly towards State-monopoly. There is a certain prejudice or suspicion abroad against unpaid officials who render gratuitous service, because such duties
_
-
t
TI4E ROMAN EMPIRE (400-550)
Sl
s6eff the natural outcome and fitting responsibility modern coa: of their social position. Of such independent rivals ceptionof the State is jealous, as of a relic of bygone feudalism ~; prOffitiE ,
but it is apt to forget that this conception of unpaid service as a citizen's duty is also an integral notion in the purest forms of republic . The regimen of Justinian suffered from exactly the same faults as any modern centralised constitution . The sole paymaster was the State ; and in a public career opened the unique vista to the aspirant . Hegel is at one with the Byzantine rulers and with modern centralism when he says (Ph. d. R., 2 94) : 'The State cannot rely upon service which is capricious and voluntary ; such, for instance, as the administration of justice by knights-errant ." But something of the spontaneous, it must be avowed, is lost in systematising, in surrendering all public business to paid officials. To find one's sole means of livelihood or hope of advance in the State-service, transforms the whole idea of civic duty from sentiment into self-interest. Progress in "popular" government and liberal measures is marked to-day by an increase of functionaries and of expenditure. The first "citizen "-monarchy enjoyed by the French, replaced in the time of Louis Philippe, a genuine if slumbering sense of honour by a desire to procure a place under government ; which to the present moment combines with Napoleon's absolutism in checking indefinitely the emergence of a vigorous and patriotic governing class. The early emissaries of Caesar were few and conspicuous ; their misdeeds and their penalties resounded through the
empire . But when agents of the sovereign power were multiplied, directly responsible only to the equally corrupt vicar just above them in the hierarchy, control of this infinite multitude ceased . Custom gave them security of tenure ; for the civil servant was a partial judge of faults and temptations to which he himself was no stranger. And in concluding the general survey we cannot
_
32
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
DIV . A
Paige of forget that the increase of prerogative and the employ17" ment of centralised or absolute forms did not ensure the.. imperial control over the lesser agents, who wrought mischief with his name and reputation by making out of them screens for wrongdoing. The more remote provinces might drift into practical autonomy, as Naples, Venice, Amalfi ; but the more usual fate was to fall into the bands of some nominal agent of Caesar, who had all the airs and vices of an independent feudal vassal. In such a condition, then, we leave, for the present, the general question of the administration under the " Illyrian " or adoptive emperors, from 450-55o . The result of the good intentions but inherent weakness of the system will be seen in the second period, when we consider the merits, the fortune, and the failure of the successors of Justinian .
,;
y
CHAPTER II THE FAILURE OF THE AUTOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION (535-565) 1. IT must now be confessed that the ideal of The witness
government portrayed in our last chapter, and especi- Ofeonally in the ninth section, was a dream of perfection temporaries. which never visited the earth . In this supplement
it will be necessary to examine the testimony of those who lived at the very time that the central government was enunciating its loftiest aims and most earnest platitudes ; and, without discouraging the general reader by excessive detail, to survey more closely than is consistent with the plan of the present task, contemporary witness,-in this age unusually abundant and strangely at variance . Three works are of especial interest-(r) the Novels of Justinian ; (a) the Secret History of Procopius (3) the Treatise on Magistrates by John Laurentius the Lydian. I will begin with this last ; its wider political interest and historical knowledge entitle it to the first place. Procopius is a venomous purveyor of scandal and superstition ; Justinian, a solemn preacher of morality and the duties of a sovereign ; but Lydus, though a disappointed civil servant with a genuine grievance, has (in spite of much inaccuracy and questionable matter) both impartiality and sympathy with the difficulties of a ruler. Chiefly, however, his historical acumen gives him a right to the first hearing ; for as a student of political causes he deserves, from the wide range of his learning and the boldness of his speculation, more credit than can be given to the senile ravings of Procopius, secret desk. He has a . theory of the VOL. 11 . 33 C
-
34
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
the witness decay, indeed ruin and shipwreck, of the State ; and of conI must carefully disentangle, from the mass of irretemporarBes.
Levant antiquarian lore, . his penetrating analysis of the reasons for this decline . It must be remembered that the Philadelphian (A) The Notary with notary is a learned specialist, biassed in spite of himgrievance. a self by his narrow training and official routine . He . identifies the ruin of an advocate's professional prospects with the overthrow of the State. He has served forty years (51o-55 o) and lost his pension ; therefore the very foundations of the earth are out of course. He is a representative of that cultured Neo-Platonic Hellenism, which was out of place in the age of Justinian ; the world could not be ruled by men He of uncertain faith and pedantic archaism . recognises, while deploring, that the prefect of the East could be no more a man of polite letters and cultured ease ; - he must become an unscrupulous tax-gatherer. Nor could his chief function lie in dispensing justice ; in the growing poverty of the realm there were no cases or suits, and no litigants pressed with generous fees to secure the services of Every allowance must be notary and advocate.' attitude of Lydus. He was made for the peculiar a survivor from a bygone age, and his political ideal was an anachronism . Those whom the Great Plague spared had need of a very different kind of government ; and the future lay with the Church which Lydus could not understand, and with the military officers who had- once bent low in homage . before the Prefect. back the abasement of the pre§ 2. He traces The Prefecture fecture (and with it of the empire) to the innova,det~ tions of Constantine2 He has but an imperfect under (a) '
1 iii. g : Wrpayp&MV ,a.~ 6PTWV T06S Uff4K60GS (? trouble or material for litigation), more fully explained in 14 : Tau"ra irdvra aapaa6XWWe . . . r~ TE p~ CYPM rpfiypMra Togs 61MK6099 rUif KaTaOBe1POIA&ocs, KTa. s As to the chief changes in the conception of magistracy, Lydus is well aware that in Republican times office was autocratic, but jealously restricted in time (Tac . Ann. i. i, ad tempos sumebantur). He quotes from ';
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
35
acquaintance with the great constitutional changes The Preof the fourth century ; but he knows that the office feeture underwent a certain modification, was confined to degractev successively
the Eastern frontier, abandoned the supervision of under (a) the army, and became exclusively engrossed in legal Consta~Gtine, and financial functions. He repeats with solemn
emphasis the curious passage (ii. 10-12 ; iii . q.0-q.2) which describes this change ; and it is perhaps a unique instance in our age of political theory. The next moment in the transformation of office and empire falls under Theodosius and Arcadius : when the sovereign ceases to go out to war, when the now civilian office of the prefecture becomes tyranny under Ruffinus by the side of legitimate authority . Had he lived in the tenth century, he might have said the same about the Regents or associateemperors. He tells us that the old theory was that the emperor was both man of letters and man of war ; 1 but when he ceased to discharge any effective duties in person, power fell into the hands of the new vizierate . After the overthrow of Ruffinus, its (f)Arcadius, Aurelius (Dig. i. xi .) : Toys Gipyaiocs . . . i7 ra"oa apos «atpbv E~OVQta . . ?7!1-66670 i. 14 ; and says himself, on the consulate of a year only, ravraxov0'Pwaatwv rats &aaaayaZs Xacp6rrwv, i. 37. Efficiency demands first the indefinite extension of exceptional commissions (as with Pompey) ; next, the duration of office is lengthened to the term of life ; lastly (with more doubtful results), to the term of a dynasty. All minor offices were merged into the Principate, which thus united and indefinitely prolonged ; after his fatal war against Senate and Pompey (W9pcov ir6Aepov, i. 38) C-Tsar became Beos, dpXGepeds, 6aaTos, u6vapxos, erlrporos rwv dravraXou" flaorA&v, frrapXos, orpaT-q7Js, 4X4 sr6Aews, rrpWros S?jkdpXwv. The tendency then (as Lydus recognised), was no longer to pass office round among the citizens, but to make government an expert profession, demanding not merely special training but special descent ; he has a curious passage on the early hereditary character of Cmsarism (T6 srdaat ,sit Tai 'uX6PTG 6aad W6vots Toss & T~s rcatvapos oecpa"s xarcov"QGV iyXcept~e&V Td Kpdr0s, ii. 3), 1 m " 53" Trajan's officers of rois re X67014 TOCs Te ep7OLs els ToQa6rqv E6KXelav Tllv ToXmelav dvlorTwav. But after the troubles of Justin's reign, especially the Persian war, Ta xonr6v Xoymets adipo6os 06K jv 4rrt 7-hp "ap7C67ma. So iii . 33 . Constantine aoMs OP & Tj" VaIBeuQCG X6yav K. at"04aet 6rXcov (OW ydp, et Iu,3t «a8' EraTipav rai8evvcv &vy4 7-Gs S'"p¬Wwv, ieaqIWS . . . TPOBXEGpt~CTO) .
-
i
l
36 The Predecture degraded successively 'under (p) Areadim,
(y) Ate"`e'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . A
authority was reduced 1 and matters went on without change until the ill-starred African expedition in Leo's reign. To this disaster Lydus attaches the gravest importance ; and he believed that the Commonwealth never recovered from the blow? He entertained the most sinister opinion of Leo and his Isaurian son-in-law ; and saw in the unfortunate holders of the once proud title of Prefect, mere fiscal agents who sought in vain to collect funds from a ruined people . For Anastasius, under whom he began his public service (51o or 511), he had the liveliest affection and esteem ; 3 but he traced to the influence of Marinus the most disastrous step in further deterioration . This low-born I' deskman," 4 Scriniarius, was raised to the prefecture in the prevailing indigence ; and it is certain that Anastasius left a substantial treasure as reserve-fund for future
apXiw i ii. 1o : P. Tvpavvi8cc 1AeaeTfivaPTa . . . eis PdpaOpov T~v *v 4wpeFTar TWV grrXwv iax6os yap 6 i6aQAe6s T~s EK KaTaapiipac. AM= soon . . . q5applKwv (6aaoroecwv) ¢poyTl5os . . . S,qpooiou 6p6lLov (a charge iii. q. P. . . . supervision) . So but under careful to the Prefect, restored So iii. 23, where the changes of the T~v 0rrapXov dpXJy Kp,1pvf6aPTos. terrified Arcadius after R.'s tyranny are set forth. "For neither the See iii. 43 . 44 vavdycov T?-Is 6Xrls roarreias . the equipment public treasury nor the prince's privy purse sufficing, all disaster of war perished at once in that luckless enterprise ; and after this forestalls all its part but long able to play its the exchequer was no longer KacpoO receipts (o6K¬TC Td Tacue2OV br~meaep Eavr~p AM apos3wravfc . . . apd Silpoalov). For etvatT~v &Wopfav TOO (vs aaepaVTOV iv Avl& . . . Td p~7w speaks, T9]S ekepoDs a~Eecvs), the sins of Leo and Zeno (of whom Justinian see 45 .
after Con$ [Anastasius] iii. 47 : "For this one merit that he alone Orxwv &o6¢CCe stantine lightened the burden of taxation (T~v Troy God forgive SaQpoXoyiav), though death prevented the full relief, may In 5 r he has, he was but a man ." committed ; for all the sins he ever of the like Psellus five hundred years later, a very proper judgment prevailed in the early regime, which and civilian of a pacific dangers 19aBe?a Tfiv sravav years of the sixth century under Anastasius : elpjvr/ 8e` T9]v Tis ,~xadvou aoatrdaV K. odx JKC?Ta TOP ?TpaTC&TnV, 7rdprwy 6AoR ermqBEdaaTa . This TQ. Paa-A&s ~7/AO6VTWY K. SLWK6VTwv pqO_Twvr)v aAqs Basil II . sentence might well form the text of the whole later period after
Marinus, 4 iii. 36. There was no doubt about the plenary authority of taxes disappeared ScolKluw. The 7%"v srpayAdTwv Anv dva~wadgevos T~v Adrrwotv els iraPTeM and the retinue vanished Su& Tr~V Twr ¢6PWV iii. 49, 50, 5I . $rrc5Xecav Tk T~s T4EWS KaTeaTvr. For his enormities, see
i
cg: ri
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
37
needs. But the office no longer employed cultured The Prenotaries and dignified advocates ; it was contented fecture degraded menial satellites
with of extortion and inquisition .' With the advent of the reigning house from Dardania (518) the tempest burst upon the empire. The Persian war, started by the faithless Chosroes, called for exceptional expenditure ; the European provinces were wasted by Getae and Antes ; the emperor embarked in colossal and untimely enterprises of recovery ; and to crown the confusion, John of Cappadocia succeeded to the remnants of the degraded office. He gives us those full and racy details of his scandalous life, transferred to the pages of modern historians, who neglect the more edifying parts of Lydus . The fragments contain a description of his successor Phocas, and the attempt of this Prefect to introduce some order into the hopeless chaos of imperial finance . Finally, we have the account of the Cappadocian's misdeeds, tempered by a solemn statement that Justinian knew nothing of them. At the moment when Theodora is about to depose the too powerful minister, the narrative is interrupted by a lacuna. It is to the first misrule of the Cappadocian that he traces the revolt of Nika, costing (as he asserts with some exaggeration) 50,000 lives . It is thus clear that Lydus confuses the order of time in order to heap all responsibility for disaster on a single culprit's head . The wars of aggrandisement and the Persian campaigns were subsequent to the Nika insurrection ; and John enjoyed his longest tenure of the office some time later.
meeeMvely unde" (y) A"mtag"w' (S) the Dardanzano .
8. Such is the criticism. passed on two and a Lydus as half centuries of Roman methods of government Mae of the imloeriaa
" 39. Freedom is the distinguishing feature of the Roman Podicy. Commonwealth, and this is now entirely out of favour. The modern official was ignorant of tradition and precedent, and of the limit and Purpose of all civil authority. Some day they will learn to respect liberty, and cease to injure the subjects (6pplPew *v rev Aev9epiar a. oirapdrrerv T062 url7Kbour of 76v 6pov Tit dpxjs &yvoou"vres ivrpaahocovrai) .
-
38 Lydw as eeritzc of the imperial
policy.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
(300-55o) . Lydus believes (no doubt rightly) that the want of money was the root of all evil ; that,
while municipal franchises were abolished, armies starved, and costly expeditions lost through careless neglect or inadequate equipment, the second office in the empire was degraded into a mere robber of the well-to-do. For this, no imperial demon in human form was responsible, as in the foolish rodomontade of Procopius . It is plain that Lydus believes the emperor to exert very little power, to know very little of the true condition of the land, and to have abandoned, with his warlike skill and eloquence, all real control' When Ruffinus and
The ultimate John set up the state, not of a powerful minister ruin of the but of a rival emperor, the sole remedy was no office uruter of the
John.
doubt to break up the single office and make d6bris a host of squalid and petty magistracies. Side by side with the significant statement of Agathias that Justinian was the first genuine autocrat in fact as well as theory, it is interesting to note the limits on absolutism which Lydus recognises . He is under no illusions as to the emperor's power. ' Since Leo's disaster, the State is bankrupt ; and these « transient and embarrassed phantoms," the Prefect-Chancellors of the Exchequer, struggle vainly against ruin. The emperor can do nothing but throw himself into the 1 He blames neglect of former princes (seemingly he includes all the successors of Theodosius), ii. 15, z6 : Tots 9Aapoo8ev fteflUQACLKoras AgvTcbvv &Avae (ep. r i, where Theodosius, foreseeing his sons' ~gov&7), legislates (!) against emperor's personal conduct of war, v6p.V T~v dviipiav ¬XaaEvwve) . So the emperor was supreme judge in the Court of Final
Appeal ; but this good use lapsed into desuetude owing to growth of idleness, just as Synesius complained before Arcadius (16, uvv71Beias ets Tpvohv 8iaXv0e(o4s K. Tav 91ATpo60EV daa rdis drrXocs K. a6Tiw T~v ,aW& abywv ¢povriiia Twv Korvwv air0VTvo-dPTwv) . In spite of several errors, Lydus is clear (i) that the prefect became a sovereign and irresponsible vizier, and
the emperor a puppet, both in war and judicial duties : (2) when the prefecture was reduced and broken up, the emperor strove in vain to recover his authority. The golden days of the empire lasted so long as sovereigns led in battle and provincial governors were vigilant for justice, not rapine ; iii . 1o : TtJV /b& f/A7rpoU'BEV PwAlwv 6rl TOUs 7roXigovs 6pp.WYTwP K. 'r@v Tat
i7rapXfas i8vv6vrwv Tois v6Wots dXV o$ Ta?s K'Xovrais rposaypvvrvo6PTwv.
j
.
l
cA, Ir
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
39
arms of any unscrupulous scoundrel who promises The ultimate to supply funds for the imperial needs . It was of ruin ofthe no avail to elevate a high ideal of State-duty and John,'under personal service, while resort was had to torture and oppression, while taxes were collected at the cost of noble lives . This picture of the necessitous monarchy will explain much that is absurd or unintelligible in Procopius ; and, while both civil servants (of a bygone age) have each their grievance, Lydus' moderation of tone and temperate criticism gains him credence and puts him on a far higher level among historians. Such is the main thesis of Lydus for our purpose . Antiquarian though he be, a personal motive led him to trace the Roman offices in the periods of kingship, republic, and empire . And interesting as is the survey of their archaic origin and use (with all his-amusing errors of time or fact), the vigorous part of his story deals with his own time and his own injuries. As a philosophical statesman or theorist of government, he has passages of great judgment and shrewdness, and demands more attention than he has yet received from the student of constitutional history. 4. With Procopius the case is altogether different . (B) ProcoI fully accept the results of Professor Bury's learned p""' `-qll"'et researches, and acknowledge with regret that this Hi"; vindictive and foolish fairy-story is the posthumous work of a consummate hypocrite . . . . Procopius would seem to have borrowed from current Christianity nothing but its superstition, and to have completely abandoned the temperate judgment which makes us value his story of Belisarius' campaign. Yet the work is by no means lacking in material for a kinder opinion. We can easily recognise the lineaments of the same Justinian that Lydus reveals .' 1 M. Diehl has drawn attention to the amiable weakness of character betrayed in Justinian's later portraits ; and it is clear that a careful Physiognomist would detect its presages even in features of the earlier
-
r
40
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV A
(B) Proco- Here we find behind the mask of an ogre or bogey, pius' 'Secret an untiring and painstaking ruler of limited capacity, Bistory,' surrounded by men he could not trust, and finding evidence ruined by his unique expedient in an autocracy which he could hyperbok and not maintain . Hampered at every turn by the want of money, he became the victim and the dupe of any minister who promised to replenish his coffers . He was unable and unwilling to inquire too closely into the methods of the fisc . In place of trained servants, the prefect was surrounded by alien bailiffs and executioners . Even Lydus' accounts of tyranny, exaction, and torture, both in the capital and in his own birthplace, Philadelphia, may well be exaggerated. But Procopius defeats his own end, and while defending a notorious criminal, tries to blame the emperor for ingratitude in his treatment of John of Cappadocia . It is hopeless to expect consistency in this venomous attack . Justinian is alternately made out to be the incarnation of devilish cunning and an amiable and easy-going dupe . His uncle was like a mule, following any one who grasped the halter, shaking his ears with a grotesque solemnity. But the nephew is a sheep, at the mercy of the last speaker, ignorant, weakly affable, and incorrigibly untruthful. Yet he is also Domitian 1 reincarnate for the ruin of the empire, or Satan himself come to earth to wreak his vengeance on the whole human race and slay as many as possible, knowing that his time is short .. He is the single author of all the coins and conquests. Succeeding too hurriedly to enterprises which seemed past belief, he spent thirty years in a vain attempt to recover his position in the zenith from which Nemesis deposed him in the very moment of triumph. In spite of his weakness and (as we cannot doubt) his own sense of his shortcomings, of the limits to absolute benevolence, he never relinquished the struggle ; he is one of the bravest and most persevering sovereigns in history, and bears no slight resemblance to another victim of ambition and overwork, Philip II . of Spain. 1 Proc . insists on the remarkable physical resemblance of the two monarchs . Even Lydus, ii. i9, seems to compare the two, though without expressly stating it, Kev68qos ydp OP o A0AercaVJS Toip vewrepwkd&'9 9Xacpew Mop S~ Tvpdvvov dvarp¬rew r& rdXar, aaOearlrcora .
f .
j
CH. 11
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
41
calamities which befell the State ; and the enlarge- (B) procoment of the realm on which Lydus dwells with pride Pi?g"~,c"'et and admiration, is a chief point in the indictment of ge Procopius . The reader must sternly disregard the ruined bY scandalous account of Theodora's youth (so dear to h~ the odious taste of Gibbon and his age) and the legends of the imperial goblin, his aims and policy and habits . Yet notwithstanding, we can extract evidence from the lucid intervals in this fantastic nightmare, which bears out the witness of other authors and is even consistent with his own published works . Yet the reckless rancour of the Anecdota will always prejudice the rare student of a problematic age. It is hard on a first acquaintance to credit Procopius with any better aim than wilfully to caricature the characters of men and the events of a period, to which he had consecrated so much serious pains and literary labour . 5. Wherever he speaks of the personal initiative P. as witness of Justinian and Theodora, or of the myriads of to (i.) domesmortals sacrificed in war, or plague, or levy, to tic disorders, satisfy their greed' of carnage, we must discount his accuracy . But he is not at fault on certain features of the time which the unhappy emperor would have been the first to admit. They may be arranged . in the following order. The State as a whole was full of (a) civic riot and license, and of (,(3) religious mutiny (a) civic riot, and disaffection. Anastasius had been the victim of a tumult in which the imperial dignity was gravely compromised . The circus factions in every great city fought and destroyed one another, like a modern mob at a football match, or a crowd at a race-course when suspicious of unfair play. The ordinary police 1 were unable to cope with this wild disorder, in which, besides the conventional 1 LAus, fi . 15, deplores the popular tumults which made peace more dangerous than war (6 Sqpos BsqXdTots 8cXovolacs dvasrrbkevos . . . wv 9veaa #"Psr9Pav 76 &71A6moy sardyqy volararac irpds ¢vXaAP rqs e1PJv11s 3) wpbs IvaxaI-Ap Twv aoXqdwv), and the maintenance of domestic order more
costly than the repression of foreign foes.
-
42 P. as
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv, A
favouritism of the Colours, there mingled an 'element (a)'c~iWeriot, of theological enmity and misplaced metaphysical acumen. These frequent scenes of riot which baffled the vigilance of the urban prefects grew in intensity throughout the empire, until the fires of aimless sedition were quenched in the suppression of the Nika ; and the last degraded remnant of ancient classical freedom was abolished . The vacillating conduct of the emperor to the partisans, the nervous division of imperial favour between the two chief factions, bears strong witness to a real danger and menace to public order. But it also completely disposes of the usual allegations as to the miserable state of the populace throughout the empire . In the famous dialogue between the factions and the imperial Mandator, there is some question of official oppression by a certain Calopodius, none of general public grievance or intolerable tax . This licentious leisure and insolent repletion of the urban mob proves nothing, I am well aware, as to the state of the country districts or the happiness of the peasant . But it is at least certain that in the first quarter of the sixth century the town-proletariat, indulged and feared, relieved from care by a pauperising Church and a Socialist government, found ample leisure for a tumultuous amusement which shook the throne and dissolved society. (b) refgiow The empire was (0) full of religious disaffection schism, Justinian is represented as the persecutor of astrologers, Montanists, Manicheans, Hebrews, and Samaritans (Anecd., % i t, a8) ; and we know that this last body created a serious rising in Palestine, elected a rival emperor Julian, and sold their lives dearly . It is then unfair to hold the emperor accountable for a universal feature of the time, namely, a widespread discontent with Hellenic orthodoxy, which is largely to blame for the ease of the Arabian conquests just a century later.
CH. II
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
43
6. Another characteristic of the age was an inarticulate fiscal grievance under a mistaken system of economy, to which no alternative was ever suggested . One serious charge in the Anecdota is that Justinian never remitted arrears of taxation ; it being the custom, both before and after that prince, to require taxes on an impossible scale and condone those arrears which necessarily arose, as an act of imperial grace and at regular intervals . The Byzantine Government might well have listened to the advice given by a well-known teacher to an ambitious but disappointing youth ; « Take a lower ideal and live up to it." Nor can the emperor be blamed for desiring that the laws should be set in operation (Tiberius' leges exercendas esse), and the taxes duly collected unless expressly repealed. It is impossible to defend a fiscal system, which ruined the poorer owners and made notable victims among the great. But it is a little remarkable that no alternative scale of taxation was proposed ; and modern critics (as I have said before) can scarcely complain if the wealthy were rated that the indigent might be re-
P. as witness to (d oppression,
lieved . There is no doubt that in this period the (d) z-pover'shmmt of realm was rapidly impoverished, both in men, in realm.
capital, and in natural resources . The emperor, helplessly confronting an impracticable task, watched with alarm the growing wastes, attempted to collect the rates on derelict property from the unhappy neighbours of the fraudulent fugitive, and was obliged to shut his eyes to the odious means by which the prefect filled the exchequer . While officials waxed wealthy and the country poor, the sole method left to the monarch was the Oriental device : a vizier was permitted to enrich himself at the expense of the subjects that the State might confiscate and become his sole legatee. Of this there is no lack of proof at this time.
Justinian is by turns accused as spendthrift and (e) penury strait of.and avaricious wasteful and hoarding It tlaeexc~eequer g (~~ 5~ gr 1 9)" exc~eequer. uer.
44 P. as
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . n
is easy to explain this inconsistency by a simple fact,
8 () that he was at his wits' end to secure money for the penury
strait of the e,vchequer.
conduct of government, the prosecution of his aims.' Once embarked on his gigantic schemes of recovery, which he reg4rded as a sacred duty, there was for him no turning back. He was forced by circumstances to forget in practice his high ideals of pure justice and official innocence. He sold office as Pulcheria had done a century before, while forbidding all such civil simony (§§ zo, 2i). He modified the rigid outline of impersonal law to suit the needs (and the purse) of eager applicants for privilege ; and Leo the Cilician became a trusted minister because he taught Justinian this easy mode of replenishing the treasury (§§ 13, z4). This same indigence and thrift crept into every department of State ; he allowed Alexander in Italy and Hephxstus in Alexandria to cut off the corn-supplies and estrange the poor (§ z6) . Although these distributions of political bread were discontinued without protest under Heraclius in a still severer crisis, it is clear that only the direst need would compel an emperor to run counter to the demands of a dangerous urban mob. (ii.) External § 7. We have spoken of the civic factions, and of religious and fiscal troubles, for which the times and (a) Military enterpriseand not the administration must be blamed. We come extravagance, now to Justinian's warlike aggression, and to his system of national defence ; both forming serious counts in Procopius' virulent indictment. We have already dealt with the former ; the recovery of the ancient limits of the empire seemed not a wanton aggrandisement, but a plain duty and an obvious task . We have already shown that there is a reverse side to all imperialism ; for the people in an age of conquest rarely benefit by their glorious history. The arguments and the common sense of "
1 Lydus, iii . 54, ESet S6 xp,1pcfrwv «. ou8& 3v dvev a&rov rpaXBjvac -rfev 8e6viwv . . , xpuviov ob drrecpov ¬Xpjv croApp£cac rev 9arapx6Tnra.
cs.Il
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
45
the Little Englander would be unimpeachable, were (ii.) External it not for a justifiable fear that without Greater policy?, (a) Military Britain there would be no more Little England. tee,,.
The party of Quaker protest against ambition and extravagance, militarism has a constant value ; and the general question of the necessity or merit of Justinian's victories will always be debated . But the plaintiff destroys his credit, and alienates an impartial jury, prevalent and by his extravagant hyperbole. He regards Justinian misery despair, the unique cause of all the disasters which as befell the world ; he notes his thirst for blood, and estimates at a modest total of a myriad myriad myriads the number of deaths during his reign. Italy and Africa are reduced to a desolate wilderness ; and he computes among his victims the Teutonic strangers and persecutors whom he expelled . But as planning the deliberate ruin of the entire globe, he is also held responsible for all deaths by natural catastrophe, by deluge and flood, earthquake and pestilence. There can be no doubt as to the well-deserved and unhappy renown of this sixth century. Popes like Gregory the Great, emperors like Tiberius and Maurice, seem conscious that in such universal disaster the " end of all things drew near." The age was dissolving, and all was prepared for the reign of Anti- the reign of christ. Yet it is strange to find the most serious Antichrist. preacher of this superstitious dread among the dwindling ranks of cultured Hellenism . For Procopius the reign of Antichrist had already begun ; the devil himself sat enthroned in the palace, as a holy monk averred and as events abundantly proved. It is tempting to believe that these absurd accretions to a charge-list, in itself formidable enough, were the work of a Nonconformist interpolator, who hated Justinian more for his heterodoxy than for the public ruin he brought on mankind . But we may take apart the losses of war, the damage of recovery, and the constant repetitions of far-off conquest which were entailed by the fiscal system, the disorders of the
46
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY -OF
niv. n
(ii.) External army of occupation, the constant lack of money and Polity' the reign of men. For these Justinian must in a measure be held
to account, yet is it possible for his ancient or modern critics to suggest an alternative policy ? (b) Defensive As to the system of national defence, Justinian soon found this a graver task than chivalrous crusades against Arian usurpers in Africa or Italy . Here we may note three distinct and deliberate designs, all of which succumb to the sweeping censure of the Antichrist.
(1) Invaders Anecdotist : (I) Payment to the barbarians (§§ ii, i g, 30) instead of repressing their inroads. Justinian (it was said), himself a barbarian (§ r4), loved these wild tribes better than his own subjects (§§ 21, 23) ; he punished these without mercy for daring to defend themselves against his darling and privileged marauders ; and (perhaps as a counterpoise to the citizens who detested him) he filled Byzantium with an incredible number of aliens .-Now it is quite clear that there were two good reasons for the attitude of Justinian so absurdly exaggerated in the previous sentence . (a) Confident in the majesty and the mission of Rome, he believed it possible to reduce all barbarians into humble vassals of the empire . Evidence of this will be seen in the division which treats of the Eastern nations : .it seemed a consistent aim of these two reigns (518-565) to infeudate, as it were, those kings, whose people could never become immediate subjects, and bind them by titular dignity and costly gifts to a certain loyalty. But a far more serious reason existed : (,8) he had noforces at his disposalto repel these migrants and unwelcome visitors . No doubt he overestimated his resources at the opening of his reign ; and it is clear that the capital and the neighbouring district were inadequately protected ; that the double line of fortress-defence along the Danube was powerless to keep out intruders.
(2) Main of For (2) the fortifications on the frontier were a special fotre" feature of Justinian's policy . He preferred to guard rather than waste human life ; and the very system
.
CH. n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
47
which earned a warm and apparently sincere approval (ii.) External : in Procopius' official work on Edifices is held up to de- Volley (2) Chain of rision in the Anecdota as a purposeless waste of money . fortresses (g) He starved the soldiers (§ 2q.) and the military built.
chest. Here again we can find a mixture of definite (3) Defwient of intention and sheer necessity . He could neither 8upp°rt Army. maintain nor control the armies which were demanded by his active campaign and national defence. The unrestrained supremacy of the army meant the triumph of the barbarians; and statesmen had not forgotten Gainas and Tribigild under Arcadius : perhaps some turned over the cryptic pages of Synesius' political allegory . The Prefect controlled the commissariat, dissuaded from ambitious expeditions, and distrusted the several foreign contingents which obeyed a native captain and cared little for the policy or the subjects of the empire . The effective forces of a vast territory shrank to a figure incredibly small ; and after the great reaction which nullified the rapid successes of early years, hasty levies and private enterprise became the sole resource. The straitness of the exchequer and the jealousy of the civilians amply accounted for the imperfect system or the often trumpery make-shifts of national defence. Here, again, the prince, with the best intentions in the world, was the helpless creature of circumstance .
There is besides one further count in our formid- (iii.) Internal able indictment, the centralising tendency which suppressed the privileges of the Senate, persecuted and tralisatzon confiscated the persons and estates of senators, . and and curtail ment of abolished municipal franchise and the faint remnants frrananchise . of local spirit . We know that under Justinian the cleavage between citizen-contributors (U7roTFXEFs) and
the official world became intensified ; and every authority that did not depend directly from the centre was suspected and curtailed . Thus the Greek garrisons were disbanded ; the populace was disarmed ; and (though this point is exceedingly obscure) some further blow was struck at the freedom of borough
48
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
(iii.) Iwernai towns already weakened by the bureaucratic methods pots' JeaToue cen- of Marinus the prefect of Anastasius . It is exceed-
tratisation and curtail~ franchise,
Modern critics at fault.
ingly difficult to criticise when evidence is both slight and conflicting . Can we blame the monarch of a State, whose whole aim is conservation and order, if he confines the use of weapons to a responsible class of police-sergeants and soldiers ? Is it not conceivable that at no very distant date the most rudimentary needs of government will oblige the freest and the most absolute States in the world, England and Russia, to disarm the great proportion of their subjects under the severest penalties ? Did the behaviour of the circus-factions justify the prince or his advisers in leaving further temptations in the
hand of turbulent partisans ? It is quite possible to draw up a damning charge, as Mr . Gladstone did in the
very similar case of the Neapolitan prisons, from the ideal standpoint of a generous but ignorant Liberalism : Justinian may be represented as the wanton murderer of public liberty and local franchise, the jealous suppressor of free-thought in the Platonic Schools, the vindictive tyrant who abolishes the consulate because it was an abiding witness to long-lost freedom . J.'s acts: But all this righteous indignation is wide of the their excuse mark. Where we know so little of circumstances and and motive . policy, we must withhold our judgment ; yet it is easy to supply a ready and perhaps superficial reply to each of these counts . Local liberty (whether of assembly or self-defence) was a mere pretext (we may say) for feudal lawlessness, or municipal corruption, or civic tumult. The lecture-halls of Damascius at Athens were already silent, and we must pardon Justinian if he shared a belief common to all governments until quite recent years, that they are responsible for the souls of their subjects and . the spiritual belief which will save them from perdition. The abolition of the consulate was a welcome end to unmeaning parade and needless expense : the
cx. u
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (5E35-565)
49
proud name itself, a mere synonym for a lavish dole, .r.'8 acts : brought no tender memories of Brutus or Poplicola their exowe and "'otwe' to the populace of Rome or Byzantium.
In conclusion, we can easily detect the truth underlying this savage attack . Justinian was amiable and conscientious, but vain, easily led, and sadly ignorant (like most absolute rulers) of the real state
Real character of the emperor emerges clearlyfrom Procopus'
of affairs. He was an "innovator" (§ i I), because, like diatribe. Rameses of Egypt, he wished to see his own name on new institutions or offices, and desired to leave his own permanent stamp on the Commonwealth for which he toiled with such unsparing industry . For the Roman world was in a transitional stage, and the sixth century was marked by a wholesale disappearance of archaic elements,-of culture, nationality, ideals, methods, and religion . It is doubtful if any one else could have succeeded better where Justinian failed. The Teutonic monarchies of Africa and Italy were already doomed when he set out on his costly enterprise of recovery. He held the Colossus together, whether for the good of mankind or not, I cannot say ; there are no general principles acknowledged in the sphere of government and politics to which I can refer, nor can I plead a moral conviction in a matter where the special needs and circumstances vary from age to age, and where conscious human effort or wish has so scanty a result . But one is happily permitted to say this much of a great and noble character, with complete assurance ; he followed the path of duty and conscience and honour, where these ideals seemed to beckon him ; he bestowed ungrudging personal service and sleepless vigilance upon a task that (as he believed) Heaven itself had set him ; and he cannot be blamed if the weight and burden of empire overtaxed his strength and his capacity. No criticism of the closet can deprive him of the undying honour and the unchallenged place which he occupies and will always retain in the imperial series . VOL. II .
-
50
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. A
EVIDENCE FROM THE CONSTITUTIONS OF JUSTINIAN (535-565) THE EMPEROR AND HIS OFFICIALS
1. We may now ask what was the ideal of sovereignty and government which floated before the mind of Justinian, never lost sight of though never to be realised in fact. His absolute power, by which alone he believed that the general welfare could be secured, resembled that of the French Bourbons or the monarchy of Frederic the Great. The State was embodied in his person and his will, but this supreme majesty was neither mute nor uncommunicative ; it condescended to explain its motive, as in the humanitarian preambles of French law, and to justify its authority as the servant of the public, entrusted with the care of ruling by God's will and the Justinian is continually pleading popular choice. the greatness of his task, the needs of the State, the distress of his exchequer, the misrule of his officials. He has no misgivings in his mandate ; he receives instructions from above and from below. He is the vicegerent of. God and the first magistrate of the people. It will be well to see in what light he regarded his heavy and responsible duties, and what convictions sustained him in his arduous task and continual disappointments. (a) gis con(a) The Imperial Position .There is no doubt about eeptim of"I the Popular character of Caesarism ; the emperor is the people's delegate or tribune to keep them in unmrsat peaceful plenty and save them trouble, Nov. 16 ;1 to watch over the worldly interests, as the priesthood over the spiritual welfare of the subject-class,
(C) .T judge
1 Ed . Leipzig 1881, Zach.von Ling. : "° We watch night and day counselling our subjects' good" (67rWS 8v xp71vY6V TE K. dp&KOV 8ej crap' ~AV rdts U7rtIK60GS Eofl'n . . . 6a-re rok *peripovs irrqK6ovs ~Y d7ra9Eto yireaBac sr&is oporri8os da~7lAaypkvovs).
CH. II
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535,565)
51
N. 12 ;1 to restore the old paths and keep precedent (a) gig conalive, N. 21, p, 136 ;' to respect the individual ception ofhis citizen without endangering the general good, N. 2I, postunive;rsal
p. 137 ; 3 to carry out Heaven's will in making men -.'en good, N. 28,4 p. 4I3,6 extirpating heresy and rooting out all occasion of evil or secret sin ; to keep off false and malignant charges from the innocent, N. 38, p. 230 ;6 to replace the oversight or carelessness of past emperors, and to meet any sudden crisis, watchful and prepared, N . q, p. 17 ;' to put away any grievance between army and people, N. 150,8 ' or (what might be still more difficult) between taxpayers and collectors, N. 152, p. 280 ; and, most important of all, to insist on unity of religious
'
.
1 °` Two greatest gifts of the heavenly mercy to man (tepwotvn TE K. Paocacta), the one ministering in things divine, the other ruling and taking care of human affairs (rcov &POpwrivwv ¬tdpxovvd re K. ¬crcgeXovp¬vrt) ; both issue forth from the same source to adorn human life (EK /Alas TE K. r~s a6ls tcpx~s lKaT¬pa srpotova-a) ; and no aim is so dear to sovereigns (sreptQroSao-rov 14ao-taCBocv) as the holy dignity of priests . For true harmony will arise in the State, if the one be always blameless and enjoy free speech to heaven, while the other rule aright the Commonwealth entrusted to it" (6pO@s TE K. Trpoo77Kbvrws KaTaKOO-1to6 T~v rapaBoOEZQav a6rj 7f0XwEIap .
$ The Mandata Principis (address . Tribonian) in a Latin preface ; nobis reparantibus omnem vetustatem jam deperditam jam deminutam. 8 earep ydp Tots 1Scwra?"s d54KOVEc¬vots 6o71B001UP, o6TW K. r5 5vtpbocov hvers)p¬ao-Top ,o.¬petv &vU,ae0a .
4 " It is obvious to all right-minded and sensible men that our whole end and prayer is, that the subjects whom God has entrusted to our care may live well, and find favour with Him" (rr6oa Vv OWOV6~ K. E6X~ Tb ro6S vto,revOeYras jpiv srapd 7-OD BEOU KaX@S #COUV K . T~v abTOU ebpE6Y 6*vflav).
s Constit. 66 : the date at which 6 6EOs Tots `Pwpcalwv, ¬rr¬vrs7QE vp&yctaow (cf. exord. N. 103, vol. ii . 42).
s J1400Y Stir Tov"ro K. v6Yous bro6TdPTwP K. Sardvqs peyda?1s dPExoA¬ vwv c"va p4 Twe TWV ~/AEr. b7rqK6wP TLS amolfiavria K. xp?1pa%rwv S) Ovx~s d7rcvaela.
r 535 A.D . 'EPJQXoa1?Fc¬v0LS Jk7v srepl Tds cixd"s sroXn-eias opoPTISas K. ,acKpbv oWv atpovk ¬vocs ¬vvoe2v AV gaws II¬pvac ,ec~v hpepoc"EV BaPSlAoc 8F a6v Mavpovatocs irraK06oiep KapXr1Sovioc U T~v sraaalav hroXa#bvres c"Xocev ¬AEUBEptav TPavot TE POP 7rpmrov Gab T~v `Pwpaiwv ytPbctevot vroxcrelav ¬V U7r9JK609S TEAOCEV . . . ¬ 7L&OV?t K. 131WTLKal 4ypovr1SEs aaap& Tmv itmr. b r7lK6COD.
8 545 A.D. IIEpt srap66ov BTpartwrwv . . . ¬0'
T06S i/AET. brilK60U4.
d~,IAEovs OvXdrTEVBat
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52
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . A
(a) Bie con- belief, the very foundation of the State, NN . 147,1 ceptzon of hi8 129.2 He often refers to the ample increase of post ;
uziver8al $uPervision.
-
territory which God has given him ; all his subjects, new as well as old, are a sacred charge in which the purpose of Heaven is clearly manifest, N. 93+ p. 511 ; 3 and it behoves him to take care of the The smallest detail of government, N. 96, p. 529 . a makeshift or Roman Commonwealth is not a approved compromise, but the final form of polity, by God ; he prays that it may be eternal, N . 66, p, V2 .5 It throws back its roots into the dim past he himself is a descendant of 1Eneas ; the second founders of the kingdom were Romulus and Numa ; and the third or imperial phase was introduced by Augustus, when by a necessary transfer made with all goodwill, the Senate (N . 8o-8r), hitherto executive as well as consulting or advisory body, gave up their accumulated prerogative into a single hand. It has two chief aims, mercy and freedom ; for all its laws are directed to kindliness (cpAav0p(mrla), N- 71, p. 43 1,6 and liberty, N. 70, p. 422 .7 Under-
the ortho' " First and greatest blessing to all men we believe to be dox confession of the true and blameless creed of Christians (d^v opoaoytav), so that in all ways it may be strengthened, and that the holy bishops throughout the world should be united in harmony (efs dp.6vocav vvva0Bqva&), and believe and preach the right faith with one voice With (bWoo(bvws), and that every pretext of the heretic be taken away." :saroduty Justinian's Ca convictions as to a ruler's these conscientious
papism needs no further justification . 2 "We believe hope in God to be the sole aid for the whole life of our commonwealth and realm, knowing that this gives salvation of soul and safety of empire, so that it is fitting that all our legislation should depend on this alone, and look continually to this end ; for this is the beginning, the middle, and the conclusion of our laws." 3 538 A.D. r
s
~7r>JKbOCs 07r6Qovs ~gv O BEbs Tpb'rep6V Te 7rapdBWKe K.
KUTA ,ULKpav (id srpoaTiBto%.
4 He begins his Constit. on Alexandi ians and Egyptian prefectures, of K. T& vutKp6Ta-ra Trvv srpayp4TWV Tis &VTwv ui;cov"pev irpovofas rrohaip p.aXAov Td pkytoTa, KTa. 6 Td TpiTa srpoofp= . . . 7-$s Pao-Aefas (Julius and Augustus), o6rco PUP KparoVOav, etq S' dOdparos, 1~ &dpwv T~v 7roXmefav ~f6LV ?~Evpjaet T~p apoiov"6av.
9rd8n wpbs ¢saapOpwrlav Bras hpiv j v6pos jppoaTac. 537 A.D . 7 &evOepfas ydp &7-es ~pavTal ¬vayxos TEBEL'Kauev vbWov.
I
p
T cx. n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
53
stood and implicated in all this was the duty of an unceasing vigilance in controlling the agents of government ; and it is on this side that Justinian has to admit his failure .
(a) Hi, coneeption ofhis unt~,.Bal supervision,
(,8) Official Misdemeanours.-The policy of the early (p)Difficulties fourth century was (as we have seen) to sever offices, of this eaaim ; the bureauto create a number of new
posts, to divide responsi- crats out of bility, and to interest as large a proportion as possible hand. of the inhabitants of the empire in the duties and emoluments of government and the maintenance of public order. This proportion might rival that which exists to-day in the similar governments of Russia or France, both happy hunting-grounds for obscure and underpaid officialism, which is the real danger in the socially democratic State. The result had been eminently unsatisfactory . Each limited command became an area for petty misdemeanours and peculation . It was impossible to arouse in these low-born and selfish functionaries a sense of public duty. A hereditary noble (like a national sovereign) has everything to lose by disregarding the popular will or welfare . The whole system of the early Roman patronate was built on this sensitiveness of privilege and dignity ; Lydus deplores the decay of this generous hospitality among the Roman politicians, and it had without doubt ceased to characterise social intercourse . The State confronted the unit directly ; and intermediate modes of benevolent activity vanished. But in aiming at this proud title of Universal Provider of Happiness, the Republic forgot into what hands the effective control was falling ; and the people at large became the prey of ignoble agents, without sense of dignity or personal honour, concerned only in spoiling the poor or the defenceless rich, and courting the favour of the rank immediately above them in the Hierarchy,
The aim of Justinian was to retrieve the errors of Their inthe Constantinian s stem , which had reduced the ea io and y exactiona.
i
54 Their insoknee and exactions.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
prince to a puppet, under pretext of increasing his extinguished a nobility either power, and had zealously of the sword or of the robe. He desired to enhance
the dignity of office, to make the wearer conspicuous and therefore open to the influence of public opinion . He was at least well aware of the mockery He well of the title, « responsible government ." knew that the emperor alone was really responsible for all his servants' faults ; and was held to account for every miscarriage of justice or inequitable tax. Yet the great body of administrators formed a privileged corporation, sworn to defend its members, to deceive the emperor, and to plunder the subjects. To relieve this, Justinian proposed to raise the position of the provincial governor, and to unite under his sole authority the various staffs or retinues (offacium, -ra~cs), which had secured impunity for petty pilfering in the envious subdivision of control. Something analogous to extra-territorial and foreignconsular jurisdiction would seem to have existed ; aovXov, ac~ucoc 7rpo~~ '-tat, N. 5 and 61 It is clear that local senators (sartXWptot ,8ovaeg-rat) secretly purchased indemnity for wrongdoing and oppressed lowlier neighbours, N . 62 An unjust official as John in the Hellespont could commit great injuries before justice could be taken, N. 37 .1 A vague and impersonal complaint runs through the Constitutions for the provinces, that magistrates and officials oppress the people, N. 53, P" 357,4 and despise
?7rapyuuv dpXovv& Tbyov do-Was 1 534 A.D. (irayopev"aac a8ot rois . . . srap ¬Xea, Fort &rrpovfcus airfan, but for private purposes only, and then for a strictly limited peridd.
$ He calls it their plot (~-rrc)SovX~), and insolence (opaQUTrls), whereby they retire to sacred places and defy justice, retaining public moneys in their hands (TCt 6pkca & Xepol aapfldvetv, gaw tepwv Xwp1wv iavro6s KaTaKptiirTeUV) .
'
3 This official on pretext of rate-collections (sro?LcrtKwv abpwv trot . . . aoXe1 ;,1wv) went to every length of robbery (oiu8evds drivyeTo 7-Cep Is apra-Ay ioxar~v ~Kbvraw), bringing his wealth to our blessed city and leaving all penury in Hellespont . 4 536 A.D. He raises the status of the Arabian Moderator, so that he may defend the subject from the official exactions ofsubordinates, dpTfjtcoBac
CH. u
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (585--565)
55
justice, N. 89, p" 494,1 being themsqlves the worst 2'heir tnoffenders, N. 38, p, 227,2 and N. 44, p. 264 .3 The 8°kwe and capital was crowded with litigants, who despaired of exactim' redress before any local .tribunal, N. 103 4 (11-44)The rule which obliged a governor to wait in his province fifty days after the expiry of his term was constantly violated, N. I 1'7 ; and at the very close of T7)S TWv I8LWT6V (i1OEAelas, (.6f`] 'QMwpetp Tlj7 repLPM7rTy DovKt Aire T!p OvXdpXrp (the Saracen chief) Aire Tin T@D 8twaTrv OYKWV dXJU& A-#re T~ BEI(p 7raTpqmply h TOIs Ociofs 9]A@ ;, 7rptpdrots ~ a6T(~ Tq BEflp jp@P otKlp Thp of avoOY i7faya-yElv Tdis J/LET . UIrarAEo"L knpfav, AVP KaTaKX[VEQBac jtrBtWs A4U TplAEw dXV 3,p8petwr TCov vrrqK6wv itilyC"vOac. In this important passage
Justinian asks him (like the old Defensor) to save the subjects from every oppression, explicitly naming not merely the military Duke, the Saracen or Bedouin chieftain, the rich landlords with their strong retinues, but the accredited agents of the imperial estates themselves, and, if we are right in so interpreting, even from members of the imperial family : he is to show no respect of persons but stand up boldly against injustice.
1 538 A.D. "Justice the unique or basal virtue, without which the others lose their merit, especially that courage to which our ancestral tongue has given the name virtue exclusively (adrptos owvfi). Ta6Tgv, he continues,?p 7a'4 ~AET. 4aapxiats dpwvres rrapewpaA&,1v . . . dvajfW"vac . . . 4ihOlluev xpiwas . s 535 A.D. Wherein he appoints praetors for the people of the capital . He restricts the high office (of Stipendiary Magistrate) to the highest rank and most exemplary probity ; it is to be given gratuitously, and furnished with a paid assessor (irdpe8pos) . We have learned that these officers have hitherto had most undesirable retinues (upds daovpyiav E1vac TdypaTa aovrlp& A1UQTOyv(i7QTas TE K. PEVEOcaMovs (poison-experts) ), and a crowd of such like who deserve to be punished themselves rather than serve the ends of justice [rendering probably corrupt]. For this class of thieftakers or recognisers exist for no good purpose at all, but they tell the criminals (ywcvvKovve Tots KVrrras) for this one purpose, to hunt profit (and hush-money) forthemselves and their officers (who are quite as much to blame). In effect, they resembled the New York police. $ Td plv yap drriTp6awv K. Twv TpaKrevrwv Svocca o63' ETvat aapTeXws flova6peOa (he is remodelling the proconsular government of Cappadocia, 536 A.D .) apes Td garrpoQBev PVaopTES vapa8d-yuaTa K. T~v iroXXirv adrwv &Jpecav ~v Toir dBAiocs hrfyov QvprAEatp. ° His language here throws a strange light on the suspicions and dislike shared by prince and people alike towards the official class ; el vuApp Tiv& Twv ip,ET. 67rIK6wv Fv U7rolpiq E'XEw Tdv dpxopTa, the bishop must consult with the governor to arrange matters ; to prevent costly delay in the capital owing to a well-justified distrust in local equity, iva ,a~ daoJtyu-
rrav6p.EVoc Taw 18iwv rraTp1Swv K. afrro1 Sri i &17$ KaKOaa6cuvi K. Td irply wra airrwv 8Xd7rrt)Tat . A special section is devoted to an appeal to the bishop if it happened that any of our subjects suffered injury (d6um8iivae) at the
bands of his excellency the governor himself (XaArpordTov).
-
56
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. A
d. reduces his reign, N. 166 (II. 378),1 Justinian repeats the fempayabk conon institution old indictment of official extortion, and sadly
to office,
abolishes Vicars,
fesses that his efforts have been of little avail . In order to remove all excuse for malversation, he corrects the table of fees payable to court-notaries on promotion, which like the necessary payments before ecclesiastical preferment in the Anglican Church were a constant source of friction and complaint . These fees were now statutably fixed, N. 16 ; an oath against official Simony was to be administered, N . 16, 123,2 and no one was to purchase a post under government, because places of trust were to be gratuitously bestowed on merit, and merit alone . No governor might send a vicar or delegate to exercise his functions, and the emperor wishes to remove and abolish altogether the hated name of deputy (-romro-rnpnTqs), N. 166 (II. 376).8 Where civil and mili-
i "This too has come to our knowledge (556 A.D.) that some of the governors of provinces are carried along such sacrilegious paths on the plea of filthy lucre that [without fees] Gthey allow neither testaments to be made or published, nor marriage nor interment to take place." 2 The prototype perhaps of our ecclesiastical oath on Institution to a Benefice : the official swears severally by the Persons of the Trinity, by the Blessed Virgin, by the four Gospels "which I hold in my hands," and by the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, to be a good official, and send away none of the profits to others : wQaep dplo-OOP lrapAaPov T~v hpX~v, o6rw K. KaOapbs wept TO11S i17roTeXets, satisfied with the stipend apportioned to my office out of public funds. 8 He prohibits all vicars, ltoKwXurat, and anaToBt@KTat . No ;Oolitical or military official is to perambulate the province without urgent cause (aepu¬vat Tshv ¬srapxiav) . [These tours or progresses were clearly an infliction.] They are expressly forbidden to burden the subject-class with corvtses or forced subsidies, pcI~re S¬ hyyapetats J Tofs KaaovA¬Pots ¬a&6q7wVTCKOYS 3} ¬T¬M o14Ssjaore ~,qptq ftapSDeLY Tobs ~AET. vaoreXets, tt~Te S¬ Qvvr1Belas 6voAdrelv 3) PqTeev . . . KaB6ov yap o668¬va Twv hpXbvrwv, aoa. Te K. oTpaTtwriKluv, ¬PS71pouvra KaTa, Thv XCwpav ¬Xetv TorrorqpiT~v aMarpov"pev .
If there must be deputies sometimes, let them at least never be called by this title ; p,71U rp6or4tv k,1S' dvopa e"Xerw Torrorqpsyrov". Twenty years before (535 A .D., N . 16 and 21) he had fulminated against the vicars, as we know, to this effect : o6Sevl dpXOPTL . . . ¬¢kAev (whether polit. or milit.) ¬gre/67retp ¬D Tats 7r6Xeo't T~s &apXias Is dpXeL Tots Kaaovp- Toaw-Opryrds those who have the insolence to promote others into their own rank (els T)w ¬aurwv Tglv ¬p#tflet~etv), will now assuredly be deprived of office . N . 2 I, § io, Tororr/pIrds . . . sraaw hzalope6pllev Tp6rots (here too their
CH. n
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (585-565)
57
tary offices are thrown together, and the respective raises etipmd retinues united under a single head, the full stipend fas . of each separate office is to be paid to the new and more dignified official, that he may have no occasion to recoup himself by extortion for a paltry pittance, N. 16. Administrators are forbidden to insult the citizens by arrogant pride in rank or military grade (a~la, ~wv~) ; or to sell their favours, N. 16, § 7. He once or twice sums up the chief duties of a governor ; first, the inoffensive collection of taxes, next, the maitennance of public order, N. 21,' pp, 137-8 ; and
he enlarges these simple instructions into a veritable text-book of an administrator, the mandata principis. His whole aim is to raise the standard of virtue and the responsible rank of officials ; new titles are invented and old ones revived (NN. 38, 44), and nothing is left outside the jurisdiction of the unique authority ; seeing that independent commands artfully created, whether of soldier or publican, had proved a failure, N. 44, p. 270,2 and had either played into each other's hands or promoted disorder. All these failings of the provincial executive are found again in the long series of Constitutions dealing with the changes of title and power in the chief magistrates of the departments.' name is coupled with unruly soldiers in the escort, and oppressive tasks, services, or contributions of the subjects, 8ard"ats, dyyapeia, and § I I (JteJJtareiv) .
1 'Esrema (i.e. next after the supreme duty of filling the treasury) 7rpos~rcb &Tt v~ srpovoeiv rof, p,~ Toils 8huovs Twv a6Xewv & dTltiXots 6Tavtdretv ; but that peace should prevail everywhere in the cities, from your constantly preserving equal treatment for all our subjects in this respect also, and neither for gain nor any predilection showing marked favour to any party (7rp6s rt 710Y Aepav airoKXEvetv).
E &srb ,Aiav ydp rd srpayua vuvhyolmv 4al Tiffs Xtupas IspX~v, Yva /.t~ Ttp &carn"fOat XwXe6Q,9 (he is speaking of Cappadocia) . 3 These Novels form the most interesting commentary or supplement to the historians whose meagre details we constantly deplore. At least eighteen are solely devoted to the status of the governor, N. 23 Pisidia, 24 Lycaonia, 25 Thrace, 26 Isauria, 31 Helenofiontus, 32 Paphlagonia, 44 Ca-APadocia, 45 the Armenias, 52 and 67 the Isles (Cyclades, &e .), 53 Arabia, 54 Palestine and Phenice, 79 Sicily, 96 Alexandria and the Augustal, 158 Pontus, x61 Phrygia and Pisidia. It is not the purpose of the present work to enter into the details of provincial government
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58
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. A
(y) Counter§ 2. (y) Novel Means to Check the Official Agents.POW to Justinian sought help from the bishops and chief mutinous
hierarcky in inhabitants to restrain the civilian peculation or (1) Bishop8 military tyranny . When Justin II . (as we must again remark) 'asked the local notables to sugei. "
gest an acceptable governor for their district, he was only following and extending a scheme of which his uncle had set the example . In the same spirit Merwings, or rather their powerful premiers, exempted abbeys and their estates from the direct visit or levy of the Count ; and betrayed, like the Roman emperors, their profound distrust of their own nominees . Constantine had wisely seen that the new and unworldly corporation of the Episcopate would be a valuable ally in the difficulties of government, and a useful counterpoise to the emissaries of the central power . To them Justinian entrusted the supervision of his lieutenants ; (while he raised their dignity, he showed no marked belief in their virtue). Bishops possessed the right, indeed the duty, of formal complaint (N . 103, passim) ; they were to watch and report on the conduct of the governors ; they confronted the half - barbarian soldiers, and saw that the peaceful subject suffered no injury, N. 142,1 150 (p . 26q., 266),2 N . 164 already: well set forth by Professor Bury, H.L.R .E ., and by Diehl, in his excellent chapter on the subject of administrative reforms. I hope also to prepare very shortly a detailed inquiry into these and kindred matters in a work dealing with the Literary Critics of the Roman Empire from 300-550 A.n.
I If a requisition (eZosrp4tv) has to be made, it must be done without annoyance to the house (pi16aw@s Tois otKocs srapevoXawv), and soldiers, if they are indispensable, must be old and seasoned, not raw and insolent recruits (W~ K6X0ha0w PCOVKTOCS QTparewracs AM Ten & srpdypaocv TerPLA,U4YOLS K . T~p 7roXCTCAY TdtUl irto-TaAlpois). The local bishops must see that our will is obeyed ; T~v T@vv e1pn1a ¬vwv srdvrwv aapa¢UAaK~v To"cs
Ka74 Tbrov brwKL7rots TE K. dpXowtp brnrphrec (that is, the emperor ; for Athan . xx. 5). the novel survives only in a summary of its gist .
2 One aggrieved by soldiers must have his wrongs righted by governor and by bishop (apparently acting in concert) ; if no ruler be found in those parts, he must appeal to the most holy bishop of the city, or to the Ecdic of those country regions under whom the estate lies (I} . . . e-rccKdry
CH. n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
59
(359),' N. 166, 378 .' They had, indeed, to con- (y) Counterdescend to 4' serve tables" : for in Italy a curiously n° tints assorted committee of Pope and Senate saw to the hierarchy in integrity of weights and measures ; while, throughout (1) Bishops the empire, bishops were urged to bring to justice a,g and a sense of their guilt those infamous merchants who castrated the young for the service of the court and church, a class which throughout Byzantine history was 1° always forbidden and always retained ." Though Justinian was sincerely anxious to secure (3) Popular the help of this order of clerics and notables, 8uperviaion he did not venture to suggest any form of popular uggested. control, such as we attempt to-day with indifferent success. He might seem aware that a democracy prefers to grumble at its petty oppressors, or to laugh enviously at corruption ; and in the chaos of creed and race and faction, to which only the empire lent a semblance of unity, a people's painstaking vigilance must have been sought in vain. Genuine democracy is the most difficult and exacting, as well as the most elevated, of all forms of government. 3j T4g WfKY TIOV
T67rwv, rrT7r). Justinian ends with ordering the prefect to make known to the bishops and the civil rulers these provisions for the security of the subject-class (67r~p Tiffs -abTwv d#aapdas ScaTvaw0EVra). 1 This Pragmatic Sanction deals with the government of Italy (554 A.D .), and entrusts the nominations of local magistrates to the bishops in conjunction with chief inhabitants (elsewhere called Toa"s apWTEdov6r.) . § 12. Provinciarum . . . judices ab episcopis et primatibus uniuscujusque regionis idoneos eligendos et suffrcientes ad locorum adminm ex ipsis videlicet jubemus fieri provinciis quos administraturi sint, sine suffragio (mi)-litis . (The justice must be a native of the district, and be guaranteed competent by his chief neighbours, ecclesiastical and secular ; and the soldier must have no share in his appointment (?),-if we accept the plausible correction of Zacharias.) E aaQav U 8E8opev d5Erav Toys rcaT& TbV T6rov 6aiwarocs 9rco'n6aois K. TOLT
7lpWTE6OUOL
TWV
9r6XEWV
T(16
TocagTa
4XEIph~A.aTa
8WA6ELV
.
.
.
K.
T&
7Ep1 TO6TWV ~p.FV ,a'qv6Eiv. Sometimes the local squire or magnate is told off to spy upon the civil servant ; sometimes the governor is armed with ample powers against these provincial grandees with their armed followings (Sop6oopoc) and their insolence and injuries to the poor. But the bishop is always trusted to prevent wrong and report infringement of rights to the anxious emperor.
_
60
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF Roman Empire was founded
]iv . n
in a cynical
(3) .Popular
The
suyges¬a.
human nature with a keenness given to few. Democratic in aim it certainly was, in that loose sense current in our own days, which implies that measures are directed for the public welfare without respect of class or privilege, and aim especially at the contentment and comfort of the poor. But the empire had no illusion whatever about democracy, in its high and ideal sense, which in truth is the only one
e'"'"~m never
Imperial attitude to the people,
e~ynkaj Wt indulgent-
moment by a master of irony, who saw through
admissible . It had no belief in the popular capacity for the long strain and never-ending duties of the
republican . The people at large placed not the They slightest value on constitutional privilege . desired to be rid of a host of bad masters and incompetent rulers ; but they had no intention whatever of taking their places . They knew very well what they wanted from government ; and in the long and perhaps surfeited silence of these centuries, we may well suppose they were satisfied The consideration of the with their bargain . imperial system for the lower classes is well known . They are to be amused as well as fed, and delighted by the gorgeous spectacle of circus, theatre, and The ruined cities of Northern court function. Africa clearly show that one chief duty of the smallest municipality, founded in defiance of natural law among the sands, was to provide for the cleanliness and amusement of the populace . Christianity had not, it would appear, conferred on these classes a marked aptitude for self-government ; it had, according to some critics, merely made representative institutions impossible. It might (so they allege) have been possible to agree on the need of sanitation, public baths, and public spectacles ; but if the province of government and imperial concern is to be extended to the problems of the next world, it is clearly out of the question to allow the voice of the heterodox to be heard or to respect minorities.
'
cg. u
"
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
61
The people's part was to trust their supreme ruler (1) costly and representative to do his best for them on pain 9 spzafto~rn of dismissal . They were not to be deprived of ot'urbanmob ; those costly shows, which since republican times had exhausted noble houses by the vain parade of a moment : Justinian introduced a welcome thrift into these expensive dignities, and limited the consular largess, just as a Puritan and Labour Ministry might curtail the Lord Mayor's Show. But he was careful not to abolish these spectacles entirely, N. 81, p. 468,1 and when the last vestige of republican office disappeared in Byzantium, the place of the magistrates' displays was taken by the unceasing liturgy and ceremonial of the court. Yet with all this consideration for the « cockney " (2) solicitude element, Justinian does not forget the needs of fl eo"'t'"y the peasant (N . 123, 139, 148 are devoted to men' the various problems of agriculture and ownership 2). And to all dependent classes of his empire he ex- (3) wages of plicitly interdicts the use of arms, N . zo8,3 and has artisan. no sympathy with the higher wages for craftsman and artisan, which they demanded after the Great 1 "° On the Consular Largess." He limits this scattering of dole to seven occasions of pompous exit, E1 ydp TOBTO 47LYEV6TaL 81d TJ riss Bias areas 3PVXaywylav dyecv Tdv 5ipov . . . o6Sevos TO6rcuv 6 i7AeT. areVTEMB~aerat S~,uos. E Especially in Novel 29 does he forbid the seizure of land for debt ; and fixes (or attempts to fix) the rate of usury for advances on landed security. 3 On Arms (539 A .D., addressed to Basilides, Mag. Off.). The aim is, of course, the prevention of civic tumult, not suspicion of insurrection (Id#Xape2S K. 4YE7r4]pedQTOUs 9Q5ACETTELV K. K(OVECV TOUS 9rOVAOUS, ODS EK T~S cavrmv dpovafas atpo6pevoc Toils KaT' dXXJawv ?pyd~ovrac 0bvovs). The manufacture of weapons is a State monopoly which may be invaded by no private person ; and no one but authorised soldiers or sergeants with license may possess ; § 3. Beta 7rapreXWs oMEVZ . . . "neither to private inhabitants of cities nor husbandmen tilling the country districts (Toc"s Ta. Xwpca yewp-yo0vev 4yp6racs) to use arms against each other and dare murders, while the exchequer is despoiled of the taxes of those who cultivate, the soil, deserting their livelihood (?) or running away through panic." This was no idle fear ; the armed households of the great, and masterless retainers (as in Japan, the Zonin or ownerless yaconin) caused disturbance on the countryside . § ¢ gives a list of prohibited weapons ; somewhat in the style of the Philistine edict in the time of Saul.
-
62
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Drv . A
(3) wages of Plague, N. 1146 544 A.D.) ; just as in Western artisan. Europe, after the Black Death, some Boo years later. Wisdom of these provisions.
-The emperor has been sternly rebuked for both these regulations ; matters, as the unbiassed student can easily see, of strict political necessity. Circusfrays and the Samaritan revolt had made men
familiar with private feuds and vendetta. It was impossible, with the barbarian at the gate, to allow mere factious turbulence. The compassion of liberal or nationalist historians is entirely wasted on a people, or rather a congeries of peoples, who had long ago resigned the noble duty of self-defence . Justinian, who had no reason to trust party-spirit, who had manifest proof of religious and tribal rancour, was in every way justified in this prohibition. Nor can we criticise from any modern . standpoint his (possibly futile) attempt to fix the scale of wages or the interest on mortgage-loans . Whenever the State is recognised as omnipotent by popular consent, the Government-Imperial or Socialist-will be compelled to take cognisance of such things . Where every class looks to the State for guidance, aid, and authorisation ; where nothing passes current without the peculiar stamp of government sanction ; various restrictions on a perilous liberty must be both expected and tolerated . The hours of labour, the scale of payment, the price of commodities, the value of land, the assessment of striking appreciated estates-all must be submitted to some analogy ~k final control and central committee . It is not for socialism. us to blame the empire for a system which, amid some misgivings and protest, is being adopted by many statesmen "as a panacea for the evils of Freedom ." 1
1 N. 60 (537 A.D .), the emperor is obliged to limit the number of privileged manufactories in Constantinople to eleven hundred, and to beg the residue to pay their imposts regularly : he says, not without reason, 7q? KQTa f6CKPLV K. ¬q5' grap7ar nrXivvOac -ra TAi7 14paXJ p.~v gmrac Td vrap' iKC60'TOv SLSL/.6EVOv, A4Tptop Std K. KOU0OV . . . 60'!17 Tap& irXEGbvmv aVXAey& He did not intend to fall into the later Merovingian dilemma, when the
CH. u
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (585-565)
63
3. It remains to speak briefly of a few classes in spczal : the State on which the Novels of Justinian shed clas8es (1) The Mili-
perhaps a gleam. of sombre light.
(i) The military tary.
element is set in vivid contrast with the civilians. The emperor is much concerned to prevent unfair pressure on the district where soldiers are quartered ; they must be, content with the produce of their cantonment, and not demand exotic luxuries from other provinces ; they must be considerate to the defenceless citizens whom it is their duty to defend, ' not to oppress (N. 138, 142, 150)Justinian is aware of the debt which the Commonwealth owes to its gallant (and often alien) defenders : after heaven, the empire rests on their loyalty and devotion (cf. the use of the term rcaOw6cwyevot) . He is anxious, too, that his barbarian allies should learn to respect the rights of civilians, just as Theodoric had to defend the effeminate Roman noble from the good-humoured contempt of his Gothic "protector" (N. 150, II . 265).' He does not hesitate to rebuke this dangerous element if it deserves it ; he threatens (N. 96, I. 540)' some mutinous soldiers with expatriation to the detested Danubian frontier, or the Crimea, still more remote ; it will not be forgotten that this punishment precipitated the military revolution which overthrew Maurice some sixty-four years later .
.
sovereign,-knowing no means of defending the public except by restricting his own officers' jurisdiction, of rewarding his friends except by lavish grant of practical immunity,-found himself in the end without subjects, taxes, or kingdom. 1 "These injunctions we desire to be carefully observed in the passage, not merely of our own Captains and their troops, but of all other forces sent by us into alliance with our Commonwealth from any nation whatever" (k oiov6hrrore 9Bvovs eis avaaaXiav . . . rreWrro*v(0v). 2 "Their splendid tribunes shall suffer confiscation, and their chiefmen (let these also beware of decapitation !) and the whole regiment shall be removed to the furthest limits of the Danubian district, there to serve their term patiently as guard of the frontier" (Td rrav Tdypa g ravrdv iv rots irojAwrlpw rov' . . . Aam)9lov rbaots . . . . i'apa¢vXarc~s ¬verca aposaaprep~oov) .
64
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
(2) Tie 4. The emperor is frequently engrossed in M°nk8'i . monastic questions, relating to the order and discipline of monks in their religious houses . If the monks will pray, the soldiers will fight well, and the Roman armies will win peace for the world . There is an especially mediaeval touch here ; and we recall the opening chapter of Lydus (which he does not follow up) dealing with the identity of the magistrate, the priest, and the soldier in primitive times. (3) The § 5. There is frequent reference to the Senatorial senate. class as well as to the Senate of New Rome. Both in Latin and Greek (N. 8o, 81)' he explains the transference to the emperor of the anxious duties of executive, and makes much of the dignified retirement, which all enjoy but the select emissaries of Caesar . He takes care that « senatorial estates shall remain in senatorial families" (NN . 10I, io6, tog). He gives rules for the release from the duties of this rank (-ruX', N. go), the old Latin venia ordinis ; but he will not allow Jews and Samaritan senators to evade their responsibility (N. 6z), though they might not exercise their privileges. He is anxious to preserve the deferential distinctions of rank, though he will not have this carried to an absurd extreme . For example, the illustrious class (N. 9i) were often reduced to poverty and unable to support their dignity ; all but the most exalted were expressly relieved of the duty of employing an advocate (6'v-roXeus) when sustaining a suit, and might appear and plead in person, if they could not afford the heavy fees, which, the joy of Lydus' heart, were a bane and a grievance to a pauper nobility. Yet Justinian is clear that disorder in a State arises when men overstep the natural limits of caste, and the due 1 " In the most ancient days the Senate's authority shone forth so bravely that by its guidance at home and abroad the whole world was made subject to the yoke of Rome . . . for by its common counsel all things were carried out. But after that the prerogative of Roman people and Senate, in a happy moment for the general welfare (felicitate Reipublicoe) were transferred to the Imperial Majesty," &c.
'
CH . ii
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (535-565)
65 reverence owing to rank is set at naught (a~zu,AaTU,v (3) The uRloc~ouevcw). Senate. 6. The social and administrative condition of the (4)Jwtinkn'8 empire has already exhausted more than the ~to hi8 space ~ allotted to it ; nor have the various questions of the country magnates, the vindices, the ecdics, the Defensor, been treated adequately . We may well conclude this section, already over-long, by quoting a direct personal appeal to his subjects ; wherein he exposes the genuine anxiety with which he attempts to conciliate two ends, unhappily incompatible-the welfare of the people and the maintenance of the costly imperial system . (N . 16, § zo : "It is right that you our subjects and contributories, knowing how great is the care and forethought we bestow on you, should in all cheerfulness pay your public taxes, and not need compulsion from the rulers, and show us by your deeds that you return due gratitude to us for our loving-kindness . Then shall ye reasonably enjoy from your rulers all care and consideration for your cheerful service ; knowing this well, that since on the rulers' shoulder rests the whole peril of the State,' and it is admitted that they take office at their own risk, it is your part therefore to abstain in every way from sullen churlishness, and not in your disobedience oblige them to have recourse to their lawful sternness, with which it is but right they should be invested, seeing that the collection of the public revenue is a necessity which cannot be gainsaid .
"Listen then, subjects of mine, whomsoever God has given to our ancestors or to ourselves (N. 89, 538 A.D.), that we issue this law to give and provide you with all security : ye shall not journey long and toilsome ways, ye shall not weep over the injuries of the great, nor shall ye blame us that we neglect to help you . But each one, seeing close at hand and under his own eyes due punishment and VOL. II .
1 Or responsibility for the taxes, Sr1pooia.
-
66 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
nzv. e
(4)Tust%nzan'a requital waiting for all his wrongs, will sing aloud Weal to his the great and good God, who enlightened my understanding so as to issue these wise laws." Such was the aim and such the scope of Justinian's legislation his failure to attain this end must be traced to causes of which he himself was but dimly conscious, and over which he could exert no effective control.
t E i i a
CHAPTER III THE ELEMENTS OF OPPOSITION UNDER THE SUCCESSORS OF JUSTINIAN (565-618) (Being a continuation of " The Prince, the Senate, and the Civil Service ")
I. THE death of Justinian was a signal, long awaited, for the smouldering, discontent to break into flame. It existed no doubt in nearly all classes of a commonwealth called upon to give up much for imperialism, and receive perhaps little in return . But the chief seat of the influence which thwarted the central control was now the Senate . The hindrance to the designs of a benevolent autocrat was found among his own ministers ; and once more was displayed to the world the peril of a privileged class, concentrating in itself the whole power and talent of the State. It is a palpable anachronism to connect this with monarchical institutions . The history of mankind shows clearly that a monarchy, even as a foreign victor, gives to a people national self-consciousness, and guarantees them from servitude to (many and fierce masters."
The truth is," writes Mr. Price in an introduction to Thierry's great work, "that to the Norman Conquest we owe both our national unity and our national institutions. . . . England was overcome by the Normans because she possessed no national unity. . . . Had not Anglo-Saxon feudalism been uprooted by the centralised despotism of the conqueror, England would probably be broken into independent States, like Germany and Italy ; or like France have been forced, at the close of the Middle Ages, to exchange anarchy for despotism." The 67
Opposition of classto Liberal I-Perialism .
68
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
opposition of committee of Platonic Guardians, the Knights of elan to
-
Rhodes, the
Brahmin
or
Roman
hierarchy, the
Russian official, even the Anglo-Indian civil servant, Liberal Imperialism. and above all, the secret influences of a monopolist republic (such as floats as an ideal before the dreamer's vision)-these are instances of the temptation which besets the most conscientious as well as the most unscrupulous of rulers . The pages of Laurence the Lydian show us the persecution of the rich by the pretorian prefect, the 'I war against private wealth," so conspicuous in political programmes to-day. But in the later years of Justinian, the rich, identified with the imperial council and exercising power by right of official dignity as well as private means, gained in weight (and perhaps in solidarity), and like the republican senate domineered over a subject world. We are often called upon to record the grievances of the noble class under the firm control of monarchs ; we trace with regret the mutual suspicions which so often transformed the Senate into the victim of a persecutor. But
when once the stern hand is relaxed, our sympathy is at once estranged ; and we feel that for the peace and welfare of the world, the "feudal " rule of Senators was neither to be regretted nor recalled . Law was no longer uniform and supreme ; a large class of higher and lower officials demanded exemption . Justin 11 . endeavoured to enforce the law at all hazards ; and offered himself as the first example, if he deserved censure. 11 To him," says Zonaras, "came one promising if he were made prefect with power over all for a fixed time, no sufferer should be found" (et AraPxos yFVO17o K. xa-ra ?rav7rcov e~ov6ia SoOeirl ~i ioPto.1oevov rcacpov ,ur-cva eupeNvw -rov aSucoziuevov) .
The story, it would seen, is clearly apocryphal in its details ; it finds its original or suspicious parallel in the "Arabian Nights" ; and we may be sure that such a sudden elevation to the prefecture of the city was not possible with the
CH. III
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
69
careful routine and rules of methodical promotion opposition of which then prevailed. "As he sat in judgment privileged one came with a charge against a very notable class senator (Tiov 6'71G-riuoT6PWV o-VyKXnTtKiev e"va), whom Imperialism. he summoned to appear ; but he refused (,uereKaa evaTO . . . a'XX' OuK a7 I .YTrivev)-a second notice fared no better ; and the accused, scorning it, went off to dine with the emperor (Sev'Tepov e967-0 Arjvuua . . . KaTa0poWicras eis To 8aT1X1KoV aa7rtyez a-U,u?ro6coV) . When he learnt this, the prefect went to the palace and found the king sitting with his guests and spoke I I promised, O king, to leave not one wrong-doer, and my promise I will keep, if thou wilt- lend the support ; but if thou dost shield and entertain the unjust, I can do nothing. Give them not liberty to scorn the law, or take back my charge .' And the king said, I If I am he, make me descend from my seat and obey the summons' (Tog-ro . . .
avvO'e4QeTal E'X(O
K.
T11V
El
KaE
IDO7r)7V'
Tflv
fl 0E
eK
TOU
KIpaTOUQ
A6XXOV
a'TO 9
TOU
TiVV
E7r[KOUp['av a 'J1K0V'VT&)V
av-rvrolb K. 950ILL'(W av'Toig J1aK6*1')U6V0V (TVV6(rT1(f)A6F0Vg EX619 0V'S'v 6 '"01 Acr-ra 1 a' V, va-ilAov - n 7o9v IA~ ue-ra8iSou wappw-'tag avToig 2'7 vaM70V U6 Ttlg apX)79 ; K. o 8aTAeVQ et a0TOS ey(U
eyac,
-
70
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Opposition of plain facts are credible (Zonaras, xiv. elms to Liberal
io) .
niv . n The
historian has a favourable opinion of the Illyrian emperor ('IXavptos . . . Eis d7ravTa 7rept&~tos T;v . yv(o'univ ,aeyaao+vXos). Theophanes has Tco yevet Opa ,ueyaao uXos TF K. E7rtaE~tos. As we can trace some part at least of the decline to the old age and relaxed energy of Justinian ; so the impunity of evil-doers is referred to the seclusion of Justin through illhealth (voo-epou TvXa6v 6aiaaTos . . . Sta Tofu-ro cruveXaes 7rpoiivv . . . ios miSevos ovTos Tov 6'AttcouvTOs aSeeo"Tepous evofJIM-). Once when he went forth he was much harassed by applicants for redress of wrong (7roTe 7rpoeX0a0v rjvtoXMOri 7rapa 7roXXiov 'we a'SIKOV ' v), whence the avenging of the oppressed . /Aevw was to him a subject of anxious thought (37 Twv a8txouuevmv e' 370-19 &a cppovTt'Jor). We are reminded of Mareian's 11 Catervw adeuntium inindcr," throngs of applicants with a grievance. The account of Scylitzes of the same episode agrees in the general outline, and argues a common source ; he particularises the culprit as payto-Tpds Tie .
Dying avowal § 2. Theophanes, who does not give the legend of ofTuftin z1. : the temporary vizier, gives in full Justin's speech at ._ the adoption of Tiberius Constantine, to which we less. have called attention in the text : it was taken down by shorthand writers (John of Ephesus), and forms a very human document, widely differing in its naive simplicity from the studied and eloquent orations usually put into the mouth of princes by classical historians. I will quote only the more salient ,uii points : ,uit e7riXapns aiAa6t. ,uii e7MOCVCevps ~ov(ov. rcarcov avTC rcaKOU a,7roUo-vg .
,urt1 ets e-X8 av o otwe:s eOV
to eycv yap an av6ptv7ros e7rratva. teat yap orTato"Trts syevOMv, x. a,7reXa)9ov tcaTa Tag aaapTias ,uou . aXXa StKa6oAat Toil 7ron/maoi lot TOUTO e'7ft TOU ,%aa-roS TOO ,uii eorapy Te TOVTO To o-Xi1,ua ius Kai eae. oiuTCu XTOV .
7rpo6exe 7rao iv ios eavT~. OAOt
o0TOi
TFKVa
,&srets O"aous
TOV
Tie
BLTIV
K. Tis vov Ei .
-111@01 TL's 4S K.
)roX iTe1ag
OOUXOt.
.
8V7relp.
.
.
TOVTOLQ
OVS
?rPOVeXe T(P
CH. III
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
a-a-pa-ruri,U
TOM
,ail ~avras
fl'7rW6lv UOC TLVEq OTL
O
71
~e ~ . ,uil Dying avowal 'IE76,peTo. TaO,, of Justin IL
[~T~OaTLWTCCS~
711D0 D-OL Ot,'TW
, ,, , reforming yap aeyW ,uaeiuv aC~ ' wv e~raeov '~ . of eXovTes ovo-cas, zeal powera7rozavercvo-av av-rwwv, -roil Ss ,Ail exov6c A~pna-ac . The less. version of Theophylact (iii . II, ed . de Boor, 133) repeats almost verbatim, but in place of the meaningless [o--rpartcvy-as] we read o-mooav-ras ; he also omits ovs before OVIrecs. And the general sense of the passage ? In these broken words Justin warns Tiberius against his own errors : « Be not made like me in the people's hatred (= do not incur my unpopularity). I have sinned and been led astray, and I will accuse those who have brought me to this at the Last Day. Do not be elated by your position ; remember what you once were and what you are now ; and look at me, what I have been and what I have become! These before you are your children and servants . You see them all before you,-all the members of the civil order. Do not neglect your soldiers ; welcome no informers. Do not be led away by the guile of those who tell you, ' His late majesty always did this and that .' Learn wisdom by my sad failure. Let those who have wealth continue to enjoy ; and give to such as are in need ." Now the charges are vague, and the melancholy Justin, appeased like Saul with cunning playing on the harp, must not be held to the letter of a suspicious temperament conscious of a great opportunity lost. But he blames his advisers for his faults ; and points with emphasis to the subordinate position of the ministers and clergy standing round . The 7roXereia comprises the ranks of the civil hierarchy, just as later 7roX1T1Kos is opposed to 6TPaTLWTIKOS . One is much tempted to read some "caution" into the double #V7Ets ; beware of, "you do well to look at them ." I translate a-ot in its usual meaning, "to thee," not "of thee" with Bury ; and am inclined to attach considerable weight to the sentence . Can we not read in the text just that -
72
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
vying avowal insistence on precedent, which is one of the most ofJustin z1. : entangling of silken meshes cast by bureaucracy reforming zeal power- round the vigorous limbs of a reforming sovereign,? Any administrator will recognise the tone of the permanent Under-Secretary in the words : '1 We never did so in Mr. X.'s time ." For bureaucrats have a fabulous golden age (like poor Laurentius), to which standard they coldly .refer the proposals of the new minister, and are apt, with Talleyrand, to discourage zeal . In the final words we may discover that, where private wealth still existed apart from the privileged order, it was insecure ; and that Justin had learnt by bitter experience that the 11 government " was always " against the people ." Theophylact supplies us with a sonorous and periphrastic description of the audience before which We remember Galba's this adoption was made . hesitation in a similar case, and the ominous last decision, '1 iri in castra placuit." Here we find Senate, clergy, and patriarch assembled (Tns O'U7KXjTOU pouxiq ES TavTOU 7evo/AePj79 TOO -re tepaTIKOU KaTaXOyov . . . QiU.a T[) fMUTaTOUYTI K. Ta TJ79 6JKKXn(riag 7rijJa'xta
SuOu'povTt).
(We may remark that
our author makes a very needless apology for the simplicity of Justin's words, which he will leave in all their naked and unpolished rudeness : their heartfelt sincerity is a very welcome oasis in the desert of his elaborate periods .) Against this solid phalanx of indurate tradition or individual greed, what weapons did a comes excubitorum possess, suddenly raised to the throne by one who made no concealment of his own failure? It is small wonder that Tiberius Constantine continued this apologetic and deprecatory tone, and sought to conciliate favour by gifts, not as Justin advised, to the really poor, but to the powerful or independent .
conciliation § 3. We may deal subsequently with the eulogy of meal of Corippus, and the debt that Africa owed to the . authorities
Questor Anastasius and the Emperor Justin 11.
Yet
'
CH. III
THE ROMAN EMPIRE I(565--618)
78
this keen interest in a freshly recovered province is Conalzation typical also of his entire policy ; and I may be allowed of "al authorities. to quote the words of Diehl (L'afr. Byz., 458), because I feel sure that this partial reform in an outlying district was of a piece with a genuine attempt at a universal reorganisation : « A l'int6rieur du pays, l'administration des finances reorganis6es s'efforcait par une meilleure perception de l'imp6t d'assurer les rentes necessaires aux d6penses (Novella, 149, A.D- 569) ; pour reprimer la cupidit6 des fonctionnaires on remettait en honneur les vieilles r6gles relatives a 1'obtention gratuite des magistratures ; pour arreter leurs insolences, on rappelait a tous les agents, civils et militaires, le respect diI aux privileges de 1'Eglise et a la personne des eveques ; officiellement on invitait les prelats a adresser au prince toutes les observations qui leur sembleraient utiles, I afin (dit le rescrit imp6rial) que connaissant la v6rit6 nous d6cidions ce qu'il convient de faire.' (Zach., Nov. iii. 9, io) (A.D . 568) . Hortamur cujusque provincice sandissimos episcopos, eos eham qui inter possessores et incolas principatum tenent, ut per communem supplicationem ad potentiam nostrarn eos deferant, quos ad administrationem provincics sure idoneos existiment." I may also subjoin the admirable words of Bury (ii- 75) : « A remarkable law of Justin (568) is preserved in which he yields to the separatist tendencies of the provinces to a certain extent ; it provides that the governor of each province should be appointed without cost at the request of the bishops, landowners and [principal] inhabitants . . . it was a considerable concession in the direction of local government, and its importance will be more fully recognised if it is remembered that Justinian had introduced in some provinces the practice of investing the civil governor (who held judicial as well as administrative power) with military authority also .
It is a measure which sheds much light on the state .Episcopate as of the empire, and reminds us of that attempt of a counterHonorius to give representative local government to the pie. -
74
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Episeopate as cities in the south of Gaul,-a measure that came too a counter- , late to cure the political lethargy which prevailed." poise.
I would only suggest that the word separatist is perhaps too strong ; it is one of Finlay's beliefs that this desire for honesty in local administration was disloyal and centrifugal . I cannot myself be satisfied that there was any desire to detach from the parent-trunk or set up an independent home-rule . The only safeguard was in imperial and central control against the abuses of men who, like viceroys of old time, regarded a post of trust as a prize, and sought a convenient opportunity for reimbursing the price paid to secure it. We may be sure that this appeal to local feeling and choice vanished in the gradual collapse of the civil system up to the time of Heraclius . We have quoted this passage, however, not to encroach on the interesting problems of local autonomy or prince-bishoprics under the empire, but to .show the earnest desire of Justin ILto maintain the best side of autocracy. The Novel emphasises the large admixture of the clergy in the ordinary body of government, as well as its presence on ceremonious occasions . This influence grew and culminated in the days of Heraclius ; and the patriarchs of Constantinople and of Alexandria seemed to have claimed no small authority on high politics and finance. But as the Eastern realm hack avoided the dangerous support of a Barbarian protectorate, so it refused to allow the State to become a mere department of the Church . With all its faults, it managed to fulfil the modern maxim of all political theorists,-the supremacy of the civil power against sword and dogma. Both these dangers of western and mediaeval Europe recur in a variety of forms ; but during our period there is no concession to the independent claim of priest and soldier. The Iconoclastic movement was largely a recurrence to a preConstantinian policy. And it was this temporising scheme of Constantine, which, in the age we are now
CH. 1111
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
75
discussing, bade fair to overthrow the central fabric. Powerful prelates and recalcitrant nobles,-here are two well-known types of feudalism ; and Justin II., with all his desire for improvement, had to conciliate and to make use of such agents as he found ready. 4. The dim records of the reigns of Tiberius II. (578-582) and Mauricius (582-6oa) (who break the line of Illyrian princes) are fitfully illumined by the tropes and similes of Evagrius or Theophylact. Tiberius indeed found a support for the throne in the denies ; Maurice reverted to the help of the nobles pending his struggle with an inefficient and seditious army. The latter need mean nothing more than that he kept the civilian supremacy intact, and in the end yielded to their protests, by a rapid return from a campaign which he proposed to lead in person . Historians attempt to give these detached points of disaffection, union and focus in a legendary public opinion, which is depicted as austere and unanimous . Finlay specially oscillates between extremes ; he complains of the now limited efficacy of absolutism, or he represents hostility to the government as widespread, popular, and deserved . It is, I think, true that this latter never seriously existed ; when we- read of the '1 threatened conflict between official privilege and popular feeling," or of the ,hate inspired by the administration," we are apt to imagine a concrete and wholesome body of opinion,-born no doubt in the higher and idealist circles (where all revolutions begin), and filtering down, until all classes are allied in opposition to the ruling system. It may well be doubted if such a desirable state of things ever existed . No country has ever been united against `its rulers ; a successful overthrow is the work of just that small minority which has the courage of its views and a well-defined programme of attack .' The removal of a king, the exile of a noble caste, merely unveils the seething animosities of classes ; and after any change of government, the larger but silent
Episcopate as poke.
Isolation of t7ae emperor : grit
-
76
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv . a
isolation of portion of the citizens regret the past. In the curious the emperor: circumstances of the empire in the closing years no public
support.
No desire to restrict titular
prerogatwe.
of the sixth century, there is no trace of serious opposition or of unanimity . Far less are we likely to discover a vestige of a rival constitution .
§ 5. The noble party, the « Senators," were profoundly interested in the resolute maintenance of
autocracy. Neither then nor in the Twenty Years' Anarchy (695-M) is there a sign of later Whig proposal to restrict prerogative . But they determined that the sovereign should be a creature, and that a still unlimited prerogative should lie in their hands . Nor were they at one upon the right method of The dominant class had lost that government. wider interest and public spirit which marked its councils a century ago. Each member of a disintegrating order sought his own good at the expense of the whole ; alone the emperor, 11 Athanasius contra mundusn," had a policy. This selfish and antinomian individualism ran through the classes ; and perhaps only among the priests rose to pride in a corporation, for which they demanded independence. Neither religious dispute nor the factions of the hippodrome show any serious criticism of the aims or manner of administration . It is in vain to seek for earnestness of purpose or combined action . Political interest was soon exhausted in a vague and scornful discontent, or in personal rancour and petty spite directed against conspicuous men . Finlay oddly represents the exempt classes of "monks, charioteers, and usurers" as successfully claiming to be above the law. Now the unique justification of insurgence would lie in this demand, to make the law just and uniform and to submit the highest power in the land to its requirements. To oppose (as in Russia to-day) an autocracy, largely guided by precedent and custom and irregular only in the minor malversations of petty agents, by a complete anarchy,-is a grotesque ambition, on a par
CH. in
'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
77
with the buccaneering sympathies of delicately nur- Private tured childhood, their fearful delight in pirate and interest and for highwayman, but not to be classed with serious law. schemes of political reconstruction . The whole claim of Liberalism (so far indeed as it makes itself articulate and intelligible) is that the personal whim shall everywhere yield to the impersonal or general welfare,that law shall fetter arbitrary despotism, and calm debate shall fix the lines of government and the principles of justice. No one is clearer than Finlay himself in making this demand, in showing the inconsistency of those well-meaning princes, who while they tried to save autocracy from itself did not provide an 11 Ephorate " or a 11 Body of Censors " to guarantee the supremacy of the impersonal . Now can it for a moment be maintained that this disinterested deference to law, absolutely essential in a free State, was in the air at this time ? Is not the sole claim of each individual, of each class, each district, each sect, to be 11 above the law" ? Is not the emperor struggling in classic and statuesque isolation for the archaic principles against pure subjectivity ? The green or blue faction, the monks of a certain community, the citizens or sectaries of a distant province, might, like the Nihilist to-day, do and suffer loyally in the supposed interest of a fraction of the State ; but a more comprehensive view of the whole was for ever denied to them. When this particularist spirit had invaded the once catholic sphere of the Senate, the case of the State became hopeless. Nothing could prevent the splitting into heterogeneous and unsympathetic groups, social and regional . And this without any matured plan or purpose of autonomy. For we must again repeat that the popular interest was confined to an alert criticism of persons, rarely of measures ; and while it rejoiced in every change of ruler, never elevated itself to a calm survey or judgment of the whole system .
78 Com late
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DID!. n
§ 6. " Maurice," it is said with truth, ',causes a revolution by attempting to re-establish the ancient fMa"to restore order authority of the imperial administration ." But we (60o) . roust be careful how we interpret this. The secret of the Augustan "constitution " (if we give this explicit name to his crafty yet beneficent compromise) lay in the control of officials : the one perennial difficulty which meets us under all governments and is quite independent of the form of constitution . We do not mean that the already absolute powers of the administrator were to be increased ; that the helpless autocrat should have a useless addition of formal prerogative, the subordinate agents supplied with larger authority . Maurice desired in a corrupt and centrifugal society to restore order and control ; and when law is openly despised or in abeyance, nothing avails but strong personal power, which for the time is the sole remedy . Limited on all sides by "rapacious nobles," an idle populace, a turbulent faction, and a 11 licentious army," the prince saw no hope but in the energetic exercise of his theoretical but latent force . A despondent tone rings with dismal monotony through this period, and finds an echo in the legends of imperial dreams, warnings, and expiations . The emperor, forced back on the natural supporters of the throne, found no aid forthcoming. Had he tried, in his endeavour to enlist his subjects' help in the work of reform, to establish a responsible council or representative body, as we might suggest to-day, there was no guarantee that this responsibility, this representative character should be maintained . It was not to be expected that such a body would be free from the factious group-spirit, the narrow and religious bitterness, the personal rancour or self-seeking,-already conspicuous in all ranks of general society. It does not follow that out of a disorderly and disaffected chaos held artificially together, like Russia to-day, a sovereign assembly will be more patriotic, united, or disinter-
CH. In
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
79
ested than the society it represents . It will rather be complete the focus of the national feuds, the quintessence of fQil'e of Maurice to
the national disorder. And it is an unvarying ex- restore order perience that the tone of parliaments is below the (600). average level of public opinion ; and is singularly unfitted to express the higher and more liberal outlook. The decisive factor in the situation turned out to be Intervention the very influence against which Maurice had reacted, of the demes. -the party-spirit of the circus. To those who know
human nature (not through supposed representatives, but directly) there is nothing alarming in this appeal to the rudimentary judgment of the average man . The half-constitutional influence oddly bestowed in the last reign had perhaps a good effect ; the factions were wanting neither in spirit nor in a certain generosity . But the experiment of making an urban mob the arbiter of national destiny has proved a signal failure. The turbulence of the capital, easily stirred by a chance word, a clever epigram, or an imprudent edict, carries off with it as a reluctant partner of its often sanguinary triumph the silent common sense and sober judgment of the provinces . Republican Paris has in this matter no advantage over despotic Byzantium ; and indeed, in spite of religious cruelty, the annals of the people throughout our epoch contrast favourably with those of most other European capitals. Their infrequent intervention is generally creditable and their tumult easily curbed . Yet it was impossible then, as now, to entrust the business of the State, either in crisis or routine, to average good-will or boisterous good-nature . 7. The Senate retires, so far as the annalists Official tell us, into a discreet and possibly corrupt and extinguished powerful obscurity during the twenty years of uncterPhocas. Maurice's reign . They emerge only to be grossly deceived . The new factor decides, and the people are supreme . Senate and Patriarch Cyriac were asked to come out to the Hebdomon to witness the elevation of Germanus ; and to their dismay behold
80
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. a
o,i Phocas crowned! It is the demes who support, tradition intimidate, or openly insult the imperial centurion, extinguished
underphom. and we are reminded by their delightful frankness of the genuine if unauthorised influence which a mob can exercise in a despotic State . Again, it is the denies who welcome the deliverer from Africa, deprived of political status by Phocas ; and it is the denies again who join gladly in hewing « Agag in pieces before the Lord." We may suspect that, in the . savage inquiries into plots and conspiracies, the Senate, the civil and official class, as the suspected supporters of the Maurician r6gime, had suffered most. And perhaps this curious period of disintegration and delay could not have found a more suitable hero or climax than in Phocas . He represents, what I believe to have been widely spread, a mere ignorant and 'capricious subjectivity ; which so far from demanding the submission of all classes to law merely seeks to be itself emancipated. Alone in the fifteen centuries of Roman rule, there is no vestige of policy in palace or council-chamber . In these years only does the imperial dignity sink to the level of some malevolent and suspicious monarch of the East, living like a threatened wild beast in a dim and noisome lair and sending forth only groans of rage and hatred . His reign is the apotheosis of a rude and blustering feudalism, without conception of duty, equity, or the trust of office. It is, I think, possible to extricate out of the scandalous gossip that does duty for history under the late empire, and even with the earlier C2esars, some thread of earnest and serious work and deliberate plan in the weakest or most vindictive of princes. But Phocas, whom we will not salute with Pope Gregory's " Gloria in Excelsis," stands as the mere accident and transitory emergence of the subjectivity which had ruined the classical traditions and the empire . And it may be well to close this section here ; for the official class, cowed but still haughty, only issues forth
CH. III
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (565-618)
81
under Heraclius into the light of day, assumes for ogciai a time large powers, takes on it the airs of a regency, ex~~d and is once more rightly or wrongly deposed and underPhoom. forced into that secondary position which it will occupy during the remainder of the seventh century .
VOL. II .
Position of Heroodiu3 insecure .
w
CHAPTER IV REVIVAL OF IMPERIALISM AND OF MILITARY PRESTIGE UNDER THE HERACLIANS : RESENTMENT AND FINAL TRIUMPH OF CIVILIAN OLIGARCHY (620.-700)
1. THE spectacle of the demes fraternising with a few disorderly mutineers to overthrow Maurice must have bitterly disheartened any true friend of the commonwealth who was capable of forming an impartial estimate . It may be questioned if in truth such a critic existed. Men of all classes seemed to rejoice at the fall of a conscientious prince, and to have believed that nothing was needed to restore the State but a change of ruler. It is very well for historians of our own time to see in this revolution the outcome of a grave popular hostility, directed against the existing order, the ruling and official aristocracy, the governing party in the Church . But it seems clear that public opinion was then incapable of rising to any universal and collective idea . Definite opposition was never formulated in terms. intelligible to modern ears . There were no solemn deputations urging the emperor to change his ministers, to lighten taxation, or to redress abuse. The strange sight is afforded to us of a sovereign, friend and champion of Reform, struggling in vain with a people who resisted and hated it . The stern lesson, which brought these recalcitrant and refractory classes once more under discipline, was learnt in the scandalous disgrace of the new reign, the decimation of the nobles under pretext of conspiracy, and the menace of the Avar and Persian invasion . Great public events turned then, as they 82
j
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
83 rarely do in history, upon personal character and Position o} incident. Had not Phocas murdered Maurice, the gerac"s benefactor of the Shah, war would not again have anaecure. broken out between these ancient and indecisive
belligerents . Had Phocas again resembled, in ever so slight a degree, the usual military pretender, he would have adorned with strenuous virtues a throne won by crime, and reinforced a nerveless or moribund civilian rule . Few popular cries have echoed with such wide emphasis as the words which reminded Phocas he still possessed a rival : IA40e -rq'v KaTa'(rram P, 0' Maupivog o UK ' a' re'Oavev. For had he or
his son Theodosius escaped to the asylum of the Persian Court, and in the end regained the purple, is it impossible to conceive a firm alliance against Saracen zealots, and an impregnable bulwark for the south-east of Europe ? It was an era, like the tenth century in Rome, of individuals, not of ideas, and the objective trails heavily behind subjective caprice. The annals of the Heraclian house are scanty and obscure ; yet we need no psychology to fill up in imagination the early years of the African deliverer . Did not the official class resume, in the new security, the old habits of dictation ? Was not the encroachment on central authority, intermitted in the terror of Phocas' suspicious rule, resumed and extended ? There must have been a -political contest " of the highest importance between monarchy and civil "feudalism," which is a worse form than the blunt but straightforward rule of the strong arm. Heraclius, in his design to shift the seat of government, desired to remove himself and the " Roman " traditions (little more was left) from the unpatriotic and costly misrule of the Bureaux, from the peril of the local militia . Disintegration had already so far set in, that it did not at first seem to matter whether the fragments of empire were conveyed or entombed ! Africa had set the example of insurrection ; and although his arrival
-
84 Pmuion of gerwlil insecure.
army' provinces : their disafeetion .
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
was a welcome relief, it was not forgotten that a « foreign" conqueror had occupied the throne, and
brought with him a band of foreign supporters . Various types and hints of the -mutinous spirit the Eastern heretical sects, p resented themselves ; Egypt, Naples and John Compsa, the Exarchate and Eleutherius, Rome and the pontiff, even the "prerogative tribe" itself, the Carthaginian province . The armies of Rome were reduced to a dangerous private legion in Cappadocia, and the African levies which were loyal to Heraclius . Cappadocia, indeed, could boast of being the native land of both Maurice and his murderer ; and the tie which bound these provincial regiments to Priscus was (as we saw in the text) feudal and personal. Indeed, we may find in them some parallel to that Isaurian brigade which under Leo I . and Zeno (467-491) might form a useful counterpoise to Teutonic predominance, but roused a dangerous civil war under Anastasius. The ideal ruler of Priscus, their commander, was also the ideal of the now reviving civilian circles ; a gentle and inaccessible sovereign, confined in his palace like the king of the Mossyni, bearing the whole weight of an autocracy which he did not exercise, the whole brunt of the odium he had not Quite like a mediaeval baron, Priscus deserved. bluntly expresses his surprise at the emperor's visit to his fastness ; the had no business to quit his capital and visit the outlying detachments of troops ." So in modern China, we can picture the resentment of a viceroy, hitherto a petty sovereign in his sphere, if a regular system of imperial visit and progress The 1' Mandarinat " (if I were to be established . may continue the suggestive parallel) of Byzantium equally resented the personal command of the sovereign in a distant war . With ready foresight they presaged the extinction of their influence, the If the new emperor suppression of their posts. threw in his lot with the military element and pur-
'
CH. TV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-loo)
85 sued with success a vigorous policy, their reign was over. Heraclius, who in these strange years of dormant energy had never relinquished his design of restoration, recovered control over the feudal retinue of Priscus by guile and an adventurous appeal, over the civilian bureaux who surrounded and stifled him, by forming a new alliance, with the wealth and growing influence of the Church .
ofciak, ay, o ee : their disafeciton.
2. The Senate still treats with the foreign foe senate as in ancient times. It had proscribed Vitalian resumes influence: under Anastasius,
and it negotiated with the general . The text is to be found in the Chronicle ; and it is clear that in A .D. 618 the tine government was a Venetian oligarchy,
Persian prerogative Paschal reasserted Byzan- during wars. with a
Doge first among his peers ; or perhaps a Spartan aristocracy in a peaceful interlude when the military power of the kings was in abeyance . It is sent from « rulers " (-ri~v apXdv-rwv ~juivv), and it seeks to lay blame on Phocas and exonerate Heraclius. It preserves a semblance of Roman pride with a significant alloy of religious pietism ; it is not the Persian valour which has robbed the realm of its finest provinces, but the righteous indignation of Heaven . Already appear traces of this triple alliance of Emperor, Church, and Army, which revives the fainting spirit of the State, gives a loftier sanction to patriotism, wins back the lost, and strikes the foe in his hiding-place : makes a soldier's death the prize of martyrdom (o'TF(pov aai#wuev ,aap-n' wv), and tones the military bluntness with metaphysical ideals (Constantine IV. and the appeal for a trinity of emperors). Reinforced by this potent support, Heraclius is able in two decisive measures to abolish the "political" bread (which pauperised a seditious capital), to acquire funds from the one wealthy corporation that remained, and to proclaim a Holy War.
We must not forget that the position which Heraclius was summoned to occupy bore a painful resemblance to the majestic impotence of a mediaeval
-
86 senate rmnm influence : yruo reasserted during wars.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
king. There was no army beyond his own retinue, and a suspected provincial force under a leader to whom he was too much indebted ; there were no funds in the treasury ; and there was no public spirit or opinion. His great stroke of diplomacy created these three indispensable factors of recovery in a national crisis. The interested and privileged were terrified by his proposal to sail for Carthage, and being' sobered by the threat lent help ; the patriarch, whose influence depended on imperial choice, not on hallowed associations, became the financier and banker of the great scheme. After some expostulation, Heraclius was permitted to head the , army in person and revert to the strictly It imperatorial " tradition, in abeyance for more than two centuries . He leaves the regency to the now dutiful Senate, with the Patriarch Serge and the When we ask for the actual Patrician Bonus. achievement of Heraclius, we are at first in a dilemma : he seems to lose more than he wins back. But he recovers Asia Minor, and Roman tradition banished from Illyricum and Pannonia, once fruitful in princes, is to find a home there . Et jun yap 14 'HpaKaeios ovK dv ijv Aewv. The solid, continuous, and opulent territory was formally reunited to the centre ; and we have noticed that Leo's Byzantine monarchy is strictly territorial, and dismisses distant rights and prerogative, of which the meaning is already forgotten or obscured in the rising gloom .
Dependence § 3. The few years after the death of Heraclius I. of Rerachads are the brief Indian summer of senatorial prestige . on Senate.
This body assumes the arbitrament of affairs and settles the succession . Martina summons a conclave of Senate and Patriarch to approve the will of Heraclius, in its way as strange as the testament of Maurice . But the people, who are also publicly consulted in the Hippodrome, refuse to sanction a divided throne and a female regency . Before the clamour of the mob Martina has to yield, like
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
87
another Agrippina. The reign of Heraclius Con- Dependence stantine II . was suspiciously short, and rumour Of Heracliads accused Martina of poison . At last, with Heraclius III. on Senate. and David Tiberius III., she sat on the throne, only
to be soon exiled with tongue slit, in company with her son with nose cut. This unique and legitimate penalty imposed by a Senate on an emperor and empress-dowager is veiled in darkness . We may perhaps suspect a strong religious influence behind the Senate in this matter . Fiery monks made the most of Heraclius' incestuous alliance with a niece ; and pointed to the little Constantine (whom we call Constans 11 . or 111 .) as 'seized" of the sole right to rule. No doubt his childish hand signed the warrants for this mutilation, and he professes his gratefulness and allegiance to the Senate in language which deserves to be cited : "My father Constantine reigned for a long time with Heraclius, my grandsire, but after him for a very brief space. For a stepmother's jealousy abruptly severed all this excellent promise, and dismissed him from life. And this crime she wrought for the sake of her own son, born in unholy wedlock with Heraclius. But her and her son your most righteous vote under Heaven has cast from the throne, so that we may not look upon the empire of the Romans as most villainous and contrary to all law ; for to prevent this is the especial care of your worshipful and honourable assembly . Wherefore, I beseech you to lend me your aid as my councillors and judges of the common weal of the subjects ." (Xpq6ToTaTa9 A?rt'Sas o y,1Tpvia9 0Oovos 6Uv&aT,urj~ag Tou ~i~v avr~XX+v . . . ijv ,uaXc6Ta ,ue-ra TOO TBKUOU il uuer6'Pa aVV 6ecv +~Ooq T~s 8aa-Aeias OLKalwg ke',aXev, ?MOOS TO Jun' Me& FKUo14.WTaTOU TrIY flao-Aeiav Twgalo)v. TOUTo /6aXa ETVWKUIa i7 iuueTepa U7repJ)U,'7g aeccvo7rpeveta . Ato vapaKa>,(~ uuag EXecv TU,u.,vOUX0US K. TVW1AOVa9 TJ/S KOIMS TOW U7r)/KO(e)V 6WTY/plag,
Theophanes ad ann ., 6q.2.) In translating the somewhat obscure words of the young prince, I am
88
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. n
vepen&nm inclined to attach more weight than Dr . Bury to q/' Heracl%ads the terms srcvomrraTov . . . and ,uaaa eyvcurcuia . It is on Senate.
Autocracy revved by Constans (650)
armies and
recognised (and the old Latin version agrees) that the maintenance of law and precedent is the true province and function of the Senate. It was their duty to keep the succession pure, and not allow a monstrous hybrid to usurp the throne. 'This is the special decision or resolve of your noble House." § 4. We can only judge of the policy and success of this remarkable prince by indirect evidence. We are forced to suppose that before he left the capital
to consolidate his western dominions, he had reduced the senatorial predominance and reorganised Asia,in a word, established a military and "thematic " administration under personal control . The Senate as an independent body disappears. The ministers who with individual or corporate influence controlled his childhood vanish and leave no successors. It has been noticed that the middle years of the seventh and eighth century alike are under a strong Constantine, and that both suffer unduly at the hands of clerical historians . When the " Occidentation " of our Constans (if I may use the term) sends him on a last pilgrimage of a Roman emperor to his aged and crumbling capital, he is acting in exact reverse to his greater namesake of the " Isaurian" line, who seems careless of the West and the elder Rome. But Constans is the pioneer, born before his time, of the Erastian or Iconoclastic movement. His attitude to the dogmatic questions which agitated that singular society, and gave it a semblance of intellectual interest, was strangely candid and free from bigotry. His aim was political rather than religious in attempting to unify and concentrate Church teaching . In the attainable truth of speculation he was indifferent, if not, like Constantine V., openly derisive. The struggle is now not with a privileged class of officials, rather with a body of refined ecclesiastical opinion ; which having once entered
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
89
into alliance with the sovereign in the Persian wars, Autocracy sought to retain him in permanent tutelage . Neither revived by Constans
the African nor the " Syrian " house was sympathetic (65o) towards this belated Hellenism . Finlay may be armies and correct or merely fanciful in suggesting that the PrieSts.
'1 Roman " Empire ended in the fall of the Heracliads, and that Leo III. opens the Byzantine epoch properly so called. But the spirit of the Iconoclasts is above all things Roman in the true sense ; and their natural yet practical and worldly piety swept away the cobwebs of dialectic, and tore the ascetic from his dreamy lair . This hostile attitude towards orthodoxy marks both Constantines, whose aims seem so unlike, yet were so much akin . The ecclesiastical influence succeeds civilian or ministerial control ; and issues in strange forms when it reaches the lowest and most ignorant order in the State. We may believe the mutiny of the '1 Anatolics " to represent the new and self-conscious importance of the provincial armies, or a rising engineered by a crafty priesthood, to thwart by parcelling out the central authority. It may look backward to the German armies of Vitellius marching southward to occupy the capital, or forward into the superstition of the Middle Ages . But in any event the incident is curious, and I venture to note it with some care as an evidence of both these tendencies,as a proof of the new alliance of the soldier and the monk, against a power which demanded the subordination of Army and Church alike to the impersonal State : for Constantine IV . is fighting against the clerical feudalism of the West. The story is told by Theophanes (who copies the lost part of John Malala ?), with the naive and impressive coolness of the typical chronicler of 8e TOO Be%AaTOS Tlo'v 'AvaToXucc@v [first reference in Theophanes] ;XOov ev XPv6ooroXei XeyovTes o"TC eis Tnv TptaSa vrto-Te~io uev- ToOS Tpeis 6T+o aev. 'ETapaX9rt . o Kwva-TapTFvos o"TC ,uovos 4v eo-Teujcevos of ~e a~eac~oi ovSeutav a$av eiXov, K. a7rovTettAas 6eocStvPov 7raTPirc~ov
_
90
CONSTITU'.PIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. n
Te miazttaory Tov Koaoveias erporva"a-ro awroug, Eraevea-as aVTovs. sevoll (670): , Ti ;ro'aEc armies and Kay e1a~3EV Ta vr~oWTeFa aUTiw Tou avEX9EFv & priests. K. /6ETa -rig 2;v'/K'XY%TOU RovXeu6aa-0ac K. 7rotic-at TO '
'
eEYI~U.aaUTWV X .
amrepav ev
'
'
Eu 9 ecvs
p' ' ' ' ' ' ' o e O ~~OUIDKLO'Ev Qa6l~ EUS aUTOUS E
XUKals, K . TOUTO IS OvTeq K.
EIVIXe0v ev 0OVVYJ elq Ta 2Ota .
KaTata-XUv0evTes
O Se' 8a6L'XeUg TOUQ a0EX(POUs
The narrative of Zonaras is but a classical re-writing of this simple story. We may notice one or two points of interest : (I) The religious motive of the sedition ; (a) the guileful policy of the emperor, who can only get his way by craft, like Heraclius I. in the matter of Butelinus or Priscus, or like Severus Alexander himself, who can only punish military leaders by a delusive honour ; (3) the consultation of the Senate, which, whether to decide of itself or merely ratify a sovereign's decision, is always to the fore in the matter of disputed succession. We may note that the two brothers were actually associated with Constantine IV., appear together on coins, and receive jointly the letter of Pope Agatho. It is therefore not unfair to style them Heraclius IV. and Tiberius IV. ; and thus six rulers of this once detested name held the honours at least of empire in Byzantium, while usurpers assumed it like the titles Antoninus or Flavius to secure allegiance . § 5. The attentive enmity which looked askance Imperial prestige at the Heraclian family was distracted by the MahoIV. metan siege of the capital, the success of Constan(6of C tine IV., the tributary vassalage of the Caliphate, and the marvellous recovery throughout East and West alike of imperial prestige . Distant Indian tribes had sent gifts and felicitations to Heraclius after his Persian triumph ; and now, although Spain was lost, envoys come with tribute and homage from Lombard and Italian . Even in that dull age there is clearly some dim recognition of the new and beneficent role of the empire. The city of Constantine was nearer an acknowledged hegemony over Western aVTOU EPPLVOK07rv0'ev.
w.
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
91
Europe than she will ever be again. Not yet have Imperial the exploits of Charles Martel and the alliance of papal u'eCIp Rome and the Franks turned attention to the newer (68o).
champion of Christendom. The loss of Spanish seaports did little harm to the imperial tradition ; and the historians of Gaul and Spain still turn loyal and admiring glances Eastwards. Isidorus, writing of the Gothic monarchy which supplanted the empire, speaks as if the sovereignty still belongs to the latter ; the kingship is a subordinate lieutenancy ; "fruiturque hadenus inter regis infulas et opes largas Imperd felicitate secura." When for the second time under the Heracliad dynasty the Caliphate pays rather than receives tribute, and John the Patrician, called Pitzigaudes, has successfully arranged a lasting peace (apxatoyevlls, says Theophanes, Tits woXrrelw cc . 7roXU7rClP0Q - . oraaTeiav elpivrlv cPvXaTTea-eat), the allegiance of the Occident revives : TaO-ra iAa00'v7-eg ol -ra Tcrre'pia 01K0VVT(F9' jUepij, 3 -re Xa7ayov 7-@v 'A,84 WV K. 01 6'lre'Keiva ap
T 104 69 e'~ajoXot 76K. 7aa--raXJ0L K. 01 e'~()X(oTaTot T(ov ?rpog
T71v JU'Ttv e0v@v, Sta 7rjoe6#euTivv Ja)joa TV ,8aa-Aei aTetXavTes eiprlvtrcilv vpos az'Tous aya7rilv xvpwO~val 11"'o-arTo ; ei~as ouv o B . Tais a0Tlov a17'T6Tlv 6KVPWG-6Kai orpos avTovs Seo-oroTUCiiv eip4vrlv . Kat syeveTo aaeptavia ,aeyaXij Ev -re T~ 'Ava-roap cc . ev Tn Duv6t . In the version of Anastasius the last phrases run : 11 Annuens itaque postula-
tionibus eorum confzrznavit edam circa illos donatoriam pacem, et facta est securitas magna in Oriente nec non
in Occidente ."-Yet the duel was only suspended, not J II hostile settled : the reign of Justinian II. recalls the earlier to offcial Ca;sars in their suspicion and arbitrary treatment of class (690). the higher, that is, the official class. For the first time we read of bad ministers, like Tigellinus or Cleander, of illegal penalties, imprisonments, confiscations,-among which, perhaps, the most notable was the whipping of Anastasia, the empress-mother, by Stephen the Persian, chief eunuch or Kisla Agha of the palace (Tou Se i6ao-Aetos aroJrlocrtcravros tcaTeTOx,ueoaev o ayplos B~p etceivos . . . Trtv Avyov-TTav prat-
-
92
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
T. II. hostile SiK@s Sc' aglvwv jeaar-rcym(Tat, loris vel habenis verberare) . to official This minister is represented as a truly Egyptian taskclasa (690). master for the public works on which the emperor, true to the tradition of his name, had set his mind (TOUS lmv O'1repas al'KI~Flv 00K ;/pKei-m aXXa K. ac0o#0XEFv au TOW Te K. Tour e7rio-Ta-ras). He incurred the detestation of the "civil" class and made the emperor detested (eis d7rav To ?roarriKov vrXj0os ;roaaa KaKa svJe
s
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
93
more explicit statement : o-TpaT>>yov 'AvaToais FK- imperial oresc7rec OeoSWpov Twv ,8ao-Am v xp,1AaT(ov ratiuav To v control of ,finance. e7riKa ;v TOripcov. Suidas (s.v. Justinian) gives him the same title, and it seems clear that in the growing preoccupation with matters religious and ecclesiastical, the ',Sacred Home" of the emperor borrowed a clerical designation for his steward. The ordinary revenue and general care of finance fell to the new office of 11 Logothete," accountant rather than comptroller (for the Heraclians were their own ministers of the Exchequer and lords of the Treasury). Both Suidas and Nicephorus call him Ticv SquoTiWv aoyta-TJ7V ov To cSriuiZes aoyoOeTi6 yevtKov e7roirto-ev=appellavit . Zonaras (who is clearly engaged in finding an elegant paraphrase for the rude, common narrative which lies behind all these writers) has of Stephen, 6aK6XXaptos ?rpoe/3AOn, and of "Theodosius " (as he styles the monk) yevtKov o B. ;rpoe,8aXero .-The other point is the illegal exactions (eiKn K. a7rpo(Pa6l6T(oV a7raIT4o-G9 K. eKTayas K. Sniueu('W 7roiouu.eYov) in which Theodotus revelled : it is expressly remarked that his victims were the inhabitants of the capital not the revenue-agents (oVK eK Twv StOLVITiov )uovov aXAa K. FK 'TWv T~g -xoXewS o1KnTOPWv) . Here Nicephorus
renders the latter by Tous u7r' avTov, either his own bailiff who could not make up the proper amount or, widely, those under his direct jurisdiction . Clearly his authority was arbitrarily extended to those normally outside its scope.
6. 1 have dwelt at length on this remarkable Ministerial illustration of the new methods of government, and irrespon"bility
have perhaps unduly encroached on a section set apart for considering the ministers or Bureaux of the later empire . But the whole passage (i n the general o~
obscurity) sheds a flood of light upon the unhappy
relations of prince and people, which fiscal exaction and ministerial irresponsibility were creating. We must complete the picture by disclosing the discreditable duties of the urban prefect : o e7rapXos
revolt of : magnates of centrar centralppo wer.
94 Miniateriad
revolt of magnata : overthrow con
lp
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF faa-AlKi
KeXe66-et
2rXeto rous
DIV. A
avjpas ev eiPKTais
KaTa0teia-as em Xpovous ( =for many years) Tr7peio-Oat ';re'7rotJ7K6. When Leontius, General of Greece, opened the Prwtorium, released the prisoners, and so overpowered Justinian , (A" D. 695)r this typical i Bastille " was found full of notable men and soldiers (TOUS Ka0etpyccevous avspas ?roXlous K. yevvaious a7OI f
K . OKTO)
XpOVWV E7KEKXftT,UFVOUS, TTpaTttoTas Tow
-iraetovas Tu7Xavov-rag) . It seems evident that Zonaras is led astray when he says, Tas Jnuoo-ias Jtappn~as elffras. The revolution with its curious watchwords, °I All Christians to Saint Sophia," « This is the day which the Lord hath made," was by no means unpopular ; but in origin and plan it was strictly aristocratic. It did not aim, as in old days, at the abolition of debt, the arming of slaves, the liberation of common criminals . Indeed, the Prxtorium was not the receptacle for ordinary misdemeanants ; nor was lengthy incarceration a favourite penalty either with ruler or subject . These prisoners confined for six or eight years (Leontius himself had been detained for three) comprised suspected aristocrats only.-The nominal cause of the rebellion is significant either of the wildness of popular rumour or the real madness which had seized the last Heracliad, as it seized Caius or Caracalla. He had ordered a general massacre of the city population, beginning from the Patriarch!-that Patriarch Callinicus who had, after a protest, meekly acquiesced in the demolition of a church with the words, Glory to God, who is always longsuffering ! (aveXO,uevto ?rav-rwre) . Two monks, friends of Leontius, are prime movers, and Callinicus comes into the baptistery, where the people had assembled, to give a religious sanction and a Scripture text to the insurrection . Thus the event of 695, with all its dismal consequence, was a noble and a clerical movement (though behind it lay the military influence of a late general of the Anatolics) ; it betrays the unpopularity of the
s~-
CH. IV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
95
stern and wilful emperor . The mob of the capital and the official class were about to throw off the yoke. Like J eshurun, they had prospered and grown
comfortable.
-rir
-rou era-rpos
Twenty-two
years
minigteriai irresponsiamity'
revolt of dis- magnates : overthrow of
of
order must elapse before they again acknowledge centratpower. a ruler ; and this episode is important enough to merit special treatment . We may here dismiss the general political tendencies under the later Heracliads . Justinian II. is loudly accused of upsetting his father's foreign and domestic policy (Niceph ., i'7ro
-r~s
E1p,1mS
Eveica,
K. TJ7s
aXXr/s
vroarrmits e0'raVas 8Pa,6eu06'Vra Steo--rpeoe . Zonaras, avTo,8ov'X(og T~ &ot"'0-6c KCXPrtaevos 7roaaois -r~v °Pcouaicov ityeaovtav icarcois ?repte,8aaev, xiv.
22).
We
will
not
here discuss the wisdom of his haughty behaviour to the Caliphate . He certainly estranges the support of the Church and the nobility (now largely warlike in temper), and thus a union of the two influences, joined by the fickle mob, was fatal in a moment to a dynasty which had ruled with glory for eightyfive years. This "round" in the long encounter ended disastrously for the central power ; and the work of rebuilding is all to be done anew by the next house.
7. I cannot leave the Heracliads without noticing Triumph the curious and fanciful speculations of Finlay upon (700) itilian and
the " Extinction of the Roman power." To him, the co..., Roman Empire really ends with Justinian II., and oligarchy. the rest of our period is buried in pure Byzantinism . Heraclius must have "regarded himself as of pure Roman blood" ; and this century witnesses the gradual decay of the "few remains of Roman principles of administration ." The aristocracy lose the memory of former days and a nobler tradition. A long and violent struggle is carried on between emperor and nobles, ~' representing the last degenerate remains of the Senate" ; so " counsels are distracted and energy paralysed." It began under Maurice, and underlay the whole history of the
a
96 Triumph (700) of the cividiani and
official ozigarehy,
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Heraclian house. This opposition was more Oriental than Roman in character ; and it was ,imbued with
the semi-Hellenic culture, which had grown up during the Macedonian supremacy." Both Heraclius and Constans III., in their scheme of removing the capital to Carthage, Rome, or Syracuse, had endeavoured to curtail its dangerous and anti-Roman power . They entertained the vain hope of reforming the republic (on a purely Roman basis," so as "to counteract the power of the Greek nationality, which was gaining ground in Church and State ." The contest ended in the 1' destruction of all influence that was purely Roman." The result was to establish a "mere arbitrary despotism," differing little from the familiar Eastern type, and to upset all those ',fundamental institutions" and that systematic character, which had so often enabled the State to rise superior to the accident of a Nero or a Phocas. -Such in brief outline is the view propounded in a retrospect of the seventh century. And the historian seeking illumination in the darkness can only be grateful for the boldness of such a venturesome pioneer . But the estimate is coloured, and perhaps corrupted by an exaggerated meaning attached to the terms Macedonian, Roman, Greek. He is tempted to give to the Hellenes of the days of Justinian and Heraclius the same acute self-consciousness and national solidarity, as he was fain to discover in their descendants during the war of Liberation and under the Bavarian Protectorate. He is continually whetting our curiosity by hints of the unanimous and precise public opinion which arrayed itself consciously against Roman rule. This thesis cannot be maintained ; I need not here repeat the arguments . It is impossible to see the same irreconcilable and united front shown to Byzantine monarch as to later Turkish Sultan . I am well aware of the existence of disaffected and indeed disintegrating elements ; but they were not solid or self-
CH. TV
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-700)
97
conscious, and they were certainly not exclusively Hellenic . Nor was the Senate of Byzantine patricians really imbued with a tradition of aloofness and opposition borrowed from the older Roman Curia ; nor with a Macedonian culture -,-nor finally with a pure Hellenic orthodoxy in the matter of religious belief.-The empire had created a ruling and official class, far more open and democratic than exists today in Western Europe, except perhaps in France ; but rapidly acquiring the features of a powerful caste, almost of a hereditary noblesse. A period of security following successful wars will increase the conceit and pretensions of such a close corporation. And into it was drawn or drained all riches and ability and all religious influence ; for the patriarch and the monk are integral factors in the situation . Justinian 11 . had tried unwisely to humble this official pride ; but the emperor and his immediate and personal executive stood isolated, and he had lost the early popular affections which had so often supported persecuting sovereigns against the Senate . The aristocracy, neither Greek nor Macedonian nor Roman, but just a natural product of an orderly State, triumphs on this signal occasion ; and the monarchy suffers eclipse for quite a quarter of a century. One point only need we add ; the new nobility is largely militant, the profession of arms revives once more, and the Byzantine aristocrat does not lurk in a Bureau, but serves in the Thematic regiments. Elsewhere we must trace the vitality of the military element ; here we will say in bidding farewell to an obscure but memorable epoch, that the Heraclians fell before the machinations of an aristocracy which had drawn to itself the strength of civil and warlike virtue, and was reinforced by the religious sympathy and active support of the clerical world. VOL . 11 .
G,
Triumph (700 Of the "ii and oligarchy.
i I
CHAPTER V PERIOD OF ANARCHY AND REVIVAL OF CENTRAL POWER UNDER ARMENIAN AND MILITARY INFLUENCE A . THE REJECTED CANDIDATES (695-717)
Benefits 1. THE half-century covered by the reigns of conferred by III. and his son Constantine V. was without doubt Leo the Isauriam : the most critical period in Byzantine, perhaps in ,~ek °f European, history. These two princes, standing out Elective
xomrcky.
,
clearly from a grey background as rulers and personalities, deferred for seven centuries the triumph of Islam in Constantinople. They restored solidity to an incoherent realm formed of detached patches without continuous tradition or territory . They gave back dignity to the central authority . Since the death of Justinian I., this had been helpless or quiescent ; or else had struggled against the forces of separatism, armed with great social influence ; or (as the sole condition of a temporary power) appealed to a scanty remnant of " national " spirit, and pro-
claimed a Holy War to save the commonwealth and its creed. Throughout Byzantine history the homegovernment takes its colour and temper from foreign circumstances. Left in peace without, the administration moves along of itself on the archaic grooves. Like any other civilised society whose aim it is to preserve the past, not to destroy the present, it was exposed to the various frailties and abuses which beset peaceful States. Wealth centred in the hands of a few ; privilege could defy the uniform and equitable action of law ; office became a prize ; and the members of the hierarchy protected each other and set a gulf between the rulers and the ruled. 98
CH. v
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (695-717)
99 The sinews of the State were relaxed ; barbarians Bemfw fought its battles and the commonalty became emferrea by pauperised or enslaved . From time to time, the the empire was awakened from this corrupt and drowsy perik Of torpor by real peril. It became once more a cam Etectzze p Monarchy. of honest and hard-working soldiers under a chosen
and approved leader . The minor figures, the irresponsible courtier, the obstinate permanent official, retire into obscurity ; and we once more read of the designs, the exploits, the failures of the hero . Such a crisis had arisen in the reign of Phocas ; such a revival had occurred under Heraclius and his house . The State had no time to sink into a slovenly peace, when the misrule of Justinian II. and the 11 twenty years' anarchy " blotted out the beneficial recovery of the Heraclian age and gave some able soldier the whole task to do over again. On the extinction of a recognised line, power went back again to its original source ; the people resumed the forfeited right and reissued it. The years of turmoil between the first dethronement of Justinian and the accession of Leo were by no means ill-spent. If a State determines that its titular head shall be also its generalissimo and chief administrator, if it starts with the curious democratic presumption that any man of any rank ought to be able to rise to this height, the discovery of this best man must needs be a violent and a costly process . The leadership of a herd is settled by a combat, brute force, or craft . The presidency of a republic falls either to a general who "pronounces " against a corrupt government of chicanery, or to an obscure and harmless nominee who is agreed upon by compromise . Or again, as in the United States, the prize is won by a genuine effort of popular interest, and business is suspended every five years that the State may choose its premier. The theory of elective monarchy is, like many theories, unassailable by logic : if men are equal and merit alone should be rewarded, tried com-
-
100
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
Benefits petence alone hold sway, the first place, whether conferred by of dignity or responsibility, should be thrown open the be
isaurians : perils °f Bleetim Monarchy.
to all . No sacrifice of domestic peace should grudged if the best man can be secured. In practice, it is the most abnormal and conspicuously unsuc-
cessful form of government : it is unintelligible to the vast majority of mankind, who are patrimonialists, never understanding a divided and impersonal control . It rouses the fires of envy and jealousy against triumphant merit (which in the happiest and most Yet virtuous community is always unpopular) . at times this struggle to secure the best man has been an indispensable expedient, especially where the State is no longer a safe and continuous realm of peace and order, but an oasis in the desert, an island threatened on all sides by the sea and often nearly submerged. Uncertainty as to the fundamental character of the chief office ran through the imperial history of Rome. Was Augustus a military leader, or the president of a free State? or was he some untrained youth to whom rank and power came as a birthright? No final answer was at any time forthcoming. No definite status was ever formally allotted to him ; and on his shoulders the whole weight rested, the credit or discredit, the success or failure. We can trace without difficulty how the balance swung at different times in favour of the dictatorship, the civil presidency, the patrimony . But the three were never expressly discriminated ; and this doubtful character marks the entire record . The § 2. A prince born }n the purple, like his forere"utzons off fathers for three generations, had been tried and 695, 698.
found wanting . Justinian II. enjoys with Michael V. the rare distinction of dethronement by the popular voice . It is often difficult in other transfers of the throne to detect the real feeling of the people, or the inclination of the still powerful populace of the capital . But as to the downfall of Justinian there could be no mistake . Leontius (who
~cs
CH. v
`
THE ROMAN ~ EMPIRE (695-717) l ^ ` 101
believed the emperor's commission as governor of The Hellas was a death-warrant) presented himself just . at the right moment, and was at once a popular 6s5luss ' favourite . With consummate ease the bloodless revolution of 695 was effected . Neither the State prison nor the tyrant's palace was properly guarded . The illustrious captives were set free by a transparent ruse ; the palace entered by a few hundred determined men . No resistance was offered and Leontius was lenient to the prostrate emperor . Once more a general of tried experience had ousted an effete stock ; the rules had been strictly observed in one of the approved methods of changing sovereigns. The sole event of Leontius' brief reign was the African war, in which Carthage was captured, recovered, and lost again. Leontius might well have used the
humorous words of an old commander in the third century : « You have lost a good general and gained a very indifferent emperor." He had fought bravely in the early years of Justinian II . ; but he could not leave his uncertain throne ; and John, a eunuch and patrician, after a first success, was forced to retreat in disgrace . In Crete the troops mutiny, laying their disgrace to their general or the emperor. Absimarus, "governor of Cilicia" (Abulpharagius), drungaire of the Cibyrxot Theme (at that time exercising his marine supervision at Corycus), is saluted emperor, and a Gotho-Greek is seated on the throne of the Caesars. John is massacred ; the foreign guards at Blachern Wall are bribed ; the city is taken ; Leontius deposed and sent noseless to a monastery, and his partisans are whipped and exiled . The new emperor began a reign of great promise. He placed his brother Heraclius in command of all the Asiatic troops, now almost entirely cavalry ; he is povo0-TpaTJ7yos 7rarTwv Tiov Ka,8aaapcxiw 9euaTWV (Theoph.), or a-Tpa-rrVyo'v ToO 'AYaTOXIKOU a-rpaTOU (Niceph.) . He relies only on his own family, and he is justified in his choice. In a
war of revenge, Heraclius penetrates into Com-
-
Of
102 ` ^
j
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
IKy . n
The magene and slays 200,000 Moslems : later in 703 he revolutions of twice defeats Azar in Cilicia, in the second engage695, 698. ment accounting for 12,000 men . But in the failure of a direct successor or a recognised line, the throne was within the grasp of any one, however obscure, who had the hardihood to seize it. An Armenian Bardanes (or Vardan), son of a patrician Nicephorus, but otherwise without repute, believed the promise of soothsayers and attempted a rising . He was shorn and banished to Cephallenia . Justinian II . now returns by the aid of Terbelis " Caasar," king of the Bulgarians ; just as later we shall see this very Bardanes supported by the Khazars, and Leo III. himself saluted emperor by the infidel troops of Maslema before the walls of Amorium . Vengeance of § w. With this unhappy return of a madman the sn recuperative process is arrested throughout the restored
(710).
Herachus, the gallant defender of the empire . eastern frontier (if such can still be said to exist) is seized in Thrace and hung ; his death leaves Asia Minor open to assault, and Justinian is too busy with his personal vengeance to attend to the defence of his realm . It is difficult to know who supported the mad emperor during his restoration (705-71'), after he had quarrelled with his new and disgraceful allies . Six years are filled with cruelty at home and defeat abroad . His only enemies were his own subjects. The capture of Tyana by the Saracens placed all Asia Minor at their mercy. One band of armed raiders insolently advanced to Chrysopolis and returned scathless loaded with booty . Justinian was defeated in person (708) by Terbelis, shobked at the treatment which his insane son-in-law meted to his own subjects . The two incredible punitive expeditions against Ravenna and Cherson completed the picture of the reign and filled up the cup of Justinian . Against .this latter city, to which the Roman Empire honourably preserved autonomy till the middle of the next- century, he is said to have despatched
ex. v
THE . ROMAN EMPIRE (695-717)
103
a monstrous armada of ioo,ooo men . Elias a Vengeance of spathaire commands them, and carries with him Bar- Justinian restored
danes from Cephallenia to a safer and more distant (71o). exile. Summary vengeance is executed on the chief inhabitants for their treatment of the dethroned Justinian ; but its comparative mildness exasperated the emperor, who threatened the returning squadron with the same awful penalties they had been too timid to inflict . He had now no supporters left ; and his end was a mere matter of time. His doom was perhaps delayed by the terrible storm which burst over the returning convoys and buried 63,000 (if we can credit the enormous total) under the waters of the Euxine. At this catastrophe, which must have denuded the empire of half its troops, Justinian exulted, as if over a notable defeat of his enemies. The garrison and citizens of Cherson, realising their common danger, now revolt : Elias refuses the purple, Vardan the Armenian exile accepts, Revolt ofthe and takes the name Philippicus. The Khazars help Armenian dan. them to arrest and imprison a feeble force sent by the furious prince ; and the expedition sets sail for the capital, and overcomes a pretence at resistance . Elias, whose children Justinian had poniarded himself in their mother's arms, had the supreme satisfaction of cutting off his head and despatching the gory trophy to Italy. Tiberius, the little son of Justinian by his Bulgarian spouse, already associated in the empire, was cruelly put to death, and the most sanguinary interlude in the whole of Byzantine history was over. It cannot be said that Vardan the Armenian justified his election as Philippicus. Of his brief reign no event is recorded, save the dismal series of raids by Terbelis on the North, by the Saracens on the East. A facile speaker, he never put his thoughts or words into practice. Like many another parvenu, he believed the chief dignity to be a place of pleasure and repose. Immersed in the
104
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . n
mwitofthe pleasures of the circus or the table, he spent the Amman hoards of the Heraclian house in foolish waste. vardan. After seventeen months' reign he was displaced by the most singular plot in all Byzantine history.
Civilians § 4. It is the purpose of our inquiry, while passing soft by lightly over the familiar historical events and record skort*ht of
of fruitless or successful campaigns, to attempt to military oon*ratoro. grasp the secret motive, the hidden incentive of the conspiracies or revolutionary movements which from time to time altered the person or the ideal of Cxsarism. Family jealousy, a courtier's intrigue, a general's contempt, a people's indignation,-these are some of the causes which transferred the throne. But the conspirators of the year 713 would seem animated by no spirit but righteous anger at incompetence. They determined to remove the head of the State : they made no provision, selfish or patriotic, for the appointment of a successor . The ringleaders in this short-sighted plot were George Buraphus the patrician, Count of the Obsician Theme, with Theodorus Myacius, also a patrician . With incredible boldness they seemed to have despatched a sergeant and a few soldiers to seize the emperor as best they could, and disqualify him for holding office. With a facility equally incredible, the band entered the palace unchallenged, found the emperor enjoying a drunken siesta, enveloped him in a mantle, hurried him off to the changing-room (opvaTOUpcov) of the Green faction in the Hippodrome, and deprived him of sight. Their mission over, the party dispersed : when the unfortunate man was found late in the afternoon bewailing his fate, neither the official class nor the public betrayed any sympathy, consternation, elation, or regret . No one thought of insulting the fallen prince or of defending his cause . He was quietly thrust into the background and disappears from history . No one appeared to seize the vacant throne ; the city was utterly unprepared for the plot, the conspirators for
t,
.
x CH. v
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its success . There ensued a scene singular and civilians perhaps unique in our history. People, churchman -oflt by and magnate meet in solemn conclave at
skortsight of Saint military
Sophia's ; and elect with unanimous voice the Secre- eons~irators . tary of State (,7rpW-roao-jK&rcv) Artemius, changing his ' name to an old and meritorious wearer of the purple, Anastasius. The first act of a brief sovereignty, not altogether devoid of dignity or merit, was the punishment of George and Theodore, whose amazing folly (or pure unselfishness) had opened up the way to the throne ; they lose their eyes, and retire into exile at Thessalonica . Like Tiberius III . (Apsimar), Anastasius had the makings of a capable sovereign . His election represented #
j
the triumph of the civilians ; the military had struck erisak of home but could not follow up the blow, and the army under Theodosius fruits of the victory fell to the rival department . in
It is useless to speculate on the cause of this miscarriage . But for two years the military leaders looked on and held their peace ; and the ephemeral civilian was overthrown by the same mutiny in the ranks that had overthrown Leontius seventeen years before. Once more a fleet was despatched against the Saracens ; this time to the east. Once more a commander named John became unpopular with his men,-no doubt because being both a deacon and the imperial treasurer (yev. Xoyo8 .) he represented in their eyes an enemy of the military caste. The Obsician soldiers are the chief mutineers ; and it may well be that they had not forgotten their leader's abortive attempt two years before . Returning to the capital in disorder and without a captain, they seize on Theodosius, a harmless tax-collector or revenue-officer, at Adramyttium, and half in sport and delighted with his obvious shyness and terror, compel him to assume the purple. 5. Theodosius had been reluctantly pushed into success which in his heart he bitterly regretted . The garrison at the palace of Blachern had again
106 n9'f success Leo HL : support of Islam.
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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proved venal and had let in the Obsician malcontents, who were bent on avenging the failure of 713 . Anastasius II. retired to Nice and entrenched himself there ; after a fight in which 7000 fell in " civil war, he abdicates, takes orders, and retires to Thessalonica. Then ensued a brief reign of pious incompetence ; the clergy at home and the Bulgarians were propitiated by lavish gifts, the latter even with some cession of Roman ground ; the Saracens invade under the Caliph's brother, and advancing with impunity into the heart of Asia Minor, lay siege to Amorium . Two linesmen from Germanicia in Commagene, Leo (Conon),Artavasdus, general of the Armeniacs, make a compact to relieve the State. Just a century later there will be a similar accord between three rough warriors, another Leo, Michael, and Thomas . The critical state of the realm may be judged from the offer of surrender to Maslema, which came from the people of the interior provinces ; uncertain (amid the change of policy and continual forays) of which kingdom they were subjects, they besought him to accept them as vassals (7raparcaWvres a'rov Aa,8eiv au'Tous) . It is true that there is another side to the picture ; on the institution of the kharidj, known as capitation tax, among the Moslem, many are said to have fled into the Roman State still orderly and moderately rated. But at this time the Roman government was raising revenue from its subjects without protecting them ; and the current of emigration set in the other way. The officials of the capital knew that nothing was to be hoped from the amiable usurper, everything to be feared from a resolute leader of troops . Leo got rid of the half-friendly, half-hostile overtures of the Caliph's brother, opened negotiations with the ministers, allowed Theodosius to retire thankfully into clerical life at Ephesus, and won almost without a blow, a murder, or a threat, the most important of all the civil wars of Rome.
CH. v
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It was clear to all that unless a strong hand and a dynastic system came to the rescue, the commonwealth would become the alternate prize of the wily courtier and the bluff soldier,-or rather in turn the sport of the civilian and the undisciplined troops. The strangest alliance in all Roman history decided the fate of the empire. A Roman imperator is saluted by the Moslem who were blockading him ; and the cry was caught up by the citizens of Amorium, wafted to the capital, and echoed (though not without misgiving) in every heart . The reign of the great Armenian heretics had begun. . The circumstances are singularly like those This which attended the elevation of the Flavian house development in the first, of the African house of Severus at the analogous to earlier close of the second, century. In Nero, Commodus, revolutions : Justinian II., we have the ignorant, highly-strung, Roman tradition overwrought purple-born, whose promising career revived by ends in horror and ruin . We have the ship of State, plebeians and its born pilot proved incapable, rolling in the trough of the seas ; timid hands stretch out to the helm ; and one after another is discarded with more or less violence and damage . Then the man of the hour comes to the front and rights the vessel which is nearly foundering . It took less than two years to discover Vespasian, less than six months to bring in Severus . But the long-drawn agony of the empire stretched after the first dethronement of Justinian into more than twenty years. Yet the result in all three cases was the same ; a soldier of simple life, austere and puritan tastes, and fixed purpose, comes to reform a moribund and useless government. Caesarism went back once more to the rudiments ; tired of its car'icature it sought a genuine representative 'among the people. In a feudal country the chief place would be a prize contended for by patrician families ; in the more democratic atmosphere of the empire, noble birth was perpetually on its trial, and when it ceased to play its part
108 development
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
was ruthlessly ousted.
Div . A
The saviour of society was
always an upstart and a parvenu, sought out in to ewer the lowest ranks and trained in the school of want "o"ttons : and adversity. The reign and policy of Leo the Roman
tradition a
a
Armenian are familiar to many who know little of the obscurer parts of Byzantine history-a military, a religious, and a legal reorganisation . The Roman memories and traditions were not yet extinct. It was not too late to rekindle the sacred fires. It was immaterial by whose hand the pious work was done. Dacian peasants had finished their task from Maximin and, Decius to Diocletian and Justinian . The pure Greek race had always been excluded from the chief post ; admirable bureaucrats (as the Moslem found) and theologians, they could administer and codify, but could not initiate or drive. The « Roman " government, even under the most religious and orthodox emperors, was never really in sympathy with the great ecclesiastical system which in turn supported, coerced, or cringed to it. Something of the spirit of Diocletian is to be found in Leo ; an intense distrust of an imperium in imperio. He had the simple faith of a mountaineer ; somewhat later he would have been an Albigensian or a Huguenot : debarred from political action, he might have been a Luther . Some see in him a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Unitarian ; he clearly represents an afterwave of that great monotheistic revival which spread east and west from Arabia in the seventh century. Yet he is a convinced and believing Christian, and his legislation gives adequate proof of his sincerity . B. RELIGIOUS REFORM AND POLITICAL REORGANISATION (7I7-775)
ob8eurztyand 1. From a literary point of view the epoch of bias I Win, tine Iconoclasts is a wilderness ; our chief if not our Annalbte. sole authorities are Nicephorus the patriarch and
CH. v
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-775)
109
that confessor Theophanes who as a boy under obscurity and Constantine V. mounted those stupendous icebergs bias 7ian' which enabled men to compute time by the Great Annahsts. Frost. Their tale is told by enemies and perhaps calumniators . It is hard to reconcile the annals of two fierce yet incapable tyrants, persecuting their own subjects and flying before the foe, with the actual revival to be traced somewhat later in every branch of the administration and national life. Can such a recovery be traced to the initiative of cowardly and cruel monsters, enemies of all religion, as relentless as any pagan emperor before them in heaping insult and torment on God's saints ? The legend certainly acquires strength and circumstantial detail as time goes on : Nicephorus and Theophanes say nothing of the burning of the Octagon Library ; Zonaras and Georgius repeat the story and add the incredible fact that guards stationed at the doors saw to it that the professors perished with their parchments. Such a war against the literati recalls a similar crusade by Tsin-Hwang-Ti (c. 212 B.C.), first emperor of united and centralised China. It may be best to neglect the personal history of these two determined princes, to let events and the later condition of the empire tell its own tale. The scheme to keep the emperor a respectable nonentity (like a Merovingian or Japanese '1 Mikado " or Nepaulese prince) had broken down . Bulgars on one side, Arabs on the other, recalled to the affrighted Senate and bureaucrats dim legends of the terrible days of Phocas and Heraclius, when Avars and Persians had looked across the Propontis at each other's camp-fires . Anastasius II. (a clear-sighted and industrious civilian) had already begun to prepare for the coming attack from Islam, popular and no doubt Leo was indebted to his careful approval at provision, for which, like Solomon, he obtained all Personal the credit . Personal monarchy was restored in obe- Ruin. dience to the popular will ; for democracy is a good
110 Popular approval at personal
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
biv. n
monarchist . There are no ministers, no intrigues, no side-influences to chronicle during these two reigns. The methods of Iconoclasm were direct ; and Leo and Constantine went straight to their aim . So strong, indeed, were they that they could afford to despise a rising of many nobles and officials ; and so intrepid that they never hesitated to include them in a religious persecution . The great Themes were divided out among four or five trusty followers or relatives, who remained long in office,-exerting the full powers that a viceroy can only enjoy under a centralised monarchy, feeling its way out of chaos towards a uniform administration . We have almost complete records (so ironical or tantalising is the muse of history) of the gradual estrangement and final rupture with the Papacy and the West ; ample detail of the inconclusive attacks or forays of Bulgarian and Caliph ; information far too full, minute, yet unconvincing, of the war instituted against superstition and monkish celibacy . But , the legal, military, financial reforms are obscure,and in these departments for our purpose lies the interest of this strange supremacy of Armenia, now become the heir of Roman tradition . It is very true of the epoch of Iconoclasm that a special study of its gross facts and events leaves one in utter ignorance of its real tendency or achievement . As with some faint star we must look away from the object of vision to detect it at all. We can only know it by examining the condition of the monarchy (in which Rome to the end recapitulated her own national story) before and after these important but puzzling reigns. Contrast the reign of Irene with those of the two usurpers who ruled a century before . We can see now what forces must have been at work to make this possible ; an Athenian lady administered the empire by the help of a few household eunuchs, without question at home and not without -credit abroad .
CH. v
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-775)
ill
2. A rough summary of the events of these some evena reigns may be of help. The immediate Saracen in Leo's reign peril was averted by the defeat of the assailants in (717-740). the great siege of Byzantium in 718 ; the Caliph died of grief at the miscarriage of the Armada . Seven years pass in comparative security for the Asiatic provinces. In 726 Leo, who had already begun to persecute Jews and Montanists, turns his attention to the cult of images . In the next year the Moslem invasions begin again and continue as
an annual border foray : Nice was attacked in vain . The Octagon Library was burnt in 73o, deliberately or by accident, with or without its professors, according as we prefer to accept legend or interpret the character of Leo. For six years (733-739) there is almost no foreign news, save the tidings of discontent and alienation in Italy,-a part of the Byzantine annals which is a special study of itself and seems to have little or no connection with political changes in the east . Still the Saracens overran Asia Minor, and in 739 both emperors in person led their troops to a successful engagement in Phrygia. The next year Leo died, followed in 7411 by Charles Martel and Gregory III. The interest of the reign is curiously divided between the circumstances of the separatist movement in Italy and a more or less avowed persecution of orthodoxy at home. Once the predominant Armenian influence, military and protestant, had been defied . Whether a national rising or a religious protest, the revolt of Cosmas with the Greek insurgents caused some anxiety to the central government . When the fleet of Agallianus (-roup,uapX,7s -riov `E71XaSciaov) was defeated and its leader drowned, Cosmas and Stephen are taken to the capital and publicly beheaded ; the reign of Byzantine leniency had not yet begun. The elevation by Sergius of a phantom-emperor in Sicily under the now canonised name of Tiberius belongs to the western history of the empire, but may
-
r
I. Y2
E 's ,
3
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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some events be noted as a symptom of the dissolution which Z0* (71 7 "'0' threatened the whole. The first years of Leo III. 4 ). had been disquieted by suspicion of Anastasius II., still living in retirement ; his predecessor Philippicus and his successor Theodosius being both alive. We have another interesting proof of the demoralising effect of civil strife . The last Heracliad had allied with Bulgarians to regain his throne, and given Terbelis the title of Caesar . Cherson and Bardanes had invoked the aid of the Khazars ; and in a later conflict between Leo's son and, son-in-law we shall see both parties soliciting reinforcements from the infidels . Now Anastasius seeks help from Terbelis, is discovered and beheaded : there is one less in the number of surviving ex-emperors living in seclusion. By his death ends the most disastrous period for the Christian monarchy of Rome ; at no time before or since was the imperial person so unsafe . Maurice, it is true, had been murdered and Phocas had suffered for the crime. The obscure conspiracy of the soap-dish had ended the mysterious reign of Constans III . .But within the first twenty years of the eighth century, five crowned and anointed sovereigns had perished by violence . Justinian had celebrated his return by the massacre of the '1 lion and the adder," Leontius and « Aspimar " ; he himself with his little son and colleague Tiberius V. had been cut off in a righteous vengeance ; and in 719 the execution of Anastasius as a menace to the commonwealth might plead a similar justification .
Rebellion of § w. To what category are we to assign the notable Artamsdus : and serious sedition of Artavasdus the Armenian ? conflicting
accounts of Was it the effect of mere personal ambition or did C. Y. (750), it conceal a deeper motive? Was it merely the tentative of a sturdy general who felt that in the new order of things the throne was open to competition, and would be the prize not of the highest bidder but of the stoutest combatant ? Was there a relic of the old, primitive, and puzzling rule in
CH. v
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.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-775) 113 which folk-tales abound, which gives the royal suc- Rebelhon of cession to the penniless stranger-pilgrim married to Arta'+asdw : the king's daughter, rather than to the home-born conflictingof son? or did the partisans of Artavasdus believe C V (750). themselves to be fighting for some holy cause or principle ? At any rate, the pretender holds the capital city for perhaps two years (740-743) ; and even while the pope's legate is bidden observe a punctilious neutrality until the duel is decided, the pope himself dates his letters by the Armenian name that intervenes so strangely in the imperial list. Husband of Anna, Leo's daughter, Curopalat (a dignity throughout our period, 550-io8i, at least nominally next the throne), count of the turbulent Obsicians,-
he no doubt believed in the justice of his claim. His prime-minister was the patrician Baktage, also an Armenian ; and when the day was settled in favour of Constantine V. and the direct succession, Baktage was at once condemned to lose his head, whereas Artavasdus and his sons did not lose their eyes until they had essayed a fresh plot in vain . Thus the reign of Leo's son formally began three years after his father's death (743) and lasted on thirty-two years. As in his father's reign, a barren table of events can give a very poor clue to its meaning or importance . It would be .easy to interpret it, by strictly recording facts, as the most disastrous to the Roman world since the days of Heraclius : he at least shed the lustre of brilliant if futile heroism on his early days. Within, the unpopular creed of Iconoclasm, forced against the patient obstinacy of the people by every means of ruthless violence and martial law ; governors, mere partisans and mockers at order, justice, and piety ; abroad, Italy lost, the Exarchate overthrown, Rome and Catholicism irrevocably estranged, the Moslem exulting unpunished in yearly depredations and slave-raids ; Bulgarians insolent and aggressive ; personally, a superstitious and cruel tyrant full of VOL. 11 .
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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abominmbeuzon of magic and lechery, scarcely human in his excrements and Artavasdus : able predilections for the odours conflicting in conceivable sense a
accounts of C. V. (750) .
no of the stable, certainly Christian ; his pastime to yoke holy men with abandoned women and make the procession slowly parade the circus amidst the jeers of a time-serving mob . Fitting, indeed, that nature should add her catastrophes to the hideous tale of horrors in this reign of anti-Christ. The Great Frost (already spoken of) seemed, as in Norse legend, to herald the end of the world ; the Great Plague swept over the shrunken confines of the empire, halved the population of the capital and made the Peloponnese a desert. Yet to us who can read Byzantine annals with a wide survey of the whole span, it is not difficult to see that the Iconoclastic era was one of undeniable recovery ; and Finlay is perhaps not wholly wrong in believing it to be the dawn of the modern age, and incomparably the most important period in Rome's history .
4. On outward showing, indeed, the record is Summary of events chief sufficiently poor and inconclusive . Shortly after the (740-775).
downfall of Artavasdus (744) Sisinnius, the emperor's cousin, to whom he owed the throne, is disgraced and blinded ; in 746, some slight success was gained in distant Commagene ; i 7 47, the pestilence and brought back the pitiable ravaged the empire years before . In 750, days of 1ustinian just aoo gave new life to the the victory of the Abbassides powerful enemy of Caliphate, and stirred up a Frankish Mayor Rome : in the following year the Astolf put an displaced the Merovingian king, and . In end to the Exarchate in the capture of Ravenna Melitene, and next 759, the Caliph Almansor seizes and cuts to and Pamphylia Cilicia advances into year is the emperor . In 76o, a Roman army pieces loses two great Slavs, and defeated by personally officers in the battle, the JpoAou aoyoO~r-vr and the commander of the Thracesians . In 763, a welcome
CH. v 3
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717"(75)
115
victory over the Bulgarians is tarnished by unusual sum..mary of brutality in the treatment of captives ; they are chief handed over to the factions of the circus to kill. ~~~-775) . In 766, the Bulgarians retrieve their disgrace, and Constantine vents his wrath on his own subjects, persecuting and deriding the monks, while treating the great officials with a capricious cruelty, which might find a recent parallel in the madman Justinian II ., but at no other epoch in Byzantine history. He had been thoroughly aroused by a formidable plot the year previous, in which several chief and responsible ministers were implicated . The emperor in 767 demands Gisela, daughter of Pepin, .for his son Leo IV., with the old Exarchate for her dowry ; the proposal is rejected . (Had Constantine succeeded in his request the course of history might have been altered by a single marriage ; there would have been no Irene, no pretext for the assumption by Charles of the imperial title, perhaps instead a reconciliation of conflicting interest and Church usage.) Asia Minor was divided between three bluff and trusty henchmen of the emperor to persecute the orthodox as they listed and to repulse the Moslem ; chief among these was Lachanodracon . After a lull of some years, tidings arrived (772) of another great reverse ; the massed troops of those Asiatic generals are shamefully defeated at Syce, a maritime fortress in Pamphylia . In 774, the Moslem again lead in a contemptuous foray for kidnapping and plunder ; they seize 500 captives, but at Mopsuestia are attacked in ambush and lose double that number themselves. Constantine himself in the same year makes a great effort and puts 8o,ooo men into the field against the Bulgarians, a last enterprise, as events proved. This was in a great degree successful, and atoned in a measure for the northern humiliations and anxieties of his reign He was overtaken by death in while preparing 775 a second expedition. -
116
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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record of a Indirect ei§ 5. It is impossible to find here the de' ent$rely successful reign. Schlosser, Finlay, and to a certain against dais have appeared as apologists
¬'
j '
disappointing extent the prudent Bury, remit. for the character and policy of the Iconoclasts. The rancour of the two Church historians, both born in this reign (758), is quite apparent ; but we do not judge by their wealth of epithets, but by facts which cannot be gainsaid. Discord within, loss or disgrace without, one half of the empire abroad, one half of the home population estranged ; provinces given over to a brutal and violent soldiery, the factions of the capital encouraged to look on the massacre of captives of war as an afternoon's pastime, insults to religious orders and emblems as the chief duty of anti-clerical officials : the negative side of a secular (not an austere) protestantism could go no further . A historian may ignore the foolish gossip of the palace, which finds poison in every natural death and moral depravity in every innocent relation . But if we are rather to judge by the straightforward chronicle, the estimate can hardly be called satisfactory . the reign of Constantine V. must appear the very nadir of this period, grossly barbarous and violent, yet ineffective, the least Roman of all reigns . Indirect evidence, as we have stated, points to a very different conclusion. A society on the very point of dissolution received new life in every department . Law, commerce, agriculture, finance, military organisation, religious practice,all are carefully revised and adapted to the new circumstances and the new inmates of the realm . The work of Heraclius, suspended during the thirty years of the madness of Justinian and its consequences, was resumed and completed . The loss of northern Italy was a gain ; the attack on idol-worship and celibacy the obvious duty of a spirited and patriotic monarch ; the frontier-defence against overwhelming odds a work nobly performed . It is impossible to do otherwise than to suspend, in this most puzzling reign
Cu. v
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-775)
117
and character, the historical judgment. Against the .Indirect embarbarity of Constantine's punishments to Scamars, ~e entirely against this to monks, to prisoners of war, must
be set the dimppointiny tenderness with which, abating his imperial dignity, result.
he treated with pirates and preferred to ransom a5oo Roman subjects rather than imperil their lives ; against the stories of his irreligion and dissolute Court we can adduce the piety of his daughter Anthemisia, who, nun though she was, lived on the most affectionate terms with this blasphemous `imangeur des moines." Against the callous brutality of an age (searching fate, for instance, in the entrails of a new-born infant) can be alleged the deep interest of the imperial family, and doubtless of a wider society, in the novel foundling-hospitals which became later a marked feature in this civilised and compassionate world . The plain fact remains that we cannot reconcile the two series of facts . Somewhere, historical evidence is wilfully distorted or entirely at fault. We have to deal with two groups separately, which cannot be brought into harmony. And the most equitable method is this (indeed the sole guide for the ofttimes impertinent criticism of the student)-to give preference to the judgment which comes from indirect proof. In this field we forget personalities and deal Recovery due only with broad, social, or political tendencies . A to resumption of direct survey of a great epoch and
its unmistakable features monarchic makes us forget the petty trivialities and bitterness eontro1 of individual human life. We have asserted, and shall find occasion to repeat, that the empire was rapidly changing in this age ; it may claim the gentler verdict usually passed on a period of transition . The population shifted ; the lower classes became more and more Slavonic ; the upper, increasingly Armenian. Whatever the apparent insecurity of these two reigns, confidence was reviving ; stability in trade, tillage, and commerce reappeared . Property was more safe ; estates and -
118
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. n
Becovery due titles were transmitted without anxiety to deto resumption scendants. We begin to see notable feudal families ofm~;chic of warriors born and bred. The military and official control, classes show no brilliant meteors out of the void, coming, none know from whence, and while a spectator looks, vanishing to leave no trace ; but steady transmission by a fixed routine of training and discipline, such as had in earlier times brought to unparalleled efficiency the twin services of Rome. Once more in the stress of the infidel siege and other perils, the monarchy resumes its direct and especially in Finance.
emphatic control. Perhaps (as modern historians suggest) the chief domain of « Isaurian " success was neither religion and military reform or frontier defence, but finance ; the internal economy centralised and careful, without which a Socialistic commonwealth, like the empire its prototype, could not for a moment endure. I gladly accept Bury's suggestion, or rather inspiration, that Constans III . (after his senatorial tutelage) drew to himself the management of the budget and revenue, and that henceforward a Byzantine sovereign was largely a glorified Chancellor of the Exchequer. Army, Civil Service, ordinary administration-these could go on smoothly on the well-worn grooves of tradition ; but financial methods and sources of income require (as we know too well to-day) constant readjustment . The independence of the minister is a thing of the past ; the very title disappears ; we meet with no more counts of the sacred largesses ; before 700 the term . is obsolete . A logothete is not a minister, but a secretary, a clerk, like a trusted freedman in those great households of the later republic on which the imperial rule was modelled . Leo III. is said to have suddenly increased the taxes (727) ; it is certain that, like Charles Martel, he resumed some of the superfluous wealth of the Church, besides seizing the Petrine patrimonies in the East . I believe that as Tiberius III. began with the help of his brother
CH. v
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Heraclius to reorganise the army, so Anastasius I I. in civil matters attempted to repair, to provide, and to retrench . The election of Theodosius III. the revenue-officer was a caricature of a real change
Becovery due to resumption orchic control,
in the attitude and functions of monarchy. The Fcey Z" emperor until the days of spendthrift Michael III . will be once again the business-like head of a household ; keeping careful accounts of profit and loss, of income, expenditure, and waste, and not delegating the resources of the empire like an idle landlord to unscrupulous bailiffs. C. THE EMPEROR, THE CHURCH, AND THE AIM OF GOVERNMENT IN THE PERIOD OF ICONOCLASM (717-802)
1. Slight but certain indications point to the Barbarzm of increasing influence of the clergy in the State during 50e the Heraclian period . If we are venturesome, we after inlueme of may boldly hazard the conjecture that while the Priests. civil administration was almost extinguished, and in the end supplanted by military dictators and majorgenerals, the clergy and bishops found themselves everywhere charged with such duties as the soldier cannot perform . The infallible token of « mediaevalism " is the predominance of the priest and the warrior, the rough division of society between those who pray and those who fight . Here we have the two natural extremes of a primitive society . The epicene civilian, neither brave nor devout, but only orderly and methodical, is a late, and perhaps a degenerate product, like the bank-clerk. The Byzantine world, after the Great Plague of Justinian's reign, was fast slipping back into barbarism ; and by this I would imply a return to the rudiments, a reaction against an artificial culture, uniform and pacific, and against alien methods of government. Respect for the State and deference to law give place to a dread of the unseen powers and their hierophants, to
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Barbarism of admiration for the strong and relentless hand . the ere History is forced once more to become mere after 550:
influence off
I
biography . What are the annals of the sixth century but the personal records of Theodoric and Theodora, Justinian and Belisarius, Maurice and Phocas ? It is still more true of the seventh century ; the emperor, an isolated figure, occupies the whole stage. It is a time, too, of barbarous punishments . The unfortunate slave-girl who without intention dishonours the passing bier of Heraclius' first wife is burnt alive ; and we have noticed that this same emperor strives in vain to save a supposed Marcionite from the flames . While the Shah skins his unsuccessful general, Phocas kindles the faggots for his victims ; and we have to go back to the rein of Valentinian I. (364-375) for such Draconian severity. However "Roman in theory the pretensions or ideals of Heraclius, it cannot be doubted that in his reign new or primitive customs and institutions blotted out in large tracts of the empire all memories of a strictly « Roman" tradition . The priests had not merely (as they hoped) an exact and infallible chart of the next world, but a scheme of conduct and a It map of life " for this. Their attitude was not that of the Justinianean Code ; Leo's legislation acknowledges and ratifies the subtle change that had taken place The in the century preceding his collection . so patient clergy in the East were never orthodox with ordinary life as their brethren in the West ; they were not the exclusive repositories of learning. The monasteries they founded in such reckless abundance (as the certain remedies for the universal decay) were not centres of active life, but in the main homes for contemplation and the practice of the most private and intangible virtues . Yet we cannot close our eyes to the wide increase in The new sacerdotal and patriarchal influence . titles of office . are borrowed from the Church ; and
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-802)
121
so are the men who wear them . We saw the use Barbarism of of "Sacellarius" extended from the cathedral to the the empire after 550 : palace ; and we acknowledge with a sigh
that it is inltmme of derived from 11 saccus," not 14 sacellum," and implies 2 rather a Bursar than a Sacristan. We find monks summoned from a cloistered retreat to the management of finance and budget ; and, thus gradually prepared for this curious intermingling or exchange of function, we can read without surprise that John the Deacon is first Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Generalissimo against the Arabs . The priest was plainly ousting the civilian, and even daring to compete with the soldier .
Every established order, however honourable orthodox in age or fortune, must find an opposition . The opposition to iconoclasm. Senate may have
`
-
'
curtailed of set purpose the exercise of imperial prerogative ; and, as M . Pobyedonestcheff confesses, reduced to an almost irreducible minimum the possible moments of its effective intervention . The imperial line, from the Adoptive or Balkan emperors of the fifth century, struggled against abuse and corruption in their own agents. The servants of despotism regarded with covert jealousy or scorn the supreme authority which had made them what they were. The orthodox churchmen looked with suspicion on the religious tolerance or suspected heresy of the sovereign ; the patriarch attempted to make a compact before bestowing the crown . And the armies which even in the earliest days of discipline had excited now and again the apprehension of the central power, might once more create di§turbance when restored to order and efficiency . The character of the opposition under the Isaurians, though we may detect traces of all these secret foes, is mainly ecclesiastical. But the wide influence of this class, as it penetrated deep into ordinary life, made the Iconoclastic duel no mere crusade against an unreformed establishment, but a general contest, in which on one side
122 Leo seek to weaken znfuenee.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . A
or the other every class in the State was enrolled and marshalled as an eager partisan . While the patriarch becomes the recognised critic, in some part the creator, on occasion the dangerous rival, of the monarch, it is probable that could we penetrate the provincial gloom we should find the bishop occupying a pre-eminent position in the lesser towns . Had not the Alexandrine pontiff under Herachus been also charged with a prefect's function and empowered to negotiate a delicate question of diplomacy ? They would act, as in the West, in default of regular civilian appointments, as administrative officials . The bishop had become, without effort or ambition, the head of the municipality, the 1' Patron of the Borough ." Whether he intervened seldom or often, he was in any case the ultimate arbiter and referee, judge and civil governor in one . In many places regular intercourse with the capital had completely broken down during the strange and obscure movements of the seventh century. The Isaurian enactments show plainly that the once vaunted uniformity of Roman law had disappeared, giving way to the local usage, which sprang up naturally like the 11 custom " of the Western manor, or was introduced by the countless settlers of alien race,-Slavs, Gotho-Greeks, Mardaites, welcomed or tolerated by the infinite patience or extreme need of Rome. Monks are to the fore in revolutions, and the whole clerical society was in closer sympathy with the people than with the governing class . Finlay remarks, with his usually correct insight, that the clergy took 1' more trouble to conciliate public opinion than official favour" ; "abbots were often men of wealth and family" ; and he warns us not to be surprised to see monks "acting the part of the demagogue ." Leo III., convinced Puritan as he is, does not seek merely to purify the Church from superstition ; he is concerned to maintain, like every Roman emperor, the supremacy
i
CH. v
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-802)
123
of the State over a rival, to rescue the imperial power Leo seeks to from becoming the tool of a faction. He is under- "waken Church's taking the
f,
+
same task and courting the same disasters influence. as his brothers of the Western line in later days . There is indeed not a little of the furor Teutonicus in the severe Ironside soldier and his Anatolics and Armeniacs, as they descend to rescue New Rome from an incapable government and the debased religion which had corrupted it. § 3. We have no intention of following closely the Anti-Cleriphases of the Iconoclastic controversy. We are caaand contented with the true statement that its motive ~tae was as much political as religious. In the involution or confusion of the secular and sacred spheres, it is often difficult to find the real spring of action . In the Reformation, in the Great Rebellion in England, in the French Revolution, we may seek to discriminate the exact proportion of the two . We shall no doubt discover in the first a large predominance of the political ; iri the second, of the religious ; in the last, a puzzling confusion of ingredients, a godless but still idealistic religionism upholding political or rather social and humanitarian claims,-claims which, as we recognise to-day, can never again be fired with a similar zeal. Interwoven intricately were the threads of the two under the Isaurians . For good or ill, the empire had taken a side and become a partisan with Constantine. Never more could it regain the indifferent and unruffled composure of a Gallio,-the attitude of impartial arbiter among all warring creeds and principles, because it lacked any of its own . The Saracen success was largely due to the misguided attempts to impose religious uniformity. The motive was political, and the dissentients were justly suspected of disloyalty. But it was none the less to be regretted that the archaic and impartial sovereignty, or rather suzerainty, had passed away. Either the State would be distracted by religious feud and the emperor pulled about between various factions, or
124 Anti-ate calinn and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
he would become a humble if majestic puppet secretly controlled by the dominant and tyrannical Orthosupremacy. doxy. As with the modern Reformers, Leo's Protestantism only substituted one form of intolerance for another ; and the commonwealth was no nearer unity than before,-or to that good-natured yet not careless ',agreement to differ" about those serious and personal matters which can never safely become value of the concern of the State.-Yet it would be unfair toate i ndeed to overlook the merits of free-speech, and the to St&ateabsolutism. bold tenacity of purpose in the Eastern Church . It is true that, in the annals of mankind, in the development and advance of the free spirit, it can never claim the same gratitude that we give without grudging to the Church of Rome. But in this age, while we sometimes appear to regret its influence and to encourage this typical Henry VIII. in his Erastian work of humbling its pride,-we cannot forget its services to subject and rulers alike, in providing an organ for constitutional criticism and opposition. We refer frequently to the dangers of State-monopoly and State-absolutism,-dangers to which the modern mind seems oddly insensible. Let us not then forget the part played by the outspokenness of a patriarch, the calm debate of a General Council, the " framework of customs, opinions, and convictions" which (as Finlay so well says) 11 could be with difficulty altered and rarely opposed without danger." Indeed,Constantinople has always seen a religious law or hierarchy, a theocracy, enthroned above an autocratic sovereign . Both basileus and « padishah " have to recognise this restriction on a power otherwise irresponsible . § 4. Just as religion and political motive are inexThe Protestants of tricably tangled, so even under political reasons we Armenia can detect the p resence of a still simpler cause of against Relzenzism : conflict . The religious wars of Europe depend succe8s and largely on race and nationalityy ; and we see clear react" under C. YL trace in our Byzantine monarchy of a cleavage of (e.800) . society depending on this difference of stock. The
CH. v
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (717-802)
125
eighth century marks the insurgence of Armenia yu Proagainst Hellenism and Orthodoxy. And when the t-'8tantg Of Armenia
victory is assuredp there appears also a severance in the dominant faction . The revolutions in the " Twenty Years of Anarchy " were the work of the Asiatic soldier ; now sullen, recalcitrant, and unpatriotic, now stern and determined to undertake the task of reorganising the collapsed fragments of a
great tradition. The significance of the two years' contest for the throne after Leo's death (740-743) may be exaggerated by the pragmatic historian ; but ,it is impossible not to read in the rebellion of Artavasdus (or rather in the support it enlisted) something more than a mere sally of disappointed ambition . The provincial regiments, now as formerly the umpires of the monarchy, take different sides in the contest of son and son-in-law ; Armeniacs and Obsicians stand for Artavasdus, Thracensians and the ever-faithful Anatolics, for the direct heir Constantine V. It cannot be doubted that the effect of the new and permanent provincial armies was to divide Lesser Asia into as many divisions as mediaeval Germany ; for "duchies" read "themes." Under Constantine VI . there is the same conflict : the Armeniacs maintain throughout their irreconcilable enmity to Irene, Hellene, orthodox, and iconodule. In 790, the Asiatic themes (except this regiment) swear reluctant allegiance to the successful restorer of images, and then proclaim her son sole emperor. When in misguided devotion to his mother the young prince insists on her recognition by the Asiatic troops, the Armeniacs again hold out ; they burst into open mutiny and blind the generals he sends. In 797, he endeavours to escape to the Anatolics, who are conspicuous for their loyalty to the direct line of succession . It is difficult to attach any certain political importance to the persistent attempts to raise the uncles of Constantine VI . to the throne . It may be easily believed that they were the figure-heads of the
against
'c~eand reaction under o. VI. (c.800).
_
126 The Pro-
8 °f Armenia
against Helten4m : success and
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE DIV. A
Iconoclastic party, and were constantly employed by
their mischievous friends as a pretext for rebellion
throughout the reign of Leo IV., of Constantine VI ., and of Irene (775-8oz). So late as 799, the Helladic
theme enters the list of conspirators, and proposes to reaction under C. VL raise one of these unfortunate princes to a position (c. 80o). for which he had neither aptitude nor desire. Even in the reign of Michael I . (811-813) the names of these luckless Caesars are whispered in the discontented circles of the capital ; perhaps for the fifth time these innocent victims of others' treason are discovered, pardoned, and removed to a securer exile . I do not profess to understand the sudden subsidence of this once redoubtable military influence . But it is possible-nay, probable-that the eunuchregime of Irene deliberately starved the army ; and was not content with merely ordering that « no military leaders should converse with Stauracius ." It must be remembered that the Armeniacs had been humbled, decimated, and perhaps disbanded for their sedition ; one thousand were sent into exile bearing the convict brand, « This is an Armenian conspirator ." Certain it is that after the comparative peace of Irene's sole reign, Nicephorus I . (like most Byzantine sovereigns at the opening of a new century) is confronted by the imperative need of national defence ; and earned an undesirable renown by the firmness with which he pressed its claims and the failure which awaited his efforts.
q, 1 .
CHAPTER VI CHARACTER AND AIMS OF THE PRETENDERS AND MILITARY REVOLTS IN THE NINTH CENTURY GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE OF LEGITIMACY (802-867)
1 . FROM the accession of Leo VI. of ambiguous parentage, or from the universal acknowledgment of his strictly illegitimate soson,~ termed half in ironyY the « purple-born,"-public opinion or its Byzantine substitute veers round to legitimacy . We have shown how, in the coming age, the pretender and supplanter of a feeble or pacific sovereign gives place to the "Shogun," a vigorous and responsible colleague ; who may sometimes forget his respect for the dynasty, but will never attempt to overthrow it. I purpose, in order to explain this seeming paradox, to examine the significant features of the reigns and the mutinies immediately following the usurpation of Irene, and the failure of the Hellenic attempt to seize the helm of State . The success of an Arabian (?) of royal descent again reminded pretenders that the chief post was open to the adventurer. Nicephorus I. has the proud distinction of setting an example of humanitarian leniency, which he had not inherited from his predecessor, which his followers did not always imitate . He had to face in the revolt of Bardanes a formidable Armenian cabal. The pretender leant on the support of two future emperors, Leo and Michael, and of Thomas the Slav (who will soon claim our notice) ; two Armenians, a Phrygian, and a Slavonic settler ; but this last is said to have had one Armenian parent . When his friends desert him and make terms with the gloomy but determined Arabian, Bardanes is allowed to 127
suspension of dyn"tic thronethrone open to Armenian adventurer. ,
_
128
CONSTITITTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
suspension of become a monk : and we must dissociate Nicephorus `y't" from any complicity with the ruffians who burst into principle
throne open his monastic retreat and deprived him of sight . to 1"ian Arshavir, also Armenian, in his rebellion of 8o8 adventurer. depends on active and aristocratic support in the capital itself ; on the failure of the plot, Nicephorus obliges him to don the monastic habit, with the same indulgence that afterwards prompts him to confine a dangerous monk and assassin as a lunatic . The reigns of Michael I . and of Leo V. belong to the annals of successful conspiracies, and the latter Armenian takes his place with legitimate sovereigns. It is on his death that the Armenian faction once more bursts out and causes not merely a serious disturbance, but a permanent damage to the continent of Asia Minor, now the chief home of "Roman" wealth and stability. Thomas, the son of a Slavonian and an Armenian, was in Armenia itself on the news of the sudden and violent death of Leo V. (82o). He resents the success of his brotherin-arms, the low-born Phrygian Michael of Amorium, whom some suspected of gipsy blood, all of heterodoxy or religious indifference . During the years 82o and 821 he overran all Asia Minor, and actually controlled the administration and appointed officials in the themes, with the exception of the Armeniac and Obsician (and we have no occasion to wonder at the unsympathetic attitude of the former regiment, for we may suppose that, after Constantine's severe treatment in 79o, and the drafting of the mutineers into other detachments, or even actual exile, the new legions were reconstituted without native support ; thus 4nneniacs ceased at that moment to represent an Armenian nation) . Socialist § 2. This serious sedition had a singular character `Jdequerie' in and interest. It presents features elsewhere associated gp,"`°r with the rising of a later Jacquerie or the 11 Bagaudage" of third-century Gaul. It might be called a social revolution, a definite protest against the whole system of
CH. VI
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (802-867)
129 imperial government and class-privilege, against the socialist fiscal exactions which the needs of the empire had `J°cq''in
suggested to Nicephorus I. But Asia Minor we must not hastily (c . 820), attribute modern motives to ancient insurrections ;
we shall content ourselves with the actual words of the Greek historians . Theophanes is no longer our trusty guide ; and we are. dependent on the Continuators, who completed his work under the direction and encouragement of Constantine VII .
eFTFUBfv
T+WTOU
K.
OOUAOI
K.
KaTa
aoXayos
OFQ7r0'Tfw
KaTa
K.
6TpaT[CWTr/S
crTpaTqy6'rou
Ti)v
KaTa XEFpa
q5ov@o-av KaBw?rat~e.' It is tempting to recognise here the familiar career of a social reformer, of a « friend of the people ." The birth of Thomas was exceedingly obscure, and he was in every way a fitting rival to the ignorant Phrygian, whom accident and audacity had fixed on the throne of the Czesars and made the founder of the longest and most illustrious dynasty and period in our later annals. He had lived among the Saracens, and perhaps imbibed some of that democratic idealism found behind most movements of fanatical religion . He was currently supposed to be the long-deposed Constantine VI., and is reported to have negotiated for an imperial coronation in Syrian Antioch . Since the accession of the « Isaurians " the capital had not been exposed to civil war, and the Arabian peril had united its inhabitants in a common duty and a religious service. But the old Roman tradition and precedent demanded that a pretender should march, like Vespasian or Heraclius, like Tiberius Apsimar or Theodosius III., upon the metropolis ; and perhaps that city has to thank the unwitting Bulgarians for their escape from Thomas' undisciplined and plundering levies . Reduced by their sudden attack and taking refuge in Adrinople or Arcadiopolis, he is surrendered to the Imperialists, and with his son subjected to the most cruel punishment that stains VOL. ii.
1 Genesius.
130
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv. A
Yet his death the record of Byzantine justice. socialist `J°,c~'~e''~e' in does not extinguish the rising ; like the Isaurian Asia Minor social or
(c. 820),
VM'thoW
revolt under Anastasius, the mutiny, whether 'military or personal, still smouldered in Cabala and Samaria ; and we may note with amusement or dismay that the capitulation of this last stronghold was due to the treachery of a churchman, who demanded and obtained an archbishopric as the price ' of his secret aid . § w. I am not able to follow Finlay's suggestive
definite the intrinsic character or political lesson political aim. musings on
f
I
of this revolt ; his theory of a large Asiatic population excluded (for social and religious reasons) from all public and local affairs and smarting with this indignity, is ingenious but not wholly convincing . Nor can I entirely endorse the following criticism or prediction : "Had Thomas been a man of powerful mind, he might have laid the foundation o£ a new State of society in the Eastern empire by lightening the burden of taxation, carrying out toleration for religious opinions, securing an impartial administration of justice even to heretics, and giving every class of subjects, without distinction of nationality or race, equal security for their lives and property ." I do not see traces in the Asiatic revolution of anything more serious than a nationalist rising against an insecure throne usurped from a compatriot, headed by a man of energy but without political principle and constructive power, calling to itself all the obscure forces of discontent and disorder, which are borne to the surface in periods of transition and religious crisis . Nothing so definite was in their minds as a conscious protest against the forms and methods of the imperial system : they demanded only (as the Teutons of old) to have their share and to enjoy, not to overthrow. It may be questioned whether the Asiatic had "taken up arms against religious intolerance ." There appear few
my. vi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (802-867) 131 signs of a religious character ; and I am inclined to Intolerant set down this so-called « Socialist " revolt to much 8'irit of the the same causes as divided the continent between age. Artavasdus and Constantine VV. eighty years earlier. It is idle even to suggest to the actors in the drama of antique history that they shall be animated by the same motives that appeal to us in our latter-day indifference or « enlightenment." Only the worst and feeblest of the Roman princes accepted the principle of religious tolerance ; and a « new State of society" on the lines of modern and modest Liberalism (such as Finlay sketches) would have shortly collapsed in bankruptcy and disorder before domestic and foreign foes. But I can heartily applaud the concluding remark, which deserves all praise for its candour and political sagacity ; it is no small concession to truth to abandon the principles and hopes which elsewhere he upholds, as a 11 popular " historian . '1 The spirit of the age," he allows with regret, « was averse to toleration, and the sense of justice was so defective that these equitable principles could only have been upheld by the power of a well-disciplined and mercenary army." Indeed, it is impossible not to see that the faults and abuses of the system lay rather with the people than with the government . The emperor himself seems always in the van of progress, and attempts in vain to allay the fierce feuds of the religious spirit. Neither justice nor worship nor finance could have been safely left to the discretion of these rancorous and vaguely separatist factions or races, which only the imperial system held together in a semblance of amity. And in the suggestion of an alien and indifferent army of mercenaries (such as was just about to bear heavily on the Caliphate) we have an omen of the coming time,-when the national or provincial legions of the earlier "Thematic " system are to be displaced by the professional militia and the Norman soldier of fortune . -
f
132 F .of monk and
Emperor, knorant or heterodox.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
viv . n
4. In this age there are signs of such undying feud and bitterness between monks and soldiers as leave little justification for hopes of amicable settlement, without a central power somewhat indifferent to the whole disturbance . Leo V. (it has been well said) holds the balance between " monks who demanded the persecution of Iconoclasts , and the army who wanted the abolition of images ." The soldiers were largely rough puritan zealots, like Scotsmen among the superstitions of Spain, The persecution of Nicephorus might seem to reflect discredit on Leo ; but the emperor was satisfied with deposing an impossible colleague, and the kind treatment of the patriarch is only an instance of the mildness of this second Iconoclast victory . Although his successor was an alien heretic, and cared nothing for orthodoxy, law, or learning, there came over him the wonderful change we mark in so many selfish pretenders to the purple when they He becomes firm and have attained their wish. far-sighted, sincere and equitable ; and we cannot regret that the lowly dynasty, destined for so great a renown, was not interrupted in the earliest moment of its life by a " social revolution ." Michael 11. allies himself with the " Isaurian " house ; and prevails on the Senate and Patriarch to request formally his union with Euphrosyne, daughter of Constantine VI. Meantime, the provincial regiments were weakened by the operation of physical laws and deliberate
Since the middle of the seventh Weakening imperial plans. of regimental century, they had been the nurseries of a vague spirit. feeling ; they had
revival in religious and patriotic taken a serious and active part in the elevation of sovereigns and the purging of ecclesiastical abuse . But if they were a safeguard, they were also a menace ; and the turbulence of the Armeniacs in the 790 led, as we have seen, to the disbanding of cannot doubt, battalions,-recruited, we homogeneous like an earlier Roman legion, in the very district
x-.n '
CH. vi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (802-867) 188 where they were quartered . Whether distrusted by the sovereign, divided, weakened, or diversified by ofWeakening regimental introduction of new elements, the thematic armies sp"it. lose that distinctive character which marked them during the Heraclian and Isaurian reigns . We have hesitated, when dealing with the unwarlike supineness of the older citizen of Rome, whether to blame the contented sloth of the subject or the jealous suspicions of their ruler ; and we may perhaps decide to divide the blame or the responsibility between the two . Once more, a strong local militia became a source of danger ; and once more, recourse was had to that last expedient of a wealthy and enervated civilisation,-foreign and mercenary troops . Native recruits may have failed ; vast tracts of country during the -Social War" of Thomas must have passed into desert and let in the jungle ; and we can see preparing the later accumulation of land in a few hands, which is the most characteristic feature of the age of the "Shoguns" (920-1025)5. We have to look in an unexpected quarter Revoit of for the next mutiny . The motive is neither religious pe'''en '°ntingent at nor political, nor yet again
social . It is purely ,i oe. mediaeval, and must remind one rather of the temptations of Sir John Hawkwood and of the Age of the Condottieri ." We find under the valiant and unfortunate Theophilus (829-842) (a match in the imperial series to Caliph Haroun, as a hero of romance and chivalry)-a force of 30,000 Persians stationed at Sinope, under the command of Theophobus. At one time we hear of their valour and good faith, at another of their dangerous sedition : now at the battle of Dasymon they alone support the emperor when the native troops desert ; now they proclaim their general, and though once coerced and disbanded, again torment Theophilus in his last days with the fears of an independent principality, such as many soldiers of fortune carved out in the West. Once again, the Armeniac theme -
134
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Bevolt of became a centre of disaffection : and the dying Persian con- commands of the emperor ensured the succession tingent at
of his son at the cost of a faithful life. Whatever the shortcomings of Michael II. in birth, education, or character ; whatever the extravagance prou' or the crimes of Theophilus, there can be no doubt that under their strong personal government the State recovered its strength and stability. And this recuperation is specially to be noticed in domestic matters . The age of « Pronunciamentos," of rough military insurrections, is past and over ; the theory and principles of legitimacy enter deeply into the national sentiment ; and the sanguinary change of dynasty in 867 must have taken the appearance, except to a few accomplices, of a peaceful succesThe reign of sion of a legally adopted Caesar. Michael III. (842-867), his long minority and unhappy reign, was a period of a sudden and general relaxation of restraint . Within a month of the death of Theophilus, his widow had made her peace with the Church (Feb. ig, 84a), and the second epoch of Iconoclastic supremacy came to an end . Orthodoxy and luxury joined hand in hand to celebrate the new pact between the . Church and the Government . Though the image-breakers had never sanctioned ascetic rigour, yet they were somehow connected in the popular mind with sternness, precision of conduct, and a simple and puritan worship . A sublime and dramatic pageant, aided and enhanced by music, colour, and odours, was once more in fashion ; and as in the very similar period of the English Restoration, manners seem. to throw off control with the revival of the Orthodox creed and practice. sinope . Close ofthe
Restoration of "weworship.
§ 6. Once more reappears, with dignity and ceremonious prestige unimpaired, the long unfamiliar
name of the Senate . This ancient assembly of officials, retiring into discreet obscurity during the personal government of Isaurians and the disorders of military revolutions, resumes its forgotten rights.
CH. vi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (8O2-867)
165
The Council of State ratifies the will of Theophilus, a,.at+,o~ and may be expected to support the pious desire of ofImageTheodora to restore honour to images. It solemnly WrohiP' receives and audits the accounts which the empress makes up towards the close of her regency, with a laudable sense of responsibility and that conception of office as a public trust and not a private patrimony, to which in that age every other nation or government was an utter stranger .-The revival of Orthodox practice and belief is attended by a recourse to violence in matters spiritual . Yet we must not judge too harshly of the persecutors of the Paulicians ; though we cannot fail to regret that after the lenient example of the later Iconoclasts, the Church could make no better use of her recovered pre-eminence than to institute civil war. But when we have once allowed the fact and principle then prevailing everywhere, of the identity or closest implication of Church and State, we have gone far to provide an apology for the saddest feature in Christian annals,-persecution for difference of creed. We may indeed distrust the virulence and bias of those partisans who tell us of the Antinomian doctrine and anti-social acts of the Cathari in Intolerant Western Europe. We may class them with the dread of ancient slander of the blameless Manichaean, with the pagan calumny of Thyestean banquets and nocturnal orgies among early Christians, with the undying legend of the Christian boy, enticed and crucified in some mediaeval ghetto . But, granting the peculiar view then prevalent alike with reactionary and reformer, the interdependence of State and Church, and giving ever so slight a foundation for these vague and dreadful rumours,we arrive at the conclusion that the mediaeval heretic could not fail to be considered an enemy of the State,-like Vitalian, whom the Senate pronounces aaao-rPtos -ris woXvrelav, a stranger to the commonwealth, to the social order. It must be noted that it is the populace -
136 intolerant dread of heretics.
Paudician lar largely political.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
who display the greatest rancour and intolerance. The early Christians fell victims not to the tyranny
of provincial governors, but to the spasmodic outbursts of democratic resentment . We have seen Heraclius pleading with the mob for the life of a " Marcionite " : and we read without surprise the mediaeval chronicler, who tells us that the people dreaded the weak indulgence of the clergy" in regard to some Albigensian suspect . I need not appeal to the strange and horrible torments which are reserved to-day for certain criminals in America, whom public opinion places beyond the pale of law and rescues from the official gaoler to inflict a more Of recent days, the cruel and lingering death. vindictive displeasure of the mob has demanded in Monaco, in France, in Switzerland, a more instant and serious penalty than the State had either power or desire to inflict ; and the rough but summary justice which the people claim to exert must indeed surprise those humanitarians who would rebuild the body politic on a fanciful idealisation of average human nature . § 7. The Paulicians were traitors to the commonwealth ; Carbeas their leader has no scruple in joining the Emir of Melitene, in ravaging "Roman" territory, in establishing a republican stronghold at Tephrice somewhat later, bearing a certain resemblance to the Assassin's fortress at Alamut. Whatever the exasperation which drove them to these extreme measures, the duty of the central government could contemplate, no concession to this faction of disloyal renegades. Under the Isaurians, the monks of Athos had assumed that curious autonomy, which still survives to-day, beneath the looser and less exacting government of the Turks. The restoration of orthodoxy placed these political dissenters once more among faithful subjects ; but a similar licence could not be extended to the half-Jewish Socialists, who were far nearer Islam than any current
CH. VI
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (802--867)
137
form of Gospel-teaching . In the recent conflict of Paul%cian England with the Boers, we have listened to severe persecution attacks on the plain duty of Imperialism ; and the largely political
thinking world will always be divided between the
champions of centralism and the apostles of nationality, local franchise, and « partikularismus ." It is Successful possible, even allowing a measure of just indignation central against this half-religious, half-political persecution, to prestige sum up in very favourable fashion both the policy (c- 84o). of the imperial regents in the middle of the ninth century and the whole systematic government of the 11 Isaurians," which had laid the foundation of order and prosperity during the previous century. The general moral and social condition of the people was incomparably superior to any other nation or group then existing . The practice of arms and the manlier virtues had once more become popular among the Byzantine nobles ; and though discretion tempered valour, they had little to learn even from the later and more perfect lights of Western chivalry . At the same time, the military class enjoyed no undue preponderance . By some obscure and sagacious measures, the prestige of the provincial regiment had been modified ; and the army had been " denationalised " and placed aloof from all civic or local prejudice and partiality . Equity and law regained their sway and commerce flourished. Wherever the lesser agents of authority threw off control, the emperor, so far as a single overseer can prove effective, levelled all, even his own consort, under iron and inflexible rules which knew « no respect of persons."
DIVISION B TRIUMPH OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LEGITIMACY CHAPTER VII CHANGES IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE METHODS OF AUTOCRACY AND IN THE OFFICIAL WORLD FROM THE REGENCY (MICHAEL III.)
A . ECONOMIC
A new
AND
SOCIAL CAUSES DETERMINING THE DEVELOPMENT
1. IT must be evident to any student of Byzantine and annals that from the middle of the ninth century a Le0imaey. change came over the character and administration of the « Romans ." The methods of government were profoundly modified. In one direction, sovereignty became purely Oriental and despotic ; in another, the peculiar features of a feudal society emerged and became strong against the palace and all central control . The period was one of rapid recovery, increasing confidence, and growing wealth. The hereditary right of infants was conceded, and (as we have so often pointed out) side by side with a legitimate heir grew up the double and rival powers of the premier and the generalissimo . In the long minorities of Michael III . or of Basil II., in the perpetual tutelage of Leo VI. and Constantine VII. a situation arises closely resembling Scottish history ; in which, under nominal respect for claims of birth, the Regency becomes the prize for the strongest and most adventurous . The Heraclian and Syrian houses had been remarkable instances of reigning monarchs, who from father to son never relaxed a personal 138
1,1
'
\
cx. vn
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
139
control of affairs ; who understood the situation, chose A. new their own ministers, did their own task, and hid `l`parture :
Regency and behind no legal fiction that "the king can do no Legitimacy. wrong." This is the antique tradition of the empire,
that which sets apart the ingenious system of Augustus from other sovereignties . Accident or real merit conferred on hereditary princes a rare liking for work and an unrivalled capacity for taking trouble . In the middle of the ninth century, at the moment when the Carolingian house and Caliphate were both in decay, a new departure was made,-in the regency during Michael Ill .'s minority . The four sovereigns, who between them almost account for 170 years (886-1055), Leo, Constantine, Basil, Zoe, were alike born in the purple ; the Augustus retreats into the palace ; round him collects a valuable atmosphere of sentiment and affection ; and the turbulent and freespoken populace vent their spleen or discontent on . . the secondary or derivative regents . Pulcheria had .governed in the name of Theodosius II . ; and Irene had guided and at last supplanted her son, like the late empress in China. But the minority of Michael had wider and more lasting consequences. It became the normal type instead of the exception . For a quarter of a century, Basil II. tried -to revert Personal to the traditions of direct and laborious perspnal awe in monarchy . But this austere example was popular neither with his subjects nor with his successors . To the end of our period, the despot continues to be ignorant and pliable or to struggle at intervals in vain against the disadvantages of this seclusion . Few countries, perhaps, are so unlucky as those where the nominal and responsible master is a dupe. It was to the interest of the official and the military class to maintain this illusion. A system like the Roman, without any fixed principles, in spite of its apparent rigour .and routine, was always exposed to the sudden shock and revolution which expelled a dynasty or imposed a tutor and guardian upon an -
140 Penonaa
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infant or an imbecile. But the permanent officials abeyance $n knew how to turn these exceptional episodes to advantage . The new emperor or regent was solitary and his new dignity precarious. The sudden veering of military favour might displace as it had exalted him ; and if the « king's government was to be carried on," the newcomer must invoke the old servants and familiar methods, rely on their advice and accept their judgment ; or throw himself into the arms of some powerful "chamberlain" ; or, once again, divide the chief offices among his own family . The reign of Basil I., an adroit Armenian who had known the extreme of want and destitution, was no exception . He is regarded as the consolidator of Byzantine despotism, which up to that time had known mitigating or rival elements ; as the last in a long series of political reformers from Diocletian and Justinian to Leo III. But it is more than probable that the measures, commonly supposed to ensure the direct initiative and personal will of the sovereign, merely implied the transference of control from the Senate to the palace, and in fact only set the seal upon an accomplished fact, a silent revolution which had long taken effect. Pace§ 2. The Civil Service still lingered, a useful counterpoise to the soldier . But it was no longer supreme. It had somehow decayed, and its traditions of training, discipline, and promotion were forgotten . It had lost that initial axiom of a centralised bureaucracy, that the person of the ultimate authority was indifferent . It had, in a word, become a partisan . Everywhere else, the notion of an incorporeal abstract State or Commonwealth was obscured by private ends. Feudalism, within fifty years, had completely ruined the edifice of Charles . The Caliph without power or conviction had become a prisoner, the victim of his servants' insolence : he is without a mission ; he was no longer the vicegerent of God . When the conception of the State is weak or obscured,
CH. vn
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the personal tie is strong . The loyal affection shown Palaceby the people to Constantine VII . or to Zoe betrays 90 ment. a kindly indulgence, in which the real aim of the empire and the conditions of its strVngth retreat out of sight. The patrimony was theirs of right, to deal with as they liked, not a sacred trust . I decline to believe that the decree removing the Senate from its share in legislation was a revolution ; that it startled a critical society by suddenly removing the veil of a military absolutism. It was no coup d'etat, but a formal recognition of a state of things already existing . The Senate was lost among the nominees ' or the slaves of Caesar . Even the laws were a privilege of his household. We need not be deceived into the belief that Caesar gained by this promulgation of autocracy. An ignorant and secluded mon- The people arch only ratifies the lowest or most persuasive voice, -Pre'8$ the claims of
is at the mercy of the latest speaker. It is incon- undisguised ceivable that Basil either desired or claimed to be Auto-acy. solely responsible . The new form of the constitution, the temper of the age, the limited intelligence of the people, demanded a single source of authority, a unique claim to obedience . The monarchy (now become a patrimony) had to be expressed in purely monarchic terms. In procedure, in influence, in consequences, not the smallest change was to be observed . Only the terms and phrases were more frank . A monarch is either a general surrounded by his staff-corps, a president surrounded by his assessors, or a master surrounded by his slaves ; for the government of one is either military, civilian, or of the household and patriarchal type . The jealous rivalry between the two first elements did not cease in this age ; but it was held in check by a universal acknowledgment, neither servile nor hypocritical, that the emperor was absolute master in his own dominions of life and chattel . This temper it is difficult for us to realise to-day . Basil I ., without effort or talent of his own, stepped into an unques-
A, t
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The people
tioned heritage of absolute prerogative. It is easy to understand that a ring or a clique will in their priat8mso unaiVu own interests proclaim their pious adherence to auto. cracy . But it , is not so easy to understand the sincerity of a whole people, outspoken and intolerant of wrong, bent on denying their own freedom and loading their prince with an intolerable burden and every predicate of a divine omnipotence . Yet it is . useless to repeat the first axioms of liberalism and to ' preach a self-satisfied discourse on the servility of the Greeks . The patrimonial idea was popular ; and in an age of great mildness, amid order and free speech, the populace (at least in the capital) were more jealous of their sovereign's rights than of their own. The reigns of Basil and Leo are not explicit as is the succeeding age. It is not easy to estimate the influences which guided and transformed the constitution . Obscure currents met and crossed beneath the surface, leaving grave but anonymous results . But this much we say with confidence. Not without popular and official consent did the Amorian or Armenian house settle into the comfortable enjoyment of the chief throne on earth . The secondary powers in the State (whether civil or military) saw their own advantage furthered and safeguarded by this acknowledgment of lordship . Under the pretext of the unique imperial will, personal interest could be followed . It was no individual merit or ambition which hastened this change . Under a formal absolutism the emperor ceased to be the effective ruler. Obscure 3. I cannot forbear from quoting the admirable economic words of Finla y in this connection (~~a~, chap. causes uses at p. i.) work.
`t The government of the Eastern Empire was always 'systematic and cautious. Reforms were slowly effected ; but when the necessity was admitted, great changes were gradually completed. Generations, however, passed away without men noticing how far they had quitted the customs of their fathers and entered on new paths leading to very
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'different habits, thoughts, and institutions . The obscure ' reign of no one emperor, if we except that of Leo [the ea`ic ' Isaurian], embraces a revolution in the institutions work. ' of the State, completed in a single generation . ' Hence it is that Byzantine history loses the in' terest to be derived from individual biography. It ' steps over centuries, marking rather the movement of generations of mankind than the acts of individual emperors and statesmen ; and it became a 'didactic essay on political progress instead of a ' living picture of man's actions . In the days of the ' liberty of Athens, the life of each leader embraces ' the history of many revolutions, and the mind of a ' single individual seems often to guide and modify 'their course. But in the years of Constantinopolitan 'servitude emperors and people are borne slowly ' onward by a current of which we are not always ' certain that we can trace the origin or follow the ' direction ."-Now such a current is set in motion by physical, economic, and social causes ; not by private ambition or deliberate policy . Among these impersonal influences I am inclined to suggest (r) The replacement of the population since the plague of Constantine V. (c. 750) : (a) the agricultural changes to be dimly descried in the legislation of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries : (3) the changes in the Law during the same period : (4) the final settlement of the Iconoclastic controversy in the triumph of orthodoxy,-the failure of the Protestant reform-movement : (5) the undoubted influx of wealth and bullion into the Eastern realm, perhaps frightened away from the moribund empires of Charles or Harun. On each of these I shall say a few words and pass on to a tentative estimate of the several influences on the manner, the methods, and personnel of the government . The critic is largely left in these matters to conjecture ; and the only value of the general student is to propose with diffidence certain avenues or mines of research, which may
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF -
(1) Cue in or may not repay the fuller exploration of °pukti°"' specialist .
Div. s the
(z.) I cannot claim for the plague of Constantine V. the same far-reaching effects as attended the pestilence of Justinian and Procopius two centuries before ; but I believe it finished the disorganisation of the past hundred and fifty years. The European provinces no longer counted in the administration. The populace was barbarous and artificial. Emperors deported or decanted at will. savage or troublesome settlers without tradition into waste places . Greece (especially in its commerce and urban wealth) recovered rapidly from the desolation of the Heraclian age, without contributing to the life or control of the empire : her two most conspicuous figures are women, the Empress Irene and the widow Danielis, benefactress of Basil I. Under the Isaurians, the "Roman" Empire became entirely Asiatic ; pretenders, officials, and upper classes were from Lesser Asia, or from Armenia . In Lesser Asia was gradually rising a feudal aristocracy, exercised in arms, who will one day seize and enslave the capital to a single family (1181) . In spite of the security and 11 quiet transmission of hereditary wealth and position " which marked the Isaurian reform movement, the Byzantine population was artificial, easily shifted, and subject to rapid changes of character. The same is true of any modern capital recruited from the provinces and draining their surplus, soon to perish in the new environment : the Berliners have within forty years been almost ousted by a foreign race. But this is in a singular degree true of the capricious if prudent creation of Constantine . An old inhabitant returning after an absence of twenty years would find the personnel of the government, the composition of the crowd, unrecognisable. The buildings, palace and temple, convent and hippodrome, were the same ; the same liturgy in the one, the same ceremonies, equally sacred and inviolable, in the other.
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But Church and .State were largely served by those (1) Change in who could found no families ; who left at their demise a place vacant for any chance comer. With the rapid extinction of a former social order, the welcome extended to exceptional courage, adroitness, or servility, the pure Asiatic invasion of high places under the Isaurians,-the plague contributed both in capital and provinces to hasten the changes and transform the face of the country. In the former the effects were more sudden and more serious. 4. It will be as well to treat here the (2) agricul(2) Agritural development in the eighth and ninth centuries, so cultural far as we can form an indistinct outline from the ch""9m later imperial legislation . The main features of agrarian tenure from the time of Theodosius II. and Justinian may have resembled those of most other nations . There was at the outset a broad distinction between the lordless village-community, and the seigneurial domain . The yeomen or peasants holding in something like co-parcenage tilled the former ; serfs and foreigners the latter. The history of East and West alike at this period enables us to trace the gradual obliteration of distinction between the status of the freeholder and the villein. Economic circumstances combined to depress the one ; Christian, legal, and humanitarian influences to improve the other. Both met in a middle lot from which the best and worst features of either were expelled. And first for (a) the village community .-The individual and his (a) Communal rights, private property, testamentary disposition, are "Lllages. the creation of Roman law and Roman Jurists . Like all absolute and « egalitarian" governments, the empire preferred to confront atoms and units, not corporations . And if corporations, municipal, rural, or commercial, formed a large part of Roman life, it was for the convenience of the tax-collector . The peculiar mark of the society was the combination of corporate responsibility with the fullest recognition of private interests . In the Teutonic "view of VOL. ii. x
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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(a) communal frank pledge," in the rudimentary institutions of 'nllages. justice and police (for example, among the Chinese), the State depends on the family or the local community for the discovery and punishment of crime . But the Roman Empire is frankly fiscal in its legislation. The inhabitants, it might appear, were singularly law-abiding ; and the serious business of the governor is not - the maintenance of order or the redress of wrong, but the collection of the revenue . The curial system had arisen (I will not say, had been invented) to ensure the regular payment of taxes. In like manner, the village presented a certain solidarity ; all were responsible for the whole, and each for all . To-day, the loss in rating on an unoccupied house is divided proportionally among the more fortunate owners . An idle farmer, unable to meet his quotum, would amerce his neighbours, copartners in the village estate . It has been found that every system of land-tax must be in some degree inequitable and oppressive ; and a fixed sum, regulated on a cadastral survey, at the opening of an indiction, soon presses unequally and becomes out of date. The corporate or mutual responsibility is not more unfair than other methods ; but it caused distress, excited comment, was extended from the poor yeomen partners (consortes, ouorcnvo"oc) of the defaulter to the neighbouring proprietors (who were not technically on the consortium register), and was abolished amid a genuine outburst of rejoicing. (For Basil II ., true to the Lecapenian policy, "war on the rich landowner," spread the extra amount on the adjacent private estates ; and Romanus III . finally swept away the 'AXXIXeyyvov about 103o, and won the same favour as Anastasius some five hundred years before, for annulling the Xpvrapyvpov.) As in the Russian " Mir," the community had some interest in the efficiency of each. The Roman village did not perhaps possess the right to send to Siberia a slovenly farmer or a wastrel ; but it could protest against the
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sale of land to the unworthy or incapable, because (a)Communal all were concerned in the good tillage of each several vildagesholding . So, in Western feudalism, where the lord embodies, as it were, the impersonal abstraction of the village commonwealth and concentrates its interests and duties, he controlled the transfer of land so as to ensure the union of military service and landed possession . Just as the constant payment of taxes in the eastern, so in the western empire the supply of sturdy retainers for warfare was the paramount interest . As the one aimed at filling the coffers of the State, so the other aimed at securing the person and property of the petty lord. Sales in the Roman village were forbidden, except to a fellowmember of the township, vicanus ; strangers could not purchase ; and it was only natural, if the adjoining landlords were made responsible for the Encroac&township's default or defalcations, that they should mend 'f the claim pre-emption, as chiefly concerned in the control Magna of the « common " estate . It may be suggested that the very means employed to depress the rich owner merely resulted in exalting him at the expense of his poorer neighbours. It is short-sighted folly to-day, as under Basil II., to seek to relieve the poor by taxing the rich. The wealthy have ample means of recouping or indemnifying themselves for such loss ; and all taxation in the end presses upon the lower classes . Its pressure has been with justice compared to a stone . bounding downstairs and reposing its whole weight upon the floor below ; and to curtail the luxuries of the rich is often to extinguish the livelihood of the poor. Under cover of their responsibilities and with much show of justice, the landowners interfered in the concerns of the village and the disposal of property there. The independence of the yeoman-community was threatened ; the proprietor obtained a footing inside the communal circle, and must have gradually secured the chief influence . The State, in the West, by abandoning or forgetting -
I I
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its functions, drove the poor man into the patronage of the nearest squire ; a voluntary " commendation" bargained away the liberty of thousands . In the East, the State, in its very praiseworthy concern and parental anxiety for the weaker, directly hastened the extinction of the freeholder. (2, b) Private § 5. In (b) the private estates (18comraTa), the owner might be a monastery or a church (as in Turkey the mosques, or our own glebes and estates of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners) ; the "Crown" (as the Duchy of Lancaster) ; or individuals . The tenantry who tilled the land were divided exactly as in a Western manor into the freeholders and the villeins. The former (liberi coloni, ,uco"OwToi) paid rent in kind or coin, and at the end of thirty years could not be removed from the soil they had cultivated for a generation. It is easy to see how this privilege or shield against arbitrary notice became later a sign of bondage, when the serf's lot was raised and the free tenant was depressed to meet him. We may suppose that in the most favourable time, their condition differed little from the freeholder (liberi tenentes) in a modern manor, or a tenant of a Scottish estate under feu-duties. The free-rent (otherwise high- or chief-rent) being paid, possession of the estate and the right of transmission on the same terms were guaranteed . . One difference there might be : the free-rents of a manor in England are fixed according to the value of money seven centuries back, and bear no imaginable relation to the present value of the land. We may presume that the Byzantine proprietor was not so strictly tied by the '1 dead hand."-The (a) villeins or serfs (evmro7paooc, adscripdcii) correspond to our copyholder, taken in to work an estate, housed and fed, like the inmate of the earlier Roman barracoons (the rural ergastula). These, too (and for a doubtful motive), are " bound to the soil,"-whether to secure their tenure or to safeguard the master against Encroachmeet ofthe
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desertion (SpaveTea), it is hard to say. Technically (2, b) Prorate freemen, they seem to have at first enjoyed this eses. immunity as a unique right-which became afterwards (like curial privilege) an intolerable bondage. But in civilised societies the indigent citizen is always worse off, because of less value, than the slave (as Abolitionists have discovered) : as the humble and honest ratepayer out of work is worse off than the criminal in his prison, the unemployable in his workhouse . The status of the two tended to become identical. Justinian (xi . 48, 21) professes himself puzzled to discover a distinction . The personal slave was raised to the condition of the predial serf of later villeinage, the prototype of the copyholder to-day, as yet on land unenfranchised, and subject, not to the fixed or nominal relief of the freeholder, but to the "fine arbitrary" of lord and steward . Yet however much Christian notions of equality, or juristic and Stoical views of equity, may have had influence, the chief motive (here as elsewhere in human improvement) was fiscal . The government wished to be able to put its hand on a subject at will and with certainty . There was to be no evasion of duties once incurred, leaving a status once entered, changing a career once chosen . Everything was done to stereotype and formulate. A man took up his father's profession, with his estate, patronymic, and duties. The peasant was encouraged no less than the curial to consider his cabin and holding his own. While the emperors transported whole colonies and altered the dialect of an entire district, the spirit of the Roman government kept the classes in duress, and the peasant '1 nailed to the sod." 6. The first sign of altered conditions is met in Pirst definite the Noaos I'Ewpyucos of Leo 111. And it must be reforms remembered that this reign (717-740) was the first ( democratic in breathing-space since the fall of Maurice . In the character. obscure night of the seventh century, the thematic -
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First definite system came to birth. Whole tracts o¬ country reforms ceased to be imperial ; and were filled with wild
democratic in giP sies and settlers of various origin . The Latin law, character. language, and traditions were gradually superseded by local customs, barbarous, Greek, and Oriental influences . Within eighty years, an emperor proposes to make his capital in the West, and a successor surrenders Rome with indifference . The first moments of leisure (from struggles for very life) were given to the reorganisation of the empire on Protestant lines . Leo and Constantine (whose administrative and legal edifice was complete about 75o) do not merely follow the current ; they also initiate, with a vigour and an individuality rare in Byzantine history . We would gladly know how far the agricultural code recognises and merely modifies an existing condition, or attempts to enforce an ideal. Did Leo abolish serfdom and its incidents, or find it gone ? We have no mention of glebal bondage, no class of eva7ro7pa0oc, no freemen owing suit and honourable service to a lord. May we hazard a guess that the caste-system of hereditary status had been swept away in the storms of the seventh century, and given place to a new freedom of contract? In the class of village-communities (a) a new type of Socialistic " Mir " had arisen, corporations perhaps formed to take over land which had gone out of cultivation, like joint-stock companies with us. It is not difficult to suppose that this method of tenure was adopted in the Asiatic provinces gradually cleared of Saracens, and in the European parts (where imperial colonies or voluntary settlements bid fair to hold Slavs in check). For the age of Leo was no period of decay or lethargy :the religious crusades put new life and vigour into the motley assortment of races and peoples known as the 1' Romans" ; and a general recovery, financial and economic, took place when the immediate peril of the capital was averted . On private estates (b) tenants
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are represented as free from service and bounden First definite obligation : the rent is a matter of agreement be- rearms " tween landlord and lessee : (z) sometimes, as in the democratic in agri decumates near the sources of Rhine and Danube character. in the first century, the gop-ri-rat paid a tenth of the produce ; (a) at others, the landlord equipped his tenant with stock and capital, and as in the mt=tayer system, diverted one-half of the profits to cover his outlay and risk ; the tenant kept the remaining moiety (icctoelavrac). The free covenant or contract supersedes the archaic feudal tie. The Iconoclastic reform, like its '1 extreme Left," the Paulician movement, hated spiritual pride and hierarchic pretensions . The doctrine of equality was recognised, and a liberty of agreement on equal terms was taught and encouraged . But the individualist and democratic efforts of Leo and Constantine were not crowned with conspicuous success . 7. The Iconoclasts had favoured the honest Reaction yeoman and sturdy independence ; but the victory (c- 850) in of of the orthodox, complete by 850, secured (so far as interest Church and we may judge) the interest of the feudal and spiritual -magnatepeers. An era of great families begins, reposing in the main no doubt upon hereditary skill in war, but largely also upon landed estate . While Basil I. may seem to be the occasional master of the Church, he is in reality its puppet and its pensioner . Reaction had set in ; the tenants' advantage was overlooked, and the obscure legislation shows some resemblance to our own Agricultural Rating Bill, whereby a certain relief is given to the parson and the proprietor . Once again, free contract was abolished ; and tenants chained to their allotted place, as once the old curials to their order. The landlords complained that the modest rental of one-tenth was insufficient ; and within our own memory, estates of heavy land have been left derelict because unable to bear even the first charge of the tithe. Taxes had increased under the « Isaurians," and no doubt bore most heavily on the
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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i
Reaction
opulent. It . was now their turn : they not only relieved themselves, under an upstart and a usurper, intere0) o Church and of fiscal burdens, but they encroached on the common lands-just as in England, we trace the gradual extinction of communal rights and the exclosure of open spaces-during the time and perhaps in unconscious revenge of the movement towards a barren political equality (176o-i83z). The Byzantine noble perhaps could show better right ; he had absorbed the neighbouring villagelands, by purchase (in right of pre-emption), by loan, mortgage, or advance, in all the well-known methods by which smaller holdings are merged into the great estate, like streams in the ocean . In spite of imperial favour, the free element in the rural population had well-nigh disappeared-the yeomen, whose place can « never be supplied." The tenth century is the epoch of feudal aggression and of ineffective attempts to stem the tide. The latifundia (whether in the age of Pliny, or of Romanus and Basil, or to-day) imply a decreasing and lethargic population, economic mischief, ruined agriculture, and a reversal to an archaic and less civilised form of society . These overgrown estates, studded with the now ruined homesteads of the small occupier, imply another soldiers' fefs danger,-the decay of the recruiting-ground of absorbed. the Army. The recuperative power displayed so often and in so surprising a manner by the Eastern empire is due to the new military system, which in the crusading era (62o-730) supplanted the foreign mercenaries of Justinian's age. The Byzantine army became the most national, the best equipped, the most perfectly disciplined in the world . The emperors took part in their parade and exercises in time of peace, and shared their perils and hardships in the annual campaign. So careful was the general staff of the lives of its soldiers that taunts have ever since been levelled at their cowardly and defensive tactics. Their pay was secured, and they
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were supported by allotments. These were supposed soldzere'Afs to be inalienable ; but in some way not very clear lb8or6edto the historian, nobles and grandees (oi JuvaToi) who had formed a dangerous and unpatriotic element under Justin and Maurice (565-602) absorbed these farms, whether by mortgage or secret transfer. Heraclius had once told the semi-feudal levies of Priscus ' that they were now soldiers of the State, not the men-at-arms of a powerful citizen ; the reverse was now the case. We may suspect that in an age when a Chamberlain of the Court could arm 3ooo domestics and secure for his nominee the throne he could not occupy himself (963), retired or still . active soldiers in the provinces would feel under especial obligations to the wealthy general in the castles of Paphlagonia or Cappadocia. 8. About this time, that is, under Leo VI., a law Estates of was repealed, useful in intent, but now out of date sf"a e' and for long a dead letter. Under the earlier agaimt empire, it was generally understood that a pro- M*TO"hment vincial governor should not cement alliance or ofgrandees. acquire property within the sphere of his duties.
The soldier and the bureaucrat were members of two detached corporations, which were sedulously kept apart from the ordinary interests of the citizen and the taxpayer . Under Justinian (c. 530), the high official was directly forbidden to buy landed property at all : the emperor looked with suspicion on the sympathy of classes, the concordia ordinum, and desired to make his soldiers and functionaries as unconcerned and aloof as the ministers of the Church. But in East and West alike a tendency set in which obliged wealth to find the only outlet for capital in landed estate, and firmly united power and influence with territorial possession. The peculiar circumstances of the empire (to which history offers no precise parallel) might have betrayed to Leo the Wise the im1 Niceph. (de Boar, p. 6) : vol. i. 282, 1 84 .
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Estates of
prudence of removing the prohibition. In spite of intermittent methods of autocracy, the sovereign was against nearly sinking into the puppet of noble factions, the encroachment Venetian Doge, or the British monarch in the time ot'grandees . of the Georges . But the major domus became himself the emperor, and was plus royaliste que 1e roi. The legislation of the hundred years following the accession of Lecapenus shows the determined efforts of the State to shake off feudalism and its incidents . The Novels of Romanus I. (922), of his son-in-law, Constantine VII ., 947 ; Romanus II ., 963 ; Nicephorus II., 96q., 967 (3) ; Basil II., 988, 996 (2), have a single aim, to prevent the absorption of the small owners and the dangerous destitution of a trained soldiery. To the lasting credit of the Byzantine government, these soldiers never became a menace to the public peace, never dissolved into roving bands, more dangerous to friend than to foe . But this excellent discipline was secured by fixed and regular pay and a certain home-pension for old age. In the recovered provinces the chief beneficiaries were the court-officials : the story of John Zimisces' complaint and death is one of the best-known incidents of this period, and is perhaps even more
Attempt to restrict
Monastic prop6iy(c. 9s5).
valuable as evidence, if it be but a legend . It betrays another problem of conflicting aims and interests, which would one day tear the State apart (quandoque distrahant Rempublieam, Tae. Ann. i. 4) and open the way for the barbarian. 9. In another direction, the victory of the Orthodox
vas attended with mischievous results . The fundamental difference of Eastern and Western monachism is well known. Under the Merovingians (especially in the last century of their nominal rule) convenience no less than pious respect granted extensive rights to prelates and abbeys . The tenants of a monastery were better off than the serfs of the secular neighbour ; and the corporation (like a college to-day) was a popular landlord. It is needless to repeat the
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praise deservedly bestowed on these early founda- Attempt to tions, custodians of the remnants of arts, letters, and re*trkt Mmeastic
civilisation, and sole pioneers in the improvement or pro,.ty reclaiming of waste land. Such does not appear to (c- 965). have been the experience of the Eastern empire . The " immaterial " life, 11 equal to the angels," was here less practical and operative . The government in Eastern countries is despotic, largely because the only class able to create or guide public opinion is otherwise engaged, in meditation, divine studies, or preparation for death. Now it would be unfair to depreciate the part played by the Greek Church in the political sphere, according to its lights . I cannot detect the grovelling servility of which it is constantly accused . The instances of a frank and conscientious opposition to the Court are at least as frequent . No one would deny that it provided a valuable counterpoise to that secular centralism which is the goal and bane of modern States . The tyranny of a government (such as some fondly dream of as an ideal), in which all the resources of science and administrative machine are directed relentlessly to the fulfilment of worldly ends, would prove' unbearable. I have elsewhere noted that the gravest problem of future politicians will lie not in the academic inquiry, « Where is sovereignty enthroned ? " but « Where is the counterpoise to its now unlimited power ? " The Greek Church performed its duty with courage. It never became wholly secularised or a portion for cadets . Theophylact (whom in the text I have compared to John XII .) is an almost unique instance of the common Western type,-the hunting prelate, more at home in the stable than the church . Imperial influence and caprice may choose the patriarch ; but there are no Marozias or Counts of Tusculum .-It is impossible always to sympathise with the Church, even while we concede the value of its frankness . Piety, which in the West was preserving the rudiments of culture and social life,
156 Attempt to Amictic property (c. 965).
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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well-nigh ruined the empire in the East. The Iconoclasts struggled for the very existence of the secular State. . The lavish gifts to monasteries, the building of new houses, had not the same practical value as in the West. Such property was lost to the State. It might and did become a house of idleness, a scene of desolation, rather than a smiling oasis in the wilderness of secular properties . All governments have at one time or another been obliged to confiscate existing Church revenues, or limit carefully the right of bequeathal. Charles Martel had in France an aim similar to his Eastern contemporaries, Leo III. and Constantine V. The Novels of Nicephorus, a century later, betray the same anxiety to limit the revenues of ecclesiastical establishments, while warmly commending the erection of new foundations in waste districts . A passion for the monastic and celibate life was, depopulating ; and the government had to strive against other causes than that of war or pestilence in the maintenance of the census . Nicephorus himself is the last person to be justly accused of hatred of monks . So far from being a mangeur des moines, he was in sympathy with their life and aims. He himself helped to build several houses on Mount Athos ; and his daily prayers and ascetic practice estranged his wife, his friends, and that fickle and luxurious populace in the capital, who looked for other qualities in an emperor than prowess and sanctity, who while professing reverence for the monkish habit and ideal, preferred to perform their own devotions by proxy. B . THE GOVERNMENT AND THE LANDED INTEREST
Economic Buddioni,m.
§ 10. The government, then, during this period (850-1000), whatever the personal predilection of individual rulers, sought consistently to curtail large accumulations in private hands or in ecclesiastical
I j
!
CH. VU
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corporations . But human nature and economic con- B~onomic ditions were against them. Two fatal misconceptions Byzan ium; spoilt the beneficence of the imperial system from Buuimirn. the outset : (i) The belief that the government could only be strong and secure by keeping individuals poor, by setting watch, like some jealous dragon of fairy-tale or mythology, over vast treasures of unused bullion ; (a) that the sole wealth of a country lies in the land-we are familiar with this latter fallacy to-day. Advance of money for commercial enterprise was dangerous and uncertain ; legislation seems to have been invariably on the side of the borrower . There was no credit-system ; and trade fell into foreign hands, as in Turkey, and largely in Russia at the present day. The unique outlet and oppor- .Land, unique investment tunity for capital lay in the purchase of more landed for capital. property ; and when this investment had turned out profitably, in the purchase of still more.' On their part, the indigent neighbours of a successful landlord had no resource but to mortgage or dispose outright in the bad harvest, the fiscal urgency, or the ' One curious outlet for capital must be mentioned, by which a valuable reversion or immediate dignity and salary were purchased from the State. It is the practice of the more temperate despotisms to sell office, partly, no doubt, to enlist as large a number of supporters as possible for the existing regime, partly to replenish a deficit in the Treasury. The practice was long continued and defended under the short-lived but glorious centralised autocracy of the French Bourbons : the purchase of function and nobility was one among many means adopted to render harmless the privilege of the noble. The details of such offers among the Byzantines are peculiar and attractive as investments : the dignity of protespathaire and a salary of zo per cent. could be obtained by a single capital payment. Other sinecures, providing both title, precedence, and income (like the lordship of a manor) produced about aquarter of this emolument, but could be sold and bequeathed . The residents of the capital, to whom such tempting offers were open and perhaps (as Bury suggests) confined, would have every interest in preserving the Constitution, which with land gave the only secure return on capital outlay. There was discontent and conspiracy and personal hatred in Byzantine society ; there were no disaffected classes, there were no political reformers ; the utmost Radicalism (to except a possible socialistic movement under Michael II .) was the removal of an individual who failed to fulfil his part, in a scheme which all considered ideally perfect and final.
158
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Land, unique personal failure. Jews, growing at this time throughinvestment out the world supreme in trade, do not appear to for capital.
Lecap-(c. 930) and the landed
gentry : Wice"t'°'s (c. 9s5).
have turned their attention to the pledging of landed estate' ; it is probable that they were prevented by custom, prejudice, or direct legislation. Thus piety, economic conditions, or fallacies, and the natural (as well as spiritual) law, « to him who hath shall be given," combined to stultify a consistent policy . § 11 . Lecapenus forbids further purchase by magnates from the poor, unless they are related ; and
permits a valid and unquestionable title to such new acquirements only after ten years. (We may ask, whether the former owner was allowed to resume when he wished, on repayment of the sum he received for the property ? for this no answer is forthcoming .) But the middle of the reign of this prince was ruinous to the small holder and the agricultural interest. In the bad seasons and distressful winters (927-932) the poor were obliged to make over their farms to their rich neighbours, to become tenants where they had been owners : it was in this way that the land of Egypt became Pharaoh's property when Joseph was premier . The yeomanry or "statesmen" rapidly diminished in numbers . The stubborn resistance offered by grandee and churchman to the interference of government was neither purely selfish nor unpatriotic . The noble could find no other safe investment ; the churchman conscientiously believed that no hindrance should be put to the gifts of the faithful . It is the expedient of the puzzled historian to impute events to self-seeking ; but man is more often an idealist and (unconsciously) an " altruist " than the economist or the theologian is ready to allow. In the end, the great Asiatic estates and the feudal conditions they produced, led to the downfall of the " Roman commonwealth " and the creation of a new State. But the landed gentry had no deliberate design of upsetting the old order ; and the churchman was only concerned in recovering from the
c$. vu
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sacrilegious the money left to God and his poor ; in assuring independence for the Church in its appointments, and for the pious laity freedom of donation or bequest. Nicephorus, half-monk, incurred the displeasure of the Church by his attempt to secure control of Church affairs ; John, his assassin, purchased immunity for the act by resigning all such claim ; Basil II., unable to struggle against the current, restores the right to accept and hold property. We are amused at Luitprand's righteous indignation at the episcopal 11 annates " which Nicephorus exacted from the Bishop of Leucara . But such an instance supplies us with another warning against a hasty dismissal of human motive as selfish. The Church fought with a good conscience and a firm resolve in the defence of its rights . The emperors, whether Leo III. or Nicephorus, or Otto I . or Henry V., were equally clear in their own course. The feudal noble who set at naught all higher control, and wished to be undisputed sovereign in his manor or barony, was in the same way justified . Even the astute and pacific chamberlains who in later times starved the army and spent the taxes in State pageants and popular amusements, believed they were doing the State good service, in repressing the aggressive and warlike class, in securing civilian supremacy, and in warding off the perils of disorder and military law. All were right in a measure, yet all were wrong .
Leeapenw tj 3 gentry : N'cePh°m (e. ss5).
12. We come now to the changes in the statute- (3) Lqg4latzon or' book, to the comparison of the new Codes or revi- Isaurians'
sion of the Iconoclast and Basilian dynasties, to the against lessons derived from the final triumph of the spirit Pl tlaeyand text of Justinian . Roman Law, individualist and contractual, grew up in the decay of national distinction and of religious faith . It replaced the sanctions of a citizen-State and a narrow ancestral religion by a wider outlook, in which the law of nature held sway, the enemy of custom, privilege, and
160 (3) .eytslatton of agaimt~"'~~ Plutocracy-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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exclusiveness . It was a fitting counterpart to an imperial system, which for the first time upset the barriers of race and creed. It was ,humanitarian" ; and where it was not contractual, it was tinged with
emotion and sympathy . Its severest penalties were reserved for the plotter against the universal peace ; that is, treason against the emperor its embodiment . Nor need we feel astonishment that the system which most completely subordinated the individual should have been the first to insist on his rights, his original liberty and equality . For it was by the free choice of the people and in virtue of their express mandate that the emperor ruled, fought, administered, and legislated. The words of Justinian are no empty boast or hypocritical subterfuge ; the emperor and his law stand for freedom : "Pro libertate quam et fovere et tueri Romanis legibus et prcecipue nostro Numini peculiare est." It tended to represent every relation of life as the result of free covenant and convention ; and under it slavery and the patria potestas receive the most serious modification . The age of Justinian did not originate it ; and the sovereign merely gathered up the parts into a kind of working coherence. His code shows scanty traces of Christian influence ; and it is reserved for the Unitarian Leo to endeavour to give expression to the tenets of the Gospel in the administration of justice, and the conception of status, of covenant, and of crime. Edited in a foreign language which became rapidly unintelligible, the work of Justinian was partially translated and in time everywhere forgotten or misapplied . The century between the author's death and the western visit of Constans III. witnessed a great
upheaval in every part of the realm . The invading Slavs brought with them their primitive habits ; and in the distress of Asia Minor and the overthrow of the old civil order, local and customary law superseded the catholic enactments of the Code ; while Christian practice and ecclesiastical canons
I
CH. v11
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gave guidance in default of any other. By 740, (3) I,egi$lawhen the joint-emperors produced their TK;koy~, the t o , official world, having respite from danger, enjoyed against a welcome leisure for considering its heritage . On pdutofacy. all sides, institutions were in ruins ; only memories and traditions survived. The new order endeavoured to combine existing practice, largely Christian or canonist, with the almost obsolete text-books. The Ecloga shows the dangers of the sea, the widespread influence -of Christian principles, the presence of alien elements in the population : it sought to reconcile civil and canon law . The levelling spirit of Presbyterian Iconoclasm is detected in the abolition of scales of penalty, determined by the station and property of the culprit . The plutocratic basis of old Roman society disappears, at least in theory, and all are equal before the law. The Ecloga was then a token of a democratic reform . 13. The treatment of the wealthy is the chief problem8 of problem which faces the ancient and the modern Stat, a"d commonwealth . The Athenian democracy ostracised, intimidated, and perhaps finally destroyed an independent class by the various methods of the "super-tax ." An Oriental monarchy encourages the accumulation of wealth by officials and private persons alike, that the inevitable forfeiture may be a rich prize, that the government may without ill-feeling gather in ill-gotten gains, and even with a show of justice confiscate the estate of the oppressor. The modern State has at present no settled policy. But it regards the capitalist with increasing suspicion and dislike . Though it would resent the comparison, it desires to become, like the Eastern potentate,, the heir of his wealth. But to his initiative, his enterprise, his business methods, it cannot succeed of right ; and it is too early to decide the vexed question whether the impersonal control of bureaucratic ,government is as effective as that of a single interested manager. VOL. 11 .
The State (it would L
_
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Probk+w of appear to-day) believes its duty to consist in the State and grudging protection of wealth by general order and police, that it may penalise any lucky turn, may seize upon the growing spoils, and find new ways of relieving the adventurous or the fortunate of their surplus. This is not the best education for those who profess to be the rightful heirs of these enterprises and industries. One would hesitate to entrust the practical management of a '1 going concern " to those who had hitherto contented themselves with exacting "arbitrary fines ." Now the Roman Empire,
institutions, had conThe rieh kept perhaps the wisest of political alooffrom ferred on wealth a recognised place of dignity, while qffa%rs under and prestige it had curtailed its
earlier empire.
by giving publicity mischievous and indirect influence :-for in a modern State the outlets are many for secret manipulation by a powerful class or indeed corporation, suffering, as they suppose, from unjust treatment . The rich were installed in a monopoly of municipal power. The poorer classes were committed to their care and kindly supervision, and taught to look to them for the support of religious festivals, corporate banquets, and the public amusements, which formed the chief business (I will not say, distraction) of urban life. If the wealthy had obvious privileges, they had heavy duties . They had the burden, but not the direction, of affairs . The civil service and the army were recruited from the needy and ambitious. The supreme place seldom lay within the timid grasp of the rich noble ; the Gordian family (238-244) is perhaps the only instance where high birth and Yet fastidious luxury are raised to the purple . succeeded . of labour this division on the whole centres lived urban in their Certainly the classes together on amicable terms ; the dangers and disabilities of opulence were too conspicuous for envy. The curial system exposed the perils of the smaller owners ; and the strangely detached order of Senators (who had never perhaps visited the metropolis or sat
CH. vrr
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in the Curia) was without defence against a prefect faced with a deficit. The reigns, for example, of Valentinian I., -x-375, and of Justinian, -x-565, are marked by merciless official raids against private wealth, of which, perhaps, the emperor himself was culpably ignorant, if not an accomplice. Natural causes and public calamities extinguished the opulent class during the seventh century. When the Iconoclasts began to renew and to reconstruct society, the Church and the official class were alone visible ; and below, at an immense interval, were the alien factors and elements fermenting in obscurity .
The rich kept ~ro , earlier empire.
14. Religious prejudice combined with social Legalre,/orms changes to nullify the legal services of the Iconoclasts. of 'Isaurians' repealed by
The Basilian code (complete c. goo) reverts to the goo. spirit and letter of Justinian ; warmly accuses the ill-advised efforts of Leo and Constantine ; and in reviving the ancient and Roman text does not even take the trouble to eliminate the anachronistic clauses, which had reference to a state of society long passed away. Criminal law becomes more merciful, the death-sentence infrequent,-and we must compare with shame the Byzantine usage with the careless and savage sentences of our statutebook down to recent memory,-when ,men must Mercy in the hang that jurymen may dine." It is suggested, not Code. without reason, that mutilation, which largely took its place, was founded on the Scripture precept, Cut it off and cast it from thee." The tenderness for human life, noticeable in the tactics and practice of Byzantine war, is now clearly seen in their code ; and if this be a test of civilisation, at least as important as the extended suffrage or a complete system of baths and wash-houses, we are afraid that England under George III. must fall behind Russia under Elizabeth or the Eastern empire under John Comnenus. But critics remind us of occasional lapses into terrible and vindictive penalties ; and are inclined to refer this respect for life to monkish
164
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Mr in the superstition (right of asylum or leisure for a sinner's repentance) rather than to the truer motives of compassion or humanity . In any case, we must in fairness do justice to a notable improvement in the Roman Empire on an essential matter, . at a time when the rest of the world was reverting to savagery and altogether shaking off the restraints of law, while rendering its sanctions more severe .The two last causes contributing to the altered aspect of the reviving empire I have named (q.) the settlement of the Iconoclastic controversy, and (5) influx of bullion . Both these may be briefly dismissed ; for
(4) Revival o,/' my conviction of their serious import is unhappily gcct'Osi'ticad independent of any detailed proof. In the eighth inflwwe.
century, at least under the two first '1 Isaurians," the State, embodied in a masterful personality, was all-powerful . The official hierarchy were reduced to their true status as obedient servants ; justice was enforced without respect of persons ; and the rivalry of the Church as an independent order in the State was curtailed . The views of Leo, in the preface to his Ecloga, somewhat resemble the doctrine of Dante's De Monarchic . The heavenly calling, the theological and religious responsibilities of the emperor are clearly recognised . He claims to be above the monkish orders, not because his aim is secular, but because he is the chief earthly representative of a theocracy. With the settlement of the conflict, by Irene for a time and finally by Theodora, the Church won back much of its It again became a direct and indirect influence . political, social, and territorial force, which claimed independence of control in other realms besides We may here that of preaching and theology. repeat, that a unitary State-government, without counterpoise, must be a necessary if perilous expedient in time of crisis or dissolution, or among peoples just learning the rudiments of . political compromise. But in a highly complex and civilised
-
CH. VU
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
165 society, in a nation scattered over a wide tract of (4) ReW at of country and exposed to the errors and inadequacy i ~ticat of centralised administration, the make-weight of independent classes on the land, or in commerce, or in letters, or in spiritual affairs, is essential to a wholesome equilibrium . Let any unhistoric idealist learn from the Roman Empire the evils of government interference and monopoly, however conscientious and well-intentioned . The danger of a republic is not anarchy or even class-warfare (though this most commonly follows any loud announcement of the actual equality), but a conservative stagnation, the decay of charity, fellowfeeling, and lofty aim, a cynical indifference to official corruption, and a unique preoccupation to obtain a place under government . But in the most centralised period of Byzantine rule, the Church interfered with this unitary conception of the State and its duties ; set apart a class of men who, living the "immaterial " life of bare need, could not be touched by a government of force ; watched over the orthodoxy of the sovereign and rebuked the errors of princes . It is a pity that in recovering this independence and noble frankness, the Church became entangled in worldly concerns . The endowment of new monastic foundations proved, as we have seen, the impoverishment of the country, and implied the disappearance of the yeoman-farmer . (5) The fact of the economic revival of the empire is (s) Revival of undoubted ; but it belongs to the specialist to search private for the causes and to trace the development . The weauh. vast treasures left by Theophilus and by Theodora, or squandered by Michael Ill. and Constantine IX., seem incredible. But the whole period from the accession of Leo III. to the death of Constantine X . is marked by a steady recovery, by an accumulation of bullion in the only kingdom which seemed to provide security . Bury well points out the fair distribution of wealth in the capital under the -
l
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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(5) Revival of Isaurians ; the later increase of riches was to the
I'
ovate wealth.
advantage of those already well-to-do .
Money seeks
its like, and while the government hoarded in default of true economic insight, the rich proprietors eluded taxation (as in any other feudal society) and raised up, under a nominal autocracy, an oligarchy of families, which I might term with Lord Beaconsfield ". Venetian," were it not on closer inspection almost wholly military. C. THE SOVEREIGN AND THE GOVERNING CLASS UNDER MICHAEL III .
Family of 15 . The marriage of Theophilus has been emTheodora the bellished by legend, but it was an event of capital Armenian. importance to the empire. One Armenian family had a monopoly of office and captaincy for perhaps thirty-six years, only to be succeeded by another. We read with surprise the boasts of the ancestry of Basil or of Theophobus ; to believe myth or the complacent Herald's College of Constantinople, the latter was a Sassanid, and on the salutation of the 30,000 Persian troops at Sinope, revived for a moment a legitimate Persian monarchy (Ws FK rOV'TOV )v xatvi~eo-8ac EBcua) ; the former, more Kai Ta Ie his fate, traced descent from the rival family lucky in But the house of Theodora represented of Arsacids. origin, and had settled or obtained an Armenian At this time, the great a post in Paphlagonia. Armenian race, preserved (or even reviving) in the wreck of the Persian empire and maintained in mountainous fastness against the Caliphate, threw themselves into the arms of Rome . Henceforth the fortunes of our empire are inextricably interwoven with the remoter East ; and fall before the Seljuks just aoo years later, because the vigilant frontierdefence of the Armenians had been abandoned, together with their independence . The noble family of the Mamigonians turned to the empire, and gave
i
I
cg. vti
.
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE
167
up their estates for the more lucrative service of Family of the Amorian dynasty. Theoph . Contin . (who is A~o`lo''a the drmenian . under no courtly obligation to flatter a long extinct house under Constantine VII.) calls Marinus, the father of Theodora, ourc a",uos -rig s7 i&~Tr7s Ti7v -rvx4v.l Manuel, his brother, was brought from his retreat by the emperor's express orders to take part in the Saracen war. He appears still to have held the titular office of Commander of the Guards, which his nephew and lieutenant Antigonus really exercised ; and legend insists that he preserved the life of Michael, just as his earlier namesake twice saved Theophilus. This uncle, Manuel, was a capable
general, and is very generally confused with an earlier Manuel, also an Armenian,2 who had served the unfortunate Michael 1. with fidelity (813) and had proved the mainstay of the forces and the shield of Leo, and of Theophilus, at cost of his own life. Theodora, born at the unknown town of Ebissa in Paphlagonia, brought her family into still greater prominence. And herein we notice the curiously consistent « democracy " of the empire in all its Emperors wed seven ages as opposed to the aristocratic and ex- alw"ys Subjects . clusive basis of later European society.
Any one
may enter the service of Caesar, even Moabites and Hagarenes ; any one may become Caesar ; to the chief place in the mighty fabric the gates, like those of Dis, stand wide open day and night. We are not surprised to find the son of a just vanquished Saracen governor heading an imperial detachment in Tzimisces' Russian war, and killing one of the three leaders. The earlier Manuel crosses to and fro between the service of the Caliph and Theophilus ; the one dismisses him with tears, the other welcomes the traitor (and possibly the renegade), and 1 He held the somewhat indistinct office of apoiryydptos, or, as some aver, rovpp-dPX~r, cont. Thph . 55" 2 Cont. Thph ., IK T6Y 'Apueviwv KaTay6Aevov. According to Genesius, he spread over the East the repute of a valiant and dreaded warrior (93) "
168 Emperors always wed subjects.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv. B
at once gives him the honorary title of -magister and the serious duty of domestic of the school.-
But in one particular, Roman tradition, so generous to capitulation and appeal, maintains a pride alien to the rest of its institutions. '(No foreign matches for the imperial house," was a principle rarely departed from : « Let the emperors mate with subjects." A daughter of Theophilus was proposed for a son of Lewis the Debonnair ; but nothing came of the betrothal, and Thecla sought some consolation in transient amours . In the next century, Constantine VII . hands down among the curiously assorted '1-arcana imperii " a solemn prohibition of a strange alliance for royal princesses . He dismissed the marriage of Emperor Christopher's daughter to a Bulgarian, with the true remark that he did not strictly belong to a reigning house. Constantine V. may well have shocked public feeling by his union with a Khazar ; and, excepting Justinian V., we must revert to Gallienus before we meet an alliance with a barbarian, of deliberate policy. In this age, and still later in the feudal period, the empire stood outside that network of powerful families in the West, which in its close and baffling affinities divided the fortunes and settled the future of Europe . It may be true that wars to-day are not fought for dynastic motives, and the personal policy of Queen Victoria shows that a clear-sighted sovereign will postpone family to national interest . But the public attention centres on this union of first families, watches intently the course of the love-match or political alliance, and sees in the common children of nations, differing in character, creed, and aims, one of the firmest guarantees for peace and easy relations . From this wider and indirect influence the emperors were debarred, partly by circumstance and the inexorable veto of religious faith ; partly by that strong public opinion or official rule which so completely circumscribed their fancied autocracy.
CH. Vu
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169
It is idle to speculate on the effect of a system of Emperors alliances with distant but reverential princes in the "ways wets subjects. West. When an empty title
could so powerfully appeal to Clovis in the fifth, to a Venetian doge in the ninth century, what might not have been the harmonious union of related Christendom against Islam ? It is sufficient for us that it was not so, and that, at least to the end of our period, the emperors seek wives and sons-in-law in the household of subjects, refuse their princesses even to friendly and Christian potentates, and bury in the convent those who might have been bearers of civilisation and piety.' 16. This was the family which obtained the chief The Regency : places under Theophilus :_ - MICHAEL IL,
. . ... . . . " I
t 829"
I
P I
Theoctiste=Marinas . (7r6"rpLKLQf Scylitza). I
I
Mannel (Regent) .
Theophobus = Helena . Txso- = Theo- BARDAS Petronas Sophia. Maria. Irene.= SergHIS ("Persian PHILUS, dora. Cesar = (patric.), king °'). t 842. (862-866} d. of Const. BaArsabir brother Myro, boutzic, (an Armen. of patriapog : magister arch e general and (uncle of envoy to Rome Pbotius . domestic apo es, Photius, Pope Aoy* n(850)" patriarch) ; Nicolas II: his father (?) Anast.) I I I I I Theodosius 4 daughters . MICHAEL= Eudocia = BASTsent envoy Anti-Xo'* ? Stephen Bardas (?) Thecla~ Ill ., : Ingerina. ~ LtusI. gonus, govo- to Lewis I. (patric .) (patric.) (affianced ( .) t 867" ; t 886. Colonel o-rparqg 839" to a son of of yos r " wv Lewis I .). I Guards. Svnarv. ALRXIUS MUSHL Cosar
(Armenian) .
L8o VII., SCc .
I """"""""""
Symbatius (Sempad), Armen. and patric., Aoyoeerqs Spop.ov.
Manuel secures his great-nephew's throne by refusing the title of emperor ; and recalling soldiers and people in the circus to their allegiance to an infant. (Had the Armenians introduced greater respect for these rights than prevailed before ?) But the first ' It is without surprise that we read of the doubts on the marriage of Otto II. and Theophano : yet could it be seriously believed, or indeed boasted, that the empress of the West was a Byzanting changeling?
_
170
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. B
the Regeney : place in the Council of Regency after Theophilus'
death was held by a eunuch-chamberlain and patrician (this title is sown broadcast and ceases to bear any distinctive meaning) . ` Theoctistus (who may possibly have been connected with Theodora's mother) had been aoyo0e'r~s Tov Jpouoa, or Postmaster. We may note that he was envious of a military renown, and took command in three unsuccessful campaigns in 843, 844, 845- Calumny removes Manuel ; Theoctistus is removed by Bardas' intrigue and by a scene of unusual violence, in which even the emperor and his uncle are disWe read of Damianus, a chamberlain, obeyed . probably ;rapaK01J &')J evos, and an evil tutor, whose advancement, pleaded by Michael III . with boyish zeal, is sternly refused by Theodora, who promotes according to old Roman tradition by merit and noble birth, not the servile and base-born . Bardas, as aoyoOe-r,vs, now wielding uncontrolled influence over his nephew, reforms his ways and governs the empire well. Theodora is induced to retire by her ungrateful son ; first insisting on an inventory of the treasures she left, so soon to be squandered by him. Damianus slips from favour and is replaced by Basil, the Macedonian-Slav or Armenian, whose Basil is romantic story dominates this period. the usual largess with further promoted. He gave receives the rank great splendour (u7raTeuo*e) . Bardas of Caesar, Kovpo7raXa-rns, and at last is granted that a title dormant for some time previous to the brief enjoyment of the dignity by Alexius Musel Character of under the jealous Theophilus .-The private life of 'M'ehael In. Michael Ill. and his personal character need not concern us ; it were well to remember the words of the judicious Finlay. He seems to have emulated some of the earlier Caesars, Nero, Vitellius, Commodus, in his vigorous patronage of the circus and his intemperance . He forced senators to take part in his favourite pastime ; stopped the beacons because
,
`'
CH.
VII'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
171
they interfered with the serious business of his maractter of life ; and seized with delirium, ordered at table the ~haed IIL deaths of prominent men . It is notable, first, that his orders were rarely executed, unless they happened to agree with the wishes of the courtiers ; second, that on the morrow the emperor was heartily relieved to find his commands disobeyed and expressed his gratitude . Yet while each night brought a renewal of the coarse pleasures which ruined his life, he was not wanting in spirit or .valour . He would sometimes recast the edicts and question the arrangements of Bardas, with whom rested the real work of administration . He constantly appeared at the head of his troops ; and we must deplore in .his case, as well as in that of Constantine VI., that under a pious mother's care a youth not without promise or ability became the most unsuccessful sovereign in this age. It is difficult to trace the exact analogy, but the reign of Michael III . with the return of Orthodoxy shows a sudden moral dissolution of society, comparable to the reign of Charles II. after the overthrow of Puritanism . As a rule, the personal behaviour of the sovereign in his palace had not been of great importance ; it was little known ; and few Roman emperors were without striking official virtues or competence, which hid, or at least atoned for, private scandals, largely exaggerated by gossiping biographies . But the genial good-nature of Michael III. was popular : he mixed freely with all classes ; visited and supped with the poorest, stood godfather to his trainers' and jockeys' children ; . and did not even estrange the vulgar by his utter contempt for the Church in a superstitious age. Gryllus the Pig was his mock patriarch, whose unseemly revels, mass in masquerade, and vulgar indecency towards the empress (if we may credit an idle legend), were the talk of the capital . The private unbelief of a sovereign may be without influence ; but the drunken processions of Michael's -
172
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
character of patriarch and his choice companions were notorious . ~ichaelIII. Theophilus, a man of stern and austere character, had built a hospital where once had been licensed houses of ill-fame . Society seemed (with the return of the mediating power of images) to have thrown off the fetters of restraint . Bardas lived in open concubinage with a daughter-in-law. Thecla (a sister rather of Michael III. than of Basil) surpassed the daughters of Charlemagne in the facility of her attachments. Basil himself assumed, with deep astuteness, a levity and an intemperance which were far from congenial to him ; and he threw off the disguise of vice when it had served his turn. He accepts the cast-off mistress of Michael III., Eudocia Ingerina, and communicated to others his own suspicions of the parentage of Leo the Wise. It is not a little peculiar that the principle of legitimacy should have taken firm root among the Byzantines at a time when of two sovereigns one, Leo, was of doubtful origin ; and the other, his own son, Constantine VI I., had been born out of lawful wedlock . Cynical § 17 . Bardas Caesar stands out with a Caliph and enfightentnent a Patriarch (Almamun and Photius) as the most enin church
anal state.
lightened ruler in a dark age. He encourages justice, law, and letters : he founds a university in Magnaura and entrusts it to Leo, who had acquired notoriety in the last reign. He succeeded in supplanting the pious Ignatius as patriarch by the lay statesman Photius, great-nephew of Tarasius, a previous occupant of the see, raised with the same suddenness from the official first-secretariat (?rpw-roa6j1KpnTts) to the archiepiscopal throne. Photius was the son of a spatharius, and seems to have succeeded Basil as Chief Equerry or Master of the Horse . The ruse by which Bardas secured the acquiescence of the bishops in Ignatius' deposition has a curious significance, in view of the known relaxation of discipline, morals, and religious conviction which followed the settlement of this Iconoclastic controversy . He secretly promised
CH. vu
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the reversion of the vacant see to each several qnicat bishop, begging him to show a decent reluctance en4g""t in Church to obey the imperial
summons ; and it must be and sate. confessed that their unanimous acceptance of this proposal is exceptional in the annals of the Eastern Church . Another incident of imperial and (as we must presume) of ecclesiastical policy throws light upon the sinister aspect of the time ; I mean the persecution of the Paulicians . Did society compound for loose morals and the Church for self-seeking by religious intolerance ? Under a government, largely dominated by Armenian influence, the frontier-vassals or sentinels of the East (countenanced since the days of Constantine V., perhaps in secret sympathy) were not merely discouraged but turned into rebels . Actively disloyal, the Paulicians sought refuge with the principal foe of the empire, the Emir of Melitene ; for example, Carbeas, whose father suffered the horrible penalty of crucifixion for his religious views. The persecution of the Cathari, of the Albigenses, had some excuse in the ignorant suspicion of the age and the anti-social character of their views and practice. But the persecution of the Paulicians must be classed with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the expulsion of Moriscoes from Spain,-a political error of serious importance . 18. The reign of Michael I I1. in its jealousies, Murder of palace-cabals, and murders, betrays features happily uncommon in Byzantine history . Bardas, in spite B"s. of his capacity and learning, was a man without principle or moral conviction . He sought to preserve the influence of his family by retaining the chief military offices for its members, the chief civil, for its creatures . Petronas, Theodora's own brother, flogged by Theophilus with impartial but Oriental justice, is called from Ephesus, whence he governed the Buccellarian Theme, to the supreme command on the Saracen frontier . Did the Caesar fear to confide forces to a stranger ? Did he contem-
174 murder of Caesar Bardas
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
plate the deposition of Michael Ill.? assassinated in the emperor's presence ;
ntv. a
He was and the
plot was conceived and executed by the new favourite, Basil. The populace, usually indifferent to the removal of its viziers, protected a monk who publicly reproached Michael with the murder.-For a short time a genuine civil war formed an almost welcome contrast to the intrigues of the palace around the childless emperor. Basil succeeded to Bardas' vacant dignity, but Symbatius (Sembat), his partner, won no advantage from the crime . Sembat leagued with the Obsician governor : they raise a standard of revolt in the name of the emperor, plunder and pillage. Against the two is despatched an Armenian, Maleinus, one of the territorial noble families, which in another line produces Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces ; and the revolt is crushed and its authors cruelly put to death . Michael now betrays the same jealousy of Basil as he had shown to his own uncle. With an autocratic caprice and neglect of form, infrequent in the Eastern empire, he suddenly invests Basiliskianus (or Basilicinus) with the purple buskins of a colleague at table, asking Basil whether he had not still the same prerogative that raised him to the rank of Caesar ? Reports do not agree as to the status and origin of the new imperial partner . He is called a rower in the imperial trireme, but he is also represented as the brother of Constantine Caballinus, prefect of the city (who seems to have borne as a genuine name the odious epithet of the son of Leo 111.) ; he was presented to the silent and astonished senators the next day . Basil had reason to fear for his life ; his Like Bardas he murder was attempted in vain. had taken a serious view of his responsibilities, as colleague of a madman ; whom he had alienated by and of his virtues and diligence . He was neither a soldier Michael III. nor a civilian, merely a palace favourite who developed a sudden aptitude for affairs, and with all his
CH. v11
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
175
timely complaisance to Michael's follies, maintained Murder of a just view of the duty and dignity becoming an . emperor. The death of Michael, one -of the most Barcias W& of pitiful and tragic episodes in our history, was an michaet Im unhappy necessity . Both self-defence and the needs of the State might urge Basil to lose no time and to overcome all scruples . The people heard without interest or commotion of the transference of complete sovereignty to the Caesar, and it is probable that the murder was not more public than the circumstance of Emperor Paul's assassination in 18oi . If we reproach the Byzantine people at large with a callous disloyalty and indifference, we must remember the secrecy of the imperial tradition, the mystery of the palace, the discreetness of those permanent attendants and officials, to whom any change of sovereign was of slight moment. No telegraph then made known to a horrified society the minute details, as in the murder of Alexander and Draga of Servia, or the King and Crown-prince of Portugal . With all our boasted advance in humanity the nineteenth century will remain pre=eminently the Age of Regicide ; singular irony, when we remember that kings were invited to lay down a burdensome prerogative that they might divert to others the invidia of bad government, and becoming sacrosanct reign secure but superfluous in the hearts of their people. 19. Thus fell the direct dynasty of Amorium ; Accession of for it is more than probable that Leo the Wise Baffurther continues the obscure lineage. It had arisen under Armenian very similar circumstances ; an old friend and 2nfl°eme" colleague suspected and imprisoned ; a sudden massacre in the grey dawn ; and a hasty salutation. Michael II. was low-born, ignorant, and unorthodox ; but his family soon acquired the weakness and the culture of a long-established family . Theophilus was magnificent without losing simplicity in personal life and character ; he had known the dangers and
176
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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AcmBwn of vicissitudes of a private station, Michael III . is the true type of the young heir born in the purple. He is no nonentity like Honorius ; but his upbringing Armenim has spoilt him, and he lacks the first requisite of a Roman emperor, application to business, personal contact with affairs. His reign bears a curious resemblance to that of Commodus ; viziers, forced into rivalry with the emperor, do the hard work ; and he enjoys high office as a means to gratify the not unmanly and still regal tastes of a sportsman . When Xiphilin was transcribing Dio Cassius and his contemporary account of Rome under the son of Aurelius, he could not fail to detect the likeness . During this nominal autocracy, the machine of government went on of its own secular momentum. The regents were able and considerate, but the treasury was exhausted by Michael's constant extravagance. This, indeed, in the eyes of his subjects, was his chief demerit. Yet may we ask, without shocking the economist, whether a reckless profusion does not circulate the precious metals more profitably than the bullionist policy which hoards the whole surplus capital of the State ? Certainly at no time did the empire more ostentatiously display its marvellous capacity for recuperation . Basil found an almost empty treasury ; but after twenty years he bequeathed to a dubious and suspected heir the same wealth and opportunity of enjoyment that Theodora had transmitted to Michael on retiring from the regency .-The Amorians had allied with an Armenian family as yet without permanent surname." And the change of dynasty in 867, after so many sanguinary intrigues, only gave greater power to the Armenian interest. The conspirators who removed 1 We may indeed trace the beginnings of this new practice ; under LeoVI. a valiant general is styled b -rig 41waa; Constantine VII. writes (de Adm.) explicitly of a certain generalof the Pelofionnesian Theme, o5 Tb hrwhw b rwv Bpoeevvtcov,-where later custom treats both Phocas and $ryennius as family names. Is not even Gibbon misled as,to the meaning of the term Monomachus ?
CH. vir
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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Bardas, the regicides who shed the blood of their sovereign, are undeniably Armenian. The precise origin of Basil the « Arsacid," the Slav, the Macedonian, the Armenian,-we shall never know ; nor is the birth of this bold but isolated figure a serious matter. But he depended on Armenian support, and received a crown with gratitude from an Armenian sovereign! There is something strange and even startling in the Byzantine empire at this time . There is a fixed social order enjoying a security of life and property unknown elsewhere ; a bureaucratic service still imbued with the administrative methods and traditions of the age of Constantine ; a Church representing Hellenic culture and abstention under the cover of Christian theology and monasticism ; a course of justice, at least for the ordinary man, incomparably more equitable than any that prevailed till centuries later in other countries ; an army efficient and devoted, whose failures were due rather to bad leadership than want of spirit or training ; and, at the apex, a strange foreign family, whether of Michael the Amorian or Basil the 11 Arsacid," not educated either in the church or the civil service, alien to the doctrine and letters of this 11 Roman " society, and yet able to seize at will by two obscure murders the most dazzling prize that earth could offer to human ambition .
VOL. II .
Accession of Ba8ilfurther Ar,wt1ens influence .
CHAPTER VIII THE SOVEREIGN AND THE GOVERNMENT UNDER BASIL I., LEO VI ., AND ALEXANDER (867-912) Trana,/er of 1 . A PERIOD of some forty-five years is covered throne to the b the reins of Basil and his two sons . We reserve `ArsacW y g the indecisive space of the regency which governed 867, supp&rted by under the nominal rule of Constantine for the next o,~cciad class. section, before the appearance of Romanus I . and the inauguration of a new family. These are years of quiet and steady recovery, vigilant and systematic business at home and abroad, relapsing in the latter half into that short-sighted conservatism and enjoyment of resources, which seems to follow every restoration of central control in Byzantine history. There are plots, conspiracies, and intrigues ; but the period cannot be termed one of anxiety or unrest . No general attempt was made or contemplated to change the family or the form of government ; and we may well wonder if these emperors regarded such episodes as serious matters, so striking is the leniency shown to traitors and would-be regicides, with one remarkable exception of barbarous cruelty, which shall be noted in due course. In spite of the historical resemblance, Basil was no peasant Maximin (235), who merely excelled in bodily strength and killed a benefactor . It is true that his records are composed by those who wrote under his grandson's partial eye ; but it is clear that his " usurpation " was popular and his government well supported by the official class, whose quiet but obstinate opposition had proved disastrous to more reigns than one. It seems, at the outset, abundantly clear that the mysterious Senate had moved in the matter of the 178
ex. viu
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (867-912)
179
transfer of the throne . Like their ancient prototype, Trawfer of without executive power, perhaps without corporate throne 10 the privilege, the 8ova', a~Trca,7-ros, or yepoua-fa exercised a 867, mp ' certain but indefinable control . It was in the pre- ported by sence of this body of high officials that Theodora °Zal c1s. and Basil opened the treasury : the one at the close of her regency, to display its wealth ; the other, at the first moment of his monarchy, to show its emptiness. Basil was sufficiently tactful and astute to secure their support from the first ; and the abolition of a supposed privilege of legislation was certainly not the act of an absolute or capricious Caesar, who despised a rival and insulted this last remnant of the Dyarchy . The natural and legitimate successor of an incapable prince, he was welcomed by clergy and civilians alike ; and owing to some admirable secret of the, Byzantine military system, no distant prefect or general hastened to the capital, like Galba or Vespasian or Constantine, to claim the vacant place by force . It is a moot question whether the general welfare of the realm suffered or gained by this exchange, when palaceintrigue replaced the military " pronunciamento ." Public opinion was less shocked, no doubt ; the greatest secrecy prevailed as to the interior of the palace, the veritable « Forbidden City" of the Byzantines. The technical forms were carefully preserved ; even Basilicinus, the nominee of a debauch, was presented to the silent ranks of senators by the now sober Michael ; and Basil, solemnly inaugurated, well tested by a year's association, succeeded without protest, receiving his crown over again from the altar, through the patriarch's hands, as a sacred trust from God . 2. It would be difficult and perhaps unfair to Domestic estimate the position of this sovereign without in- reforms and quiring into the administration which made his rei n ofB,~ipodacy g of Basil.
acceptable and his family popular . He had good ability, a natural desire for the happiness of his
180
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
Domestic subjects (whose lot he had known and tested in his ''e or"s a"' youthful poverty), and he was well served . Nature ,foreign policy and willing human effort combined to help him in of Basil.
his task. First and foremost came 'the reform of finance and the replenishing of the treasury ; unworthy pensions were halved, not entirely abolished ; even the needs of the State under an absolute prince recognised something like « vested interests ." The expenses of the Court were curtailed ; imposts were diminished and perhaps more carefully distributed ; the cost of government was simplified ; proposals to increase the scale of taxation were declined, though warmly recommended by the official class ; and (best of all) the steady and equitable administration of the law was secured by payment of a fixed and regular salary to the justices . This was one of the chief boasts of the later empire, that amid the storms of a turbulent age and the rapid shipwreck of neighbouring powers, this ideal at least of 16ovouia had been preserved ; the law-books might be forgotten, but the traditions of Roman equity remained inviolate . The poor suitors, forced under any centralised government to resort to the capital, were maintained during their sojourn at the State expense ; and it would be interesting to know how long this unique and thoughtful provision lasted . Basil revived the old practice of sitting as assessor or interested auditor in the Courts, to give dignity to the judges as well as to guide their decisions . He sat in Chalc~, having rebuilt a judgment-hall in the vestibule of the palace ; and in the Treasury (To y6Vercov) he was a constant attendant in the most important branch of Byzantine administration-the assessment, apportionment, and collection of the revenue, and chiefly of the land-tax. Basil, or his wise counsellors (and an absolute monarch who dares employ and listen to such deserves the credit for their sagacity), took care to have these cadastral assessments written up clearly and in full, so that every
r.
CH. VIII
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (867-912)
181
one might read. He encouraged appeal, protest, Domestic and grievance against the exactors, those necessary reforms and evils in a State which employs the vexatious method f-eign policy ofBasil of direct taxation ; and when he found no cases of complaint he suspected fraud or intimidation, and
wept tears of joy on discovering through trusty spies that there really was no one to complain . The law was once more codified ; and this bold and systematic task, bringing an incoherent mass to order, and reacting against the brief and hated Iconoclastic redaction, was completed, and should properly be noticed, under the reign of Leo VI . The disorganisation of the army during Michael's sole reign has no doubt been exaggerated ; but Basil introduced a new element of strength, by distributing mature soldiers among the younger recruits and by making the duties of military service somewhat more continuous . He secured the submission of the Slavs, already '' completely seized " of the greater part of the Balkan peninsula ; and exercising a rare discretion and reversing the precedent of Theophilus, who extinguished the autonomy of Cherson, he allowed these scattered tribes to choose their own rulers (while in the last reign such places had been, it was said, sold to the highest bidder). The chief warlike events of Basil are found in the constant and indecisive border-forays in the East, on the Cilician frontier ; in the regrettable overthrow of the Paulicians under Chrysochir at Tephrice ; in the naval expeditions, which with varying success protected the Roman shores from the Saracen corsairs ; and in the kaleidoscopic changes in the map, the policy, and the fortunes of Southern Italy . It is on the Eastern limit that the chief interest lies, where the chief obscurity conceals . We are informed significantly enough that on the fall of Tephric6, the resolute Protestant citadel of the saints, Tarsus and its emir revived and raided the empire's land ; that private enterprise, not imperial policy, founded two
'
-
182
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
.niv . a
Domestic new themes-Lycandus, where Melias the Armenian reforms ant acted as some Anglo-Saxon pioneer of a lethargic foreign. podiey
ofBastt.
central government ; Mesopotamia, where three brothers, nobles of Armenian descent, surrendered (without doubt to resume in fee) their estates to the emperor . Greater Armenia, recruiting-ground for the soundest stock and the best warriors, was divided between several great princes, and perhaps the chief bore the honourable but unmeaning title of Curopalat. Yet we cannot doubt that the Eastern frontier suffered severely ; large tracts were depeopled either by civil war, which made a desert of the interior and compelled the vanquished to join the Saracens, or by those fruitless expeditions in Melitene or Cilicia, ' where Byzantine tradition seemed to insist that the sovereign shall appear at the head of his troops.
§ S. The family and ministers of Basil consisted of His,tamily : relaxation of four daughters who, according to the custom of the moral
restraint.
Court and the time, followed the religious life ; and four sons-Constantine, by his first marriage, who predeceased him, and appeared(as he believed) in the spirit by the clever jugglery of the Santabarene ; Leo, who continued this dynasty, born of uncertain origin in September 866 ; Alexander, who reigned for a brief period of thirteen months, 9 11-9z a ; and Stephanus, born in 87o, raised at the age of sixteen to the patriarchal throne, dying in seven years of the severity of his ascetic practice, and providing a precedent for the elevation of the young Theophylact by his father Lecapenus in the next century. It is said that Basil had reason to complain of Ingerina's conduct, and that Thecla (whom Theophilus had crowned and Michael her brother indulged) continued her vagaries into the more decent, or at least more pious, atmosphere of the new reign. Basil's clemency imposed upon Nicetas, the empress's cicisbeo, and on Neatocomites, Thecla's paramour, the somewhat peculiar penalty of the monastic life : the former was permitted under Leo to become ceconomus
cx. vui .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (867-912)
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of Saint Sophia . It can scarcely be denied that a &euiar and certain secular air invaded the high places of the Church, though not to the same extent as in Rome in the following century. Princes of the bloodroyal take orders ; Ignatius is the son of Michael Rhangabus (811-813) and the grandson of the "Arabian" Nicephorus ; Gregory, the son of Leo the Armenian, is Bishop of Ephesus ; Stephen and Theophylact are the brother and the son of a reigning emperor . But the episcopate was never a mere appanage for the cadets of some powerful family ; and whereas in the West the holder secularised the office, as John XII . in the tenth, and Benedict IX. in the eleventh century, in the East the mitre (powerless only over the son of Lecapenus) insensibly transformed its wearer into a spiritual person. Photius himself is a statesman and an intriguer, as well as a vindictive partisan ; but he brought to the throne deep learning and capacity for practical business, not often seen in a patriarch . He compassed his restoration under Basil by a pamphlet, possibly ironical, in which he displayed the Arsacid descent of the emperor . His brother-in-law, Leo KaTaKaXwv, is captain of the guard ; he himself had been an ambassador to the caliph ; and his friend, Theodore the Santabarene (who played the imposture on the superstitious Basil), was an accomplished hypocrite, ordained to the see of Patras : which the witty Byzantines called 'A0avro7roXtr, the courtly bishop being both an intruder and an absentee. We cannot discern the motive for the plot of Photius and Santabaren against Leo after Constantine's early death, grudgingly acknowledged as sole heir. It was a curious and obscure political manoeuvre, conspicuously imprudent and unsuccessful . The last days of Basil were tormented by suspicion and ' perhaps by remorse ; he grew moody and irritable ; a servant who saved his life while hunting was -
184 seer and p~ h.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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punished with death for baring his sword before the emperor, and his last words warned his successor against the priestly machinations which had embittered the closing years of his life . At this critical moment he complained, like Justin 11., of the helplessness of an emperor among servants banded together to deceive him.
§ 4. The officials, ministers, and generals in the Byzantine public senice service of the State under Basil prove the same free from
'
conditions of complete superiority to national spirit or exclusivenationality. ness, which we have so often remarked . Andrew, Governor of the Hellespont, is a Scythian of the West (in contrast to the Tauroscyths or Russians) . He succeeds in one of the many expeditions against Tarsus ; is superseded in a palace-cabal by Stypi6tes, a sort of later Cleon ; but is again replaced and becomes Commander-in-chief. The period is chiefly worthy of notice for the emergence of those great families, mostly of Asiatic or Armenian origin, with whom arms became a hereditary profession, the defence, as distinct from the administration, of the State, a peculiar duty and privilege .' The great Admiral Nicetas was an effective if stern disciplinarian (not to be confounded with the chamberlain who found favour with Ingerina, nor with a courtier who assisted the return of Photius, nor again with a later confidante of Leo V1.). An indolent general in Italy, Stephen Maxentius, of Rise ofthe the untrustworthy race of Cappadocia, gives way to gam t''" Nicephorus Phocas, grandfather of the emperor a century later. Phocas is sent against the Saracens in
886,
and
against
the
Bulgarians ; he
becomes
i We read now of the first family of Ducas, which was almost blotted out in the next century, in a treasonable attempt to seize the throne. Andronicus and his son Constantine will be noticed in connection with the favourite Samonas ; and we here only call attention to the gradual formation of the surname. In Basil's life (Bonn, 369) it is TJv 4K 7-000 Aomds ; also 'Av5p6v&KOS d AouKas ulas-very soon lapsing into the brief Aovrcas. Dindorff in Zonaras gives Sovrs3s simply as if a title. Thph. Cont. 165, b Too 'Apyvpov K. b rou" DovKas, and of Theodotus, o Karl T3v ME~tPG7/v6YV .
CH. VIM
.
t
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (867-912)
185
SomFCrTiKos -r@v a-xoawv, or Commander-in-chief, on the Rise ofthe demise of the " Scythian " Andrew ; he refusesmis-families. to 9mat eastern become the nominal husband of the emperor's tress, Zoe I. ; and being removed to comparative exile as Governor of Lydia, achieves a brilliant victory over the Saracens, and obtains honourable mention in the "Tactic " of Leo, for a mastery of strategic art . Leo Ka-ratcaaiuv succeeds to his European command, coupled with a palace - dignitary, Theodosius the 7rpwTo,8eo-Ttdpio9 ; both are defeated with terrible loss by Symeon, throughout this reign of ease a perpetual thorn and menace,-Angyrines, the Armenian, being killed with his troop ; and his squire Melias finding renown (as we saw) by the establishment of the Theme Lycandus, peopled with a colony of his fellow-countrymen . Alexius, an Armenian (so Constantine VII . tells us), also recovered Cyprus for the empire for seven years, after which it was again lost to the Saracens . It cannot be asserted that excessive control by the State had as yet extinguished private enterprise. Curticius, another Armenian, falls in the Bulgarian war in 889 . Nicetas Sclerus is sent in the same year as envoy to obtain the dangerous aid of the Hungarians against the determined Symeon ; and henceforward the perplexing fewness and similarity of Christian names begins to be made clear by the adoption of the surname, which serves a double purpose ; the historian is enabled to trace the fortunes of families 1 and the continuity of their tradition, no longer puzzled by the sudden emergence of some isolated and unique figure, without father, without mother. We are thus enabled to judge the 1 Another link is given by Theophylact Abastact (or the Unbearable?), who saved the Emperor Basil's life in war, and is given as the father of Lecapenus, who forty years later shared the purple with his " grandson," Constantine . In this time, too, we hear of another surname of renown ; Eustathius Argyrus is the son of a general under Michael III. at TephricP, is the representative of a Charsian house in Cappadocia, and becomes the ancestor of Romanus III. (io28-1034), first husband of Zoe (C. vii. 374) .
-
186 Perils of divided command.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv . B
effect of the Iconoclastic revival, which enabled titles, estates and a sense of family y honour to be transmitted
with a security infrequent if indeed ever found in Oriental monarchies. The most painful episode in Basil's reign is the treacherous conduct of a Leo during an Italian campaign, as the colleague of Procopius, the 7rpw,ro,8ea--rcaipeos . This practice of joining an official of the palace with a professional soldier has been noticed before ; and after all, is no novelty to the historian who remembers the astonishing success of Narses under Justinian . Not yet had the military class claimed supremacy or even independence of the civilian's administration ; but we may trace in this a half-conscious suspicion of a sole command . At any rate, the usual quarrel arose between the two ; Leo deserts Procopius, leaves him to perish, himself obtains a victory and returns to claim the credit . On discovery of his crime, heinous and without hope of forgiveness in the military code of honour, Leo was punished by the loss of an eye and his right hand (the same punishment which excited civilised people of late against the Moorish Sultan) . Perhaps the government scarcely ventured to avenge the murder of a palace functionary by the execution of a successful captain ; but other proofs are not wanting of the exceptional clemency and humane prejudices of Byzantine society at this time. Those who see in the Greek chronicles nothing but hideous penalties, parricide, and hypocrisy, should remember the gradual improvement in our own prison system and our penal code, and should compare the treatment of Lord Balmerino and Admiral Byng in the eighteenth century. Abortive § 5. We are brought, then, to the conspiracies and plots which disturbed the rest of Basil and Leo aon~tBs~a~ and his son without rendering them cruel or vindictive . Ro(s7o-szo). manus Curcuas, captain of the °IrcavaTot, was the father of a general . sometime compared to Belisarius, and was the great - grandfather of an illustrious
i `~
'' j
I
i i I
crr. Viii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (867-912)
187
emperor, Zimisces (fi976). Sixty-six senators were Abortive implicated in an obscure plot, of which Curcuas was e°nspiraeies against Basil
the author. He is deprived of sight, but his accom- and his son plices are only banished and their estates confiscated. (870-910). It is permissible to see in this plot the discontent of a rich official class who had lost the chance of gain by the new methods adopted to secure their integrity . The conspiracy of Santabaren against the young prince Leo was punished on Leo's accession by the loss of sight ; but it is remarked that the tender-hearted emperor repented of this sentence, recalled his old enemy to the capital, and settled a pension on him, charged on Church-revenues ; this he enjoyed with the noted longevity of State pensioners, and died in the reign of Constantine VII . at an advanced age. The mild control of Leo gave the inmates of his household opportunity to show their disloyalty. Tzaoutzes Stylianus was once the governor of the three imperial princes under Basil . He had allowed his daughter Zoe to become the mistress of Leo, afterwards raised for brief space to the lawful rank of empress, and fit (if legend is to be believed) to associate with the Marchioness of Brinvilliers . Loaded with favours, dignities, and new-created titles, Stylianus conspired against Leo when absent from the capital in a villa of pleasure on the Bosporus . His son, Tautzes, captain of the guard, is in the plot, together with Basil ?rj7x-rj7s (the Harper ?). Zoe discovers and thwarts the unnatural and foolish intrigue, and sends back the emperor out of harm's way to the palace. Leo contents himself with withdrawing the commission of Stylianus' son, and conferring the important post on Pardus, son of Nicolas, commander of the Foreign Legion ; but it would appear that the new colonel was himself a grandson of Stylian 1 Basil, his brother, actually attempted to make himself emperor, and laid the foundations of the remarkable influence of Samonas the Saracen by taking him into his confidence . Samonas told Leo of
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188
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. s
Abortive the enterprise ; and the kindly monarch, convinced of °"''`8 his uilt, burnt off his hair, and exiled him to Greece . agaimt Baa l g
hi, ,%, (s7o-sio),
qoa occurred an attack on Leo during a solemn procession which bears a closer likeness to the modern dangers of royalty . A candelabrum saved the emperor's life, but he was severely wounded in the head, and the nameless and perhaps insane assassin underwent a terrible and Chinese- punishment ; he was tortured in vain to reveal his accomplices, and after he had lost hands and feet he was burnt alive . Leo YI. § 6. The personal reign of Leo is the history of a ua"styhan kind and ease-loving sovereign, but little acquainted with affairs, and completely under the influence of samamuas : remarkable his wives and attendants. We have noticed the long Saracen
,favourite.
predominance of StY~ lean,hurried through the inferior
ranks of the hierarchy to the most exalted posts, master of the offices, logothete or grand treasurer, and « parent of the Emperor," ,8aa-tXeoza-rwP-a title invented for the occasion by the pedantic emperor. But if the Tzaoutzes dominated over Leo, he was himself the victim of his own servants, who in every despotic State enjoy the chief influence. The greed of Musicus (Mousegh) and Stauracius precipitated the Bulgarian war by re-establishing for their private benefit a monopoly in the commerce. And after Zoe's death (« unhappy daughter of Babylon," as some one wrote on her coffin), Stylian owed his final and irrevocable disgrace to the personal discovery of the emperor ; who, on a visit to the logothete's house, detected Stauracius armed with a sheaf of corrupt requests and offers . Leo, left in unaccustomed and miserable loneliness, looked round for some one to be his master. Samonas the Saracen succeeded to the Tzaoutzes as the director of the sovereign's conscience and policy . It is doubtful if his romantic and unscrupulous career can find a parallel in the annals of court favourites . Such influences may at times be paramount in a State centralised in the cabinets of the palace (like Spain after Philip I1.), and inured by
CH. VIII
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native sloth or superstition to traditions of loyalty Leo VI. and passive obedience : Farinelli, an Italian soprano, under Stylian exercised unbounded but honourable power over the qa : melancholy Philip V. The chamberlains of Constan- remarkable Saracen tius II . are notorious in the pages of Ammianus . favourite. Eunuchs had governed the empire under Irene, and
would again appear as the chief rulers in the reign of the aged Theodora (1054-1056), gathering in a court, as Constantine VII . wittily says, "thick as flies over a sheepfold ." But in the annals of Rome there is no precise parallel to Samonas the Hagaren favourite . It is very doubtful if he formally renounced his religion : it is certain that he built monasteries at his own expense without convincing any one of the sincerity of his conversion, and that he boldly counselled his Moslem father during a visit not to accept the emperor's offer or give up Islam. He made no secret of his purpose to return ultimately to the dominions of the infidel laden with Christian spoils . Once, wearied by a tedious spell of power, he fled to Asia, and was with difficulty prevailed on to return by the emperor, grieved rather than indignant . Yet this influence over a weak monarch of an unbelieving eunuch was not resented by Byzantine society, certainly not at that time servile or hopelessly corrupt. Basil, a poor hermit, alone among the Romans, had the courage to taunt him with his race and creed, whatever the dignities by which despotism might attempt to conceal them. For fifteen years (c. 895-9Io), he was the abjectly trusted adviser and chamberlain. A singular episode is found in the adventures of the earliest Ducas in Byzantine history. Samonas had taken flight, and Constantine Ducas had been sent to bring him back. He overtook him at Cabala, near Iconium, and returned with him. Leo, anxious that his favourite should be cleared of any treasonable charge, prompted Constantine on oath to explain the sudden journey of Samonas as the result of a religious vow ; he was on a pilgrimage to a shrine in
190 Leo FIT. a aylian Sa zozas; remarkable Saracen
favourite..
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
my. B
Cappadocia . Losing his presence of mind before the stern demands of the court of inquiry, Constantine let slip the truth, that the real destination was Meliten6, where resided the chief Moslem foe of the em pire. i
After a nominal captivity of a few
months, Leo restored the chamberlain to favour, and made him godfather to the young Constantine, the long-expected heir." The Saracen cherished hatred against the man who had betrayed him. His father, Andronicus Ducas, not long afterwards was invested by Leo, who knew how to choose his generals, if not his favourites, with a joint command against the Saracens . Himerius, or Homerius, logothete of the imperial port, was his colleague . The chamberlain sends secretly, warning Andronicus that the appointment was a ruse to cover his arrest ; and urging instant flight to a place of safety . Andronicus believes the lie, and takes refuge with the caliph . The emperor, unable to understand the motive of this treachery, sends a message with a secret missive concealed in a candle begging him to return. Samonas tampers with the bearer, and has it delivered to the vizier ; and the caliph, believing him to be a traitor to one sovereign and perhaps to both, puts the unhappy general to death . The last exploit of this alien satellite was the composition, in collaboration with other worthies of the palace, of a virulent and anonymous satire on the emperor himself . He had been piqued by the favour shown to a servant of his own by the imperial pair (gio). Leo, kindly himself, and sensitive to ridicule, suffered greatly from this poisonous attack, and not less when he discovered the author. But with culpable leniency he contented himself with depriving him of office, confiscation, and imprisonment ; the servant who had been the cause of the rupture took Samonas'
I Son of his fourth wife, Zoe II. Carbonopsina, a great-niece of Theophanes, historian and confessor, married and crowned after the birth of an heir. She succeeded the short-lived Eudocia the Phrygian in the affections of the uxorious Leo.
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vacant place . Such is the whole remarkable story in brief outline-a story without parallel in the later empire. No favourite exercised so long .and so inexplicable a sway over an emperor . 7. The chief argument against despotism is not its severity but its laxity and waywardness . Absolute rulers seldom resemble Ivan the Terrible in cruelty, Peter or Napoleon in vigilant supervision. The influences which sway the mind of a lover of ease are anonymous and irresponsible . The customary complaint of the people blames not the interference but the indifference of a ruler. We hear nothing of popular grievance or discontent under Leo the Wise, but it is easy to see that effective personal control is a thing of the past, that the nominal master has no will of his own and little voice in his own household . Where he takes the trouble to interfere, good-nature and not policy seems to direct his judgment. He vastly increased the cost and sumptuous outlay of the palace ; his son remarks on the magnificence of the royal galley. Basil's simple ways were out of date in a capital bent on enjoyment . To Finlay, Leo 11 typifies the idle spirit of conservatism " ; and he remarks, with some show of truth, that under him the 1' last traces of the Roman constitution were suppressed ." Yet we do not chronicle in this reign the '1 extinction of the Roman Empire and the consolidation of Byzantine despotism ." Allowing for the difference of age, society, and religious belief, Leo is but the echo of Claudius and the prototype of James I., as Basil of Maximin. He may have technically abolished the decrees of the Senate and put an end to independent municipal life. But it is hard to believe that any .deliberate attack was made, under a prince so kindly and in a society so contented with its peculiar institutions, upon any genuine survival of republican or at least responsible government. It is easy to see that the spirit of the age was comfortably fatalistic, and
Leo VI. under Styldan &
.
wastefudeose Court of",e (c. soo).
192
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. 8
wasWaaeuee quite willing to concede to the ruler the same arbiof'tlw court trary power which it recognised in God, who made (c. 900).
the harvest plentiful without man's labour. ConDiregard of stantine VII ., also a learned and an industrious man, aP e a" admits the disorder which crept into the services motion. under his father. The rules of promotion, hitherto inexorable for the lower posts up to the permanent secretariats, were disregarded . A certain « Sancho Panza" was appointed judge-admiral (admin. imp., 5o), and the reports or verdicts of this illiterate man were dictated by his deputy ; as a clerk prompts the decisions of the country bench, or as the sublime detachment of the nominal ministers under the Japanese Shogunate was brought down to earthly business by the whispers of assiduous valets. It is also clear that the careful supervision exercised over the collectors of revenue was relaxed ; and that local exaction became again an abuse without ready redress . But it is difficult to see any great degree of corruptness in the purchase of court office ; for example, a certain cleric, Ctenas, desired to become a protospathaire, and for the title and a yearly salary of one pound of gold offered forty. The court had become an insurance office, returning a very poor terminable annuity on a large outlay ; or, as has been suggested, the State was groping its way towards the institution of a National Debt . This proposed step outside the routine of caste was unwelcome to the emperor, who seems to have found time for such minutiae by neglect of weightier matters., But when the ambitious clerk raised his offer to sixty lbs., the imperial scruples disappeared and the patent or commission was issued ; we may pardon the quiet humour of Constantine who tells the story and points out that Ctenas only lived two years to enjoy his place and salary . Round Leo collected an atmosphere of eulogy and incense ; to Genesius, the earliest historian of the post-iconoclastic emperors, moderate in his praises of Basil, he is 7rav6o-Pos and &iuvrp "ros ava~, -7reptcovopos and
CH. vni
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7raveUKAenv and aofSylcos pao-Aeus . He was undoubtedly Di8regard of popular ; and the sole acts of his reign which can be preoedenta"t called arbitrary are connected with his frequent mot~a nuptials and the rebukes of the patriarchs . His own irregular life did not prevent him from a moral interest in the meanest of his subjects . Like Theodora in the sixth, like Theophilus in his own century, he pulls down evil houses of resort and builds in their place an asylum for aged pensioners (yr1porcoueiov) . Thph . Cont . 370 (Bonn) .
8. With the joint salutation of "long life to Alexander and Constantine," we shall enter upon a new period ; and I cannot do better than borrow from Finlay a few sentences in which this sympathetic historian contrives (rather by intuition than use of slender material) to seize the fugitive charac-
teristics of an era of transition :-11 Leo VI . had undermined the Byzantine system of administration which Leo III. had (re)modelled on the traditions of imperial Rome. He had used his absolute power to confer offices of the highest trust on court favourites notoriously incapable of performing the duties entrusted to them . The systematic rules of promotion in the service of the government ; the administrative usages which were consecrated into laws ; the professional education which had preserved the science of government from degenerating with the literature and language of the empire,-were for the first time habitually neglected and violated. The administration and the court were confounded in the same mass ; and an emperor called the Philosopher is characterised in history for having reduced the Eastern empire to the degraded rate of an Oriental and arbitrary despotism. . . . It is difficult in the period now before us to select facts that convey a correct impression of the condition, both of _ the government and the people . The calamities and crimes we are compelled to mention, tend to create an opinion that the government was worse, and the VOL. 11.
Detects and 'elit8 ofthe p"cifie wCown Se-ate ln~`yl'
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HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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Defects and condition of the inhabitants of the empire more merits of the miserable, than was really the case . The ravages of wific
Coon-` Wnwism (Rnlay).
war and the incursions of pirates wasted only a small portion of the Byzantine territory ; and ample time was afforded by the long intervals of tranquillity to repair the depopulation and desolation caused by foreign enemies . The central government still retained institutions that enabled it to encounter many political storms that ruined neighbouring nations . Yet the weakness of the administration, the vices of the court and the corruptions of the people during the reigns of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his father-in-law Romanus l., seemed to indicate a rapid decay in the strength of the empire ; and they form a heterogeneous combination with the institutions which still guaranteed security for life and property to an extent unknown in every other portion of the world, whether under Christian or Mohammedan sway. The merits and defects of the Byzantine government are not found in combination in any other portion of history, until we approach modern times ."
ie
CHAPTER IX
1
THE SOVEREIGN AND THE GOVERNMENT DURING THE TENTH CENTURY : THE STRUGGLE FOR THE REGENCY AND CONFLICT OF THE CIVIL AND MILITARY FACTIONS : RISE OF THE FEUDAL FAMILIES A.
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DUCAS AND
PHOCAS TO LECAPENUS (912-920)
§ Y . IT would be a serious error to judge of the ne Paiaeegeneral state of the empire in the light of the dis- ~~~try tressing cabals and personal rivalries which solely Alexander . engage the attention of authors and students in the space of thirty-three years . It will be necessary for our especial purpose to examine the events which led to the singular spectacle of the tenth century, the regency ,"-however tedious and unprofitable these circumstances may appear . For underneath an unedifying display of selfishness and hypocrisy
or violence, there are real principles at stake, and the chief agents are not merely fighting each for his own hand . Each great party in the State service and each unscrupulous competitor represent a certain ideal of government ; and these are defensible not only by arms or conspiracy but by argument and sound reasoning. Alexander had long enjoyed the empty title of emperor ; he exercised its function after long waiting for a year and a month. Dissolute and slothful at public business, he had vigour only for hunting and tennis ; and the question arose (to the populace of the capital a long familiar inquiry), ,Who was to be the emperor's master?" The reign of Alexander bears some points of resemblance to the Orleans regency in the youth of Louis XV . A certain ias
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196 The PalaeeXin"try under
Alexander .
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv. B
cleric, who reminds us of Abby ]Dubois, became the secret confidant ; and two Slavonians, Gabrielopulus
and Basilitza, were chief ministers, under the invariable title of patrician . It was even whispered that a design was on foot to castrate Constantine VII ., to leave Basilitza heir to the throne . Surrounded by a crew of soothsayers and charlatans, Alexander preserved a complete detachment from public affairs. He chased Zoe the empress-mother from the palace, disgraced Admiral Himerius, and reinstated the late Patriarch Nicolas (with needless insult to the inoffensive intruder Euthymius) . Yet the emperor himself would have held the solemn renewal and consecration of his totem (v-rotXeiov), the circus wild boar, to be the chief event in his reign. Basil I. believed in a barefaced hoax, and was expecting a summons from Elijah the Tishbite to ascend into heaven in a fiery chariot ; but his son reverted to a rude and primitive belief, for which we have a parallel in the Germania of Tacitus (where the boar is a talisman and an amulet), and in the ancient superstitions of the close affinity of the life and fortunes of an individual with some material object or animal
kin. A single public event is recorded : the insulting The Bulgarian answer given to the envoys of Symeon the Bulgarian .fau the king (893-9z7), who after a peace of ten years was counciLo iLof
-
about to try the temper of the new ruler . Before the certain retribution could fall on Alexander's head, he expired of a complication of disorders, brought about by temulence and over-exertion in the tenniscourt. Before his death he appointed a new Council of Regency, and we find ourselves back in the exact circumstances of the minority of Michael III., seventy years previous . But there is a momentous and significant difference in the person and character of their imperial tutors. First comes the restless and vindictive patriarch, bold enough to rebuke the inertness of Leo and to bear the consequences, but a firebrand, cruel and unforgiving : three unknown,
CH. IX
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (912-920)
197
Stephen, master of the palace, John Eladas, master of The the offices, and a certain Euthymius, all base-born or Bulgarian ii peril and the alien menials named above ; and the Abb6 Dubois, council of John Lazarus, who soon followed his master to the Regents. grave, and will trouble us no more . It seems clear
`'
that the populace, so far from believing themselves governed by an irresponsible despot, deemed it their mission to criticise, to protest, and to intimidate-cries of dissatisfaction were raised not merely among the generals but in the common talk of the city. "The Bulgarian army of vengeance was at hand ; was the fate of the Empire to be entrusted to the nerveless and untried hands of courtiers ? Let the military caste provide a champion ." Alexander may have dreamt of rendering his nephew incapable of ruling. Romanus later certainly excluded his sovereign from the business or dignity of the monarchy, and perhaps desired to supplant him altogether in the succession . But the official classes, and the soldiers, and the commonalty seem never to have wavered in their allegiance. Pretenders arise, but only to deliver the rightful prince ; letters written by him, or in his name, have marvellous effect ; and the army of the most popular general of the time melted away like snow when a single audacious messenger impeaches him in the emperor's name for turbulence and treason . 2. The name of Constantine Ducas was in every Popular one's mouth . Disgraced and restored to favour under denand for a strong and Leo VI, he was now defendin g the Eastern frontier failure and with success.
So strong and frank was the expression death of
of public feeling that the regents intimated to him in was' vaguest terms that he should accept the burden, and
sent him the most sacred pledges of good faith. Ducas is unwilling to consent to the invitation, from a fear of this uncertain status, a military respect for law and usage, and a genuine attachment to the young emperor. Now follows a tragedy, happily exceptional in Byzantine history, though common enough in Western records down to recent times. He comes
i
198
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
Popular to the capital with a small retinue, and lodges with 4"'df' a Gregoras, a senator. The news of his arrival spreads. strong man
,failure and death of
Before break of day a crowd collects, senators as" semble ; he is proclaimed emperor, and marching with flambeaux attempts to enter the circus, and at last turns to the palace . The regents have kept an unaccountable silence instead of sending to welcome him. He lays siege to the palace and is repulsed and slain. Three thousand are killed, and the carnage of the Nika riots finds a parallel . Secure in this quick triumph, the Council takes summary vengeance on the malcontents. Some senators are hung, some beheaded in public ; Gregoras and Eladicus, a patrician, receive the tonsure. The wife of Ducas is shorn and sent to reside on her estates in Paphlagonia ; a son Stephen is made a eunuch ; and of the whole family one son alone survives, Nicolas, guiltless of his father's treason, like Piso the Younger under Tiberius, and destined to win a noble death against the Bulgarians . It would not appear that their estates were at once confiscated . We may remark on the pitiless rancour of his namesake the patriarch, who would seem not merely to condone, but to encourage this severity, Thus ended the first attempt of one of the military leaders (oi «pXovres of Psellus) to establish himself as working colleague of a minor. This time the civilian regency got the mastery, by trick and perjury . But their days were already numbered. King Symeon appears before the walls and is induced to retire. The immediate crisis past, matters for a time rested .
Zoe'a Regency § 3. In 914, the young emperor insists on his and B~o"s mother's recall ; Zoe returns, and at once alters the
garian dens.
whole face of affairs, no doubt for the better . The patriarch is desired to restrict his interest to spiritual things ; Eladas is retained as Master of the Offices, but soon dies ; and the other regents lose their posts. Three servants of Zoe receive high place in the palace, Constantine (as chamberlain) and two brothers, Con-
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (912-920)
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stantine and Anastasius Gongyles . The important Zoe's Regency captaincy of the Foreign Legion (eracpetapX~r) is be- and vig°r°w anti-Bul-
stowed first on Dominicus, and on his removal, on garian John Garidas ; and the title first found in Symeon's d669na, account of Michael's reign (850) will acquire increasing significance as the years pass. Finally, a eunuch, Damianus (a name he shares with a chamberlain under '"Michael III. and an emir of Tyre
about this time), is given the function of Drungaire of the Watch (Sp.,(iiya~s) . Thus the ministry was reconstructed, and once more, as under Constantine VI ., a female regent was supreme. Gossip has played with the character of Zoe, but her administration was competent, her conception of imperial policy clear and straightforward. She it was who first pronounced (as it were) the watchword 1' Delenda est Bulgaria," and with this motto the consistent principles which swayed the second Basil. On this single aim she concentrated the whole force of the empire ; and for this purpose she humbled herself to gain an honourable peace with the Saracens . The caliph received the envoys with a mighty and brilliant display of his troops ; but the superior valour and success of the Greeks in the past campaigns were attested by a singular fact-in the exchange of captives the Moslem in duress so far outnumbered the Christians that the empress received 120,000 lbs . of gold. This may dispose of the foolish calumny that the empire was exposed during the reigns of such pacific emperors as Leo VI . to the harassing raids of the Moslem, and that it bore the insults helpless to avenge them. We may well surmise that Ducas, the unfortunate pretender, carried the war into the enemies' country, and that the caliph's realm, in spite of outward magnificence already hastening to decay, was unable to retaliate. The empress, to make her position doubly sure, accepted the offer of a defensive alliance with an Armenian prince ; Ashot, son of the king of Vasparacan, coming as envoy to arrange terms. -
200
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Zoe* Reyeney Should the infidel neglect or violate his engagement, *'ow the Armenians were to attack them in the Roman a"4 anti-Bud
.
garian desiyiw.
interest. A similar method was pursued in Europe . The Patzinaks were engaged to fall on the rear of the Bulgarians, at their first movement against the empire ; and the wisdom of this astute policy is extolled by Zoe's grateful son in an early chapter of his "Administration." Three small incidents happening about this time (q15) may be recorded as significant of the general or exceptional conditions : Chazes, an oppressive governor of Achaea, was assassinated by a popular rising in an Athenian church : the son of a Venetian Doge, decorated with the coveted honour of protospathaire, was seized on the Croat frontier by Michael, « Duke of Sclabinia," and sent a captive to the Bulgarians : Adrinople was surrendered for gold to Symeon by an Armenian commandant, Pancratoucas, and seemingly recovered for the empire by the same means. It is obviously unfair to pass a sweeping indictment on the loyalty or justice of the officials, or the safety of the frontier, from the slender evidence which the chroniclers afford. I am disposed to believe that at this time military and civil governors had a high sense of duty, whether towards the foreigner or their own fellow-subjects,-placed by the envious socialistic conception of government and its functions, so immeasurably beneath the official hierarchy.
zoe'spolicy § 4. The whole forces of the empire were now thwarted by concentrated against the Bulgarians ; the court di8semiow of cannot at least be accused of vacillation . Zoe began milatary that firm and resentful policy which, interrupted for a time by the Eastern conquests of Basil ll .'s regents, was resumed by him and brought to a final conclusion . The treasury was able to make liberal presents and promises to the troops ; the Church could bless a pious enterprise ; and one of the most perfectly equipped armies . that had ever left the capital set forth with the brightest auspices. All the heads of the well-known families of military
CH. IX
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specialists were there : Leo Phocas, son of Nicephorus, was in chief command ; Bardas, his brother, fifty, years later Caesar during his son's reign ; Romanus and Leo, sons of Eustathius Argyrus, already mentioned ; and Nicolas, son of the pretender Ducas, who had been generously pronounced guiltless of his father's adventure and retained at his post. Melias, the Armenian, feudal governor for the empire of the Theme Lycandus which he had himself created, came at the head of his own Armenian levies,-colonists and settlers from the shores of the Caspian, tenants and men-at-arms of their captain and landlord. We must not fail to do justice to the trustful and patriotic spirit of the empress and her advisers. A great and important point of policy is determined ; the overthrow of the Bulgarian Empire . The safety of this concentrating movement is assured by adroit and yet honourable diplomacy . The military leaders assuming, as it is easy to detect, the familiar feature of half-independent 1' wardens of the marches," great proprietors in Cappadocia or Paphlagonia, are sent forward without suspicion on a notable enterprise certain of success . Gibbon, who but ill conceals his ignorance and impatience of the whole period, falls into error about the site and the significance of the battle, or rather series of battles, which ensued . Achelous is a castle on the Danube, not the classic stream ; and the real lesson of the failure of a splendid effort is not national cowardice, but the peril of the competition of professional soldiers. Everything had been assured that came within the province of the home administration . The equipment was perfect, the commissariat unimpeachable, the courage of the troops beyond dispute, the Patzinak allies were waiting to do their part. But the example of Ducas had kindled the secret fires of ambition in many souls ; every marshal carried a diadem in his knapsack. Lecapenus, son of Theophylact the Unbearable, a man of humble origin
zoe spodgy thwarted by military leer's.
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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zoegPof Pt4Tns r. aypauga7o9, according to his son-in-law thwarted byof and
colleague) had been Admiral of the Fleet since the last year of Leo Vl. He was stationed at the Danube's mouth, to co-operate with the land forces at the fitting moment. During his singularly long command he had gained the affections of the sailors. Leo Phocas was more intent on discovering the intentions of Lecapenus than on securing the easy victory which lay within his grasp. A first engagement was successful ; but the commander is found unaccountably missing ; he had gone in secret to reconnoitre, not the movements of the foe, but the designs of the High Admiral. A pause ensues ; the army flies helpless and demoralised ; and the total and irretrievable defeat that followed has not many precedents in the records of the empire. Military honour suffered a deep stain ; and the reproach was only wiped out with the success of Basil Bulgaroctonus . The Patzinak allies, tired of the quarrels of Romanus with John Bogas, who had conducted Zoe's negotiations with them, refused to wait longer, and returned to their own haunts. The shattered remnants of the army regain the capital ; Leo Phocas impeaches Romanus of hightreason, and he is sentenced to be blinded. Zoe, like Eudocia Macrembolitissa a century and a half later, spares the disgraced admiral, as Romanus Diogenes was spared. Meantime, with the fury of shame and despair, the forces repulse Symeon's bold attack on the capital itself. A spirit is displayed which at an earlier moment might have broken for ever the Bulgars' power. Leo Phocas performs prodigies of valour ; Nicolas dies bravely in the fight . The danger is over, and domestic intrigue may again occupy public attention . Competition § 5. Men were generally agreed that a woman and °fphoea8 and a child could no longer bear the entire burden of empire ; and the times were ripe for a revolution . A Pretender arises, in obedience to popular exmaitatary
CH. IX -
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (912-920)
203
pectancy, claiming to be Constantine Ducas. He Competition collects a few followers, fails, and suffers one of °ff"casand Lecapenus. those cruel deaths which sometimes startle us in this
i
j
lenient period, and remind the reader that we are still in the dark ages and the tenth century. The two protagonists are now left jealously confronting : the stage is clear for the commander of the troops and the admiral of the fleet. On the advice of Theodorus, Constantine's tutor, Zoe throws in her fortunes with the latter, and excludes from the imperial dignity the powerful family of Phocas for more than forty years. Secret messages pass and the repass between flagship and the palace ; the emperor himself, now fourteen years old, personally indited a letter,-doubtless in an elegant style and handwriting which astonished the rough sailor. All Constantinople takes sides in the duel of the two champions ; and waits for the inevitable declaration of open hostilities. This is precipitated by Constantine, chief of the palace-eunuchs and brother-in-law of Leo. He comes, haughty and unattended, to pay the men of the fleet . He is seized by Romanus' orders . In the palace, Theodorus explains to the affrighted empress that the rising is aimed at Leo, the corrupter of the troops, at Constantine, the intriguer of the palace . Young Constantine claims to reign alone, and his ministers banish his mother and boldly cashier Leo from the colonelcy of the Guards ; Garidas, already mentioned, succeeds. At the same time a son, Symeon, and a brother-in-law, Theodorus, are permitted to retain the joint-command of the Foreign Legion . When he dutifully retires without a word, they too are dismissed ; and with singular lack .of penetration, Leo approaches with his tale of grievances the very last person in the world who could listen with sympathy-Romanus, the High Admiral . Foolishly satisfied that he can leave his interest safe in the hands of his rival, Leo retires to his Cappadocian estates . On Lady Day, gig, the fleet in
j
204 Competition
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. B
full array appears before the palace . Constantine consents to interview the admiral, and after mighty n oaths invests him in the imperial chapel with the office of Grand Hetceriarch, command of those foreign mercenaries who since the reign of Michael III. have become increasingly important to the safety of the reigning emperor. Constantine the eunuch, now set at liberty, writes a reassuring letter to Phocas, and pacifies his doubts and anxiety . Towards the end of April, the emperor marries Helena, daughter of Romanus ; and the proud title ,8a6Aeo?rarop is revived to give him precedence (in the punctilious court) over all officials and ministers . Christopher, afterwards associate-emperor for some ten years, succeeds to the foreign command. 6. The wrath of Leo Phocas knew no bounds ; he had been miserably tricked . prootzon of Constantine the Lwapmw. eunuch escapes from the dangerous and uncongenial atmosphere of the palace where he no longer ruled, and sought his relative in Cappadocia. He finds him caballing with three other great lords of the province. Soon all the scanty troops in Asia Minor are aroused ; for, secure against the Moslem by Zoe's ' diplomacy, it had been denuded of most of its native forces for the Bulgarian war . The watchword is the loyal cry, "Forward to Constantinople to save our young emperor!" But into the forces, assembling opposite the capital, there penetrates a clever emissary Symeon . He persuades the soldiers of Leo's treason, and displays a violent letter written by the hand of the imperial calligraphist . The loyal troops desert ; Leo, left almost alone, is taken and blinded ; and Romanus expresses with doubtful sincerity the greatest grief at this summary penalty without orders . The wily admiral was now convinced that for him there was no safety, for the empire no stability, unless he assumed the diadem and the inviolable purple buskins . Attempts were made to assassinate him It was reported that Zoe had mingled a deadly potion.
CH. ix
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (912-920)
205
only escaped by accident ; the empress-mother was success and conducted, at least on this pretext, into a convent, out motion of of a public career which she had honourably filled, Lecapenw. whatever in the low gossip of the time may have been her private failings . One by one the former friends and associates of Romanus are removed ; with great and perhaps needless ingratitude, he arrests Theodorus, the founder of his fortunes, at table, by the hands of John Curcuas, and despatches him to solitude on his Hellespont estates . The steps now are easy to On September 2q. he becomes the supreme place. Caesar ; and emperor and colleague on December 17. Amidst the greatest tranquillity of the empire within and without, an almost bloodless revolution has been effected . A new family, unknown to fame twenty years before, has seized the throne ; and in a short time three sons will further strengthen (or imperil?) its fortunes. But the legitimate heir will be reduced to the fifth place in this strange imperial corporation. I have dwelt, it may be objected, with disproportionate care and superfluous detail on the events of a brief period of nine years,-events which display merely the weakness of the empire, the corruption of the court, the odious and contemptible character of the 1' Romans ." I am of another separation imperial opinion. In these events, related without under- fu standing by the chroniclers, read by us to-day as mere romantic tales of adventure and lawless ambition, far weightier issues are concerned than personal self-seeking, than the natural rivalry of a soldier and a chamberlain . These few years are the preparation for that anomalous expedient which secured to the empire some of her most brilliant triumphs, the military regency side by side with a respected sovereign of older lineage, residing almost like a deity in the sacred recesses of a palace-temple. But they teach more than this : here first clearly emerges the conflict between two intelligible ideals, -of a pacific and conservative civilian state, of a
206
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF niv . s %paration off' strenuous and aggressive military monarchy. The the i m"u`a next century following Basil II.'s assumption of real control (c. 985) witnesses the fatal steps by which the empire was ruined by the incompatible claims of these two principles ; the suspicion of the central government, defenceless like the Roman Senate against a determined proconsul leading devoted troops ; the jealous retrenchment of needful military subsidies, the hoarding or thriftless policy which either stored useless ingots or spent the entire revenue, the surplus resources of the realm, on palace extravagance and the amusements of an idle populace : on the other hand, the dangerous rivalries of a landed feudal class that had grown up to the expert use of arms in the long internal security and active foreign policy of the Iconoclasts,their impatience of civilian dictation, an impatience shared by every soldier of every age and a standing menace in our own time to the stability of France,-and their distrust of each other.' Active Regent Of all this later development the earliest years of kget1mate the tenth century give unmistakable premonitions . Respect for human life, reverence for a hereditary line ; the retirement of the reigning sovereign into a seclusion where he becomes the puppet of anonymous influences ; the vigour of a female regency, and the capable policy adopted to consolidate the European themes ; the dangerous rivalry not merely of the two services, civil and military, but of marine and soldier ; and the haughty or apprehensive abstention of generals who sulk like Achilles in their tent and will not win an easy victory for fear that others may reap the reward : these are some of the features or lessons shown in this brief period. The next century and a half will trace the further progress of the great duel ; I can perhaps justify i For possessing a genuine class solidarity the"ApXoprer would fight for the honour of their order, but dissolve into hostile units when once the hated and unpatriotic government of chamberlains had been displaced.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (920-945)
CH. Ix
9.07
both combatants. For the empire needed valiant Active Begent It de- a""giti""cte soldiers, if only they were true patriots . cluse. pended no less upon the perfect civilian machinery of control and supply, which, in the Byzantine as in every monarchy, must find its centre in the cabinet of the Prince. But this once unique and indivisible figure was split into two halves . Before, the emperor was ubiquitous, omniscient, and master of all the arts of peace and war . Specialism has invaded high places ; an amicable division of sphere has taken place . For the next sixty years we have a Mikado and a Shogun . B. ROMANUS AND
HIS SONS (920-945)
1. The following table will display more lucidly Fdmidy of L than an express account the family and connections Romanus Legitim popular regent-emperor, and the means adopted of the new to strengthen a precarious position .
Bgitimism.
Tbeophylact(6PdaraKTas), "saved Basil's life ." Nicetas
=
. .. . . . . .
Tbeodora = ROMANUS Augusta. (& Tic- Aalcamls), .+r6 Admiral, qri ;
LEO VI .
(
(4) Zoe Carbonopsina.
Caesar and Emperor, 919"
CHRiSTOPHER,=Sophy. Agatha.=
'C 93r"
Leo
Argyrus.
STEPHEN.
Anne, dau . of Patr.
i
PETER, = Mary King of (Irene) . Bulg.
BASIL IIj' 1025.
ROMANUS Michael.
Martanus Argyrus.
CONS IX. .-TINE 1 'ZOE-
''' 1052.
THEODORA, f 1056.
CONSTAN-
TINE VIII . = (I) Helen, dau. of Patr. Adrian. (2) Theophano.
Theophylact, Helen .=CONSTAN-
Patriarch in 933-
Theophano.=RoMANUS II . j' 963. I
Theophano.= OTTO II . I
TINE VII. t 959-
DaIght. =JOHN I, 1' 976-
Anne. = VLADIMIR of Russia.
OTTO y III., 1 1003-
The general verdict passed on the rule of this upstart must be entirely favourable. The empire
-
208
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
Family of was in sore need of a strong hand at the centre, Rmnanw I : acknowledged by all. A regent -colleague united "War
Legitimism.
power and responsibility, too long separated in .the secret and accidental influences of the last thirty years . It is true that Romanus behaved unfairly to his ward : he reduced him beneath Christopher, Stephen, and Constantine VIII., and even proposed to give the infant Romanus precedence of the legitimate sovereign, whose servant and champion he had ever professed himself. It is also true that, like Eli (to whom the frank monks and confessors compared the contrite emperor), he overlooked the failings of his sons. But he was a sedulous and business-like administrator ; a kind and charitable dispenser of the imperial stores to the distressed ; a mild and indulgent judge towards the treasonable conspirator ; and, above all, a capable master of those jealous and unruly services which the empire employed and feared . At last there was an emperor with the dignity of Caesar, who was at the same time a man of affairs, and gave close attention to the public welfare . For a whole generation (886-qi9) this idea of the imperial function had been entirely in abeyance. The position was an inheritance which, like landed property, the owner at once made over to agents and factors, while he enjoyed the fruits of their labours . The _ populace of the capital, so far from resenting this easy partition of duties and profit, regarded it as the normal and proper state. It would be wrong to suppose that over an indigent, ignorant, and servile mass domineered a few proud palace officials or feudal captains from Lesser Asia ; that the throne was handed about according to secret intrigues of the noble and seditious . I believe it possible to trace a very clear understanding in the people's mind of the rights and limits of their interference. This intervention was neither tumultuous nor arbitrary. It would seem as if the mob, divided into guilds of handicraftsmen and factions of the
CH. Ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (920-945)
209
circus (untroubled by the new modern curse of un- Family of employment) held the scales of the constitution, and n, I popular were the final arbiters
of affairs. They were faithful Leytimism. to Constantine VII . and grumbled at his retirement, while they acknowledged the ability and the charity of his regent . They upheld the throne of his son and grandsons by their silent loyalty, which put the unique dignity out of reach of the ambitious Phocas . or Zimisces. They endured the brief irritability of Constantine IX. as they had borne the long and exacting government of Basil II. They acquiesced in the female right, which for thirty years bestowed upon the lucky (or unlucky) husband of Zoe the most exalted dignity in the world . They heard without murmur or regret of the death of Romanus Argyrus 0034), and beheld with indifference the sudden elevation' of the handsome epileptic who succeeded him. But under this seeming inattention or carelessness, they watched with profound solicit tude the fortunes of the two princesses . A suspicion of rudeness or neglect ensured the unpopularity of the regents, who during this epoch never once ` attracted the loyal regard or affection of the people. They regarded them with cold and critical gaze, or on occasion burst out into loud and scornful insult . As the redoubtable premier of a modern State, armed with a democratic mandate and supported by a solid phalanx of silent voters, can never occupy in the public gaze the same place which is given to a scion of the royal house ; so the Byzantine populace, much like our own people to-day, had a rough but clear outline of the respective duties of royalty, regency, and democracy . The regents were something like paid servants after all, stewards of a great estate, which, when all was said and done, only changed hands three times in 145 years, at the death of the seventh and ninth Constantine and at the death of Theodora (31056). Gibbon represents these astute, affectionate, and equitable citizens as a mob of 'rVOL. ii. o ,.
i
i
I
!I
1
210
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. B
Family of slaves, or rather a herd of cattle. But the verdict p~ I ' is superficial and unfair, like his entire treatment of Legitiminn . later Roman history . It might be adroitly turned against the whole system of female sovereignty, in which some modern thinkers have seen realised the ideal of constitutional government-that strange yet necessary compromise between the sacrosanct dignity and kingship, and the business function which makes the temporary wielder of authority responsible both to his lord and to the nation .
Conviracies § 2. Neither the family of Romanus nor the house aunt obtained a hold upon the popular mind . Romanus I. of Phocas with equanimity of a new plot against Men heard public indir"" at the regent-emperor, and the lenient justice meted hisoverthrow . under Romanus con-
out to the seditious ; and spiracies were frequent . Leo Argyrus, a son-in-law of Romanus, combined with Stephen, master of the palace, and Paul the Orphanotrophus (a title still more conspicuous in the next century) : all are banished . At a review of the household (or the household troops), Arsenius the Patrician and the captain of the Manglabites, conspire to seize Romanus and the young Constantine : betrayed by a slave, they are blinded, and their estates are forfeited . A third cabal, also composed of officials near the throne, is detected and punished ; the culprits are beaten, tonsured, and exiled . In 924 occurred a sedition of a different sort ; a centrifugal, separatist, or feudal rising, rather than a personal quarrel with Romanus, which will throw some light on that most interesting problem of the time-the relations with the Armenian kings, vassals, and Bardas Boilas, a patrician, unites with peers. potent nobles of the frontiers of Pontus and Armenia, Adrian and Tazates, aiming at the erection of a separate and local principality . Curcuas, who is the permanent and impassable sentinel of the East, comes up from Cappadocian Coesarea, and speedily defeats the plot ; he puts out the eyes of Adrian as
ca. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (920-945)
9111
the most culpable, takes Tazates into the corps of Imperial Manglabites (a place he lost later on a renewal of treason), and sends Boilas into a monastery. The soldiers of the rebels receive a complete amnesty. The next attempt was .confined to the palace. John, a minister, had married the, daughter of Cosmas the Postmaster (XoyoO . Spolc.). He conceives the design of ousting the usurper and taking his place . His father-in-law and Constantine, grand master of the palace, spur on his ambition . Romanus, tired, negligent, or contemptuous of these fruitless cabals, for long refuses to believe or to take action ; at last he is convinced of their guilt, gives the two chief criminals time to escape to the inviolable retreat of the cloister, and merely flogs the patrician Cosmas . The idle discontent of courtiers now spreads to the immediate circle of the regent himself. Nicetas, a firm supporter of Romanus during the crisis of gig, plots against him in 931, probably in conjunction with Christopher, who married his daughter : he is made a monk, and Sophy, on the death of her husband, being still under suspicion, is removed from the palace . There is a welcome interval of some ten years during which Romanus had leisure for an anxious and diligent administration, the reform of the land laws, the relief of distress, the liberation of creditors, the repulse of Hungarians and Russians, and contrite penance for his own moral lapses. Becoming (like Michael IV.) severe and ascetic, abandoning in pious exercises some of his grasp of affairs, Basil the Bird (a faithful servant of Constantine now grown to middle age) unites with Manuel Curtice, the Armenian, to excite the conceit and ambition of the two younger Augusti, Stephen and Constantine VIII. Stephen yields and Constantine refuses. Romanus is easily seized, covered with a mantle, taken to an adjoining island, and tonsured, during the last days of 944 " The two brothers (for Constantine is willing to share
conspiracies Vainst public blic i,I inr aiference at higowthrow.
212
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
discover to Conspiracies the fruits if not the danger of crime) against r o f the revolution have rin that the profits their chagrin g Romanus I. : will of Lecapenus
fallen to the rightful heir. The public indifference at (with the mournful foresight of a disappointed his overthrow. parent) gives back the chief place in the Augustan college to the seventh Constantine . The joy of the people at this revival of legitimacy is unbounded ; and it requires no great audacity for the new monarch or the new ministers to ship off the superfluous regents first to their father's retreat, and then to their several prisons (wherein Stephen survives nineteen and Constantine but two years) .
§ S. The foreign wars and the heroes who conHis diwlomat"eonduet ducted them cannot be alien to our subject, for the offoreign power is a momentum in the constitutional
affairs : Bulgarian alliance.
!
military changes which we are attempting to estimate. The Bulgarian war engages a trio of generals (92i), two closely connected with Romanus and members of the feudal aristocracy of birth and arms-Leo Argyrus and Pothus his brother, and John palk-nop (a title found also during Zoe's regency, 9 II) . The new- Admiral of the Fleet recalls the memory and name of the Armenian Caesar under Theophilus, Alexius Musel . A total and disgraceful defeat ensues, perhaps due to the same jealous division of command which had doomed the splendid promise of the earlier campaign under Leo Phocas in gig . A summer palace of the emperor is pillaged and burnt ; and the whole shore ravaged within an alarming distance from the capital . In 923, Symeon conducts a second insulting attack on Byzantium, but is repulsed by the valiant conduct of Sacticius, captain of the watch . . . (Spouyy. Ptya.), who died gloriously in the moment of success . In the next move of the restless enemy, Romanus scores a distinct diplomatic The African Sultan is approached by victory . Symeon with a view to an alliance against the empire, but the envoys are seized in Calabria and sent to the capital . The compliments of Romanus
cg: ix
s`'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (920-945)
213
win the caliph ; he remits one-half of a tribute, which we acknowledge with shame was owing, to secure the immunity of Italian shores, and renounced the proposed alliance with the Bulgarians . In 925, Adrinople was again seized, and soon regained by the empire ; but the next year, Symeon obtains an interview with Romanus, who expostulates with him and wins a great diplomatic triumph . The king returns home highly pleased with the modesty and judgment of the emperor, and it is many years before Bulgaria becomes again a formidable or vindictive foe . The same mild and considerate bearing secured the affection of the Serbs, who, after seeing their country ravaged by Bulgaria, place themselves under the protection of the empire and continue its vassals . A wise and clement policy in Greece secured the allegiance or quiescence of the Mainotes, still half-autonomous, as they continued to be until the fall of the Turkish dominion ; and the Slav (who refused levies and tribute fixed under Michael III .) was pacified and relieved of burden. Romanus no doubt welcomed the chance of completing this general policy of conciliation . In 927, Symeon died, and the glory of Bulgaria was past. Hungarians, Croats, and Patzinaks pressed round the headless nation, but no enemy was so dreaded as the empire . Byzantine tradition was set aside in the marriage of Christopher's daughter Mary to the new King Peter, who visited the capital to take away his bride, deeply impressed by its stately order and wealth. The alliance, unlike some sudden political connexions, was of deep and lasting value ; Mary, renamed Irene, journeyed to and fro between the two courts as emissary and guarantee of peace . Romanus now turns his attention to the desolate cities of Thrace and Macedonia, and rebuilds and colonises them. In 934, he finds that the Bulgarian sway in the Balkans has only been reduced to open the road to more dangerous neighbours, the Hun-
.Eis dipdoo~'ct affairs : Bulgarian alliance.
_
I
.
214
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
His dzplogarians : these press to the capital, but are induced 'duet generosity) of "" to retire by the tact (and no doubt the broken only oa~ the emperor. Six years of peace ensue, Bulgarian by the distant rumours of troubles in Italy, and a alliance . takes the governinvasion in
terrible Russian 941 ment and the capital entirely unprepared. Of the imperial fleet but fifteen disabled or superannuated galleys lay near, the rest were guarding the southern Asiatic shores from Saracen raids . These, Romanus equips and mans. Theophanes disperses the invaders with Greek fire . Other vagrant bands of Russian marauders are cut off on the north coast of Asia by Bardas Phocas, and Curcuas, the hero of the Eastern frontier, rapidly mobilises and comes up in time to share in the overthrow. The expedition was a complete failure. The wife of Inger, the Russian chief, adopts Christianity, but we shall find their son, Swiatoslaf (1~5Fv8oc-9Xa/8os) among the enemies of the empire some thirty years later . So far as a steadfast policy was possible in the shifting tribal quarrels of the North Balkans, Romanus adopted and pursued it. It was no longer an aggressive war to the death, as under the regency of Zoe. The veteran admiral was entirely pacific and preferred to triumph by compliments and discussion, rather than We cannot doubt that the peninsula by arms . recovered much in this quarter of a century, in ' spite of the vulnerable capital, exposed to any pirate from the north by land or sea. The wide battleground of the rival empires becomes more settled and 'peaceful, and what a central government could do to rebuild and to secure was efficiently done. § 4. The life of John Curcuas by Manuel, in eight Curcum and his Iffli9 books, is unhappily lost, but the scanty records in control of'the the annalists leave no doubt as to the vigour and skill eastern with which he defended the Eastern frontier . For frontier. over twenty-two years he was in supreme command of the oriental troops, and with his brother Theophilus, Duke of Chaldia,, the chief guardian of
CH. IX
THE ROMAN EMPIRE . (920-945)
215
the empire. It would appear that Romanus, himself mecum and no active warrior, knew how to select and to trust hil 1°W control of the
i f 1 j !
his officers . The two brothers Curcuas belonged to eases the new warlike nobility, that was recruited chieflyfrowier . from Armenian families and settled in true feudal fashion, with retainers, peasants, and men-at-arms in the rich land of the Armeniac and Anatolic Themes. John was born in Little Armenia, and was the son of a captain of °Lcava-roc, found conspiring against Basil in 879 . His son Romanus will be seen among the staff of Nicephorus Phocas ; and his brother, whose just fame he eclipsed, is the grandfather of John Zimisces, the third of the capable and patriotic regents of this century. The Saracen danger dwindled and disappeared : Melitenc passed again under Roman sovereignty ; the Euphrates was once more a Roman stream ; and the frontiers were extended from the Halys to the valley of the Tigris. The caliphate, passing under the same inexorable law of royal impotence and military dictatorship, showed no consistent policy, and wasted its force in internal disorders . Curcuas was no mere valiant commander like Leo Phocas . He was astute and conciliatory ; on his first capture of Meliten&, home of the most dreaded Eastern neighbour of the empire, his tact and clemency converted two emirs into friends and vassals of Rome ; they joined his expeditions and fought in the imperial service . On their death in 934, the town was recovered by the Saracens ; but Curcuas, with the aid of Melissenus, of the Lycandus Theme again assaulted it, and razed it to the ground. It ceased to be an infidel centre, and the open territory round it was joined to the prosperous new theme . Phasian6 and Theodosiopolis had been regained under Leo VI . by Catacalon, and the Saracens evicted ; but the king of Iberia had somehow seized the region, alleging a just claim. Romanus (no doubt on the advice of John Curcuas) preferred rather to abate the imperial pretensions than
216
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div . B
Curmw ant to make an enemy of an Eastern Christian : he conhi8 all land north of the Araxes, and the cedes to the king he acquires Akhlat and Bitlis, near Lake Van . The eastern .frOnti-*rconclusion of this brilliant and useful career shows a sinister light on the anonymous influence which made and unmade generals and set a bound to the mercy or competence of the autocrat. A court faction stirred up suspicion of his loyalty, and Romanus after inquiry was convinced of his innocence . To show his whole-hearted confidence, he proposed an alliance between Euphrosyne, daughter of Curcuas, and Romanus, son of Constantine VIII. The emperor was unable to carry out his design, or save his friend from the storm of indignation and envy. The high officials triumphed-jealous of a hero's renown. Curcuas bowed his head to the storm, retired after continuous toils of twenty-two years, and doubtless listened to the regrets of the emperor, who had to confess his own helplessness . Powers indeed had arisen in the group of families who sustained the dignity of the empire, in the satellites of the palace, in the civil bureaucracy, that put an effective restraint on the free-will of a sovereign still nominally absolute. Parental § 5. We are not concerned as a rule with the °f private character of the emperors, on which such valuable time and space has been wasted . History should be a record of public service, not of secret and unwarranted scandal. But it would be unfair to pass over the democratic sympathies and kindliness which secured the support of the people, by no means servile, to a despotic system. The indulgence of the regent to conspirators is known ; but in his care for popular distress he gratuitously outstripped the demands made on a modern premier or a modern sovereign ; and we must not forget that he combined both offices. The hard winter of 932, followed by bad seasons, and their retinue, pestilence and famine, brought out the good qualities
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (920-945)
217
of a kindly man of business. He remits taxa- Parentaz tion, builds orphanages and almshouses, constructs mn of public gardens for the people, and, in one moment of generosity, freed all the petty debtors of the capital, not by abolishing the debt but by satisfying i the creditor. It is easy to turn to ridicule the parental and tutelary instinct which prompted this jminute and untiring care. But it is well to remember (i) that Romanus lived in an age when, outside the empire, office and kingship had almost no functions, and government was parcelled out among a herd of unauthorised and violent agents (a) that the present age, with its foolishly exalted j belief in the duty and scope of rulers, can say nothing to disparage the well-meant but excessive j interference of the Byzantines. It is clear that the emperor, as popular representative against aristocracy, occupied, or was expected to occupy, the same position as Julius, Augustus, or Trajan . He alone, in an age when the current set steadily towards feudalism, was the sole guarantee of justice, or the sole asylum for the oppressed. Romanus had to contend with palace cabals, robbing the empire of its best defenders, with the dangers of a precarious position, with the encroachments of a landed and military oligarchy . These threatened to control not merely the whims of monarchy but the ordinary course of justice, the success of arms, the welfare of the provincial poor. He broke his oath, it is true, to Constantine VIL, and made tardy amends in his last testament. But he fully justified his usurpation. No mere vulgar ambition exalted and sustained him in an unenviable dignity. Kindly, charitable, politic, and vigilant, he made possible the later extension of the empire. He left the Balkan peninsula in peace, the Eastern frontier secure ; and he may well have carried into the sometimes penitent, sometimes cheerful seclusion of his convent the natural satisfaction of a heavy burden well and honourably borne .
218
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Drv . B
C. THE REGENCY IN ABEYANCE (945-963) AND RESTORED (963-976).
1. Constantine VII . emerged from a refined The Great Chamberseclusion to become at once a popular favourite. lama Brinyaa and This affection supported the dynasty continuously the two Basils, for over one hundred years, forgave the exactions of Basil, condoned the suspicious indolence of his brother, and upheld Zoe and Theodora through evil and- good report . Under Constantine and his son the office of regent, or acting colleague to the soveIt was only revived reign, was left in abeyance . when another long minority threatened to impair the vitality of a State which always took its tone from its chief citizen, and expected him both to initiate and to complete. The reign of Constantine, in its fullest extent (91I-959), was a period of marked recuperative power and steady policy . The realm suffered nothing from the control of Romanus, and the same wary and defensive principles were maintained under his son-in-law. At the close of his reign the empire, now ready to sustain the burden of wars of aggrandisement, burst into that Chauvinist enthusiasm which fills the rest of the century with heroic exploits. The military spirit carries off the legitimate and purple-born as well as the regents ; and the regret and fatigued exhaustion which follow all wars, whether successful or adverse, only set in when Basil, like Justinian or Lewis XIV., lived too long for his reputation, if not for his vigour.-The bloodless revolution which dispossessed the family of Lecapenus had been the work of Basil the Bird (o ~r~rEwos)1 His influence, sometimes obscured, was never wanting till the moment of his mad venture and tragic penalty (962). Under his adroit suggestion, thepersonnel of the ministry was entirely changed : he himself assumed an office of growing importance, the command of the Foreign Legion, eTacpetapXqs ; ' Or the Cock, see C. vii., i. 78, 3.
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
219
six-and-twenty years before, Romanus had begun his ambitious career with the same title. Bardas Phocas becomes Commander-in-chief, Domestic of the Schools, a name to which was often prefixed the term great, a use maintained down to the last days of the empire . Nicephorus, his son, the future emperor, is prefect of the East ; Leo Phocas (afterwards Curopalat) is governor of Cappadocia ; a third brother of this allimportant family, Constantine, is entrusted with the prefecture of Seleucia . Marianus Argyrus, grandson of Romanus, but throughout faithful to the legitimate line, becomes Count of the Stable (KO'A27r 6Ta,l3Xou) ; Manuel Curtice, colonel of the night-watch (Spovyy. ,&ya.) ; and the regency of Zoe is faintly recalled by the elevation of a Constantine Gongyles to be High Admiral of the Fleet . It is not difficult to see what influence provides the moving weight that decided the crisis : the Phocas family played General Monk to the Restoration . On January 27, 945, the two puzzled sons of Romanus, who had reaped nothing from their unfilial ingratitude, were quietly removed from the palace ; Constantine VIII ., the more spirited of the two, killing his gaoler two years later, and in turn slain by the attendant, was accorded an imperial funeral ; Stephen survived nineteen years, and was (according to legend) poisoned by Theophano' Romanus died in June 948, peaceful and penitent, and men forgot the Lecapenian regency, which had not been an inglorious epoch for the empire . But the secret and commanding influence of Basil the chamberlain, natural son of Romanus by a Bulgarian captive, will be found to dominate the next forty-two years ; for the sole reign of Basil 11. can scarcely be said to begin before the disgrace in 987 of his namesake, who had confronted Bringas and overcome him, who had raised Phocas and rid himself of Zimisces. When we remember the power wielded ' An unfortunate princess, who had the credit of all notable deaths at a later period which were not due to obvious violence.
ne Great ChamberBringas and thetwoBasias .
220 The Great memberlairs : Bringas and thetwoBasik. Literary =ature and amiable
C. V11
'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. s
by Empress Helen, and her general understanding with her base-born brother, we are justified in saying that the heirs of Romanus, recognised or unacknowledged, continued to sway the fortunes of Rome. § 2. First, as to the character of the new monarch, who has passed out of the hands of tutors and
of governors and come into his own at last. Just a century after Bardas the Caesar he applies himself to the task of reviving letters and science, once more well-nigh extinct . He is typical of the Byzantine spirit ; of the careful encyclopoedic work of students without originality . He collected and preserved the remnants of learning or of the arts ; amassed a library, and threw it open for public use . He set needy scholars, in quest of a Maecenas, to work upon agriculture (yew7rovlKa), the veterinary art (hrrorcaTpucJ'7) ; and engaged them to excerpt the notable and edifying recitals of antiquity in the « Historic Pandects," of which we possess the valuable "Embassies" and the less profitable '1 Virtue and Vice." Upon the philosopher, scholar, and grammarian he showered favours ; introduced into the still dignified Senate and placed on the episcopal bench. He was no mean painter and architect, and was unusually skilled in music and a fine singer . He may have learnt in adversity a genuine sympathy ,with the distressed, and he never appears so ignorant and indulgent as his father. Where he intervened in person he did right ; and he had a long arm for wrongdoers : Theodorus Crinitas, governor of C~labria, bought corn at easy prices from the " Roman " subjects, and retailed at great profit to the Saracens ; he is discovered and punished. His chief solicitude was for justice ; and significantly enough, we are enabled to trace at this time two chief authors of mischief, the landed proprietors and the men-at-arms . In the provinces, the usual encroachment of the capitalist had followed the hard winter of 9 3 z . The reign of Romanus I. had witnessed the eviction of the yeoman under legal
CH. IX
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
221
forms . In rare cases the small adjacent properties Literary were seized by force ; far more often by plausible lure and amiable
'
chicanery, or under the guise of a charitable mort- character of gage and reluctant foreclosure . Constantine and his C VII counsellors, with remarkable intrepidity and patience, revised all titles to landed estate for the last forty years ; all .unjust or questionable bargains were annulled and the land given back to the small occupier free of cost and embarrassment . It is possible that, like the imperial edicts of China, the imperial novels of Constantine were more honoured in the spirit than in the letter ; but however imperfectly realised, such a design is a lasting testimony to the democratic and tribunal basis of Roman sovereignty, to a systematic defence of the poorer citizens against corrupt officials, powerful country neighbours, or overbearing soldiers. Constantine waged war with all three classes : the men-at-arms had oppressed the common people under Romanus, who, stay-athome though he was, represented the ascendancy of the military party. But the restored emperor was emphatically a civilian . He restored the balance in an empire which still, amid the hopeless disorders of the time, maintained the supremacy of law, as the foundation of a civilised State . So far as an emperor can, he made ordinary justice cheap and incorruptible ; like many of his distinguished predecessors from Tiberius onwards, he sat in the courts as assessor, to guide and encourage the judges and stop the eternal and interested delays of the attorneys. He made himself readily accessible to all who came with grievance or complaint. It was noticed that whereas the charity of Romanus had been content with alleviating immediate scenes of distress in the capital, Constantine was equally solicitous of the welfare of the provinces, too often neglected by a centralised monarchy. He revived a practice something like the Caroline institution of the imperial missi. Patricians whom he could trust were de-
222 ztterary cd~` amd amiable
CONSTITUTIONAL . HISTORY OF
viv. s
spatched to the outlying 'districts as commissioners to inquire into the behaviour of officials or the
,hamster of insults of the military. Curcuas, once more restored a. Vii. to favour, was despatched to ransom captives ; but the emperor reserved to himself, as a personal duty, the visitation of the prisons . He rebuilt at his own expense the houses consumed by a great fire, and handed over the new buildings to the grateful proprietors . It is clear that Constantine VII . had a noble and exalted view of the great administrative office which he held. It is easy to detect the weakness of a government which, instead of educating public opinion or sharing the burden of control with the nation, sets a single individual to watch the behaviour of the multitudinous petty kings, feudal or bureaucratic, that prey upon the Commons . It is the Chinese conception of the supreme authority, which believes that a secluded and ignorant youth, carefully kept even from the light of day and shrouded in impersonality and gloom, can control the official world . Yet the public, in modern as well as in ancient times, still secretly believes this world of salaried place-men or place-hunters to be irretrievably corrupt : from time to time it has armed a born sovereign or a chosen dictator with a popular mandate to sweep away the evil, quod semper vetabitur semper retinebitur. And Constantine lived in a complicated age, when modern abuses pressed close on the heels of the older mischief ; when the privileges of soldiers, landlords, and hierarchs were used to coerce and despoil the poor .
Hisministers, 3. Basil the Bird was at first all in all ; but the to of t, of Constantine and his son to o,~ gcials,zfts real prime minister
dzpk-aey.
Romanus was Joseph Bringas, who retained his authority till 963 : he was treasurer and admiral, and we may perhaps notice a growing laxity in the old pedantic rule which, except on rare occasions, kept such offices apart. There are rumours that this universal supervision broke down in the increasing
4° Mr. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
223
complexity of the duties and problems of govern- gas ministers, ment. Helena and Basil were accused of intruding cabimt, Afts . incompetent favourites and of putting responsible dip posts to auction ;-a charge like that of poison, easy to make and difficult to refute.-The happy family life of the palace makes it hard to credit the subsequent stories about Romanus and Theophano . The court was neither niggardly nor profuse ; it was neither dissolute nor austere : Constantine loved good cheer and social intercourse . It is said that he employed his accomplished daughter, Agatha, as intermediary (,ue6iTCs) between the imperial closet and the' cabinets of the various ministers . No abuse of this curious usage is noted ; and indeed it was the peculiar tact of the emperor which made him treat his subjects as his children and transformed the realm into a single and a contented household .-The prefect of the city enjoyed a grave and responsible charge ; he was head of the police department as well as chief stipendiary magistrate. Theophilus, after an earthquake, was desired to recover the buried effects and furniture, and restore them to their owners ; he appropriated to his own use the greater part. Constantine was more ready to notice and to punish than Justinian ; public indignation (never far from the surface in « despotic and servile " States) was aroused and satisfied. Theophilus yielded his post to Constantine, a spathaire, and he in turn to Theodorus Belonas, both of whom receive the praise of the historians. Luitprand has left us some curious details of one of those solemn distributions of gifts to the official class (poya) which marked the policy of the later empire : it is useful in establishing an order of precedence not always very clear. The three chief offices, master of the palace, grand domestic, and grand admiral, receive alike a costly box and q. robes ; the 24 paylv-rpoc, 24 gold pounds and 2 mantles ; the patricians, 12 and i .-In foreign matters, Constantine followed the conciliatory policy of his father-in-law ; he wooed an alliance with the
224
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. B
HiBministers, Cordovan caliph, Abdurrahman,, to divide the Moslem inet, AN to officiak, attack in East and West ; and secured his friendship dip by a gift of 150 columns of choice marble,-once more a proof that the 8aaav6orcpaTfa (of which the emperor speaks in his works) was neither an archaism nor an empty boast. Constantine welcomes to his court a Hungarian prince, Bulagud, who adopts the Christian faith along with rich gifts and the title of patrician . The old habits and instincts were too potent ; the convert resumes his brigand raids with his paganism, and seems to have met a shameful death in Germany . Constantine had better success with Gylas, another Hungarian catechumen, whose sincerity was attested by his sparing the lands of the empire.-The Argyrus family were still in favour, and Marianus was successful in punishing a strange revolt of the usually loyal city of Naples ; and later will be found (962) driving the Hungarians from Thrace, with the command of Prefect of the West. Pothus Argyrus, his brother, hastily wards off a still closer attack of the Hungarians (958), as colonel of the guard, like Belisarius at the close of Justinian's reign .
Roman= IL § 4. The death of Constantine, the handsome and and hig amiable prince, was widely deplored . Romanus II . . advisers
dutifully followed his dying advice, and retained Joseph Bringas as chief minister throughout his reign . But he added a renegade cleric of his own choosing to the small conclave in the closet,-a eunuch-monk, John Cherina, who secured the coveted post of e-ratpecapxns . Sisinnius was made prefect of the city, and rose to be grand logothete, when his urban magistracy was filled by Theodorus Daphnopates . The vicarious glory of Romanus was only tarnished by the sedition of Basil the Bird, the sole conspiracy of the brief reign. Discontented with the circle of new favourites from which he had been excluded, he proposes to murder Romanus as he issues from the palace to the hippodrome . His
5
ca. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
225
accomplices apparently saw nothing absurd in his Romanus H. suggestion that he should be the new monarch . But ¢"d h"" advisers. a Saracen named Joannitza or Joannicius informs
Bringas . So far from setting a stern precedent to put an end to these futile and dangerous plots, Romanus merely makes the accused senators « run the gauntlet " of the popular derision ('70A,7revo-ev) ; and reduced to a short period their exile in a cloister . The fate of the Bird was tragic and exemplary ; on the discovery of his plot he lost his reason, and died soon after, a dangerous madman .-The chief interest of the new reign is not domestic intrigue but foreign aggrandisement ; and its glory, belonging wholly to the lieutenants of the emperor, will be recorded when we have reason to tell the story of their elevation . The vigorous youth of Romanus, unexercised in political business or warlike cares, was spent and exhausted in hunting, athletics, and the wine-cup . There is no need to seek in darker vices the cause of the sudden break-down of one who always overtaxed his forces in the pursuit of these strenuous pleasures, which were to him the serious occupation of life. He died on March 15, 963, and once more two purple-born heirs succeeded to an unquestioned sceptre under a female regency . Martina in 641, The ,e Irene in 78o, Theodora in 842, Zoe in 9I I, Theo- Be9of phano in 959 : these are the empress-mothers who reigned over the Romans during a son's minority . Martina was expelled with ignominy by the Senate ; Irene succeeded her own son by deposing him ; Theodora maintained the dignity of court and empire in a lax age ; and we have attempted to do some justice to the firm policy and administration of Zoe . Once more two children and a woman represent the majesty of the commonwealth ; and as a necessary result, once again the eyes of the military leaders are raised to the prize at which Fortune pointed . At the close of our period, the same situation will recur Eudocia Macrembolitissa (long supposed to be the VOL. II .
p
I
I
II
226 Ue new R9On,+J Of
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. B
guardian elegant authoress of the Violarium) is left in io67 . his brothers and regent for Michael VII. and later cases, a three It will be noted that in all these Lecapenus . military dictator is the inevitable sequel public succeeds not so much by native ability as by agreement choice ; Theophano soon comes to an with Phocas ; and Eudocia chooses the luckless Romanus Diogenes to be the protector of her children . and -But before I treat of the revolution of 963 so trench upon that historical domain which has been brilliantly filled by the works of Schlumberger and Rambaud, I must devote a section to the dry recital marked of the Eastern exploits of Nicephorus, which associatefuture as the him out beyond question emperor .
whom % 5. In 950, the Emir of Aleppo and Emesa, The East and the Roman through the,family of the Greeks call Hamdan, plunged Pkocas . reported to have slain the
lines into Cappadocia, is quite incredible number of 3o,ooo, and lost all captives and booty by a swift reprisal of the Roman forces at the "pass of Cicero " in Mount Amanus . priest An odd story reaches us about a renegade repelling near Tarsus, who was unfrocked for boldly a Saracen inroad during divine service : annoyed - at this evil return for his patriotism, -he passed over have to the Saracen faith and service, and seems to . Meantime, friends his former done some mischief to Bardas Phocas, commander of the East, had become unpopular ; his troops refuse to obey him on account of his greed, and in one engagement with Hamdan he is deserted by all but his own satellites or '1 gladiators ." The kindly emperor removes the veteran by an honourable superannuation, and appoints Nicephorus, his son, to the place in 954 : Leo, a brother, is named governor of Cappadocia ; and Constantine, already prefect of Seleucia, is made lieutenant of the two . Almost the whole of Eastern Asia is thus within the control of the single family of Phocas. The first attempts of Nicephorus were unsuccessful
CH. IX
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
227
he was severely defeated by Hamdan . It seems clear The East and that, like Heraclius, he discovered his first and perhaps P~~%ty of heaviest task in efforts to restore Roman discipline.
Under the timid control of Romanus (as we learn elsewhere) the military element had oppressed and insulted the Commons ; the avarice of Bardas had turned the soldiers loose to find spoil or bare nourishment among the citizens, whom they were engaged to protect. Like the later Janissaries, they had become the terror of their fellow-subjects and the scorn of the enemy. This necessary work went on silently while others gained laurels. Basil, drungaire of the Cibyrrhaeot theme, a native of the Thracian Chersonese, attacked and sunk a great Saracen fleet from Tarsus in southern waters with the few ships which belonged to his maritime province . Leo marches on Samosata and takes the city ; but the chief credit lay with a palace official, Basil the chamberlain, despatched to share the solicitude and perhaps watch the movements of the professional soldier. In this assault, too, John Zimisces first emerges into the light of history ; he convoyed 11700 Saracen knights, wellmounted and well-equipped, to the capital, as a living trophy of a prosperous campaign . Meantime, the eyes of statesmen and soldiers were fixed on Crete, quasi rebellibus vires ministrantem. This had been in Saracen possession since the reign of Michael II . (82o-829) ; the inhabitants had been slain, expelled, or forced to embrace Islam ; and while this island remained a harbour and refuge for the miscreant pirates, the sea-supremacy of the Romans and the commerce it protected were alike unsafe. The first expedition was confided to a courtier, and proved a disastrous failure ; Constantine Gongyles, the Paphlagonian, was. perhaps the son of one of Zoe s early
favourites and ministers ; it is difficult to identify him with his namesake of nearly fifty years before . It was reserved for the reign of Romanus II. (9611) to see Crete once again Roman . In that year Candia fell ;
I
228
CONSTITU17IONAL HISTORY OF
niv. x
an honoured pensioner The East and the Emir Curupas becomes thefamily of at the Byzantine court, receiving lands and the offer Phocas. dignity, if he would renounce Islam.
of the senatorial gravely inThis he refused, and one chronicler by an obvious forms us that he was a rcoupo7raaaTns, misreading of the true name. His son (Anemas) the serves faithfully under the empire against leaders . Russians ; and kills one of their three General While Leo Phocas, decorated with the title of the West, obtains a great victory over the Saracens and at Andrassus in Galatia, Nicephorus marches east was takes Hierapolis, Anazarbus, and Aleppo . Such died. Romanus when the situation of affairs
society recog§ 6. The caste-system of Byzantine Duel of the Army Church, orders-the Bringas and nised three great official Nicephorm r sharply distinguished Service, sometimes
Patriarch's decisive action.
and the Civil of as the Senate . We find as early as the Arcana sixth the middle of Procopius-that is, about the in century-a clear line drawn between them ; and of a account subsequent writers or annalists no all they are unanimous choice is complete unless expressly mentioned, in conjunction with the irresponsible populace, their factions and gilds . The power See of Byzantium had regained its spiritual a and independence ; the patriarchate was no longer provision like an English rectory for a younger son. In this very year John XII . in Rome was superseded by Leo VIII ., under the control of Otho I. ; and Polycuctus in New Rome held a recognised position the in the State, and would appear, at least during the right of have enjoyed regency of Theophano, to Nicefriendly to He was summoning the Senate. phorus, while Bringas, chief of the palace hierarchy, dreaded as a civilian the military influence . Nicephorus celebrated a formal triumph in the circus ; talked and to disarm the suspicions of the minister, inwith him about the religious life which he soon tended to adopt. But he induces Polyeuctus to take this remarkable step of convoking the Senate and
cx. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
inducing Bringas to obey.
.29 9
There the evils or dangers Duel of
of the rule of females and minors were exposed with frankness ; and a new office is proposed for the most efficient general. An extraordinary situation is revealed : Theophano and her two sons are not con'suited. The civilians merely come to terms with the
military leader. The Senate entrusts to him alone the appointment, promotion, and removal of all chief affairs of state ; and engages to settle nothing about the conduct of the Eastern war except in agreement with him . But in the Roman Empire, any exceptional authority tended insensibly to monarchy ; and the history of the republic is full of the various essays made to create great posts and commissions which should be in theory dependent on the civil assembly ; and is full also of the failure of such a compromise. It is doubtful if Nicephorus was ambitious of the purple ; he was probably quite contented with the formal sanction of his great war, and more than satisfied as Commander-in-chief with unlimited powers for the conduct of the Asiatic campaign. But fortune and the jealousy of Bringas hurried him up the steps of the throne. While he exercises his new recruits and restores ancient discipline in Cappadocia, while he prepares against Tarsus the whole force of his troops, Bringas writes secretly to John Zimisces and to Romanus Curcuas, his cousin, bidding them rid him of the turbulent general. They show the letters to Nicephorus, and incite him to find safety in the purple. He is saluted emperor on July 2, quite in the old Roman fashion, and is perhaps the first prince since Leo II I. ~to owe his dignity to the shouts of the soldiers. At the news Bringas wavers, and shows none of his usual firmness . The son of Romanus I., Basil the chamberlain, becomes by an audacious device complete master of the situation . Arming his household, 3000 strong, he attacks the supporters of the minister with success. Bringas enters Saint Sophia -by one door as a suppliant, while Bardas
Bw"ga,, and Nicephorus : patriarch's doci&ive action,
-
i
i CONSTITUTIONAL 141STORY OF
niv . B
son . Phocas leaves by another to greet his victorious Duet of his crowns and solemnly Bringaa On August 16, Polyeuctus Nicephoms : the compact of usual family
Patriarcys decisive action.
I
nominee : and the profit Phocae amicably distributes the chief places of an rcoupo7raaa-rtjs, or command . . Leo Phocas is made sinecure a office which had by no means become Eastern or an empty title ; the command of the the protroops goes to Zimisces, who had merited while ; motion ; the venerable Bardas is named Caesar Phocas, the a certain Manuel, natural son of Leo emperor's uncle, is found without credit in command in Sicily . Bringas was banished to Paphlagonia, then immured in a cloister, and died not long after the loss of an authority which he had wielded without a peer for nearly twenty years. The first achievement of the new reign and the new family, at last, after some imperial disappointment, was the gratifying success of Zimisces over the Saracens near Cilician Adana ; the carnage was so great that the site long retained the title, "Hill of Blood ."
entrust § 7. But Nicephorus was quite indisposed to Nicephorus His . elevation IL takes the war to his cousins or lieutenants. personal character or his conduct. Like com~reamd of did not change his
the mar.
Xmilianus (253), he believed in a certain straightforward division of labour . He carries off the Empress Theophano, now his wife (964), with her two sons to Cilicia ; safely bestowing them out of reach of intrigue at home or foreign danger, he turns to his serious purpose. His army is now reinforced by a special troop of Armenians and Iberians, who form, as it were, In the private bodyguard of the militant emperor. . had relapsed), (which 965, he recovers Anazarbus is year Cyprus Mopsuestia, Tarsus ; and in the same reunited to the empire . In 966, he forces the Syrian pashaliks (or other emirates) to become tributary,.Aleppo, Tripoli, and Damascus ; and lays siege withHe leaves behind him out success to Antioch . Burtzes to watch the blockade, and Leo Phocas, a eunuch, son of the new Curopalat, with strict orders
cx. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
231
not to move during his absence. But the temptation Nzoephorus is too strong ; Antioch is reduced; and the two gallant II personal
officers cashiered for serious breach of discipline . Nicephorus at once loses by this untimely severity that respect which the Byzantines always paid to the strong leader . Other causes contributed to ruin his popularity . He allowed his soldiers the same lic8nce they had enjoyed and abused under Lecapenus ; in each resumption of the regency, it would appear that the men assumed the overbearing airs of a military ascendancy . The war was costly ; new charges had to be imposed ; money, hitherto spent in lavish doles to the nobility or public spectacles for the people, was directed to the urgent needs of the camp. The revenues of the Church were laid under contribution, and during the vacancy of a See, needlessly prolonged,' a steward was sent to administer the revenue, while putting by a large surplus for the State-treasury . Every class felt itself aggrieved . Prophecies were rife as to the violent end in store for the gloomy emperor ; the palace, under his orders, was transformed into a fortress . The empress was neglected and indignant ; and the warriors (apXoYTes) no longer trusted the emperor. As for the people, they loaded him with abuse, and even pelted him with stones . A breach which could not be healed grew daily wider between the regent and his subjects. His brother's administration was unpopular ; like Crinitas in Calabria he had profited by a scarcity in wheat (968), and retailed at a private profit that commodity which, to Byzantine socialists, the State held and distributed for the people's benefit .-Foreign policy was diverted into new and dangerous channels ; the later " Roman " device of quelling one foe by calling in another was resorted to with mischievous effect. Calocyres the patrician had been sent (967) to invoke the growing power of the Norse princes in Russia against the Bulgarians. This country, which had gone rapidly backwards since the death of Symeon, was in no mood
command of the uar.
His valour, unPopularity, and errors.
_
232
Ij
Div. S
The Russians overran
His valour,
to offer a stout resistance.
and political
suggests to King Peter a double marriage to the two youthful heirs of the empire ; he joyfully accepts, but dies of grief at the invasion of his country and loss of his power. By the end of this reign the Norsemen possessed the open land, and had secured the capital Peristhlaba .-Only the partial historian can pretend to see in Nicephorus Phocas a successful monarch and statesman . The Roman emperor had two main duties ; to preserve domestic peace, defend the people from encroachments of wealth or official arrogance, and support the lower ranks in that mistaken socialist policy of tutelage which was far too firmly rooted to yield to reform ; outside, to protect the frontier. A thoroughly capable general, he was unable to give time to civil matters ; his chief concern was to procure funds somehow for his campaigns. Abroad, the Eastern frontier has been secured and extended ; but the Balkan policy was both treacherous and mistaken . A once hostile and now friendly power was brought to ruin ; and the restored Bulgarian monarchs under Basil II . will be animated by a not unnatural hate of the Romans . The populace forgot the respect due to sovereigns ; their open affronts might have been serious to the monarchical prestige, had not the innocent children of Romanus won their affection and sympathy . The Church justly felt aggrieved at the usurpation of Phocas ; and tidings of his savage murder (gradually published or whispered in the closing days of 969) were received with profound indifference or intense relief. It was just over a century since a similar massacre had ended the reign of a very different man.
errors.
j
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Bulgaria .
Nicephorus, to support the failing dynasty,
§ g. Basil the son of Romanus, for whom NiceT hnzzmices and the settle- phorus had discovered a new title IIpoeSpos, at once went of turned towards the rising sun, and to the end of Bulgaria.
the reign of Zimisces maintained a firm control of domestic affairs. Indeed, it is suspected that the
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
233
emperor was suffered to reign and live only so long Johnzimzsces as he pleased the powerful minister ; and it is clear ~o settkthat important tracts of public business were Buiga~. wholly abandoned to civilian control by an emperor genuinely interested in war alone . Under the reformed empire of Diocletian, Constantine, and Justinian, the civilian was always a match for the military element . While the historian depicts on a large and glowing canvas the valour of a hero, the romantic details of a campaign, the ordinary life of a people (still nine-tenths of a nation's history) remains without a chronicler . Only a Napoleon, perhaps, has ever strictly fulfilled the imperial promise, personal control over both departments of State, unrelaxed vigilance, and military enterprise . We can only conjecture dimly amid the tumult and flash of arms, what the early government was like during these chivalrous exploits . For twenty years Basil will retain unquestioned his grasp on public business ; for twenty years there will be seen the same ambition of generals under the cover of a weak but respected legitimacy, the same cabinet-rule of an irresponsible chief minister. But for the masterful spirit of Basil II., the personal control of a Byzantine sovereign might never have reappeared ; and after all, this was what a Roman emperor pledged, what the government needed for efficiency and the people for security,The Phocas circle was broken up ; the Curopalat Leo was banished to Lesbos ; Nicephorus, his son, 7rp& ro,8ec--rt«pto9, to Imbros ; Bardas Phocas, the second son, governor of Chaldia and Colonea, was closely confined in Amasia ; Peter the eunuch was spared from the general disgrace .-The death of Nicephorus was the signal for a widespread movement among the enemies of Rome. The Russians, now lords of the Balkans, threatened to overrun the,European territory of the empire : there was no reason why the Bulgarian people, mainly Slavonic, should not accept the leadership of the Norse princes
234
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY .OF
niv . a
.rohazimiwes as their cousins had in Russia ;, the revolution had mew of
Bulgaria. s
been purely dynastic .
The Moslem powers forgot
their differences, and closed in round an army without a head, as they supposed. But the defensive methods were still vigorous ; Nicetas, a patrician and
a eunuch, contrives to overthrow this imposing confederacy of unbelievers ; Bardas Sclerus, Zimisces' brother-in-law, stationed at Adrinople against , the Russians, issues forth and inflicts a crushing defeat, in which zo,ooo are slain . He is recalled in haste by the news of a fresh danger, the invariable conspiracy of the Phocas family so recently disinherited. Leo and his two sons are discovered, judicially examined, and (an infrequent sentence for high-treason) condemned to death. John modifies the penalty to loss of sight, and gives directions that it shall be only formally performed. (Two years later (97z) they are found again conspiring, are again betrayed, and this time the sentence is really executed, and their goods are confiscated to the State.) In 970 Sclerus, another conspicuous figure in the military caste, was sent to Asia Minor, where at Cappadocian Caesarea he assembles his forces . In 971 John marches in command to the Russian war by way of Dristra (Dopo6-roaov) ; Peristhlaba he captures, and lays siege to Dristra, where two terrible engagements take place ; in the latter conflict r5,5oo Russians are slain, while the Romans lose but 350. Zimisces brings with him a special corps of devoted Armenian troops, who defend his person and assure the victory (we already know from Abulpharagius the value attached to these reinforcements of Armenian infantry, during After the the late Syrian wars of Nicephorus) . embellished interview of the two sovereigns, famous by historians, peace is made ; and duly supplied with provisions and safe conduct the Russian invaders, remnants of a great host, take their homeward path . Wenceslas is killed on the way ; and his son Vladimir marries Anne, sister of the young emperor, and
I
c$. n
TIDE ROMAN EMPIRE (945r-975)
235
begins that long, peaceful influence of church and Johnztm%wes the court on the receptive Russians, which is seen sur- and settlement of
viving, strongly marked and unmistakable in our own Bulgaria . day. John triumphs with one of those spectacular
`processions so familiar of late to the citizens of the capital ; he divests Boris of his kingship, and transforms him into a docile, imperial official with the harmless title magister militice. About this time is ' abolished a vexatious impost, the smoke-tax, rein'; stated by an emperor of evil memory, Nicephorus I., in the early days of the ninth century, which excited perhaps much the same resentment as our similar window-tax. 9. The next three years are devoted to the East. .Tohn and the The Great Domestic was nobly continuing the tradi- cam a n8. tion, called by Armenian writers Mleh demeslikos, in p 9 which we must surely recognise Melias, the governor of Lycandus, or more probably his son .' He ravages Edessa, and takes Nisibis and Amida ; after seven centuries the fortified towns of the debatable border are just as they were in the time of Constantius II. John now came up, having concluded an alliance with the Armenian kings, Ashot III. and the Prince of Vasparacan, and received reinforcements : there had been an anxious moment of uncertainty when he found the frontier menaced by 8o,ooo troops, who at first seemed reluctant to admit the Romans . The combined forces are directed against the central citadel of Islam . In Bagdad the feudal forces, everywhere prevalent in Europe and West Asia, had substituted for a direct theocratic rule centralised in the Caliph or Vicar of God, the turbulent rivalry of emirs . The acting "Shogun," Bakhtiar, of the impotent captive, had himself resigned to others the business of government and the defence of the .
country .
The
people,
never voiceless
at
a crisis
1 Mleh, Melias, and Melissenus are perhaps the stages in the development of this patronymic.
.
236
,i
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . s
.rohn and the in so-called despotic States, rise in sedition against Bakhtiar was alarmed, campaigns. this double indifference. gave up his hunting and pleasures, robbed the unfortunate caliph, in spite of his protest, of his household furniture for the expenses of the war, and took ' the field. It would appear that this vigorous effort surprised and baffled the Romans ; Mleh or Melias is defeated and captured, and the results of his brilliant enterprise are lost. In 974, John passes by Nisibis and Amida, proposes to sack '1 Ecbatana " (Bagdad), most inviolable and opulent city on earth ; and after an obscure but successful raid, forces the caliph into a tributary alliance, which is operative some thirteen years later. He returns home laden with booty, and after a brief rest again proceeds to Syria in 975 . He rapidly seizes Membig (or Hierapolis), Apamea, Emesa, Baalbec . He makes Damascus pay tribute, and leaves part of his army for the siege of Tripoli, part, under Burtzes, for the blockade of Antioch which again capitulated to this successful leader after the death of Zimisces . If we can credit Armenian authorities, he wrote from Jerusalem itself to Ashot III., sending a present of 2000 slaves and iooo horse ; and honours the king's envoys with titular dignities, one Leo (a clerk) as « rabounapet " and philosopher, the layman It is clear Sempad as magister or protospathaire. that John Zimisces valued both the soldiers and the monarchs of Armenia . Sprung from a native stock, he felt in sympathy with the race rising gloriously from centuries of obscure oppression . The Armenian influence perhaps reached its height in these two regencies ; and although it declines somewhat in the following legitimist reaction (989-11056), yet the fortunes of this warlike people were closely bound up with the destiny of Rome ; and the short-sighted policy of Constantine X. (c. 11050) finally broke up an important bulwark of the empire .
r7
CH. ix -
I,
R ;} f; j
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (945-975)
237
10. But in the moment of triumph and in the Suspicious prime of life, Zimisces was attacked by deadly though m8 lingering illness. In the autumn of 975 he turns (97s). his' face homewards, and moves slowly through the now peaceful and fertile regions, which his family and his countrymen had once more annexed to the empire. The chronicler suddenly lifts the veil from the secret conflict of the rivals, which the din of arms allows us to forget. Passing through Cilicia,by Longias and Dryze,he inquires for the owner of the prosperous but thinly inhabited country . It is Basil the chamberlain, and the soldier is indig-
nant that the fruit of his toil and the lands won by the lives of brave men fall to menials of the palace . At the Asiatic Mount Olympus he lodges with a noble, Romanus, whom some affirm to be a grandson of Romanus Lecapenus. But there is little need of the story of a poisoned cup. Mortafly ill he reached the capital, and just lived into the new year . On the loth of January he died, leaving the young princes to the care of the minister suspected of his own murder. A strange version of the story comes from the East ; Matthew of Edessa tells us that he abdicated in deep repentance at the massacre of Nicephorus, assembled the grandees (yeyc6-raves to the Greeks), and placed the crown on the rightful head of Basil. Retiring into a convent, he was poisoned by his butler and chamberlain ; whom we scarcely expect to meet with in that austere simplicity of the cloister, for which several Roman princes had gladly exchanged a throne .-We have now Hidden
reached the assigned limits of an important period . conflict We see the Eastern frontiers immensely strengthened, Empire. as they had not been since Heraclius' reign. There is a firm alliance with the great Bagratid house of Armenia . Bulgaria, humbled to the dust, is a vassal of the empire ; the Russians are no longer a menace, but are receiving gladly creed, customs, and even forms of government from imperial Rome.
238 Ridden 1onflict in the Roman
Empire,
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
The Byzantine State is the only one in Europe that deserves the names of monarchy or common-
wealth. But under the surface of this prosperity are working tendencies and influences whose conflict will hasten the downfall of the empire . On the one hand, ambitious feudal captains, whose unique business and interest is war, who know nothing and feel nothing of the cost of military expenditure and the people's suffering ; on the other, trained officials or palace favourites, whose ideal is a pacific and unadventurous state, who cannot realise the danger of a soft and vulnerable civilisation in the midst of hardy neighbours, and whose protests against the costliness of war are upraised in the interests not so much of the people as their own . D. ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS TO PERSONAL
MONARCHY
DEPARTMENTS,
CIVIL
REVIVE THE REGENCY TRIUMPHS AND
OVER BOTH
MILITARY . (990-
1025)
§ 1. Public opinion without doubt, whenever it The young Augusti : could be said to exist, predicted a serious conflict revolt Sckrus(976) . between the cabinet and the army-leaders. The death of Zimisces left every ambitious pretender in either sphere free to follow his inclinations under cover of service to the State and to the youthful emperors. The first act in the drama recalls the main features of the revolution of 963 . Once more a minister, Basil, holding the place of Bringas (whom he had supplanted), attempts to remove a dangerous and popular commander ; in place of Nicephorus we find the old rival of the house of Phocas, Bardas Sclerus . He was the obvious successor of Zimisces,_ as guardian of the princes and the empire ; his elevation to partnership seemed a mere matter of time. The emperors had now reached the age of eighteen and fifteen, without learning any of the duties of their station. Basil the chamberlain suc-
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (975-994)
239
ceeded in permanently imprisoning Constantine IX, The young in a charmed circle of palace-pleasures and illusions ; A'E revolt of
Basil II: broke through this restraint and respectful mockery ; he learnt life's lessons by bitter experience, shook off his sloth, startled the rival hierarchy by acting for himself, issued commands to his subalterns, and reigned in an inaccessible and perhaps joyless solitude.-The year 976, beginning early (Jan. 10) with a new reign, was destined to have more than its share of exciting incident. The Minister recalled Theophano to the palace, where she sank into silence and inaction ; honoured Bardas Sclerus with the (now favourite) title of Duke of Mesopotamia, but detached him from the immediate command of the Oriental armies and the society of his faithful friends ; sent Burtzes, with a similar title, Duke of Antioch, to govern the city he had recovered ; and gave a captaincy to Peter Phocas, the eunuch, nephew of the late emperor . At this shower of favours upon the hated and powerful house, Bardas broke into open protest. Basil the chamberlain lets it be known among the friends of Sclerus, that if he had a grievance in the office to which he was appointed, he might retire and live quietly on his estates . Sclerus revolts, and openly seizes the regency . His son, Romanus, who might have become a valuable hostage for his good conduct, is adroitly convoyed from the capital and . joins his father. With the help of Armenian cavaliers he is saluted emperor by the troops, and passes into the district of Melitene, so recently regained . The revolt took on an entirely Oriental character ; it was chiefly supported (as the Greeks indignantly realised) with Armenian contingents ; and at one time it seemed likely that two pretenders at the head of equal armies might avoid the horrors of civil war by splitting up the integrity of the empire. Sclerus seized the public taxes and local resources. But he held the richer inhabitants to exorbitant ransom, and prevailed on some of
&zerm (976).
A8ia Minor dIt"hedfrom the empire.
240
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. B
Ask Minor the wealthy proprietors to hand over their whole `tet'Wf` fortunes. He was now established in Mesopotamia, the empire.
and thought it no disgrace to parley with the infidel and obtain their succour. The Emirs of Diarbekir and of Miafarekin join his cause, finding nothing singular in another ebullition of selfish separatism, which was then everywhere rife through the caliph's dominions . Three hundred picked Arabian horsemen join the rebel standard ; and the camp of Sclerus is the haunt of bandits, and the centre and asylum for all the discontented . The Armenian auxiliaries include some notable princes-the brother, Romanus, and the sons, Gregory and Bagrat, of Ashot, Prince of Taron . The utmost fear prevailed in the civil councils of the Ministry ; Legitimist generals who could be trusted were not numerous. At last Peter Phocas was sent to Caesarea, where all available troops were assembled in the interest which we must call, by a stretch of fancy, the Imperialist cause. A first engagement ended in his success, and special enmity was shown to the Armenian allies, who were believed to be the motive and the backbone of the rebellion . Bardas loses a firm friend in Anthes ; and finds the captain of the Saracen contingent openly advocating desertion . It is a curious comment on the times and on the character of the regent, that the band murders its "believing" commander and throws in its lot with the Christian general . A certain Saraces conducts Bardas safely through the passes watched by Phocas' troops ; and a second engagement takes place at Lapara on the Armenian frontier, or, as some aver, at Lycandus. Peter, deceived by the ruse of a mock !banquet and simulated doles to the rebel troops, is caught unawares and suffers heavy loss ; while shortly after, Burtzes, the Duke of Antioch, declares for his old friend and ally, Sclerus . As his viceroy in a semi-independent duchy, he leaves a Moslem, Abdallah Muntasir, who acts with feudal loyalty (typical of the age) towards his friend,
ca. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (975-990)
241
but on the collapse of Sclerus' rebellion refuses to Asia Minor restore the city to the empire i Andronicus Ducas ` 0he frOm the empire. (who may be a member of the
-,'
ancient house by Nicolas, the one surviving scion after Constantine's abortive attempt) also declares for Sclerus ; and the insurgent sailors of the port of Attalia seem to have joined with the townsfolk in putting their admiral in irons and hoisting the black flag. But this mutinous fleet added little to the cause of Sclerus or the interest of the war. Commanded by Manuel Curtice, it sailed to attack the imperial galleys, still loyal, stationed off the Cibyrrhaeot Theme. Thence it made for the Hellespont, seized Abydos as its headquarters, terrorised the capital, and interrupted its supplies. But the next news we have is the tidings that Theodorus Carantenus has annihilated the rebel squadron.
Against this powerful confederation of the Defeatsot'the land forces the minister Basil despatched Leo ImWl4t (,2rpwTo#FQTLC'pto9) and John the patrician. Con- forea' stantinople had not known such a panic since the
.
reign of Theodosius III. All kinds of authority were hastily heaped on the generals, not perhaps without the secret misgivings of the cabinet . They were armed with the fullest powers of treating with the rebels, or bribing them into submission ; and at their disposal lay all offices and captaincies without reference to the ministry at home. The Imperialists reach Coty2eum in Phrygia . Leo fails in his efforts to detach the partisans of Sclerus, and succeeds _ better by an audacious manceuvre . Slipping past their lines he leads his men eastward, as if to retaliate (like Heraclius) on the homesteads and fields of the chief supporters of the war. Seeing their homes threatened, the army, Cappadocian or 1 He is only won over to become an imperial officer by the clever special pleading of the Bishop of Aleppo (rewarded for this service with the Patriarchal See of Antioch, and losing his promotion and his liberty by ungrateful treason towards Basil II . twelve years later).
VOL. II .
I
f
242
i
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
Leo follows Defeat. of tu Armenian, deserts to the imperial cause. in which engagement, jmP"*11i8t up this skilful ruse by a third are pretender, of the fom". Burtzes and Romanus, son or . renegade repentant defeated ; we shall find the Burtzes, along with Eustathius Maleinus, among the Imperialists . Once again the special bitterness against the Armenians was displayed ; no quarter rewas given to those who were perhaps unfairly . A fourth garded as the prime-movers in the sedition battle resulted in an entire change of fortune : Bardas Sclerus with his brother Constantine falls with his Eastern cavalry on Leo . An utter rout ensues ; of the three generals, Peter Phocas and John are slain, and Leo is taken prisoner . Elated with this overwhelming success, the rebels march towards the Bithynian frontier, everywhere welcomed by the fickle crowds ; the days of Thomas the Socialist have come back again. The government sends out Manuel Comnenus, first of the famous house to find the a place in Roman annals, 'as commander of the title he held garrison at Nice ; at that moment of Prefect of the East. Feigning plenty by sandheaps lightly covered with grain, he capitulates and retires to the capital with his soldiers and the honours of war, leaving behind an almost empty and faminestricken town to Sclerus . There was now no general who could command the shattered remnants of '1 Imperialism ." Driven to extremities, the government Phocas ''' t° draws from his convent-retreat in Chios Bardas favoure°''ed ) overPhocas, disgraced some six years previously . The throw8 part of the two chief actors was now oddly changed -a Phocas was now the loyalist, a Sclerus the defaulter . So low had the fortunes of the central government ebbed that it was by stealth that the new leader effected a secret journey to Caesarea, long prevented by the vigilance of young Romanus Sclerus from passing into Asia Minor . Placing himself at the head of the army Phocas retreats to Amorium, and is there met by Sclerus . The Imperialists are
' ~'
en. ix
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE. (975-990) 243 again defeated ; and nothing but the brilliant strategy .Phoe" of a capable and humane general saved the flying (restored to and dismayed troops. In turn retreating and facing favour) °" again to confront the pursuing rebels, Phocas pre- s6 . served his men at serious personal risk from utter annihilation, with that respect for human life that is so marked a feature in this Byzantine age. Gathering together his humiliated forces -he again offers battle, and again is driven to flight . In yet a third engagement Phocas fought with the courage of despair ; the armies watch the single combat of the heroic leaders . Sclerus is hurled from his horse, and the riderless steed spreads the false tidings of his defeat and death . The rebel army, hitherto victorious, but depending only upon the personal influence of an individual, was seized with unreasoning panic and dispersed in all directions. Sclerus fled to Miafarekin and thence to the caliph in Bagdad. So ends the first scene in the contest for the regency . His followers continue to harass the provinces of Asia' Minor, like the Carlists after legitimate war in Spain . Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria suffer from their raids, and it is not till c98o that peace is restored throughout the peninsula . Before the second act opens, certain events had taken place in the palace and the capital which altered the complexion of affairs and shifted the balance of parties . 8. A new and -unexpected factor had appeared : Basil 11. in 986 goes in person to the Bulgarian Military annoyance at war, in spite of the remonstrance of the chamberlain Bas`p$ inztaatiM and the open disapproval or ridicule of the military
leaders . At first unsuccessful, he had not been deterred from continuing an active policy. No "legitimate" sovereign had commanded the troops since his namesake ; and even Romanus became a recluse when he assumed the purple. We shall again allude to this remarkable decision and the adverse criticism it aroused ; here we will only add that Basil scorned the interested advice of those
244 Midita
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
who would have kept the titular emperor a puppet .
B~$ne °'t Issuing from his obscurity he learnt to command initiative. respect and even fear. While the sovereign was engaged in his Bulgarian campaign, Bardas Phocas had, in 986, crossed the Euphrates and seized Dara ; the caliph retaliates on the region of Antioch with that familiar and purposeless foray which since Sapor and Chosroes was the favourite method of Eastern aggression. But Phocas must so far have succeeded, for we find the Emir of Aleppo paying tribute again to the empire with the caliph's consent . The news was brought to the camp that the emperor, not content with invading the province of the soldier, had disgraced the minister ; Basil, on suspicion of a plot, was removed from office, sent across the Bosphorus, and had the bitterness of seeing all his public acts and decisions annulled by imperial edict . Personal control had once more appeared in camp Revolt of and cabinet (987). Phocas had been annoyed that his aid had not been sought for the Bulgarian war ; he believed himself indispensable . The military caste met at the castle of Eustathius Maleinus, at Charsiane, in Cappadocia ; and on August 15 saluted Phocas emperor, under the same circumstances and with the same motives that attended or impelled the proclamation of Isaac Comnenus just seventy years later . Almost simultaneously there arrived the disconcerting news that Sclerus, the former pretender, had escaped from the confinement into which the caliph had thrown him! For this baffled fugitive, taking shelter with his soldiers, 3000 in number, in Bagdad, had been first welcomed, then distrusted and disarmed ; but had obtained the caliph's permission to attack the rebel Persians, and had succeeded . Instead of returning to a suspicious hospitality, he turned his cavalcade towards the Roman frontier in Melitene, and was now preparing to renew his claim to the regency . The situation closely resembled the military anarchy of the third century. There
j `?
ca. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (975-990)
245
were the same well-trained army-corps, the same Rem& op ambitious leaders or turbulent troops, the same honest and patriotic endeavour to do service to the State. Once more a Gallienus in the capital was confronted by rival claimants, who had first to decide with each other in open fight, and then seize the defenceless prize of victory . Sclerus got possession of Malatiya from Basiliscus, the patrician in command, seized the valuable equipment and resources of the provincial capital, assumed the imperial title, and began to negotiate both with the emperor and with Phocas. To secure a safe retreat in either event, he despatched his son Romanus Sclerus to Basil II ., with a feigned distaste for his father's treasonable schemes and a warm desire to serve the genuine sovereign . Basil's nature was, at the outset of his public life, open, confiding, and clement ; the young renegade (as was supposed) received a hearty welcome, and even became a principal minister and adviser . To Phocas, Sclerus suggested a partition of the empire : so far had feudal views prevailed in undermining the ideal of a single empire "one and indivisible ." Phocas pretends to agree to this compromise, and suggests that Sclerus should occupy the further East, taking as his share Antioch, Phenice, Cwlesyria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, leaving the larger part of Asia Minor and all Europe to him . But a real understanding between these ancient rivals was inconceivable ; at no moment was Phocas sincere in agreeing to such an accommodation . Inviting Sclerus to an amicable interview he seizes and despoils him ; and thus does him the best possible service by removing him against his will from the dangerous competition.
4. The curtain rises on the final scene in the Extinction of drama of the pretenders . Phocas is seen marching rmit by saddens death on Constantinople (q8q). Half his
army is sent on ofp ahead to Chrysopolis, under the patrician Calocyres Delphinas . Basil II. at the head of the Russian con- -
.
246
CONSTIZTTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
1s on them, inflicts a crushing defeat, and E,xtanctaon of tmgent falls
"o& by then and there hangs Calocyr as a warning to &udden death traitors . In the camp is found the old, restless Niceo,f Phocas.
phorus Phocas, blinded by Zimisces after, a second conspiracy. Meantime Phocas himself is attacking Abydos ;, and Basil II. and Constantine IX. his in war) reach Lampsacus and unique appearance p offer battle . Once more the fight assumes something of the aspect of a duel in a tournament of chivalry. On his way to meet Basil in single combat Phocas suddenly turns aside, dismounts or falls from his horse, and instantly expires . His forces, held together by no principle but the precarious cement of personal loyalty, disband in con. fusion and receive a general amnesty. The principal accomplices are submitted to the painless indignity of a mock procession on asses, seated facing the tail ; and in this lenient treatment it is worthy of notice and approval that Basil relieved Leo Melissenus from this light penalty, because he had in the rebel camp refused to allow injurious abuse against the rightful emperors. Basil had tiow triumphed over his most serious rival ; but the fires of sedition still smouldered . Once again, for a third time, the aged and gouty Sclerus becomes the unwilling centre and focus of the malcontents. The wife of Phocas releases him from confinement in the castle of Tyropaeum, and urges him to succeed to the undying feud with Legitimacy. Amnesty and But Sclerus was tired of the cares and perils of thigh a pretender's life. His son Romanus was high in hons. rs favour with the emperor . Basil, generous to a fault, offers him the second title in the kingdom, the coveted rcovpowaXaTV9, if he will resign all independent claims and resume his allegiance. The details of the interview are well known ; and the whole episode of the civil war (disastrous though it was in its results to a wealthy and pacific State) leaves a most pleasing impression of the age, its humanity, considerateness,
cx. zx
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (975-990)
247
respect for life, and good faith. But the mischief Amnesty and wrought on the real home of imperial power, Asia high kmmrg Minor, and on the provincials, was very great ; to Scderus. perhaps, it never really recovered. Feudal armies, warring for purely personal ends and in service to some great captain, are rarely bitter, and seldom fight to the death. The actual loss of life may have been slight . But the civil order and tranquil course of justice, on which the empire could especially pride itself, was thrown into confusion . Great feudal castles became not merely the meeting-place of the disaffected and mutinous, but the asylum of the fugitive villager. Vast territories held by magnates supported ten thousand head of cattle, but few independent yeomen or honest husbandmen. The horrors of civil war were experienced by the neutral inhabitants of the lower class ; the conflict, half an exciting tournament to the partisans or « Imperialists," wrought real and lasting havoc on the resources and the population of the peninsula. Yet it must best be forgotten that such contests and crises are inseparable accompaniments of the C2esarian ideal . The best man must be discovered and loaded with plenary powers, not as titular monarch, but as ubiquitous general, as personal administrator, as embodied High Court of Appeal . We have tried to justify from this point of view the incessant turmoil and wanton confusion of the third century, which Bardas and Phocas seem anxious to revive. They acted within their right, and according to their conscience. But the triumph of Legitimacy was a real benefit to the commonwealth . The wish to be ruled by the ideally best and most competent leads into hopeless chaos. It may well be doubted if the most able and virtuous would be the better for unlimited power or confidence ; and it is certainly not worth while for a nation to take steps to discover this shy and lurking genius. Neither China, with her studious and democratic tests of literary aptitude, nor Rome and Latin
248
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
Amnesty and America, with the brusque arbitrament of the sword, to so,honours provide that order, guarantee that security, which a government ought to bestow on its subjects . The hereditary principle reasserted itself at the close of the tenth century in Byzantium . Men were glad to obey a prince whose ancestors had reigned, at least in name, for a century and a quarter, and as some men whispered, longer . Basil crowned the public relief and approval by his generous treatment of the partisans ; not merely did he decorate the ringleader with the coveted distinction, but he took his followers into favour and preserved for them the titles which Sclerus had bestowed ; this latter indulgence became a precedent for the next century. Personal § 5. Imperial magnanimity could go no further . ('.'Basil at this epoch in his long reign kept all his (99o-zo,25) : vindictive truculence for the foes of the empire . A true last echo of the regency conflict disturbed the oppressive silence of his later years without awakening his idead.n thirst for vengeance . In 1022, he had left at Constantinople Nicephorus Phocas (son of the pretender Bardas) and a certain Nicephorus Xiphias, both valiant commanders, while he is absent . Both retire in agreement to Cappadocia and revolt. An Armenian king Sennacherib appears to have assisted them, with that eager help always forthcoming for the house of Phocas from that nation . Basil will not waste the forces of the empire on a contemptible domestic brawl. He writes to each, promising pardon if he will rid him of his rival . Xiphias, already regretting his step, lures his companion to an interview and murders him. This is perhaps the only violent death by perfidy or judicial sentence that marks this age, if we except the summary penalty of Calocyr on the field of battle . The history of Byzantium is in this respect a welcome contrast to the cruel series of deaths which East or West of this humane area forms the staple interest of the historian .-We have .no intention of closely following Basil 11. in his Bulgarian
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (990-1025)
249
campaigns of nearly forty years . That task has Personal already been performed by competent historians, and 9°°"'''t of Basal II. is well within the scope and power of any painstaking military chronicler and tactician. Still it would be unfair for the constitutional theorist to ass p it by altogether, like Psellus, who devotes much space
(99o-10,25) tme desarictn xdead.
to a lengthy account of the pretenders and dismisses the military achievement of the legitimate prince with an airy periphrasis . For the Bulgarian wars account both for the success and the failure of the « Macedonian " dynasty . It was the costliness of these expeditions which Rare phemforced Basil II ., now the "government," into an e oppressive fiscal policy, which provoked a strong mntrolofone. resentment and at a fitting moment produced violent reaction . Among the later emperors, he stands out as a unique and masterful spirit, accepting seriously the impracticable role of Caesarism, as « earthly providence " or "present deity " to subject millions. The autocratic power of a generalissimo he learnt to exercise in his tireless campaigns ; and he transported the peremptory tone and methods of the camp into the cabinet . We shall have occasion to inquire what were the changes in civil and military administration under this longest of Byzantine reigns ; and it will be impossible to separate the austere lessons of foreign warfare from the modification of system and principles in both these departments. An effective personal monarchy is the rarest phenomenon in all history ; there being but one still rarer and more miraculous, an efficient and harmonious democracy. The line of Roman emperors supplies by far the greater number of instances . The whole temper and tradition of the Orient hinders the realisation of this ideal ; and except in the early days of a military dynasty and under the eyes of its founder, no one is so ignorant or innocent of affairs as the master of all lives and all estates . Feudalism and the modern expedient of constitutional compromise
250
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv.2
Rare roheno- has hitherto always tempered the direct authority mewn ; of the central ruler or government by a number of effective
oowroiot'me. jealous rivals ; political life becomes a resultant of many forces not easy to predict ; it is always safe to reduce by one-half the nominal power enjoyed by a military dictator or a premier with an unparalleled majority . The Teutonic spirit (which has alone made progress in the ideal of politics) is usually « against the government," and popular nominees are the last people in the world to enjoy the full confidence of the nation . The dignified and spectacular side of a Byzantine sovereign's life and duties detracted much from his vigour and vitality. He moved in a world of glitter and illusion, dressed and decorated for public display by obsequious hands, minutely regulated by custom and the bond-slave of precedent . Yet how many shook off the sloth and futility of this laborious splendour! Basil II . quitted the court ; and surrendered its fancied pleasures to Constantine . His aim was to realise the Caesarian ideal . He would be sole master ; for to this office was he born. He may have owed his clemency toward traitors to an absolute and fatalistic trust in Providence, which had so often overthrown his domestic foes . He did not believe it would fail him ; and he could afford to be generous, where a Tiberius or a Domitian was filled with alarm . But the genuine claims of Basil II . to the autocrat's title were deceptive and transitory ; even he was sometimes the victim of the obscure guile of his nameless ministers ; and on his death the court came to a silent but resolute decision to limit sovereign power by every possible means . The history of the remaining s fifty-six years within our prescribed period will prove a striking comment on the vanity of human will. It will teach us this lesson,-according to our temperament and creed, a comfort or a disappointment,that no one has less real power than an absolute ruler.
t
CH. ix
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (990-1025)
251
6. On the death of the dreaded Zimisces, the Overthrow of Bulgarian race took heart. Four leaders presented New Bwqaria
themselves as champions of the nationalist move- in the west. ment,-sons of a late dignitary who had stood very near the throne. Of these David and Moses are soon killed ; and Aaron is murdered by Samuel, sole survivor of this strangely scriptural family, together with all his children except Ladislas and Alusianus. Samuel, the Shishmanid, unlike his Old Testament namesake, becomes king, and on occasion of the civil war (976-981) is found established in South Macedonia and in Thessaly, the hapless regions open -throughout Byzantine history to any herd of adventurous savages . He penetrates to Dalmatia on the west, and to Peloponnesus on the south, where he occupies the important station of Larissa . Basil takes the field in person and lays siege to Sardica (Triaditza). He is induced to return hurriedly by the slanderous rumour that Leo Melissenus was meditating defection . Samuel falls upon his line in retreat, inflicts serious loss and captures the baggage . Basil found Leo entirely innocent of the charge, and waiting quietly at his post. Contostephanus, his informer, tried to brazen out the accusation ; and Basil, losing all patience, attacked him with brutal vigour, but beyond this imperial chastisement inflicts no further penalty on the author of a calumnious slander and a disgraceful defeat, The second expedition was undertaken in 995 or 996 . The Bulgarians were still ravaging Thrace and Macedonia . Basil fixed the headquarters of the war in Thessalonica ; repairing the defences of this second city in Europe, now fully recovered from its capture and sack in the reign of Leo Vl. The command of the garrison was given to Gregory the Taronite, a member of that loyal Armenian nobility who surrendered lands to the empire in exchange for official title and dignity at court. Indeed, the prominence of this nationality gave rise to a singular
252
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
9
Overthrow of and incredible legend, to be found in Asolik,Badgaria an that Samuel the Bulgarian leader was in truth an Armenian prince, accepted by the rebels as their the West. king on the defeat and capture of Curt. The third campaign (996) was mostly conducted by lieutenants ; the fourth, in 999, found the emperor in person at Philippopolis ; in i ooo, his general, Theodorocanus, penetrated into Old Bulgaria and reduced Pliscova and Peristhlaba ; Xiphias, who accompanied him, was the same as the conspirator two-and-twenty years later. From iooi to 1014 the war languished ; and the emperor was continually at the front in the east. It was during the stubborn resistance of the despairing Bulgarians that the lonely emperor became stern and reticent, parsimonious and autocratic . The details of the fifth, sixth, and seventh campaigns belong to the historian : Samuel died in 1014 ; opposition under Ladislas was finally broken in io i 8 ; and Basil II. celebrated perhaps the last of ancient Roman triumphs in z o i q. The recovery of the Danubian frontier had been gained at tremendous cost of happiness, civilisation, and human life. The wars of Belisarius had made Italy a scene of desolation ; and Justinian had exhausted his rich Oriental provinces to reign over a desert in the West. For the relentless policy of his successor there is more excuse. No vanity or mere political sentiment prompted an emperor to consolidate that broken and incoherent territory, which from the time of Heraclius to the present day presents us with a variegated spectacle, and a political problem of unceasing anxiety. He attempted an impossible task. The Balkan and the Italian peninsulas are natural outlets into which the vagrant nomads drained. Teuton, Slav, Finn, Magyar settled in the latter, not in the compact and solid mass of an invading host, but in intermittent forays, and built up gradually and without purpose or design the several strata of race and nationality . The unifying and centralising 5
cu. ix
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (990-1025)
253
policy of Basil 11. had been anticipated in sheer overthrow of self-defence under the regency of Zoe ; her great- Xew grandson preferred safety and uniformity at home the Wes.En to all the Asiatic triumphs of the knight-errants . Yet the Byzantine system of government and taxation was unsuitable either to the Italians under Narses, or to the Bulgars and Serbs under governors sent out by Basil and his successors. It is vain perhaps to waste regrets on past political mistakes ; and still more is it impertinent to offer advice from the study to statesmen and warriors, acting under stress of necessity and without knowledge of the future. Yet an absolute and uniform centralisation was never an integral part of the early imperial ideal. We ask if the complete overthrow of the dynasty of Theodoric or of Samuel was demanded by the States welfare if vassal kingdoms might not have maintained that pleasant federal diversity and local privilege and autonomy, which, for example, is to be seen to-day in different measures in the United States, in India, and in Germany. 7. We come now to the last and gravest Masterful question-the place and influence of Basil II . in the *Pi'it and reserve of
development of political theory and practice. What Basil: changes did he effect in the civil or military order ? change in the What legacy of strength or weakness did he be- 9 government. queath to his house, destined still to reign for over thirty years ? Character, early training, and the sharp lessons of political experience, made Basil what he was . Forced into the background and kept in tutelage, he had broken his fetters by sheer force of will, and triumphed over all competitors . He stood absolutely alone ; he trusted no one ; his counsels were his own ; and his word was law. He won this commanding and isolated vantage-ground by success in war . He was a great captain, and . his subjects feared and respected his unflagging work and joyless life. He had secured the mastery in his own house by the removal of his namesake, long
254 Masterful *rit and f. Baszd: =he
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Iuv. B
recognised as holding an official position second only to the emperors', and far surpassing theirs in weight. The chamberlain had no successor ; Basil, unlike many great rulers, rarely fell under the insidious intrigue of valets and placemen, Rough, loyal, and often quite unintelligent emissaries carried abroad the abrupt mandates of the emperor . He had no confederates in the art or conspiracy of government. He never lost control or vigilant watch over himself. Constantine IX, after one valorous appearance in the field against a pretender, sank into the not unmanly ease of a Byzantine gentleman. Basil never forgot that he was the emperor ; his were no pleasant intervals of leisure, when among friends and equals the sovereign could forget his cares and dignity. For forty years he worked alone ; and the brief and precise military orders become the model of all cabinet instruction in the eleventh century. THE POLICY OF BASIL II .
According to Psellus (whose work deserves, and I hope may receive, from me a more detailed treatment than is possible here), Sclerus published to the emperor the secret of absolute monarchy, how the central power may be kept free from sedition (oaws av doTautao-ros Ei~~ °° Abolish the great appointments (vrepoyuovs apXas) and keep the supplies down during the campaigns " (1zq8eva ;)v 4v mrpa-rclatS Eav 7ro l)Gv Evropew) . The other wonderful secrets are more apocryphal (r) To wear men down by unjust exactions that they may devote all their anxious time to their own households ; (a) not to marry a wife or bring a woman to the palace ; (3) not to be open to any counsellor, but allow very few to know of the imperial projects. From this moment, it was said, Basil, changed his policy. He reigned alone, and drew the plan of the campaigns : the political class he ruled not according to precedent and written law, but his own will ; to men of letters (the Chinese Literati of Tsin-Hwang-Ti) he paid no heed, and altogether despised them (Ta IIOk&TCKav ov 7rpas Tons yCypa/AJAEVOVS vop,ovs QA . Vpds Tovs aypd4,ovs rids av7ov
ca. ix '
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (990-1025)
255
Ev0vcarfcns EKVRepva oXils). When the barbarian was tamed, mmterful he then began to reduce his own subjects, destroy feudal Spirit and inequality and privilege (Ta rpoV'Xovra Tow yeviGV xdOEIXWV reserve : of x . 'Egg to-ov TOES Q'XXoss xatao-rwas) . He surrounded himself change in the with a faithful band of servitors, neither clever nor well- methods of born, who alone shared his secrets : (TCva Aoyasa aepi avr6V government. aCaosrixws dVSPZV, OV'TE TqV yvwpqV Xaprpwv oVTE Uqv orto-q'pmwv yevos . . TO{rrocs ras #ao'i .XEiovs E7tTTOXas EVEXEdpto-E x . Tc"uv aroppalrwv xocv(ovw"v SGETEXEL). (Cf. Constantine IX., § 3 ; Romanus IIL, § r8 ; Constandne X., §§ 29 (a good passage), 80, 134 (the famous phrase : `1 Our political rulers are not Pericles or Themistocles, but some miserable Spartacus of the household ") ; Theodora, § i .) Cf. in Michael h, § 36 : -rb uE'r y 6'V09 oVX ' 'EXX-qva, which explains a good deal of the feeling
against the new official class. I may perhaps be pardoned for dismissing in somewhat summary fashion the great exploits of Basil IL, on which a flood of new light has lately been thrown by a more careful inquiry into the oriental authorities ; for (z) I am preparing a history of this reign in detail under the kind encouragement of Professor Bury ; and (a) for our ' present purpose, which is mainly constitutional, this new evidence does not alter the general aspect of affairs or the relation of parties in the State.
1
CHAPTER X LEGITIMATE"
ABSOLUTISM, OR CONSTANTINE IX. AND HIS DAUGHTERS (1025-1056)
A . JOHN THE PAPHLAGONIAN, OR THE CABAL OF THE UPSTARTS (1025-1042)
Reign of 6~ i"e inctozent and capricious tetemper.
1. WITH the death of Basil the obscurity lifts ; the history of the next half-century is voluble and explicit. The revived Attic of Psellus gives us the record of an eye-witness, and indeed an agent . After Basil's masterful consolidation there a certain lull in foreign affairs, which allows us to catch the whispers of court-intrigues and trace the secret motives of revolution . The personal monarchy he bequeathed with unabated prerogative to his brother. Who were the ministers or satellites of Basil ? History is silent as to their virtues or their influence . He preferred dutiful subalterns to frank partners or wise counsellors. With the turn into the eleventh century the atmosphere changes ; old titles disappear. Constantine IX., like Claudius of old, brings to the administration of an empire the servants of his household. Three valets compose his cabinet . Nicolas is Great Chamberlain and captain of the guard ; Nicephorus is Master of the Robes (?rpwTo0Fo--rc«ptos) ; Symeon, a third, commander of the night-watch-all three decorated with the title 7rpoespov, which Nicephorus II . had invented some sixty years before for Basil, son of Romanus. Eustathius took charge of the Foreign Legion : the recent honour of a dukedom was given to Spondylas, a eunuch, at Antioch ; to Nicetas, a Pisidian, in Iberia . We have little knowledge of the ordinary 256
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
257 officials, captains, or judges, who may have held myn of functions of defence or administration in the themes - Conetantine but it is clear that this division was dwindlin g in ice" t g indolent and
interest, whether as basis of military defence or civil oapriciow jurisdiction . To the short reign of Constantine temper' belong all the familiar features of a thriftless and
dissolute reaction against militarism . For sixty years actual civil war or foreign campaigns had monopolised attention . The arts or enjoyments of peace were forgotten . Yet Constantine was too old to enjoy, too ignorant to be the Maecenas of a brilliant and pacific reign . He was determined not to engage the empire in conflict ; he had the same nervous aversion to the sight of arms as James I. He had been despised by the rough followers of his brother ; and he hastened to retaliate on every real or fancied affront . Taxes he collected twice by an unfair method of reckoning ; peace he purchased from the barbarians, rather than risk the peril of a popular general ; the treasury he exhausted by pensions and palace-waste . He was as fond of ordering hasty punishments as Michael III . : he sometimes listened to protest at the moment, . was grateful afterwards for such interference, and often wept over the blind victims of his suspicions . Constantine, son of Burtzes, the hero of Antioch, lost his sight . Nicephorus Comnenus, governor of Vaspuracan, suffered the same on a charge of treason, because he had bound his mutinous troops by oath not to desert him . The same treatment befell the scions of the old turbulent families-Bardas Phocas, a patrician ; and Basil, son of Romanus Sclerus, both grandsons of the old pretenders . The latter was a type of the new feudal nobility, who are by turns a defence and menace to a free State . He had married the sister of Romanus Argyrus, afterwards emperor, and he challenged the governor of Galatia to the first duel or single combat in Byzantine history . It is difficult to believe that the actors in VOL . II .
R
I I
.
258
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. B
this strange scene still called themselves Romans . Prusianus, a Roman governor, is also a son of a inXdoiew and Bulgarian king Ladislas, the late enemy of the empire : Sclerus is a rich and independent nobleman, member of an attainted family, which in any other kingdom or people would have been wiped out or reduced to poverty : the emperor is an old dotard of long descent but doubtful race, who may have been a Slav, a Macedonian, or an Armenian. Still his action in this instance is modern and commendable ; he forbade the duel, and confined the two in different isles of the Propontis until their bellicose temper cooled. Sclerus was blinded soon after. The general control of the empire seems to have been held in firm hands ; it was long before the ignorance or trivial preoccupations of the palace corrupted the imperial tradition . A revolt in Naupactus, which closed by the murder of the governor Morogeorge, was summarily punished, and the bishop lost his sight, though he loudly protested his innocence. Diogenes, governor (perhaps duke) of Sirmium, compelled the invading Patzinaks to repass the boundary-river . The two governors of Chios and Samos, and George Theodorocanus, assail a marauding fleet of Saracen privateers in the Cyclades, capture twelve vessels, and scatter the rest. Such is the brief and scanty tale of public events in the reign of Constantine IX. His chief anxiety was to secure a partner for his heiress . Eudocia, marked with the small-pox, had concealed her infirmity in a convent ; though she could look back on the romantic alliance proposed with Otto III ., her first cousin : Zoe had reached the mature age of fortyeight without a husband, through the neglect of Basil II., her stern uncle ; and Theodora was in every way better suited for the conventual life, whence she issued in dignified majesty at any crisis in the State, to assume control of the Roman world. Reign of o'omtant~n~ne e,
f f
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
259 2. The choice of Constantine fell upon a member Romanm of the distinguished family of Argyrus . The first -4r9yrm and envoys had been despatched to the East. Constan- hPaphluyartian bailiff. tine Dalassenus (-of Thalassa), a typical country magnate on the confines of Armenia, was the first
candidate for the hand of a princess bringing an empire as her dowry ; but Symeon, third in rank of the powerful valets, took hasty measures to stop the envoys or to delay the departure of Dalassenus by a peremptory message . The wife of Romanus retired to make room for a nobler alliance ; and Theodora having declined a marriage with the husband of a living and blameless wife, gave way to her sister Zoe . For the next thirty years the centre of the stage is occupied by the three husbands of this princess . It is worthy of note that the courtiers grumbled at this step, and tried to discover canonical reasons, more valid in the eyes of the Greek Church than the survival of the first wife, why the ceremony should not be solemnised . Their objections were overruled ; the marriage of Zoe and Romanus took place ; and Constantine expired on November i g, 1028, having ruled alone less than three years.Romanus Argyrus, sprung from a family illustrious since the reign of Michael III. (c. 850), was a typical Byzantine noble in an age when orderly government, regular training, and civilised institutions were perhaps strictly confined to the empire and the emirate of Cordova . He desired that the subjectclass should enjoy the blessings of security which the conquests of Basil II. seemed to guarantee . The accumulated stores of treasure were now opened for the benefit of all . Fiscal burdens were lightened without any impoverishment of central resources, and for forty years the commonwealth was luxurious without being weak. Romanus III. reduced the impost of aaanaeyyuov, and extended the alleviation to every part of the vast realm . He released debtors, and paid off from the privy purse not -
i 260 Bomamw
Argyrw and
his Paphla-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. B
merely their arrears to the State, but their private obligations.
His own brother-in-law, Basil Sclerus,
gonian bailiff. received the office or title of Curopadat, and lost his dignity and is punished with exile on account of a plot some time later . The new emperor recalled Xiphias, the rebel of 1022, from his conventual retreat ; but accustomed to the peace of the cloister, he goes to the monastery of Studium of his own free-will . The invariable conspiracy soon broke the monotony of court life. Prusianus, the duellist of the preceding reign, suffers the penalty of blindness, like his rival, and Mary, his mother, is expelled from the palace. Constantine Diogenes, nephew of Romanus by marriage, was suspected of treasonable designs . He had been removed from command at Sirmium to the duchy of Thessalonica, which made him general 'of all European forces . So powerful a man had to be treated with caution . He was sent to Lydia with a similar title and rank ; but soon arrested, examined, and sent to the Studium, now the fashionable resort of penitent or futile pretenders. The following accomplices were chastised and sent into exile : two grandsons of Burtzes of Antioch, the governor of Achxa, and the Syncellus John . Within the palace a new and paramount authority was rising,-the influence of John the Paphlagonian. Psellus has drawn for us with fairness and probability the portrait of this remarkable man . For fourteen years an empire of hoary antiquity and immemorial institutions became the plaything of an obscure family of valets and eunuchs . The foundations of the power of John Orphanotrophus were laid firmly during the principate of Romanus III . ; though the brothers only divided out the dignities of the State with scornful arrogance during the reign of Michael IV. It is a truism that the favourite ministers of a despot are the alien and the slave ; but 'nowhere but in New Rome could such a sudden exaltation of a whole family be seen,
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
261
among powerful feudal interests and the not less Bomanus important routine of the hierarchy. John, with A'ga'ud his PaphlaConstantine and George,
had been castrated in boy- yonian ba idif hood ; a condition of preferment in the Church and in certain civilian offices. This condition formed no barrier to military command ; and at this very time the eunuch Spondylas is Duke of Antioch. Michael, the future emperor, and Nicetas, were known as false coiners . John had been at first a monk, then private servant of Romanus, and on his master's sudden elevation extended his influence from the management of a household to the control of an empire . He became chief minister and confidante ; retaining his monkish habit in a proud humility . Gradually he collected round him his four brothers ; introduced Michael, the handsomest, to the Empress Zoe, connived at an intrigue, and in the sequel hurried on the marriage and the salutation of « Michael IV.," which gave a dull surprise to the indifferent populace of the capital . It is necessary to remember the careful steps by which an obscure Asiatic factor or agent secured sovereign power for himself, and the imperial crown for his brother and his nephew . An attempt was made by this gloomy but capable . man to convert the titular emperor, no less than the rightful empress, into an automaton, as in China during the last half-century. There were thus three nominal or actual wielders of power : Zoe, in the people's eyes sole legitimate ruler, from whom all secondary dignities derived their credentials ; Romanus III. (and later, Michael IV.), who enjoyed a transient supremacy in virtue of a lucky alliance with an heiress ; and the real Catastrophe ruler, the '1 power behind the throne." and humidia3. The policy, the character, the fate of Romanus tion in the
III., were settled in the East. The fleet of the Duke e fie"of Antioch had been beaten by the Saracens in retrieve October 1029. Spondylas had before suffered a i serious reverse at the hands of the Emir of Aleppo, failure (1030).
262
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
viv. s
Catastrophe and was completely deceived by the transparently and in thee ahostile offer of MusaraPh to build a fort on a comtion in th eaat : fieumanding site near Antioch and assume control of the garrison himself. The fort was indeed built, but retrieVe
imperial failure (zoso) .
-
the Emir of Tripoli was invited to occupy it. In Iogo matters in Northern Syria were so unsatisfactory that Romanus decided to move in person against his recalcitrant vassals . Constantine Carantenus, his brother-in-law, went in advance ; and when the emperor reached Philomelium in Phrygia, Roman pride was gratified by the humble offers of the infidel to resume payment of the tribute as fixed under Nicephorus II . Against the unanimous advice of civilians and soldiers, the emperor decides to continue the expedition which had already secured its object without a blow or the loss of a single life. An ignominious defeat was the result of this obstinacy. Baggage and imperial furniture fell into infidel hands ; and after a long interval a Roman emperor was seen to beat a hasty and disorderly retreat. It may be doubted whether this reverse was retrieved in his eyes, or rendered still more galling, by the news of the brilliant successes of Maniaces or Magniac, and Theoctistus . The former recovered the larger part of the booty ; and the adroit tact of the latter once more secured the suzerainty of the empire in Syria, and won over to a tribute and friendly alliance the powerful Pinzarich, Emir of Tripoli . The successes of his lieutenants completely re-established the Roman authority ; but the prestige and the self-confidence of Romanus III . had received a severe shock, from which he never recovered . Abandoning to others the charge of affairs when he no longer trusted his own judgment, he became an austere and monkridden builder of superfluous convents and churches, ceaselessly pulling down and reconstructing on a new plan. Building may be an unmistakable witness to national wealth and prosperity ; or (as with Nero, or Lewis of Bavaria in our own day) a sign of a
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
263
restless and unbalanced mind . Taxes once remitted Catastrophe to the subject had to be again imposed ; and forced a"d hu"liation in the labour
(something of a novelty in the empire) took east : tieuthe place of levies with the indigent class. Nature and the enemies of the empire seem to have combined to throw discredit n the administration of failure Romanus . The heart of Asia Minor was desolated (1080). by a greedy horde of locusts, which (if we may believe the story) rose again to life after a feigned death or slumber of two years, and once more began their depredations . Mcesia was overrun by the Patzinaks ; the new Mesopotamian provinces by the Saracens ; the Peloponnesian coast and the islands by African corsairs . Nicephorus Carantenus (of a family allied to the emperor) defeats this latter fleet. Such was the state of Lydia and Phrygia that the inhabitants fly to Europe to escape the horrors of famine . Romanus, with the uniform readiness of an emperor to become relieving-officer in general, gives to each fugitive a sum of money for the present distress ; but refuses to allow a settlement in Macedonia, and encourages them to return to their deserted homesteads. When the capital was shaken or shattered by an earthquake, Romanus hails an occasion for the exercise of his favourite art ; and rebuilds afresh the lazar-houses and hospitals . Yet it cannot be said the empire suffered serious hurt in this reign, either by rashness or neglect . The emperor chose his servants well, and in the remoter East rather recovered their lost ground . Magniac seizes Edessa, and imposes a yearly tribute of 50 lbs. of gold' Theoctistus is able to win the gratitude of the Emir of Tripoli, by aiding him to recover his dignity, and in alliance, wins a great victory over the Egyptian fleet. In Bagdad the caliph trembled.
1 Under the Chrysargyron, a "tax on industry" (abolished c. soo by Anastasius L), Edessa paid i4o lbs. of gold in four years : the sum, derived soo years later, might speak therefore of increased commercial prosperity, if we did not remember that under the new feudal method the whole tribute or revenue was paid in a single sum.
264
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. H
Cataotrophe In Percrin, a semi-independent emirate near Babyand hu-Elia- lon Alim the governor capitulates voluntarily ; and tion in the
east: lieuttg retrieve imperial failure (1030) .
when, repenting of his bargain, or wounded in his vanity by some slight, he endeavours to withdraw, the place was taken by assault and attached to the empire. Alda, widow of a king of Abasgia, gives up her realm (at least its defence) to Rome, like Attalus
of old. The castle of Anakuph is made over to a Roman garrison ; and in this case (as with the recent alliance with Tripoli) the goodwill is confirmed by the title patrician, bestowed on Demetrius, the queen's son.
The hasty S 4. The life of Romanus was drawing to its close. ratayetheof Ill-health was the lot of the Byzantine sovereign at MXhel ic Paphla-
'
this time, and especially of the husbands of Zoe. Her father, a fine figure on horseback, was not seen walking after he assumed sole control on Basil's death ; Romanus, already sixty at his accession, rapidly broke up after his disgraceful defeat in Syria ; Michael IV ., a well-known epileptic, had to devise a
hurried screen of curtains to hide himself from an audience, and he became at the latter part of his reign a neurotic and hypochondriac, bathed in tears and covered with shame ; Michael V. fainted at the inaugural ceremony in 1041, and could hardly be revived by the strongest odours ; Constantine X. was an habitual invalid, unable to walk and suffering agonies from the gout, which however did not spoil his easy and forgiving temper . Only the two princesses seem to have enjoyed sound and robust health . The idle and credulous, to whom history means the secret and anonymous memoirs of court intrigue, were as common in Byzantium as with us. It is difficult to believe that an age so careful of life in enemy and traitor should have condoned parricide and poisoning ; or that rulers like Romanus II. and Zoe should have broken their amiable and lenient record by exceptional and monstrous crime . But there can be no doubt she was permanently, estranged
.i
h-,vas, 7' . b
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
265
from an ascetic husband, who regarded her with The hasty aversion . The hurried marriage with Michael (for marriaye of Michael the which Patriarch
Alexius was summoned in haste on Paphlathe night of Holy Thursday) caused no stir in the 90nian. capital ; and Psellus himself witnessed the livid countenance of the late emperor as he was borne in state to burial . The right of Zoe to treat the empire as a dowry seems to be recognised ; and open expostulation is heard only at the division of the great offices amongst the low-born family of the new favourite. Zoe has been compared to Catherine II ., without her ability. But the society of St. Petersburg was indifferent or indulgent to the amours of the great German princess who completed the work of Peter I. The polished and inquisitive society of Byzantium looked carelessly on the marriage ; and disapproved only of the change of government. Michael IV. was intended to be a pliant puppet, who would amuse the empress and leave business to an ambitious brother . Constantine Dalassenus, member of a wellknown family, expressed in public his contempt for the gang which under cover of female legitimacy had secured control of affairs : on the curious pretext that he had stirred Antioch to revolt he was imprisoned, together with his son-in-law, Constantine Ducas. George, brother of John and Michael, was made protovestiaire; and Constantine succeeded Nicetas as Duke of Antioch. Stephen, brother-in-law of the Paphlagonians, was named general in Sicily in conjunction with Magniac ; and his inefficiency and arrogance led to the recall and disgrace of this most capable of imperial lieutenants, and the loss of Sicily which had been won by his alliance with the Normans . (In this new feudal age it was only personal influence and valour which could keep together the mercenary armies who made of war an art ; the old discipline and spirit had disappeared, which could do its duty even in spite of bad generals . Magniac continued in confinement until the reign of Michael V., 1041 ;
266
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
and it is recorded as the single good action of this unhappy prince that he restored him to liberty .) .*tie,, § 5. If Sicily slipped away from the empire, owing The a opHtdaed to the incompatible tempers of palace-upstart and t9'~m'o- able captain, other outlying districts were in a ferment. The Saracens still attacked the south coast and islands of Lesser Asia ; two admirals of Thracian Chersonese and the Cibyrrhaeot theme (Constantine Chages) repulsed these raids with loss. The emir in Sicily allies with the empire, and his son is created magister militum ; and a treaty is made with Egypt, and perhaps with Tripoli . Both Servia and Bulgaria revolt ; Servia, subject since Basil II., had given trouble in the preceding reign, but had been reduced to submission about 1038 ; a member of the royal house escapes from duress and becomes king, defeating George Probatas (a trusted eunuch who had acted successfully in the negotiations with African emirs). He justified by his failure in arms the protests of the military caste and the careful division of the services . Meantime, the inner management of the realm fell entirely into the hands of John . Michael, like his predecessor, sought occupation (and perhaps atonement for a crime) in pious but costly building : his character underwent, also as in the case of Roinanus, a complete change . He was devoted to lepers and anchorites ,"' and even in the opinion of the sceptical populace was but little removed from a saint . Both Zoe and her husband seem to have earned no discredit or odium from the faults of the minister, who still preferred the humble title opOavoTpoq5os and the substantial authority of the empire . In the many plagues or catastrophes which distressed the land at this juncture, he was accounted the worst ; the taxes rose, offices were venal, and the governors recouped themselves for the bribe by oppression. He endeavoured to secure the continuance of his power by effecting the adoption of another Michael, hissister's son : and this nepotism brought about his own down-
cx. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
267
fall and the expulsion of his family . The health of The anxieties Michael IV. grew worse, an heir was necessary ; OfMichael and Zoe might delegate or transfer, but she could tion of,,, never exercise in person the duties of sovereignty . fir. She reluctantly consented to this adoption ; but the emperor soon repented of his share in the transaction. His serious and melancholy nature was repelled from the fawning and insincere character . Michael the younger was indeed the sole type in our annals of the usual estimate of Byzantine ruler : and in the popular indignation which flared up against him alone of this long line, we may relieve the mob from the indictment of servility. The dying emperor expelled his nephew from the palace, and relieved him of the nominal duties of a Caesar ; becomes a monk at the urgent entreaty of his confessor, Zinziluc . and expires in his holy retreat and the odour of sanctity, after refusing to see the empress in her last visit of grief or inquisitiveness . . The reign of Michael V. (1041-1042) was Loyadfeeding brief and significant : after this signal and unique wards example of a popular rising, no one can reproach the u ~'r y monarchy with its unrepresentative character . For Michael V. a few days Zoe resumed the sceptre ; but she found the charge irksome and yielded to the advice of John, to the tears and entreaties of Michael, who protested that he would ever reign first and most loyal of her subjects . A letter of recall is produced, purporting to be written by the hand of the late emperor ; and she gives her consent to the coronation of the Caesar. It is difficult to know whether a strain of madness did not enter into the new sovereign his recorded actions are those of a purposeless ingrate . His own family he hated, as reminding him of the precarious rise of an upstart ; and in the grandiose fashion of a Claudian Caesar, proposed not the murder, but the emasculation of all his relatives . Constantine, his uncle, created nobilissimus (a title perhaps dormant since the close of the eighth
268
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY Off`
Div. B
Loyalfeedzny century), was a doubtful accomplice in his schemes. towards John was exiled to a monastic cloister, to muse dynasty
water -Mi,chml V-
Indignant storm je
palace and Princesses.
upon his nephew's exercise of power . Alexius, the patriarch, is banished ; and the Princes' Isle again . becomes the asylum for deposed royalty ; Zoe is transported thither, and her head is shorn . To the announcement of the prefect Anastasius in the circus that Zoe had been guilty of treason and suffered a fitting penalty, the sole answer was, 11 Death to Calaphates." The mob were on this occasion unanimous and grimly determined. The two sisters were proclaimed joint-heiresses and coempresses, and Theodora was taken from her monastery to the palace. Michael, in terror, brings Zoe across and displays her at a window of the palace ; but the people have but one single cry and a single aim. Constantine and all the guards defend the palace ; but the indignant mob enters and sacks
the home of upstart tyranny . It was a splendid example of that feudal temper which in Scotland drove many to certain death for the Stuart cause. Three thousand perished in this rare rebellion of the inhabitants ; it is uncertain how the loss was apportioned . The tax-lists are said to have perished in the flames . Michael and his uncle escape and assume the monastic habit, and the Monday and Tuesday of this memorable week are over. Zoe now addresses the multitude from a balcony ; and refuses the savage demands of the people for the penalty of death or blindness . But Theodora gives the order ; and under the direction of the new urban prefect, Campanares, first Constantine with heroic constancy, next the emperor with shrinking and entreaties, were deprived of sight . So terminated a remarkable period . Since the opening years of the century, Basil and his brother had employed only rough sergeants or household slaves ; a few curt commands had superseded the courteous method of consulting the Senate and higher officials . The bailiff of
''
. s
CH. x _
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
269
Romanus Argyrus as a private noble, had become sole responsible minister of Romanus III. ; and the influence of John was only ended abruptly by his nephews' ingratitude and folly. The people, by no means, as we see, without weight or views, were patient under the claims of legitimacy, and resented nothing but the neglect of the rightful princesses . When the younger Michael showed the depth of his spiteful and hypocritical nature, they removed him with ignominy and restored their heroines in the only serious popular tumult since the Nika riots, five centuries before . The field was once again open for the choice of an aged and capricious lady, or for the intrigues of courtiers . The joint administration was not long possible . Theodora retired once more from the active duties of a ruler ; Zoe sought a third husband, to support the business and the weight of her arduous heritage .
indignant PIP1110 palace ant rei.m8 prznces8es.
B. CENTRAL POLICY AND PRETENDERS' AIM DURING THE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE X . (1042-1054)
1. The joint rule of the two princesses was zoe'schoiceot' dignified but brief ; together they gave audience and a third hicsba~cd. conferred appointments ; at least so far as by an
edict, they endeavoured to reform the venality by which office had been secured under the upstarts. Constantine the Nobilissimus refunds a hidden store of 5300 lbs. of gold which he had diverted to his own use and future contingencies with all the caution of a parvenu . The Western armies were entrusted to the eunuch Nicholas ; the Eastern to Constantine Cabasilas, patrician ; and Magniac (already released from duress) was decorated with the title Magister militum, and sent to Italy with fullest powers and an undivided command . But feminine rule could not last long in New Rome. Never resented by the people at large, it seemed nevertheless unfitting, and
270
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
zoe's choice of gave way to a regent-husband or to a new dynasty. a third Zoe proposed to the Senate to elect a new prince, and promised to postpone her own feelings to the public welfare in accepting their choice without demur. The option, after this protestation, lay naturally with the empress ; and three bearers of the immortal name of Constantine were accorded an interview. Constantine Dalassenus (from Thalassa on the Euxine) arrived to receive a gracious pardon after a gratuitous imprisonment of eight years . He came in a very natural state of bitterness and irritation ; gave advice in a lofty tone ; and made no effort to conceal his strong disapproval of the late Paphlagonian cabal . Constantine Archoclines (?a title) is removed by premature demise from the tempting offer ; and gossip suspected a jealous wife. Constantine Monomachus (husband of a niece of Romanus III.) stood next on the list : he had been banished to Mitylene seven years before by Michael IV., on account of his supposed intimacy with Zoe . Exile had not soured the complacent and amiable disposition of the new ruler . A swift galley conveyed the astonished suitor from a subordinate rank in Greece to the throne ; and although Alexius the Patriarch refuses to perform the marriage rite, he consents next day to crown the united pair. Theodora lost by this event all direct authority, but continued to enjoy the imperial title and dignity and to reside in the palace . The short spring of the sisters' government (April to June) gave way before the summer or rather autumnal brilliance of the mature couple. Like an echo or grotesque parody of the old ofX~ rivalry of the Sclerus family, Scleraena, a charming mmhm and widow who had shared the exile and soothed the temper scterzna. of Monomachus, was admitted to the capital, to the palace, and to the Augustan title. The arrangement might be said to resemble the special exemption of the French kings from moral restraint-a relic, it may be, of Merovingian polygamy ; the maitresse en
F-1
,.
cg. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
271
titre held a recognised position by the side of the Anomatmm legitimate spouse of prudence or of policy . Scleraena rezation8 of Mono-
'
was the daughter of Romanus Sclerus, and perhaps mackus ant the great-granddaughter of the pretender Bardas . ScZer~ena. Her chambers adjoined those of Constantine, and were not far from the apartments of Zoe, who regarded the arrangement with equanimity or indifference : the disorder took on a regular and formal character, and was thus robbed of half its evil. Into these two twin reservoirs or receptacles poured the entire treasure of the empire . If we believe the partial witness, the palace saw a double ocean of waste, a double court of intrigue and venal office. The faults or infirmities of Monomachus were forgotten in the mildness of his character and the prosperity of his reign . For, however easy it may be for us or for Psellus to detect the unmistakable signs of decay and omens of coming doom, there can be no question that in the later empire this reign of twelve years was the zenith and meridian splendour. 2. The domestic history was diversified by con- Uma series stant plots and seditions, some serious, some humorous of *Fective revolts. and half-hearted, but none (so far as can be seen) embodying any principle or genuine grievance. The setting of this motley drama is like the staging of a sovereign and his court in a pantomime . It is impossible to believe the actors in earnest ; and the foolish but criminal impulse of the moment is rapidly forgotten and forgiven . (a) Theophilus Eroticus, once chased from Bulgaria by Stephen Boisthlabos, was now governor of Cyprus. On hearing of the downfall of Michael V ., he conceived a design, by no means uncommon at the time, of securing his province as an independent sovereignty. To win popular favour, he posed as the champion of the people's rights ; and was hailed as a liberator when he effected (or forgave) the murder of the financeofficial, Theophylact, as a just punishment for,the
272
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nzv. s
Usuaamrks rigour of his extortions' The appearance of Con*f i ecttive stantine Chages, still Drungaire of the Cibyrrhaeot theme, sufficed to end the plot : the people at once returned to their allegiance ; and Eroticus, taken to the capital, was forced to disport himself in female attire for the delectation of the citizens : had Constantine X. (we may ask) heard of the mock penalty meted out by Julius Caesar to the knight Laberius ? Magniac's (b) In the same year (1042) ; Magniac revolted in atte"pt. Italy, and the cause of his resentment was a feudal quarrel about land. Sclerxna's brother, Romanus, held an adjoining estate in the great home of wealthy landlords, Asia Minor : he profited by Magniac's absence on state-service to encroach or to annex, and finally to secure the recall of his provincial rival. Magniac revolts, and, assuming the imperial title, crosses with a devoted personal following to Epirus to attack the seat of government . Unlike Eroticus, he aspired not to a part but .to the whole. The emperor, providing for a doubtful event, sent his mutinous lieutenant a complete amnesty, but despatched a strong force under Stephen the Sebastophorus .z In a sharp engagement at Ostrovo, Magniac is killed and his men join the imperialists ; for beyond the personal grievance there was no cause and no conviction . The head of the pretender was borne in solemn state to the capital, and the splendid procession of the easily victorious troops was witnessed by the emperor and his two spouses. In reward for his attitude in the rising, Constantine creates Argyrus, son of Mel the rebel, the Prince of Bari and Duke of Apulia. (c) Stephen, so lately successful on the imperial side, now in his turn becomes a conspirator . 1 We may note here the same rivalry of executive and exchequer as we observe in the earliest account of the Roman provinces, when the independentprocurator watched or thwarted the responsible governor. 2 This is probably a title designating those commandants of a quarter of Constantinople who had the right to carry the imperial image on State occasions ; it was a coveted distinction which patricians might envy, but the wearer was subject to the control of the city prefect .
'
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
273 His design was to raise Leo, son of Lamprus, the various governor of Melitene, to the throne. Against this fut"e plots. latter the whole resentment of the court party seemed to concentrate ; while the ringleaders lost their estates and became monks, Lamprus was tortured and blinded, and died from the effects. It is impossible to assign any motive for this unprecedented departure from the well-known rule of Byzantine lenience. (d) The emperor's life was perhaps more endangered by a sudden popular outburst during a religious procession of the 9th of March 1044Once more the mob, jealous of the rights and dignity of Zoe and Theodora, raised angry voices of protest against Sclerxna, like the mob of older Rome against Donna Olympia under Innocent XII . He was threatened with death, and the tumult was appeased only by the appearance of the two aged heiresses at the palace window.
§S . (e) Having weathered this minor storm, the Rebadion of luckless emperor found in the revolt of his kinsman Thornic an4 the troops of Leo Thornic or Tornicius, a genuine tempest
Macedonia. From this moment until the close of our (1047)period Adrinople becomes a troublesome centre of disaffection, justifying, as I think, two conclusions-a
'
large element of transplanted Armenians, and a strong desire to vie with the Oriental armies in the nomination of the sovereign . It is quite as much from this revival of the Western battalions under Basil II ., as from the ancient splendour of Philip and Alexander, that the name Macedonian acquired and retained a sense of "warlike," « noble," or "valiant," like Aryan ; the Drakoi Hellenes of Mount Taurus bore it with pride, and its use survived as a honorific term for the mercenary troops of Naples or Venice . In the streams of Slavonic, Bulgarian, Servian migration and settlement, little remained of Justinian's warlike subjects on either side of the Danube (homines semper bellicis sudoribus inhesrentes, c. 535) i whole towns and districts had VOL. II.
I
274 (
CONSTITUTIONAL -HISTORY OF
niv. B
Rebe&m of welcomed a new and peregrine population since his Th°'nic and namesake (c. 700) ; if Philippopolis received its the Of Mace. heretical contingent under the Iconoclasts, a colony of stout Tauric militia may well have thriven in Adrinople . The European towns of the empire are not buried, indeed, under the deep silence which in all this period hides the annals of the Ionian cities of the Asiatic coast ; and their meagre record is at times illuminated by such a writing as the "Capture of Salonica" (under Leo VI.). The task remains for the careful student and speculator to inquire into the condition of the commercial centres of Thrace and Macedonia ; and it may safely be predicted that whenever there is an appearance of new life and fresh vigour, it will have risen from some Eastern settlement. The armies of Spain, of Germania, and of Syria contended for the prerogative at the death of Nero ; of Britain, Syria, and Pannonia at the murder of Pertinax . In the welter of the third century, there is a semblance of earnest purpose when each regiment believed its captain to be the most fitting heir to Caesar. The provincial troops of Constantine decided the mastery of the world, and ended for ever the exclusive claims of Rome and her pretorians. Justinian had attempted to reduce the armies to harmless and occasional levies ; but the civilian scheme of society broke down bef ore the Heracliads and Isaurians, and the State was reorganised on the military basis of which the themes afford sufficient evidence . Chief amongst these were the Anatolics and Armeniacs ; and for long these regiments were the arbiters of the monarchy, and their support essential to the continuance of a dynasty. But it must not be forgotten that the Balkan peninsula was gradually filled with a strange population ; that Basil II . drove the frontier boldly northwards to the old line of the Danube ; and that the new citizens soldiers, or colonists offered a welcome counterpoise to the predominance of Asia.
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056) 275 And yet the chief and decisive element among the ' Slavs, Croats, Serbs or Bulgars was, after all? not European at all . Ghevond Thornic or Leo '' . -
Macedonia. Tornicius, was a popular favourite (perhaps a feudal
magnate ?) among the Macedonian faction . Their headquarters were at Adrinople, but they had their members and representatives in the capital. Tornic was a cousin of Constantine X. on the mother's side Ee~ave+os sK st;1TptKjq Pies), belching forth the true braggadocio of Macedon (MaKe&WKIV 'epuyyavcvv ,usyaXauX1av) . The faction is headstrong and obstreperous (aMa& K. Opaavs) ; and though now unused to the regular practice of arms, vulgar and lacking reverence for imperial dignity (cf. the oroXlrtK' ftoAoaoxfa to Constantine in the balcony scene) . Leo is removed from his dangerous friends to the dignified isolation of an Iberian governor . There he is followed by rumours and suspicions of his loyalty ; he is recalled and compelled to assume the monastic habit . Constantine granted him an interview, but merely laughed immoderately at his altered appearance . The insult rankled, and Tornicius promised himself revenge . His clan, with the Macedonian faction, rescue him and carry him off.' With his company of robbers, Scamars, or devoted adherents, he advances to the walls without let or hindrance, and attempts to enter by the Blachern Gates. As Justinian
1 Leo Tornicius was no aggressive usurper ; he pleaded the commission of legitimacy (Psellus, § io2) . The story went round that Theodora, now recognised as the rightful sovereign, had chosen Leo, Tdv & MuKe8ovias. The military faction could thus satisfy their faith to legitimacy, and their desire for an active regent. They trusted that the scanty forces in the city would join them, already angry with the emperor for his innovations. Anxious to see a soldier on the throne, they might take an active part in the defence of the State (6c' 6p-y* Tdv AfrroKpdropa Ixovreg (the urban troops) &ef677 K. KacvaTope7v KaT' a$r@v ?fp~aro ; K. T~v apoe8plav a6Tov avaXEpaipopres K. flovMFLEYOC YrTpaT[dT4w 18ECY abToKpdropa o'OCp Te 2rpoKGV&Uvefiovra
.
&veuim of Tic and the troops of
K. Tds drt8poads Twv flapfllpmv dvelpyovra) . So on approach to the capital they ask the citizens to open the gates to them, and admit a gracious and valorous emperor who would guard and promote the
empire (E''x4ELKj K. XMordv adrOKp. ¢tXav9osr(os Te avrois xp7pQ6pepov x. rd 'P(#Aatwv Kpd'fos r0ls KaTATCOD flap8(yPW~y VOUfcocr Te K. TPOTafocr aql~oovra).
I
276
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. B
Rebellion of in a similar crisis just 500 years before, the emperor Tho'nie and with difficulty raised iooo men, valets and guardsthe troops of
macetonia,
End of Thornic ' exemes c¢cses for
the military party.
men . Argyrus, the Italian rebel, now ally and vassal of the empire, recommends him to keep within, and not expose his person or his weakness to the disorderly rabble . Constantine sits on a balcony in full view of the invading army, in all his imperial panoply ; he is mortified by the gross rudeness of the Macedonians, who dance grotesquely before him, He is menaced imitating his gouty movements. by missiles, and retires hastily . Tornicius missed his lucky moment, and gave up the enterprise in the moment of success . He falls back on Adrinople ; he fails to reduce Rhedestus, which is kept'in the narrow path of loyalty by the patriarch and the chief inhabitant, though a relative of the pretender . 4. Yet the crisis seemed serious enough to warrant the recall of the Eastern troops .' They were
divided into two ; and part crossing at Chrysopolis, part at Abydos, the whole force converged
on the disaffected region, completely enveloping the mutineers at Adrinople. Iasita well known to us in his Armenian command, observed the severest discipline and restraint in this civil war . No pillage was allowed ; deserters were welcomed, and amnesty Tornic is given to all except the ringleaders . gradually left alone with his faithful lieutenant, John Batazes ; he takes 'refuge in a church, but is seized and blinded2 Pardon is granted generally, and the 1 The people of Byzantium, turning war, like everything else, "into a joke and pastime," hastened to enrol for the emperor. § 112 . MjOos TroXtTCK@v oinc oacyav, MeXovTai S¬ o5Toc To?s abxocs ¬am our &e8l8oo-av, 6uvarep 1L Twp VAWV rc. TbV 7r6JkeAop 7fal,ovres. Nor were Leo's soldiers more serious ; the whole rebellion was a jest. § 120. Only in a half-hearted way did they lay siege to the Thracian towns. The reviving prosperity of this once unhappy district (from Anastasius, 5oo, to Basil 1l., iooo) is well marked by these words : cbpoupton e6aUTocs Mws 7j re ToD r67rov ¬rrcTVSec-
6rqTC rc. Tj TrV TELXWV Stacp¬uet, Tqi I~ apov5orcaV TAAou xpbvou rrOX&cov. 2 John suffered with all the courage of an ancient Roman, and set an example to the unnerved and weeping Leo, like Constantine to Michael V.
. a short time before ; he only remarked that "To-day the Roman empire will lose a good soldier."
"
1
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE" (1025-1056)
277 stubborn who rejected all overtures are « paraded " Fnd of with contumely, and lose their estates. So ended Thomie :
i .
i
excusesfor the most menacing disturbance in the reign of Con- the military stantine X. We believe it is possible to extricate Party-
a more serious motive than wounded pique or personal ambition . Like all rebellions then, it was a protest against the court and civilian government . Adrinople was full of dissatisfied members of the warrior caste, condemned to idleness ; of retainers who chafed at inaction during peace, and grumbled at the niggardly pay during a campaign. Stipend and rations and commissariat were controlled from the centre ; and some inexpert courtier, following the camp, was the real dispenser of the means and sinews of war. With the person of the monarch, with the claims of the dynasty, these conspirators had little quarrel. But they looked back to the glorious days of Basil', and contrasted the luxurious inertia of the court under the two Constantines with his simplicity and valour . It is possible that they refused to aid loyally in the foreign campaigns ; not a few Roman generals have won their way to power by withdrawing support at a critical moment. And while there was no dearth of men and leaders in the Western army, the year 1050 was marked by a terrible and triple defeat at the hands of the Patzinaks. Either the court could not trust the captains, or the captains would not serve the court. 5. At the turn of the half-century an obscure Ludicrous plot (f) again disturbed the sovereign's peace. A ?'awe distinguished family united to overthrow him ; it intrigues. was detected in time, with the unfailing disclosure of most Byzantine plots, and the principal agent, a Nicephorus, was reduced to poverty and exile . It is possible that this is the plot mentioned by Psellus, when this person following in the imperial escort found ready access to the palace, stood at the door of the private apartments as if expecting a summons, and was discovered with a sword prepared to strike -
278 Ludicrous pakee intrigues.
!
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
the defenceless Constantine. The most ludicrous of all the court plots, that of Boflas the jester, re-
vealed the wonderful leniency (or fatalism ?) of the emperor, and the absurd insecurity of his position . (g) Boilas, an old servant of Romanus, was gifted with a pleasing stutter, which he took care to cultivate. He was the favourite of Constantine, who, after the storms of a hard life, looked on the throne as a welcome haven, and considered amusement to be the sole-at least the chief-duty of the sovereign . The constant plots published to every one the dangerous secret that fortune was to the adventurous ; and, in spite of universal failure and detection, every one believed that he could guide his intrigue to a successful issue . Bollas, a fool only in appearance and by design, adopted a clever ruse for securing allies and disarming suspicion. He approaches the discontented one by one, and either receives a promise of aid, or artfully congratulates the indignant loyalist that he has so well stood the test of devotion to his own beloved master, and promises that the emperor himself shall hear of his steadfastness . It was no difficulty to secrete himself in the imperial chamber ; indeed, he would seem to have been the chamberlain at hand (IraPaKoc ' evos ) for a ludicrous story is told of his waking the emperor in the middle of the night to share his joy, because a dream had disclosed the culprit who had CkmewV of stolen his polo-ponies . He is discovered with a 0. X. sword, strutting about the chamber, and seized it may be at the last moment with remorse or fear. Hurried off and questioned, he was subjected to a nominal penalty at the express command of the empresses, and soon restored to complete favour and confidence. The reign of Constantine was hastening to its close . Zoe expired in the middle of her incense and aromatic confections, in 11052, at the age of 74 : Sclermna had been long since dead ; and the uxorious Constantine put in their place
ca, x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
279
a little Alan princess, hostage at the Roman court, Ckmency of whose sole attraction (in the eyes of Psellus) was C Xher ivory complexion and her sparkling eyes. The treasures of the empire were lavished on her countrymen, and galleys regularly plied the Euxine carrying the wealth of Rome to the outer barbarians. She was saluted Augusta, but the emperor dispensed with the ceremony of a formal marriage, and on his death she sank back into the grade of a hostage.
6. The civil ministers of Constantine call for a The word of notice . His chief adviser was Constantine ministers, Lechudes and Lichudes, whose
son we met in connection with ,john. Armenia . He was an excellent counsellor, but was superseded by the eunuch John, of base extraction, by an emperor whose chief distinction was his utter disregard of the ordinary rules of promotion . Nothing shocked the official world more than the caprices of autocracy . The civil service (as we saw in Lydus) expected the prince, to whom the whole popular authority was transferred, to be guided by the decisions of his council : he was "to ratify the judgment of the chief men of the State " ; and, as in the Pekinese Government to-day, an emperor hearing with the ears and seeing with the eyes of his ministers was no arbitrary ruler, but rather an automaton, bound to subscribe with the vermilion pencil or the purple ink of the Canicleius, to the views of others ; those, indeed, who fancy the modern expedient of Constitutionalism to be a wise novelty, being mistaken. Psellus in several passages deplores this indifference to procedure and precedent, and actually left the service of a gracious and amiable prince because his whims made every post precarious. The military regents had been content to leave much, if not all, internal management in the hands of lay Premiers-a Bringas or a Basil. But the emperor Basil Il. (as we saw) was a martinet in palace as well as camp, neglected the honours and compliments due to birth and wealth,
,j,
280
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
The reposed trust only in the hireling, 'and handed on an m~"atls, Oriental method of rule, dangerous and unpopular Lichudes and
in a State where the nobility was still vigorous and inured to war . The low-born John, with whom all government rested (as with a Duke of Lerma or a Koprili vizier), unwittingly repaid his benefactor by bringing upon him the crowning humiliation of his reign . This prince of the Senate and Grand LogoDeath o./' C. x.1054 . thete suggested as successor Nicephorus Bryennius, general of the insolent Macedonian troops, while the gout-stricken Constantine lay dying. Theodora, hearing of this proposal, left her convent and proceeded with dignity to the palace, where she was at once accepted as legitimate sovereign . The emperor, hearing that his scheme was baffled, turned his face to the wall and expired, November 30, 1054" John.
Character § 7. The relations of Psellus and Constantine X. and seope of resembled in no small degree those of Claudius and Pselbas, conSeneca ; and their respective characters were closely te po,.a y chronicler. akin . Psellus has to explain in his history why he, a professed eulogist of the living prince, should narrate evil of him when dead . He adroitly explains and justifies his versatile pen ; and implores the ,blest departed" (BecoTaTrl uX)7, 1' ccelo recepta mens ") to pardon him for daring to dispel the illusion of his perfectness . Verbose, subtle, and unsatisfactory, he has graver faults as a historian than this vacillation in judgment : he has a rooted dislike to giving names or facts, and dismisses the foreign relations of Rome with a few pedantic words about Mysians, Scythians, or Assyrians. We turn with relief from his diffuse and vague account to bald but explicit chroniclers like Theophanes ; yet it is from his pages alone that we derive any genuine knowledge of the atmosphere of the court. He occupied a place
midway between the civilians, to whom office was a mere source of profit and delight, and the military party, who still believed that patriotic duty was a stern task. He has learnt correctly from the latter
;,
S" .
''
a u
x
CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
the parrot-cry that
the armies are starved
9.81 and Character
imperial defences ruined by the peace-faction . But Q"d *"P"f Psellus, conhe could give no warning or wholesome instruc- temporary tion on government to Michael VIL, the amiable chronic&r.
scholar summoned by a supreme irony of fortune to retrieve the errors or avenge the death of Romanus IV. He is genuinely devoted to the house of Ducas ; and it was this sentiment of affection that made him hostile to Diogenes . He disliked Stratioticus, and as his envoy undoubtedly encouraged Isaac Comnenus in his defection . He calls himself "friend of the Romans" (0AopW'Aacos) and "Patriot" (cpcao7ra-rpcs) ; as if from a superior vantage-ground he regarded with discreet approval or concern the "Roman" administration, and its efforts for the public good. But he can scarcely be said to identify himself closely with the State ; and his real interests are with rhetoric or philosophy, in which he was unhappily so apt a teacher of his royal pupil . For if he has traits in common with Seneca, he has also no little resemblance to Fronto, urging Marcus Aurelius to the archaisms of the lexicographer when the barbarians were already knocking at the gate. Evidently, though he can sympathise with the warriors in their desire for an emperor of their own choosing, his real grievance is with this wanton violation of strict rule in civilian promotion . It is the theme and text of his book ; to it he reverts again and again ; and it constitutes his chief indictment of the methods of government . We cannot understand who did the routine work, or who issued the necessary orders in the various departments of State. The permanent officials and secretariat must have quickly usurped control, as they do to-day in the short-lived ministries of a republic or under the sister constitution-an autocracy. 8. Though Constantine X. displays in his rela- Indolemee, tions to Armenia much tact, good sense, and good f~t faith, the general impression of these rulers (10 2 5- of c_. x.
282
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. s
zndokme, 1056) is that they had little notion of the serious courage, and business demanded of them . Zoe, to whom all the favowritism world deferred, had no idea of ruling, and no experiof C. x. ence in affairs (7rpayuc'Twv 7ravTa7rao-cv a8a4s). She became childish in her later years, was subject to sudden changes of temper-from grave to gay, from sportive to vindictive. With a dim memory, among her crucibles and pastilles, of her father's irascible moods, she who had opposed the just penalty of an ungrateful rebel, issued broadcast the savage command to deprive of sight : Constantine took care that these commands (as speedily forgotten as issued) were never carried out . She had the innocent vanity of Augustus ; that the actual fire of her gaze was irresistible, and those who dropped their eyes, as if dazzled in her presence, were sure of her favour and tangible rewards. Psellus regarded her natural disposition as spoilt by the vulgarity of a court from which she never issued . Bent and with trembling hands, she had nevertheless no wrinkles on her face . Her unique preoccupation was to be free from care or business (,ra'vrv «o-Xoaos Eivac) ; her sole employment (in default of any interest in dress or female accomplishments) lay in preparing incense for the divine service-half voluptuous, half pietistic. As for the easy-going prince himself (whose reign was the zenith of Byzantine success), he had no taste for hard work, perhaps little knowledge, and no bodily capacity . The most part of his time he spent in a recumbent posture, a martyr to rheumatic gout (Kacvower;Is -r« ?roXXa 7'iv) ; if he walked, he was supported on the shoulders of two stalwart officials. Again and again, his attitude to the sovereign dignity is expressed in the feelings of a storm-tossed mariner who has made port at last, and will not be troubled any more on earth G 47, 72, 79). At last he could
breathe freely and take his ease («vawveuo-rea), and the business of government could be shifted on to some vizier (F0' erepW 7rpo6Wm0
Tip TOU KpaTOVS votet
t ' F ~
r CH. x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1025-1056)
283
-rnv StolKITcv) . In one respect only, we are told, did Indolence, he preserve a heroic courage in the discharge of his "aye, and favouritisym
duties, in fulfilling the punctilious ceremonial of the Of C. x. court . In spite of intense suffering, aggravated by
all this solemn trifling, he felt himself under a natural and covenanted obligation to give the citizens the splendid display, which had now become the chief duty of sovereignty (awapal-rnpra riva Xpea -rois oroac-rair, § 1z8). Never, in all the agony which he endured with a brave smile, did Psellus hear a murmur or an angry word against Providence . In personal bravery (in spite of the balcony scene in the tragi-comedy of Tornicius), Psellus regrets that he fell below the standard of Roman worthies of the type of Basil II . : but he allows that he was quickwitted, shrewd, and gifted with a good memory (0'&'9 aTXivous ,avrjawv). Yet he was dauntless and unmoved in a crisis,' and paid little heed to the omens of nervous superstition (§ q6). He was by birth a member of that warlike nobility which sometimes served and sometimes excited the alarm of Basil 11 ., who did not move easily among his peers, and had good reason to distrust their independent loyalty. Theodosius, his father, detected in some conspiracy (s?ri -rvPavvucaFq amafs aaou"s), had bequeathed this imperial suspicion and rancour to his heir-an uncommon instance in our history of a son prejudiced in his career by a father's fault ; for, as a rule, the sons of traitors are treated with conspicuous fairness and kindly consideration . He was called to no civil office or empty distinction, so eagerly coveted by courtiers ; although his lineage warranted the foremost dignities of the kingdom (yevous eevwev . . Ta ?rpurra Tjs,8aa-tXEfa9). He loved pastime, witty com' In Tornic's revolt, his elder sister (Helena) entreated him to fly or take refuge in a church ; the other (Euprepia), having encouraged the rebel, as it would appear. He uses the (Platonic) words of Socrates bidding a cold farewell to the weeping Xantippe-ravpg6dv apds aurtv dro#Xhpas, 'Aaay4rw r&s a6rr~v . . . Yva ,A~ -rev 9/jiv «ara/AaXBariPoc 'l'UXhV
-
284 off,
CM ~ of C. X.
His meri& underrated.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . B
panions, and landscape-gardening more than befitted
d a ruler (,8ovaj0opeoo «Apc, quotes the classical Psellus) ; but, as many praised his disregard of the strict rules of promotion in the mandarinat, so there were found apologists for these amiable and innocent pursuits . Punishment he hated to inflict ; and in his rare reprimands to defaulting officials he grew red and ashamed, modifying the penalty piece by piece until nothing remained ; and even condoning the grievous and significant offence of peculation from the war supplies by a civilian (§ 170, s~r2 icaev.,ua6i Tes iAovgs o-TPaTr7yzKiov Seocrn'G'ecov) . He became, like other exalted persons, the devoted slave of a petulant favourite, an outspoken lad from the gutter (if we can believe the historian Psellus) ; and was credited with the design of naming him as his successor (§ 179) . He actually appointed him chief of the Senate (Ta ;rpWTa TES yepova-ias), or gave him rank with the highest dignitaries ; and we are reminded of the urchin of thirteen who followed a recent Shah on his travels, and was pointed out as the commander-in-chief of the Persian armies .
§ 9. It is not altogether easy to reconcile these accounts of the emperor with the general character of his reign ; and I am strongly inclined to think that his merits and his industry have been underrated . While titular dignity may have been lavishly distributed, there is no proof that the business of the empire suffered by neglect or malversation . Fickle in the choice or retention of his intimate ministers, Constantine X. was nevertheless well served, and the retirement of Psellus and his apprehensive friends may not have been a serious loss to the State. We cannot forget that in an age when the wildest impulse, grossest ignorance, and vaguest policy reigned supreme elsewhere, the Byzantine ruler, fixed and imperturbable against foreign rumour or domestic tumult, maintained his calmness and humanity. Except Tornicius, no pretender represented the solid
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good sense and patriotism of the military caste ; and His meats discontent was limited to personal envy or to that underrated. general opinion that an emperor should be first and foremost a soldier (~§ 10q., iog). Nor is it clear that Constantine can be accused of wanton and thriftless waste in the public finance ; the charge is levelled indiscriminately at all pacific princes, and the pastimes and boy or girl favourite of the emperor might be somewhat costly or exacting. The '1 scandalous chronicle" of the palace would make him out an impossible dotard, surrounded and fawned on or hopelessly hoaxed by a host of low-born jesters . Yet Constantine X. was still the trusted arbiter in the last resort, the unfailing friend of the falsely accused ; and he cannot be blamed if, while the vast machine of government moved on of itself, he took innocent diversion and reserved the initiative or the calm dignity of a sovereign for moments of real crisis . The tranquillity of Theodora's reign and the early quiet of Michael VI . may prove that during his rule of twelve and a half years the Roman commonwealth suffered nothing to its detriment from this most amiable and cheerful of its rulers . At most we must say (as we can say of all the Constantines in the eleventh century) that he lived before his time. His conception of office was purely civilian ; war was a preventable episode, or a regrettable expedient. Affable (Ekcecue'vos 7r«crcv) and accessible, giving leave of absence to his chamberlains and guardsmen (rcaTevva~orreq), he answered the remonstrances of his friends by saying that he was in the hands and
under the care of a Higher Power, and needed no human protection . From the more visible guardianship of his people's love he was unhappily debarred . Loyalty (in our modern sense unknown) expended itself in a peculiar form in a jealous watch over the legitimate claims of the two princesses : there was nothing left over for the occasional and transient partners of Zoe . If we remember that he was a
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286
His meats "'d'''"'d.
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
inv. s
coeval of Hildebrand and of William the Conqueror, living alongside of feudal anarchy and misrule in Western Europe and the Turkish forays of the Eastern border, we cannot fail to recognise with astonishment the modern character, proclivities, and policy of this ruler. Behind the mere lover of pleasure, ironically making light of the business of a monarch, there was another man hidden, a man of firm and dauntless purpose, steadfast clemency, and straightforward dealing ; and if, in common with other critics, we place in his days the culminating point of Roman power, wealth, and territory, we cannot deny some share in this achievement to Constantine X.
g
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DIVISION C
,
GRADUAL DISPLACEMENT OF THE CIVIL MONARCHY BY FEUDALISM
'
CHAPTER XI CONFLICT OF THE TWO ORDERS A.
THE MILITARY PROTEST AND THE COUNTERREVOLUTION : THE PEACE-PARTY AND THE SOLDIERS (COMNENUS AND DIOGENES), I057iob7
1. THE sole reign of Irene (797-8o z) had been the palmy days of eunuch-influence. The regencies of Theodora II. 84a) and of Zoe (911) had not
rested on their exclusive support ; and Theophano
(963) hastened into a second marriage with a member of the warrior-class . But Theodora III. brought into the palace the arts and virtues of a convent . Her claims to the throne, hallowed by the vicissitudes and afflictions of nearly thirty years, were recognised by all ; no conspiracies disturbed her reign ; and her household servants disposed of the vast patronage of the empire . . But it is clear that she remained the mistress, and perhaps no female sovereign until Queen Victoria exerted at an advanced age a blending so judicious of administrative ability and moral excellence . When, in spite of the flattering promises of the soothsayer and the secret conviction of the empress, her health began to fail unmistakably, the palace-cabal of faithful servants (but indifferent statesmen) reasserted itself . They pressed on Theodora the 2sr
Tuodoraand Michael (creatureV1 of' a factiora).
-
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288
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . c Theodora and name of Michael Stratioticus, and perhaps hoped by mich"l (ereatureVI of a the bellicose surname to delude the warriors into
factim).
a belief that at length they had a prince of their own. But if Michael had ever served in Western or Eastern armies, history is silent as to his prowess or achievements ; and his accession was the highwater mark of the pacifists . He was bound by a solemn agreement to do nothing in public affairs without the full consent of this informal council of ministers ; and with an aged dotard, the cabal hoped for an indefinite continuance of power. The most liberal of Roman malcontents in early imperial days would have been stupefied at this condition, which fettered monarchy and rendered it harmless or superfluous-the mere disguise of a secret committee. At least, Caesar was elected to act and to assume responsibility . He never became, until the accession of Michael VI ., the creature of a faction . The tradition of imperial industry was still potent Michael had to discover some outlet for his faded energy ; and while an anonymous faction dispensed the money and honours of the realm (apXatpe6ia), the emperor superintended the cleansing of the pretor's tribunal and issued Il ukases," like Emperor Paul of Russia, to control the wearing of the hair and the attire of his subjects . I cannot conceive that it was the prince who replaced simple "intendants " for the usual dignified senators in the management of the treasury : it seems clear that the peace-faction were here at work. The Senate was still a venerable and important institution ; its members might be imperial nominees, but the entire body had a creditable history for the past and preserved the traditions of an earlier day . But the Yildiz Kiosk was pitted against the Sublime Porte ; and unknown menials usurped the power of responsible statesmen . To such a decree (rivalling the autocratic edicts of Basil and Leo VI.) Michael subscribed his name ; but he was not its author. The sovereign was a slave, and
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in vain he lavished gifts and doles on the Senate Theodora and and people. He was despised and distrusted ; and x"ael Yj (creature of a the discontented were prepared to rally
t
round the faction). most unlikely candidate for the throne. But the revolt of Theodosius Monomachus was a ridiculous fiasco . Claiming a hereditary interest in the purple, which his cousin had worn for twelve years, he marched to the palace with a few followers, crying out that he had been defrauded of his rights. He opened the prisons, as did the conspirators against Justinian II. (695) ; and finds his motley crew opposed by the Varangians and marines, whom the eunuchs had hastily armed. Unable to force an entrance, he betakes himself to St. Sophia, hoping that patriarch and people will recognise in him their lawful champion . Instead, the gates are shut against the disorderly rabble ; and the pretender, deserted and at last a captive, lightly expiates his folly as an exile to Pergamus, one of the "dead cities" of the empire .
. The next conspiracy was neither contemptible The Warriors nor unjustified : and we shall bestow some detail sd'~Yhtea by Prance and upon the successful
protest of the military faction Premier. which transferred the sceptre to the Comneni from Colonea, and the distant limits of Lesser Asia. Psellus has left us a vague but precious account of a movement in which he played no inconsiderable share : and the curious may be referred to his text.' Michael VI . had shown a tactless parsimony in rewarding the warriors at the Easter Doles, This solemn ceremony of imperial gifts had 1059" been well described and perhaps derided by Luitprand of Cremona a century before ; the emperor was still the unique fount of honour and of recompense . When the turn of the military leaders came, Michael was x This entire period, with the account of Psellus, has been admirably summarised by Professor Bury in the English Historical Review. It is almost an impertinence to treat again of the events which he has described
so vividly and estimated with such judgment. VOL. II.
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The warriors profuse in compliments : Comnenus and Catacalon 8hgWd ay (lately recalled from the duchy of Antioch) were p a"'~ singled out for conspicuous praise ; and the rise of the latter from obscurity through sheer personal merit was pronounced especially gratifying to the democratic emperor . But the coveted distinction of 7rpoe ' Spog was refused ; and neither pittance nor title soothed their vanity. The faction, headed by these two men, illustrious and plebeian, now betake themselves to the chief minister, or head of the palace-clique, Leo Strabospondyles . They could not believe that his Majesty's slight was intentional ; it was surely his purpose to show his appreciation of their services . It was both ungrateful and unwise to decorate the luxurious and pampered clerks of the bureaux and neglect the brave defenders of their country who faced death for the good of all ? Again (and this time by a detested minister) the plaintiffs were dismissed with contumely ; and the eunuch echoes his master's taunts, " What have you done at Antioch except
Xetare to Asia Minor (1057) .
pillage and oppress ?" The leaders meet in St . Sophia, and bind themselves by a great oath not to rest until
the insult has been avenged . Catacalon, the veteran and the spokesman, is offered the crown ; but he refuses, and like Sallustius of old on the death of Julian, promises to be the faithful servant of their choice . In the end he suggests Isaac Comnenus ; ~~ for," he said, 11 it needs a noble to command nobles." All get leave of absence from the willing emperor and retire to their estates in Cappadocia, those vast domains which, whether occupied by palace-eunuchs like Basil (976) or by feudal lords, equally excited the envy and suspicion of the central government. As a last condition, Catacalon had insisted that Nicephorus Bryennius should be made privy to the plot. S. Nicephorus Bryennius, the nominee displaced Hasty insurgence by the prompt action of Theodora in 1054, had ryenni~ureof been despatched by Constantine X. with the famous
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1067) 291 " Macedonian " troops to fight the Turks ; for a prediction was going round that only Macedon could overthrow the East. But, on his patron's death he
ga,,ty in-Our9 a"dfailure o,/'
Bryennaus. had brought back his turbulent forces to Chrysopolis
without orders ; and Theodora, justly suspecting his motive after the trouble of Tornic a few years before, had cashiered and exiled the general . Michael VI. restored him to his command, and sent him with these same Macedonians to act against Samukh . On a modest demand for the restitution of his confiscated estate, the emperor replied with a homely proverb, "That one did not pay the workman until the article was delivered ." Such was his imprudent use of satire, a dangerous as well as a contemptible weapon in the hands of authority. With him to report upon his conduct was sent John Opsaras, a eunuch of the palace, with the army-chest. We have a repetition of the behaviour of Romanus Lecapenus to a similar spy. Bryennius demands payment for his men on a higher scale than that sanctioned by the civilian war-ministry. When Opsaras refuses, he seizes him by the hair, violently maltreats and drags to his tent a prisoner, dividing the contents of the war-chest with the troops. Lycanthus, governor of the province (Lycaonia and Pisidia), advances to avenge this outrage, sets Opsaras free, blinds Bryennius and sends him to the emperor, with the story of his crime . Alarmed at this unexpected blow, the chief officers advance from their several homes to the strong fortress of Castamouni, the abode of Isaac. With gentle violence in the dead of night they hurry him away to the plain of Gunaria, where on the morning of June 8, 1057, he is saluted emperor, like any Probus or Diocletian of old, by the assembled troops, rapidly recruiting from the soldier-settlers of the surrounding district. Catacalon did not at once join the rebels, and caused them no slight misgiving by his silence . Indeed, he found himself in a difficult place ; expecting an earlier movement on the part of -
292
CONS'T'ITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Hasty Isaac, he had written a daring epistle to the Logothete insurgence Nicetas Xylinitas, in which he had andfailure of of the Course,
Bryennius.
Catacalorc j°i"'e Comnenian mutineers.
openly hinted at insurrection . When the news of Isaac's 14 pronunciamento " was confirmed, Catacalon hesitated no longer. He raised zooo men, kinsmen, vassals or retainers, and servants ; and adroitly counterfeits an imperial order appointing Nicopolis as the rendezvous of all the regiments of the district for a new campaign against Samukh . This, it is only fair to remark, is a single incident of questionable honesty in a period to which is usually ascribed the bad faith, cowardice, and studied hypocrisy of the Greekling. The troops assemble, Russian and Frank, and the garrison of the themes Chaldia and Colonea (birthplace of the pretender). At daybreak Catacalon collects the officers, and gives them a simple choice between death and adhesion to the cause. ~ 4. At the head of these exultant and unanimous troops, Catacalon advances to meet Isaac. He in turn, overjoyed at this welcome proffer, leaves his wife and children with his brother John in the castle of Pemolissus (on the Halys), passes the Sangarius, and sets his face towards Nice . Michael VI., in the usual jealous fashion of a dual control by civilian and soldier, sent against them Aaron (Isaac's own brother-in-law) and the eunuch Theodore, who march to Nicomedia and encamp at the foot of Mount Sophon . Meantime Isaac has entered Nice. It is difficult to induce the two armies to adopt a resolute or hostile air. They fraternise and discuss the position amicably ; nor are the Asiatic forces behindhand in proffering advice to quit the party of an aged fool, slave of his menials, and tyrant only of his brave captains. At last a pageant fray or tournament was prepared ; and in the battle duly set forth on each side with centre and wings, according to the invariable custom, Romanus Sclerus is routed and captured by the Imperialists, Aaron and Lycanthus ; Isaac (in the
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THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1067)
293 centre) was turned to flight, apd only Catacalon Catacakn retrieved the cause of the rebels, by putting to Mng rout Basil TapXavcuis, noblest of the « Macedonian " mComnutineersianm . phalanx, while aiding discomfited comrades . Radulf, a Norse mercenary, fought in single combat with a future emperor, Nicephorus Phocas (Botaneiates), and the perfectly tempered casque of the latter turned the mace and numbed the arm of the Latin . War was still somewhat of a "Pastime," as in the revolt of Tornic ; and but few of the opposing forces were left dead on the field . Revolutions in the Byzantine period were rarely murderous, and a change of throne or dynasty demanded few victims . The Comnenians enter Nicomedia, and are met by envoys from Michael, Constantine Lichudes and iwak Psellus . The proposals would have revived the old mgotiatiom and perilous expedient of the regency, or perhaps gone wuh H Yr back to the ideal of Diocletian . A youthful Caesar
was to be adopted by an aged and childless prince, the one for the camp, the other for the palace. Isaac accepted the terms, stipulating (z) That Michael should crown no one else : (a) that the honours bestowed on his companions should be confirmed : (3) that he should enjoy the patronage in certain minor appointments : (4) that Strabospondyles should be dismissed . To this Michael agreed, and Leo was sent from the palace to his clerical duties. Everything looked favourable for an amicable compromise . But behind the scenes strange intrigues were moving. Catacalon opposed any concession : and the envoys themselves betrayed their master's cause by urging the mutineers .to extreme measures . And the emperor, while promising in public to adopt Isaac as his colleague and heir, was at the very moment exacting a terrible oath from the senators never to acknowledge him as such . The patriarch Michael Cerularius absolved these reluctant jurors from their word, and promised the emperor a heavenly, in exchange for an earthly
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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crown .1 They proclaim the Comnenus emperor. Michael VI., finding resistance fruitless, retired with quiet dignity to his own house and survived his downfall two full years unmolested. § 5. In this great military revolution there was
Triumph of the comnene : a sin ular absence of Greek chicanery or refined origin of the g family. cruelty . In Michael VI. alone was there doubledealing ; and the envoys were no doubt justified in urging the refusal of the very measures they brought for acceptance . There was no violence, no outrage, no pursuit of the downfallen ; and power was transferred from one party to its rival without leaving behind so much as the rancour and ill-feeling of a General Election. The new family came from Colonea (o Koawvela0ev), and afford a good type o¬ that unhellenic culture, pious, puritan, and warlike, which hailed from the East and could be referred to no indigenous source. It is true that a harmless fable brought over their ancestors with the first Constantine, who stood to the Byzantine pedigreemakers as our own William the Conqueror, a convenient and venerable fiction. We hear nothing of the family until the days of the prefect of the East under Basil II ., and the name of the village Comne betrays its feudal and rustic associations . His children, Isaac and John, were brought up under the eyes and by the care of the emperor ; partly in the convent of Studium, partly in his own court, not less austere, like noble pages in an early Teutonic period or in later chivalry . He chose their wives, and married Isaac to Catherine, daughter of Samuel, the (Armenian?) king of Bulgaria, and John to Anne, daughter of Alexius Charon, rcawravw in -Italy, and a Dalassene on 'the mother's side (his eight children survived him, destined to fill the highest places in the Roman world
1 Lebeau's comment is delightful, and will not bear translation " L'echange etait avantageux, si le patriarche en efit 6t6 le mattre ." It is interesting to contrast the tone of Gibbon's inevitable quip on the same point : " An exchange, however, which the priest on his own account would probably have declined."
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295
and to transform its institutions) . This house ruled, Triumph of. sustaining or despoiling the commonwealth, for a the Comneni : origin o the
hundred years ; and the brief principate of Isaac family. (1057-1059), like that of Claudius Gothicus (268aqo), was an augury or foretaste of the longer honours awaiting his kinsmen. For the abdication of Isaac interrupted the line ; and in twenty-two years of loss and decay the empire learnt to regret the Comnenians. Had Isaac's brother succeeded and received the support (still indispensable) of the civil officials, had a continuous policy and a tactful demeanour reconciled the warrior and the bureaucrat, the history of the East might have run on different lines. It was scarcely the fault of the Comneni that by i o8 i around them the traditions and institutions of Rome lay in ruins, and that a vigorous and not seldom oppressive predominance of a feudal clan was the only possible government. 6. The causes of Isaac's comparative failure, strong brief reign, and early retirement are still enveloped clerical
opposition to in obscurity : it may be that ill-health is quite Isaac I. : his sufficient to explain - the sudden collapse of the abdicationwarrior-policy . Yet it appears that the dead-weight
''
of a stubborn bureaucratic opposition, outwardly deferential; completely thwarted all reforming enterprise, and paralysed the zealous arm by the spiteful indolence of the permanent official. Isaac at the outset had to propitiate the Church ; he abandoned two valuable pieces of preferment to the patriarch, the ccconomus and the treasurer of the Great Church, saying, "That the Church should choose its own ministers ." The doles, gifts, and pensions of Michael VI. had been wasteful and injudicious ; they had been squandered upon laity and churchmen, while the military servants of the State had been starved or insulted. These he endeavoured to revoke without exciting undue resentment, and found the task beyond him . Himself setting a fine example of the -
9 .96 strong oppmtion to
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF .
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simple life, he excited the violent hatred of the clerics
for suggesting an inquiry into the revenues of church
Isaac i. : his and convent. He might have appeased the enmity of the ministerial world ; but he committed the inexpiable offence in the eyes of a devout hierarchy . The Greek Church never forgave him ; Cerularius the patriarch sets up all the well-known pretensions of sacerdotal sovereignty, which was so soon to kindle the flames of civil war in Western Europe. He assumed the purple buskins ; pronounced the advantage to lie with the sacerdotium in the delicate weighing of the two powers, not with the imperium ; and threatened, quite in the style of Hildebrand, that he who bestowed the crown could also take it away. Isaac deposed and confined him ; and while awaiting the approval of a synod, he was both relieved and distressed by Michael's opportune death . Lichudes succeeded, the old minister of Constantine X., who had received as a solace for his feelings the titles irpoeSpos, protovestiaire, and aconomus at the Manganese convent . Isaac (it must be confessed) employed a ruse to secure the surrender of certain documents or charters of monastic immunity. The emperor, true to the Protestant spirit which existed even in the most devout princes since the Isaurians, desired to bring these petty autonomies within the pale of the common law ; and to abolish the exempt jurisdictions or spiritual courts, which made little republics of these foundations. He prevailed on the ceconomus to surrender these privileges, by threats of a synodal inquiry into some mythical irregularities in the life of the Patriarch-Designate ; and Lichudes complied. It is impossible not to remark here the complete resemblance of East and West in the chief . social features and problems . There is the same conflict between the secular and the clerical power ; the same proud menace from the unarmed priest, strong only in conviction. But in the East (a more highly developed community) there was a third factor
CH. xr
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297
in the duel of the knight and the priest,the civil servant'
7. We do not know why Isaac Comnenus Civilian passed over his brother's claims in naming his influence predminant
r i
successor : it is clear, however, that he did so, and under C. xL that Constantine Dux or Ducas, an old companionin-arms, was appointed as a compromise, to satisfy the court-party without estranging the Warriors. After the triumph of the federate or feudal party in 1057, Isaac, now emperor, had naturally become a convert to centralism and autocracy. He had gently disembarrassed himself of his inconvenient allies ; and his- successor was still more obviously annexed by the official ring. The curious may consult the learned account of the condition of the empire by C. Neumann ; and it needs but little direct proof to convince us that the years zo59-ro67 witnessed a steady civilian reaction .2 Ducas took pains to conciliate 1 Finlay's comment upon the success of the Comnenians (1057) is curious, and a good indication of the confusion of his judgment on matters Byzantine : °' Perhaps no man then living perceived that this event was destined to change the whole system of government, destroy the fabric of the central administration, deliver up the provinces of Asia an easy conquest to the Seljuk Turks, and the capital a prey to a band of Crusaders ." Let any one read Psellus' account of the policy and purposes of the princes after Basil (Isaac, §§ 5c-5y), and in spite of the execrable style and redundant or conflicting metaphors, he will recognise the real culprits,-the civilians, and the sole cause of the disunion which thwarted all active good service to the State, in the envy of the two factions. It would be unfair to confound the 'Comneni (with their modesty and public spirit, their heroic struggles against fortune, their untiring energy) with any vulgar feudal individualist who wrecked a throne, and won a power which he did not know how to exercise . It was not their fault that Roman tradition was extinct, when at last all opposition to the military empire disappeared (io8t) ; and so far from inviting the invaders of East and West, Se1juks or Latins, the Comneni alonekept out the former and managed the latter. The Angeli returned to a corrupt peace and sloth, and the consequence was the collapse of i2o4 . The sporadic revivals of the empire, and the autumnal radiance of the Palaeologi, were won by a return to the methods of the Comneni. a From the personal knowledge and graphic account of Psellus we gather : (i) Pacific policy of the emperor (§ 1y, eavn~ wbvy ova,#bv7W wept rd aparcr¬a Xp&pevos ; depending on his own judgment he sometimes missed his aim) : Tb yov"v 6ovX6wevov avrrpi 3v ,A~ rroV/Aocs rd crept rCw ¬9vwv 8garl8ce9at &XT& Swpruv daoar0aais . . . BUCV 1`verca, tva Np~re -
i1
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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Civilian infivence
the °t politicals," discoursed with eloquence upon the duties of a ruler and the beauty of justice, predominant under C. XL. professed that the crown of rhetoric was of far higher value in his eyes than the crown of empire ; and made Constantine Psellus the tutor of his sons. There is no conclusive reason against his authentic connection with the earlier family of Ducas ; did not a son, Nicolas, escape from the ill-fated venture of Constantine Ducas in 912 ? But he had abandoned the traditions and lost the spirit of his ancestors . 7k vXetw KaravaXto-Kot Toys o-Tpartwrat-s K. ai3rbs &aywAV exot d86pupov. Psellus (§ 18) rightly rebukes this policy, but his own Chinese contempt and ignorance of the foreigner is also to blame ; he calls them M6aot and TpilaXAot, as if he were Demosthenes. (2) Is popular with the agricultural interest : (§ I6) of S' e`srl rfev &,ypwv o£ rb aaplv ,aq8¬ rap pao-Ae6ovra 118etoav KaOapios adrqi ¬vsr¬vtPov, and benefited by kindly words and still kindlier deeds. Indeed, he had been a countryman all his life on his ancestral estate ; (§ 6) Ev dypo?s 3t¬TPIPe Td aoaad K. aepl rev irar4av PCO7tov ¬Tpaycta7e6ero. (3) Chief aim to spread equality and equity ; (§ 2) rrpQTov T1Berat Qroti8aalAa ia6riTa K. edvoAtav KaTaaKeudaat ; and fill by fair means the exhausted treasury : (§ 3) 1SaQtadav ¬v o-Tevw . . . 6pwv srdvrwv . . . XpVp,£Twv ¬eavrM78irrwv, xpqaarwT~s ,u&os ¬y¬veTo (that is, not oppressive) ; he left the treasury half-full . (4) Obliterates the old hard-and-fast distinction between fiolitical and senatorial classes ; (§ 15) sending every one away honoured, leaving none neglected : o6Tiav ¬v r¬Aet, o6 rwv ,aer' ¬KECrovs EZIIB6S, Ob1 7-Cop 7r6APwOt, dXX' o668¬ rmv J6ava6awv 068¬va " afpee ydp K. rof6701S (1 removes in favour of them) Tots rwv 4twpdrwv ,8aOuobs, K. Stpp7/A¬ywv T¬ws TO& IIOX&TCKOU y&004 K. rou" fruyKX?J7&Ko6, ahbs doatpet 7b peQbro1Xov K. ovvdsrret rb &earws . We wish Psellus would give up metaphors and Scripture allusions and confine himselfto facts ; there are not many other traces of the distinction of department of which he speaks ; and it is clear that in many passages where civil (sroX.) and military interests are contrasted, roatr. certainly includes, broadly, all who were not in the army-service . See in this very chapter (§ q) the following summary of the Military Revolt of 1057 : ¬v 8etvgi rwv Zrpartwriuv aotovg¬vwv, ei a6rol p& rbv irTEP Twv 6Awv dywva brO8601VTO K. ros"S o(S,aavtv vT~p Tis dpX~s Kw5uve6otev, Kardptot U Todrwv ¬v ra?s dpXatpevta£s Tou" KpdTom (i.e., the empire) ~ E4KX#ros T& aOXad, fts)UP Tfov Ktv66vwv ¬aalTBott vn. (5) ¬ His secret relations to Isaac : it would appear (§ 6-i4) that Constantine was early marked out for the throne, was a favourite with the conspirators in 1057, yielded not unwillingly to Isaac, but received some promise in stipulation, which was ill-kept ; received again during Isaac's illness promise of the succession, was again eluded on a partial recovery, owed to the boldness of Psellus the investiture with imperial insignia, and succeeded rather in spite of the moribund emperor than owing to his influence (§ 13, r6 ira"v 6,1royvoils T6v re Pao-Ae6orra ewpaKtbrs . . . dabs rwv ttvax-r6pwv k¢Evrarat.)
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299
He frittered the imperial dignity by interest in petty Civilian ,~ee detail, by neglect of the wider outlook, by ignorance Z Predoedomin¢nt i
of the graver issues . His industry and watchfulness under C. Xz. (for he spared no pains) seemed to degenerate into pettiness and pedantry . He examined minutely into the conduct of the civic magistrates, sat as assessor with the judges, and interfered in the ordinary course of justice with the well-meaning but vicious influence of an autocrat. He usurped the functions of his Misplaced lieutenants, and failed to find a post or duties of his chivalry .nd own . Courting his favour, the warriors become barristers, and plead instead of fighting . Corrupted by his own virtues he overrode the law, made personal exceptions and immunities under cover of equity, unconsciously altered the whole tenor of the code, and introduced a weak and amiable arbitrariness into the most steadfast institution of the empire . Liberal to the monks, he kept the soldiers on short rations, disbanded troops to avoid expense, made employment venal, and opened all office without reserve or distinction to senators and commonalty alike. Like Justinian, he preferred to purchase peace from a barbarian foe than to raise up a possible competitor at home at the head of a victorious army : when Belgrade was captured, when the raids of the Uzes spread unwonted desolation and havoc, he ransomed Nicephorus Botaneiates (the future emperor) and Basil 'A?rorcotTos, and refused to send an army against the invaders. The forces were indeed in a pitiable plight : captains were ignorant, troops ill-disciplined and badly equipped, peculation on the part of the ubiquitous civilian treasurers and assessors systematic. Personally brave, he conceived the astonishing design of marching against the Uzes This with a knightly retinue of 1150 1' paladins ." project, quite in keeping with the romantic and chivalrous spirit of the time, had an unexpected success . The barbarians took to flight (io65), and cease to be a menace to the empire for the future ._
300 Mkplaced eenergy and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
Many settle as submissive subjects in those districts of Macedonia which seemed to open inexhaustible expanses to the barbarian colonist. (Civilised and faithful in the imperial service, their descendants fought for Rome and attained high office. Other branches of the now scattered family settled, under the vague name of Turkmans, in Armenia ; and others again in Moldavia and the country north of the Danube .) Constantine XI. showed the usual clemency to forlorn and detected conspirators . Even the city prefect was implicated in a plot to drown the emperor when passing to the Manganese convent by galley on St. George's Day ; and retribution stopped at the confiscation of estates . Though simple and unostentatious in personal life and habits, and curtailing in some degree the costly waste of the court, Constantine got the name of avarice, and was accused, even by well-wishers, of a dangerous parsimony in the matter of national defence. Emperors' § 8. The real business of government in the brothers eleventh centur y rested largely with the brothers of the during Xlth century : the sovereign . John the Paphlagonian, President of the two dokm. Foundling Hospital, had been the effective minister from 1ogo-roq.1, and was only expelled by his nephew's ungrateful folly. The brother of Isaac Comnenus, sharing with Catacalon the high titular dignity of Curopalat, would seem to have brought into a now empty office some genuine duties. The Cxsar, John Ducas, brother of Constantine XI ., was for twenty years the moving spirit and the final arbiter in the curious developments which ended in the Comnenian victory (io6o-io8i). When Constantine XI. (like most Byzantine princes in this eleventh century) fell rapidly into declining health, he commended his wife and the young Augusti to his brother's care ; bidding. her follow his advice in everything, and his sons to obey him as a father. Eudocia Macrembolitissa, without any technical exclusion of her sons, assumed the sovereignty and
ca. xi
`
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1067)
301
reigned alone, perhaps the fourth time in this period (since Basil's death) that one or two princesses had been recognised as regnant. Although bound by a promise to the defunct prince not to contract a second marriage, Eudocia was expected by the Byzantine world to follow the example of Theophano and of Zoe . Intrigues were set on foot to One favourite was Nicefind a suitable match . phorus Botanciates, lately arrived in the capital with a remnant of his troops and a few foreign auxiliaries attached to him by the feudal tic of personal loyalty ; his main force having disbanded in Armenia, no doubt in protest against arrears of pay and consistent neglect on the part of the home government. The choice of the empress fell on an unexpected head, and the previous career of Romanus Diogenes had given the public no warrant that he would attain the chief place by marriage and legitimate association . His father had been convicted of treason, and owed his death to his own ungovernable temper. Not a few Byzantine rulers crept up the ladder of promotion in spite of such a family history ; and Romanus found no hindrance to advancement. Appointed patrician and Duke of Sardica, he had applied to Constantine XI. for the titular office of Protovestiaire, which would otherwise appear an uncongenial post for a member of the militant faction . Ducas replied with unusual brevity, "Deserve it" ; and Romanus achieved no little success against the Patzinaks. The commission of Master of the Wardrobe was duly sent ; and Ducas with unwise candour or spitefulness remarked that he owed it to his own right hand, and not to the imperial favour . Sullen, but not yet openly mutinous, Romanus waited for the demise of Constantine XI. ; and was on the event at once suspected by the court-party of designs against an He was sumempress-regent and three infants. moned to the capital, and the charge duly laid and supported by certain proof. Yet his situation excited
Emperors' brothers during zth century : the two .rohns.
Disgrace and e~ of. Dioyyenes (1067) .
302
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Disgrace ant a general sympathy ; and the empress, ftddim
eievation of. Diogena (1067).
Div.. c
warming
towards a gallant soldier, recommended the justices to reconsider their verdict and their sentence. However much we may deplore the constant interference of the Roman sovereign in the course of ordinary justice, we cannot deny that such intervention was universally employed on the side of mercy. In the light of further evidence and the obvious partiality of the empress, Romanus was acquitted ; but despatched to his Cappadocian estates to muse awhile on the vicissitudes of fortune and the caprices of the law. On his way thither a messenger recalled him to receive the honours of magister mditum and a--rpaT77ds . Meantime, Eudocia has got from the patriarch Xiphilinus the solemn document in which at her husband's express desire she had abjured second nuptials ; and it is stated that the credulous prelate was led to believe that the favoured candidate was to be his own brother Bardas . The aged monk wasted much valuable time in reading the dissolute Bardas the wholesome lessons of restraint in his new dignity : the court-party were still pressing the claims of Botaneiates by obscure suggestion ; when Eudocia put an end to all surmise by calling Romanus to the palace and announcing her marriage.
B . THE MILITARY REGENCY AND THE CAESAR JOHN BEGINNINGS OF LATIN INTERVENTION : THE MISRULE OF NICEPHORITZES (io67-ip78)
Novel Varangiam
sand Latin fortune . °f
§ 1. The ambitious had to reckon with a new factor, the loyalty of the palace-guard, the Varangians.
They were devoted to the family of Ducas, and we may well suppose that they had not been allowed to suffer from the straitened resources of the military chest or the thrift of the war-office . They take up arms for the young Augusti, and threaten to burn the palace. Eudocia reasons with the modest and dutiful Michael, who had been awakened by his
ca. xi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067-1078)
80E3
mother and Psellus on the eve of the marriage to hear the startling news. She convinces him of the need of a regent to guard the rights of legitimate innocence, and promises that when they are of full Michael VII . age their stepfather will retire . appeased the tumult, and the Varangians (who were never the same menace as the Turkish mercenaries in Bagdad) returned to their duty. The military party rallied round the new emperor ; and the five sons of the Curopalat John Comnenus, recently dead, pressed (when their age allowed) into the service of a vigorous captain . Romanus IV. lost no time in setting the dilapidated machinery of the army in motion . His levies comprised a motley assemblage of Macedonians, Bulgars, and Cappadocians . All Phrygia was placed under requisition for men and supplies . The Uzes, recent enemies of the empire, joined the standard ; Norse bands under Crispin ; and Varangians from the palace-guard, now reconciled to their new master . Into the early successes and campaigns of Diogenes we need not enter ; but we cannot dismiss without notice the novel element in the situation, the Norse condotheri. Herve, Radulph (or Randolph), Gosselin, and later Russell of Balliol, must occupy the attention of the historian ; forerunners of the Latin movement eastwards, which resulted in the Latin kingdom and counties of the twelfth century, and impartially spent itself against the Christian empire in 1204. Crispin belonged, it was said, to the ancient corsair-family of the Grimaldis of Monaco ; but his fathers had settled in Normandy under Duke Rollo, and had learnt something of the roving life of these turbulent vassals of France . He became an adventurer and a soldier of fortune, and entered the service of the empire with his men, whether kinsmen or retainers . Romanus IV. sent him into Asia ; but receiving irregular pay, he began to live by the plunder of citizens and taxgatherers . He defeated the Bulgar prince Samuel
Novel influences : a;d~n'~ soldiers of fortune .
'[!
304 Novel Varangiam
and Latin ao1diera of ,fortune.
. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. c
Alusianus (whose sister Diogenes had married), and the Turks sent against him by the questionable
policy of the time. It was but a half-hearted mutiny ; and neither master nor servant was in earnest . Crispin demanded, and Romanus granted, a full amnesty ; but on his recall the court-whispers again convince the emperor of his treason and he is sent into captivity at Abydos. The Frank colony at Manzikert revolts at this cold treatment, and pillages Mesopotamia . Meantime the Turkish war runs its course ; Iconium is ravaged in io6y, Colossae (Khonx) in 1070 ; and after the great defeat at Manzikert (where the faint assistance of doubtful friends compromised the day) a treaty was drawn up of amity and alliance, subject to a ransom for the imperial captive and a yearly tribute or a subsidy of 36o,ooo pieces of gold. Oivilian § 2. The subsequent proceedings to the death of "I~ 'A " Romanus IV. are obscure and perhaps discreditable ; defeat Of M but it is not easy to single out any one actor for censure. In the alarming rumours which reached the capital, Romanus was reported dead, or given up for lost . The Caesar John hurried home from the pleasures of the Bithynian chace, to guard the claims of his nephews and retrieve the error of the fatal marriage . At first the proposal embodied the joint-rule of Eudocia and her son ; the rights of Andronicus I. and Constantine XII . being tacitly set aside. Meantime, Romanus was on the march, to vindicate his prerogative : this, unlike Regulus of old (capitis minor in virtue of his capitulation), he did not consider abrogated. The Caesar exacted an oath from the guard never to acknowledge Diogenes ; and these proclaiming Michael VII . sole emperor, rush to the apartments of the empress with loud and angry cries . Eudocia, hiding in a cavern, was rescued by the Caesar, but forced to retire to a convent, where she survived perhaps until the arrival of the earliest Latin pilgrims . Constantine (the
ca. xi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067-1078)
305
Caesar's son) was sent in command against Romanus civitian . the outlaw, and defeats him at Amasea, his head- reaetion after defeat of quarters, driving him into the fortress
of Tyropaeum . The faithful Armenian Chatatures reinforces and en- Nanzikert. courages him ; and on the arrival of envoys from Michael VII . offering terms, the ex-emperor returns an explicit negative . The mother of the Comneni, suspected of sympathy with his cause, is exiled to Princes' Isle, like many dignified and unhappy personages down to our own time. Andronicus (another son of the Caesar) is now entrusted with the conduct of the war, which for some reason Constantine had surrendered . But Romanus, shut up in Adana, and absorbed in melancholy and humiliation, took no further part, but depended on
the eager loyalty of Chatatures . But this friend is Romanw taken prisoner, and Romanus at last surrenders deposed by Casar John . receiving the solemn promise of personal safety
from the Archbishops of Chalcedon, Heraclea, and Colonea. Andronicus, brave but faithless (as was alleged) in the great battle of Manzikert, behaved well to his imperial captive. He is detained for a time at Cotyaeum in Phrygia ; and the order of the Caesar arrives for the extinction of his sight. We can well believe the asseveration of Psellus . that Michael VII . knew nothing of this barbarity, and that on this occasion, as on many others, the viziers and ministers worked their own will under cover of their master's name. As to the act itself, Psellus evidently believes that it was fully justified from a political view and in the crisis of the moment. He deplores it only from the side of that humanity which was accepted as a Byzantine tradition ; and he does not regard it as a breach of good faith . Andronicus refuses to comply, and showed his indignation by genuine protests. But the Caesar regent was all-powerful, and the blinded emperor, conveyed to the isle of Prote, died there untended in that temper of Christian resignation and calm VOL. II .
-
606
j
-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div . c
Boman= heroism, which we learn to expect in misfortune dePosed by the Lower Empire ." Such Ccesar .john. from these 1' Greeks of was the end of the last colleague-regent from the military party, and the acute struggle between the two ideals of government culminated in the year 107 1 . The character of Diogenes has been differently estimated . Rather, while we admire his energy and valour, we must not deny his faults. Reigning by the kind indulgence of his sovereign, who pardoned and raised him to share her throne, he was arrogant, selfish, and boastful . He drew to himself the sole power, ill-treating her (if we may believe the envious Psellus) with actual blows, and committing, in the view of that strong constitutionalist, the cardinal blunder or crime of a ruler, depending on his own judgment alone and refusing advice. The results were mischievous. The name of the gentle pedant Michael was abused by an unscrupulous minister . The injury rankled in the mind of the warriors ; and Caesar John, recognising his error and seeing with alarm the condition of the empire, threw his weight into the scale of the soldiers, and brought in the Comnenian dynasty. Mznistersand § 3. The mildness of Michael VII . was inopportune, gmerak and his good intention was ineffectual . He was under M.
VII ; Nim- the victim of his servants, and exerted as little Phwitzes. influence over Roman destinies as over the See of Ephesus, which he is said to have once visited as its metropolitan . Coming from a warlike stock (as his name implies) he had lost all their aptitude or ambition. He was like Claudius or our own James I., a punctilious purist and grammarian ; and he carried the literary aspirations of his father to a dangerous extent, under the careful training of Psellus. He wrote poems and discoursed on rhetoric, and played the docile Marcus Aurelius to his teacher's Fronto. Even the Caesar John (like the Chinese regent at the present moment) did not himself transact the heavy imperial business. The vizierate
CH. xi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (106'7-10'78)
807 was now a recognised and perhaps a necessary instiMinistervand tution ; for princes born in the purple and bred in 9'
the palace knew nothing of the realm or its needs under . VII. : NiceThey listened to the only home-truths they were Pzes likely to hear, from outspoken bystanders during
some solemn procession. An episcopal chancellor was the centre and arbiter of all normal administration, the Archbishop of Side, in Pamphylia, a wise and admirable man of business. He recalled Anna, mother of the Comneni ; and cemented a friendship with the most numerous and powerful family by marrying a cousin of the young empress to the eldest son Isaac : Ir ene was a daughter of the king of the Alans, then vassal to the Iberian ruler, Bagrat IV., whose daughter Mary wedded two emperors in succession, Michael VII . and Nicephorus III. This happy state of affairs did not last. Under Constantine XI. a certain Nicephoritzes, a Galatian eunuch, had been a secretary of State, and Eudocia hating, like Theodora, his chicanery and false suspicions, procured his dismissal somewhat strangely by giving him the duchy of Antioch, an unsuitable post for a subtle bureaucrat. Here he won the dislike and contempt of the province ; and Constantine XI. recalled him and placed him in custody . But the regent Romanus IV. was indebted to him for large funds raised for the expenses of the Turkish war,-the method and source of which financial aid he no doubt forbore to investigate too closely. He released him from prison, and gave him the post of Chief Justice of Hellas and the Peloponnese, an office once held by Monomachus (c. 1040). The Caesar John created him grand Logotkete, and the Roman world once again beheld a John of Cappadocia . Worming himself into the confidence of Michael VII., he supplants the Caesar and becomes sole favourite. If we can believe the historians, there is -nothing but indictments and accusations, delations and spying and heavy sentences, con- _
308
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
HZnistervand fiscation of municipal or private wealth, such as we generak are led to expect to-day from a very different form under M Vu. : Nice- of government. Appointed sovereign administrator phoritzeg. of the Hebdom monastery, he perverts the donations of the pious laity to his own profit ; and creates a lucrative monopoly in wheat (like early Roman governors and American financiers) by buying up the harvest of Thrace and garnering the grain at Rhedestus . Diminishing the bushel by a quarter, and enhancing the price for the reduced measure, he won for his unfortunate master the unmerited nickname by which he is known in history, IraPa7rzvarc s. The Caesar in umbrage had again retired to his Asiatic hunting-grounds, and employed six months in that strenuous leisure, which brings the Byzantine noble, out of office, so much nearer to the English statesman than to the lethargic Roman of classical days. But Nicephoritzes grew alarmed at the steadily rising influence of the Comneni ; and recalled the Caesar . Once more he assumed the upper hand ; and once more the eunuch-minister has Russets revolts and captures
to disembarrass himself of a benefactor and a rival, He induced Michael VII. to believe that no one
c=ar john. else could conduct the campaign against Russell (Ovpo-hXcos), the second Latin adventurer who disturbed Asia at this time. Succeeding to the command of the Frankish "foreign legion" after Crispin the (Ppayyo?rovXos, he had shown to the Comneni the feudal spirit of insubordination, and levied contributions and subsidies like a brigand-chief throughout Phrygia, Galatia, and Cappadocia. The Caesar's army was a motley gathering, like the forces of Romanus IV . : barbarians from the European side, a Frank corps commanded by Pape, and the usual Asiatic levies of Phrygia and Lycaonia. An actual battle was fought near the river Sangarius in Galatia with the mutineers ; and forms an excellent instance of the danger of mercenary troops and of the personal resentment which at several crises in our
ex. xi '° r-;a
k,` q.
f
t
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067-1078)
history divided interests and paralysed action .
309 The Russedt
Frank contingent not unnaturally fraternised with llol a"a their rebel kinsmen ; and Nicephorus Botaneiates, captures Cesar John,
annoyed since the disappointment of io67, sullenly draws off his forces, exposing the brave Caesar to the whole brunt of the fight . The Caesar, trying to rescue his son Andronicus in a dangerous combat, is taken and made a prisoner with him by the exultant Russell . 4. The days of the fifth century are now revived . Once more the Teuton or Norseman gains admittance into the empire after a rigorous exclusion of 6oo years. Once more in the camp of a Latin mercenary is carried about a tame Caesar, poor, spectral heir of Augustus and Trajan . The captive of yesterday becomes the honoured guest and titular sovereign, and the rebellion takes on the excuse of a vindication of John's rights . It is doubtful if Russell for a brief moment entertained the design of seizing the throne himself ; it is obvious that if so he speedily abandoned it. Constantine (elder son of the Caesar) was sent by the minister Nicephoritzes to avenge the fate of his father and brother ; but on the eve of taking command he dies of colic, and I prefer not to impute to the incredible villainy and folly of the eunuch a sad event entirely explicable by natural causes . Russell armed the imperial family against itself ; andproclaims and forced the genuinely reluctant Caesar to assume ~~m emperor. the imperial title . At first he declined the honour, but hearing that he had many partisans in the capital, and honestly desirous of saving the dynasty, he at last assented . Like Attalus or Eugenius or Gerontius he is saluted emperor by the Franks . After this events moved wildly . Michael VII . sends to Russell as token of pardon and amity his wife and children, and gave him the title Curopalat. But the crafty minister, no doubt without the express order or cognisance of the emperor, stirred up against the _
310
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
Casar Jahn rebel and his usurper the forces of the Turks . It is p''oek"`ea difficult to realise the condition of the Asiatic inemperor. terior after the defeat of Manzikert. The comedy of the Roman succession was played out on a deserted scene, and the victors gained little advantage from their dissension or preoccupation. The levies were made in the very districts we might well suppose were harried and ransacked by the Seljuk ; and the solution must be that only sporadic detachments of Curds and Turkmans pressed on, each acting separately, towards the western coast, and were the pioneers of a constant filtration into Ionia . Astonishingly quiescent, the main body of Turks halted on the verge of Cappadocia under Tutach, to the number of i oo,ooo . These attack the troops of Russell ; against the Caesar's advice (he could not command his imperious Master of the Horse) the first onset is fiercely resisted, and Russell fell into the main contingent unawares. The Caesar joined the mad enterprise and shared his sewed ay fate. Both were taken prisoners ; and Michael VII., Turks, relieved at the failure of the condottieri-captain, regains his ransoms his uncle and obliges him to take the monk's ,freedom, cowl and tonsure. Unhappily for the peace of Pontus and the security of the court, Russell recovers his liberty, and spreads havoc in the neighbourhood of Amasea and Neocaesarea. Michael, deferring to the last the dreaded help of the Comnenians, sends to requisition 6ooo men from the Prince of the Alans (either in accordance with the express covenant of a treaty or in view of the recent marriage-alliance). Nicephorus Palaeologus (first mention of this familiar name) is sent to take command ; and with the usual perversity of the civilian war-office pay is withheld, and the once alert allies disband in confusion . but i8 reduced § 5. It was agreed by all that the only hope of safety "~ lay in the valour of the united clans . Alexius, now aged twenty-five, received a commission to extirpate the
1
ca. xi
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067-1478)
311
tyrant, and like Belisarius, was told to expect neither Rwsea reduced men nor money from the State. Raising his own by Alexius. retainers, and acting with that humane tact which
passes with the closet-historian for craven duplicity, he detached the soldiers and Turkish allies from the cause of the Norse rebel . Tutach seized Russell 'I once more-and this time in the service of the empire-and sent him bound to Alexius at Amasea. Here occurred the curious incident, when the merchants of Amasea refused to assist the imperialists by a subsidy ; when Alexius appealed to the people against the selfishness of the middle class, like a true Caesar in a democratic republic, or a Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer in a popular budget . ,I Movements were still being made to deliver Russell, 'and enable him to continue the guerilla-warfare which was the delight of his band of countrymen. Alexius by a kindly pretence affects to blind the rebel to keep off his dangerous friends, and conveys him to Constantinople ; there he is beaten and immured . Movement in -The Balkan district was at this juncture disturbed the Balkans. by a revolt of Bulgars and Serbs, to diversify by a foreign war the constant series of domestic sedition . The former, exasperated by the fiscal exaction of Nicephoritzes (just as before under Leo VI. by Stylianus), chose a king and defied, without success, the European imperialists : their king was sent out of danger and out of mischief into a Syrian exile, but was subsequently delivered and came home. The Servian revolt was fostered and maintained by Longibardipoulos with his Lombard kinsmen from Italy, and his influence was increased by his marriage with the R king's daughter. The capital was dissatisfied at the inaction of Michael VII. : after the example of Romanus IV., military prowess was once more believed to form an indispensable title. But in this respect Disappointat least Michael was incompetent, and had no vain "of. illusions ; he decided, not without the approval of wopnrepares his all-powerful minister, to confer the title Caesar a revou.
i K
312
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. C
Daappoint-
upon Bryennius, then sojourning at his birthplace, Brt ous, Adrinople, for long past the home of a warlike spirit wlhoprepares and an independent population. Before Bryennius a revolt. obeyed the summons, Michael VII . changed his mind, or suffered it to be changed by the insidious eulogists of the merits, the courage, the enterprise of the new favourite . As to Agricola under Domitian, the laudantes amici were the most deadly of his foes. He is given the title Duke of Bulgaria, and the commission to chase the Serbs and Slavs. He has great success ; and extending his sphere he settles at Dyrrachium, and from thence curbs the insolence of Croats and the forays of Norse pirates . A second Pompey, he soon subdues all disturbing elements, and cleanses the Adriatic Gulf, which since Basil had begun once more to recognise a Byzantine sovereign . This enterprise provided prestige and employment for the military class ; but discontent was still rife in other quarters, owing to the tactless injuries of the Premier and the withdrawal of rations and equipment. The Danubian garrisons were at the time commanded by an old slave of Constantine XI ., Nestor, decorated with the ducal title, who acted in concert with Tat, a Patzinak chief in the imperial service. The half-pagan forces had been guilty of sacrilege in the search for booty at -Prespa during the recent war . Deprived of all their plunder for reasons which appear to them singularly inadequate, they burst into open mutiny, and carried with them their commanders Tat and Nestor . Presenting themselves before the walls of the capital, they demand what they believed in their honest conviction to be simple justice . Nicephoritzes, who never lost an occasion of humiliating a captain, confiscates the estate of Nestor ; and nearly succeeds in securing his person . But the duke departed, began to lay waste Thrace, Macedonia, and the Bulgarian frontier, and finally retired among the Patzinaks . In the sedition of barbarian auxiliaries the Macedonian
; i d I
-
ex, xi "' ''
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067-1078)
813
troops had taken no part ; but they too had their grievances and demanded redress . Their envoys listen to the scornful refusal and acrimonious insult ~
Disoqpointment of. prepa' who who prepares
habitual in the treatment of the army ; and returning a revolt,
~r
to Macedonia, with bitterness in their heart, communicate their discontent and prepare the way for the great rising of Nicephorus Bryennius . 6. In 1077, Bryennius found his position in- and anumes tolerable, owing to the weakness of his sovereign the purple. and the enmity of the minister. He was amazed to discover that the friendly envoy Eustathius had been sent by the timid Michael to penetrate his motives and purpose ; and the unfounded suspicion of treason converted a loyal subject into a traitor . But it is unlikely that he would have taken the initiative, if his brother John and Basilacius had not returned from an interview with the minister, furious at his refusal of all their requests for recompense and recognition . John retired in dudgeon to his Thracian estate (for the great feudal landlords were not confined to Lesser Asia), and hears with indignation and alarm that a drunken Varangian in a village inn near Adrinople had boasted of his secret commission to compass his murder . He seizes, examines, and cuts his nose ; and will owe to this not unseasonable severity his own assassination some years later . In concert with the chief inhabitants of Adrinople he works to arouse an insurrection, and excites his still hesitating brother at Dyrrachium . He even overcomes the scruples of the long faithful loyalist Tarchaniotes, who, unable to arouse the Premier to a sense of danger, felt himself compelled to join the rebel and married his sister to John's son . The minister, neither competent nor diplomatic, actually allowed his master to name Basilacius governor of Illyria, with orders to give short shrift to the mutineers and seize Nicephorus. Reconciled for a moment to the imperial cause by this unmerited honour, he at first refuses the overtures of the
-
314 Bryeanim a8mvw the `urpk.
CONSTITUTIONAL . HISTORY OF
Div. e
Bryennians ; but in the sequel joined them at Thessalonica with his men. All the Thracian and Macedonian troops are assembled outside Trajanople ; and Nicephorus, still averse to taking the final and irrevocable step, is here persuaded to do so, by the threats or entreaties of friends and soldiers and by the nocturnal shouts of the beleaguered city itself
ne Capital in his honour. This took place on October 3rd. zn'""ted Q"ut (Seven days later, as we shall see, Nicephorus . relieved
Botaneiates also assumed the purple .) He marches to his home, Adrinople, and is welcomed with joy . The Bryennians now suggest terms to the emperor, for whom they entertained nothing but goodhumoured contempt and pity. In an age affording many remarkable instances of brotherly unselfishness, John was, according to custom, decorated with the titles of Curopalat and Grand Domestic and sent forward with the Uzes and Patzinaks . Rhedestus, home of the late iniquitous monopoly, and Panium were both willingly surrendered to the party ; and for some obscure cause Heraclea was burnt,-a rare incident of retaliation in a chivalrous age when constant warfare implied neither ravage nor cruelty. Indeed, a similar incident or accident estranged the warm sympathies of the citizens of the capital, who were preparing to declare themselves for Bryennius. They were filled with anger at the wanton havoc wrought by some barbarian marauders across the Horn in the suburban houses, which, though deserted, still contained their rich furniture, believed to be safe in the mimic tournament of a civil war. Michael VII. sends out the titular Augustus Constantine XII . in company with the indispensable Alexius and Russell, taken from his dungeon. Hastily arming their own domestics and any chance comer, they break out and surprise these buccaneers, carrying captive twenty of their stragglers . This petty defeat, magnified into a triumph by the populace, and the irksome delay before the walls, cooled the ardour of the Bryennians ;
CH. XT
I
f
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1067--1078)
315
and John, who had not ceased to be a Roman The Capztad and because he rebelled against an odious minister, invested relieved. started at once in pursuit on hearing the report of a fresh Patzinak inroad . The investing army breaks up and, directed to the Chersonese, inflicts loss on the invaders ; while his brother, the emperor of Adrinople, secures by means of the captives the firm friendship and alliance of the Patzinaks for his cause. 7. The situation on the eve of the revolt of strange The situation n Botaneiates was singular and anomalous . capital was defended by Germans and Varangians, and Europeand administered by a slave. The emperor, kindliest of -4sia,1078men, was known to exert no influence, and spent his time in those harmless literary pursuits which from Claudius and Nero to Michael VII . formed a most serious charge in the indictment of a Caesar. The armies, divided into the European and the Asiatic, and reinforced by foreign and barbarian aid, were still in large part composed of native levies . After a long silence the reviving themes, or rather duchies, of the western empire claimed to exercise the prerogative of choosing their ruler. The Macedonian troops, grudgingly supported by the civilian war-office, were attached to their feudal captains, taken from a few notable families of Asiatic and Armenian descent . The populace, by no means servile or cowed by these constant 11 pronunciamentos," welcomed a military pretender, compassionated their powerless but innocent prince, and detested the tyranny of the monopolist . The Seljuks, during the whole term of Michael's nominal reign, would seem to have withheld their hand, and left the arena free for the settlement of the Roman disputes . Indeed, they are found more often acting as obedient allies and vassals than as active foes. Still, the roving bands filtered through into the deserted interior of Lesser Asia, pressed to the western coasts, and formed the principal support of the forces of Melissenus, yet
316 strange
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Div. c
another Nicephorus, to whom must be ascribed the
the empire°fin foundation of the Sultanate of Rum.
The astonishing
Europe and silence and modesty of the Turk after Manzikert 8. allowed free-play to the combatants in that strange duel of civilian and soldier, during which the institutions of ancient Rome completely disappeared .
r
I
CHAPTER XII CONFLICT OF THE THREE NICEPHORI : THE MISRULE OF BORILAS ; AND THE REVOLT OF THE FAMILIES OF DUCAS AND COMNENUS (1078-1081) .
1. IN the somewhat tangled series of events which union of finally to the seizure and sack of the capital by the Aemuse it led Comnenians, the intimate relation and firm friend-~, ship of the two chief families must by no means be forgotten . Michael VII . had no more loyal subject and lieutenant than Alexius ; Constantine XII . no more trusty companion . The Caesar John, veritable king-maker of the period, maintained towards him throughout a consistent confidence and affection ; and it was by his arbitrament, arguments, and entreaties that the crown was at last transferred to the Comnenian dynasty. Andronicus, his son, had never recovered strength after his wounds in the Russell tumult, and was slowly dying ; his daughter, Irene Ducas, was married to Alexius, and the two Constantine XII. houses doubly bound together. sister Zoe for his his own preferred would have of the Commother Anna Dalassena, friend ; and honourable brief and forgiven her neni, had not exile at the hands of the Caesar . Nor was the facile Michael convinced of the wisdom of this alliance . But John, who with the monk's cowl did not lose interest or influence in public affairs, had the usual success of firm resolve and honest purpose . After some trifling success of Alexius, objections were swept away and the nuptials celebrated amid great
public joy .-Meantime the Eastern troops, honey- Insurrection Ea8tern combed by discontent, envied the European forces °f their resolute conduct, but refused to acknowledge Bo~,r 317 -
318 "
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . c
Insurrection their candidate . Once more the armies of the Taurus t Emtern under frontier sustained their prerogative of creating the Botaneiates. prince, which was so long their unquestioned right. On October Io, 1077, a second Nicephorus Phocas, an aged and now lethargic veteran, assumed the purple, convoked the officers of Asia Minor, and divided amongst them the usual dignities and titles of honour . Only two captains of distinction preserved their good faith to the civilian r6gime ; Nicephorus Melissenus (who won in later days a sinister fame) and George Palwologus, whose father at this time was in command of such territory and such forces as the Turks chose to allow the Romans in Mesopotamia. The cause of Botaneiates was everywhere popular, not by reason of his personal character so much as by way of protest against an unworthy tyrant . The towns of Pontus, Cappadocia, and Galatia opened their gates to him ; well disposed towards a change of masters, and enlisted by trusty envoys, by the promises and example of senators and clergy, among whom the Patriarch of Antioch, Emilianus, was prominent. To the mind of Nicephoritzes suggested itself one single unique and unpatriotic expedient ; he secretly begged Soliman to stop the nearer advance of the new rebels. But Botaneiates with but three hundred men manages, in spite of this formidable obstacle, to traverse the length of Asia Minor, by way of Cotyxum, Azula (on the Sangar), and Nice ; and to disarm the hostility of the Sultan by the hired offices of Kroudj (Chrysosculus), the amiable renegade. Before the walls of Nice, Nicephorus halts with his scanty following ; he sees with consternation the battlements manned and the walls lined with soldiers and citizens . But to his relief and joy it is his own name that is thundered forth by them in the imperial salutation ; and he reposes securely in the city while awaiting reinforcement from his friends and news from the capital. For in Constantinople the sympathy was general ;
ca.xi
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
319
senators and clergy, as in Asia, were warm adherents ; insurrection Emilian of Antioch and the Archbishop of Iconium, top leaving their flocks, succumbed to the delights of Botazeicates . political intrigue . 2. The support of the Cxsar John was believed Abdication of Michael VII. to be essential to success . An envoy, Michael Barus, was sent to shake his constancy, but to no purpose ; and the indignant uncle apprehends the emissary, and informs his nephew and (what was more important) the minister Nicephoritzes . But the inertia or mistaken clemency of Michael VII . ruined any hopes of prompt action, in which still remained a chance of success . The conspirators the next day (March 2q.) open the prisons (a now favourite method), and assemble in St. Sophia, where revolution always sought the divine sanction, and failure the In the still potent names of divine protection . Senate and Patriarch they summoned all good citizens to repair with them to the great church . But Alexius advises stern measures ; and believes that one charge of the palace-guard under a well-known captain The emperor is would disperse the mutineers. you have me lose this advice ; ,Would shocked at asked the unhappy clemency?" my reputation for brother, Conin favour of his scholar ; and abdicating Blachern. the church of stantine XII ., he retired to The new monarch at once repudiates the offer of a Borzlmenters palace throne, and hastens to pay his homage to the veteran the and takes to vwgeance who is cautiously and by slow stages approaching Niceassume the power which Michael had let fall soon phoritxes' tamely. Borilas, a slave, is sent ahead to take formal possession of the palace in the name of Nicephorus
III., and Alexius and Constantine are welcomed in the camp, though his distrust and suspicion of the Ducas family is only dispelled by the straightforward apology of Alexius . The Caesar John, who had not been allowed to save his nephew's throne, now advises him in his irretrievable plight to become a monk, and the Studium receives the imperial novice .
320 Boralasenters the p"ime and takes +reeweance on Nice- .
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv. c
Meantime, Nicephoritzes makes good his escape to Sely mbria, where at his command Russell the Norman had taken his stand. He essayed to turn the Norman to the cause of Bryennius, and failing, is believed to have poisoned him . The friends of Russell carried the fallen minister to Nicephorus III., who sends him into exile . But the household slaves who then controlled the government, Borilas and Germanus, urge the emperor to inquire into his secret hoards of wealth . Contrary to the emperor's orders, torture is used by Straboromanus to compel restitution, and under it Nicephoritzes expired (1078) . Weakness § 3. This bloodless revolution had once more restored the supreme authority to a warrior. But, from aaextro Nicephoru the military point of view, the character and spirit of III the soldier, once elevated to the purple, underwent a complete deterioration . The etiquette of the palace confined him within its precincts, and formulated his daily routine with rigid precision . He inherited all his predecessor's diffidence in respect of the armycorps, reposed his trust and the welfare of the realm solely in menials, and once more raised the old struggle between the warrior and the civilian. Borilas and Germanus were the imperial slaves and confidants, who rose, like Icelus in the service of Galba, from household duties to the control of affairs . Botaneiates, to secure the still doubtful favour of the official world, opens the treasury, and with spendthrift generosity, lavishes titles and pensions broadcast. The State was ruined by these extravagant doles ; distinctions were vulgarised ; the fisc was exhausted ; and at last recourse was had to the most disgraceful expedient of a bankrupt empire-the debasement of the coinage . He attempted to come to terms with Bryennius, his Macedonian rival, and despatches Straboromanus, a kinsman of his own, with Chcerosphactes, a relative of Bryennius . They met the pretender in Moesia, near Theodorople, and offered adoption as Caesar and the second place in the
ca, xn
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
321
administration . Like Isaac Comnenus, in the similar we$ crisis of 11057, Bryennius accepted these conditions, and extramerely stipulating that the honours and titles of his N,~ partisans should be confirmed, and that his corona- III tion as Caesar should take place outside the city. Asked his reason, he bluntly confessed his entire disbelief in the good faith of the ministers . Their influence broke off the negotiations ; and the emperor had to appeal to Alexius, now invested with the rank of Nobilissimus and Grand Domestic. The names and numbers of the soldiers under his command are instructive and significant. The Eastern or Asiatic forces were still congregated on the Turkish frontier ; and in 1077 (according to Samuel of Ani), six years after Manzikert, a Roman army had engaged with Gomechtikin near the old contested borderforts of Nisibis and Amida. Alexius had trained a new corps, the Immortals, named after the famous bodyguard of the Persians ; he leads the men of Choma (X(oua-rnYoi), a detachment from Mount Taurus and the warlike settlements there ; and this motley host is reinforced by Soliman the Seljuk. Advancing with Catacalon to the river Almyras, in Akxim ends Thrace, he comes in sight of the splendid array of Of t Bryennius and Tarchaniotes of Adrinople (now his Bryennim COQ, most faithful lieutenant) ; Italian mercenaries, Uzes
r?
and Patzinaks (under the terms of the recent alliance), and the regular detachments of Thrace and Macedonia, become of late the flower of the Roman forces. The battle was fought at Calabrya, and long hung in a doubtful issue. The Franks under Alexius desert to their kinsmen's side, and the Patzinaks rout the army of Catacalon . But by a clever ruse the Imperialists spread the report that Bryennius had fallen, and point to a riderless horse which had been captured by Alexius. The Turks arrive at the opportune moment, and add terror to the now wavering party of the pretender. As in most battles of the feudal period; there would seem to have been little loss of _ VOL. II. X
322
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
Maxim en& life and much chivalrous display of personal valour . the rayon of The Turks, surrounding their gallant foe, entreat him Bryennius at
aatubrya.
not to throw away his life, and conduct him to Alexius. The two generals travel together in amicable intercourse as comrades, and Bryennius refuses to take advantage of the slumber of Alexius, either to avenge his own defeat or secure his safety by flight. But the vindictive ministers sent Alexius on another quest, and he was not able to entrust his captive to the clemency of Nicephorus. Borilas gives orders that Bryennius should be blinded ; and the feeble emperor mourned the deed, disclaimed responsibility, and by every means-by invitation to the palace, and by new wealth and added dignities-attempted to With no less atone for the irreparable outrage. kindness he allowed the Bryennian faction to retain the grades and distinctions conferred by the usurper, and no further inquiry was made as to their behaviour in the recent sedition. The vengeance of a menial and a barbarian mercenary alone demanded cruel satisfaction ; Borilas had mutilated Nicephorus, and the injured Varangian requited his own wrong by assassinating John, as he left the palace after a friendly interview with the emperor . At this murder and contempt for authority the cold prince was filled with righteous indignation, and wished to punish the criminal . The whole body of Varangians broke out into mutiny, and threatened to murder the emperor, to whom they had not yet transferred the contemptuous yet faithful loyalty borne to the house of Ducas . Botaneiates could not control his soldiers, and trembled before his servants . His gifts had not secured respect or affection ; and the firm rule (as had been expected) of a resolute general became the tyranny of a palace-clique or a Turkish guard .
B"wit of § 4. Meantime the harvest of pretenders was by Ba&ikdw in no means over. The Western Provinces, awaking Idlyria.
from their long slumber of exhaustion, claimed equal rights in the election of a prince . The area of the
CH. xir
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
823
malcontents comprised Illyria and Macedonia ; the Remit of modern country of European Albania, and the home Ba8il~w in of the Shkipetars, the Toskidae and Geghidm, and of _91y'i"' the formidable Turkish rebel Ali Pasha of Jannina . Basilacius took up the cause which . had fallen almost by an accident from the hands of Bryennius . Long before the end of that futile revolt he had approached Achrida and consulted the Archbishop whether he should assume the purple. The churchman dissuaded him, and he retired, to watch events and to protect the empire, to Dyrrbachium, with his mingled forces of Illyrians, Macedonians, Bulgars, Franks, and Lombards from Italy . On the coronation of Nicephorus III. he wrote a letter of congratulation and welcome, and receives from him the title of Nobilissimus with a golden Bull. But while the contest of Imperialists and Bryennians was hanging in the balance, he threw off disguise and delays, took the Augustan name and attire, and waited with calm indifference to question the right and challenge the fortune of the survivor in the duel. Alexius encamped on a plain near the river Vardar (Axius), and Basilacius issued forth from his headquarters at iThessalonica (six leagues' journey) to encounter him. The engagement was long uncertain, and if we are to believe historians, it was at last decided, like Calabrya, by a conspicuous exploit of personal valour . This, while it turned the tide and determined the issue, gave no proof of the relative strength or spirit of the combatants . While Manuel, a nephew of Basilacius, exultantly proclaims aloud that the day is theirs, a Macedonian-Armenian and Imperialist named Curticius seizes him bodily, drags him from his saddle, and carries him off to the feet of Alexius . Basilacius drew off his crestfallen troops to Thessalonica, and is by. them compelled to capitulate . Either the army was growing weary of constant sedition, or it had determined that the captain and inspired leader of the warriors could not be found
324 of
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
in Basilacius.
niv. c
Once more the clemency of Alexius
and of his sovereign was eluded or openly flouted ; between Amphipolis and Philippi messengers arrive from Borilas, who demand the person of the captive, and inflict the usual penalty for high treason. The position of Alexius now gave him reason for serious thought. The trusted right hand and indispensable champion of the Imperialist cause, the friend and favourite of the aged emperor, he had become the sport of slaves, who sent him breathless from one post of danger to another, allowed him no repose, and robbed him of the recompense and credit of his victories. His achievements were tarnished by their cruelty and bad faith ; and he knew well that they would hail his failure with secret joy, as they had He was regarded his success with spiteful envy. now decorated by his grateful sovereign with the new title Mepao'TOS ; and the ',Greeks," in conferring this dignity upon private subjects outside the imperial family, would seem to forget that it is a mere transBut the favour of the emlation of 61 Augustus." for little at the court, and was no peror counted . Nicephorus III . had just guarantee of security married the wife of Michael VII., consoled for the loss of kingdom and partner with the Archbishopric of Ephesus ; and the young Constantine XI II ., born in the purple and invested with the imperial dignity in his cradle, became the stepson and prospective heir of a childless and uxorious prince ; his proposed union to Robert Guiscard's daughter Helen was broken off, and in the issue we might see how fraught with evil result was this rupture' state 5. With the settlement of the disputed succession, Restless °f Eur°xal$ the inhabitants of either continent might reasonably and Asiatic
OnCe nwe' t4ctor~.
hope for a period of quiet and recuperation .
Their
The Byzantine court had . now completely laid aside its vain and Chinese exclusiveness in the question of imperial princesses ; the regulations or advice of Constantine VIL, never adhered to with strict fidelity, were now again and again disregarded ; and Nicephorus wedded his niece, a daughter of Theoduius of Synnada, to the Craal of Hungary.
CH x1i
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
825
hopes were disappointed . The European provinces zestku state were once more overrun by Patzinaks (no doubt °f P`ropean and Asiatic
±
the late allies of the two Macedonian pretenders), provinces. and by Paulicians, a fiery race of Covenanters, who still retained their faith and truceless hatred of Greek Church and Byzantine rule in their new home in Thrace. The former burnt a large part of Adrinople, home of the recent sedition . Lecas, a Paulician heretic, slays the Bishop of Sardica at the altar, and Dobrouni, another of the same creed, acting in concert with him, spreads terror in the vicinity of Mesembria. These two miscreants, tiring of outlawry, conceive the bold project of demanding amnesty and pardon from Nicephorus ; it is granted with criminal indulgence, and thus the lenient ruler is obliged for the second time to condone an atrocious murder, in an age unusually tender in regard to human life. Nor was Asia more tranquil. The Turks had begun again their inroads, dissatisfied (as we may well suppose) with the recompense meted out by the courtiers for their service in the late sedition . Alexius detained against the Basilacians Futi1e was not available, and Constantine XI I., the son rebeld'on of of Ducas, was sent in command . Never formally Conat. X11 despoiled of the Augustan title which he had carried since birth, he conceives that the time has now arrived for enforcing his claims. Crossing to Chrysopolis with the forces allotted to him, he assumed the garb and title to which he had a right, and seemed uncertain whether he would teach the Turkish marauder a lesson or overthrow the government. But his attempt proves abortive ; and Nicephorus immures him as a monk in some convent on the Propontis : in the next reign he will be seen as a trusted captain in the expeditions of Alexius . All these events seem crowded into a single anxious and turbulent year . But it would be a mistake to exaggerate the misery or bloodshed caused by these incessant civil wars . The condition and the senti--
826
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
viv. c
Fatale rebelhon of const. %II.
ment of the provinces, always obscure under a centralised government, cannot be distinctly revealed
Llke earlier Slavonic immigrants,
fied the military instincts of the Armenian families and Macedonian nobles . As for Lesser Asia, it is
by the most patient search. Still, it may be inferred that the western half enjoyed considerable prosperity, in spite of the brilliant skirmishes and tourneys which amused the mercenaries and grati-
hard to ascertain the extent or the desi gn of the the Turks Penetrate into Turkish forays or Turkish migrations wending slowly Asia Hinor. and without violence to the western coast. Life went on much the same in the luxurious society of the walled towns, and the nomad Turkomans may have been accepted with indifference and permitted to settle, or rather bivouac, on Roman soil. This part of Asia, in a word, was Turkicised much as Greece and Macedonia were Slavonised in the seventh and eighth centuries . There was no definite moment when Roman authority ceased in the various districts, when the writ of a Roman emperor ceased to run. Permeated by degrees, and at first in its more desolate regions, by new colonists, the country lost .by silent and stealthy encroachment its language, its government, and its creed. The urban centres still retained their wealth and culture, speedily recovered any violent raid which from time to time fell on them, and willingly abandoned to the new occupants whole tracts of superfluous pasturage . Meantime the new settlers or nomads, with a savage's deep-seated dislike of needless war, became peaceful countrymen, carrying into a desert the rules and customs of a patriarchal community. They crept into the service of the Romans, and into the Utterly lacking in religious faith of the Greeks. wider polity than the tribe, the conception of a the complicated they looked with amazement at mechanism of the empire, fell into place like Teutons and Goths before them as soldiers, husbandmen, and household domestics ; and even
ca. xrz
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
327
mounted into the high places of spiritual and civil Like earlier Slavonic rule . 6. The influx of the Turks differed no doubt theTurks~s'
in important details and - in general result ; but the Penetrate into method was the same-a gradual infiltration and no A8ia Minor. definite challenge or conquest . We must repeat that the Turks, under Soliman, are found more often as allies than as enemies of Rome ; and the attitude of the Seljuks was not by any means wholly hostile . As with the Goths under Valens, 378, their violence or breach of faith was often the issue of some tactless meddling of government officials . The Turkomans who followed in the train of the Seljuks were not fighters by conviction but bandits by necessity. Pillage was to them a means of livelihood ; they had neither the fixed design nor the discipline necessary for annexation. Their masters and superiors, the Seljuk caste, had no wish to overthrow the empire . For the Sultanate of Rum, which stands out so boldly in the map as an independent power, had its origin no doubt, like the Frankish power in Gaul or the Visigothic in Spain, in some curious and confused sentiment in which alliance, vassalage, and occasionally Covert enmity were unequally blended . Nor can it be for a moment doubted that the real founder of this Turkish dominion in Hither Asia was a Roman j
and pretender to the purple. In io8o, Nicephorus "Nicephorm V."f°""" a the Fifth," Melissenus, brother-in-law . of Alexius, Turkoman
took the imperial title. Himself a great feudal lord principality. in Cos, he had influence on the mainland. Allying with these roving Turkish bands he founded a principality along the coast, which gave an augury and example of the Latin counties in loose vassalage to the kingdom of Jerusalem. With these strange allies or mercenaries, he becomes master of Phrygia and Galatia ; and it would be difficult to decide whether in effect a new usurper had assumed the purple or a foreign tribe had ousted Roman customs and authority from a large and fertile district. Was
328
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. c
~°Nieephorw it but another ephemeral revolt or a revolution ? "f°u"d$ a The chief cities opened their gates to him and his Turkoman
p,i ,cipalty.
Alexim dedines to him.
masterful servants without demur or conviction ; and a powerful army of mixed troops was stationed in Nice (henceforth, until the coming of the Crusaders, the headquarters of a rival to the Byzantine Caesar) . The court proposed to send against this new pretender the usual scourge of rebels, Alexius . The emperor had lavished on him and his family the most honourable marks of favour and affection . Isaac, returning lately, 1079, from a prosperous viceroyalty as Duke of Antioch, was created XE,8av1ros, lodged in the palace, and apparently chosen in all but open promulgation as heir-presumptive . His advice was taken, or at least he was officially consulted, in all affairs ; and the star of the servile camarilla waned. Incapable of business, but well-meaning and amiable, Nicephorus III. might have reigned in confidence and security as a constitutional monarch had not the traditions of Byzantine despotism made him the prey and the victim of his valets . - § 7. Alexius, fatigued and distrustful, had lately curbed the raids of the Patzinaks, by turns servants and spoilers of the Balkan district. He put little faith in the imperial favour, or rather the imperial advisers, and declined the commission to overthrow the fifth Nicephorus. As in old times a palaceeunuch is appointed in his place, raised, like Narses under Justinian, from the control of the imperial wardrobe (7rpwyro,0emrc«pcos, a title coveted even by warriors) to the responsible direction of a foreign campaign. To the annoyance of the army, John takes over the command from Alexius, and leads his force to Nice. There he secures Fort George on Lake Asernius, near which Nice is built, and holds a council of war to discuss its future conduct. Curticius (the hero of Calabrya) and George Palxologus, his uncle, . recommend an immediate attack on the Sultan at Dorylaeum . John insists on his sole
i
cg, xn I ?
j
i;
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
829
authority, and drags the army into a distressing Alexim plight, from which he is only rescued by George ~ against Palaeologus . He repays this timely service by black him. ingratitude, and prejudices the emperor's mind The courtagainst the worthiest of his captains . party dared not repeat the experiment ; no further levies were trusted either to a soldier or a civilian ; and Melissenus (astonishing to relate) continued un- West Asia disturbed to divide Hither Asia peaceably with the indVendent and aygre8Turks into the reign of Alexius. So far from acting si e, as a Roman patriot, he was a mere forerunner or jackal, preparing the way for the Turks. When he was removed the delusion was detected ; under cover of a fictitious emperor, Soliman had quietly established his undisputed sway over all Asiatic provinces, from Cilicia to the Hellespont. The capital was fixed at Nice ; the still Greek or Roman towns paid him their tribute, and perhaps hardly regretted the days of Nicephoritzes or Borilas . The Turk never proposes to administer ; he is content to encamp and to enjoy . No violent catastrophe marked the insensible change of government. The "seven churches " and the dead or decaying metropoles of Ionia scarcely marked the gradual shifting from the rule of an emperor to that of a usurper,' and from this again to the control of a Turkish emir dependSo abased was the ing on Soliman the Seljuk. imperial government, or so indifferent to a trifling inconvenience, that the ferry-dues insolently established on the Asiatic side by the half-Roman, halfTurkish power, were hardly resented . Certainly, no steps were taken to remove the oppressive tollbooths, the publicans who filled, or the unnatural alliance which supported them . In this extraordinary atmosphere of tolerance and half-heartedness ended the year io8o ; and we have now reached the climax of our story . ' Could the boundary-line be so accurately drawn, and were not both wearers of the name Nicepborus 1 _
380
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div.. e
Thefnisters § 8. The ministers, long jealous of the Comnenian plot agavnst clan not trouble to disguise their suspicion and Co~hneniama. ' do
dislike. The Empress Mary (wife of two sovereigns) formally adopts Alexius ; and her husband (no doubt at the instigation of the envious cabal) announces a nephew from Synnada as heir to the throne. The choice was by no means bad ; the son of the rich Asiatic noble Theodulus was youthful, accomplished, and vigorous. But the empress saw in Alexius the defender of her son's claims, the little Constantine xiii. At this juncture the ministers decided to get rid of Alexius and his kin, either by casting them as a prey to the Turks or by weaving a charge of attempted treason . Alexius is sent against the barbarians and their renegade '1 Roman " emperor to Cyzicus ; and the ministers work on the fears of the emperor. They point to the troops gradually collecting (at his own orders!) for the campaign, in the streets and barracks of the capital . Alexius contrives to reassure the emperor, who may perhaps have remembered that he was once a soldier and had risen to power as champion of the military interest. The rumour went that the insufferable Borilas himself designed to kill the emperor and seize the throne ; certainly it was agreed that he had marked out the whole Comnenian clan for ruin. Alexius then determined to forestall him. His companions and advisers are, significantly enough, an Armenian Bacouraon (Pacurians) and the nephew of Robert Guiscard, known to the Greeks under the patronymic of Humbertopoulus . On February 114, the later St. Valentine's Day, the party take their momentous step and leave the city. They collect at Tchourlu (T~oupouaov), while their wives and children secure themselves in the safe and venerable asylum of Sophia . But the movement would have been incomplete, perhaps destined to utter failure, without the magic of the name and influence of Caesar John. He had thrown off the monk's cowl,
cx. xii
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1078-1081)
881
and was occupying one of his country-seats in ThefniBterg Thrace. An emissary entreated his sanction and olomna. approval for the enterprise. He starts to join the mutineers, and on the way annexes the treasure of a financial agent of the government and the alliance of a vagrant troop of Hungarians. The principal towns of Thrace (with the strange exception of Adrinople) declare for the insurgents ; and they advance to the capital, encamping at Schiza, within six leagues . The warm appeal of Caesar John and the unselfish affection of Isaac Comnenus enlisted all sympathy for Alexius . Constantine XII . was a tonsured monk, Constantine XI I I . an infant ; and the Caesar, representing the whole Ducas interest, earnestly pleaded for the young champion of imperialism, whose merits had won so infamous a recompense . Isaac, in full sight of the army, invests Alexim . the still reluctant Alexius with the imperial insignia ; invested and these two by this act fix the policy and the succession of Byzantine royalty for a hundred years. Nicephorus V." writes to congratulate Alexius on escaping the perfidious intrigue of miserable slaves, and suggests a division of the empire : but the The fourth Nicenegotiations came to nothing . phorus trembled and lost heart :- the Caesar corrupts the German guard and gains admittance for the whole insurgent army. The entire city is abandoned sack ofthe W and to pillage, but life is spared . Botaneiates, failing in resignation of gr a message to Melissenus for aid, offers to adopt Botanewe8 Alexius and transmit the crown to him, retaining only title and dignity, but surrendering active control . These offers (which could hardly have altered the status of the ineffective prince) came too late. The patriarch urged him to spare Christian bloodshed, and retire in obedience to Heaven's manifest will. The bodyguard still lined the avenues of the palace, and were prepared to resist ; but like Pius IX., the last legitimate Nicephorus decided to abandon his cause. Wrapping his head in his mantle,
332
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Div. c
Sack ofthe and preceded by the scoffing Borilas, he takes the rpaof road to St. Sophia . Removed to the convent of Botanetates Periblept, he receives the tonsure, and on his own confession regretted none of the pleasures or profits of empire but the use of meat, from which his new career debarred him. With the victory of the Comnenian clan begins a new era for the Roman Empire, which at least here we are not prepared to follow . The military caste had triumphed, and a potent family divided out amongst its members the extravagant titles, the steadily dwindling resources, and the real hard work of the empire . The sack of the capital, so bitterly deplored by Alexius and his daughter the historian, marks a real change in motives, ideals, and political aims ; and we are warranted in fixing here the limit . of our survey of the institutions of imperial Rome.
3t
I
PART II ARMENIA AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE EMPIRE (59.0-1120) THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE ARMENIAN ELEMENT
DIVISION A GRADUAL ADMITTANCE (540-740) GENERAL INTRODUCTION
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>i
i
1. UNDER the dynasty of the Herachads the Balkan peninsula ceased to form an effective part of the empire ; but Lesser Asia was recovered and consolidated . The great nursery of warlike princes in the Danubian provinces sent no more champions like Decius or Diocletian, like Constantius and his heirs, or Justinian and his nephew. Africa is lost by the year 700 ; and by 750 the resolute Constantine V. seems to have abandoned all interest in older Rome, and submitted with a strange tameness to the. loss of the Exarchate . The scene of the active and decisive movements, which only find an echo or a reflection on the smaller Byzantine stage, is shifted eastwards and comprises the new Regiments of Asia Minor and the newly risen nation of Armenia . It is a matter of no great importance to decide whether Conon is an Isaurian or a Syrian ; what is of interest is his undoubted connection with the land between the Caucasus and Lake Van . Now the eighth century witnesses a significant revival in the nationalities lying on the Eastern frontier . And the spring of their fresh and energetic vitality may be traced to the stir and commotion which followed the overthrow of the Persian Colossus and the establishment of the militant caliphate about the year 650 .
An Armenian, Artavasdus, contended for the Byzantine throne just a century before the Bagrafid dynasty arose under Ashot I. orb the ruins of the
Interest e : Eastern d a .f Armenia.
336 Interest of eighth Easten~ ROM and
Arme lia.
Early Armeenian
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div . A
Caliphate : and an Arzrunian, Leo V., actually reigned for seven troubled years over the Roman Empire, long before his own family had established them-
f selves in independence in their own country.
The
weakness of the successors of Harun gave a welcome opportunity for revival to the Armenian nationality, and enabled them to preserve a feudal liberty, to play a new and serious part in the politics of the East. The Bagratid dynasty, with the rival family of Arzrunians in Vasparacania (qo8-io8o), will provide two strong Christian principalities on the east of the 1' Roman " Empire down to the very last years of the period we are undertaking. A third fraction indeed, to the west of Lake Van, fell under the Muslim,-the Merwanidae ; and the relations of all three portions of Armenia oscillated between autonomy and vassalage to Byzantium or to Bagdad and his lieutenant at Melitene . All were extinguished together at the close of our epoch (zo8o) ; and only in the mountain-fastnesses of Cilicia, in the safe asylum of Mount Taurus, did there linger on a semblance of Armenian sovereignty, expiring about fifty years before the fall of Constantinople (A.D. i qoo) in the person of Leo VI., a refugee in the Parisian metropolis. Such is a hasty outline of the fortunes of the Armenian provinces from the advent of the « Isaurians" to the accession of Alexius Comnenus .
§ 2. It will be necessary to cast our eyes backward as well as forward if we wish to have a clear notion Arsa~c& and of the place occupied and the part played by this "L'er8i'm °f singular nationality. Armenia owes its renown and Tiridat (c.
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its integrity to the same family that so long bore sway in Parthia, the Arsacidee . In 150 B .C. a Parthian sovereign established his brother there, and the line continued to the reigns of Theodosius II. and Valentinian 111. (15o B.C. to A.D. 430). Such a State, midway between two great empires and often bearing the brunt of their quarrels, would bear a
'
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
t'
337
doubtful allegiance to the courts of Rome and of Early Ctesiphon . It was to Armenia that the pride and -4r"cnian tradition of the Arsacids retired after the triumph history ; and of the Sassanids in the reign of Severus II . (2a6). conversion of There the national or dynastic opposition to the new oo.) ~o' family (or tribe) sustained itself for some six years ; and So.~ we may notice that the kingdom was reconstituted in the latter part of the century by Roman aid, and after a brief hostility under Tiridat accepted the Christian faith and practice. Himself of royal Arsacid descent, Gregory the Illuminator works for the conversion of his people ; and before the great tenth persecution in the Roman Empire (c304 A.D.) Armenia had its Patriarch or Catholicus, and the Church could claim more than half the subjects as believers. Towards the close of the fifth century a division of interests or "spheres of influence" (such as divides Persia to-day between Russia and England) became necessary ; and Theodosius authorised an amicable settlement with Persia ; by which Persarmenia had its Arsacid governor, owning allegiance to the State, and Roman Armenia, a similar native chieftain, owning fealty to Byzantium (c. 400 A .D.). The high-water mark of Roman influence was reached in the reign of Maurice, nearly two hundred years after (c. 600 A.D.), when, as Georgius of .Cyprus clearly shows, a considerable advance of imperial frontier was made in the North and the Euphrates valley. In Persarmenia, indeed, the Arsacids were soon superseded by princes or satraps of Persian birth, who continued for just two centuries (c. q.go-6go A.D.). The disastrous rupture in the orderly succession .Decay of of the empire, and the internecine conflict of the R°"n influHeraclian revival, tired out the two combatants in sth profitless warfare. Armenia in 650 yielded greatly century. to Saracen influence ; and in the loose federalism of the early political system of Islam retained its native princes owning obedience to the caliph . The reign of Justinian II . is memorable for an attempt to _ VOL. II. y
888
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
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Decay of recover independence, or rather to exchange the .ztoman "fl' Arabian suzerainty for a Roman protectorate. But ence in
smith
Armenian
Nonewfor,aity,
obstacle to Union.
,before the close of his first reign (by 695) the country is entirely subjected and Arab emirs replace the suspected native chieftains. Thus the last years of this century witness the loss of the African province and a curtailment of the 11 sphere of Roman influence " in the nearer East. For one hundred years all is confusion and disorder ; and we again take up the records of this 11 ambiguous " people, as Tacitus calls it, in the renewed activity displayed under the Jewish (?) family of Ashod, who in the reign of the third Michael founded a power, which, with numberless vicissitudes and sundry changes of abode, lasts five and a half centuries till the latter days of the Palaeologi (843-1393)-
§ 3. A strange fortune overtook this doubtful land and nation, belonging properly neither to West nor
East, siding with the empire in general Christian belief, yet severed from a full sympathy and communion by an accident or a misunderstanding . For the Armenian Church remained in touch with Orthodoxy for barely a century and a half (30o-450 A.n.). It did not accept the Articles of Chalcedon (45 z A.n.) in the reign of Marcian ; and so great was its detestation of the Nestorian heresy that it distorted some uncertain phrases in this Council's decisions into an acceptance of the hateful « Adoptianism," used language which savoured of Eutychianism (~uuuics, not Evow-ts), and gradually drifted away from the great Establishment into a kind of provincial isolation. (And from this it may be said never to have successfully issued. Evangelised by the Jesuits and protected by the Russian Church and Government, it still preserves its solitude and its independence, and now and again extends tentative offers for reunion to the Protestant sects in Western Europe .) It was a feature of later Persian diplomacy to foster these religious schisms . The supposed Eutychians of
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
339 Armenia, and the followers of Nestorius, found the same favour and protection ; and the advisers of the quite aware of the political value of an Shah were q opposition to Byzantine orthodoxy. It was the first endeavour of Heraclius, warrior and theologian, to revive religious unity in the East, and rally the flagging patriotism of Armenia, Egypt, and Syria in the new crusade (c. 625). His failure belongs rather to the records of religious history than to my present design ; and I am content here merely. to remark the abortive effort, which will be described more fully
Armenian X0''1ebamtioy, obStc~ze to union,
in a later section. But whatever the schism between not to entry the churches and the cleavage between Armenia and ofAnnenian into Roman Byzantine speculation,
nothing hindered the widening service. influence of the Armenian stock on the destinies of the empire . We may hazard the conjecture that in the singularly democratic or purely official society of the capital, this definite title to noble birth gave weight and influence. Plagues had decimated Byzantium in the middle of the sixth and eighth century. An artificial capital, artificially recruited, is exposed to violent changes and vicissitudes . In the reigns of Theodosius II., of Justinian L, of Constantine V., an entirely different population thronged the cities . The official nobility were subject to the same law of sterility and decay, inexorably awaiting comfort and opulence and that secure transmission of hereditary wealth, which was the chief pride (and perhaps the chief danger) of the empire . A primitive society is keenly alive to the claims of birth ; and the Armenians might boast to find among themselves the 11 oldest and most illustrious families of Christendom ." It is no wonder that Asiatic influence eclipsed the moribund traditions of Greece and Rome. The eighth century tells of the internecine conflict between Hellenism, enthroned in the Establishment, and the new Asiatic militarism, which, as the spirit of Cromwell's soldiers, represented a practical and Puritan piety. The newly stirring movement makes itself _
i
340 -Armenian con-ormity, obstacle to union, . not to entry
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nzv . n
felt first perhaps in the revolt of Simbat or Sempad,
under Justinian II .,-corrupted into some resemblance to a native Greek name, as Sabbatios or Symbatios (just as the -titles of Gothic kings
ofArmenian were insensibly accommodated to classic etymology into Roman as Theodoric, Theodatus) . Under Constans III ., " general of Persian birth, Saborios . an " Armeniac subdue Romania ; and had invited the Arabs to Sempad, although a Roman patrician and commander holding the same rank, exchanges his allegiance, and allows Southern Armenia to fall to the Arabs. Armenian 's and
§ 4. We may suppose that the Romanising party emigrated into the empire and the imperial service
from a land overrun by unbelievers. At any rate, 8 weiyns (loo-850) at the influence of Armenia is henceforward continuous Byzantium. and consistent . Armenian birth seems to have been the chief recommendation of the idle and luxurious Vardan or Bardanitzes (Anon . Cod. Coislin .), who reigns as Philippicus (711-713) ; Leo III ., if not a native in descent, possessed strong connection and affinity in Armenia, and his son-in-law, Artavasdus, is a typical Armenian noble. In 790, Alexius Musele, governor of the Armeniac theme, is suspected of conspiring with his mutinous legions, and was flogged, tonsured, and blinded by the order of Constantine VI . These native(?) levies were the determined opposers of the claims of Irene ; and the too dutiful emperor deprived himself of strong Armenian support when he insisted on the recognition of his Greek mother's title . Vardan, another compatriot, rebels against the first Nicephorus, and Arsaber, patrician and quaestor, who revolted in 8o8, belongs to the .same race. Armenia has its first legitimate ruler in Ghevond, who ruled as Leo V. from 813 to 820, son-in-law of Arsaber. And in this connection a citation from Father Chamich's history' should not be omitted 1 St . M. on T.ebeau, vol. xii. 355,409,431-
n
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
841
" In this age, three Armenians were raised at different Armenian times to the imperial throne of the Greeks . Two PretOnders of them, Vardan and Arshavir, only held this lofty and sozere~qw station for a few days. The third, Levond, an (700-850) at Arzrunian reigned seven years. Not long after Byzantium . Prince Manuel, of the Mamigonian tribe, won great renown with the emperor Theophilus for his warlike skill and valour ." This Arzrunian family with which Leo V. claims connection was supposed to have issued from the parricide sons of Esarhaddon, Adrammelech and Sharezer . The Mamigonian Manuel became a member of the Council of Regency during Michael Ill .'s minority ; and it was necessary to support the claims of that extraordinary upstart, Basil "the Macedonian," by appealing to his ancient descent from Armenian royalty. This curious fiction was a concession to the Asiatic and aristocratic prejudice then dominant in Constantinople ; and is the strongest testimony that we possess to the complete seizure of the government in the middle of the ninth century by Armenian personality and tradition . 5. After this short and general survey we shall Summary of examine each period in detail, from the age of conclusions. Justinian to the last years of our allotted span, and even encroach on the Comnenian period, and surpass the limits of the eleventh century. From this inquiry we invite adhesion to the following conclusions : (i) That the Armenians succeeded to the place and functions of the Pannonian or Illyrian sovereigns (25o-678), and became the defenders of the imperial frontier on the East ; (2) that this race, strenuous, prolific, and feudal, formed a compact military party, in whose eyes the prestige of the empire and the survival of Roman culture depended on the generous nourishment of national armies and defence ; (3) that to the scanty and precarious barbarian levies of the time of Belisarius succeeded a native force of provincial militia, recruited in the-
342
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Summary of countries they defended (during the development of " the thematic system, c. 65o-8oo) ; (4) that the vitality of the empire was due not so much to the useful r61e of the civilian prefect and judge (a class almost extinct by 65o), as to the new -vigour and loyal allegiance of the Armenian immigrants and settlers ; (5) that this warrior-class, handing on military skill and valour from father to son, maintained a silent but truceless conflict with Greek orthodoxy, monachism, and the civilians who starved the warchest ; (6) that later Byzantine history becomes an interesting spectacle of the vicissitudes of this contest, and culminates (it may be said) in the scandalous treatment of Romanus IV. (1071) ; (7) that the whole spirit of this invading race was "feudal," that is, attached great weight to descent, family connection, landed possessions, and vassals ; (8) that feudalism infects (or transforms) the Roman institutions, presenting us with the glorious epic of Phocas, Zimisces, and Basil, and the constant pretensions of certain noble families, if not to sovereignty, at least to actual and responsible control ; (9) that, while as a rule nationality and local prejudice vanish in the lofty atmosphere of the throne, the Byzantine monarchs are Armenian in actual birth or unmistakable sympathies ; (io) that the strong armies . of the Eastern frontier are the chief (if not the invariable) arbiters of the succession, and are seen to dictate heirs to a failing, or policy to an incompetent, dynasty, from 700 to the accession of the Comneni1 1 Feudalism implies a union of land-tenure, warlike exercises, and that personal loyalty which attaches the strong to the service of an individual, at a time when the notion of the abstract State or Commonwealth is incomprehensible. Gelzer (inhis "Abstract ofByzantine Imperial History") may indeed complain that under Zimisces (969) we have to note a retrogression of empire and an expansion of feudalism, while the Roman military and civil State takes on a military and aristocratic aspect . But he might have placed this obvious and, significant symptom much earlier. The Pretenders of the ninth century belonged to the new military caste, enriched by ample allotment of vacant land in the east of Lesser Asia.. The throne of the Amorian sovereigns (826-867) is supported by heroes
THE ROMAN EMPIRE-
343
I \'
EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA DOWN TO THE FIRST PERIOD OF JUSTINIAN I. (640 A.D.)
1 . The real centre and interest of this period in Ar mia in the imperial history lies in the East. The connection the new with the West is largely artificial . Justinian recon- of quered the ancient capital, and Leo Ill. lost it ; but these events had little influence on men and society in the East, certainly none upon the political development which we are now attempting to trace.
Never did the city of Constantine look westward ; she preserved, and still maintains to-day, her persistent Orientation . The men who by adoption joined the Roman Commonwealth, and entered into the Roman tradition with eager loyalty, were not Italians, will soon cease even to be Thracians and Illyrians, or even Dardanians and Pannonians of
the hardy Balkan stock of Decius, Diocletian, Valentinian, and the house of Justin . The empire (as we so often have occasion to remark) was specialist and supra-national.
It knew nothing of race or family,
of Asiatic breed and Roman traditions . Nor, again, is it possible for the historian to regret the new anti-centralising and anti-civil tendencies. Great posts became once more almost sovereign, at least vassal, States. The peace-party of menials and officials offered no substitute for an aggressive policy which was also the most prudent course. Praise has been lavished on the civil service of the empire ; yet it is but just to apportion the merit carefully between the two rival departments . The conquests of the feudal or chivalrous party enabled the civilians to enjoy and monopolise the world's riches (96o-1025) for half a century unchallenged . But the war-party alone understood the true needs of the State, and, judging from their actual experience, would not be put off by the real or affected ignorance of a historian like Psellus or a dilettante like Constantine Ducas (ro59-io6q) . The strong arm was still indispensable for the maintenance of law and order, for that civilian procedure which existed nowhere else on earth except in China. There is little sign of mere feudal anarchy and individualism in the great Armenian champions of the empire ; but the official class and the clergy hated and feared them . Feudalism gave the empire a long respite and a glorious sunset ; and it was not the fault of the Comneni, but of the age, that they became the unwilling destroyers of the old Roman system .
894~ Arrmmia in the new . of Rome.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
and at this time little of creed or religion-for the ministers and historians of Justinian are dubious Christians-and the great code is singularly free from all traces of Christian influence . Work had to be done, and it mattered little who performed it. But it must be well done ; continuous training, and a sort of school-of law, of arms, or of letters-became the rule. The army-corps in the anarchy of a35285 kept alive the memories of Roman discipline, a certain patriotic simplicity, and some rough rules of honour . Constantine's civil service, and the punctilious ranks and duties of the court, had inculcated a definite and immobile routine . The growing demand for central supervision resulted in a body of civilians without initiative, but singularly faithful to a corporate spirit which dictated all their phrases and acts. The ecclesiastical caste naturally existed as a thing apart, and drew to itself those who were excluded from the other branches of State service . The unhappy curial colleges were kept alive and compact not merely by direct and tyrannical force, but by the whole tendency of a specialising age. The military caste (of which Justinian, perhaps not unwisely, showed some distrust) formed another welltrained corps, solid and continuous in method, precise in promotion . Who are the new actors on the scene? Who, in the dearth of recruits or violent depopulation of the empire, will take up the different posts as representatives of the imperial tradition ? It will be found that at least in one department of State the land of Armenia is closely concerned . From the time of Justinian onwards, the best soldiers of the empire will be Armenians . Usurpers and pretenders, too, will belong to the same race, and when the throne is vacant there will seldom be wanting an Armenian candidate . The customs and beliefs of this remote country will exercise the strongest influence on " Rome." Here will be learned the lessons of defence from a feudal military caste
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
345
which had long been extinct within the borders of Armenia in the empire . There will enter into Roman life a t "'~"' expert service
`
foreign element not to be gainsaid, which will take of Rome. the place of the Teutons, Heruls, and Gepids who had once formed the heart of the Roman armies. There will be witnessed a silent but resolute duel between the Hellenic spirit, now orthodox-Christian, and the simpler Protestantism of the Armenian mountaineers . The eighth and ninth centuries will be the chief scene of this conflict ; the attempt of Iconoclasm to revert to a religious practice and belief, simpler and more Roman . From Armenia came also (i) the tendency to hereditary succession in the imperial title, and in the great feudal estates of Asia Minor ; (2) the strong military and aggressive spirit which awoke in the Basilian house the fires of old Roman conquest ; and (g) that strangely un-Roman principle of the Shogunate that would reserve the chief dignity to a certain family, but deliver effective control to a colleague or recognised generalissimo. The competition for this latter post, not to be settled but by the sword, will lead to that clan-rivalry of warlike families which issues in the victory of the Comneni . And it is here I have ventured to place the extinction of the genuine imperial tradition . It is my present purpose to inquire into this gradual admission of Armenians into the armies and society of « Rome" ; to trace in the tedious wars with Persia the real cause of the futile and inconclusive strife ; and to examine the part played by this new nationality in the East, that succeeded to the championship of the empire which was undertaken in the West by the Teutonic race.
2 . The turning-point in the relations of Armenia Christianity, and Rome was the conversion of King Tiridat in source both. of alliance
the third century . In this acceptance of the Christian and of faith Armenia took the lead, and set an example e8tran9ementwhich Rome under Constantine was not slow to follow . It is undoubted that this community of
346
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
ohrtdiaaity,, of~iame and of estrangement .
creed brought the country into closer connection with the Romans, and severed it from its natural allies and neighbours . Yet the peculiar form finally taken by Armenian Christianity served rather to isolate than to bring their Church into a full Christian fellowship . Especially under Heraclius are the separatist tendencies of all Eastern Christians apparent. Neither Syria nor Egypt nor Armenia recognised the established church of the capital with its Hellenic orthodoxy ; and it was disunion and jealousy between these branches that admitted the infidels so easily. Still, the immigration of the warrior class, and the constant interference of Rome in Armenian affairs, were largely due to this common belief. The Arsacid Christian monarchy confronted the new Sassanid dynasty, predominant since 226 in Persia, a Magian revival, and entirely hostile to the Arsacid house . The extension of Persian influence implied the propaganda of fire-worship and the persecution of converts to. the Gospel, sometimes even of native and hereditary Christians. These were thrown into the arms of Rome ; and Armenia was an occasional casus belli, and a constant source of suspicion and disquiet between the two empires, as will readily be seen in the ensuing sketch . Thus religion partly united and partly severed this debatable country from the body of the empire . But in spite of the curious vassaldom and imperial investiture under early Caesars, the real intercourse did not begin until both powers had adopted a' common religious belief . To make clear the character of this preponderating influence on the Eastern ' world, I shall have to go back to very primitive times to account for the peculiar features of Armenian society and civilisation .
^
Origin and ' § 3. Various modern writers (amongst others Wiearty history lamowitz-Mollendorff) refer the origin of this people a,the
niams.
to a great Phrygio-Thracian immigration from the West. The rough ~~ Dorians " had ousted an earlier
.
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t THE ROMAN EMPIRE
`"
347
culture, and established themselves in its place ; Otttin anal survivors who escaped serfdom travelled eastwards. "~htory But the Phrygio-Thracian tribes went farther, and Armenians . became the ancestors of the Armenian race.' Their own traditions, wildly improbable as history, are curiously typical of their native belief ; they sprang from Haik, son of Thargamus-the Togarmah of Scripture, grandson of Noah, and were thus Iapetids, their earliest indigenous dynasty being certainly traced to JaphetQ But two chief clans boasted of a singular and perhaps discreditable descent ; from the intercourse of David and Bathsheba, as yet illicit, or from the parricides of Sennacherib, Adrammelech and Sharezer, '1 who fled into the land of Armenia " after their father's murder . Clan-feeling, intense pride in families developing into tribal chieftaincy, and finally into feudal principality, such is the chief note of Armenian society . And it is little wonder that in such an assembly of equal tribes no one family should have attained supremacy ; in a proud and feudal community a foreign dynasty must rule, because no one single member will submit to an equal. The difficulties as well as the vitality of the Armenian race will be due to strong, jealous, and exclusive pride. It has a sense of nationality unknown in the artificial " Roman " commonwealth, which asked no questions about birth. It was ruled by turbulent nobles, full of vigour and public spirit ; whereas Rome, since the adoption of an imperial government, had set itself to weaken the pride of caste and the power of families, substituting for claims of descent an 1 The Armenians were not without affinity to the Phrygians in the central plateau of Asia Minor, and these again are allied to the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia. These peoples are non-Oriental in their character and culture ; and Armenian history is the struggle of an outpost of the West. 2 The Seljukian Turks are equally confident of their origin from the scriptural patriarchs. The Ghuss (OZ~a) tribe traced back to Ghuss, son or grandson of Japhet (Yafeth), son of Noah (Nuh). The enemies of the
Ghussidw believed that this early hero had stolen the rain-stoma, whichTurk, also a son of Japhet, inherited from his father. -
.
$.48 Origin and Athe
ians.
Asoy"&
CONSTITIMONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. A
official hierarchy where personal cleverness went for
everything. It is easy to foresee the result of the fusion of the two. The later period of Roman history is the record of a long contest : on the one hand, the ministry of isolated instruments, the eunuchcelibate or the priest ; on the other, the closely knit family : the ideal state and the feudal clan. Victory will lie with the more natural association ; the last two centuries before Alexius are just the chronicle of notable generations, not merely on the throne, but in the military class, in the great land-holding section which was now refusing to be a mere payer of taxes.
As late as the accomplished Orientalist, Saint Martin, the old legend of Semiramis, her visit, conquest, and death in Armenia had to be fitted in somehow. Instead, modern research gives us the historic kingdom of Urartu, round about Lake Van, wresting provinces from Assyria during the throes of revolution (c. 750 B.C.) ; Tiglath Pileser marching in reprisal against Sarduris II. at the head of a powerful confederacy, and defeating (744), with a capture of 73,000 prisoners ; ten years later assaulting Turushpa, Sarduris' capital city on Lake Van ; Rusas, the new King of Ur, again, under Sargon, stirring up the Hittite neighbours to rivalry (716, 715), and even sowing sedition in the northern provinces of Assyria ; seeing his allies one by one reduced, flying to impenetrable mountain-plateaux in Armenia, and at last falling on his sword in despair. This Haikian (or earliest native) dynasty was not without its mythical or actual glory . Tigranes (Dikran) is the equal ally of Cyrus, as Barvir had revolted against Assurbanipal .i It was i A general summary of chief events : Assault of Assyria under Tzkl. Pil. I. begins iwo. Shalmanezer II. first to plan annexation, 860, and Arame's dynasty ends . Sarduris I. begins anew house, and resists Assyria, 850-830. Shalm . III. makes six ineffectual expeditions, c. 780. Argistis and Sarduris II. continue to humble Assyria and annex territory. Tigl. Pil. III. curbs, and reduces to old limits, c. 735. Argistis II.. reduced to a small district round Lake Van..
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (380-1 s.c.)
-
849
brought to a close only by the irresistible march of The Arnew Alexander (328). Subject to the Seleucid monarchy, too15a into rebellion and secured a short A Armenia broke .D.). period of autonomy (c. 318-285 B.C.), and just a century later declared its independence of Antiochus the Great under its governor Artaxias (19o). Fifty years later again, the Parthian sovereign put his brother Val-arsaces on the throne, and the great Arsacid dynasty begins in the latter branch, which far outlasts the better -known house of Persia . Tigranes, son-in-law of Mithradates of Pontus, reigns over Syria, Greater and Lesser Armenia, and some Parthian provinces ; is entangled in the quarrel with Rome (which first brings the two powers into connection) ; and is allowed by Pompey, the capable reorganiser of the East, to retain the North and Centre, resigning to his son the accretions in the South-west, Sophen& and Gorduen6 . About the middle of the first century B.C. Armenia came into collision with the curiously assorted sovereigns of Egypt ; Artavasdus, defeated and taken to Alexandria by Antony, is put to death by Cleopatra in 3o B.C. Then ensued a time of feudal anarchy, one hundred and seventy princely families fighting with each other and raising up (as Tacitus tells us in Annals," ii.) some fitful shadow-kings in rapid succession . Germanicus solemnly invests one with the diadem at Artaxata in A.D . 117 ; and already the country is more akin to Rome than to Parthia nimium vicana. Yet it was ready enough to give welcome to the cast-out Arsacid Artaban (possibly on account of his Roman education as well as his undoubted lineage). Under Nero and Vespasian, Erovant 1. (c. 6o-8o), Arsacid on the female side, unites Armenia and builds two cities, Erovantoshad and Pakaran ; and Ardashir (of a more legitimate Arsacid line) appears later under the alternate suzerainty of Rome and Parthia, scarcely recognisable in the historians as Exedarus.
850
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Pomaw anal 4. In` the first quarter of the third century A.D ., Prmmisa an the northern branch of the Arsacids had been .more ~rmeyai :
indepenlenm powerful than the southern. Chosroes the Great of Armenia takes up arms on behalf of his cousins against the Sassanids (2a6) ; but on his murder by a renegade member of his own clan . Armenia passed under the victor's yoke (25o), easily yielding to foreign sway owing to its feudal distractions . Tiridat of the ousted line, son of Chosroes, flies to Rome, common asylum, like Paris to-day, for displaced monarchs ; and the burlesque Augustan historians of this period say nothing to the point on an event so pregnant with grave issues . It was perhaps this restoration to his father's throne by Roman help that explains the extreme bitterness of Sapor against the empire ; the captivity and death of Valerian . The new king, at first, like Decius and Aurelian, a persecutor of the Christians, meets Gregory the Illuminator, national hero of the story of Armenian evangelisation . The saint cures the king, and converts the people. For just a century onwards, until the "first partition" under Theodosius (385), Armenia is a scene of perpetual conflict between Rome and the Sassanids . It cost the lives of two emperors, Valerian and Julian (z61, 363) ; and Jovian, after the latter's death, has to purchase a safe retreat by the disgraceful surrender of five provinces beyond the Euphrates, with the important and thoroughly Roman frontier-towns, Nisibis and Singara, and the fertile lands of Arzanene and Gorduene . The treaty of Theodosius definitely ceded all fanciful or legitimate rights over Eastern or Greater Armenia, and incorporated Lesser Armenia into the empire (385). But neither province received an alien viceroy ; in both a scion of the Arsacids was set up as a governor or vassal-prince ; Arsaces III. in Roman, Chosroes III . in Pers Armenia, as it is henceforth habitually called. From this year may be dated the gradual infiltration of the Armenian
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (225-440)
351
race into Roman territory, expelled by religious in- Romans and tolerance or encouraged by the military prizes of pe''in Armenia
the empire . The century (4oo-soo) from Arcadius to Anastasius passed without any protracted warfare between the two great powers ; and we are prepared to accept the story that Arcadius begged Isdigerd (succ. c. 400) to become tutor and guardian to his son, in spite of Agathias' denial ; did not Heraclius appeal in like manner to the chivalrous feeling of the Avar Khan, when he left young HeracliusConstantine as regent in a capital almost denuded of garrison? Did not Cabades propose in vain to the prosaic Justin I. that he should adopt Chosroes, and did not the refusal precipitate the war, long preparing, between the two rivals ? Armenia, 11 perpetual source of annoyance " (as Bury rightly calls it), was undoubtedly the cause of the brief war under Theodosius II . (420-1) . It was the old story ; Varanes II. had attempted to proselytise Persarmenia, and had begun a persecution of Christians. Nothing happened of any consequence ; it rarely did in these interminable and purposeless wars on the Euphrates. Peace for a hundred years was finally proclaimed by the optimistic diplomats of the two kingdoms (422). In 428 the government of Persarmenia was altered ; instead of a native prince, a Persian governor or Martzban was sent. It is possible to explain this in two ways ; (i) either (as Bury supposes) the Armenians begged the king to send a polite foreigner in place of an unpopular member of the old royal line (a request by no means uncommon or unnatural) ; or (2) the tyrannical sovereign extinguished the last embers of independence by annexing on the same footing as all other Persian provinces . Isdigerd II. (440) is very anxious to convert Armenia to the Zoroastrian faith, but meets with no success, chiefly owing to the staunchness of the Mamigonian clan (a notable house throughout Armenian history, and, if rumour may
indepeutmee emtinyuished (384
The reiigiow ~~ ~o~ .
$52
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nzv. A
The refgiom be believed, deriving descent from a Chinese outlaw and immigrant of the dispossessed Han dynasty!)' Balas, the next Sassanid, wisely gave back liberty of conscience and worship in Armenia, and restored the status to that of vassal-ally ; Vahan (Baavv9) the Mamigonian is nYade prince-governor, and the step , taken in 428 (whatever its significance) reversed . Balas died in 487, four years before Zeno the Isaurian, bequeathing peace to the rival empires and internal contentment to Armenia . oabades the § 5. Plato's dream and prayer has rarely been SOCW&t realised or granted ; a philosopher-king is happily renews the war wtth a rarity, and invariably a disappointment. Neither Marcus nor Julian could encourage (by their example or success) the exercise of reflection upon a throne ; for while their virtues were their own, their failures may be distinctly traced to their creeds . But it is recorded of one Roman emperor and one Sassanid king that they desired to put in practice the theories laid down in Plato's ideal commonwealth . Gallienus was prepared to assent to Plotinus' request for the loan of a ruinous Italian city, that a model community, like the Quakers or Oneidists, might be tested . Cabades, the new king of Persia, fell under the influence of a convinced and earnest Socialist, a strange and repulsive amalgam of the Socrates and the Thrasymachus of the "Republic ." He bears a curious resemblance to a certain Chinese statesman, Waganchi, who likewise converted a despot, and received license to put his views in force over the vast and silent population. This alliance of despotism with Socialist visions is therefore no novelty ; indeed it is perhaps the only expedient by 1 Colonies of Chinese are by no means unknown in Armenia. Was the famous Georgian royal family Chinese in origin? About 250 A.D ., when the Goths, sweeping Europe, were about to annihilate Decius and his army, comes into the western part of Asia a Han of royal descent ; in 260, Tiridates gives him the province or district of Taron, of which mention will be frequent. His name was Mam-kon, and he became the head of the Mamigonian clan.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (440-500)
353
which these views can ever be imposed on mankind, Cabadw the in themselves curiously unsatisfying to every human s1~ulist renews the
instinct. Men are neither born equal, nor do they war with believe themselves to be so ; and it is only under a -P-owdespotism where all are alike slaves, that the automatism and docility, requisite for the Socialistic
order, can be found . Cabades, carefully preserving his own autocracy, like Frederic of Prussia or Joseph II ., posed as the enlightened foe of privilege, the apostle of Liberalism . "Women and property must be held in common ; so-called 'crimes' are merely the artificial creation of an unjust society ; and right and wrong lie elsewhere than in the conventional standard ." The nobles, about the close of the century, united to depose a monarch holding such views, and left him ample leisure to enjoy a practical application of his own tenets . Restored (not unlike Justinian 11 . two centuries after) by the aid of the Huns to his "unequal" and privileged rank (5oo), he showed more caution, reserved his free-thought and anarchic dreams for private, and perhaps seized with eagerness an occasion for renewing the Roman war. The pretext was the arrears in the Roman subsidy, promised for the joint defence of the Caspian gates or passes of Caucasus . Tradition made out that Cabades was offended, because the prudent old money-lender Anastasius refused a loan, intended to pay off his dangerous " Ephthalite " allies . At any rate, in 502, eighty years after the hundred years' peace, hostilities broke out ; and Persia was soon in possession of the cities of the march-land, Martyropolis, Theodosiopolis, and Amida. Competent authorities believe (and I am content to accept their judgment) that in the next ensuing three years of war the Roman side was at a disadvantage, chiefly owing to the jealous policy of dividing the supreme command . Still, Celer the Illyrian, magister offsciorum (why not militum ?) achieved some success in Arzanene and recovered VOL. II .
i
554
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Cabadu the
;
the fortress of Amida ; while in 507 Anastasius built the great citadel Dara on the site of a tiny village. renew the war with (We may perhaps here notice the last Roman chainR°"~~ pions from the Balkans. We have this Illyrian ; twenty years later we find Belisarius in command in Persia, a Slav from " Germania," a Teutonic colony in Illyricum ; nearly forty years later (544) we find in an Eastern command Nazares from Illyria, -rivv ev AXupi0' o-'rpa~ruvTWV apX(ow. But in spite of Heruls and Gepids in the hasty levies of the famous general, the day for Goths or Teutons is over in the Eastern empire . We shall read of no more Thracians, Dacians, or Dardanians ; the house of Justin, extinct in 578, is succeeded by an Asiatic, Maurice the Cappadocian, from Arabissus, almost within Lesser Armenia. So on the palace-guard of sturdy Thracians have followed levies of strange Isaurians and Armenians, who to the number of nearly 400o keep watch in Justinian's palace .') Feudal policy § 6. It was Justin I., about Sao, who initiated or of Jwtin, rather revived the policy of welcoming ethnic kings 520, and as vassals under the suzerainty of the empire ;, Tzath, eastern campaigm of king of the Lazi of Colchis, being received under Belisarius.
its protection, after paying a kind of feudal homage. Persia found a new motive for war in this interference with her natural allies or subjects ; under Justinian I. a great army 30,000 strong invaded and ravaged Mesopotamia, while Belisarius, now appearing for the first time, suffered a defeat. In 5 2q Persians, with their Saracen ally Alamundarus, plunder the country up to Antioch ; and Belisarius in the Roman reprisals of the ensuing year wins his first laurels at Dara,notable as the first defeat of the Persians for many years . The new emperor had started his Eastern policy by appointing a magister militum for Armenia (o--rpa-rnaai"s) ; Sittas, husband of Theodora's sister, Comito, held the office, but in 530 Dorotheus was 1 Though when the dignity was sold to peaceable but conceited civilians, the guard was found to exist only on paper.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (500-540)
355
acting as his lieutenant . Nor was Justinian backward in securing other loyal and gratuitous allies for the frontier ; he gave the title of patricius (as Anastasius
Feudal polky Justin, of 5'0, and
eastern camto Clovis) to Arethas (Harith), king of the Ghassanid P*m of Bedawins and ancestor (?) of Emperor Nicephorus Beluarius. I' (802-811). This chieftain continued a faithful ally
of Rome during a long reign (530-572), as a contemporary of Chosroes (530-579) . Once more Persians and Alamundar raid in 531, and after the doubtful result of the battle of Callinicum, Belisarius was recalled ; it is difficult to say whether justly . For clearly the suspicious policy of divided command thwarted any united action . Mundus the Gepid succeeds him ; and the new king Chosroes is quite content to make an Endless Peace, while the subsidy (ii,ooo lbs. of gold) is faithfully promised on the part of Rome for the defence of the Caucasian passes . But the brilliant successes of Justinian's early years, over faction at home and Goth and Vandal abroad, roused Chosroes' envious fear (54o). The Gothic king Vitiges sent envoys to the Persian court to implore help against the common danger, the universal autocrat ; and the two distant wars have an appreciable influence on each other. The despairing struggle of Gothic freedom is lengthened out by the diversion of troops to the East ; it is hard to say in which quarter the efforts of Rome's « only general " were the more needed . 7. It is possible to trace to the fiscal system of came of Rome the reaction of the middle period (5q.0-550) which set back the triumphs of Justinian in East and failure aid* and West. Alexander the Logothete estranged loyal Italy W-t : f8cal and let in the Goths again ; Armenia is found de-8`' nouncing the exactions of the collectors, and professing her willingness to acknowledge Chosroes. It does not become one who lives under the perils of a democratic budget and the costliness of popular government to speak hastily of Roman imperial finance . Where we have accurate figures the amount would -
356 Cause of in's failure in fitilure
East and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
not seem excessive ; but it is clear that the passage from the intermittent suzerainty of barbarian king or
even Sassanid to an expensive system of centralised officialism must seem vexatious and oppressive. It would be mere impertinence for any modern writer in a " free" State to blame the empire (or censure a 11 despotic " form of rule for showing the natural and inevitable tendency of civilised society ; namely, to centre in the State all the resources of citizens, all the springs of action, all the natural riches of the country . The Roman Empire in this sixth century was absolutely modern, and indeed democratic in tone and attitude ; it overrated its strength, and undertook the colossal burden which mischievous dreamers to-day would have us transfer from collective shoulders to an irresponsible centre . It multiplied its duties and functionaries : the subject class paid. Italy, under the mild control of Gothic king or the benevolent pauperism of the Holy See, was Armenia, a ill-prepared for the new demands . repeat), regarded society (as we must again feudal as an contribution to imperial needs even a modest Amazaspes, the Roman imposition and a disgrace . governor, was slain by Acacius, and such was the Roman weakness or preoccupation' elsewhere, that he was allowed to succeed his victim . But the demagogue in responsible office is a curious spectacle (as we may learn from Sardou's Rabagas). Money had to be collected, and the indignant and protesting Acacius was now the collector ; he too was killed, and Sittas, sent on a message of conciliation, shares the same fate. Armenia appeals to Chosroes for help ; and could point to the encroachments of Rome, as proof of a real danger to Persia ; for Justinian had reduced the wild Pontic tribe of the Tzanni and had set a dux over the military forces of Lazica . For the next few years the real centre of the eastern cyclone lies in this remote kingdom . The details of this Lazic war, told with leisured
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (500-540)
357
and scholarly grace by Agathias, passed over with cause of weariness by Gibbon, retold with redundant minute- J'tfntian's ness by Lebeau, and again with critical judgment Eaa8t and by Bury,-need not detain us now. Like most West : fieal episodes in the long feud of Rome and Parthia, 8yStem' it has no conclusion, no meaning at first sight ; a mere desultory skirmish over a 1' sphere of influence " claimed simultaneously by two great powers. Yet grave interests were at stake . It was a part of the great imperialist policy of Justinian to secure vassals and allies on the outskirts of the realm . His uncle had set the example ; and perhaps the astute nephew had secretly inspired. The friendship of the Lazic king would secure Roman Armenia and act as a set-off to Persian influence . Justinian was penurious in the extreme of the lives of his citizen-soldiers, of the number of troops on a foreign expedition, of the initiative or responsibility entrusted to individual commanders. He welcomed gladly any substitute for his own dear troops or suspected generals. The Lazi, the Tzans, the Apsilians become dependent on the empire ; chieftains of Herul and Hun are baptized, the emperor, as it were, standing sponsor ; the Caucasian Abasgi and the Nobadae are converted, and to complete the isolation of Persia, bishops and clergy are sent to the Axumites . The king of Iberia comes to the capital and is received with rich gifts by Justinian and Theodora. The spread of Christianity was part of Justinian's imperialism : he was pope as well as Caesar. II RELATIONS OF ROME AND ARMENIA FROM JUSTINIAN TO HERACLIUS (640-620)
l . Such a policy of Imperialism, flattering to these remote princes allied to the majesty of Rome, bore immediate fruit. An Army List of Justinian's later years would display in a striking manner the
Loyaa Sertrice of-4rmlia theempire in and Italy.
358
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. a
Loyal service predominance of Armenians. In 540, the garrison of Armenia of Sura on the Euphrates is under an Armenian to theempire
in the East and Italy-
commandant ; so too with the fleet of Thrace two years later. Phazas the Iberian prince has an important post in the Eastern armies ; he is nephew of Peranes, the son of the Iberian king Gourgenes, at this time a refugee at Constantinople (in whose name it is difficult to avoid tracing the later name of the inland Caucasian country). In the same year (542) Belisarius sent on a mission in the East Adolius, son of the assassin Acacius ; and we wonder that Armenian families should have given up their own names and adopted the weak quadrisyllables of the later empire . In 543, when Chosroes thought of attacking the Roman province by way of Persarmenia, we find in the Roman army, 30,000 strong, Narses of the Camsar clan, and Isaac, brother of Adolius.l In the familiar weakness of the Roman command, the two confederate generals have little chance ; Narses is killed in battle, and Peranes the Iberian seeking to ravage Taron (Tapauvcov Xa'pta), on south and west of Lake Van, has to return from a successful foray on news of the defeat.-The result of the confederacy of East and West against Rome is evident when the Lazic troubles begin (545). The costly system of frontier forts, Martyropolis, Satala, Sebast&, Colonia, and others, overtaxed Justinian's treasury, and an expensive restoration relaxed the vigour of the Italian war. But the emperor was perhaps more than indemnified by the loyal service of Armenians far from their homes. Isaac an Armenian, of Camsar and Arsacid families, brother of Narses 1 It is at this point that we may notice the emphatic witness of Procopius to the prosperous state of Armenia under Persian sway ; Dovin, or Do6flcos, the capital, is eight days' journey from Theodosiopolis (Arzeroum), and stands in a smiling and fertile plain, covered with thriving villages at short intervals on a high-road busy with mercantile traffic between India and China and the West . Dovin is near the site of ancient Artaxata and lies north of the Araxes : it maintained its dignity as the capital for eight hundred years.
I
. r
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-620)
359
(who fell fighting in the East) ; Gitacius with a small Loyal service band of Armenian fellow-countrymen, « who knew t p~e : nothing but his native tongue" (as Procopius tells us) ; inthee the East Pacurius, grandson of Gourgenes, the Iberian ex-king, and Italy. and son of Peranes ; Varazes with a little cohort of eighty ; and Phazas, cousin of Pacurius, already seen in Roman service in 542 ;-such are the Oriental officers in Italy.-But we must turn once more to The Vassal the East (549) and the Lazic entanglement . Gubazes Lazio and
the king is the son of a "Roman " wife ; it being mb4nfeudaa long-established custom (e'K waaalou) for the Lazic tion. dynasty to accept honorary posts in the imperial
palace and to marry with the daughters of senators on the emperor's choice or approval. It is quite possible that Gubazes may have actually served in person as a Silentiarius ; though in a later age similar posts, as that of Curopalat, were purely titular and implied no duties. Indeed, though he had been for long a vassal of Persia, he demanded, naively enough, the payment of arrears of salary as Usher of the Palace since his accession to the throne! For the Persian yoke was unpopular (oVK avToyvwlcovouvrer, Procop.) ; and when Chosroes tried to murder Gubazes, the country flung itself into the arms of Rome. Mermeroes a Persian, forced to retire, begins tedious intrigue (551) against the Romans ; and until 555 there are ceaseless and indecisive hostilities.-We may notice here the subinfeudation then prevalent ; the little peoples of Scymnia and Swania, in the interior of the Caucasus, are subject to the Lazic king, but are governed by native princes bound to homage (aPX0VTes . . . Tiov duoe8v(6) . When the tribal headship is vacant, word is sent to the Lazic king, who is then empowered by the Roman emperor to invest whom he will, provided it be one of the same tribe. It is clear that the ascending hierarchy of feudal obligation was well known to the Eastern peoples of the sixth century. -
t E360 Armenian vakar in A, Erica : ,durst Armenian plot : recall and conit
Artaban
CONSTITU'T'IONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
§ 2. Meantime, Armenian bravery had not been without employment in Africa. Here, as in Italy, the first rapid successes had been followed by disastrous reaction . In 543 we find the two sons of John the Arsacid despatched, John and Artaban ; and this
family would seem to have passed into the imperial service when Arzanen6 had thrown off the Persian yoke and surrendered to Rome. John was soon killed by the mutinous Moors ; but for Artaban was reserved a romantic and troubled career . With his nephew Gregoras and Ardashir (Artaxerxes) he joins, or pretends to join, the curious rebellion of Gontharis the Tupavvos in Carthage . But seizing a fit moment they murder the rebel and his friends, and shout the loyal salutations to Justinian . As a reward of this service Artaban is allowed to leave his 'post and return to the capital, lured by the fascinating Prejecta, a member of the imperial family. But disappointed passion or ambition made him a conspirator (548). Theodora, finding that he is already married, disposes otherwise of Prejecta, and forces him to take back his earlier and rejected spouse, also of Arsacian descent (ouo(pvao9) . Artabanus in high dudgeon listened to the murmurs of a youthful kinsman, Arsaces, who had been publicly whipped and paraded through the streets on a camel for treasonable correspondence with the Persian court. Smarting with the disgrace, Arsaces dwelt lightly on his own wrongs, but dilated rather on national grievances, the unhappy condition of those Armenians who fell a prey to the Roman tax-gatherer. They decide to assassinate Justinian ; the plot is discovered ; and the mild emperor is content with despoiling Artaban of his dignity and confining his impetuous relatives within the palace for a time. I would throw no doubts on the mercifulness of an untiring prince and a good man ; but we may well suppose that a fear of offending the powerful Armenian contingent would reinforce the "imperial clem-
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-620)
361
ency,"---one of the most glorious and truthful titles Arian in use for the later Caesars : six years later (554) valour in
Africa : first " Chanoranges," a member of the conspiracy (perhaps A,.wzian
a title of honour at the Persian court), would be plot : recall found serving in Italy against Buccelin's marauders. pn~~of Such was the first Armenian plot against the life Artaban and majesty of an emperor ; it will not be the last. (548)' Generally devoted, like the Swiss, in their impersonal attachment to the empire, and displaying more manly
qualities than any desire for intrigue, the Armenians on occasion can become dangerous competitors for the sovereign dignity. In the next century we shall have the brief and obscure "tyranny " of Mejej or Mizizius (668), and with increasing frequency candidates will propose themselves for the purple : until in one century there are few pretenders who are not of this race, and in the next an entire dynasty will be Armenian in origin and sympathies . We may complete here the record of the empire's debt to Armenians on the African shore. Artaban's own successor was probably a fellow-countrymen, John Troglita, the hero of the epic of Cresconius Corippus. Now John's brother is a certain Pappus or Bab, a name common among Armenians, and especially with the clan of Arsacids . He was the son and the husband of a princess ; his wife "filia regis erat ; mater quoque falia regis" ; and his own Christian name, John, is a favourite with the Armenians, who have ever held in especial veneration the memory of the Precursor, " Karabied." Such was the tale of Armenian prowess in Africa .
3. Again turning to the East, John Guzes is very Persarmenia valiant at the siege of Petra in 55o, and loses his life under~ there the next year in a similar assault . In 55 i, too, persecution Aratius appears (Hrahad), Arsacid and Camsar, in loins the control of Armenian and Illyrian troops. Arme- empire. nians command the punitive expedition which exacted vengeance from Rome's seditious subjects in the Caucasus, the Misimians, and the disorderly Tzanni
.362
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
"niv. n
Peraarmenia of Pontus ; the army obeyed Varazan the Armenian and Pharsantes the Colchian, one who held the office religious
persecution i0im the empire.
of master of the troops in the Lazic court (,"a'yta-Tpos -rive ev ava,~ -rayua--Wv) . This title, like those of patrician and curofialat, will meet us often, and sometimes in curious disguises, till the close of our history and the subjugation of the free Christian kingdoms between the Black and Caspian Seas .-In 562, another sonorous title was invented for the short and suspicious armistice between the two powers ; this time the peace is not "endless " or " for a century," but « for fifty years." Menander gives with his usual minuteness the exact terms of a compact so soon to be violated .-Justin II . (565-578), who showed an equal desire to lighten the subjects' burden and to raise the dignity of Rome, assumed a loftier tone towards the Sassanid than Justinian, mild but persistent, had ever adopted. Once again the northern lands, ambigua gens mortalium, as Tacitus well styles them, supplied an incentive to war. While Swania, to the great annoyance of the emperor, decides for union with Persia after a kind of plebiscite, like Rome 0n Garibaldi s entrance m 1870 ; Persarmenia, on the other hand, begged to be transferred to the Christian power. This country, once Great Armenia, had been surrendered, if we may trust the solitary evidence of Evagrius, by Philippus (244), after the murder of Gordian III., ;rp'v °Pcvceaiocs ica7rjicoos ; and if this be true, it forms doubtless an episode in the obscure revolutions which placed Tiridat on the throne . Definitely recognised as Persian by Theodosius, it had taken little part in the recent wars, and since the reign of Justin I . at New Rome (518) had been under the benevolent rule of Mejej (the later Greek MVKcos), a Gnounian prince . He repaired the mischief of the past, paid regular tribute, saw that the Christian faith and practice were respected, and taught Armenians to forget their light vassalage by securing a greater prosperity than in the days of
y
.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-69,0)
363
independence, both in numbers and rich commerce with India. He remained in charge for thirty years (5 18-5 48) ; but Chosroes did not give the succession to a native Christian prince but to a Zoroastrian . The church was persecuted : magians were introduced. for a subtle or violent propaganda ; fire-temples were built, even in the especially loyal Reschdounian canton . Envoys were sent (532) to remonstrate with the Persian king, and to demand
the strict terms of the compact between King Valasch (or Balas) and Prince Vahan the Mamigonian . Chosroes, alarmed at the Gothic successes of Rome, was prepared to conciliate ; and Ten-Shahpour (cf. later name Ten-Chosroes, TaAXoa"jPW) was recalled . Veshnas-Varanes (552-558) and Varazdat (558564) succeed ; and Souren follows them, a member of the Surenian family, a branch of the Arsacids, to whom Theophylact gives the title rcatua-rapXj7s -r7t 'AP,uevuov woXtTetas (the Armenian Goghmanagao. Once more persecution became a settled policy ; and Vartan, head of the Mamigonians, set himself forward as the leader of a revolt, his patriotic feelings roused by a private wrong,-the murder of his brother Manuel by Surena . He was distinguished in birth as in military skill, wpou'Xcvv yevet, a cw sa7rECpia crTpa7Tyucj-just those characteristics to be expected in a race which forced a chivalrous feudalism upon the reluctant institutions of imperial Rome. The patriarch Moses II . leads a rebellion at Dovin, the record of which is strangely preserved to us by Gregory of Tours. Vartan and Vard (Bardas) complete the attack ; Dovin is taken ; Surena killed ; and by the end of March 57 i Persian soldiers and priests of the alien creed were exterminated in a general rising .
Persarmenia under persecution joins the empire.
4. Armenia, struggling towards independence, Doubtful sought alliance of her northerly neighbours (7rario co-'8me ofthe X(epoc . . , oiaoeOveis . . . aalo0vaot, Evagr.) and Persarm~a the powerful protection of Rome. Justin 11. we]-_(575--580)-
364 Doubtt*l issue of the quarrel over
i j
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
comes the envoys, promises to defend as his own subjects, and pledges never to abandon the authors
Per,,armmia of the revolt to the tender mercies of Persia . Iberia (575-580) . follows the lead, and crosses over to the Roman side ; for the king of that country we should probably read Stephen rather than Gourgenes (Popycvor7s), with Theophilus of Byzantium . Chosroes sent Deren, the "Constable of Persia " (Sparabied), to reduce the disaffected provinces. Being defeated in the first engagement, he gave way to Bahram (or Varanes) (the pretender eighteen years later to the throne of Persia), who at once availed himself of the dissension invariably prevalent in a feudal society of peers, even when the common liberty is in peril . Vartan, soon despairing of his venture, retired with his kinsmen to the Roman capital, and was there treated with the generous courtesy always extended to dispossessed princes . Nothing can well be more tedious and unedifying than the record of the next seven or eight years. Anarchy prevailed , fire and sword ravaged the country, from which all traces of former prosperity vanished . The Persian army, under Mihram and Bahram, is swelled by Caucasian tribes, Dilemites and Sabirians . Under Marcian the Roman commander fight Vartan the refugee, the Alans with their chieftain Saros Colchians and Abasgians . Neither great power seemed anxious to push matters to a final settlement ; Chosroes is glad in 575 to make peace with the regent, Tiberius II ., but wishes to except the rebels from its benefits. The Roman generals, Kurs the '1 Scythian " (or Goth) and Theodosius, attack the Albanians and Sabirians, take hostages, and secure their brief surrender to the empire : on their default they return, ravage their land, and transplant across the Cyrus the faithful Romanisers, wavouria ,ue-roau~ovres (Menander),-an early instance of that wholesale change of a settlement which is an interesting but disconcerting feature in the later history. The Roman army twice
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-620)
365
disbands, either in dislike of a new general or in fear Doubtful of the emperor's displeasure : it seems a significant is"riprer symptom of the contempt of authority which marks Persarmenua the fifty years from Justinian to Heraclius. In 576, (575-580) . the Great King marched out in person to Armenia ; Taron (an appanage of Vartan's family) he finds a vast wilderness ; and, losing the great battle of Melitene, is said to have forbidden a Persian king to lead his own armies-a prohibition very unlikely, but singularly parallel with the tendencies of China and Rome about this time, where Maurice and Heraclius and Lichi found it difficult to revive the military side of kingship. Next year (577) the humiliated kingdom was exposed to Saracen raiders, acting under the instructions of Rome. Yet the emperors do not follow up their successes, and indeed on both sides of the long struggle we observe merely a temporising and spasmodic policy, no constant aim. There now appeared on the Eastern scene a general whom Armenian writers claim as a fellowcountrymen . Maurice was, according to Evagrius, a native of Arabissus in Cappadocia ; but others say he was born in the province of Ararat ; in either case it is more than probable that he was in some way connected with that district, which gave strength and military leaders to the empire after the failure of the Balkan or Illyrian stock. He may well have belonged to one of the families who migrated into Roman territory during a persecution . In 579, Tiberius II. agreed to give up the imperial claims in Persarmenia and Iberia, but refused to surrender those who wished to join the empire . But Chosroes especially insists on the extradition of those feudal clan-leaders (TeveapXat) who had initiated the revolt ; and dies during the ineffective conferences, after a reign of nearly half a century. Tiberius' § 5. We are now on the threshold of the most offer to re*n stirring scene in a somewhat wearisome duel ; the o to last fifty years of the wars between Persia and Rome Per8ar ia.
366 TEhmus'
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
are crowded with incident .
DIV. p1
A Persian general de-
rthrones his sovereign, who is restored by a Roman Roman
emperor, a Roman centurion murders his emperor, claims to Pemarmmia, and is attacked by the Persian, grateful to the prince only, not to the commonwealth. Rome, lately so triumphant in its favourite role of arbiter of justice and the world's peace, is helpless before the Persian vengeance ; and, after an inglorious and desperate interval of some sixteen years, suddenly awakens to crush her rival in the campaigns of Heraclius, and in the end to expose two exhausted powers to the irresistible Arabs. To the new Shah, Hormisdas (579), Tiberius renews his offer to surrender Persarmenia and Arzanene, but not the heads of the rebellion. (It is to this epoch that we refer the curious counterpoise of Tiberius to the seditious and untrustworthy legions of Rome ; he purchases barbarian slaves (a7opaa-as awAa-ra eOvucuv), and thus began or revived that policy of slave-armies so eagerly imitated by the Moslem in the cases of Turkman, Janissaries, and Memlukes .) The last year of Tiberius was signalised by a great Roman victory at Constantia ; but John Mystakon, a Thracian, under the new emperor Maurice, 582, suffered a defeat, and yielded his place in 584 to the emperor's brother-in-law, Philippicus ; for it might well seem hazardous to entrust an important post to any but a member of the imperial family . At the great battle of Solacon, it is said that half the Persian army perished, and this success was
mutinous state of ana Roman armies alike.
followed up by the ravage of Arzanene . But PhilipPicus, like Heraclius later, was of a highly strung and neurotic temperament ; seized by panic he fled, and, filled with shame, remained in retirement during the rest of his command . The active duties were handed over to Heraclius, father of the future emperor ; and the armies of Rome obeyed in addition two Arabs and a Hun (v7roa--rpaTnyos). The mutinous and malcontent spirit of these Roman troops was well displayed in 588, when Priscus was sent out as general-in-chief ;
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-620)
367
they broke into open revolt, forced him to fly for mutinow his life, and, refusing to be propitiated by the offer s of of Philippicus' return, proclaimed Germanus their Persian and leader. The Senate condemns Germanus to death ; army alike . but Maurice, naturally clement, and at this time helpless, pardons him . Finally, on the pleading of Gregory, bishop of Antioch, the troops take back their old commander, Philippicus, and almost at once secure an important victory in a pitched battle near Sisarban, adjoining Nisibis (59o). We read with some surprise of this success of soldiers thoroughly mutinous and demoralised ; but the armies of Persia were in a worse, at least a similar, plight . Bahram, the new pretender, came of Arsacid stock, and of the family of the Miramians (mss -rou Mtppauov olKapxtas) ; that is, he belonged to a branch of the old regnant house which enjoyed the feudal appanage of Rey in Hyrcania down to the middle of the seventh century. During this time Persarmenia had become Roman in its sympathies ; Maurice had also appointed a o-rpa"yos for Colchis, who, taking measures with the patriarch (Ko(v0Aoyrjo-as 'r;o &60-e iepapXovvTt), had gained a victory over the Persians near Ganzac, the Albanian capital . But a settled policy was out of the question. Opinion began to veer round to Persia : Sembat raises a Persian party, murders John,'ApAevias yiye A'v, is reduced by Domentziolus, condemned to the beasts in the Byzantine arena, and finally reprieved by the clemency of Maurice . It is curious to speculate on the long train of results from this act of pardon . Sembat the Bagratid returns a free man to become a resolute 11 medizer," the favourite of Chosroes II., the Persian governor of Armenia. From him issued the well-nigh interminable line of Armenian and Georgian kings, who ceased only with the opening of the nineteenth century. 6. In 590 Chosroes displaces his father, and is Detkrohimself dethroned by Bahram . He flies to the secure went of and honourable protection of Rome. The Armenian- C1os'oes.
f 368 c%osrom dethroned and restored by Bo e En concert with Armenian
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
nobles, with that warm and chivalrous interest in a legitimate line which is so prominent in Byzantine history, supported the cause of Chosroes. Among their number are conspicuous Mouschegh, prince of baron or Taron,l a Mamigonian, Sembat the pardoned rebel of the Bagratid stock, and Khoutha, prince of Sassoun, a canton near Daron belonging to the Mamigonians, and giving its name to-day to a notable friend of our English royalty. With Mouschegh emerges a family well known in Roman history-one Alexius Mouschegh (Mwc-;7ae) is a trusted Armenian captain under Constantine VI. (c. 790) and another, victor in Sicily, will be Caesar and emperor's son-in-law for a brief space under Theophilus. Comentiolus has a certain success at Martyropolis, where the garrison are compelled to surrender by the bishop Domitian, another determined Eastern prelate, who mingles in political affairs ; Sittas, a rebel, is given up to condign punishment, and burnt alive in the barbarous fashion of those days (we may see such a penalty inflicted under both Phocas and Heraclius). But Chosroes did not like Comentiolus . By the king's influence he was recalled, or rather put in a subordinate place under a general of undoubted Armenian descent, Narses, an Arsacid and a Camsar (541), who six years earlier was governor of Constantia. After a brilliant victory over the pretender Bahram in Aderbaijan, near the modern Tabriz, Chosroes is re-established as king. He cedes Dara, Anastasius' well-placed citadel, and a large strip of Armenia, stretching along Lesser Armenia ; it has been long since the Romans had a frontier on the East so safe or so honourable . Armenians are in favour for their loyal support ; the sons of Sembat, Ashot and Varazdirot, receive the rank due to the children of the Great King ; their father, a vassal of Persia on specially advantageous 1 Tchamtchian believes that this captain may be identified with John Mystakon, an early general under Maurice, but there seems little reason.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (540-620)
369 terms, is made Marzban of Armenia and Hyrcania, Chogow d,lying south-west of the Caspian . Mouschegh, or throned and vy " Musel," the Mamigonian, alone is envious and Rome in disappointed ; like some feudal noble of Western concert with Europe, he retires sullenly to his own estates . Ten
years of peace and silent recovery (5c9 I-6o I ) were nobles. a welcome relief to the peoples of the near East, W hurried along against their will in the aimless quarrels peace Broken of the two great powers. Only the Saracen free-lances of seem to have distressed Chosroes by their raids ; Maure.
and on his remonstrance (6oi), Maurice sent George, "prefect of the East," and comptroller of the revenue (95opoaoyias e7rcorTama, Thph . Simoc.), to propitiate his offended ally. It was very typical of the disintegrating and individualist spirit then abroad, that the envoy boasted, openly and with impunity, that to his tact alone was due the success of a delicate business which the emperor could not have carried through. Meantime, as we know, " urgentibus imperiti fatis," disaffection had penetrated the Western armies of Rome ; the Avar campaigns were a failure ; the toiling emperor could do nothing right in the eyes of his subjects . For a moment the destiny of the commonwealth hangs in the balance ; but the evil genius prevails, and Phocas is elected by the troops . He was joyfully accepted by the capital and its factions (602), to their eternal shame and remorse.
7. At this the unnatural and incredible peace was Chogroa war roughly broken . In 604 policy and the manes of °f Seance his murdered friend drove Chosroes into a declara- agaznstRome. tion of war, and the last and most dismal scene opens in the long fight . For eighteen years the Romans suffer indescribable hurt and ignominy (60q.-622) ; in six years their majesty is amply vindicated, and the exhausted combatants succumb to an unexpected foe. At this dramatic crisis in our history, we can readily forgive the turgid metaphors of the historian ; the Persian king sounds the trumpet which announces the doom of a world, and over- _ VOL . II.
2 A
i
370
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . A
Chomroee war throws the well-being of Roman and Persian alike ofvengeanee (KOWAo0dopov o-Arnyya . . . a,vTrjpcov su7rpayias) . The against Rome.
now pacified frontier had been denuded of troops, and all available forces had been sent over for the pressing needs of the Avar campaign. These were now hastily collected and despatched eastwards, under a eunuch Leontius soon to be supplanted by the new emperor's own brother (or nephew), Domentziolus, the Curopalat ; for Phocas, like Maurice, seems to trust only a near relative in high command . A conspiracy of perhaps honourable silence among the historians disguises the details of this war ; TheophyTact is scanty, and the Oriental writers alone give us some tidings of a crisis, which forms such a signal Mutinous refutation of elective monarchy. The Armenian princes, living in a spirited feudal society, careless ofTarpeone like the later Teutons of any tie but personal loyalty, were not backward in offering themselves for the war of righteous vengeance. When Sembat dies in 6oi, Chosroes appoints a nominee recommended by the nobles-David, the Saharhounian. Ashot, his son, accompanied the king on an expedition into Roman Armenia ; and being made lieutenant of Persian forces in that district, begins to ravage a country just reviving under the blessings of peace . Mouschegh (Mwa-j1ae), alone in his private appanage of Taron, remained, like Achilles in his tent, deaf to the call to arms ; and in the truceless enmity of the two forces believed he had found the best guarantee for his own autonomy. Mihram sent against him a nephew of the Great King himself ; is absurdly deceived by Vahan the Wolf, heir to the principality, and meets with woeful discomfiture ; his army is divided and lured to its destruction piecemeal, and the independence of Taron seems secured. Vahan, succeeding to the chieftaincy in 605, still defies the might of Persia, and set an example which the unwieldy and dissolving empire of Rome could not imitate. Chosroes, indignant at the failure of his
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-670) 37'1 expedition and his nephew's death, sends his uncle, Mutinous Vakhtang, against the rebel . But David the Marz- LndePende-e ban eludes the order to send reinforcements, Taron. and of Vahan is completely successful. He dies in glory and independence at his capital Moush ; and his son Sembat, having killed the second kinsman of the Great King, is for the present left alone in his precarious freedom. Such was the feudal atmosphere of Armenia ; such were the centrifugal tendencies which rendered sovereign authority everywhere helpless at the beginning of the seventh century . III THE DYNASTY OF HERACLIUS AND THE EASTERN VASSALS (a) TO THE DEATH OF CONSTANS III. (62o-668) 1. During his distant campaign in Persia, Hera- Heradim' clius had no reason to complain of the services ren- fmft to secure dered by Armenia in other
parts of the empire . His religiow conunexpected vigour and success had reunited those f°rmzty Zn scattered limbs and interests which had been falling Armenia . apart in the years that followed Justinian's death. When the soldiers, despising a sexless rebel, saved him the trouble of punishing Eleutherius' revolt, the exarchate was given to Isaac, an Armenian (probably of the Camsar clan), 625 (?), whose epitaph, written by his wife Susannah, can still be read in St. Vitalis at Ravenna . He belonged to that princely caste who offered themselves to the emperors almost on equal terms-to that feudal and warlike nobility which still surrounded the Sassanid throne and tempered its despotism, only to vanish utterly in the democratic equality of Islam and the unchecked autocracy, its necessary consequence . 'ApAecos& Tap oi-ros 6'K lau?rpou Tevous . o Tjs airwir7s 'Ap)uevias icoo-,uos Meyaq loaarccos Twv,8a6Aewv 6 avocpcaXos. -
i 372 Heradius?
a°'`Pt secure t°
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
(These lines show clearly the proud and independent spirit in which he served Rome,
religious con- governing the curious patchwork which com,tormity in in Italy for eighteen Armenia . posed the imperial districts years.) The problem of Heraclius in dealing with Armenians in their own country was one of religion, as will be seen in the sequel . David, lieutenantgeneral in Persarmenia since 6o z, and Prince of the Saharhounians, escaped to the Romans in 625, finding it difficult to conceal his sympathies in the crusade, or convince the king of his good faith. Varazdirot the Bagratid, son of Sembat, is his successor as Mamban ; but exposed to the plots of an envious governor of Aderbaijan, Roustem, he follows the precedent set and takes refuge in the emperor's capital, after nearly seven years' command On the peace (628) Heraclius in Armenia (63i)gave Roman Armenia to Mejej the Gnounian (Me F tos), a great-grandson of that Mejej who had long controlled Persarmenia under Cabades and Chosroes Nushirvan . Heraclius now tried to secure religious unity and persuade Armenia to accept the council of Chalcedon . The patriarch Esdraas and Mejej consent, but are indignantly repudiated by the rest of the prelates ; and the rupture of the churches has lasted to the present day . Meantime the independence of Sembat the Mamigonian, Prince of Taron, was secured by the weakness of Persia and his own craft. Surena, demanding the surrender of his brother Vakhtang's wife and children, is defeated ; and Vahan or Baanes deceives and cuts to pieces some Persian troops under Dehram in a fashion strangely recalling the earlier successes of this house . Taron was now safe from interference, and this immunity from foreign control was shared with the adjacent districts of the Balounians, of Haschtiang, and of Ard-Shont . 2. The flight of Varazdirot to Byzantium drove Armenia into alliance with the emperor . Rustem,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-670)
373 who had attempted to oust the late governor, was Ambiguous hindered by troubles at home and could not profit position of by his disappearance . Anarchy prevailed every- Armenia where . The Patriarch Esdras, taking the lead like twopowers. Moses, Domitian, Cyrus, Sergius (statesmen-prelates of the age), summoned a conference of peers, and with their consent despatched envoys to Heraclius (c. 632). The emperor, hoping for better fortune in political than in his recent religious intervention, sent out David, the ex-governor, with the high title Curopalat : this is the earliest instance of its use for an Armenian governor, and it will meet us at every turn in Armenian history together with the name ,uaiyta-rPos . But the attempt to rule independent nobles by a vassal prince of their own rank could not succeed ; feudal pride was too strong. The nobles league and chase David from his post (c. 634), and civil war ensues till 636. Then Theodore, Prince of the Reschdounians (like Taron, near Lake Van), acquires sufficient force to exercise the precarious office of Mamban without authorisation from either monarch ; quite in the fashion of some mediaeval count, doubtful vassal of a German emperor and a French king. Meantime the Arab Advent ofthe onslaught on the prostrate rivals had begun, and Arabs . in the Roman service and in their own country Armenians are conspicuous . It is said that Vardan commanded a Roman army at the siege of Damascus (634), where the Greek writers give Theodore, the emperor's brother ; while Vardan's son is on duty at Emesa. If it is true (and the two accounts are quite compatible), he will be a Mamigonian prince . In the same year of disaster (634) Heraclius sent a Vahan (or Baanes), also a Mamigonian, in joint command with Trithurius . (Of this Vahan Arab writers know nothing, but use consistently the name Vardan both for this colleague and for 1' Theodorus "). It is not difficult to see why he supplants the emperor's brother in the eyes of the
i
374 Patriotic resietance mWer the vahazs.
DIV. A
Arabians ; for he actually displaced him in a mutiny of the troops and was saluted emperor, curiously foreshadowing a very similar sedition of the Persians under Theophobus exactly aoo years later (7rpoXeipi'~orrai 8aa-Aea ' TO'y B. KaaI Wpc~KXetov a'?rwjpv~av, Thpl .). But the revolt of « Emperor " Bardanes comes to the same untimely end as that of his Armenian kinsman under Nicephorus I. (804) he retires to Mount Sinai and becomes a monk' Another Armenian Vahan is killed at Tarmouk (636), where some read m error «Manuel , this officer, a Mamigonian Romaniser and a eunuch (according to Elmacin), was sent by Heraclius as governor of Alexandria and Au'yova-ratos . But Armenian valour was sadly needed at home. Arab raids became frequent ; Abderrahman with i8,ooo ravages Taron, raises tribute, and carries off women and children as slaves or hostages . Prince Vahan (a Camsar and Arsacid on the mother's side), son of Sembat of Taron, raises half this number to defend their country ; he aroused a Mouschegh into arms,
and unhappily Sahour, Prince of the Andsevatsians, from the southernmost part of Vasparacan and the heart of Kurdistan mountains . This traitor ruined the patriotic enterprise and passed over to the foe, the loyal Armenians suffering a terrible rout and losing Mouschegh (Movo-1ae) and Diran, Vahan's brother, who enjoyed the rich satisfaction of slaying IIthe renegade before his own death.
I
j
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Nationalism
§ 3. Theodore, Prince of the Reschdounians, tried fly without success to rally the nationalist cause ; feudal para6sie : . )jealousies p prevented any cohesion in the party . Sack ofDovxn
1 If we may trust an anonymous Syriac chronicler at the beginning of the fourteenth century, this was not the only instance of Separatism in the East, where private ambition defended in name the cause of the empire which had already'been surrendered by the emperor- a certain Joseph makes himself master of Byblos, maintaining a petty State against Persian and Arab alike under the unauthenticated title of defender of the empire on the Phoenician coast ; Job succeeds and extends his dominion to Casarea Philippi .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-670)
375
The country lay open to the marauders, for the Natzonat Arabs had as yet no idea whatever of empire . So -ruined &y pitiable was the condition of the land that Patriarch f~aa paralysis :
'~
Esdras dies of grief (639) after a primacy of ten SwkofDovin years and eight months ; and at this signal the (64o) Arabs close in round his see-city, the capital
Dovin, taking it by assault early in 640 (Epiphany, according to Asolik). It was burnt and laid waste, and 35,000 captives may attest past prosperity and
present misfortune . Habib, ironically termed the Steady north"friend of Rome" (he was no doubt a constant but 'ad advanee of the Arabs
'
unwelcome visitor), was the author of this crushing (64o Sqq .). blow to Armenian freedom . Believing resistance to be fruitless, the " Batrik " (7ra-rpfrc1os) of " Basfouradjan " acknowledges the caliph ; or rather surrenders through Habib to Moawiah, governor of Syria for Othman . In this anonymous official with a Roman title some have recognised Theodore, who had so lately tried to marshal his national army. Habib passed northward through Sisakon beyond the Araxes, seized Wa*is, a strong fortress, and advancing into Iberia, seized Tiflis . All the princes of North Armenia and Iberia, and the chieftains of the Caucasus, pay tribute . Salman, his lieutenant, captured Bardaah, the capital of Otene (in Albanian hands since the fall of the Arsacid monarchy in Armenia), and Schamkor, a citadel and district in the north (which comprised a separate lordship until the fourteenth century). The Arabs' success was continued into the fastnesses of Albania ; Cabalaca (or Cabala), the capital, felt into their hands ; and the petty Albanian chiefs in Schaki and up to the Caspian Sea were reduced to vassals . (But a terrible Nemesis awaited them (651), which we may here anticipate. The Khan of the Khazars proved an unconscious avenger of Rome and of Armenia ; the Arab commander and his troops were confronted and exterminated, few escaping with the story.) Such was then the state of the country in the middle of the
i
376
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
Steady north- seventh century when Constans, grandson of ~'' a"" Heraciius, was just issuing from tutelage into a wayward and headstrong manhood . Both powers (64o sqq.). claimed the suzerainty of Armenia (for in neither case did it amount by a direct administration) ; the Arabs, though continually ravaging, never made any permanent conquest ; and the strange slave-dynasties of Turkmans, alien military oligarchies, Taherids, Sofarids, Bowids, Samanids, had no better success. It was reserved for the pacific avarice of the Byzantines and for the ruthless courage of the Seljukian Turks to overpower this sturdy outpost of eastern Christianity-or rather to drive its last representatives, like the Gothic remnant in Saracen Spain, into the fortresses of Cilicia and Georgia .
After the § 4. But meantime affairs in Armenia had not VkW °f stood still. Once more Theodore tries to conConstana III. wationaatsts federate the nationalists . The Roman Senate had, aim at in the name of the youthful Constans (642), sent the autonomy.
.
old Curopalat, Varazdirot, to resume whatever power he could over the turbulent local chiefs, who were quite out of sympathy with the uniform and centralised control of Rome. On his death Sembat, his son, succeeded to a vain dignity. Sembat (in a wellmarked triple division of authority and department) was at the head of the civil administration ; Theodore commanded the troops ; and the new Patriarch Narses, or Nerses, showed all the vigour and capacity of an ecclesiastical statesman . These three, acting in a rare and happy agreement, endeavoured to restore order to the Church and State. But on a fresh inroad (646) through Peznounia (north-west of Lake Van) to the remote province of Ararat or Uriartu, Theodore and Sembat are forced to pay tribute once more. This news of his defaulting vassals reached the inflammable emperor, who seemed more anxious to punish this defection than prevent it by timely reinforcement. Constans III. arrived at Dovin, now recovering from its desolation, and was wel-
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (620-670)
377
comed by the conciliating patriarch, Narses (c. 6q.6). A,?er the Valuable time and patience were exhausted in pro- vigit4 Of III constans fitless theology. Constans, like his grandfather Natiouahst8 nearly twenty years before, attempts to force the az"a at Council of Chalcedon on the belief of Armenia . autonomy. To secure a barren religious uniformity, he gave up a valuable occasion for establishing Roman suzerainty over a grateful people. On his retirement (647) the old feuds break out again, and the Symbol is repudiated . He now from a distance orders the three heads of the civil, military, and ecclesiastical society to convoke a council at Dovin and to urge the acceptance of the distasteful creed. Narses, finding himself in an untenable position between prince and people, and unable to satisfy either party, abdicates. In 649 Theodore secures John the Doctor for his successor, and the two convene an assembly at Mandzikert, in Central Armenia (651). But the fortunes of Armenia have taken an unexpected turn for the better. News of the defeat and overthrow of Habib's lieutenant may very likely have reached the conclave ; the emperor was far off, and Roman troops were scanty . The princes believed themselves able to dispense with the support of Rome, its churches, its orthodoxy, and its imposts . They anathematise the creed of Chalcedon and all its adherents . Political and religious separatism had triumphed ; and it may be that the lords were always more favourable to the loose suzerainty of the Arabian caliph. 5. In this crisis Constans III . sent the gallant waning veteran, Mejej the Gnounian, commanding in Western Of Rvman Armenia, to conciliate his countrymen ; but speedily Armenia ~ replaced him by a certain Pasagnathes, « Patrician of tributary to the Armenians " (Thpl.), who is by no means so loyal caaiph. to the Roman interest. Imitating the feudal princes around him and the example of Joseph and Job in Coele-Syria, of Eleutherius in Italy, he attempts to seize autonomy, and gives hostages to Moawiah :
878 Waning Of Roman influence ; caliph.
.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. n
Constans was roused to indignation ; unstable and precipitate, he advances to Cappadocian Caesarea to punish his viceroy or his vassal, is seized with despair of reducing Armenia (a7reX7ri0ar -rig 'Ap-
,aMas), and beats a hasty retreat to the city of Constantine. Moawiah now determines to reduce Armenia, where he counts on the support of Pasagnathes. Abulpharagius speaks of a great expedition, of a double siege of the Caesarea before mentioned, of an honourable tribute and capitulation ; and of the amazement and regret of the Arabs at the rich splendour of the city they had held to ransom. But the onslaught of Moawiah had produced a reaction in Greater Armenia ; Pasagnathes had made little progress in detaching the nation from the Roman alliance. In 653 another effort was made, this time with better success. Habib, 't friend of Rome," was sent thither and defeated a Roman general, Maurianus, who was present with reinforcements for the loyalists. He chased him to Caucasus ; ravaged the country, burned the towns, and came home laden with booty and captives. The Armenian writers, John Catholicos and Asolik, believed that over 700o hostages were carried off from the richer families as a pledge of their inaction . Theodore the Reschdounian, lieutenant-general and patriot, at last abandons the Roman cause. With his troops he passes over to Damascus, dying there the next year (654) , his body is brought back and buried in his father's sepulchre in Vasparacan . The civil governor Sembat, Curopalat, dies about the same time ; and of the two only Narses is left. He comes out of his seclusion, and concerts measures with the grandees of Armenia, to secure order and protect the country from a foe whose method of conquest was a mere raid . Hamazasp, son of David the Mamigonian, is now raised to the supreme civil dignity ; and Vard or Bardas, son of the late commander-in-chief, as the new general, divides with him the government .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (6"70-740)
379
Armenian authorities style these leaders "Patrician" ; waning and with this Roman title they continued tributary Of oman to the Moslem. Armenia IV
tributary to caliph.
UNDER THE HERACLIADS AND ISAURIANS
FROM CONSTANTINE IV . TO THE DEATH OF LEO III . (670-740) 1. It seems abundantly clear that the Armenian Revolt of soldiers in the immediate service of the empire were Armenian princes in
dissatisfied with the treatment of their country by East and the Heracliads. After the great opportunity in 628, Test ; sapor the Roman policy had been vexatious and inter- a(668). e~ej mittent . It had neither protected Armenia as a friendly ally, nor governed her as a subject vassalneither defended nor administered. The imperial visits had been unwelcome ; for they had turned on points of religious difference, not on the urgent need of reinforcements against the unbeliever. While the Council of Chalcedon was pressed on the people with angry zeal, the country was left exposed to a ruthless power which recognised neither Chalcedon nor any other. In 667 Constantine IV., as yet beardless, was regent for his father absent in Sicily . The a-TpaTnTor 'Apuevtarcimv, Sapor the Persian-born (Ma,8Wpcos llepo-oyevqs), revolts, an Amadounian prince ; allied with Moawiah's troops he agrees with the caliph to pay tribute to him if he wins the empire. Sergius, " magister mildum " (o-TpaTnXaTrls), was sent to Damascus to draw up the contract. But Rome was saved from the disgrace of becoming vassal to the caliph, under an Armenian, by a eunuch of the court . Andreas had been bold enough to refuse leave to the empress to accompany Constans westwards ; just as the Patriarch Sergius had prevented a similar flight of the Emperor Herachus himself . Before the caliph, at Damascus, the two
380 Remit of
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A
emissaries explain their terms-his favour is to be
Armenian prince given to the highest bidder . Sergius, full of the true Byzantine hatred for a palace-chamberlain, East and West; Sapo' insults Andreas ; and the latter hurries off to arrange 8Mejej for a warm reception of the general from the Clisurrarch of the Taurus (in the neighbourhood of Arabissus) . Sergius, elated at his triumph, returns from his mission to be rudely seized in the moment of success. Andreas mutilates and hangs the rebel, not for the personal abuse but for his treason to the empire. Sapor dies of a fractured skull in an accident with a restive horse, while Nicephorus, patrician, is sent against him to Adrinople (which we must suppose to be some unknown spot within the limits of the Armeniac theme) . The sedition of the H,Paoyevj7V had collapsed ; but within a year an obscure cabal at Syracuse had procured the assassination of Constans at the bath, and the elevation of the handsome Armenian, Mejej, to taste for a brief season the cares rather than the delights of sovereignty . He is Mt~"~Ios in Theophanes, Mizius to the barbarous translator in the Miscella, Mecetius to Paul the Deacon, Mezzetius to Anastasius. Michael, the Syrian patriarch, styles him a patrician ; he was certainly a Gnounian prince ; in no other family do we find this name. We may well ask whether he was not the son or grandson (euvpe7ns K. wpato-ra-ros) of the aged Mejej, partner of Heraclius and governor of Roman Armenia ? The entanglement of Justinian (patrician) and his son Germanus might persuade us to accept another hypothesis ;-was this another attempt to transfer the throne to the survivors of a dispossessed dynasty, who had treated Armenia with greater fairness than the Herachads ? We may note that Germanus'is castrated, and becomes later-like Ignatius, of son of Michael I. (81g)-patriarch of the capital city. Armenia § 2. During the contest of Ali and Moawiah for the caliphate, Armenia recovered her lost indecaiph pendence and placed herself under the protection of
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (670-740)
881
Rome. We find again the title 11 Curopalat" ; but when Moawiah became recognised head of Islam, the Armenian again veered round against Rome, remembering the scanty aid rendered by the empire and the constant religious friction. Vard or Bardas, the Reschdounian, was prominent in the anti-Roman party. Hamazasp died after a principate of four years in 658 ; and the caliph « invests ". his brother and successor, Gregory, on the demand of the grandees and the patriarch . It cannot be denied that under the infidel suzerain the country enjoyed a new life of peace and prosperity. The lords were harmonious ; the prince tactful, pious, and enlightened ; the tribute punctual ; and the contingents of Armenia regularly figured in the muster-roll against the Roman Empire . In 683 (John Catholicos and Asolik are our authorities) this tranquil development was suddenly arrested. The Khazars, unconscious saviours of the Armenian State thirty years before, crossed the Caucasus on a pillaging enterprise, slay Gregory, and expose the land to two years' anarchy. In the last year of Constantine IV., a prince more fortunate in West than East, Ashot the Bagratid, rallying the forces against the northern raider, is recognised as "patrician ." He gives (according to a sacred custom) the control of the troops to a brother, Sembat, and secures his position by dutiful tribute, the only indispensable incident in the condition of a Moslem vassal. The young Justinian II . and the caliph strike a peace for ten years in 686,
Recovem of Ar""enia r~zecaliph-
which gives signal proof of progress and quiet re- secret comcovery in the empire during the reign of the fourth Pact of .r't. II. and the
Constantine. The caliph gave 3000 pieces of gold canph : a day, one horse, and one slave, while the two removalof'the Mardaites. powers shared equally (rcaTa To ialov) the revenues of Cyprus, Armenia, and Iberia . But behind this apparent humiliation of the tributary caliphate lay a secret understanding of the utmost importance, which explains the sudden advantage of Rome in
382 secret comPact of Just. and II h: t cal~k: remowof'the Mardaites. -
"
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. A
the negotiations . For some time past the Mardaites in the Coele-Syria had been a thorn in the side of the Damascene court. Under a nominal allegiance to Rome, they had kept their autonomy and played off one power against its rival . Justinian II. now agreed to the removal of this inexpensive bulwark . A local chronicle of later date tells of the behaviour of Leontius, general of the East, and afterwards emperor (695-698), towards these gallant mountaineers : advancing to Cabbelias, their stronghold, with protestations of amity, he lured and killed John their chief. He appointed as successor the nephew of the dead prince, administered the oath of allegiance to the empire, and somehow contrived to appease their resentment . He then achieved the sole object of -this sudden imperial interest in the Mardaites : he removes 12,000 of their best soldiers to Lesser Armenia, to Thrace, and to Pamphylia (where, like the Gotho-Greeks in an earlier age, they formed a military settlement or colony detached from the native populace, under their own commander at Attalia, the ica-re7ravo (Constant. Imp. ad. imp., § So ; this would seem to be the work of Tiberius III., who sprang from those parts, and it is not beyond possibility that Leo the '1 Isaurian " was the son of one of these Apelatic brigands) . Without distracting attention to the origin and fortunes of this remarkable community, we may note that Roman opinion looked on these unauthorised defenders as a 't brazen wall " (XaXKeov -reiXos) ; and regarded Justinian's act as the capital .error of his reign, whereby he permanently exposed the eastern frontier and mutilated the empire (rev `PW,ualkr7v Jvvaorrefav «KPco-r~pcao-as). The Arabs, now relieved from fear, sought again and fortified anew the strongholds from Mopsuestia to the north of Edessa and Nisibis, and the parts round Martyropolis (Miafarekin) .-The same Leontius was sent on as general Ka-ra' -riw 'Apjueviav, with a force of qo,ooo to overawe the
`
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (670-740)
`
:g!
888
inhabitants and remind them of the mighty claims of Rome. He advanced right up to Albania to Mongamr the rich alluvial pastures and marshes at the mouth of the Cyrus, ravages twenty-five provinces or cantons, carries captive eight hundred families to be sold as slaves, and massacres the Saracens there . 8. Armenia had then, by the end of Justinian's first reign, passed through the following vicissitudes
secret comPact of-Twt. and the caliph: removalofthe Hardaites .
Troubkdstate otArthe
afL-r the visit since the rise of Islam, the collapse of the Sassanids, of Just. ii.
and the decay of Roman influence or continuous policy in the East. Arab invasions begin as early as 637 ; they capture and lose Dovin, 639 ; reduce a large part as Saracen province by 650, but soon, after the defeat by the Khazars, are driven out, 65a656 ; recover their footing by 657, and during the reign of the Roman emperor, Constantine IV., control the land by tributary princes ; are challenged by Justinian in a restless but impatient policy, 686-693 ; and in 693 send governors to take the place of the native rulers . For in 692 Justinian had lost the great battle of Cilician Sebaste by the defection of his Slavonic mercenaries (aaos 7repcou6ios, to the number of 30,ooo, an unhappy imitation of Tiberius IL's bodyguard) . The caliph shakes off the tribute, and reasserts his sway over Armenia (693), since the inroad of Leontius a prey to anarchy and invasion. The Arabs had raided and carried off booty and slain Ashot the patrician, after four years' rule. In 69o, Justinian had himself visited the East, with an army, divided into sections, for Armenia and for Albania. His presence compels the submission of the lords, tribute is paid and promised, and Roman control seems to revive. The government is entrusted to Narses of Camsar descent, son of Vahan and he is honoured by the dignities of Patrician and Curopalat. The troops and military matters, with the title valrpl'Ktos -rig 'Apuevlas, are given (according to the familiar division of labour) to Sembat the Bagratid,
r
384
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. A Arab inroads brother of the murdered Ashot . On the retirend ren°W ment of ustinian, who could intimidate but not
mil. defend, Abdallah, on behalf of the caliphs, marched to Dovin and secures the persons of the rulers by a trick, including the patriarch Isaac,-the chief pastor exercising (as we have often seen) in this feudal society very great political influence . Sembat manages to escape, and after opening a secret and hesitating intrigue with Leontius, general of the Anatolics, flies to Albania with Ashot his cousin, and Vard the son of Theodore, Prince of the Reschdounians. The Armenian cause is upheld only by a Roman resident or commissioner (7rapafouaos ovoaa-rc Magivos), who, indignant at the flight of Sembat, harasses and defeats the Arabs . His troops take Dovin, burn the renegade governor's palace, and march to Vartanakert, where the refugees were besieged ; the siege is raised, the Arabs defeated and drowned in the breaking of the deceptive ice, which a frost of exceptional severity had formed on the Araxes . Leontius, well known in the East, has now become emperor (695), and he sends a namesake as Curopalat. Sembat moves the capital northwards to the fortress of Toukhars in Daik (or Taik), on the Lazic frontier, and for some time kept the country inviolate from Arab incursions. To this period (? 692 or earlier) must be referred an obscure alliance between the Khazars and the empire, resulting in a joint inroad from the north into the caliph's lands . Othman defeats the united force of 6o,ooo with 4000, if the figures are correct ; and the caliph's nephew, Mohammed, at the head of Ioo,ooo, after a preliminary failure, defeats the Khazars ; while his son Maslemah attacks and completely routs 8o,ooo at the gates of Tzour (or defiles of Derbend), and achieves a complete victory. It is hazardous to assign this event to any precise year in the caliphate of Abdalmelik, but the inroad would seem to show (I) the exposed and troublous state of Armenia
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (670-740)
885
proper ; (z) the security or insolence with which Arab inroads the Arabs penetrated across it to attack the nor- and red of the capital. thern foe.
4. Meantime in Byzantium, Leontius gives place Terribie ea- of to Tiberius III. (6 q8) ; and once more an Armenian pretender gives anxiety at court. Bardanes, son of .Qyamt~o~ Nicephorus, a patrician, is troubled with an earlylegend Romanisin9 of an eagle shielding him from the sun in infancy. party.
The same tale is narrated of Marcian and of Basil ; but the court was justifiably suspicious of Armenian immigrants of royal descent and imperial auguries, and he is exiled (c. 700) to Cephallenia, to reappear as first undoubted Armenian Caesar in 711 . Armenia, as was her wont, vacillated between the two powers ; Vahan, « he of the seven devils," a Mamigonian governor, was a faithful henchman to the caliphs, and reduced forts in Lesser Armenia for the use of Arabs. But on his retirement, the lords in secret conclave (ol apxovTEs 'Ap uviar) decide to extirpate the Saracen intruder. Narses the Camsarid and Sembat the Bagratid lead the new revolt, always believing their late more tolerable than their pre-
''
i
s
sent masters. Roman influence revives during this not discreditable reign of an obscure Cibyrrhaeot (698-705) ; the northerly people of Vanand, by the Araxes, join the confederacy ; and it is proposed to welcome a Roman garrison for Greater Armenia,an expedient which would have been long ago suggested but for the incurable feudalism which could neither brook tutelage nor dispense with foreign aid . At the same time, dread of the nearer power forces the insurgents to open negotiations with the caliph in case of failure ; and it is probable that the captive patriarch Isaac, dying (703) at Harran in Mesopotamia, was engaged on a conciliatory mission . But the day of vengeance was near Mohammed entering Armenia with a large force massacres all Romans ; convenes through Cassim, his lieutenant, all the grandees (,aeyto-raves), and burns _ VOL . II.
2 B
,
886
.
I
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv. n
Terrible Myeance V eauph (7o5) against Romanisin9 party-
Armenian "ik8Jtock e, "'an
Early adornCons of Conarointhe But.
them alive! Dovin is given to the flames ; noble families are enslaved ; pillage and desolation last for several years ; and the poor remainder of the Christian nobility take measures for deserting their country and finding asylum on Roman ground. In 7o6, the curopalat Sembat, with two Arzrounian princes, Gregory and Gorioun, fly to Lazica, where Justinian II. allotted towns for their occupancy : but finding it difficult to live under official supervision, these feudal princes return to the despairing business of brigandor guerilla-warfare. The silence which falls on Armenian history in the opening of the eighth century tells us emphatically of the decay if not of the extinction of national life. A feudal peerage, rent by jealous factions and supporting severally, like the Japanese Daimios, a warlike retinue of vassals and kinsmen, could not accept the control of either despotic or democratic monarchy . While they felt themselves free to join either party at pleasure, the sovereigns of New Rome and of Damascus regarded them at each default in the light of traitors and apostates. The sole administrative measure of these suzerains was a punitive expedition, brutal ferocity, _ a hasty nomination, and a hurried retreat . No attempt was made to annex or incorporate ; and though both powers are to be blamed for a policy of slave-drivers, it may be confessed that the most prosperous years in the troubled century were passed under Arab allegiance. Yet the results of this most' recent and vindictive act (705-6) desolated Armenia and sent her soldiers and captains wholesale into the ranks of Rome. Even more conspicuously than before, Armenian influence prevails in the imperial society and government. Alone the Greek Church maintains its independence and its suspicious attitude. § 5. The early experiences and success of Conon (or Leo III.) sufficiently attest his Armenian connections. He was sent by the restored Justinian II .
t
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (670-740)
cs
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¬
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to subdue a revolt of Abasgia, Alania, and Iberia, Early advenwhich the greed of governors had roused during the impunity granted by the weakness of the central con~onOn the government (695-705) . He was also (it was said by the malignant) despatched by a jealous prince upon an errand from which he would never return alive. But Conon falsified this secret hope. Known to us as an able leader and an implacable persecutor, he displayed all the arts of a tactful diplomat . Deprived of his military chest (it was said with Justinian's connivance), he secured the cordial help of the Alans against the mutineers. The Alans deceive them by a profession of sympathy, surround their forces, and at his orders exterminate them. Another Roman detachment was defeated by the Saracens (?) before Archxopolis in Lazica . Conon is now cut off by his relentless foes ; and only manages to slip through by a perjured guile, by which Pharasmanes, governor of the Iron Fortress in the Caucasus, consents to capitulate and join the Romans, but is seized and his citadel razed to the ground . Leo gained Absilia, was received with honour, and sailed from Trebizond for the capital, to find that Anastasius II. was fixed on the throne (713). We make much of these early stories of great men, but this series of incidents throws perhaps little light upon the state of feeling in the East. It is clear that exchange of suzerains was easy, that Abasgia and Lazica were in the main loyal to the Romans, but that the Saracens (?) found no difficulty in penetrating to the very capital of Colchis . Yet it is from this half-mythic exploit that Leo III . won the command of the Anatolics, and the reputation which made the caliphate recognise in him the future emperor .-About this time the authorities supply us with conflicting rumours on the behaviour and policy of Rome towards the Armenians, which make it difficult to discover the truth : at the close of his reign Justinian (in Syrian accounts) is ' said to drive out these natives from his dominion,,
388
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
vtv . n
Two Armen- while the Arabs gave them a home (c. 7oq). This (is : (unless two accounts are given of a single event) was ofArmenian repeated under the Armenian Bardanes, now the Emperor Philippicus, in 712 : '1 He chased them from his anrl (2 origin 9in territor o.f Leo III. y, and the Arabs gave them settlements m Melitene"_ So Abulpharagius and Michael Syrus, and even Theophanes, seem to agree, ouci crat Ivayrca6Ev, which might easily be applied to one who made them shift their quarters. The natural and accepted account is of course exactly the reverse : Philippicus established his fellow-countrymen expelled from their domiciles, in Melitene, and in Fourth Armenia . History is, alas! not so explicit as to the respective power of Rome or the caliphate to allot land in these districts ; and we are obliged to leave an obscure transaction with this remark :-the settlers seemed in the end to become rather the friends of the caliph than partisans of the empire . So confused are the homesteads and the population by the shifting of entire countrysides in this era, that it is not surprising if we cannot assign the birth and descent of Leo with any accuracy. Did he belong to the Mardaite borderers ? Was he born, like Artavasdus, his son-inlaw, at Marach, near Germanicea, on the confines of Syria and Cilicia ? Technically, the name « Isaurian" means little ; Leo 111. was not a compatriot of Zeno. But the name Syrian means still less. It is incontestable that he represented Armenia in character and creed, that his chief allies and relatives came from that nation, and that he believed himself closely united with it.
unqualified § 6. Still we find Arab intervention in the north submission to stern and imperious . In 710, Othman seized Camakh, the eatipta
(from 71o).
or Ani, the ancient capital of Armenia, with its images of the old Armenian gods and its sepulchres of the kings of the Haik dynasty. About 720, the country was once again aroused by the din of war, and became the scene of a renewed struggle of Khazars with the Moslem . Maslemah, the son of Caliph
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (670-740)
ta
`
889
Abdalmelik, who failed in the great siege of Constan- unqualified tinople, now governor of Armenia, has to repress the mbmimion to invaders : Armenia has no longer native and tribu- (from 710). tary rulers, but a prince direct from Damascus . In 722, he carries the war across the Caucasus into the homes of the enemy. For the next ten years Maslemah appears and disappears in an Armenian command, according to the caprice of his brother, Caliph Hischam . We find him in 728 laying siege to Derbend, but suddenly retiring (SetXaYSP4o-a9) by one of those inexplicable panics, which seem common enough for Roman and infidel generals in the East about this time. He is again displaced in 731, to make room for Merwan, an Ommiad, and son of Mohammed, who long governed a contrite or suppressed Armenia . Under him "order reigned in" Armenian "Warsaw" ; the country was consolidated ; the Khazars repressed or conciliated ; the petty princes along the Eastern Caucasus reduced to order. It was the era of unquestioned Arabian supremacy .
DIVISION B PREDOMINATING INFLUENCE WITHIN (740-1040) V ARMENIANS WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE EMPIRE FROM CONSTANTINE V. TO THEOPHILUS (e. 740-840)
Remit of I . IT becomes difficult in the period before us Artamwdug to keep distinct the streams -of political development and trangpzantation of and of Armenian infiltration . Deprived of local life, Armenia poured the best treasures of her warlike tine V."or feudal temper into the empire, and contributed largely to its internal history. The revolt of Artavasdus must be once more treated under this heading (742, 743). To the line of Baanes and Mizizius and Bardanes-Philippicus is added a new pretender, son-in-law of the great Iconoclast by Anna his daughter, and father of Nicephorus . A civil war at this juncture was little short of disastrous for the fortunes of the commonwealth ; Constantine to the end of his reign was hampered by the losses of this needless family quarrel . But it was more than a contested succession or a domestic sedition ; it was a national movement. The troops concerned are Armenians and Armeniacs-that is, troops supplied by the princelings (like Hessians in the eighteenth century) serving as allies under the imperial standard, and troops stationed in the Armeniac theme, by origin and sympathy equally Oriental . At Modrina, on the Bithynian frontier of Phrygia, the patrician Tiridates lost his life, an Armenian and cousin of Artavasdus ; and his soldiers refuse to yield, determined not to survive their compatriot or accept 890
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
391
quarter from aliens . These troops had long formed Rewlt of the flower of the Roman armies ; and their obstinate A't`vasdus and tram-
valour led to a serious loss (Constant . Imp. ad : imp : plantation of i. 2) . The Domestic sent to gather provisions for the cowtantine Y. beleaguered capital bears the same Armenian name as
Y
his master ; and the chief minister and companion of Artavasdus' flight (743) is the patrician BaKrayeios (or with Zonaras better, Barclr«yros) in which we can easily read Vakhtang . Almost two centuries had elapsed, when the revolt was at last subdued, since Artaban's attempt on the life of Justinian in 548 .Ten years later, when Abbassid caliphs have supplanted Ommiads, and Pepmids the effete line of Clovis, when the Exarchate had been torn from the empire,-the East awakens to life once more. Chusan revolts against the Emir of Mesopotamia, at the same time Governor of Armenia ; with the help of Roman troops he takes Melitene and Theodosiopolis ; Camakh (or Ani) as well, if we accept the account of Abulpharagius . Constantine V. adopts the transplanting transplanting policy of Justinian II from these
towns he takes large numbers of heretics, and with them replenishes the terrible gaps left in his capital by the Great Pestilence . Scylitza (Cedrenus) calls them "kinsmen of the emperor ; Armenian and Syrian schismatics" ((Tvyyeveis . . . 'Apgev . K. Xupovs aiPETCKous), following Theophanes, the violent hater of the Iconoclasts . Probably they were Paulicians ; and we shall find them later arguing with Alexius Comnenus at the close of the eleventh, and still existing in the nineteenth century, as a suspected but tolerated community in Thrace . Caliph Mansour fights with varying success ; his forces are beaten back with discredit from the siege of Camakh (Ani), but he manages to rebuild Arsamosata (767) on the Euphrates, and in 771 he captures Samosata and Germanicea, the birthplace of the reigning dynasty, "decanting " the population into Palestine Cuereronjer] eis naXa«"rivrw) .-In 772 a Vardan is
V
392 Armenian
MEl ly °f command.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. B
found in command of the Roman theme of the Armeniacs ; and six years later (778) a great force of ioo,ooo men is raised under Leo IV ., in which all
the four generals of divisions are clearly of Armenian descent ; Artavasdus of the Anatolics, Tatzates of the Buccellarians, Caristerotzes of the Armeniacs, Gregory, son of Mazalacius, of the Obsicians ; the entire army being placed under the control of the famous old monk-hunting Michael Lachanodracon of the Thracesians . Tadjat is a favourite name with the Arzrounian and Gnounian princes ; and it is interesting to notice that, thirty years after the rising of Artavasdus, his compatriots monopolise all the chief military posts, and as a consequence the entire government of Asia Minor. Little was accomplished by this vast and unwieldy host : but more Jacobite Syrians were transferred to Thrace ; perhaps to act as a counterpoise or solvent to the Hellenic orthodoxy, against which the Armenian camarilla had declared a truceless war.
. In 78o a new and romantic figure claims our Policy of notice. Harun enters for the first time on the stage Harun ; con, stant duel at as governor of Aderbaidjan, a post in our own day BByyzanntium allotted to a Persian heir-apparent . But the position betwee
Armenian included the control of Armenia ; and by the side of yener" and the inexperienced prince was a faithful Barmecide as Secretary of State . With this year then begins reaction. a more vigorous and vexatious policy towards the lands of the empire ; and at home a long and obscure series of conspiracieg takes its start, aiming at the dethronement of Constantine VI. and Irene. Incessant intrigue and suspicion was the atmosphere in which moved the unfortunate half-brothers of Leo IV. Decorated with the empty titles of Caesar or Nobdissimus, they became for more than thirty years a storm-centre and a rallying-point for the malcontents . The last intimation of their existence is found in the reign of the first Michael, when their dynasty had irretrievably passed away ; though
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
;+ , ' " '
s
"'
f
'f .
r
393
a few who recalled the services of the " Isaurian " vigorous Poa"y of house looked with regret at the blinded princes, the Harun; con-
blameless instruments or pretexts of revolution for stant cued at so long a time. This year (78o) sees the earliest Byzantium attempt to place Nicephorus on the throne ; and the Armenian plot includes the father of a future emperor, Bardas, 9'a& and general of the Armeniacs. Now in the dim light a"tx which fitfully illuminates a dark period we are left to surmise, and may often be led astray by an excessive interest in the meagre detail . But it seems impossible to avoid the following conclusions : that since the time of Leo the whole imperial forces in Asia had been in the hands of a small band of devoted Armenian adherents, who thoroughly sympathised, like Cromwell's Ironsides, with the policy of image-breaking and monk-hunting ; that the Orthodox reaction looked to Irene the Athenian, strangely-mated consort of Leo IV. ; that the last twenty years of the dynasty were not a mere household quarrel between a capable mother and a wayward son, with designing uncles in the background : rather was it a serious contest between two rival creeds, two rival methods of government. Irene represents Orthodoxy, pacific principles, and palace-control ; the leaders of the army represent a bluff and jovial worldliness, anti-clerical and undoctrinal, and an aggressive frontier policy . These incidents are treated elsewhere, in our estimate of the imperial position and its dangers. We must here restrict our attention to their Armenian aspects ; yet it will not be easy to keep the threads apart, so closely interwoven is the national, the religious, the political issue. The Saracens' inroads, menacing all Asia Minor, begin anew in 781, the annual tournament, or rather purposeless slave-raid, which excites the impatience of the historian and the reader . Chief command of the imperial troops is entrusted to the eunuch John, significantly enough ; not for the first time had the court found security in supplanting
394 vigorozm
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF , DIV. B
a too popular general by a pliant agent of the palace, gauntu e and some of the great Roman successes had been stant det at won by the latter. Eleutherius the exarch (619) was Byzantium a eunuch, and perhaps owed his failure and between death
to the circumstance, and in 782, another, A,tnenian Theodore, smerak and was sent in command to Sicily. This is the first orthodox occasion for many years that we read of such an reaction. appointment, and no doubt it marked a deliberate purpose in the regency of Irene. The civil service, or rather the palace-clique, were to be pitted against the strength of the Armenian genbral, the military caste ; and from this moment dates the tedious duel which fills all our later records to Alexius (io8i). Michael Lachanodracon (who held command in Asia for forty years) and the Armenian Tatzates defeated the Arabs under the vigilant supervision of the eunuch, who desired, with the court, that the result of the battle should be neither too disastrous nor too triumphant ; in the victory there must be a discreet and moderate exultation, and no single personality should stand out before the public gaze. Elmacin tells us that certain Greek troops fled to Damsak, lord of Malch (MaMos, in Thph . MI1ov ; in the Miscella, Milium) ; this will be, as Batrik of Patricius, an equivalent of Domesticus, already used for the chief commander in the East. We cannot avoid the conclusion that this new title implies that change of policy which placed all large forces under direct central control . In the next centuries the name Domestic of the Schools will be the invariable appellation of the generalissimo ; but the Schools are the household troops, and their commander an emissary or a satellite of the palace . Treason of § S. The want of harmony between the two de~ es partments may well have emboldened Harun ; he ofcourtier,. advances to Chrysopolis, near Chalcedon, without let or hindrance . Nicetas, a eunuch and a chief favourite with Irene, defended the town (called by Elmacin al-Koumas, the Count, by Ibn-al-athir, Koumas-al-
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
=~I
395
kawamis, Count of counts, on the analogy of Emir Treason of of emirs) . Lachanodracon suffered a reverse, and T fates
turned to fly on the plain of Darenig in Lydia ; of cortiers. 15,ooo Romans perished . Nor was the panic at Constantinople allayed by the next item of intelligence-that Tatzates had passed over to the caliph,
finding the insolence of the eunuch Stauracius insufferable. Long ago the pretorian prefect, despoiled of direct military command, had taken his revenge by controlling the stipends and the commissariat ; now (true to the civilian policy) the accountant (Xoyowrns, whether of post or of exchequer) could harry the army corps by interference, formalities, and delay . Nor need we betray surprise if an Armenian t Christian magarizes ; it may well be that the crude belief of a Paulician or an Athingan was in fuller sympathy with Islam than with Christianity. In the dearth of evidence, we need not refer Tatzates to one or other of these heterodox sects : yet there is reason to think that, among the military caste, such views were more prevalent than the Greek Church would have us believe. And it is well to remind those who see in the Albigenses or Cathari the forerunners of Protestantism and the pure gospel, that in the Western sects, as in the Oriental, there was (little distinctively Christian at all, either in dogma or in practice. The treason of Tatzates bore immediate fruit ; invited as if to an honourable conference, the chief minister of Irene was seized by his advice, and held to ransom by the unscrupulous Harun. Disgraceful terms were dictated, and the empire paid '! 65,000 pieces of gold for the liberty of some menials of the court. Harun, contemptuous, gave the com- violent monwealth a breathing space, which was employed and military j
tk E f'
by Irene (785) to reverse the Iconoclast policy at a opposition to formal council. The guard, whether from Puritan 16-4988 (784 conviction or loyalty to the Isaurian memory, vio-
lently interrupted the conclave and menaced the Greek bishops with death. Irene treated the revolt
396
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY -OF
DIV. B
violent with adroitness and clemency . A feint of a Saracen Armenian and military inroad allows her to transfer these Armenians across
opposition to the Bosphorus, where they are at once disbanded ; Images (785). their- wives and effects are sent after them, and they are forbidden to set foot in the capital city again. Meantime, Stauracius enrolled loyal Thracians in their place as the bodyguard of the sovereigns . So turned out the first attempt to roll away the Armenian incubus, as this court-party and the Orthodox Church without doubt believed. It is clear that the removal of the anti-Hellenic element could not have been complete ; for the Armeniac guards play a considerFirst deposi- able part in the revolution of 790- In the interval, f atd Constantine VI, had emerged into manhood, and the Armenian resented the trifling and ceremonious part allotted to troops. the legitimate Augustus. He had suffered the great disappointment of his life in losing his romantic Western bride Rotrud ('Epv0p,~), and being forced to wed Maria, a beautiful and pious but humbly-born Paphlagonian . He was embittered and dangerous ; Irene removed him, by her act exciting the deep displeasure of the Armeniacs . Alexius Mouschegh (MW6.vXF), Spathaire and Drungaire of the night-watch, being sent to appease them (with singular shortsight), merely places himself at the head of a movement of his countrymen with which he felt in complete sympathy . The rest of the Thematic troops, curiously massed as it would seem within sight and reach of the capital, assemble and salute Constantine VI. sole emperor, who at once confirms Alexius in the captaincy of the Armeniacs. The fierce delight of old Michael Lachanodracon may be imagined, in the pleasing duty of administering an oath to the troops never to receive Irene as ruler two years later he closed his restless career in battle against the Bulgars, 792 . C. V1 § 4. A third intrigue of the discontented with A,tmenian Caesar 11Ticephorus enables Stauracius to implicate supporters. Alexis Mouschegh in the plot. Constantine blinds
t' x
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
397
his faithful servant on a false suspicion ; and the C. vi. superstitious noted with satisfaction that exactly five At n'an years later, in the very month of August, and on the s,~p7,8. same day of the week, he suffered the same penalty . The pent-up fury of the Armeniac troops broke out at this treatment of their general ; they imprisoned Theodore Camulianus, sent to remonstrate with them, and cut to pieces a detachment, no doubt of Thracians (and amongst these we may note with some astonishment the commander's name, Constantine Ardashir, an Armenian) . Terror prevailed at Constantinople ; but the storm-cloud suddenly dissolved under the influence of money, as the violent factions had been appeased under Justinian . The year 797 is signalised
both by the second and final dethronement of Con- $i8 removal; the stantine VI ., and by two abortive attempts to elevate sons of C. V. his uncle Nicephorus ; the fourth plot of this un-
?`
I~
happy puppet of a losing faction was followed by his banishment to Athens, whither the eunuch Stauracius sent him, lured from the safe asylum of S. Sophia . Here his partisans once more meditate revolt ; but the citizens, devoted to Irene, and led by her brother the patrician Constantine Serantapechys, save the government further trouble by inflicting blindness on all the brothers. The presence of an insolent foe, in the heart of the empire and within sight of the capital, cannot have implied in those days the ignominy and panic, the paralysis of trade and government, which it would entail to-day. The reign of Irene was by no means wanting in dignity ; but the strong Asiatic contingents must have been seriously weakened, and the frontier defence imperilled, when we read that in 798 the stables and horses of Irene and Stauracius, on the shores of the Bosphorus, were plundered by the Arabs, and that Peter, Count of Obsicians, was It was cut to pieces resisting with his band.
Peril of the cap"
and re-
mOml Of Ireu t e coronation as perhaps in the same year as Charles' Stauracicuan party. Western emperor, that the strange veto was placed
f 898
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF niv . s Peril ofthe by Irene on the intercourse of the military caste with raif this minister ; and we only mention it here as a bane al tke proof of the jealous separation of departments pre="~n vailing at this time, or perhaps inaugurated by the first female sovereign . Meantime, a plot was forming (8oo) within the precincts of the palace and the ministries, to deprive Irene as she had deprived her son . The historian is prepared to see in Nicephorus (descendant of the Ghassanid king Djabalas), a kinsman of the powerful eunuch, and to explain the sudden elevation of a civilian comptroller of the finances by the same unseen agency as raised Michael IV. to the throne in 1034Masoudi and Abulpharagius agree in calling his father Istibrak, which may well be a version of Stauracius ; and his son and successor bore the same name . Yet we must allow that the minister was by this time dead, and that his crafty brother looked for other supporters in his venture. On the disgrace or demise of his rival, the eunuch Aetius divided between himself and his brother Leo the chief military command near the capital ; he unites the colonelcy of Obsicians and Anatolics, giving Leo the European troops of Thrace and Macedonia . But the Stauracian party was not extinct . Seven eunuchs combine with rare unanimity in the cause of Nicephorus Nicetas, already named, with three eunuch brothers of the Trefoil or Triphyllian family ; and in the remaining three is found Gregory, son of Musalacius, who may be kinsman to the general of the Obsicians in 778 .
Exceptional § 5. It is hard to believe that the throne was created t quietly transferred , not from an individual }orArmenian but from general in a dynasty, without the connivance or approval of the Ate`. - strongest factor in the State . At all events Nicephorus took a very strong step in appointing Bardanes (Vartan) the Mamigonian to an exceptional position in Asia, or at least in confirming him in the post (,aovoo"-rpa-rvyos -riov mrevre 6euaerwv, says Thph . and
THE ROMAN EMPIRE ('740-840)
his continuator) charged with (eoopela and ?rpovota) Exceptional the full oversight of all. It may be well surmised P08t ereated for Armenian
1
that on the death of Staurace a bolder policy was y~,.al in welcomed in regard to the East, and that in spite Asia. of the civilian jealousy of these exceptional military commissions, something like a dictatorship in Asia was invented to secure the frontier and restore peace to the interior. This office either dated from the latter days of Irene, or it was bestowed by Nicephorus,-in either case, . Bardanes could not have been wholly ignorant of the revolution of 802, or wholly acquiescent unless he consented . Constantine Sathas has perhaps too sweepingly pronounced that changes on the throne from 700 to the Venetian capture in zzoq. were invariably the work of the Asiatic troops . If so, the elevation of Nicephorus the Arabian provides a notable exception, unless we suppose that here, once more, an Armenian officer preferred to delegate rather than usurp the chief place . But his approval of Nicephorus was soon changed into hostility. His soldiers hurried along a path of perilous ambition 'a general who was brave, equitable in dividing the spoils, and animated by no friendly feeling towards a hated civilian exactor . Like some general in the third century, Bis dis-
z
7
or like Julian in the fourth, he is forced to take the 10"1d I'd revolt. dangerous step by the urgent entreaties and threats
';
.
,
yk,
899
of his men . Only the Armeniacs stood out, and their refusal is somewhat puzzling. Bardanes the Turk (o -rouprcos), who was no more an orthodox Christian than Nicephorus or Michael II., took the precaution (so runs the story) of consulting a wizard . The purple is promised to his two companions-in-arms, Leo and Michael, but he and Thomas are classed together as pretenders destined to fail. The two His
obscure captains, on whom rested the shadow of ian officer coming greatness, lost no time in separating them- Leo joins selves from a countryman who had aimed too high . NicePh . Leo was the son of Bardas, who after holding com-
400 Hio
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
mission as 6Tpa-r*yos in Armenia under Leo IV., had joined the unsuccessful plot of 78o, and had been joins whipped and cashiered . But his disgrace had not Nicephorm. prejudiced his son's promotion in the ancestral art of the condottieri. His family claimed Arzrounian descent (xaThXB,1 yap eK -riuv 2:evaXr1Peia, says George Monachus), a family or princely dynasty owning vast territory in Southern Armenia, towards the mountains of Kurdistan and Assyria. (The prevalent passion for tracing descent from Assyrian, Persian, or Armenian stock appears clearly in Leo, in Theophobus, and Theodora ; lastly in Basil, the so-called Macedonian, whose pedigree was written up by Photius, to show a clear lineage from the Arsacidx .) Nicephorus welcomed the friends of the pretender . Each received a post of trust and an estate of good emolument ; Leo became chief of the Federates (95otJepaTmv), and enjoyed the imperial domain (fao-Aucov oucov) of Zeno and Dagistheus Michael was appointed count of the court (Ko, KoopTS7s), or seneschal of the imperial tent, and jeo
Armenian received the rents of the estate of Carianus . Once conspirator ondy omrereome more, the only way to overcome an Armenian
by Armenian competitor was to depend on Armenian aid . The aid. revolt ended in the flight of the regretful Bardanes, his entrance into a convent, and the sinister story of his loss of sight at the hands of some wild Lycaonians (AVKav0pwroi, says Thph.). Public rumour asserted that these were sent by Nicephorus himself, though he not only denied complicity, but mourned seven days for his unhappy rival. Even if the worst side of the story be true (and we have every reason to distrust contemporary witness about Nicephorus I.), it says much for the humanity of the times that he thought it worth while to pretend sorrow for a punishment, which in any other age would have been deemed ridiculously inadequate. Harun in 803 advanced right up to the Bosphorus, and this time he carried with him a tame
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
ts f.
401
aspirant to the legitimate purple, Thomas, the son of A,fake ConMousmar . This person has been supposed to be atantine v.1 identical with the companion of Bardanes and the g later rebel whose sedition wrought havoc throughout Lesser Asia. But the foreign authorities state that he claimed to be the ,son of Constantine VI.," palpably impossible by computation of age, and wholly irreconcilable with the later "white hair" of the pretender of 823 . Constantine VI. himself might have been just over fifty in the time of Michael II. ; and we cannot conceive that one who claimed to be his son should then show marks of old age. No doubt he gave out that he was Constantine himself, a legitimate scion of a successful dynasty, still popular with a large number of the subjects of Rome. Harun knew, and in secret scorned, the imposture, but he outwardly treated the pretender Constantine with the respect due to his dignity. But this bold enterprise, like all the incursions of Harun, had no result ; and the militant caliph of romance died in Bog, having wrought great and purposeless mischief to the Roman commonwealth . In 8o6 Bardanes Anemas, clearly an Armenian Armenian minister, was charged (so the authorities report) to minigtem and reduce the settlers in Thrace to the level of imperial ~o'"`rators. serfs, tilling imperial demesne-land . Once again in
8o8, an Armenian appears as plotting against the emperor, Araates, of Camsar extraction, and qumstor (or chancellor) ; Nicephorus, with the tired or ironical clemency characteristic of his reign, cut his hair and sent him to meditate in a Bithynian monastery. Our accounts of Nicephorus come from garbled and prejudiced sources ; and it is from Abulpharagius that we learn that he was a gallant prince, by no means despised by his Oriental foes or invariably unsuccessful in warfare. It cannot be denied that his attachment to Hellenic orthodoxy, or even to Christianity, lay under deserved suspicion. I am not inclined to dismiss summarily, as the unscrupulous VOL. II. 2C
s
.402
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV . a
Armenian scandal of political or religious partisans, the stories ministera and of his heretic sympathies or pagan practices . He conspirators. was the cordial friend (Sca7rupos OAos) of Manichees, that is, of Paulicians, whom he allowed to found a little State .in Armenia . Like Michael, he consorted with the mysterious Athingans of Phrygia ; his Lycaonians were not merely rough henchmen but disseminators of heresy. He consulted gipsies and soothsayers ; he submitted to a rite resembling the Mithraic taurobodium . If he was not, like Leo, a determined Iconoclast, it was merely because he was devoid of religious conviction ; himself of Arabian descent, he reminds one of the Morescoes-an outsucceg8 and ward conformity concealing an utter indifference . elevdaon of Leo the "Assyrian " was made by him o-TpaT.Vyor Leo of the Armeniacs, and, like his greater « Isaurian " namesake just one hundred years earlier, he lost (Srs). his military chest-not this time through treachery, but by carelessness. The emperor is content with a beating and a sentence of exile . He owed his advancement to a victory over Thebith in an Arabian inroad ; and to a curious act of perfidy at the great battle of AdrinoPle> in which following so soon after the death of Nicephorns, every other empire but the Byzantine must have succumbed (June Za, 81g). It is perhaps unwise to trust the biassed and clerical historians ; and the same doubtful tale is told of Decius' successor, Gallus (a5 z), and of Romanus I. (gig). In any case, Leo had not lost the affection of his Oriental troops, or the confidence of the capital . It is more than likely that the Arsneniacs were determined to make something out of their employment on a European shore, outside their own province, and to claim the usual prerogative of the troops of Anatolia in creating and unmaking princes . 7. Over these important forces, at least over the Armeniacs, Leo V. placed Manuel, an Armenian and a Mamigonian . His own son Sembat he created
s
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
403
colleague and Augustus, changing his name to the ever-popular Constantine, like Leo III., whom he set before him as his model. John the Grammarian is made patriarch of the Morochorzenian clan ; his father Bagrad or Pagrat (IIayrcparcos), and his brother Arsharis ('Apo-ap)'7s) sufficiently display their nation-
s,ceess ant elevation of Leo tie A Armenian (8r3).
ality. Leo is displaced by another bold and ignorant soldier of fortune, Michael of Amorium ; and in the absence of any legal ruler, the succession is contested with equal right by Thomas, son of Mousmar .
I will not here dwell on the peculiar character of serious this revolt (821-3). The Obsicians and Armeniacs menaces to the State did not join the pretender, but his
ranks were swelled under,. not merely by needy Socialists but by Saracen sub- michaelII. sidies and detachments of Parsee dualists. It was a strange assortment ; Thomas himself was called indifferently a Slavonian, a Scythian, or the son of a Byzantine emperor ; and his host represented every race, creed, and nation of the East. Twice he attacked the capital ; and fell at last, no doubt because he could not undermine the loyal attachment of the Armenians to the candidate who was first in the field . The short reign of Michael II. gave little prognostic of the future splendour of the dynasty . Crete was torn away (824), and continued in detachment until its recovery by Phocas under Romanus II. (962). Sicily was almost entirely lost to the Saracens (827), and the slender cord of sentiment or tribute which bound the remote Dalmatian coast was snapped, if we may trust the terse and summary dictum of Scylitza (Cedrenus) ('A?re6-ra-rJ7G-e -7r6c-a AaXAa-ria) . Indeed, like Gallienus (260-268), the emperor merely joked about the loss of territory as modifying the toil of his office . There were not wanting those who reminded him that with a few more such lightenings of labour, the imperial dignity Armenian would become superfluous. Indeed, it seems quite heap and clear that the heart, the vigour, and the policy of alliance indispemabde Rome lay solely in the Armenian mountains.
The to Bme.
i 404 Armenian help and alliance
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. B
steadiness of the Eastern frontier during the reigns of
Leo V. and Michael II ., the restoration of order and
indispensable plenty after Thomas' destructive insurrection, were to Row. due to the loyalty of Asiatic troops under Manuel ; and the true inner history of the empire should be written rather from some frontier citadel in the East than from the palace in the capital . The real and serious happenings might be told by tracing not the series of pageant emperors but the records of Manuel, John Curcuas (92o-942), or Nicephorus Phocas and Zimisces : and these do less for the commonwealth in the purple than as simple generals of the East. So indispensable was the Armenian influence that we may at once discount the pleasing legend of the Policy, not whim or marriage of Theophilus . accident, dictated such an alliance . Theodora is a niece of the brave champion of the East, and the whole family are staunch Armenians and marry husbands of the same nation ; her sister Mary is found united to Arshavir, a ,uayto--rpos, possibly the brother of the patriarch John. Throughout the reign (82q-842), Manuel and Theophobus the "Persian " are the principal commanders ; Theophobus is rewarded by the highest dignities of the realm, the hand of the emperor's sister, Helen, and at last by suspicion, disgrace, and death . Services to ~e of vender Theophiaw; Aiexis and
§ 8. From Persarmenia too comes Babec, for five years rebel against the suzerain caliph (c.-831), with 7000 men of his own country. These settled at Sino e, like the Mardaites at Attalia, formed an p
independent military commonwealth, raised their numbers to fourteen and subsequently to thirty thousand, and gave the court anxious moments when they desire to restore a national monarchy in the person of Theophobus . For he succeeded to the captaincy of the formidable band on Babec's death ; and the 1' Persians " are loaded with favours and legal privileges ; intermarriage is permitted and encouraged ; and the soldiers rise to the highest titles and places in
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (740-840)
405
the military service of the empire (,8a6Acxois a~t(L,aa6cv, services to rcco&~c orTpaTWrr1rco£s) . Theophanes' continuator tells the empire of Armenia us with pardonable hyperbole, o'aov E9vos urnrcoov, and under Leo Grammaticus adds the significant item that down T71OP71Zlm ; Alexis and to his day
there are detachments called Touplcac Theopho&w. wepa-ivv in all the themes,-whose origin we shall presently have occasion to remark. These troops surround Theophilus the « unfortunate " in the disastrous battle of 835 ; and Manuel saves his life . In the same year Manuel, more an ally than a subject, crosses over to the caliph ; and having repented him of his magarizing, is welcomed with open arms by Theophilus and obtains the title of Magister and Domestic of the Schools. This easy exchange of masters must excite our surprise ; but the "Persians " or Persarmenians had brought their traditional policy with them into the imperial service. Naturally desirous of independence, they had played off one illustrious power against the other, had received an Arsacid ruler of alien race, had coquetted with Sassanids, and had paid tribute to the caliph. Religious disputes had prevented a genuinely cordial attachment to their proper suzerain . A purely feudal system of society had put annexation under a centralised bureaucracy out of the question, and had rendered suspicious the proffers of Armenian help or the entreaties of Armenian distress. It is not unlikely that the perplexing and meteor-like career of another compatriot may be traced to the suspicions of the court and ministries ; and we may assume that the young Alexis Mouschegh (McomnXe) owed his elevation and his downfall to the indirect influence of the Armenian faction . Might not Theophilus, alarmed not without reason at the rising fame of his wife's brother, burdened with a debt of gratitude to her uncle, desire to find a rival to this coalition, and find it only in another Armenian ? Distinguished in the defence of Sicily, Alexis was summoned home to receive the successive steps of patrician, proconsul,
406
j
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
Services to magister (always an especial honour), and lastly ~ e of Czesar : revival of a title not employed since Conunder stantine V. gave it charged with misery to his cadets. Ahe'~'shand' He is betrothed to the emperor's daughter, and sent Theophobu, again to Sicily as its General and Duke. But on the death of the infant princess, and on the birth of a son, afterwards Michael III., Theophilus, amidst the envious voices of courtiers, had no longer the same need of his services or the same confidence in his loyalty . He was recalled, whipped, and immured in a dungeon ; and as speedily reinstated in favour and dignities. But Alexis and his brother Theodosius were weary of such vicissitudes, and retired at the moment of the final triumph of innocence into a cloister. In 837 occurred the famous proclamation of Theophobus as king not of Rome but of the Persians : the troops were distributed through the older themes of Asia, and the suspicion leads in the end (842) to the murder of Theophobus, the last act of the dying emperor . Next year we find Armenia Armenia t~jxd wholly attached to the caliphate : following its p armies are the chief of the Bagratids and the leader of Vasparacan, the former bearing the title 1' Prince of princes," while the latter, Ashot, Arzrounian, and therefore kinsman of Leo V., bore that of simple « Prince." With this rapid increase in Armenian influence in the high places of the empire, this practical monopoly of Armenian defence in the imperial military system-this curious antipathy to Rome in the land itself-we pass to a new age, an established dynasty, and the altered policy of pretenders or rather regents, all of Armenian birth .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
40'7
VI ARMENIANS WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE EMPIRE FROM MICHAEL III . (8492), TO THE END OF ROMANUS I. (944)-(840-940)
1 . Theoctistus the eunuch, chief minister of the Roman young prince, looked eastwards for the warrior's exp"itiom to N.E. ;
'H
Hl
laurels which always eluded him. In 843 he led Bardm ant an expedition to the eastern shores of the Euxine Theoctistus. to bring succour to the people of Lazica, or rather, if we look more closely, to punish a revolt. For the Arabs had not in effect penetrated so far ; they held in vassalage, especially when the emir of Meliten6 took the lead (838), the feudal princes of our Oriental Poland, but they had not yet challenged Roman supremacy on the Black Sea or among the tribes of the Caucasus. Yet the Roman Empire was very weak in those climes, and the abolition of Chersonese autonomy under Theophilus, so much regretted and censured by historians, may well have been a necessary act. It involved a permanent garrison and military law in a district threatened by Patzinaks and Russians, and half-way between the capital and its dubious vassals or allies in Abasgia. Some years before, 832, Bardas and Theophobus had been sent on a similar enterprise ; and neither seems to be attended with any conclusive results . It would appear that all loyal Armenians had sought refuge and settlements on Roman ground, leaving the magarizing faction to swell the armies of Islam. This alone can account for the diversity of feeling between the trustworthy officers of the Roman army (if we except Manuel's lapse), and the antipathy of the natives in their own country . We have now arrived at the Rise and most notable instance of Armenian success,-Basil elevation of the Macedonian, Armenian and Arsacid ; whose Amin. mother's family descended from the great Constantine ; ' who boasted on both sides Alexander of Macedon
408 Rise and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
as ancestor. His forefathers (deriving from the of Christian king Tiridates) claimed the hospitality of Basil the Armenian. the Roman Empire, either, as was then believed (Genesius), in the days of Leo I. (457-474), under whom they settled in Macedonian Nice ; or as Saint Martin with more likelihood, under the great Justinian, when Artaban and his kin entered the imperial service . That the story of Armenian colonists is not purely mythical is clear from the mention of Cordylus and his son Bardas at the time of Crum's ravages, 81o-820 (during which time the latter, obviously of Armenian birth, was chief of a Mace' donian settlement beyond the Danube) ; from the ;name of Basil's brother, Sembat (hum,8a'rtos, Geo. Mon.). And it must be obvious to the student that Macedonian " is a vox nihili ; there was no settled population of the Balkan peninsula that predated the Slavonic incursions except in the towns ; and it is clear that Basil was not a Slav, and that his elevation was not a revenge for the failure of Thomas (823). On the other hand, we must not press unduly the serious motives or deliberate policy which raised the handsome groom who was neither soldier nor civilian. It was no military nomination such as we have in other Roman and Byzantine pretenders, called in to retrieve the errors or neglect of a worn-out dynasty . We must leave it as an instance of capricious selection by a legitimate monarch of a colleague, whose tact disarmed envy and hostility and enabled him to rise to an unchallenged and sovereign position from the murder of his beneBasil invested factor. The first act of Basil was to display his B the iw veneration for his ancient fatherland ; in 867, he monarch. heard from an Armenian bishop that a Bagratid prince had the right to crown the head of the house ; just as in later time the solemn act of coronation has become the privilege of certain archiepiscopal sees. Basil despatched Nicetas to Ashot I., founder, amid the disorders of the caliphate, of the Bagratid
h.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
409
line of kings ; he sent him in reply a rich crown, and Nicodemus carried back a grateful letter from the emperor addressed to « my beloved son ." This interchange of courtesies was maintained during the reign of Leo VI. 2. In the plot against Bardas the regent (866), Sembat, his son-in-law, Armenian and Bagratid, was an accomplice with his own brother Bardas ; and
Bawinvested 6Y the " monarch . Notable Armenian emerges
emerge ; the truly Oriental list of conspirators includes besides, Makznus, an Assyrian, a Chaldean (from near Trebizond), and gems ' a Bulgarian. In the same year the disappointed AMyru& schemer Sembat rebelled against the influence of
Basil, now a full associate in the empire and charged with all its serious business. He is reduced by Nicephorus Maleinus, an Armenian noble of one of those prolific and warlike families which produced the Phocas and Zimisces of the next century. In 872 Basil in an Eastern expedition receives, like some German emperor, the repentant homage of a brigand chief, Curticius, who from the safe fastness of Locano's castle had secured wide territory and wrought havoc on Roman land ; this petty feudal tyrant brings over his men-at-arms with him. In 879 occurred another Armenian conspiracy which introduces us to a notable name. John Curcuas (Gourgenes ?) captain of the Hicanates (ircavaToe, a corp dating from c. 8oo), lured, like many other usurpers, by a lying soothsayer, attempted to secure a throne, for which, as it seemed, the sole condition was Armenian descent. He lost his sight, and his partisans were whipped. One cannot wonder at the severity with which divination was pursued in the empire (e.g. under Valens, c. 370), when designing men worked on empty and credulous brains with such hopes . The treason of Bardas had not harmed the career of Leo V., his son ; and it is a pleasing trait in Byzantine manners that military promotion was bestowed on the sons of traitors . Curcuas the younger, in the next century, hero of a prose-epic in eight books, is the guardian of the
410 Notable, Armenian families
emerge ; ~ , phoea8,' Ar9yrm.
I
'
Intimate and
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv, a
Eastern frontier and fitting companion of the great warriors of his nation, Phocas and Zimisces . And,
indeed, about this time (88o) emerged the first Phocas (Nicephorus) to attain renown ; he had served with ability and courage against the Western Saracens in Sicily, and about 886 was sent to curb their Eastern kinsmen . Leo VI. pays him a generous tribute for his ready inventiveness in strategy : and for over a century there will be few years unmarked by the valour or the revolt of a Phocas. He desolated Cilicia up to the gates of Tarsus ; for the border wars were still merely forays, raids of vendetta, without fixed policy. In 891, he is "Governor of Lydia " ; and for many years formed an iron bulwark to the east frontier, ravaging Syria and checking any advance of Islam . He left three sons, Michael, Leo, and Bardas . Another family of repute emerges at this time, that of Argyrus ;-Leo was sent by Michael III., c. 85o, against the Paulician stronghold of Tephric6 ; his grandson Eustathius is a great territorial magnate in Charziane (Cappadocia), whither after good service to the State he is banished : his recall or rather exile to his lands being procured by the envy of a friend Himerius. He may well have belonged to a family of settlers originally Armenian ; but he is at any rate a good instance of a type meeting us with increasing frequency,the military leader and feudal lord, having great possessions in a certain district ; in the intervals of warlike duties exercising there the functions of a clan-chieftain among kinsmen, of a landlord among serfs.
§ 3. Leo VI . continued the policy of his (putative ?) father, and drew closer the bonds of Roman-Armenian redattions of Leo YL with alliance . Ashot I . visits the Roman court at some Armenia ; rein (perhaps in 888)) and left a expansion of time early y in the reign
enqnre towards East.
I
detachment of troops, who were employed against the Bulgars. The captain was Melric or, Mel (and I am unable to sympathise with M. Brosset in identi-
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
411
fying him with Curticius) ; we shall hear again of this captain. Escaping from this unsuccessful encounter, Mel is reported to have returned with his band to Lesser Armenia, founded a fort in Lycandus (district of Dchahan) and enabled Leo VI . to boast that another theme was added to the empire under his sway : (when somewhat later we find Arabians writing of « Mleh Demeslicos" it is impossible not to connect the name with this captain) . In 893 Leo received envoys from Sembat, the new Bagratid king, to apprise him of his succession ; they paid homage, and it is said that the two sovereigns exchanged gifts each year during this reign . Towards the close of the century (perhaps in 898), Gregory (I'piyopcs),, son of Vahan, the Bagratid prince of Taron, came into somewhat peculiar relations with the empire like many of his peers, he was careful to keep on friendly terms with both powers . His doubtful faith was reported at court ; and he imprisoned the two Armenians who, as he supposed, had carried the tale. But they had a powerful advocate in King Sembat, their kinsman ; and he asks the emperor to secure their deliverance from duress . Gregory sends a hostage to court, and is so charmed by his treatment there, and the kindness of Leo, that he releases the two captives under escort of his brother Apoughan. He came himself to Constantinople and received the title ,u«yt6-rpos, while his brother was made patrician ; and the firm alliance was ratified by a marriage within the imperial house. In the latter years of his reign, Leo achieved a similar diplomatic triumph, and once more added a theme to the provinces of the empire : three brothers, owners of land beyond the Euphrates, north of Meliten6, gave themselves up to the emperor as his '1 men " ; and, like Melias or Mel, received back their canton as the theme of Mesopotamia, of which one of the three became the first governor . Private enterprise thus became the pioneer of Imperialism.
Intimate and f~8 of Leo vi. with Armenia : expansion .m 're -ard8 East.
412 Muu~~°l~"'°'z °f petty in Anzenia
Ir
j
II-
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
§ 4. To the student, it is clear that the principles and methods, the rules and conditions, of feudalism were perfectly understood and practised by the Roman court long before the Crusaders brought eastwards calikat~f the name 11liegeman" (autos) and the formal constitution of the kingdom of Jerusalem . Evidently Leo VI. took full advantage of the disorders and incoherence which these feudal tendencies produced in Armenia. Everywhere the example of the disintegrating caliphate was eagerly followed by the princelets. Kingdoms (of the smallest extent and most precarious tenure) are multiplied ; every noble claims for clan or manor complete immunity ; and family divisions increase the number and weaken the power of minute sovereign states. The Roman Empire was the residuary legatee amid such confusion . It alone stood upright in the ruins of the Orient,-an orderly, amiable, and peaceful commonwealth, mild in its laws, Christian in its belief, tactful and courteous in its dealings with lesser potentates . Greater Armenia was portioned out, like mediaeval Germany, between nobles who strove to maintain independence against Roman and Saracen alike . Such was " Cricorice " of Taron, between Taurus and Euphrates, in whose strange name we recognise the diminutive of Gregory, Gregoritza (as from Theophilus we have Oeo-PAIT~qs, the early patron of Basil) . There is " Symbaticius " (a similar Grecized form for "little Sembat") who might claim to be the chief of these petty sovereigns ; he bore the title " Prince of princes " and ruled undisputed from Kars to Lake Van, a district henceforth called Vasparacan. There is besides the northerly Iberian prince, Adranasar, still enjoying, of hereditary right rather than by direct imperial collation, the dignity of '1 Curopalat." The relation between these feudal princes and the empire strongly resembled the nominal vassalage of the Mongolian or Tibetan chiefs to the court of Pekin. The emperor in each case received presents, or
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
418
perhaps '1 tribute " ; but was expected to surpass the costliness of these gifts by lavish munificence, and to pension superannuated scions of the princely houses and dignify the rural clan-leader with some imperial dignity, He provided wives (as under J ustinian I, in Colchis) from noble and senatorial families at
Mudti~ Ptn f petty Sovereignties in Armenia ca decay of caliphate.
home : he exchanged lands inside the safer circuit of the empire for districts of peril beyond the Euphrates . To this policy must be largely attributed the extension of the empire to the shores of the Caspian, which took place quietly enough in the next hundred years . Of these records we hear little amidst the din of the Bulgarian campaign and the more brilliant and less durable victories in the lower East.
5. In 9 r r (the year of Leo's demise) Sembat I., Appeal of Armoian king of Armenia, was reduced to hopeless impotence king
by the insubordinate nobles. He had recourse to enpire(911). the empire ; and John Catholicos is in error in naming Basil as the object of his entreaties. But Leo dies, and Alexander was by no means inclined to venture on a distant enterprise. To the troubled dignity his son, Ashot II., succeeds in 914 ; who, like some chivalrous Gothic king in Spain, forms a chosen band and harries the Moslem . He secures the crown rather in virtue of his exploits against the unbeliever than as a birthright . He chases Arabs from Tiflis, and ravages Aderbaijan. He allied with 1' Aternerseh " (the Adranasar mentioned above), Bagratid king of Iberia, who had secured the kingly title (c. goo) by the direct recognition of Sembat I., happier in his external relations than in his domestic policy . This coalition, joined by Gourgenes, king of Abasgia, reduced or overawed the petty feudal tyrants and secured the coronation of Ashot II. in 9115 . Royalty saw in the emperor a suzerain and a champion, fount of honour and legitimate dispenser of dignities ; aristocracy preferred the Moslem alliance. Under the not incapable regency of Zoe (914) a Vasparacanian prince offered aid against the
414
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIv. B
Appeal o,/' Armenian
Saracens ; and Constantine VII. in his first brief rule follows a sympathetic policy with regard to Ashot I I., empire (911). confronted with a perilous confederacy of Moslem
governors and his own unruly nobles. The emperor was astonished that the willing assistance of the empire had not been solicited . A Greek patriarch condescends to write to the heretical Armenian Catholicos a letter of friendly sympathy and advice '1 The emperor is sincerely concerned at the distress of Armenia, and begs you to rouse the kings to united efforts on its behalf." John the Catholicos succeeded with Adranasar Il . and obtained his aid ; while Gourgenes wrote in reply to the emperor a letter which is curiously typical of the attitude of these kings of the East to Rome : "Only give us an asylum in the empire and all Armenians will follow
consistent , us across the border and will settle there and beImPOridi- come loyal subjects ." The emperor (who was now ofArmenian
Romanus Lecapenus, 920) invited Ashot the 'I Iron and John to Constantinople ; the latter refuses, not alliance. wart "Fiswishing to scandalise his flock by communicating with heretics who accepted the detested Council of Chalcedon ; the former is warmly welcomed, and returns with prestige and hopefulness enhanced to an enthusiastic people, already beginning to repair the damage of successive Moslem inroads . A small Roman force secures the submission of two recalcitrant cities or forts ; and are then sent back with a wise confidence in the native allegiance. Ashot is now joined by his brother Abbas, returning from his refuge with the grand prince of Abasgia, whose daughter he married. With this the fortunes of the little kingdom began to revive. But the same hindrances stood in the way of any certain alliance ; the distaste of the feudal nobility for the methods of Rome ; the prejudice of the people at large against the "heretical council ." We may anticipate a few years in order to supply another instance-in 926, Gagic or Cakig, king of VasParacan, earnestly desired Y; ,= and
I
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
415
to conclude an alliance with the empire . But the lords protested, and hurled at the diplomacy and arms of the ,Greeks" those taunts of faithlessness and cowardice, which have been re-echoed down to resent day. day . The clergy insist on a reconthe present
ciliation of the Churches before a national alliance is suggested. The king therefore wrote to the Byzantine patriarch, pointing out the trivial points (as he considered them) of disagreement between the hostile creeds, and the greater and nobler issues at stake
consistent fin royalty ; nobles and mown thwart alliance .
in a confederacy of two Christian powers against a common foe . But the letter remained unanswered ; the tolerant and broad-minded monarch was before his time ; and an immaterial discrepancy on a subtle point of metaphysics prevented the alliance. In the latter days of the Eastern empire the reunion of the Churches failed for a similar reason.
6. Once more the Taronites on the hither side of submission of the Taronites Lake Van claim our attention . Here, as elsewhere to the empire
in feudal and limited monarchies permeated by (c. 93o). family feeling, a system of patrimonial subdivision was in vogue. At Gregory's death, the province of . Taron was portioned between his children ; and in 926 (the same year we have just been considering) Bagrat, a son, visits the Roman capital and marries a daughter of Theophylact, a close kinsman of the regent-emperor Romanus I., whose father (it will be remembered) bore the same name. He was also created a patrician, and received investiture for that district of the Taronite principality (the Armenian 11 Saxony ") which recognised suzerainty . About the same time his cousin Thornic (in which we clearly see the later title Tornicius, a rebel under the tenth Constantine) surrendered his hereditary lands to the empire, on condition of receiving an equivalent at the Byzantine court,-Constantinople being not merely the goal of barbarian greed, but the Mecca or (if it be preferred) the Paris of Armenian nobles. Sembat, his brother, followed the pre-
416
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. s
submmtsaion of cedent, and sank into a dignified. pensioner in the Tiaro~zites the capital ; only Vahan, the third, remained in his to the empire native province ; thus the Taronite family divided (c. 93o). its members between the luxurious comfort of ByzanExtenoon of tium and the exacting duties of .clan-chieftaincy .Rotan But the empire was not merely a diplomatic dealer influence
by dzplomaey in alliance, pensions, and orders, it could maintain its and by war. cause in the last resort by force of arms. Desultory warfare (not easy to distribute in years or campaigns) meets us from the last year of Leo VI . Lalacon, with the Armeniac troops, is sent to ravage Colchis ; and Catacalon, his successor, recovers Theodosiople (near Arzeroum), sacks Phasiane, and humbles the pride of some mysterious foe, variously supposed to be the Colchians or the Saracens : neither purport nor event of these expeditions is clear . A dispute ensued with the king of Iberia, who quietly occupied Theodosiople on the retirement of the Roman troops under Catacalon. Remonstrance was made on the part of the empire, but it was finally agreed that the Araxes should be the limit of Roman authority, and all territory to the north should be surrendered to Iberia. Curcuas, soon succeeding for his brilliant twenty-two years' defence of the frontier, turned his attention rather to the southern district and to Vasparacan . In the neighbourhood of Lake Van many cities seemed to be occupied chiefly by Moslem ; and when he reduced the towns of Akhlat and Bitlis he granted terms to the inhabitants on this curious and significant condition-that a cross should be planted in the middle of the mosque. We may well pause for a moment to contrast the demands of a strong central government with the fanciful and trivial stipulations of feudal tenure, flattering to vanity, but useless as a guarantee of service or fidelity. Religious piety about this term dictated a somewhat costly bargain, when very substantial concessions (both of captives and advantages) were made by Romanus I . (94a) to secure the miraculous veil of Edessa .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (840-940)
417
7. Such, then, were the relations of the empire Unzveraal with the petty Christian kingdoms and principalities fe Bow n of the East down to the retirement of the regents Ammza. The period had been prolific in bring(944, 945). ing to birth fresh independent sovereignties . The country from the Caucasus to Kurdistan was a motley patch-work (like mediaeval Germany), not merely of immune baronies but of full-blown royalties, multiplying and vulgarising the regal title . Over all these miniature kingdoms or principalities the Roman Empire exercised a potent charm. Except by the sovereign, the masterful and methodic system was not beloved ; the nobles disliked its rigour, the clergy its doctrine . But it was the secure and dignified asylum for the dispossessed exile ; it was the sole fount of honour in bestowing those empty titles and positions which from Clovis onwards had secured the homage of powerful kings . Certainly at the end of this epoch the ties are very much closer than at the beginning ; and there is no waning in the preponderating influence which the Armenian race exercised within the empire and in the imperial service. Lecapenus is a member of this militant caste or aristocracy, inured to arms from childhood and invariably following the ancestral craft : his father Theophylact saved Basil's life, and one of the last acts of Leo VI. was to appoint the son High Admiral . Like Nicephorus Phocas (963) and Romanus IV. (ro67), he rises to place and power against the anxious interest of the courtiers, by the favour of an empress and his own troops . He upheld, not unworthily, the repute of Rome, and after a quarter of a century gave way to a " legitimate " monarch, whom at one time he could have displaced without peril. The chief Armenian hero of the time Exploits and is John Curcuas, who in his long Eastern lieutenancy ' Ammiofthe the way quietly p reared P Y for the more familiar Arrmenian. achievements of Phocas and Zimisces . Son of the blinded pretender, whose failure we have noticed (879), VOL. II. 2D
418
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . -B
Exploits and he became sergeant of gendarmerie, and arrested succas of Curcuag the some conspirators in gig. In Sao he went eastArmenian. ward with wide and ample powers : defended Syria and Euphrates, repressed the Moslem, and overthrew a significant plot of Bardas Bollas to erect an independent Armenian governorship within the empire and imitate the emirs of the caliphate, who like the imperial counts of the West were daily claiming independence. (This is variously referred to the years 924 and 936 .) This rebellion again excited the infidel to reap profit from Roman dissensions. But Curcuas never lost a battle ; he carried fire and sword into their country, recovered Malatiyah, and employs its colleague-emirs as trusty allies. When on their death the town again closes its gates against the empire, Curcuas with Melias of Lycandus (a feudal warrior-chief, but also a loyal subject) again reduces and razes it to the ground. Once more the Euphrates flowed « under Roman laws." The troops of Curcuas were recognised as the flower of the army, and the most efficient force in the empire ; in a Russian peril they are hastily summoned across the continent to take part in the capital's defence (941) . It was Curcuas who really began the great work of consolidation on the Eastern frontier with a resolute design which never faltered. Himself born in Lesser Armenia, son of a soldier, he is the father of Romanus Curcuas, a captain of distinction under Nicephorus in the pursuit of the same policy . His brother Theophilus, Aou~ of Chaldia, is noticed as a strenuous provincial governor, and was the grandfather of Zimisces. Curcuas became a popular hero (his life was written by Manuel in eight books, unfortunately lost), and he suffered at the close of his career the usual penalty reserved for Armenians of warlike ability . Here the envious or vindictive influence is not a secluded sovereign warring against private wealth or merit (as in some Eastern court), but the Byzantine official world . He was accused of treason-
TIDE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
419
able designs, and perhaps the idle sons and colleagues Exploits and of Romanus were induced to join in the charge. The meee" Of Curewas the
emperor refused to believe, and despatched secret Armenian. (and happily impartial) envoys to inquire on the spot into the behaviour of Curcuas . Their report disposed of the cabal, and reinstated the general . Romanus, to mark his approval and delight, proposed to ally the houses of the sovereign - regent and the generalissimo ; Constantine VII I.'s son was to be betrothed to Euphrosyne . Once more, the autocrat is helpless and overborne ; the court is again aroused to bitter hostility ; and Romanus, with the deep regret of Charles L, sacrifices his brave defender to a lighter fate. He is cashiered and supplanted by Pantherius, a kinsman of the reigning house : according to a custom in favour at Rome, Damascus, and Bagdad alike, of entrusting the highest posts only to those who had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by disloyalty.
VII RELATIONS OF ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS TO THE EMPIRE, FROM THE SOLE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE VII. (945) TO THE DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL V. (1042) -(940-1040)
§ 1. The close of the reign of Romanus I. had Religious diirerenees been marked in Armenia by religious disputes which separate
left their sting and trace. About 94o, Ber, king of Armenia Georgian Abasgians (another puzzling subdivision), from Rome. presented himself with a large force before Kars, where King Abbas, son of Sembat the Bagratid, was about to consecrate a patriarchal church ; and requested that the rite employed should be Georgian . Suspecting his motive, Abbas, after fruitless parleying, attacked and captured Ber. In the following years the unappeasable enmity of Greeks and Armenians
420 Behyzow aif"s separate
Armenia fromRome.
Rise and elevation of Armenian.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . s
became apparent and gave rise to serious dissension, such as we may witness to-day in Liverpool or
Belfast . Devout Armenians fly from disorder to the lands of Shirak and Little Vanand ; and to end the conflict, once more a patriarch Vahanic has the courage to propose the acceptance of Chalcedon, so that Armenia might worship in communion with the Greek and Georgian rite. As with the complaisant Esdras under Heraclius, the popular indignation vented itself against the renegade and compelled him to flee into Vasparacan . About the same time, religion had led to a singularly disadvantageous compact ; at the price of the Saviour's letter to Abgarus of Edessa, the emir had secured the Roman promise (for what it was worth) never to war against Edessa, Hara, Sroudj, and Samosata . The reigns of Constantine VII . and his son were free from Armenian complications ; but the influence of the emigrant nobles who formed the military caste in Roman society was daily increasing . When Bringas (963), the civil minister, cannot induce Marianus Apambas, general of Italy, to compass the overthrow of Nicephorus Phocas, he applies to Zimisces and his cousin, Romanus Curcuas >- the one, patriciangeneral of the East, and related in some way to Nicephorus ; the other full of hereditary valour, and son of the brave defender of the border from 92o942 . (Tchemchkik is an Armenian word of doubtful meaning, which may be found in our maps to-day, but -kik is a diminutive, and Tchemch is a Persian word meaning ,majestic " ; and the whole might imply a humorous oxymoron . Ducange believes that the reading in Leo Diaconus should be tAotparci7~r1s, and that the Greek equivalent means "youth.") Of noble family or clan, his mother was in some degree connected with Nicephorus (as cousin ?), and he was the great-nephew of the famous Curcuas and grandson of his brother Theophilus, governor of Chaldia. (It is curious to note that Curcuas becomes Gourgen in
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
421
the Armenian chronicles .) Six years later, Zimisces Rise and consented to be an accomplice and agent in the plot ~~ t~ he so indignantly rejected in 963 ; to Phocas suc- Armenian. ceeded an Armenian regent . He took the young emperors, aged i i and 8, from their retreat in Vasacavan, which under Nicephorus had been chosen for their exile or their safety ; and he surrounds himself with a special bodyguard of Armenian fantassins (Asolik on 971) ; of the services of the Armenian infantry under Phocas we have already heard in Leo Diac. and Abulpharagius . 2. As the object of Basil, his ward and pupil, was the consolidation of lands in Europe, so before the eyes of Zimisces floated the ideal of a crusader. He aimed at the recovery of Jerusalem, Syria, and
Zimisces and the Crusading Ideal ; hi8 eastern exploits and close relations
Mesopotamia . A great force is collected under With " Mleh Demeslicos " (is not this a scion of the Armenian family of Melias, creator and governor of Theme royalty . Lycandus under Leo VI . ? 1) ; and in spite of the covenant of Romanus I ., the army ravages the lands of Edessa, takes Nisibis and Amida (Diarbekir), and fills the country with carnage . A reverse before Amida brings the emperor out in person ; he penetrated into the Taron district and encamped near Adziatsberd, where he finds himself confronted and opposed by a notable coalition of Armenian nationalists, numbering 8o,ooo. Yet once again the kings display their Romanising proclivities ; and Ashot III. and his namesake the king of Vasparacan act as peacemakers, and end by lending him reinforcements. Alarmed at these preparations, the people of Bagdad loudly accuse the sloth of their rulers, and insist on urgent measures. We must elsewhere attempt to trace the political development of the caliphate and the causes which led to the seclusion of a Caliph-Mikado ; here we must be 1 Or does Mleh stand for Melek or Malech, Lord or chief Domestic? Or, again, is it in any way connected with the later family of Melissenus? -
422 Zimisces and tie Crusading Ideal; his ea8tern exploits and h'~edati°ns Armenian royalty.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . s
contented with noting the institution by Rahdi 1 (934-940) Of the Emir-al-Omra's office, which some years before these events had centred all effective authority in this Shogun,-minister or generalissimo . But (as sometimes in Japan) the chief emir was himself an indolent man of pleasure ; and public indignation had to summon, from the useless pastime of
the chace, a delegate who had in turn delegated all serious business . Bokhtiar set himself to defend the capital and raise troops ; he compelled the unfortunate Commander of the Faithful to sell his furniture for the purpose. But the Roman peril vanished like a summer cloud ; while their armies wrought havoc up to Miafarekin, an imprudence of the mysterious Domestic Mleh exposed the weakness of their position and lost at once the advantages of the campaign . (Indeed, it is disheartening work for the student to trace the thousand-years' conflict on the Tigris and Euphrates, and to reflect that in that long period no serious change was effected in frontiers or influence, except in the middle of the seventh and the middle of the eleventh centuries.) In 974, Zimisces retaliated and reduced the caliph, or rather the emir, to the payment of tribute, which we find still paid twelve years later-even amidst the civil discord and insecurity which filled the early We notice, with amuseportion of Basil's reign. ment but without surprise, that the prudent emperor refuses to open negotiations on the reunion of the Churches, suggested by the ex-Patriarch Vahanic, on the ground that he had been canonically deposed by his own people. In 975, during the great and comprehensive expedition into Syria, Zimisces sent Ashot III., his old ally, a full narrative of his visit to Jerusalem, with a gift Of 2000 slaves and iooo horses, decorating at the same time two Armenian envoys with the titles " rabounapet " (rabboni) and philosopher in one case ; and in the other, ,uayca-rpos 1 Or by his immediate predecessor?
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
423
or protospathaire : so at least run the native accounts of an enterprise and a compliment otherwise unknown .' S. In the troublous year 976, after the death of Armenian Zimisces, the revolt of Sclerus takes on an entirely influencenn Armenian character. His headquarters were in rebellion of (97s). Dchahan and Melitene ; there he was saluted em- Sc peror, and there he was joined by Armenian horsemen . The seat of government and the resources of the rebellion lay in Mesopotamia ; and while goo Arab cavaliers fought under his standards, the neighbouring emirs of Diarbekir, Amida, and Miafarekin cordially assisted the cause. Nor are the native Armenian princes behindhand ; a brother Romanus and the two sons (Gregory and Bagrat) of Ashot, prince of Taron, were to be found amongst his allies. The rebel fleet was under the command of Manuel Curticius . The attitude of a certain David in this civil war is more doubtful ; he is variously represented as a king of Iberia, or as a prince of Taik and Curopalat ; as an ally of the legitimate emperor, or as acting in concert with the pretender. One account tells us that, in exchange for his support, Basil 11. promised to surrender all towns depending on the empire, in Hark (or Haik ?) and Apahouni provinces, and in the district of Mardal. But whatever may have been the aid of this dubious Displeasure Basil and ally, we cannot doubt that, on the whole, Basil had Of oea2 outb 1c good reason to be displeased with the Armenian attitude during the rebellion . He was angry with Persecution . the race and the Church ; and he empowered the metropolitans of Sebaste and Melitene to persecute the Eutychians. They fail in a design to seize the Patriarch Khatchic, but succeed so well in stirring up the bitterest feelings between the two nations that, in 977, St. Gregory of Narec loses all his popu1 Schlumberger does full justice to these Oriental sources in his diffuse history of the time. But the shapeless and straggling plan of his meritorious labour of love makes the narrative very difficult reading to the eager student.
424 Displeasure t~~ and ofreagiow n-
Armenia from the
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv. s
larity and is subject to insult, on the mere suspicion of a desire for reunion with the hated '' Greeks." But the emperor was eminently placable, and has gained an undeserved renown for merciless cruelty by a single action during a Western campaign. Twelve years later (989) he accepts graciously the surrender of the four princes who had taken part with Sclerus. One last ember of sedition broke into flame in the revolt of George, 1A«yto--rpos, in Taron, quickly overthrown by John, general of the Imperialists, on the plains of Bagarij . When Sclerus accepted from his generous rival the title of Curopalat, and retired into the dignified privacy which that title now entailed, Basil had no more competitors to fear . In this same year (98g) we read
Moslem and of an isolated fact which raises our sympathy for is reconciled the gallant Armenian struggle for freedom and to Basil IL worship, between the infidel and the still more suspected Greek. The emir of Akhlat (near Lake Van), governor of Hark and Apahouni (mentioned above as offered by Basil to an ally), once more elevates the defences of Manzikert, which Bardas Phocas had destroyed, captures Moush, and massacres the priests there ; Asolik, our informant, having himself seen the gory traces on the churchwall. But the chief interest' of Basil's reign and subsequent exploits is now finally transferred to the West ; and we shall find Armenian characters figuring conspicuously either in actual records or in the romance of History. Legend of § 4. In 988 (here too we depend on Asolik) Basil Armenian n compelled many Armenians to emigrate into MaceSdmue tihe donia and settle there ; an instance of that transshishmanid. planting policy which the Byzantines for divers reasons so often adopted . Carrying into their new home the hostility and resentment which they had felt in the East, they lost no time in defaulting to the Bulgarians ; and in the number of these defaulters were found Samuel and Manuel, two members of a
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
425
great Armenian family in Derdcham . When in the Legend of next year (989) Basil, accompanied by the Armenian Armenian origin of
annalist, went to the wars and captured Curt, the Samuel the Bulgarian king, the following strange tale went round : .8hishmanid. that it was the Armenian Samuel who placed himself at the head of the despondent Bulgars, chased the imperial troops, accepted the title of king, and proposed peace on the terms of marriage with Basil's sister . Being deceived, like Jacob, by a lady-inwaiting, he swears undying hatred and commits the episcopal go-between of the mock marriage to the flames . It is difficult to say what element of truth lies embedded in this astounding myth ; perhaps we may pardon the national conceit of a writer who sees a compatriot in every gallant foe of the powerful emperor, an Arsacid on every throne.
Yet Armenians are not wanting to the imperial Armenian cause ; and several facts point to the noble confidence fee" of Basal II.
of Basil, and his ready acceptance of Armenian proffers (990). of loyalty . He placed in command at Thessalonica Gregory the Taronite, a Greek patronymic for that family of princes who, having surrendered their territorial right between Taurus and Euphrates, were content to live as pensioners of the Roman court or captains in the Roman armies. Some members of the clan had followed Sclerus ; but all were pardoned and taken into the confidence and intimate service of the emperor . Again, in his retinue on this occasion, Basil takes with him a Gregory ,udy«rpos and his son Ashot, with Sahak, prince of Handzith . Meantime, in the East the mysterious David, prince of Taik, had been enjoying great success against the various emirs ; he had reconquered land in Vasparaean and Ararat . But this success aroused envy, and he was poisoned in the Eucharist-a rare instance in this history of treacherous or brutal crime so familiar in Western annals. He has time to make a will, bequeathing his little realm to the mighty empire, much as kings of Pergamus or Bithynia had
426
CONSTITUTIONAL: HISTORY OF
niv. s
Tazk
done in earlier days . At this moment Basil was at RomeBail Tarsus (991), and on the news flies northwards with Ii. removes his habitual impetuosity. Met on the way by the religious remonstrances of the Armenian clergy against the disabilities.
The Great 991 ; ar of ssz Basil
II. receives ,fealty o,/' Armenian
kings.
vexations of the Sebastene prelate, he at once annuls all their religious disabilities, and restored amongst other privileges the use of bells. At Erez, in the canton of Archamouni, he received the homage of the Emir of Neferkert, and, oddly enough, seems to have ordered his Armenian princely neighbours to lend him their support in case of need. We may believe that Basil saw in this nominal vassal of the imprisoned caliph a useful renegade for his own purposes ; and it is clear, both for the Christian nobles and the Moslem governors, that independence could only be preserved by playing off one great power against the other. 5. The Caucasian monarchs also came to pay their respects i Bagrat, king of the Abasg~cans a minor royal dignity, held as apprenticeship by the Iberian heirs), and his father, Gourgenes, king of Iberia.
Meeting Basil near Mount Hadjitch, they were decorated severally with the titles curopalat and magistros ; and Gourgenes discovered later, to his chagrin, that he had enjoyed a vastly inferior dignity . Several Talk princelets do homage, and the harmony is only broken by the quarrels of a Russian and a Georgian. On the charge of stolen fodder the whole Russian contingent make common cause against the purloiners, and defeat the Georgians after slaying their Talk generals, John and Gabriel, sons of Otchopentir, and Tchortovanel, son of Abou-Harp (Abel-kharp ?). Abbas, king of Kars (the hero of the cathedraldedication), renders fealty at the same time with Sennacherib, king of Vasparacan, and his brother Gourgenes, loaded with gifts. The absence of Gagic I., king of Ani, from this imperial durbar excited adverse comment ; a nephew instils into Basil's ear suspicions of his .uncle's motive, while 'the emperor
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
427
waits with increasing impatience at Bagrevad (in the The Great province of Hark). Basil orders the district of ss1bB Cogovit and Dzalcot to be ravaged . Some difficulty ii. receives of arose, too, out of the envious discontent of the Iberian fealty ki ge"`Zan kin g at his inferior title ,; he works havoc in Twkr kings. and, after recourse to arms, Basil finds it prudent to cede a portion of this district to Georgia at a convention agreed to at Mount Medzob. (This king, Gourgenes, left to his son, Bagrat, whose superior dignity had incensed him, the joint kingdoms of Abasgia and Iberia ; and he dying ten years before Basil, in 1015, is followed by his son Georgi, heir
to both crowns.) According to Arabian writers, Basil occupied at this time (before the close of the century) the towns of Akhlat, Malazkert, and Ardjich ; and this famous expedition is followed in the East by a long peace and silence . It is not until i o z 6 that we resume the thread of Armenian history, interrupted for a quarter of a century. The scene valiant of events is Vasparacan, where, since Phocas and y~ "c¢n Zimisces, a part had been incorporated into the to sjuks. empire, part being occupied by petty chieftains, allied or directly vassals, part still acknowledging an independent king, Sennacherib . Upon this little realm fell the brunt of the Seljukian invasion in its earliest Countless Turks invade and penetrate attacks . into the Reschdounian canton . Sapor (who would seem to have controlled the military resources of the With him went country) marches to meet them. the valiant youth David, son of the king ; while the sovereign himself, charged with the civil and central government, watched anxiously from his capital at Van, or at Ostan. The Seljuks carried their ravages to Dovin and the canton of Nig, actually securing a portion of Vasparacan . Vasak of Betchni (father of Gregory, ,u.aiyt6Tpos by imperial favour, of whom we shall hear later joins in defending the country, falls on the Turks besieging a church, and cuts their detachment to pieces, cleaving in two a very Goliath
428
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. B
sennaeherib of stature at a single blow. In the very moment of or poivictory, while he was uttering words of pious thankswrrenaders to fulness, a stone ended his life, and he was venerated the empire. as a martyr in the cause of his religion and his
country . His brother Varanes succeeds as generalissimo of independent Armenia ; a post, like the Byzantine shogunate in the past century, sometimes equal in dignity, and generally greater in authority than the kingship itself. The Armenian troops more than held their own against the raiders, but Sennacherib, remembering a prophecy of Nerses about the fate of their country, convened the grandees, persuaded them to endorse his proposal of a surrender to Rome, and despatched his brave son David to the imperial capital . He was accompanied by the clanbishop of the Reschdounians, who could from his own eye-witness testify to the havoc wrought by the Turk in his canton : three hundred horses laden with presents followed in the retinue. David, a prince after Basil's own heart, was welcomed with fatherly affection, and solemnly adopted by the childless monarch in St. Sophia ; I ooo villages or hamlets, I I fortresses, and i o cities were transferred to the direct sway of Rome. Convents and their lands were only excepted ; but many of their inmates, P .f~fs together with 400,000 of the people, followed the king within the into the safer territory of the empire. They rapidly empire. build cities for their own use on the Euphrates, Akh, andArabkur ; while Sennacherib, made patrician, is given Cappadocia to govern as an imperial lieutenant, and receives an appanage very palpably feudal, in the city and surrounding district of Sebaste, for his own hereditary usufruct. We know that Basil distrusted the great Asiatic landlords who "joined field to field " and emulated the latifundia of an earlier age ; he had removed Eustathius Maleinus from his 'more than civil" demesnes in 99 I, and part of the principality assigned to the ex-king may have comprised the estate of Maleinus (which had at his
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
429
death reverted to the State) . The new province was Feudalfets the entrusted to Basil Argyrus (a brother of the future v'ithin empire. Emperor, Romanus 111.) ; and on his estrangement from native sympathies, Nicephorus Comnenus was despatched to consolidate and to pacify . Sennacherib (according to Armenian accounts) showed his loyalty
to Basil in a peculiar way, for it was he and not Xiphias who killed Nicephorus Phocas (last pretender of the famous clan) and sent his head to Basil (1021) . But the Far East gave the veteran emperor Discontent rebellion endless trouble : in 10 2 2, he sets his face towards and in Georgia
Iberia, and marches on Vanand (or Phorac) . The (ion) . whole country was up in arms against the Roman aggression ; the Abasgians were in force, and all the neighbouring tribes of the Caucasian district joined Basil after some anxiety wins a the coalition . decisive engagement, and proceeds to ravage twelve cantons (according to Samuel of Ani, twenty-four) . He winters in Marmand on the Euxine, and crosses thence into Chaldia. On September i ith a second battle was fought, in which Liparit, Abasgian general, George, the king, flies and sues for was slain . peace, which is granted by Basil in exchange for the cession of a large district and the surrender of a son as hostage. Basil treated this youth with the wellknown kindness and whole-hearted confidence of Byzantine rulers ; he was to him as a son, and received the now uncommon title, magister militicv (TTPa-rnXarqs)- John, king of Ani, who had also been Proposal to a moving spirit in the anti-Roman league, finding his g domof allies surrendering, hurriedly made terms with the Ani to Rome. empire . Like Sennacherib, he proposed to give up Ani to Rome on condition of a life-interest reserved to himself, and an imperial promise to defend The Patriarch Peter, Armenia from the Turks. charged with the precious documents, the title-deeds of a kingdom, arrived at court. Basil treats him with great respect, enhanced by a miracle of which
430 Proposal to surrender Kingdom of
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. a
the emperor was witness. (There are references to an obscure campaign in Persia in 1022, in which
Ani to home. Basil suffered some reverses, but gained the citadel of Ibrahim through the cleverness and loyalty of a native woman in that part of Armenia which was occupied by the Moslem .) It is uncertain if the deed of
Curiousdelay gift or-donation of Ani was given up by Basil Il . or in compkting Constantine IX. during his brief reign (i o a 5-a 8) ; the tramfer; by
varying accounts.
nor is the transaction entirely clear. Cyriacus, chief of the Armenian patriarchal hospital, was sent, at the emperor's request, on a delicate mission ; and in his hands was placed an important document which transferred a large district to the direct rule of Rome . This was to be delivered to the new King of Ani, John Sembat ; was it to remind him of the precarious tenure, or to surrender the deed ? Cyriac (Kt'paKos) at any rate kept it, and appears to have delivered it over again to Michael IV., and the mild and conscientious prince waited till Sembat's demise to enter upon a legitimate possession. John Sembat of Ani, and his brother Ashot, king of Tachir, died about the same time, previous to 1039, probably in 11038 . An interregnum, or rather anarchy, prevailed
Anarchy ant for two years. The nobles do not agree upon the treason in choice of a successor ; for Sembat was childless, and Ani.
Gagic, his nephew, son of Ashot, was too young. Thus the boy of fourteen years had to wait until a loyal general put him in possession of his heritage two years later. In 1039 the bailiff of the king profited by political disorder to pillage the royal treasure-house, to entrench himself in a strong
Michael IV., castle of his own, and to return in force to Ani, pre1040, irepares to p ared to offer himself as a candidate for the vacant
enforce the claim.
throne ; his name was Sargis-Vestes 1 of Siounia (or Swania). Then at length Michael displays the letter,
conveying Ani as a gift to the empire ; and sends an i It is possible that, in the profuse distribution of Byzantine courttitles, Vestes stands for fllQr-qs, a somewhat obscure dignity, perhaps Master of the Imperial Wardrobe .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
421
army to enforce the claim, reaching, according to the mickoet IV., historian, the incredible number of ioo,ooo. Mean- 1040, prepares to
time the military resources of independent Armenia, at least of Vasparacan, were under Varanes (or Bahram), a brother of that General Sapor who had met and defied the first Turkman onslaught. It is not easy to define his position exactly ; he was certainly in some respects the peer of kings, and pursued a free policy of his own choice, as a strong nationalist . With an equally incredible force of 50,ooo he falls on the negligent Roman troops, who had hitherto met with no resistance. The infuriated natives slay the Romans without quarter, in spite of the imploring appeals of their own more merciful general. Sargis had played a double part : he had betaken himself dutifully to the Roman camp, and, now that fortune had declared against them, he returned to the city and gave the best account he could of his absence. 7. But the chief Armenian throne was now open
enforce the claim.
Furious resistance the Nationalist.
Bahram
raises Gagi~, to the adventurer. Under Michael V. 0041), David last King of Lackland, a Bagratid "king in Albania, descends Ani (10.4,2) . into Shirak (possibly' at the instigation of Rome), to
seize the vacant crown . Here again Varanes interposed, challenged his ambitious aim, and forced him to retire. Sargis-Vestes had not given up his pretensions, and Varanes guarded the rights of a scion of the royal house against these claimants . At length he succeeds in placing the youthful Gagic (or Cakig) on the throne, aged sixteen, destined to be the last independent sovereign . In this restoration Varanes was warmly assisted by his own nephew, Gregory ,Aayca"-rpos, lord of Betchni, in Ararat (who would seem to have received the title during a sojourn at Constantinople, and to have there written works in verse and prose in his native tongue ; also to have converted a Moslem by the literary tour de force of embracing in a thousand distichs the history of the Old and New Testaments. He left behind him a
432
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv. x
Bahram son, who was destined to become Prince or Duke of raises Gaqie, last Sing of Antioch under the Romans). Gagic was a youth of
Ani (10.4.2).
Straightealin d
ddealing of
excellent qualities, and fought with courage and success against the hordes of the Turkmans now returning to the charge . In 1042 (the limit of our present inquiries) they are found near Betchni, the residence of Gregory 1uay«-rpos ; Gagic secures the victory by a clever ambuscade, and many are lured to death and drowned . They return soon after to the coveted soil of Vasparacan, and are confronted by Khatchic-Khoul the Lion (an Arzrounian prince), in the Canton of Thorounavan . It may not be out of place to give another instance of the g ood faith and feeling of the Byzantine
the emperors. sovereign, at a time when the title seems to modern ears to imply the hypocrite, the thief, and the assassin. David, the son of Sennacherib, Arzrounian '1 king " of Sebaste, died after ten years' reign. Here is an excellent example of the official turning into the hereditary, the transformation of a functionary holding a certain post at pleasure into a continuous feudal family seized of an appanage on condition of a trifling homage. Atom, his brother, succeeds, but is accused at court of treasonable intentions by an Armenian prince, jealous of their house. Michael IV., credulous and alarmed, sent troops, and a summons to appear before him . The royal brothers wisely decide to obey. At the tomb of the great emperor Basil they read out his deed of investiture with the sovereign principality of Sebaste, and protest their innocence of the charge . Michael at once believes them, embraces them with tenderness and remorse, and imprisons the calumniator.-The reign of the same prince was also signalised by the amazing vicissitudes of the little town and fortress of Bergri, on the borders of Lake Aghthamar near Ardjich . The governor, Khtric, was captured by the Roman governor in Vasparacan, Nicholas Cabasilas, who seized the town.. He again recovers his liberty and his post, loses again to the
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
488
Armenian lords Gardzi and Tadjat, wins it back, celebrating his triumph with a horrible bath of gore, and yields at last to the empire. Leaving then independent Armenia in the hands of a generous and able prince, and united in loyalty by a common danger, we may perhaps establish the following conclusions . The native dynasty had emerged again out of trouble and conflict, and thanks to the services of Sapor, of Bahram, of Vasak, and of Gregory, had reasserted its rights . The claims of Rome, founded on an authentic document, had been overlooked, tacitly surrendered, or mildly enforced. The Turkish onset had largely contributed to the success of the loyalist or nationalist party ; Roman governors and native princes lived side by side in suspicious amity, in open hostility, and occasional alliance. One great armament had been launched in vain against Armenian autonomy ; and time was preparing a last and final conflict in which the lesser power would vanish like Poland in thraldom to the empire, itself already approaching the term of its real sovereignty in Asia. We reserve for notice, under the important reign of Constantine X., the final conclusion ; following, as it does, the familiar lines of those historical events, by which the independence of smaller states is wont to be extinguished .
Relations of kingdom to the empire (e. 1042)-
8. There remains only to notice briefly some Close disconnected details in the general relations of Rome "lion qt' Iberia with
and Armenia, which serve to illustrate the time empire under between Basil II. and the tenth Constantine. &1nanws1IL Romanus III. (of the notable family of Argyrus) (t 1034)' was strongly Armenian in his sympathies ; he married two nieces and perhaps a daughter to their princes. It may be suspected that his death arrested the development' of friendly relations and a wise policy of conciliation . I do not attach weight to the supposed insult imposed on the Armenian reinforcement at the Black Mount, when VOL. II . 2E
434
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
DIV. s
Close during his ill-starred expedition of 103o, he enrolled of eonneetion them among his regular troops. The actual loss Iberia with (himself
empire under of the day was retrieved by Maniaces R°-anusIIl of Eastern descent) ; though nothing could ever (t 1084) . obliterate the personal disgrace and shame of the emperor, who, perhaps for a century, was the first to suffer defeat in the open field. Magniac was given command of the riparian cities and forts along the Euphrates, with a chief residence at He seized Samosata and a roving commission. of the emir lieutenant Edessa, then occupied by a of annual tribute of Miafarekin, and sent home an . He was soon 50 lbs . of gold from the single city transferred to the control of Roman Vasparacan, while Leo Lependrenus succeeded him in the Mesopotamian viceroyalty . The brother of Michael IV., the eunuch Constantine, was the next governor of Edessa, or at least appears in its defence, with the title of Domestic of the eastern troops. The technical successor to Lependrenus was an undoubted Armenian, born, it was said, of an Iberian mother, Varazvatch .-It would appear that the death of Romanus III . (1034) stirred the ill-feeling and suspicion of these Iberians . Romanus and Zoe had married a niece, daughter of Basil Argyrus, to Bagrat, son of George, king of Iberia and Abasgia ; and it is said that Bagrat broke a long peace with the empire to avenge the murder of Romanus. This would seem to be (like the scandalous yet circumstantial story itself) very problematic : in 11036, the same monarch sent a reinforcement of 4000 men to David Lackland against the emir of Dovin . The tendency to appoint natives to the imperial
Armenian commands in the East is evinced by the name 9°"x°"'8 f°'' Khatchic, a native governor under the empire for the empire :
Principality Roman Vasparacan, a post in which the official and the feudal element must have been very evenly Of Tarm. balanced. We read of two sons, Hassan and Zinziluc, being despatched to offer gifts and homage
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (940-1040)
435
to the emperor Michael IV . During their absence Armenian the Turks kill father and brother, and they return 9o"no" for the empire :
with 5ooo Romans to take vengeance . Quite in the principality spirit of mediaeval chivalry, the murderers are of Tarsus. challenged to single combat, and the right prevails in the province of Her. But the petty Armenian principalities or governorships have become increasingly insecure ; the tide of Roman influence is fast ebbing in the east, or rather the Armenian nationality is being driven westwards . On Hassan's death, the emperor gave his son, Abel-Kharp, the principality of Tarsus, in Cilicia, with its dependencies, and thus paved the way for that romantic sequel to the Armenian monarchy in the country of St. Paul. Once more, under Romanus III. (1034), Alda, widow of George of Abasgia, had handed over a strong fortress to Rome, Anaquoph ; and Demetrius, brother of the Bagrat above, who married the emperor's niece Helena, received the distinction of magister militum . Thus hither and thither flowed the stream of Romanising sympathy among the Armenians at this time. KINGS of IBERIA (or Georgia or Karthli) of the Bagratid line, established as fifth dynasty since 575 by Gouaram, curoalat :Adranasar (Aternerseh) II ., 890. (Bagratid king of Georgia ; a grandson of Ashot I ., Bagratid king of Armenia ; crowned by Sembat I .) David II ., son. Gourgenes I ., nephew of David . Bagrat II ., son of Gourgenes, the Fool. Gourgenes II ., son of Gourgenes, 998. Bagrat III ., son of Gourgenes, Ioo8 . Georgi I ., son of Bagrat III ., 1015 . Bagrat IV ., son of George, who married niece of Romanus III., whose brother Demetrius received title magister militum, whose mother Alda received Roman garrison in Anaquoph. There follow Georgi IL, 1072 ; David III., Io89 ; Demetrius L, 1125 .
The new line of Abasgian kings provides several members of
436
HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
DIV . B
the Iberian Bagratids, though sovereigns are not invariably chosen from that family : in 915, there is a Gourgenes, grand prince of the Abasgians, nephew of David 11 . (above) ; his son Bagrat served, as it were, an apprenticeship in Abasgia for the more important crown of Iberia, which he obtained in 958, at the close of Constantine V I L's reign. At that time Abasgia served, like Naples or Tuscany, as a stepping-stone to a higher dignity. But the barbarous names of Thothos and Ber (927 and 945) prove that the Abasgian chieftains were not always chosen of this stock. KINGS OF ARMENIA (of the Bagratid line) :Ashot (son of Vasak), created ruler of Armenia by Merwan IL, last Ommiad Caliph, 748"
Sempad, 758 . Ashot, 781 . Sembat, Confessor, 82o. Ashot I . the Great (first independent ruler), 856. Sembat L, Martyr, 89o. Ashot II . (iron-arm), 914. (An Ashot not counted, nominee of Arabs,=92 I .) Apas, 928. Ashot III ., the Pitiful, 952. Sembat II ., the Powerful, 977 . Gagic I . (*king of kings), 989. John Sembat III ., Io2o-1042 . Gagic II., 1042 (tio8o).
DIVISION C ANNEXATION, RIVALRY, AND ALLIANCE WITHOUT (1040-1120) VIII ARMENIA AND THE EMPIRE FROM CONSTANTINE X. TO THE ABDICATION OF MICHAEL VI. (1040-1067) .
1 . THE reign of Monomachus is perhaps the zenith voluntary of Byzantine ,influence and extension, and the first cession of King of Ani
moment of rapid reaction and decline . The chief (c. 1o4,5). event in the Eastern world was the extinction of the Bagratid kingdom in Greater Armenia, and the annexation of a vast territory, which stretched the
realm from the Danube (or even the Straits of Messina) to the Caspian Sea. In 1045, Michael Jasitas, Roman governor in Iberia, has small success against the recalcitrant Gagic, nephew of the deceased monarch ; and Constantine X. does not scruple to request the aid of Aboulsewar, Arab emir of Dovin, against a Christian sovereign . The emir bargained to retain his conquests. Gagic was alarmed at this unholy alliance ; and Sargis-Vestes, working on his fears, induced him to make peace with the mighty yet placable rulers, whose arms and allies were ubiquitous . At last the distressed king decides to repair to the well-known asylum ; he binds his nobles of the Romanising party by terrible oaths not to surrender the city of Ani in his absence, and exacts from the emperor full and express safeconduct and immunity . The treacherous faction at . once despatched the keys of citadel and palace-to 487
488
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv. c
Constantine ; and to his credit he refused to accept the advantage . Meantime a notable Armenian peer (t045)n2 set the example of capitulation ; Gregory Iuayto rpov, friend of the aged Basil II., versifier and paraphrast of Scripture, gave up his possessions in Ararat in exchange for land in Mesopotamia, and the coveted title of Duke (which now became the chief honour bestowed by the empire on its foreign adherents). Gagic hesitated no longer ; and with the entrance of Jasitas into Ani the Bagratid kingdom comes to an end, leaving only the prince of Kars in complete but precarious autonomy, under the hereditary sway of the son of Abbas. Gagic is Exploits o,/' granted the now archaic title of magister militum, catacalon, with a large fief in Cappadocia. The first dependent Roman or ., governor of Ani was Catacalon Catacecaumenus, against emir the burnt (cf. Fabius Ambustus), a general of the ot'Dovin. Armenian military caste, who will bulk largely on the scene in the next twenty-five years. Catacalon at once suspected the patriarch Peter and his nephew Khatchic of very doubtful attachment to Conthe new suzerain ; he seizes them both. stantine X., entirely faithful to the gracious and trusting policy of the later emperors towards alien ' princes and possible allies, received Peter at court, and (while compelled to acknowledge the fairness of his lieutenant's suspicions) gave him the high dignity of Syncellus to his own '1 Chalcedonian patriarch . He orders the reinstatement of Khatchic in the see of Ani, and even dismisses Peter after three years from his honourable detention, at the request and with the personal surety of Gagic the ex-king, and the two princes or " kings " of Sebaste ; thither the patriarch retired, to die in io6o.-The two following years (1046) witnessed more desultory Aboulsewar, the conflicts in the farther East. emir of Dovin, was discontented with the good faith of the "Greeks," and loudly bewailed the violation of the compact by which he was to voluntary ""'on of
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-x1057)
439
retain whatever he won from Gagic. It is customary ExptoW of C a", to believe implicitly such charges in the case of the Rman
decadent Byzantine monarchy, the It Lower " empire ; governor, emir in this case, we will only remark that Gagic had agaimt Do"in. ally of already detached the emir from his imperial and thus rendered the treaty void ; and again, he had ceded his kingdom of his own free-will . Nicolas Cabasilas,' in command of the troops, despatched a large force, under Jasitas and an Alanian vassal of his own, which is badly defeated under the walls of Dovin . The two generals are at once recalled, and Catacalon transferred from Iberia ; while, with the true Byzantine caution so often fatal to rapid and concerted action, the control of the army was entrusted to a Saracen eunuch, Constantine, in whose loyalty the emperor had every reason to confide ; we are reminded of the influence But this strangely of Samonas under Leo VI. assorted pair of yoke-fellows, the bluff general and the emasculated renegade from Islam, acted throughout in perfect agreement. They close in on the emir's capital, carefully occupying all places of supply and commissariat . (The Armenian writers give Catacalon the name Telarkh or Teliarkh : is ' it possible that under this lurks concealed, the ironical title -reaetos «pXwv, or Telecapxns ?) Aboulsewar retaliated (as was usual in these border forays) by carrying desolation up to the walls of the new Roman centre, Ani . He destroyed the churches, martyring the faithful priests and bishops ; and amongst the number we find the name of Vahram, the aged Arsacid general and patriot, who had comi We may perhaps suspect that the name Basil is not strictly of Greek origin, either at this time or earlier, when it is illustrated by the great Christian dogmatist. The Armenian form might be Vasel or Barshegh ; the Greeks would force its Hellenic equivalent into some kind of intelligible form . In this spirit and intention, they make rop-ycv6Vs (alert mind) of Gourgenes, ZvW#drto9 of Sembat, lIaycpdrtos of Bagrat. In the West they attempted a derivation of Thiudat and Thiuds-reich, by words which reminded the hearer or reader of the gift of God (Aedr, Wpm) .
440
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div . c
pleted his eightieth year. He still lives as a canonised saint in the grateful memories of his scattered countrymen . The Seljuk § 2. The year 1048 saw the beginning of the advance : its Seljukian wars, which destroyed in a few years the significance caliphate and the traditional form and territory of histam. the Roman Empire, extended a Turkish conquest from the neighbourhood of Byzantium to Cashgar, vanished before the still more terrible onslaught of the Mongols, and gave birth in dying to the Ottoman supremacy . The founder of the line was a brave captain in Turkestan, very probably of Christian belief, who, in the disturbed and incoherent realm which we call the caliphate, retired affronted from a petty court, set up an independent authority, and died full of years and booty as a brigand chief or mercenary captain in Bokharia at the age of eighty . It is fitting to compare for a moment the fortunes of Rome and Islam. Both systems were anti-national, impersonal, democratic (or rather equalitarian), and therefore despotic. There were no gradations of authority, no distinct and balancing centres of influence ; the Caliph and Caesar were all or nothing ; the popular delegation of power was plenary and (at first) irrevocable . Rome leant successfully on the nations who entered her pale ; the provinces were summoned one by one to send their sons to the capital and revive its dwindling vigour . As in Rome, Spaniards and Africans, Syrians and Dacians had played their part in sustaining the empire which recognised no distinction of race, so in Islam we can trace the successive stages by which the real power passes from Arabia to Syria, Persia, and Khorasan ; how the caliphs, recruiting their armies farther and farther from the seat of government and the home-country, became the victims and the slaves of the Turkish mercenaries whom they had invoked against their own subjects. In the widespread theocracy of Islam any believer might become, not
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-1057)
441
indeed Caesar-the prophet's kin were sacred-but The Sedjuk "d"a"re : " his tyrant or his assassin . The difference between significance
the two parallel systems may be seen in the greater in uwldefficiency of the successors of Constantine, who are h1f8M continually awoken from the slumbers of the puppet
to become the active controllers, first ministers, and generals of the great commonwealth. Elsewhere, the members of a privileged house of sacred and immemorial descent sank into nonentities ; but at Old and New Rome there are no Mikados, rois faineants, or Abbassid caliphs. By the middle of the eleventh century, the original force of Islam had been exhausted ; its noonday was long past . The three great movements which created our modern world were just happening : the Norman conquests of England .and of Southern Italy,-the arrival of the Seljukids as militant exponents of the principles of Islam. It is at this time that the kingdoms of the ancient and the modern world fall into that shape and system which has lasted until the present day. For the Seljukids are the ancestors and pioneers of the Ottoman Turks.
3. The first embroilment of these redoubtable First pilkge °f Vasfoes with the imperial forces occurred in 1048, for paracan. a miserably inadequate cause. Stephen, governor of Vasparacan and son of Constantine Lichudes, a favourite minister of Constantine X., refused leave, like Edom of old, to Cutulmish, Togrul's cousin, to pass through while retiring before the Arabs of Diarbekir. The arrogant governor is defeated, captured, and sold as a slave ; but the glowing reports of Cutulmish on the fertile province influence the greed of the Sultan (as we may now call the representative of the imprisoned caliph, in distinction from the official emirs of the Arabian system). Twenty thousand men under Assan are sent to reduce and ravage Vasparacan ; for if Harun himself had no higher ambition than a successful slave-raid, it was not to be expected that these gross recruits
442
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv . c
Mrst pEuage to Islam, perhaps Christian renegades, had any idea of V" of political consolidation. The new governor was pardmn.
1hvisim in the Roman councila ;
Aaron, son of Ladislas, Bulgarian king, and brother of Prusianus (the duellist) ; so strangely on the outskirts of her empire did Rome bring together the different nations, tongues, and creeds of the world . He sent to Catacalon for aid, who had during the rebellion of Tornicius been summoned to the defence of the emperor against the usurper, and afterwards transferred to his old post as governor of the Iberian frontier of Armenia. Local report assigns a creditable victory and successful ruse to Catacalon the camp was deserted, .and while it is rifled by the enemy the ambush falls on them, drowning them in the river Strauga (?) It must, however, be remarked that the incident and the plan bear a suspicious resemblance to the tactics of king Gagic ; and that while the Byzantines know of one incursion of the Seljuks, the Armenians, with better chances of accurate knowledge, speak of three. But the further success of the Roman arms and perhaps a long re-
they wait,>or prieve for the Asiatic provinces of the empires, were 4parit. hindered by the Byzantine safeguards of a divided military command, by a college of equal generals. Their unanimous voice was requisite for any joint action, and a single veto (as in a Polish Diet) could indefinitely postpone action at a crisis . Aaron the Bulgar wished to act on the defensive and await further imperial commands, when Togrul's brother, Ibrahim Inal, advanced against them with an enormous host of zoo,ooo . Catacalon, merely a warrior and not a courtier, bluntly declared for an immediate attack. The emperor sent in reply a cautious direction to wait for the further reinforcements of the character o,/' Iberian Liparit .-This ally or vassal or subject of "part.) Rome (we are approaching the feudal uncertainty of legal status) is an excellent type of a common class in these latter days of the Eastern empire . A trained warrior, and descending from a military
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-1057)
443
family, he stands, like Vasak or Bahram, a powerful (Pea" general by the side of the throne, or on its steps, and 'ha"acter s of often of more consequence than its occupant. Twentysix years before (11022), his grandfather had died fighting against the empire with the Abasgians ; and under Bagrat, king of Northern Iberia, he was established there and enjoyed great influence. But the king insulted his wife, and was expelled by an exasperated husband . Seizing the throne like the Persian general Bahram of old (in a rare interruption of a strictly hereditary line), he sought to establish himself by the friendship of Rome. Constantine X . willingly accepted his proposal, and recognised the successful pretender ; but Bagrat escapes from his exile, passes to Trebizond, and secures the emperor's permission to visit Constantinople . There the legitimate sovereign complained o¬ the countenance given to a rebel and usurper. And on this occasion, if on no other, the emperor acted a truly imperial part, as judicious arbiter of the quarrels of lesser men, such as Dante vainly portrayed to the turbulent He West as the ideal of an earthly monarch . mollified the two rivals, and prevailed with wonderful tact on Liparit to rest content with the lifeenjoyment of the province of Meschia, acknowledging Bagrat as his sovereign . 4. While the generals each in good faith proffered Defeat of and upheld their different views, the forces of Liparit Li9oz'atton8 were slowly assembling and descending southwards, for peace and Ibrahim, reaping a full advantage from the re- with Rome. spite, attacked Arz-Roum (near the ancient Theodosiopolis), and burns and sacks an opulent town, where the number of victims of fire and sword was said to reach 140,000. Still Aaron believed that nothing could dispense from the letter of the imperial instructions ; and his veto paralysed the action of the Roman forces while Catacalon chafed at the delay. But the arrival of Liparit only brought a fresh He came with 26,ooo Georgians and obstacle .
444 Defeat of negot-iatiow
for peace *11 .
The P,a aks, diversion in Europe ; eastern
armies weakened.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
Armenians and 700 of his own immediate retainers
and vassals ; but he refused to fight on a Saturday .
When the engagement does in the end take place, both Roman generals accounted for the detachment that confronted them, but Liparit was defeated and taken captive . The Sultan displayed an even greater generosity towards his fallen foe than Alp Arslan to Romanus Diogenes. He dismissed Liparit without ransom ; and gave to the released prisoner for his own use the sum which the emperor had sent. Events seemed to point to a truce in the hostilities between the two powers ; but the Sheraf, sent to the Roman capital to discuss the terms of peace, made extravagant demands, required tribute from the empire (which was as yet insensible of its secret decay), and broke off negotiations on refusal. In consequence, Togrul resumed the war next year (1049) by an attack on Manzikert, some twenty years before the famous and fatal battle. (Earlier in the year he had appeared before Comium in Iberia, but was deterred by the news of a great Roman force which Constantine X. had collected. The defection of the
emperor's Patzinak allies or recruits altered the whole complexion of affairs. Like the Slavonian mercenaries of Justinian II . they abandoned their forts with one consent, refused to go on a distant
expedition to the rocks of Iberia, and swam the Bosphorus on their horses beneath the eyes of an amazed .and perhaps affrighted capital .) The patrician Basil forces Togrul to retreat ; and the great army collected at Cappadocian Caesarea was free to turn its attention to Aboulsewar . The Roman arms and designs were crowned with complete success . The emir's territory was ravaged, the old treaty renewed, and a hostage was offered and accepted, in the person of his nephew Artasyras . But this concentration of troops on the Eastern frontier had left the capital exposed . The days of the great Justinian were recalled when, victor from
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-1057)
445
Gades and the Straits of Hercules to Colchis and The the Euphrates, he trembled in the palace before a Neither then nor raid of disorderly barbarians . now could the empire support more than one fully-equipped host ; Belisarius had to leave his task
Patzznaks create a diversion in Euroroe ; a~
in Persia to fly to Italy . In recent times a Russian weakened. scare had brought up Curcuas with all his men from their proper post ; and we shall soon see how the revolt of Tornicius disorganised the military defences strange trio by a contemptible domestic sedition . The Roman ofgenerak against armies had followed strange leaders of every nation under heaven ; but never perhaps a combination so (1050) . curious. At the head was a retired priest, Nicephorus, who had abandoned his orders to follow active military service ; a Western bishop would have united the two professions of arms and prayer. Catacalon, not without a smile or a murmur, assumed a subaltern post ; and Hervey the Norman ((ppayyo7rovaos) occupied a powerful but indeterminate position as ally or condottiere : here first we meet with a notable name among the foreigners, Russians, Germans, and English, who since the days of Basil and Constantine had formed no mean reinforcement to the decaying (or suspected) native Successive defeats had broken the spirit armies. of the soldiers. Nicephorus was routed ; Catacalon was taken, still breathing, among the heaps of slain ; like Liparit, he was tended by the foe, restored to health, and finally released, to act once more as the guardian of the empire, the veteran hero and spokesman of the military party, and the '1 king-maker " in the revolution of 11057 . The Patzinaks were a third time victorious over the cowed and demoralised forces (1050) ; but by one of the rapid turns from peril to security, so familiar in Byzantine history, they were repressed and rendered harmless by the end of the next year . 5. Meantime, the court and advisers of the benevolent emperor were agitated by perpetual sus-
446 The courtirs charge Armenian Princes of with drknaw
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, OF
DIV . c
picion of Armenian loyalty . Once more a charge was Preferred (105 I) against the vassal-princes, who lived so strangely in the midst of the uniform officialism of Rome, on the border-line between subject and ally. The province of Baghin, in Fourth Armenia, had long enjoyed peace under a college of amiable brethren residing at Arkni, Abel Harpic (or Aboul-Kharp), David, Leo, and Constantine . The emperor listened to their accusers, and sent Peros with a force to investigate . He summons all the lords to attend a durbar and publicly renew their profession of loyalty . Intending to abstain they were betrayed ; and found it prudent to present themselves and tender allegiance . Of the guilty designs of the eldest brother Peros was reluctantly convinced ; with unusual and almost unique severity in this age of tenderness to traitors and renegades, he set a price upon his head ; but wept at the spectacle of accomplished justice . The remaining three princes he brought home with him, Curious plot to be banished into an island in the ensuing year to (1052), not because their innocence was again doubtArmenian ,Huguenots .' ful, but by the kindness of the emperor. Our authorities at this juncture tell us that « a decision was taken at court to annihilate the entire Armenian race," and we are left in darkness as to the motive and scope of this curious proposal, which has found in our own times a parallel in the policy of Abdul Hamid II. The emperor (always the most clement man within his own dominions) saved them from the tempest ; there was no Armenian Bartholomew, no Sicilian Vespers ; and the gracious and capable sovereign, Theodora, sent them back to their own land, conferring the responsible control of their province to Melusianus.-But it is abundantly clear that No n the court-party and civil ministers entertained a proEast outing to found distrust of the Armenian warrior-class . From distrust. certain vague intimations we might almost surmise that the great army of the East was no more. In 1052, we find Franks and Varangians dispersed in
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-1057)
447
various posts of Iberia and Chaldia, under Michael Normans . the Acolyth. He was successful in inducing Togrul to " East ov owing to desist from his savage reprisals for the escape of his distrust. rebel brother Cutulmish. But in 1053, the Sultan Attack of again returns to Lake Van, round which in earliest ~ey and latest time alike clustered the homes of the true renewed but Armenian race. He captured Bergri and begins the (1058) baffled. second siege of Manzikert, still ruled by Basil the patrician (scion of a noble family of TaYk by a Georgian mother), a clear proof that the wisdom and justice of the emperor had arrested the fatal policy of eliminating the Armenian element from the service of Rome. The Turks had the usual successes of a ferocious and undisciplined horde . The districts of Ararat, Vanand, Khorsene, Chaldia, and Taik were ruthlessly ravaged. Thatoul, the general of Abbas, king of Kars, was put to death in captivity for having killed in battle a Seljuk prince . But the Sultan retired baffled from the walls and bastions of the citadel ; an Armenian and a nameless but ingenious Frank diverted the force of his batteries and set fire to the engines which, stolen from the Romans, they employed with clumsy art against their inventors. After receiving in his camp from a catapult the gory head of a general who had counselled persistence in the siege, Togrul hesitated no longer. He strikes his camp and plunders the vulnerable portion of Arzk6, a town in the Pesnounian district, and on the borders of Van . The not inglorious reign of Constantine X. was wearing to its close ; two acts of imperial generosity must be recorded ; Basil, for his meritorious defence, was created Duke Catacaion, Duke of (or Prince ?) of Edessa, and Catacalon, returning safe and whole from the kindly Patzinaks, received the still prouder title, Duke of Antioch,which had for a hundred years shed added lustre on the highest official rank. F e h ,geljuk 6. During the short reign of Theodora (1054- attack ; ofthe 1056) decisive and significant movements took treason Seljuks place in the East. On the one hand, the Liparit.
449
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. c
Prooksequk gathered courage, assaulted Ani (1655) by the united tragon o the armies of Togrul and Aboulsewar, once more hostile son off to the empire ; ravaging the district of Basen, Liparit. massacring the whole populace of Ocom to the number of 30,000, scared or stupefied by the fires kindled by the savage foe . (Another band of mutineers, despising the commands of the Sultan but recognising the same prey, killed a Roman commandant Theodore, in the province of Taron.) On the other hand, we have a signal instance of that restless feudal spirit which excited the distrust of the ministers in the capital against the Armenian race, whether as vassal-princes or as troops enrolled in the imperial service. Ivan (or Ivan6), the son of Liparit, the superstitious general who had failed against the Turk in 1648, had been gratified by the investiture of the provinces of Hacht6an and Archamouni : he had found this substantial recompense for the very doubtful services of his family piLkye of Chaldia. inadequate to his own deserts . He coveted the addition of the province of Carin ; and to secure his purpose, allied with the Turks. Terrified at his crime, he guides them into Chaldia, away from his own territory ; and they are glutted with the rich booty of a defenceless country . This was the signal for a more determined and ferocious onslaught . Anarchy broke loose in the Asiatic provinces . A band seizes Erez, and massacres all its people. Emir of Michael VI.'s reign was marked by the revolt of Akhlat Hervey, an excellent instance of the dangers of merevot ~ cenary aid, and the aversion of strong and youthful germthe individuality to serve an impersonal cause. Neither Norman nor Armenian (amid many signal points of unlikeness) could appreciate a state, a commonwealth, or public welfare. All life was for them comprised in personal honour, in detached acts of prowess, and in allegiance to a personal chief. Hervey at least would have been contented if his vanity had been flattered by the title magdster milatum,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1040-10.57)
449
which he asked as the price of his services. The Emir of boon was refused with some scorn . ; and Alaric had -4k711tat
extingqui8ka sacked Rome to avenge a similar slight . Hervey ,.ewl of was no historian, but the same Teutonic spirit, covetous of honour and careless of gain, worked in Norman. him as in his Gothic cousin six and a half centuries
before . He dissembles his resentment and asks a furlough . He passes into Armenia, where he had an estate or a citadel ; and communicates his discontent to the other Franks, who had been established there in military colonies to counteract the Armenian influence . The empire had reason to repent of its decision ; the Norman mercenaries were less trustworthy and more dangerous than the Armenian natives . Like Russell some years later in the empire, like the Seljuks themselves in their early days, he became a brigand-chief, a robber-baron of the Western type, a captain of raceless and creedless condottieri. In Vasparacan, he does not scruple to court the alliance of Samukh, Togrul's general, and with his aid to harass the lands of the empire . But the infidel put small faith in these blonde barbarians ; and Michael VI. owed to the prudence and friendliness of the Emir of Akhlat the easy extinction of the mutiny. Apolasar posed as the host and ally of Hervey's company, but it was against the wish of their leader that the Franks entered the city. They were all assassinated ; and Hervey himself thrown into chains . The emir wrote to Michael VI. with almost dutiful glee at the deserved fate of the rebel ; and the emperor, terrified at the renown of any successful general in his employ, must have been
profoundly thankful that he was not required to provide the military class with a chance of distinction . But the emperor could not avert his fate . He was destined to fall before some member of the warrior-class, and it was the veteran general, Catacalon Catacecaumenus, who became the arbiter of the due moment of the insurrection and the qualifications of the new emperor. VOL. II . 2F
I,
450
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
ix ARMENIA AND WESTERN ASIA FROM ISAAC I. TO THE RETIREMENT OF NICEPHORUS III. (1057-1081) Catacalon a" Armenian
§ 1. The forces of the East had recovered their influence, their numbers, and their prestige ; or at
Armenian influence en Bow.
I have dwelt thus on the political aspect of the revolution of 11057, because it bears out the influence
military least the great magnates knew where their disbanded ,faction again soldiers were chafing in enforced inaction . The in power . troops, gathered at Castamouni in Paphlag onia, joy(zo57)7) fully proclaimed Isaac Comnenus, to whom the choice of Catacalon had pointed, on June 8, 1057. From this moment the conflict between the Pacifists and the military caste is continual and embittered, and ceases not until the accession of the second Comnenus, twenty-four years later, puts an end for ever to the civil tradition of Rome. Like any feudal prince of the West, summoned by his peers to a precarious throne, Isaac is well aware of the doubtful benefit of a military backing . The constitution had not yet lost its archaic and yet venerable lineaments ; the wearer of the purple was not yet a pure military dictator, nor a feudal prince among his clansmen or his serfs. Michael VI . had dismissed with irony and studied insult the generals who had assembled to pay their Easter homage and receive the usual gifts and honours . Isaac was not so imprudent ; but he took occasion to send his late allies far from the capital to reside on their own estates . Catacalon became Curopalat, but the office was perhaps, for the first time, divided between a brother, John Comnenus, and a subject . Henceforth, the emperor relies only on his kinsmen ; a Comnenus is the power behind the throne even during the interval between the abdication of Isaac and the emergence of Alexius ; and the nomination of a new emperor is the triumph of a feudal clan. ascribed to the new feudal forces at work throughout
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
,
451
the empire, and especially in the East. Armenia had no doubt preserved her independence by means, rather than in spite, of her feudal turbulence. But she had done more ; she had permeated the socialistic system and government of Rome with the spirit of a bellicose hierarchy : and the influence which destroyed the reality of the empire, while it kept alive its phantom for 500 years, came from the East and not from the West.-For our present purpose, we must now resume our inquiry into the sequel of the Turkish inroads and the Roman civil war . Blour
Armenian ~~e °
Desultory raids of M`ks vrith 'varying
in Carin (which Ivan had coveted), submitted to sweess terrible cruelties ; Khorzene and Andzitene are ran- (1057-9) . sacked ; and the attention of the warrior-class was distracted from the needs of the State to their own
real or imagined grievances (1057). In 1058, a Turkish force came against Melitene and sacked and burnt according to their custom ; but with a curious nemesis, the retreating raiders are snow-bound among the gorges of the Taurus for five months, while the scanty but resolute defenders hold the passes . The death of their general and the news of a Roman reinforcement threw the Turks into confusion near the village of Mormran ; and, though during their retreat through Taron they burn Elnout's cathedral and belfry (built by Gregory ,uayca--rpov), Thornic the Mamigonian assembles the levies of Sassoun against them, rescues their prisoners, and sends them back in safety to Melitene. So far at least the Turkish war is a mere record of havoc, slaughter, and burning ; broken only by some instance of patriotic daring. There is no steady policy, no advance to any certain goal. The Seljuks harry and destroy but they do not annex, and seem at the very moment of signal triumph to repent suddenly of their aggression. . The estrangement of Armenia was assisted Reli9 Qnd by theological hate. Constantine XI. Ducas had sensions 0j. succeeded, and he summoned the Ani patriarch Armenia and Khatchic (nephew of Peter) to appear in the capital the empire
452
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
nrv. c
Religious and (1059) . he was retained in polite captivity for three political dig- years, importuned to accept the creed and rites of the muiono of
Armenia and Greek Church, and (if an odd report be worthy of the empire . credit) to supply the emperor with an annual tribute or subsidy. Application is made also to Atom and Abousahl, princes or "kings" of Sebast6 (Sivas), and Armenian to Gagic, the king of Kars. But the suggested suballiance was intensely distasteful to the Armenian with infidel mission and Seljuk nation ; nor did the behaviour of the '1 Greeks " serve advance. Insults were meted to mollify these prejudices . out to the Armenians, on account of their religion ; George coming from Ani to Antioch suffers the crowning and unpardonable indignity of a pulled beard. In revenge he asks aid of the Turks, and plunders twelve adjacent villages belonging to the empire ; no doubt frightened, like the rest of his countrymen, at the success of his unnatural vengeance. Yet Constantine XI . himself trusted Armenian loyalty and valour ; he appointed Khatchatour, a native of Ani, whom Zonaras calls Xa-ra-rouptog, Duke of Antioch in io6o. But nothing could heal the breach between the two nations ; jealousy impeded the successes of the camp as well as the harmony of a common worship . When (also in zo6o) the duke levied his men and marched out to meet SlarKhorasan (a title, not a name, "General of Khorasan"), a Greek, envious of Armenian success, sounded a trumpet in the dead of night, . and thus informed the Turks, encamped near Nchenic, of the approach of foes : the emperor punished the culprit with the extreme penalty . If the duke by this expedition saved Edessa, he did not escape calumny ; whisperers were always ready to insinuate suspicions of Armenian intrigues . He is relieved of the high office and replaced by Vasak, son of Gregory tta71177pog, the pious poetaster : the emperor afterwards (with the keen desire to be just, which we have learnt to expect in Byzantine sovereigns) compensated him with the command of the fort Andrioun. At a second
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
453
siege of Edessa, bad feeling again broke Out 4000 Armenian : Greeks leave the city and encamp beyond the river alliance with infidel
in comparative safety and complete uselessness . ; only and Seljuk a few Armenians, performing prodigies of valour, 'kept the bridge, and a Frank died bravely in the defence. Togrul follows this up by an order to Fall of'the three generals, including Samukh, to attack Sebaste. prfn10ipalities Atom, helpless and dismayed, retired with his brother A~'~ """~ to an impregnable fortress, Khavatanek, and witnesses or hears of the burning of his capital, the murder of his subjects . After eight days' wanton havoc and destruction, the Turks leave behind them a mere scene of ruin, and Atom, like all Armenian princes in distress, seeks the asylum of the Roman court . This blow carried the horrors into a part of the empire which had long enjoyed peace. In i o6 i, another trio of captains, including the nameless General of Khorasan," were ordered to Baghin, where Arkni, the chief town, falls before their fury, only intermitted for a brief space out of respect for religion during a service in church . The « Frankish colt " and the Duke of Edessa were sent against them too late to save the town. 3. Alp Arslan succeeded Togrul, or TayypoXim~, serious in io6z, being the brother or the nephew (Abul- a99re8sive pharagius) of his predecessor. Next year he invades Sufot'new and reduces Albania, forces David Lackland to give (1062) . his daughter in marriage ; and takes the province of Gougarkh and Dchavakh (dependent on Iberia), together with the town of Akhal-Kalaki, 'the new city." With Arslan, the Seljukian sovereign ceases to be a captain of brigands and raiders, and assumes the generous air and serious policy of a more civilised ruler. In io64 he attacks the favourite and coveted citadel of Ani (with its lofty ramparts of Sembat II., and its circumfluent river, the Akhourian). This town had been in Roman, hands Capture and
'
since 1045 ; but was still entrusted to the care of Sack o~otd native Armenians as lieutenants and officers of -the cappita't'an citol, Ani.
i
454
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
Capture and empire . Bagrat was in chief command as duke ; sack of old and Gregory, a Georgian, held a subordinate post. Armenian
Ar m, Ani. Here again the Sultan was disappointed, and preparing to retire, was unhappily brought back by the news that the inhabitants were leaving the city; in the very moment when their safety was assured, the host of fugitives amounting to 50,ooo. Arslan returns and sacks (June 6, io64). Part of the citizens were sent home as slaves, part set to rebuild the shattered walls and houses. With a strange population transplanted into it, Ani soon recovered from its ruins ; for the Sultan had something more
The king of Kars, sole' secret cession than a destructive aim. of lad surviving independent State now left between the independent
.Further sei'.'9uk8f unhindered.
old monarchies and the new barbarian inroad, averted the impending storm by wearing mourning, as if for Togrul ; and the generous Arslan accepted without suspicion this hypocritical compliment. But the king followed the precedent so often set by Armenian princes ; he handed over his land to Rome, by secret compact rather than open agreement, and was promised in exchange a fertile district and one hundred villages, near the Pontic towns of Amasea, Comana, and Larissa . But the trusted and venerable asylum of the oppressed would very soon be unable to protect the refugee . The eastern peril pressed gradually westwards . While jealousy at home starved the Roman armies, the Turkish troops under Samukh and the Slar-Khorasan had laid waste Iberia, Mesopotamia, Chaldia, and Melitene ; from the Euphrates northward to the Caucasus Greater spread a scene of uniform desolation. now experience the Armenia and Vasparacan are to horrors of this destructive war . Roman influence ebbs in Ani ; and the natural defenders had lost their spirit in servitude (as they supposed) to a foreign power. The emperor gave liberty to the Patriarch Khatchic, at the prayers of the refugee princes of Sivas ; but he survived but a short time,
t
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
455
and died at Cucusa in this year (zo64) . Would there Further range of be a new patriarch, it was anxiously y asked ? At last,' Seyuks
through the good offices of the Empress Eudocia unhindered. and Abbas, prince in (or of) Amasea, permission was extorted from Constantine XI ., or rather his Greek orthodox advisers ; a son of the ,uai/toTpos Vahram was chosen under the title of Gregory II. In so66 a Turkish army ravages the district near the Black Mountain, on the confines of Asia Minor and the modern province of Caramania : while another column penetrates to the province of Telkhoun, and plunders the district of the confluence of Euphrates and Melas. 4. The short regency of Eudocia (io67) was Armenian scandalised by another proof of the ill-feeling be- aff~tfthe tween the "' two nations." At Meliten6 a Roman captain force was stationed in the garrison, and another detachment (perhaps the more important) on the opposite bank ; the latter refused to cross to the aid of the town . The inhabitants, deserted by their allies, bear the brunt and the town is taken . Arslan advances without check to Caesarea, pillaging along his route, and despoiling the shrine of St . Basil in his metropolis. He returned by Cilicia and Aleppo, guided by a Roman renegade . Amerticius, claiming descent (like most ambitious men in the East) from the old line of Persian kings, had served the empire under Michael VI. ; accused to Constantine XI. of some crime, he had been punished with exile, but, his innocence soon established, he had been taken back into fullest confidence and sent against the Turks. But the disastrous policy of the civilian ministers of war transformed a loyal servant into a foe : he became desperate owing to the default of pay, subsidies, and commissariat, and was glad to conduct the Turks to the ready plunder of a country which for the past hundred years had been singularly free from ravage. The Roman cause was undermined, as we see, by national and religious animosities ; but its
-456
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
Evil effects of armies ; still capable and brave, were honeycombed civilian by discontent . Nicephorus Botaneiates, the future parsimony.
emperor (11078-1081), commanded a considerable force in Northern Syria ; but his men disband in tumult like the soldiers under Tiberius and Maurice ; and the new levies in Antioch, without cavalry, arms, uniform, or rations, soon follow their example. It was impossible for the blind to mistake the signs of the times. Under a series of princes full of good intentions and generous impulses, but imperfectly informed and unduly influenced, the civilian and military. duel was being fought to a finish . The inner history of this movement belongs to that parallel and complementary section, which narrates the shifting of authority under the nominal auto-
No adequate cracy of the Caesars. But the Eastern annals of Imperial these last fifty years betray unmistakably the forces on
Eastern frontier. .
Lukewarm eten2~ded to B. IV.
outward symptoms of the disorder. To the shortsighted civilians this real Eastern danger lay in independent commands, such as had been confidently bestowed on Curcuas, on Phocas, or on Catacalon : the Turkish inroads, by the side of this formidable domestic menace, sank into mere borderforays, and the submission of the Armenian princes (which should have aroused the deepest anxiety) flattered the ignorant pride of the pacific and luxurious courtiers . The choice of Eudocia may well have been dictated by a nobler purpose than mere sentimental attraction . Against the advice and the perpetual intrigues of the palace and nobility, Romanus Diogenes was elevated to the throne as colleague of the young heirs and husband of the empress . The last military regent of Rome now appears on the scene, the son of a rebel and a pretender, and the most tragic figure in later Roman history, the Regulus of the empire. § 5. The campaigns of Romanus IV. belong to plain historical narrative ; and it is idle to speculate on the possible results of the loyal and consistent
M
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
457
support of his lieutenants .and of the court. His Lukewarm difficulties belong to the domain of political intrigue, extended port to which is elsewhere explored ; and all that here con- R. IV. cerns us is the inquiry into the general issue of the war. Its failure was by no means a foregone conclusipn . The war-party and the upholders of 11 peace at any price" were no doubt evenly divided ; and had the Byzantine empire enjoyed the blessings of universal suffrage and « popular" control, there is no reason to believe that the consequences would have been different . The civilians honestly took up much the same attitude as the opponents of the Boer war in England : and both (if mistaken) were sincerely convinced of the evils of imperialism and a military ascendancy. (In the actual conduct of the campaign His camwe note the same strange anomaly as in Heraclius' A Persian war . When in the second year (io6g) officers ; 'won of Romanus proposed . to advance to Akhlat, on Lake szvas princes . Van, the Turks were deciding to ignore his inroad and attack Iconium .) In ro68 we see that Romanus leaves an Iberian Pharasmanes in command of Hierapolis ; and in 1070 the generals include Manuel Comnenus (a curopalat on his father's death), Nicephorus, of the illustrious family of Melissenus, and Michael the Taronite, of the old princely house so long domiciled in Constantinople. He performed a notable feat in bringing his captor to the Roman court (captus ferum victorem cepit), a hideous dwarf, boasting the ancient Persian dynasty among his ancestors, like all who claimed or attained high position in this age. It is possible that the favour In catastrophe shown to this renegade exasperated Arslan . ofManzikert forces seizes Manzikert he collects all his 1071 and lays ineffectual siege to Edessa and Aleppo ; (1071) . at least the empire had not forgotten the arts of defence with which her valour has been so often reproached by the historians of the closet . Romanus was at Sebaste (or Sivas), where once more the misunderstandings of court and Armenians broke- out.
458
CONSTITMIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
Catastrophe The princes, Atom and Abousahl, of this feudal O1 Mmikert appanage or vassal, principality, received him with respect ; but the familiar charge of disloyalty being preferred, the emperor believes it and treats the town as a foreign conquest, refusing the title 1' king " which soothed the vanity of the exiles. Advancing to Manzikert he recovered it and put all Turks to the sword ; and in his train we note the Armenian captains, Nicephorus Basilacius and Kbapat . The great battle of Manzikert follows, the capture and release of the emperor, the vindictive measure of the 11 political " party under the Caesar John, the removal of Eudocia, the disastrous civil war, and the final defeat of Romanus at Amasea. Once more, as under the emperor Phocas, can an eastern monarch plead a righteous vengeance for his wars . Henceforward the Turkish Sultan might urge an honourable motive, the requital of Romanus' death. There is no reason to distrust the sincerity of his intent ; and it is clear that the sultan had been deeply impressed by the fortitude of his gallant foe.
Scanty results ~1~)zikert
'
6. But even while we recognise this change from a brutal raid to a solemn punishment of guilt, it is impossible to submit these ancient campaigns to any rules of modern warfare. It is difficult to understand what took place in Arslan's councils or camp during the earlier years of Michael VII. But little capital was made out of the victory of Manzikert, at least by the central authority ; the sultan seemed content to denounce the murderers. The emigration of Armenian princes westward still con-
tinues, and we are left in astonishment at finding that Cilicia is still considered a safe asylum. In 1072 we find once more a close connection of the exiled nationality with Cilicia . In this year Abel-Kharp, grandson of Khatchic,(who called for our notice in 1048), became a friend of the gentle and studious emperor who so fitly represented the civil party. Michael gave the prince command in Tarsus and Mamistria ;
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
459
he raises the fortification, and prepares to dwell in Michael VII, the strong fortress of Paperon, like any feudal noble ~3o"w in the West. The province becomes by degrees iond and Armenianised ; and there is a steady influx of the awards principalities . race. His daughter is married to a younger son of Gagic. Soon after, Ochin (11 chased by the Turks," according to Samuel of Ani) obeys the invariable rule ; he cedes his lands to the empire (which was perhaps almost helpless to defend them), and, joining Abel in Cilicia, receives from him (with the imperial sanction) the fort of Lambron (in the extreme west of the ancient province), where he too exercises wisely a petty feudal sovereignty.-Meantime Ani, now Ani, content definitely in Turkish hands, is placed . under Emir with Sefuses Phatloun, an aged warrior who soon resigned m to restore favour of a grandson . This government must have royalty. been as mild and tolerant as the earlier rule of the Arabs in the countries they so rapidly annexed . Gagic, the ex-king of Ani, tried to rewin his crown when in 1073 Malek Shah succeeded to Alp Arslan but among the Armenian princes he finds no sort of sympathy ; and we may wonder whether this indifference was due to lack of patriotism, to a genuine contentment with the control of Phatloun, or to dislike for the character of their late sovereign (about whom a curious story is told of cruelty to a bishop, set to fight in a pit with his own dog) .-The record The interval used by Bo-e of the next few years is unexpectedly scanty and for . interrupted . The Romans seem to have had an sedd unfortunate respite for the growth
of
rebellion,
which diverted their thoughts from the defensive measures so urgently needed . Michael VII . seems to have reigned in 1074 over a territory which nominally touched the Danube and the Euphrates, and included an effective control over Asia Minor. The merchant grandees of Amasea were emboldened to refuse subsidies to Alexius Comnenus, the future emperor ; the rising of Oursel or Russel could be repressed without causing undue -alarm ; and the
.
460
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
mv. c
The intervw military party must have been slowly recovering med Rom and prestige for the dignified "Pronunciafor domestic sedition: mentos" of Bryennius and Botaneiates . In the last year of Michael VII . (1077) we read with surprise of an imperial army quartered at Nisibis, Amida, and Edessa, and find that it sustained a defeat at the hands of the Turk, General Gomechtikin : our
Triumph of the Military faction over
astonishment reaches a climax when we discover (10 g 7 ) Soliman, another Turk, acting in concert with
House of the imperialists against the rebel Botaneiates . But 'Due"(Z074 the star of Nicephorus was in the ascendant . He mounted the throne with the approval of the more energetic section ; and the seventh Michael, like three of his predecessors, the first, the fifth, and the sixth of the name, retired from the palace, to become the non-resident Archbishop of Ephesus .
Revolt of § 7. The last Armenian pretender within the Armenian limits of our It period now claims our attention ; also Basiladw in
Macedon.
Pevolutiow seizure bay' Armenian Phzlaret.
a Nicephorus, and surnamed Basilacius (or Vasilatzes) . The scene of the fruitless revolt was Macedonia ; engagements took place near the Strymon and the Axius rivers, and the decisive blow that ended the sedition came from the mace of Curticius (called a Macedonian, but of obvious Armenian descent), who killed Manuel, nephew and chief lieutenant of the pretender . Five centuries and a quarter had elapsed since the first conspiracy of Artabanus against Justinian .-Two or three incidents in Armenian history seem to show (I) how poorly the Seljukids had followed up the victory of Manzikert and the political dissensions of the Romans ; (a) how Turkish influence or example had corrupted the manners of the Armenians . About 1077, a generation of Turkish atrocities might appear to have prompted or excused the murder of Khatchatour, once Duke of Antioch, now commander of
Andrioun 1
When he fell
ill, a Greek monk stifled
I Is this Andrioun the Adrinople of an earlier Armenian revolt? Rebellions of Armenian pretenders are not uncommon in the Macedonian or Thracian colonies (Nicephorus Basilacius, Tornicius, Basil the "Mace-
-
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
'
461
him .with a mattress. The faithful troops avenge Revolutions at Antioch; their master by throwing the assassin from the top seizure by of a lofty tower. At the same time Antioch became Armenian Philaret. jealous of the renown of its Armenian Duke, Vasak ; he is stabbed in the street under cover of offering a petition ; the soldiers appeal to Philaretus, a character and a type that deserves some notice. He came from Varajnouni in Vasparacan, and, after the death of Romanus IV. (1071), aimed at the creation of a small independent state . With 20,000 men devoted to his cause he ousts the 11 Greek" garrisons in several towns, encamps before Marach, and begs Thornic (Tornicius) the Mamigonian, a prince of Taron and Sassoun, to join him in recovering Armenian autonomy . Thornic, like all the Taronites loyal to Rome, not only refuses but prepares to thwart Philaret's ambitious schemes . But the latter, indifferent as to the creed of his allies, invokes Turkish help, overthrows his rival, and makes a drinking goblet of his skull : it is long since we have to chronicle such an act of barbarity in the mild annals of Byzantium, and for the peculiar form of this savage exultation we must go back to the Lombards in the middle of the sixth, to the Bulgarians in the beginning of the ninth century . The rest of the body was sent to the prince or emir of Nepherkert, a personal enemy of the dead man . In such a society we cannot wonder that every attempt to rebuild a national kingdom should fail . Philaret, long independent with his Armenian troops, and seemingly undisturbed by the Turks, secured his reconciliation with the empire by meting out punishment to the murderers of Vasak ; the indulgent in emperor gave him a complete amnesty and the re- Events Armenian io8o version of the Duchyy of Antioch (c. I07 8).-In kingdom to an of Cuicia. dynasty came Bagratid Armenian third the Colonist(!) ) ; but it is donian," Samuel, King of Bulgaria and Armenian 667, in Europe, and Andrioun of Sapor, locate the rebellion not possible to (cf. PP . 380, 452) " may well have been altered to the better-known name
462 EventB in 'an kingdm of Oweia.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
end, extinguished in the person of Gagic . This exking, unsuccessful in his hopes of recovering his sceptre, went down into Cilicia (almost repeopled with Armenian settlers), and demanded the surrender of his young son David at Fort Paperon, son-in-law, and perhaps hostage or prisoner, of Abel-Kharp . Having received his son he disbands his followers, and, wandering with a small retinue, is murdered by obscure treachery. Both David and Abel follow him to the grave ; and the Paperon principality falls to Sahak or Isaac, son-in-law of Ochin, who by the cession of Abel had (as we saw) received in fee the castle of Lambron. Fortune was severe at the time on the scions of Bagratid royalty. John, Gagic's eldest son and David's brother, after marrying the daughter of the Duke of Ani (?), fled to Iberia, thence yielding to an irresistible attraction to the Roman court with his son Ashot. From the Emir of Gandzac, by a somewhat discreditable covenant, Ashot (leaving his party) secured the government of Ani as a subject, where his family had so long ruled in independence . He was poisoned by the clan of Manoutch6 ;so ran the tale of crime and violence in the East during a short period of five years. Disappear8. There now remained but three scions of the nati of house of Bagrat-Gagic, the son of Abbas, and the natives in Armenia . two princes of Sebaste, who seem to have outlived their contemporaries, the jealousy of their countrymen and peers, and the suspicion of the Roman ministers. From this year (io8o) may be dated the disappearance of the Armenian race in its native land. A tiny principality, Parisos in Onti, struggled in vain to preserve its freedom, and soon vanished. Religion fell into decay ; and the Armenian Church was nobly distinguished by its apostolical poverty, its uncompromising but ignorant loyalty to its creed and traditions. The remnants of the once powerful race escaped into Cilicia, and founded there the last and most romantic monarchy in Armenian history.
y THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1057-1081)
4633
Reuben, a companion of Gagic, betook himself on Foundation this king's murder to a canton peopled by his race ~~?°edom -Constantine, a son, was with him. He seized the of czlz,na forts Cositar (or Conitar, in south of Ana) and Bardzerberd ; then penetrating the inaccessible Taurus, and joined by Armenian refugees, he established Basil the Robber possessed a himself as king. separate realm at Kesoun, near Marach (or Germanicea) : while the several authorities seem to have acted in concert against the common foe and to have maintained to the end an indefinite kind of But Reuben could not vassalage to the empire . him . Ani was still the 7U Patriwith carry the patriarchate 'had sees. tradition : and Barsegh native centre of Armenian (Barsel or Basil), already bishop, is elevated to the supreme title (but, as we shall see, he will not rule without a rival over an undivided Church till some years later) . The consecration of the patriarch took place at Haghpat in ro8z, and Stephen, Albanian patriarch of Gandzac, performed the ceremony at the request of Manoutche, governor of Ani (after young Ashot's untimely death), and Gorigos, king of Albania, from his capital Lori. 9. We have just overstepped the boundaries of western the period marked out, but it is needful to advance mta °-f even further into the unknown domain lying beyond. okristidw. We shall trace the fortunes of the Armenians in the next section during the reign of Alexius, Io8I-I I 18 ; for it is impossible to leave the actors in the drama without inquiring into their later fate. Let us, at the the strict limit of our appointed task, resume up to the dependants state of the empire and its years In the ten success of the Comnenian clan . between Romanus and Nicephorus, Asia Minor was overrun by roving and predatory bands of Turks . Destiny, or the motion of the globe, forced a constant stream of immigrants westwards, spoilers and refugees alike ; just as six hundred years before the integrity of the Occidental empire had grumbled
464,
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. c Western before the steady inrush of Northern barbarians . "Pat" of Central Asia stood now to the Roman Empire as oriental
e%riatiam.
.
Scandinavia; Denmark, and Germany to the realm of Honorius or Valentinian 111 . Armenia had pressed westwards and yielded only to the irresisAsia Minor tible momentum of the Turkish tribes . While Antioch overrun. still remained an imperial fief or duchy, with its broad territory carefully defined as in Bo6mund's treaty of investiture, Smyrna, Ephesus, Laodicea-in a word, the Seven Churches of the Revelation-and the western coast-line fell into Turkish hands .. Certain strongholds, like Pergamus and Philadelphia, may at times be found tenanted by a Roman garrison ; but the population that filtered in to occupy the wild sheep-runs and vast feudal solitudes was Turk or Turkoman, rightly claiming or usurping affinity with the great Mongolian family. Meantime, as with the empire of Attila (c. 450) or with the later Mongol horde (iaoo), nothing gave cohesion to the new Seljuk power, and every emir fought for himself . The central authority betrays all the wellknown traits of barbarity in the first onset, followed by tolerance and clemency toward conquered peoples Cidicia an and their rulers . Armenia proper was not discon~r n . tented with the government of Malek Shah ; but the natiowdaty irreconcilable patriots fled with Reuben or with anr~ Imperial Basil, and repeopled a territory where the inhabitradition. tants had been often shifted since the days of St. Paul. The emperor was not without power in these distant and outlying parts ; while (like Justinian or Phocas) he watched with alarm the manoeuvres of barbarian squadrons within sight of his own capital . Armenia preserved a measure of independence under a suzerain who had not yet learned how to administer . The new kingdom enjoyed a prosperous development ; and the captains and pretenders of the empire, those who defended and those who sought to destroy, will be found still to belong to the constant rival of the Greek nationality and religion .
F
4
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
465
X ARMENIANS UNDER THE EMPIRE AND IN CILICIA DURING THE REIGN OF ALEXIUS I. (1080-1120)
1. It is impossible to take leave summarily of the race whose firm native characteristics impressed the empire with their own ineffaceable stamp, more than half replaced the population, and enabled the great feudal revival of the Comneni and Palaeologi to continue the "Roman " sway for nearly half a millennium. And as the sequel shows the significance of events, as later exponents of a philosophical school the latent drift of the early masters, so we can understand the period already surveyed by the light thrown back upon it by the ensuing years.The elevation of the Comnenian clan meant the triumph of a vigorous policy and the feudal aristocracy ; the dream of the 11 pacifists " was over. The army, and indeed the whole military system, had to be reorganised : the sovereign has to learn once more to fight in person, and display not merely the strategy of a captain but the valour of a knight . It is difficult to ,realise the Asiatic situation . Turks appeared in sight of the city, and their earliest capital was Nice, within the hundredth milestone ; they manoeuvred on Damalis and ravaged Bithynia. Yet Alexius defeats them, chases to Nicomedia, graciously accords peace, exacts the promise not to pass beyond the-Dracon, and makes use of Turkish reinforcements, which the Sultan is glad to provide .
Anomalous Emption °f under Comnenians.
In spite of this early success which gave hopes of Fluctuating the recovery of the great wrong, the Turks, "es8 of Seljuks in
giving their name by io85 to the whole country Asia Minor . (Tovprcla, instead of °Pcvgavfa), have made Asia Minor
a heap of ruins, and the inhabitants are carried off wholesale as slaves or settlers beyond Oxus and Jaxartes . In their hands lay the once fertile proVOL. II . 2G
466
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div . c
Fluduating vinces of Pontus (with some reservation), PaphlaSt~eeeks of gonia, Bithynia (south of Nice), Ionia, Phrygia, S'e~ksin Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Lycaonia, Isauria, a portion of Cilicia, and the Pamphylian coast to Sataiia. The conquests of Soliman (Suleiman), first Sultan, or perhaps viceroy of Rum,l were confirmed by the sanction and recognition of Malek Shah, head of the conquering clan, and by the treachery of Philaret, Duke 1 A few words on the Seljukian kingdoms may not here be out of place : as in later Mongolian empires a certain family bore unquestioned sway ; the law of succession was uncertain ; brotherly feuds frequent ;
local emirs apt to assert independence ; and the various centres of the hereditary branches constantly at feud. The term "Sultan" may be said to apply to the princes of the blood, while Emir implies a mere
lieutenancy, often in practice independent . There was the Great Sultan in Irak and Khorasan, like Kublai in Cambaluc in later times (the last representative being Sinjar, }t i57) ; but Aleppo and Damascus (as well as Nice and Iconium) were seats of petty sovereignties in the family of Seljuk . The Sultan of Aleppo was a son of Toutoush, and the other city was occupied by his cadet . This constant subdivision and the resulting jealousy rendered joint action impossible, and gave the empire respite from the fate which only came with the Ottoman Turks .-As for the dominion of Rfim, it achieved its zenith in its early years under Soliman, after the conquest of Antioch had relieved it of a constant source of anxiety in the rear. When in 1097 Nice surrendered, and the
capital was transferred to Iconium, the Romans recovered a large district inland and many walled towns ; Turkish emirs, in vague allegiance to the Seljuk prince, were expelled from Smyrna, Ephesus, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, Lampes, Polybotus : so overpowering had been the early inroad, so disastrous the effects of Melissenus' insurrection. When Arslan (io92-iio6) fell back on the north-east of Asia Minor, he
counted on the faithful help of the emirs in that region. But the Danishmand (from Tailu the "Schoolmaster") effectually hindered his plans . These had probably entered the district of Sivas soon after the death or defeat of Romanus IV. : on Soliman's death (imitating Aboul Cassim) they had seized Sivas, Tokat, Nicsar, Ablastan, Castamouni, and Malatiyah (the ancient seat of the bitterest foe of the Romans). This rebel viceroyalty formed an effective counterpoise to the adjoining legitimate dynasty of Rum, and was of valuable help to the Roman revival :
not until the extinction of the Danishmand (1175), after a century of power, did Iconium become the residence of a free and dangerous monarch. " Saisan'° is unknown to Orientalists ; he is Khahan Shah set free by the Grand Sultan Mohammed, murdered towards the close of Alexius' reign after his treaty with the empire, and succeeded by Masoud, who enjoyed or regretted his long reign of nearly forty years
(1155) . The Danishmand were reduced by his son, Kilig Arslan II ., in II7S .
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
46'7
of Antioch, the Armenian of many parts . We have spoken of the anomaly, by which Antioch and its environs remained loyal and imperial, while Ephesus and Nice belonged to the enemy. This possession kept the nearer Turks in check by a perpetual menace in their rear. Whatever raids changed the aspect of the continent to ruin, while the Romans held part of Armenia, Trebizond, Cilicia, and CceleSyria, the Seljukian kingdom formed an enclave shut. off from the central frame of their empire . In io83 Basil (Barshegh), an Armenian, governor of Edessa, was replaced by an illustrious compatriot, Sembat, who at once excited the rage and hatred of the citizens. Philaret fished in troubled waters : he advances to Edessa, seizes Sembat and certain other native princes, carries them to Marach (Germanicea), and blinds them there ; while he makes his own son, Barsames, governor. He soon allies with
severed from ~mby territory.
strange
exPloits of Philaret, Duke of Antioch.
Soliman against his father, and takes Antioch (i o84). Philaret escapes to Honi in Dchahan, but expelled by Emir Poltadji, returns to Marach : and to console himself in a mean retreat he consecrates a fourth Armenian patriarch for this new ducal residence . (Some accounts give as the reason for the unfilial treachery, the horror which Barsam felt at his father's apostasy to Islam ; but his own alliance with Soliman is beyond doubt, and it was a lieutenant of the Sultan, Aboul-Cassim, who occupied Antioch .) Sinope was also seized about this time : and the further advance of Soliman was abruptly stopped by the jealousy of his kinsmen .
2. Fraternal feuds and the independence of the Adroit emirate, out of sight of central control, made the diplomacy of Adexius ;
consolidation of the Seljuk empire impossible. The jealousy and Emir of Aleppo and Mosul claimed from a prince of division of sedjukide . the blood the same tribute that guilty Philaret had paid ; and, met with arms instead of compliance, had invoked the aid of Toutoush, the Great Sultan's brother . He, long envious of his cousin Soliman's
468
.
Adroit diplomacy of Alexim ; jealousy and divisions o,/' Sejukids.
Armenians high in the servz~eet
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. c
fame and wide dominions, drove him to suicide, and became the foremost figure among the Seljuks next to the throne . Asia Minor breaks up like Germany at the Great Interregnum into numberless
petty emirates ; and at Nice Aboul-Cassim disposes at will of the late Sultan's power, creates his brother Pulchas emir in Cappadocia, and assumes the airs of an independent Sultan . This was now the opportunity of Alexius . Malek Shah, in his turn, was suspicious of his brother's rising renown, and allies with the empire . Alexius, adroitly tampering with the envoy sent to arrange terms, secures the restoration of Sinope, and creates the now Christian emissary, Duke of Anchialus, to shield him from his master's resentment on the unknown continent of Europe . He converted Aboul-Cassim, taught prudence by two defeats, into a friend and ally, indulged him (on a visit to the capital, still splendid and inviolate) with all kinds of pleasures and sights, and invented for his vanity the unmeaning title ae,8aa-ro"ralros ! Meantime (while Alexius restored, owing to this alliance, the Roman power in Bithynia), Malek Shah attempted to convince Aboul that he was but a subject, a lieutenant, and a rebel . Attempting to appease him, he is strangled by his orders in far Khorasan.-Such, then, was the state of affairs in the early reign of Alexius ; he had recovered large districts by personal prowess or diplomacy, and the intestine discords of a quarrelsome and suspicious family allowed him to complete his success . Meantime, Armenians are still prominent as ever in the imperial armies. His most trusted generals were natives ; Nicolas 1° Branas " or Varaz, and Pacurian, who is Bacouran in his own tongue. We are not in the least surprised to find Taticius (?Tadjat), (the Saracen son of a brigandcaptain, reduced to slavery by Alexius' father), in command of a Persian colony in Macedonia : these bore the name BapSapciw-rat, or Vardariots, from the
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
469
river Bardar, not far from Achrida. These claimed Armenians descent from the Persian contingents of Babec and high in the Imperial
'
Theophobus, prudently distributed among all the Roman themes (c. 840) ; gave an Armenian name to the classical stream ; and sustained in this foreign land the tradition of the corps. Similar Eastern reinforcements came from the isolated Paulician centre of Philippopolis, where heretics of Armenian ' descent kept up their faith and customs . Nor was the voluntary aid of the semi-independent Cilician princes behindhand ; the prince of Lambr6n, Ochin, joins Alexius' armies, is nearly killed at the engagement of Dyrrhachium, owes his recovery to the devoted care of the emperor (admirable friend and placable foe), and procures the appointment of Prince (or Duke) of Tarsus, with the title of Augustus (148«a-Tos) . Ochin, father of Haiton (Haythonus), is the ancestor of St. Narses of Lambr6n . 3. Meantime, how fared the Armenian population, as yet true to their native soil ? The rule of Malek Shah over the vassal-princes was mild and indulgent to the Christians throughout the East, with that true indifference to religious forms which marks the Turk and the Mongol . A great part of Armenia was still in Roman hands ; and perhaps Ani did not finally leave the empire until io86. The government was left to the Manoutch6 ; and the Sultan advancing without opposition to the shores of the Black Sea, drove his horse into the waves ; thereby solemnly claiming possession, like the Spanish loyalists in the early times of American discovery. To the manes of his father he . uttered a proud and pious boast 11 Your little son, once an infant, now reigns to the uttermost ends of the earth ." His general, Pouzan, laid siege to Edessa (t o87) ; and Barsames (son of Philaret), unpopular with the citizens, threw himself from a tower over the wall, and sustaining terrible injuries, was tended till death ensued in the enemy's camp. The Edessenes capitulated ; and the town
wmice.
mild ,,k of -Malek in pro er`aa
470
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
Div. c
Mild rote of continued under Turkish influence, and perhaps under Aa~ a Roman governor, until the coming of Baldwin and the creation of the first independent Latin principality . proper.
Concidzation of Armenians.
In io88 Gandzac was taken by assault, and Phatloun (grandson of the first emir) was taken prisoner and replaced by another governor . While the realm was extending, internal administration was not without merit. The patriarch Barsegh (or Basil) applied to the Sultan for the diminution of imposts and tributes (ioqo) and also of the number of patriarchs, no less vexatious. The scattered faithful of the Armenian Church recognised four metropolitan sees, and it seemed
probable that with each new principality of refugees the archiepiscopal control would be further divided . Basil secures the resignation or submission of the patriarch of Honi (after a fourteen years' rule) and of the patriarch of Edessa . About this time, such was the favour extended by the Sultan, Liparit (no doubt kinsman of the earlier broken reed) embraced Islam ; and Gorigos (already named as Albanian king in Chaki), visits the Persian court and returns loaded with gifts. Sometime before his death (the computation of time being obscure in Samuel of Ani and others), Malek Shah, significantly accompanied by this Albanian king and a certain George II. of some petty Caucasian monarchy, advances from Khorasan to capture Antioch ; Philaret, who seems to have maintained friendly terms with the various masters of the city, was indemnified by the charge of Marach, the price of his conversion to the Mahometan faith . Malek, from Antioch as his headquarters, pushed Big wise forward to the Mediterranean, and there in the same reci~' ,stje dramatic fashion took possession of the Southern (1092--1097) . Sea. The death of this wise and tolerant potentate (x092, but according to Samuel of Ani, 1095) was the signal for civil war, and the disruption of the empire which he had done so much to consolidate. Toputoush was suspected of poisoning his brother,
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
47'1
and his claim (natural enough in Turkish tradition) was not recognised. Pouzan, the great general, like Bahram the Persian rebels, but is defeated and killed ; the sceptre was not to pass out of the line of Seljuk . The four years of civil war dissolved the strength of the military caste ; many rebel captains tender homage, and Barkiarok, son of Malek, is able to establish himself in Armenia and Persia, and finally to remove his uncle Toutoush in 1097" 4. But to return : the death of Malek had immediate effect on the Sultanate of Nice (1092) and the fortunes of the empire . Two sons of Soliman escape* from their honourable captivity as hostages for their father's allegiance ; and David Kilig Arslan L, the elder, is welcomed by the Nicenes with genuine heartiness. He secures the permanence and con= tentment of . the Turkish garrison by sending for their wives and children, and replaces the suspected Pulchas (brother of the late rebel governor) by Mohammed, with the title "first of Emirs ." Alexius had not been able of late to pursue his persistent policy of recuperation . The Comans and Patzinaks spread more terror in the capital than the nearer yet
His wise '*ynfo11`d strife ` -io~7). ~ (zos,~-io~7).
&ijuks at Nice. .
less deadly Turks. In iog z, Alexius was exposed to Armenian ayainet yet another Armenian plot : Ariebus (Ariev, Arm. = P" Alexius; the
sun) conspires with a Frank to kill the hard-working Duchy of prince ; the plot was discovered and the conspirators Trebixond. treated with that excessive leniency which is a standing marvel in all Byzantine rulers, and Alexius in particular. Trebizond now begins to enter into serious history and give an augury of its future fame. Malek might ride proudly into the Euxine, but the empire still possessed the seaports and convoys of the northern coast of Asia Minor . It had shown a stout resistance to the Turks, and it may be surmised that Pontus was still independent. A native, Theodore Gabras, recovered it from their hands and received his own conquest in fief from the emperor with the ducal title ; while Gregory, his son, was invited to
472
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF niv. c Armenian the capital for an alliance with the imperial house plot aai and formally betrothed to Mary, then aged six years. Duchy o,/' (The impetuous and ungrateful youth was involved in Trebizond. a plot against his benefactor and sovereign ; but was merely confined among the Paulician colony at Philippopolis.) We may inquire, without requiring or expecting a reply, whether at some time Trebizond did not fall under the sway of David III . the Repairer, king of Georgia from 1090-1130? His sway extended over all Lazica ; but if he controlled Trebizond it was for a brief space . Theodore Gabras chased him as he had chased the Turks. General gate The Armenian emirs, relieved of the control of ofBast on the a firm arrival of the y et benevolent Sultan,, oppressed their subjects Crusaders. after 1092. A fresh exodus transported many natives into the artificial Armenia of king Reuben, and still further denuded the original home of the race. Monks above all fled from the wrath to come. Yet Ani still remained a centre of patriotic sentiment : Gregory, father of the patriarch Basil, repelled an assault on Ani, and followed up his victory by using the troops of Emir Manoutch6 to obtain possession of Gagsovan, himself falling in the successful assault . Meantime, the Armenian servants of the empire showed the old aptitude for conspiracy, to be met by the consistent clemency of the Cwsar ; in 1093, Michael the Taronite, brother-in-law of Alexius, dignified by the title Haw7repo-e,8aa-Tos, joined the futile conspiracy of Diogenes (son of the late emperor). A second Catacalon Catacecaumenus (from Phrygia ?), who had 'served gallantly at the Calabrya engagement, was also found among the insurgents . Exile and confiscation follow discovery ; but John Taronite, son of Michael, is continued in office and favour.-On the eve of the first Crusade, there was peace in the East ; and the undisputed realm of David Kilig Arslan I. stretched 4rom Orontes and Euphrates to the Bosphorus . (We may note in passing that about this time Alexius entertained a
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
473
proposal to welcome the English refugees from General state fh Norman tyranny at the seaport of Cibotus, near af2~ the Nicomedia . Saxon guardsmen were not uncommon, cmsaalers. but an English settlement was never an . accomplished fact on the shores of the cosmopolitan empire.) 5. The Crusaders arrived and the Roman world Reconque8t of Ni~eLatin was thrown open to the foreigners, like the Middle Kingdom in our own day . They came not as recruits Armenian or settlers, but as visitors, doubtful allies, finally as PrinciPalitie' foes and conquerors. We will only follow events in the familiar campaign so far as they concern our purpose, the re-establishment of Roman authority in the peninsula, and the condition of the Armenian race. The fall of Nice in 1097 implied the removal of the Seljuk capital or rather headquarters from the immediate vicinity of Constantinople ; and from this fateful moment Roman influence steadily revived . The next conquest of importance was Edessa, where Baldwin fixed the earliest independent principality . There was still a shadow left in that city of Roman power ; as in the cities of Northern Gaul in the time of Clovis and Syagrius . Thoros (Theodore) had received his commission from Romanus IV. (c. 1070) ; and after the manifold vicissitudes of Oriental fortresses, with their almost annual change of masters, he had somehow managed during the inroads of Philaret, Barsames, and Pouzan to retain a delegated, or acquire an independent, authority .' Edessa welcomed the Latin ; perhaps the Frankish Latin8 settlers had made a better impression in the East tvith im than their countrymen elsewhere . The aged Thoros Armenian8. adopted Baldwin as his son and shares the govern1 He is Gibbon's '1 Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been suffered under the Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of Edessa." He was of course an Armenian ; and the Turks, without regular method of government, employed harmless officials or native princes, much as the Western invaders availed themselves of the existing methods of Roman bureaucracy and finance. In the constant Seljukian feuds there was every opportunity for such a viceroy to assume an independent role.
474 latins fraternim
With Armenians.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv. c
ment ; but he perishes in an obscure popular rising,
and the whole-hearted allegiance of the citizens is transferred to the Latin adventurer. Armenians aided him ; a certain Bagrat was a warm supporter (probably not a member of the dynasty) ; and Constantine I. added his help, king in Cilician Armenia, who had succeeded on Reuben's death after a reign of fifteen years (io8o-1095).' It was this first inheritor of a romantic crown who moved the capital to a fortress newly acquired, Vahca in Cilicia, aided by the loyal support of Bazouni, Prince of Lambron, and Ochin his brother, governor and Duke of Tarsus (in virtue of a direct imperial commission) . Their services It would appear that the forms of feudalism and aristocratic independence were carefully preserved to Crusad the er8, in the new kingdom ; that the lesser princes warmly supported a tactful and courageous monarch ; and that over all, the empire threw a vague halo of suzerain influence and honorific titles, as it had done (for instance) on the Lazic and Iberian sovereign in happier days. Nor were the Armenians unfriendly either to Turks or to Crusaders : so efficient and opportune were the subsidies of king Constantine to the famished Latins that, on the capture of Antioch, he was richly recompensed, and believed his royal dignity further augmented, by the grateful titles, marquis, aspet, and ii7ra-ror. The Western powers did not forget . this seasonable aid ; Gregory XI II. mentions his services to the cause of Christendom in a Bull of 1589...-In this same year, 1097, we read of the succession of a grandson of Gregory ,aaiyc0-rpos to the feudal fortress of Dzophk in the old Fourth Armenia : he was an Arsacid on his mother's side (a sister of the patriarch Gregory) ; and while his brother attained patriarchal rank in Egypt, his son Narses was celebrated for his elegant Armenian i It is fair to say that some authors cannot identify this Constantine with the king, but suppose him to be a feudal prince of Gargar, a district near Marach .
r
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(1080-1120)
475
writings,=a taste which was a family gift from his ancestor in the days o£ Basil II. 6. Boemund (the constant foe and at last the humble vassal of the adroit emperor) founded the principality of Antioch in io 9 8 , destined to survive
Rivals to se&ks; Aatz"s`~t
Etntioch and for nearly two hundred years under nine princes. It Edessa ; the Danzshmand . was in vain that the Sultan sent a great force of 36o,ooo men under Korbouga 1 Anna Comnena's
avapf9,u~Tot XtaiaSes were swept away or annihilated by the courage of famished despair . Armenia proper was exposed to an invasion of Soliman, son of Ortukh, who marched into Vanand . But the Seljuks were already enfeebled by contested claims and the revolt of lieutenants ; the curious and obscure power of the Danishmand had been established in the neighbourhood of Sivas 2 He was a lettered Armenian apostate (such were the careless or democratic methods of the Turks) who governed the territory of Sebast~ (lately occupied by Atom and his brother), and had joined the district of Malatiyah (Melitene). Lying between Rum and the suzerain-sultanate he
I This dignitary is oddlynamed by Matthew of Edessa, Courofiaghat (the Armenian transliteration of Curvfialat) : his full name would seem to be Kawam ad-Dawla (pillar of the State) Kurbugha ; and if in the Chanson d'Antioche he is termed Carbaran d'Oliferne, I am inclined to believe some legend compared him to Holofernes, and told (no doubt untruly) of some feminine stratagem by which he was overcome. 2 This obscure dynasty, at first helpers of Kilig Arslan and then rivals or foes of his house, are perhaps the only family who have gloried in the scholastic title of " pedagogue." The name means schoolmaster, and is borne not only by the founder Tailu but by his successors, to the despair of the numismatologist of princely series. His eldest son, Kbazi, speedily learnt the Turkish lesson, " the slaughter of the innocents " (or did he set the terrible precedent?) . He mounted the throne (IIo4) in the same year that removed Soliman, son of Ortukh, Toutoush, Seljukian prince of Damascus, and the Great Sultan Barkiarok. But he at once murdered his eleven brethren. On the death of Soliman, the family possessed the centres of Sivas, Tokat, Nicsar, Ablastan, Malatiyah, and perhaps Kastamouni ; and may well have begun their ambitious career directly after the death of Romanus IV. (1071) . Ahmed Khazi (tI135) was succeeded by the short reign of his son, Mohammed (t 1143), and it was only on the extinction of this house, after a century's power (I175), that the kingdom of Riim again revived .
4'76
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
Rivahs to reigned as an independent prince, coerced the Lat,`s at former power as it was closed in by the judicious Antioch and advances of Alexius, and perhaps atoned by this Edema ; the unwilling service to the empire for the sin of apostasy. . But in no way did he deserve so well of the emperor as in his imprisonment of the Prince of Antioch . He captured him on a field, where two militant Armenian prelates are said to have met their fate, held him to ransom, and accepted the price of io,ooo gold pieces from another Armenian, the ImpMal general Basil (Barshegh) the Robber, Prince .of Basto~expediexpedi- Kesoun . Tancred, regent for the absent prince, tion to repudiated the debt, and increased the bounds of the 1103,1104 Principality ; yet while he thus despoiled ' . the robber by a mean evasion, he contrived to secure the alliance of the Armenian princes . But meantime the empire was just preparing to make good its suzerain-rights over the vassal-kingdom. The imperialist generals Butumites (1103) and Monastras (1 104) established once more Roman prestige ; the one by seizing Marach and leaving troops there, the latter, by the occupation of Tarsus, Adana, and Mopsuestia (Mamistria) ; and, as some would convey, of the entire province. Seven years before, William of Tyre may well be pardoned for supposing Tarsus to be in Turkish hands, though it was still under an imperial lieutenant, Ochin : for the allegiance to the far-off emperor was a mere shadow of servitude . But the early years of this twelfth century witnessed a great and welcome reaction in the tide of Roman fortunes ; and, if to use Gibbon's suppressed simile, the jackal (Alexius) followed the lions, it is certain that he knew how to turn to advantage both his own victories and their mistakes . In 1105, there are to our surprise two efficient imperial armies in the East, in Syria under Cantacuzen, and in Cilicia under Monastras ; and when the latter is relieved, his successor is known by an Armenian title not a name,-Aspet('Ao-r'TI79),constable,which to the Greek
;
T
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120)
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ears may have suggested some Homeric adjective, Curious the "- immense " or " unspeakable ." Constantine I. treatmentnf had died in iogg ; and Thoros or Theodore had general. succeeded to rule in the '1 land of Thoros ." Under Roman influence and approval, he enlarged his mountain-realm, added Anazarbus to the important fortress of Kendroscavi, and (with . the Moslem loyally obedient) ruled over a mixed population and a tract It is hard of two days' by sixteen days' journey . to say whether the imperial army superseded, or supported, or competed with the royal authority . Certain it is that the Aspetes gained a peculiar notoriety for somnolence and excess ; and in a drunken slumber was transported unconscious to Antioch by Tancred, who secured Mamistria and predominant influence in Cilicia . (It is only fair to add that the incident is unknown to Armenian writers, and may be as apocryphal as Anna Comnena's legend of Boemund and the cock in the coffin .) 7. But the province was unsettled and tempting War o enough to attract the Great . Sultan himself . In Ar Armenia of successor) Cidzcia . (Barkiarok's o8, Taphar or i z 1107 ravaged the land of king Thoros. Basil sets on him and defeats, returning in patriotic joy to his fortresscapital Kesoun . But Taphar comes back ashamed and angry with a larger force, and lays siege to Once more Basil achieves a notable Harthan . victory, and receives a petition for reinforcements from Baldwin of Edessa, to which he assents . But to his surprise he learns that his men are to be used against Tancred ; he sharply refused to go against one "who had always been friendly to the Armenians ." Now it may be possible, with this Amity of indirect intimation, to give some account of the Amred a ofnd perplexing changes in Cilician ,Armenia" which we Antioch. have just recorded . If Tancred was their firm and trusty friend, his advent and capture of the Aspet (Alexius' general) was either purely apocryphal or carried out in alliance with the native princes . Here
4'78
CONSTITUTIONAL . HISTORY OF DIV. c Amity of we may well suspect another instance of the alienation Armenia f and Tanorest of of the feudal mind (ver y local , p ersonal, and impulsive) Antioch. at the uniform demands of imperialism . Though himself
Boemund becomes
an Armenian, the Aspet may have come as a helper of the nationalists, and ended, as other Byzantine captains, as a foe more hated than the infidel. But in the welter of feudalism it is not easy
Vassal of the to extricate the thread of private motive, much less empire . that of political principle ; and a great change comes over the East in I Io8, when the ,thirty years' war" is over with Boemund, and the fiercest assailant of the empire becomes the dutiful liegeman (altos) of Alexius. The terms of this curious infeudation are little short of amazing: the emperor grants what he certainly could not give, and makes over a life-interest to his vassal and feudal control over a district, including the towns of Antioch, Borzes, Shizar (Larissa on the Orontes), ATtakh, Tolukh, Saint Elias, Marach, and the districts of Pagres, Palaza, and Zyme ; always excepting that which belongs to the Armenian subJects of the empire . From the ancient duchy of Antioch was detached all Cilicia east of the Cydnus, and a portion of Syria round Laodicea, Gabala, Marathus, Antaradus, acid Batanea. Boemund secured an annual pension or subsidy of aoo pounds of gold and the dignified, if unmeaning, title of MeWaa-ros : he died in I I I I . (Changes At this point in our story it may be well to in Roman notice briefl y the changes in administraRoman provincial
tion : the Duchy.)
.
government, of which the ducal system is the final phase . At first, governors united civil and military duties ; were judge of assize and lord-lieutenant and sheriff all in one. About A .D. goo, the well-known separation of department took place ; and specialism reigned supreme down to the days of Heraclius . The Thematic scheme recognised the civil magistrate and the ascendancyextinction of the of the captain of the district corps. Localities were renamed after the regimental titles ; and the problem of civil
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(1080-1120)
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(Changes ruler and municipal methods becomes for us in- in Boman soluble. The vague designations, Anatolics, Armeniacs, administraBuccellarians, Cibyrrhoots, and the like, disappear in Lion : the their turn ; the commanders are Domestics, and the
old classical nomenclature is revived for the countries of Asia Minor . A last step is the transference of control to dukes ruling the garrison in important centres as Antioch, and acting as arbiter in the rare disputes which could not be settled by local custom and precedent . It maybe doubted whether these local and urban duchies were a reminiscence of the early Latin title (so common in Ammianus) or came back into use by way of Spoleto and Benevent and the lessons taught by Southern Italy . Another 8. In 1107, we must notice a plot against conspiracy. Alexius Armenian accordin g to some authors, conspiracy_ now Pontic in the account of others . Was Gregory, the displaced who the Taronite Duke of Trebizond, Gregory was he the Or suspected Gabras clan? Gabras himself, affianced to the emperor's daughter Mary, who had already conspired, and been already forgiven? I am inclined to respect both the judgindulgence ment of Fallmerayer and the'well-known an indepenof the emperor. Seizing Trebizond as around him, dent domain or fortress, like the emirs by a Danishmand or other, he was confronted former Taronite (his own cousin, if we believe the story) . Brought captive to Byzantium, he almost eluded the imperial clemency by the violence of his language ; but mollified by captivity and time he once mends his ways, is restored to favour, and the generous favour of by the more regains his duchy emperor. Captured (if it be still the same governor Emir and not a son) in 1142 by the Danishmand he was able Kamakh, of Melitene and the Emir of pieces of of 30,000 to offer the enormous ransom power wealth and gold, a certain sign of the original of of rapid recovery which the great coast-towns Lesser Asia always possessed .
480 ory
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
In i iog the restless spirit of Norse individualism or crusading zeal led Baldwin and Joscelin into an Franks and attack upon Harran. Apolasar, Prince of Taron, Armenians, joined them (as he had joined Cilician Basil some time before against the Seljuks) : he met his death in the expedition . The Emir of Mosul made reprisals and laid siege to Edessa, retiring before the united forces of the Christian princes, but returning after their departure to inflict serious damage on the city. Next year, the Turks invade the "realm of Thoros " ; but the king with his brother Leo (Ghevond) can repulse their attacks . In default they turn (I I Io) against the little feudal fortress of Dzophk in the Mesopotamian district, where the new prince Apirat, of the brave stock of Gregory ,u« y«,-pos, is completely successful ; but in the moment of victory is killed by a chance arrow from an ambuscade. Next year, Tancred and Difficulties Basil vanish from the turbulent scene .-Meantime, ofRdm . in Lesser Asia the Seljukian kingdom of Rum had been enjoying a certain respite from its anxieties ; Kilig Arslan L's son was careful to maintain good terms with the reviving empire, and with a prince who knew how to turn every success and every failure to his own profit . But on his Eastern frontier (if we may use the term of his vague and shifting "sphere of influence " round Iconium) he knew no security. The "Schoolmaster" dynasty gave him no peace ; and in 1112 he drowned himself in the river Chaldras near Edessa to escape his foe, the Emir Dcholi ; he had reigned six years (rio6-12) . His son «Saisan" pursued a more vigorous policy ; he ravaged the open country of the Romans from Philadelphia to the Ionian coast . That city (destined in later times to be the last solitary outpost of Roman power in Asia) contained a strong garrison under Constantine Gabras : and neighbouring Pergamus was held by the veteran Monastras . Gabras, retrieving the treason of his family, and justifying the wise confidence of the emperor, defeats Saisan and forces him to fighting in East betwem
THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1080-1120) sue for peace ; terms .
481
it was concluded on honourable
A great blow fell on the Western provinces in the ALexzm next year : the central Seljukian power in Khorasan checks an inroad from
aimed a deadly stroke at the reviving prosperity of Asia. All the country from Nice to Adramyttium was ravaged ; and all the coast-towns along Troas and Mysia were sacked, with Prusa, Apollonia, and Cyzicus. Eustachius Camyzes, governor of Nice, was defeated and captured ; and it was the veteran Alexius in person who turned the scale. Twice he defeated the Turks, and returned home to receive the sincere congratulations of the capital . This victory ensured a welcome term of peace . 9. About . this time happened the great earthquake described by Matthew of Edessa, which in the distressed country added the catastrophes of Nature to the gratuitous havoc. of man.
Chiefly attacking
gharaan,
Armenian s°roreiym tthe Ea )quake .
the neighbourhood of Samosata, Kesoun, and Marach, it is said to have destroyed q.o,ooo Turks . The conservative character of the princes of the East is here well displayed, a contrast to the mere destructive raids which seem so often to exhaust the Turks' conception of "administration ." The Armenian kings Thoros and Leo hasten, like modern sovereigns, to the scene, and bestir themselves to relieve the distressed and raise their shattered homes ; their humane efforts are seconded by a Camsar prince
in Mesopotamia, Basil the Child,We have read of Batalwin of the aid and countenance given by these Armenian Edessa reduces the
princes to the Crusaders : the return was not seldom Armenian a sorry one, and the extinction of these small and PrinciPaditim . ancient sovereignties was hastened by the crafty greed of the Latin, no less than by the jealous centralism of Byzantium, or the wanton destructiveness of the Seljuk . Baldwin, Prince or Count of Edessa, having married his sister to Leo of Cilicia, lures Basil into confinement and seizes his estates . Alexius, unable to avenge this treacherous act, VOL. IL 2 x
482 Baldwin of educa reduces the Armenian Primi,mtitzes.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
niv . c
welcomed the dispossessed prince with the invariable Byzantine courtesy . The only son of Thoros, Constantine, died at this juncture . Suspicion pointed an idle finger at the intrigues of his uncle Leo ; and if we were inclined to impute motive or listen to slander, we might suppose that Leo and Baldwin had conspired to -divide between them the remnants of the Christian kingdoms in the Mesopotamian region . In 1117, Baldwin continued his offensive policy . Ignorant of the arts of peace or the duties of a ruler, he confused thoughtless acquisitiveness with statesmanship ; and believed that he governed when he merely laid waste and thwarted development : he attacked the town and province of Pir lying southwest of Sroudj, and was delayed a whole year before the principal fortress. He deprived another Armenian prince of his estates, a former ally of the first Baldwin, and thus ungratefully repaid his imprudent services : he took from him the town and residence of Araventan . state ot'Asia Meantime the gradual desolation of the fertile and Minor, 1120 populous Lesser Asia was stealthily and steadily restless policy o Jum. proceeding. Clouds of Turks, Turkmans, and Kurds poured in, bands succeeding one after the other, pillaging and wasting, and even demolishing the ancient and deserted sites to pitch their nomad tents over the ruins of Lydian, Hellenic, and Roman culture . " Saisan " again breaks faith with the empire ; and Alexius, now a martyr to the gout, rises from his sick-bed to teach him a lesson . He projected the capture of Iconium, for twenty years the headquarters of the Seljukian encampment, in answer to the insulting farces of the palace, where his malady was caricatured amid the laughter of the Sultan and courtiers . Several brave but indecisive engagements were fought near Nicomedia ; and Bardas (grandson of Burtzes, commander under Basil I I.) was entrusted with a troop to reconquer his heritage, which, now occupied by Turks, had been then bestowed as a
rc
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
(1080-119.0)
488
reward of merit . It is uncertain whether he attained state of Asia his end ; but it is clear that Alexius and Bardas re- Minor, 1120, pulsed the Turks, and welcomed to an asylum in ofRd.. Constantinople a multitude of expatriated Asiatics, followed by wives and children, with that protective instinct which, sometimes obscured, never failed entirely in the rulers of Rome. Alexius established for their benefit monasteries, almshouses, and hospitals ; and in i i 16 opened his doors wide to admit the monks of Iberia, who came westward in crowds from the turmoil of the new invaders to the settled and orderly commonwealth,which, having enervated its citizens by relieving them of arms and military duties, could do no less than protect them .-Saisan, Homage to a prince of inconsequent spirit and easily repenting Akthus ; has of his boldness, soon sued for peace after a personal defeat. He showed his intense reverence for the imperial dignity and its wearer by dutiful courtesy on a Phrygian plain, where the two monarchs held an interview. But once more fraternal discord intervened, not to save Rome from a foe but to spoil a welcome treaty ; Masoud, no doubt representing the "unbending Turk party," murdered his brother on his return . In 1118 died the Emperor Alexius I., and it is not without import that, when John his son marches to the palace to secure the succession, he should meet Abasgian envoys on the way, bringing the daughter of David III. the Restorer to marry a member of the noble house of Bryennius . With this last instance of the continuous relations of these countries to the empire, we shall end this historical sketch .
f
I.
I
_. "i Ff ` ; '
APPENDIX (I venture to annex another account of the motives and signi-
fieance of the Revolutions (695, 8fc.) during the Anarchy. It Was written in a somewhat different connection and nith another purpose . It is hoped that the t?vo versions may be mutually complementary .) THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE PROVINCIAL REGIMENTS ; OR EMPEROR, SENATE, AND ARMY DURING THE GREAT ANARCHY (690-720)
1. THE monarchy under the Herachads was un- Predominpopular with both ranks in the State-service ; and ante of the provincial
however beneficial the work of former rulers, nothing regiments : but good fortune and great personal tact could up- the empire hold the central power. In the summary deposition now 4siatlc. and mutilation of Justinian II . by an obscure cabal
it had suffered a grievous blow. In the next brief period between Justinian's first dethronement and the peaceful secession of Theodosius III . (68S717), the two parties in the State contend for the mastery. No question is raised of altering the form of the constitution ; but the sovereign is to be rendered harmless, a negligible quantity. The provincial regiments, created in the newly recovered districts of Lesser Asia, and to some extent in the vague centres of imperial influence still left in Hellas and Thrace, usurp a prominent share in the election of rulers, which the Eastern realm but rarely witnesses . Phocas, indeed, had been the disastrous product of a military revolution ; Heraclius, like Galba, Vespasian or Severus, had arrived at the head of a local contingent to save the capital from itself. But in the curious and often decisive prominence of the Obsicians and Anatolics, it is possible 485
486 Predom%nanee of tl' provincial
APPENDIX
to detect a wider and deeper issue than the mere brute force and narrow motive of local levies. The
Roman Empire, with its centre of gravity, is being reytnet, : the empire shifted eastward ; and although the ambiguous 4e' city of Constantine hangs doubtfully between either continent, there is no question in the next age of its orientation . The desolation of Thrace, the wide, autonomous, and pastoral communities of 11 Sclavinia," the ebbing of the tide of Roman and Hellenic influence in the European part of the empire, the rare oases of urban culture and commerce clinging to the outskirts of a barbaric continent, the shifting of interest to the lands most imperilled by the Arab advance,this is the picture which the obscure records of the Heracliads open to us. The empire was in truth confined as an effective power to Asia Minor ; and with Asia Minor will rest the arbitrament of its future destinies . The torch of the Roman tradition had passed from Spaniard to African and Syrian, and from these again to Illyrians and Pannonians. We have shown how from Decius to the second Justin (25o-578) the Balkan peninsula supplies Rome both with sovereigns and soldiers . A new epoch opens in the last years of the sixth century ; and it is not without good reason that (as Gibbon tells us), « Tiberius by the Arabs and Maurice by the Italians are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars ." But strictly Hellenic influence was never fated to predominate at Byzantium that anomalous outpost of Roman law in the Greek and Oriental world. Infrequent, precarious, and unsuccessful is the intervention of an authority purely Greek ; it is largely feminine, and is therefore strongest when indirectly exerted . Still the Roman ' ideal called from the very ends of the earth representatives of divers races to carry on the imperishable tradition ; but it did not appeal, or it appealed in vain, to its ancient rivals, the Greeks . Whatever the exact- nationality of Heraclius, he is plainly typical
APPENDIX
487
of Roman character ; and his eyes look westwards to Predomznanee of'the Africa and Italy. But after the reign of Constantine provincial
IV. there is no further hesitation as to the important regi e,&, part to be played by Byzantium in the further East ; the empire Asiatic. the reforms and Thematic reorganisation did little or "°w nothing for Europe, everything for Asia Minor. The
sceptre passes to Armenia and Syria ; and the European side plays (until the days of Basil II.) an insignificant role in the fortunes of that strange fiction, the " commonwealth of the Romans ." § 2 . The reconquest from Persia, the needs of de- Permanent Thematic fence west of Mount Taurus against the caliphate, armies. had decided the form of the new administration . Great districts were roughly mapped out for the patrol of permanent legions, with no great solicitude I am for precise frontiers or well-defined duties . not convinced that civil magistrates, despatched from the capital, vanished entirely from the scene ; but their powers were now subordinate, and enter The nowhere into the light of political interest . cities had their respectable or episcopal rulers ; the country its semi-feudal chieftains, not seldom wisely identified by the government with the regimental leaders. The legislation of Leo III. shows the tendency of an earlier age ; neither the serf nor the small yeoman proprietor survived. Castles rose in Cappadocian fastnesses ; already under Phocas and Heraclius, a local nobleman was able in true mediaeval fashion to baffle and mortify the sovereign and entertain the forces of the State as if they formed a private militia . The armies were necessary ; first Anatolics, Obsicians, Armeniacs, and then as needs multiplied, Thracensians, Optimates, Buccellarians . But it was essential that they should be governed from the centre ; and as the centre was never too stable in the empire with all its majestic pretension, they ended in controlling rather than being controlled . We find under Constantine IV. the halfreligious, half-military rising in favour of a triad of
488
APPENDIX
Pevvolutim2s emperors ; and though beaten then, the provincial of695, 69s. army does not forget. Leontius was named General of Hellas when he opened the Byzantine Bastille and overthrew the tyrant (685) ; but he had commanded the Anatolics, had served with distinction in the far East, and derived his ancestry from Isauria. He is replaced by a Gotho-Greek from Pamphylia, whose barbarous name Apsimar bears witness to his original race. Not for the first or last time do we record the rebellion of an army disgraced and defeated, the insurrection and success of a general who had failed . The expedition to relieve Carthage had proved abortive, apparently owing to the dissensions of the lieutenants, their reluctant support to John the Patrician. Fearing his protest at the capital, they united and elected an admiral, sailing, as Romanus Lecapenus and his companions two hundred years later, to upset the reigning prince . This mutiny is maritime and Asiatic ; it is indifferent to race, but it is a respecter of names, and seeks (as it would appear) to affiliate itself to the fallen house of the second Justinian . The name Tiberius is revived, borne by two jointemperors in the century before ; and the new ruler, when he bestows on his brother sole command of the Asiatic cavalry, and of the passes of Cappadocia, gives him the not less venerable name of " Heraclius." Both these revolutions, then, are Asiatic, and while a general expels a tyrant, an admiral, quite in the manner of Septimius Severus, reverts to the exiled line in his choice of imperial titles. The restoration of Justinian II. by the help of Terbelis, the Bulgarian chief and Roman "Caesar," need not detain us ; the Armenian Vardan (afterwards Philippicus) is saluted emperor at Cherson by an alliance of mutinous troops and terrified citizens,-for Justinian had sent orders to raze it to the ground and exterminate the inhabitants . Jwtinian § 3 . We must notice the secondary place of the Senate during the rule of Leontius the Isaurian, 711, 718. f Apsimar the Gotho-Greek and Asiatic, and Justinian's
APPENDIX
489
second brief reign of revenge . It exercises no infiu- Judznian ence on the changes in succession ; and it seems to restored revobutiom of have been coerced, like the rest of the representative 711, 71S. classes in the city, into raising funds for the equip-
(Theoph . :
ment of the expedition against Cherson .
'Iov6Tlviavos . . . E~o7Waas o-TOXov 7roaiiv . . . a?ro SLavouig
Troy
oL'KOVVTwv Tiw
?roalv avyKXqTLK@v Te K .
ep-yaLrTr7piaKaov K. Sr?,aOTwv K. ,;ravTos o(p(PLKiov. We shall find these guilds of artisans mentioned again as consulted by the sovereign, Leo IV., when he names his little son Constantine as his successor in A.D. 776 .) Nicephorus, using and perhaps perverting the same anonymous authority on which Theophanes depended : AK Te TWV O"TpaTLWTLKWV KaTa'XO7LAV ETL Je Kai TOO
yCWPTLKOO K . Th"w 8avavTLKiov
TEXvaw
Taw
Te
eK Ti7s
0-iuyKXrj'TOV #OUXiis K. TOO Tiffs ,7roXecos J4uov. The Senate suffered severely along with the leaders of the army from the anger of the restored exile (Theoph. : aYaple1AfjTOv7rXj0og EK Te TOO '7roALTLKOU- K. TOV 6TPaTLWTLKOv
KaTaXoyov a=Aeaev . Zonaras slightly alters the sense, in paraphrasing the common original which, as Bury suggests, may well be the LL acta" of the denies '7roXV OE 7rX0og AK Tf TOO OYJJU.OTLKOV K. TOO
O-TpaTLLOTLKO6
&s09upev. The two terms are not synonymous, and I prefer to keep the word 7rOALTLKOV for the higher and official . class.) When we pass to the next revolution which disposed of the incompetent and luxurious Armenian, we have a curious instance shortsyht o,/' both of the power and of the thoughtless shortsight mi7r~. of the military faction . The Obsicians blind and depose Philippicus, but have taken no measure to secure a successor ; and once more the august names of the " Senate and People" are invoked to cover the hasty selection of a chief secretary, Artemius, by a determined minority, who still retained their preIt seems evident that Philippicus sence of mind. favoured the civilian element at the expense of the soldiers ", he celebrated his birthday by a public festival and races, and by a banquet with the nobles
490
APPENDIX
Shortaight of (,aeta roXrriov aPXatoyevwv apto-Tilrat) . It is also clear muitary cmispirators. that the warrior-faction took no steps to provide an emperor ; for the first act of the new sovereign is to blind and exile the sacrilegious authors of the crime which raised him to power. We cannot doubt that once more the palace-faction profited by the military oversight, and got ready a candidate to be crowned on Whitsunday ; Theoph . merely o-ccpevOevTos Tov Aaoa eis TJiv /teyaXi6 FKKXrja-t'av eo m950,1'ApTeutos o lrpamo a6,vKpiTts . Nicephorus somewhat more explicit, but not more instructive : aOpota8Ets o T6s 7r0'Xews abras 4o7r ~7~ s po~ s To iePov . . . Teuevos ilvayopevouvtv eis #ao-taea
'Aplre'utov,
(MorrwoO
'ITaaiov q5l)Vj
ypajAAAaTFa
KaXoOmv a'Qj7Kpj-rts.
TUyya'vovTa,
ov's
TV-
It is reserved for
Zonaras to display a precision which is suspicious ; first, the guests of the monarch, as at the King's dinner to the jockey Club, are select nobles, or as some aver, the winners in the day's races, xiv. z5,
WITQITOUS Tlvas
IMP -rig aw-1KXY%TOu 7re7rOL1JTO, Ws O' Mot XFyOva-t, TOUS fv Tj r@v L7r7r(Wv a/61nXV viKflQavTas ; next,
he is killed, not by a discontented military faction of Obsicians then stationed in Thrace, but by Senators ;
7rapa ' TLv(Uv TlUv T* yepoucrias Ka'raTXeOelg ru4~XoO-rat lastly, the Senate and people elect and salute ArtemiuS (oi -re -rig a-uyKaVTOuaouajs K. o 4,uAls oXXos), changing his name (as was then the custom) to the once unpopular designation of «Anastasius ." It is far more probable that the account of the earlier historians is true ; it was a military rising against a partially successful resumption of civilian sway . Vardan neglected the army and ruled, as Nicephorus tells us, without dignity or solicitude (ao-e AVWg K. ' a NlAwv) . P But the more crafty order made use of the victory to score another civilian triumph in the nomination of Artemius ; and it is to his credit first, that he punished the authors of the revolution, . and next, that he gave all attention to the needs of national defence . (Nic. : Si e7rt,ueXefas Ta roAeuma vpayccaTa Xe K. apXovras Wavow 7rpos Tag Toz~Twv Stomrjo-ets KaOilrTv.)
APPENDIX
491
4. Once more is repeated the curious mutiny of troops, conscious of meriting censure. Once more the 1' Obsicians " encourage themselves by throwing off authority, by refusing to join in the expedition against the Saracens. They kill the Minister of the Exchequer, Deacon John, at Rhodes, and sail off tumultuously to the capital . We may note as a sequel to the Heraclian practice and precedent, the union of sacred and profane offices, or the quest of trustworthy agents in the ranks of the clergy ; 6TpaTny0'V,
Mutinow troop and revok under Theodoaius III
says Theoph ., Tov StaKovov 'Icoavvr1v "rqs ,ueyaX~s eKKXqmas To TnviKaOTa aoyo0eri7V yEVLKOV U7rapxoVTa.
We are no little surprised at this strange mingling or confusing of the functions of all three orders in the State,-a deacon is treasurer and Commanderin-chief ; nor is our wonder allayed when we find the rebellious and unpatriotic regiment described as headless (aKe0aa(ov ovTwv), and selecting at haphazard when they put into Adramyttium the respectable tax-collector who bears in history the name of Theodosius 111. (Theoph ., eKA47rTopa TrmV SrJ,u0T1'WV 95op(ov (the others, wpaKTopa) . . . a7rpa-yuova Te K. i'Sz' Orr)?v). (Here the verbal resemblance proves the
common source of both our clerical historians, Theophanes and Nicephorus ; we may in passing notice that the latter, aiming at a greater elegance of style, replaces the colloquial phrase, Tov ,Qao-Aea aveo Ka+av ( = cursed, dug up bones; see the Calopodian colloquy before the 11 Nika" riots), by the more decorous For the second time, the capital was ewmoi'lcouv.) exposed to Obsician ravage, sailors and soldiers uniting in the pleasant duty of pillage, Tou aav auuTiv, says Zonaras, VaVTLKOU -re K. o-rpaTiaVT1KOV eispuevTog iroaaa TFOV eV Tais oiuuats Xo,1,ua'T&>v jp7rayr16av. Perhaps he is toning down the horrors of this military sack, which displayed clearly the weakness of a purely civil administration and a civil candidate ; Theoph . is more definite, of Se wapavouoc Aaoi Tou 'O+uciou aaa TWV POT8oypa1'KWV To YUKTL 619 TOUS OIKOUq TiVV-VOXLT(;V
`I92
APPENDIX
Mutinous
JtaJpauovwres ,ueyi67nv etpTamavro dawmv, 1cc ;1Sevos rewunder a Oei6auevot . Anastasius II . assumes the monastic Theodosim garb at Nicaea, and is permitted to retire in safety to III Thessalonica . Such, then, was the issue of a sullen and unpremeditated mutiny, without a leader and without a policy . The story of the elevation of Theodosius III. (7rpos 7rpayaa-r(vv ScoircriTcv «. TaUTa ,Oao-Aeias 64oSpa a7ro7reovKWs, Zonaras) recalls the tumultuous and accidental success of Phocas ; and although nothing could be more opposed than the characters of the two men, they have this much in common . Both appeared as leaders of a military faction at a moment when such a leader was wanted ; and both were entirely incapable of fulfilling their promise and their task . The loyalty of the « Obsicians " melted away . Theodosius was left confronted with a Senate who despised him ; and as Maurice found an avenger in Heraclius, so more speedily Conon the Syrian rose as general of the Anatolics to punish not merely the dethroner of Artemius, but the insolence of the West-Asiatic faction . Civilian § 5. The capital is no less defenceless than Rome capital found herself in the years following Nero's death. deenceless
before new tration.
Once more jealous regiments disputed between themselves the prize of victory and plundered the metropolis. Again, on the failure of a legitimate line, civil rule disappeared in anarchy, and men welcomed the first respectable plebeian from the East who came to restore order ; Leo 111 . is a second Vespasian . It must be noted that the anti-imperial campaign of the nobles either failed entirely or took on quite another character. For the Senate gained nothing by the final dethronement of Justinian 11. ; it was at the mercy of the provincial regiments, and 'might deem itself fortunate if these marauders had a recognised leader . Gradually, an athletic and warlike nobility, chiefly Asiatic, was supplanting the earlier Civilians, the apXatoyeveFq, who had long
APPENDIX
493
Civuian monopolised the safe seats in the official bureaux . eapital period the revival to see in this It is perhaps possible defenceless of a '1 nationalist" spirit, at least an esprit de before new military corps among the legions quartered in certain districts and recruited from the native population . I t,.°','n, think, too, it is possible to convey a wrong impression to the reader by using a word of such
The new precise meaning to modern ears. '1 nationalism " was Obsician, Anatolic, or Armeniac, not "Roman," Cappadocian, or even Armenian,-large as is the part played by this last people who almost The engross the history of this eighth century. feuds of the legions last far into Isaurian annals . The rebellion of Artavasdus, the brother-in-law of Constantine V., is not merely a personal quarrel, but a trial of force between two well-matched armies . Justinian II. had combated the rising national tendencies by his despotic policy of resettlement ; and Conon, who becomes Leo III., may claim to represent Thrace, whither his parents were transplanted to Mesembria, as well as the distant Isauria or Syria, their original home. Still we may trace the Balkan influence, but it is perhaps fanciful to insist on it. We know they had not been in their new home long enough to have learnt Greek orthodoxy, letters, or culture . The 11 Isaurian " house represents the old Roman spirit ; it is," Byzantine" in its true and proper sense,- practical, austere, warlike, and Protestant, and it beats not without success against the cage of dialectic pietism and civilian intrigue which imprisoned the imperial figure . It was the lack of strict nationality and consistent political aim or intelligence which made the strong hand from time to time welcome and indeed inevitable. So to-day Parliaments tend to break up into groupsystems from the simple division of ministry and opposition ; and it is in such conflict of petty interests that the central power may possibly hope to recover some of its lost rights and influence .
494
APPENDIX
6. The pretext for Conon's, insurrection was aW Ant°rw indignant support of the dethroned Anastasius II ., UPWt
ob8iczan influenm
who had appointed him and the young Armenian Artavasdus to command the Anatolic and Armeniac detachments . The real motive was a profound scorn and hatred of the cowardly "L Obsicians," a milder contempt for their nominee, and a desire to fish in troubled waters. The condition of affairs was indeed deplorable. Three times since the first dethronement of Justinian had the capital been exposed to the horrors of a blockade, to the insults and pillage of victorious besiegers.
Security reigned neither in the capital nor on the frontier. The Arab armies were once more in the heart of Asia Minor. The general of the Anatolics had been in favour with Justinian ; he owed his present post to Anastasius ; and he appeared as a patriotic champion against the infidel, and as a "restorer of the old paths." A formal meeting of patriarch, Senate, and chief magistrates is convened to decide upon the crisis . Theodosius himself proposes the choice of Leo, and the tardy sanction of the ministerial cabinet ratifies the clamour of the Asiatic armies. There was no longer any pretence of recalling the monk Artemius from his exile in Thessalonica : and all classes united to welcome the foreign general who promised to set a firm hand on the helm . It is a point of idle or fanciful significance which the clerkly writers do not forget, that the Saracen army round Amorium were the earliest to salute Leo emperor and to invite the city to join in the shout : jp~arro, says Theoph ., wq,yueiv Tov mrpaTrJyov l eov--a flaa-Aea 7raparcaXovvres K. T04 e"MO Tawro 7loLeiv. It may be a prejudice of orthodox historians to attribute the rise of this half-Mahometan Protestant to the suggestion of the infidel, but the narrative bears clear marks of authenticity . Through
495
APPENDIX attempted
this alliance Maslema
to
the Armmiaes
reduce
Roman Empire (e qY6O-at ger' avTOU K. St' avTOU Tip
n°li
(xetpoOTat wTa iratrw Tiffs 8aatX1Kj9 v7r0vpytats K . T(OV With this precious ev TeNet aYJpiov Tov 7raXaTlov) .
-
i'7roTa~at) . Leo gets possession of Theo- obsician es
f 6'Xjxvo OTOM T06 ,8a(rtXCV'CrovTos (= as to a successor)
vpe0r7 Aewv o 7raTPIKtos. The general impression of the crisis of 7 16-7 1 7 is well represented by the same author a little earlier : 'Ewei ouv 7mKvai Tiov'8a6taetnv < F7Tava6Ta6Eiv
C-1611OVTO
K.
11 TUpavvtg EKpaTFt
Ta
TF
T,JS
j8a0'Aelag K. T~S WAEWS KaTnimXELTO K . 8te?rt7rTe,7rPayataTa ert ltnY K. q TWV X0,-/WV 7j(~aVt F'TO 7laLOfUO'lS K . Ta TaKTLKa
SteVe7o. Theophanes, too, in his second and better narrative of the rise of Leo III. (where he actually styles the hated Iconoclast o Ev0T,8 ;'js j8a6Aeus) Tiffs Tivv `Pcvpalwv 7roXiTelav o-u<1KCXUjAevr7s OU"s eK Te Tiffs j8aPOaPWV e=SPoju.~s K. fK TWY TOO 'Iouo-r . ,utat(povtmv K.
T@v
TOO
YAt?f7PLKOU
aV061OUPyUWV,
OUTOS
O
li&V
uvepeuaXet T~ 'APTeAt(p, evavTtouuevos OeoJomcv. We will leave the Senate humbled and sobered, conscious of the inefficacy of pure civilian rule ; the Armeniacs and Anatolics triumphant at their success over the Obsician candidate ; and the capital conBut abroad there is a fident in the new ruler .
496
APPENDIX
Ammiaes general sense of anarchy and growing barbarism ; ~'M`tol'cs polite letters and official training have disappeared . obn Even military discipline and the famous skill of infimme
1,
Roman tactics has gone ; and the work of reorganisation has to be taken in hand afresh by the Isaurian house.
INDEX AARON, brother-in-law of Isaac Cornnenus, 292 Aaron, Governor of Vasparacan, 442-3 Abasgi, Caucasian, 357 Abasgia :Fortress in, handed over to the Empire, 264, 435 Imperial relations with, 4o7 Revolt of, 387 Status of, 436 Abastact, Theophylact (the Unbearable), r85 n., 201, 417 Abbas, King of Kars, 419, 426 Abbas, Prince of Amasea, 455 Abbassides, Caliph, 3114 Abdalmelik, Caliph, 389 Abderrabman, 374 Abel-Kharp, 435. 458-9, 462 Abou-Harp (?Abel-Kharp), Tchortovanel son of, 426 Aboul Cassim, 466n, 467,468 Aboulsewar, Emir of Dovin, 437-9, 444,448 Abousahl, Prince of Sebast6, 452, 458 Absimarus. See Apsimar Abulpharagius, cited, 234. 378, 388, 391, 398, 4011, 421 Acacius, Governor of Armenia, 356 Achot. See Ashot Adana (Cilicia), "Hill of Blood" near, 230 Adolius, son of Acacius, 358 Adranasar (Aternerseh), Iberian Prince, 412-r3 Adranasar IL, 414 Adrian, plot of, against Romanus L, 21o-x1 Adrianople :Bulgarian seizure and loss of (925), 213 Disaffection of (eleventh century), 273, 275-7 Adrinople :Battle of (832), 402 Identification of, 380, 46on. Adscripticii (&aa6ypa0oc), 148, 150 ARius, 398 Africa :Armenian soldiery in, 360, 3611 Justin's reforms in, 73 Loss of, to the Empire, 335 War in (696), ioi
VOL . II .
Agallianus, rrr Agatha, daughter of ConstantineVII., 223 Agathius, cited, A 35=, 357 Agatho, Pope, go Agrarian tenure. See Land tenure Agriculture, Imperial concern for (see also Land tenure), z8 Akhal-Kalaki, 453 Akhlat, Emir of, 449 Aiamundarus, 354-5 Alania, revolt of, 387 Alans in Imperial army, 364 Albania, Arab success in (seventh century), 375 Alda, Queen of Abasgia, 264, 435 Aleppo, Bishop of, 241 n. Aleppo, Emirs of, 244, 261, 467 Aleppo, Sultan of, 466 n. Alexander, Emperor, r82, 195, r96 Alexander the Great, 349 Alexander the Logotbete, 355 Alexius (Armenian), i85 Alexius Comnenus, Emperor, commissioned against Russell, 31oIr ; John Ducas' relations with, W; marriage, 3317 ; troops under, against Bryennius, 321 ; battle of Calabrya (x077), 32z--22 ; defeats Basilacius,323 ; created 2;epaoros, 324 ; declines to serve against Nicephorus V., 328 ; adopted by Empress Mary, 330 ; plotted against by Borilas, 330 ; invested by Isaac Comnenus, 331 ; successes of, against the Turks, 465, 468 ; Ariebus' plot against, 471 ; Diogenes' plot against, 472 ; proposal entertained by, of establishing English colony at Cibotus, 473 . grants Antioch to Bo6mund, 478 ; Gregory's plot against (1107), 479 ; welcomes Baldwin's victim, 48 :1--2 ; successes against Turks from Khorasan, 481 ; engagements with Turks (1120), 482-3 ; clemency of, 4731, 472, 479 ; death of, 483 ; otherwise mentioned, 314,459 Alexius, Patriarch, 265, 268 Alexius Musel, 16q, r7o Ali Pasha of Jannina, 323 Alim, Governor of Percrin, 26_4
2 I
498 '
Almamun, Caliph, 172
INDEX
Almansor, Caliph, 114 Amasea, 458, 459 Amazaspes, Governor of Armenia, 356 Amerticius, 455 Amida, 353, 354 Ammianus, cited, x89 Amorian dynasty :Armenian alliance of, 176 Fall of, 175 Support accorded to, 342 n. Amorium, Saracensiegeof, xo6-7, 494 Anakuph, 264 Anarchy, period of (695-7x7), 76 Anastasia, Empress-Mother, qr Anastasius I., Emperor, respect of, for law, 13 ; Chrysargyron abolished by, 17, 18, r46, 263 n. ; builds Dara, 354 ; deposition of,' 25, 41 ; Laurentius' estimate of, 36 and n.3 ; otherwise mentioned, 12,14 Anastasius II ., Emperor, accession and policy of, 105, 489-9o ; defensive preparations of, xoq ; retrenchment policy of, 1x9 ; Leo Ill.'s attitude towards, 31x2, 494 ; retirement of, x06, 492 ; execution of, 1x2 Anastasius, Prefect of the city, 268 Anastasius. Questor, 72 Anastasius, quoted, 931 ; cited, 380 Anatolics :Influence of, 2774, 485, 487. 494-5 Mutiny of, 89-go Anazarbus, 477 Anchialus, Duke of, 468 Andrassus, Saracen defeat at, 228 Andreas, 379 Andrew the Scythian, x84-5 Andrioun (? Adrinople), 460 and n. Andronicus I., 304 Andronicus, son of John Ducas, 305, 3x7 Anemas, 228 Anemas, Bardanes, 4ox Angell, policy of, 297n.1 AnWines the Armenian, 185 Am (Camakh) :Arslan's sack of (x064) . 453-4 Chusan's capture of, 391 Loss of, to the Empire, 469 Othman's seizure of, 388 Patriotic centre, as, 472 Seljuk assault of (11055), 448 ; Seljuk rule,459 Surrender of, to the Empire, 429-30 ; final cession, 438 Anna, daughter of Leo III., 1113 Anna, mother of the Comneni, 305, 307,317 Anne, daughter of Alexius Charon, 294 Anne, daughter of Romanus II., 207, 234
Antaxias, Governor of Armenia, 349
Antbemisia, 117 Anthes, 24o Antichrist, Procopius cited on reign of, 45-6 Antigonus, 167 AntiochBurtzes' success against, 236 Crusaders' capture of, 474 Siege of (966), 230-1 Turkish acquisition of, 466 n., 470 Antioch, Duchy ofBoemund's acquisition of, 475, 478 Imperial allegiance of, maintained, 464 Antioch, title of Duke of, 447 Antony, Mark, 349 Apambas, Marianus, 420 Apirat, Prince in Mesopotamia, 480 Apolasar, Prince of Taron, 480 Apoughan, 411 Apsilians, 357 Apsimar (Absimarus-Emperor Tiberius III) ., xox, 105, 112, 488 Araates, 4031 Arabs (see also Saracens)Advent of (seventh century), 373-5 Hostilities against, 92, x09-xo Ravagers, not empire-makers, 375. of, 407 Vassals 3 Aratius (Hrahad), 361 Araventan, 482 Arcadius, Emperor, relations of, with Persians, 351 ; prefecture under, 35-6 ; mentioned, 38 . 47 Archmopolis, 387 Archamouni, 448 Ardashir (Artaxerxes), 360 Ardashir (Exedarus), 349 Ardashir, Constantine, commander of Thraciaus, 397 Arethas, King of theGhassanid Bedawins, 355 Ard-Shont, 372 Argistis II., 348 n. Argyrus (Son of Mel) . Prince of Bari, 272,276 Argyrus, Basil, 429. 434 Argyrus, Eustathius, 185 n., 210, 410 Argyrus, Leo (c. 850), 410 Argyrus, Leo (c. 92x), lox, 210, 212 Argyrus, Marianus, 219, 224 Argyrus, Pothus, 212, 224 Argyrus, Romanus (tenth century), 201, 202 Argyrus, Romanus (eleventh century). See Romanus III. Argyrus family, emergence of, 410 Ariebus, 471 AristocracyHostility of, towards the Government, 1o Triumph of, over central power in seventh century, 94-7
i
j 7
a ;
INDEX Armenia-
Arab successes against (seventh centurY), 374-5 Byzantine sphere of influence in, 337-8 Capital of, removed to Toukhars, 384. See also Ani Chinese colonies in, 352 n. Christianising of, 337, 345-6 Church ofCouncil of Chalcedon repudiated by, 338, 372. 377 Four patriarchates of, 470 Isolated position of, 338-9, 346, 372, 415. 419-20, 4531-2 Persecution of, under Basil II., 423 Poverty and ignorance of, 462 Constans Ill.'s policy regarding, 376-8 Disappearance of native race in, 462 Division of Greater Armenia among great princes, 182 Divisions of (tenth and eleventh centuries), 336 Fiscal exactions of Justinian as affecting, 355-6 Earthquake in (early twelfth cen-
imperial influence in (4oo and Goo A.D.), 337 ; treatment by Heracliads, 379 ; Imperial relations (r042) . 433 Khazar pillage of, 381 Magistes Militum appointed for, 354 Mohammed's massacre in (705), 385-6 Monksin flight from (endofeleventh century), 472 Parthian relations with, 349 Partition of, first (385). 350 Prosperity cf, under Persian sway, 358 n. Revolt of, against Seleucid monarchy (318-285 $"G) . 349 Saracen influence in (650), 337 Saracen raiding in (576), 365 Summary of conclusionsregarding, 341-2 Summary of events in, following 637,383-4 Suzerainty of Rome universal in, 417 Tributary to Caliphate, 376, 379, 381 ; complete submission, 389, 406 Vacillation of, between Rome and Damascus, 383-6 ArmeniacsAnti-Hellenism of, 125-6 Connotation of term, 390 Constantine VI.'s relations with, 397 Influence of, 274, 487 . 494-5
Armeniacs (continued)
499
Mutiny of, 340 Reconstitution of, after 79o, 128 Armenian dynasty. See Isaurian Armenian strain, increase of, among upper classes under Constantine V., rz7 ArmeniansAnnihilation of, plotted (1052),446 Army recruited from, 344, 357-8 Attitude of, towards the Empire, 4114 Characteristics of, 347 andn.i Cilicia an asylum for (eleventh cenWry), 458, 462 Conspiracies by, 36o-r Crusaders, relations with, 473-4, 481-2 Disappearance of, in Armenia, 462 Distrust of, at Court, 446 Influence of, in Imperial Society and Government, 339, 344-5, 386,493 Insurgence of, 117, x25, 3144, 3166 ; zenith of, 236 ; rise of the great families in Basilian period, x84-5 Names common among, 361 Nicephorus' bodyguard of, 230 Non-Oriental character of, 347 n.1 compared with, 448-9 Origin of, 3 Pro-Roman and Anti-Roman, 407 Turkish alliances of, 448, 449. 452. 467 Zoe's alliance with, r9"oo ArmsCarrying of, by private persons prohibited, 631-2 Manufacture of, a state monopoly, 61 n.3 ArmyArmeniacs, see that heading Armenian attitude towards, 3411-2 Armenian recruitment of, 344, 357-8 Basil's reform of, i8z Constantine X., under, 277 Constantine XI ., under, 299 Efficiency of, in crusading era (62o730), X52 " Immortals," corps of, 321 Irene's policy regarding, 3126 Justinian'sattitude towards, 63 and n.2 Macedonian troops, 291. 313, 315 Maurice's relations with, 63 . 75 Mercenary troops, recourse to, in tenth century, 1133 Monks, soldiers at feud with, 132 "Nationalist" spirit in corps of, 493 Native levies largely composing (end eleventh century), 315 Obsicians . See that heading Palace officials joined with military commanders, 186 Pay and pension of, 3154 _
500 Army (continued)-
INDEX
Provincial regiments (thematic system)Disintegrating effect of, z25 Rise of, 342, 485+ 487 Thematic system, transition from, x3i-3 Recruitment ofArmenians, by, 344. 357-8 Classes selected for, x62 Regency in military hands, period of, 205-6 Revolutions by (713), 104-5 ; (716), 105 ; (718), ro6-8 Romanus II., under, 227 Slave-troops, 366 Starving of, by civilian rdgime, 454-6 Thematic system. Seesub-heading Provincial regiments Traitors' sons promoted in, 4og Arsaber (Arshavir), r28, 34o-i Arsaces III., King of Armenia, 350 Arsaces, kinsman of Artabanus, 360 Arsacid dynastyBeginning of, 349 Influence of, on Armenia, 336-7 Sassanid hostility against, 346 Transfer of Imperial Sovereignty to (867), 178 et seq. Arsamosata, 391 Arsenius the Patrician, zro Arshavir (Arsaber) rebellion of (808), 128, 340-1 Arshavir, 404 Arslan, Alp, aggressive policy of, 453 et seq; seizes Manzikert (ro7i), 457 ; Danishmand opposed to (1092-rio6), 466 n. Artaban, 349+ 36o-= Artaban, 408 Artasyras, 444 Artavasdus defeated by Antony (3o ) 349 Arta39dus, General of the Anatodics, z ` Artavasdus, General of the Armeniacs, 494 Artavasdus (son-in-law of Leo III.), nationality of, 335+ 340 ; revolt of (742), zrz-z 3. 390+ 493+~ sig nificance of support given to, xzs Artemius. See Anastasius II . Artisans, guilds of, 489 Arzanen6, 350+ 353+ 36o, 366 Arzrunian dynasty to Vasparacania, 336 Arzrnnian family, genealogy of, r6q Ashot (Ashod) family, 338 Ashot (Asot), Armenian Prince, 299 Ashot I. Bagratid King (ninth century), 335, 408, 410 Ashot II ., 413 Ashot (Achot) 111 ., 235, 236, 421, 422 Ashot, King of Tachir (d. ro38), 430
Ashot
(Achot), Prince of Taron,
240 Ashot, Prince of Vasparacan, 4o6 Ashot, son of David, 37o Ashot, son of Gregory, 425 Ashot, son of John (grandson of Gagic), 462 Ashot, son of Sembat, 368 Ashot the Bagratid (?684), 381 Ashot the Iron, 414 Asolik cited, 375+ 378, 381+ 42r, 424 Aspar, 14 Aspet, te (general of Alexius), 476-8 Aspet, title of, 476-7 Assyria, early events regarding, 348 and n. Astolf, 114 Atliingans, 402 Athos, monks of, 136 Atom, King of Sebaste, 432+ 452. 453+ 458+ 475 Avar Campaigns, 369-7o ; the Avar Khan, 35= Axumites, 357 BAANES, 92 Babec, 404+ 469 Bacouran (Pacurian), 330, 468 Bagdad, Byzantineoperations against (974),235-6 Baghin, 446, 453 Bagrat, Duke, at Ani, 454 Bagrat, King of Iberia and Abasgia, 426+ 434, 443 Bagrat IV. of Iberia, 307 Bagrat of Taron, 4X5 Bagrat (supporter of Crusaders), 474 Bagratid dynasty, 335-6 Ba~'am (Varanes), 364+ 367, 368 Bahrain (Varanes), Generalissimo of Armenia, 428, 4331+ 439-40 Bakhtiar of Bagdad, 235-6 Baktage, 113 Balas6(Valasch), King of Persia, 352,
R ' i
+
.a
Baldwin (founder of principality at Edessa), 473 Baldwin of Edessa, 477+ 480-2 BalkansImperial line from, z4+ r 9+ 486 Revolt in, against Michael VII., 311 Romanus L's policy regarding, 213-14 Baqunians, 372 Barbarism, relapse into sixth and seventcenturies), 31x9zo Bardanes (Vardan), " Emperor;' 3127-8, 373-4 Bardanes (Vardan), Emperor Philippicas, 10z-4, rrz Bardanes (Vartan) the Mamigonian, 398-400 Bardas (brother of Sembat), 409 Bardas (grandson of Burtzes), 482-3
I'. : ~Y
}1
i
I':
INDEX Bardas (son of Cordylus), 408 Bardas (Vard) (571), 363 Bardas Caesar, genealogy of family of, r69 ; influence of, I7o-r ; murder of, 3174, 409 ; estimate of, r72, x73 ; otherwise mentioned, 220, 407 Bardzerberd fort, 463 Barkiarok, Sultan, 471. 475 n.2, 477 Barsames, Governor of Edessa, 467, 469 Barsegh (Barrel, Basil), Patriarch, 463,470 Barshegh(Basil),Governor ofEdessa, 467 Basil, origin of name, 439n. Basil I., Emperor, ancestry of, z66, I77, 341, 400. 4o7-8 ; position of, under Michael III., r7o, 3[74 ; murders Michael, 4o8 ; accession of, 178 ; relations of, with Ashot L, 4o8-9 ; relations with the Senate, 178-9 ; coronation of, T.79 ; position of, as Emperor, 141-2 ; relations with the Church, 1151 ; . domesticreforms of, r8o-r ; army reform of, 181 ; foreign policy of, r8r ; receives homage of Curticius, 409 ; last days of, 3183-4 ; estimate of,408 ; estimate of reign of, i4o ; family of, 182 ; astuteness of, 172 ; credulity of, x96 ; otherwise mentioned, 3144, 417 Basil II. (Bulgaroetonus), Emperor, vigorous initiative of, 139, 239, 243 ; in the Bulgarian wars, 243-4, 248-9, 251-2 ; relations of, with Romanus Sclerus, 245 ; persecutions by, in Armenia, 423 ; Armenians transplanted by, 424 ; annuls his persecuting policy, 426 ; Great Durbar (991), 426-7 ; adopts David of Vasparacan, 428 ; success of, against Georgia, 429 ; proposed surrender of Ani to, 429-30 ; agrarian policy of, 3146, '154 ; ecclesiastical policy of, 3159 ; fiscal policy of, 249 ; Bulgarian policy of, Zoo ; policy of, reviewed, 254-5 : northern frontier of, 274 ; court of, 294 ; Armenian officers of, 425 ; unpopularity of, 3139 ; estimate of, 233, 245. 24950, 253-4, 279, 424 ; leniency and magnanimity of, 246, 248 ; simplicity and valour of, 277 ; Novels of, cited, 154 ; otherwise mentioned, 202, 209, 219, 232 Basil the Bird, revolution against Romanus I. instigated by, err, 2x8 ; influence of, 222 ; insurrection of, against Romanus II., 224-5 ; madnessand death of, 225 Basil the Chamberlain (son of Rcma-
501
nus 1.), influence of, 219 ; success of, against Saracens, 227 ; supports Nicephorus, 229 ; Cilician property of, 237 ; policy of, on death of Zimisces, 238-9, 241 ; disgraced, 244, 253-4 Basil the child (Camsar Prince), 481 Basil, Drungaireof Cibyrrhreot theme, 227 Basil the Patrician, Duke of Edessa, 447 Basil the Robber, Prince of Kesoun, 463. 464, 476, 477, 480 Basilacius (Vasilatzes), Nicephorus, 313, 458 ; rebellion of, 323-4, 46o Basilian Code, x63 Basilicinus (Basiliskianus), 175, 3179 Basiliscus, Admiral, z2, 25 Basiliscus, Commandant of Malatiya, 245 Basilitza, x96 Batazes, 276 Batazes, John, 276 andn.2 Bazouni, Prince of Lambrdn, 474 Belisarius, 354, 355, 358, 445 Bel6nas, Theodorus, 223 Benedict IX., Pope, x83 Ber, King of Georgian Abasgians, 419,436 Bergri, 432 Birth, claims to power not constituted by . 9 Bishops. See under Church Boemund, 475, 477; infeudation of, 464,478 Bogas, John, 202 Boilas, Bardas, 2ro-rr, 4318 Bollas the jester, plot of, 278 Boisthlabos, Stephen, 271E Bokhtiar, 422 Borilas, 319-20, 322, 324. 330, 332 Boris, King, 235 Botaneiates, Nicephorus . See Nicephorus Phocas Branas (Varaz), Nicolas, 468 Bringas, rivalry of, with Nicephorus, 228-9, 420 ; overthrow, banishment and death of, 2119, 230 Brosset, M., cited, 4ro-rr Bryennius, John, 313-15 Bryennius, Nicephorus (1054) . proposed as successor to Constantine X., 280 ; insurgence and failure of, 290-r Bryennius, Nicephorus (1077),created Duke of Bulgaria and commissioned against Serbs and Slavs, 312 ; suspected, 313 ; assumes the purple, 314 ; negotiations of, with Nicephorus III., 320-1 ; defeated at Calabrya, blinded, and honoured by Nicephorus IIL, 322 ; murders John, 32a Buccelin, 361
5012
INDEX
Bulagud (Hungarian Prince), 224 Bulgaria--
Basil IL's policy regarding, Zoo Revolt of, against Michael 1V., 266 Russian invasion of (967), 23x-2 Vassalage of, 237 Zoe's policy regarding, x99-too Bulgarians, hostilities withBasil II .'s exploits, 243-4. 248-9 . 251-3 Constantine V.'s victory (763), 3115 Eighth century raiding, ro3, ro6, 3109-ro Ninth century wars, x85, x88, 413 Revolt against Michael VIL, 311 Tenth centurywars, 2312 Thomas the Slav routed, x29 Bullionism, 157, x66, 176 Buraphus, George, zoo-5 Bureaus, Byzantine, organisation of,
Capitalists, State attitude towards; r6z-2
Carantenus, Constantine, 262 Carantenus, Nicephorus, 263 Carantenus, Theodorus, 241 Carbeas, r36, x73 Carin, 448, 451 Caristerotzes, General of the Armeniacs, 392 Caste system, 149-50 Castration as condition of preferment, 261 Catacalon (c. io77)," at Calabrya, 321 Catacalon, Leo (c. 930), 138, 3185, 215, 416 Catacecaumenus, Catacalon, seizes Patriarch Peter, 43" ; assists Aaron the Bulgar, 442 ; defeated by Patzinaks, 445 ; created Duke of Antioch, 447 ; slighted by Michael VI ., 290 ; joins Comnenus, 291-3 ; mentioned, 449 Burtzes at Antioch, 230-1, 236 ; Catacecaumenus, Catacalon (second), created Duke of Antioch, 239 ; 472 declares for Sclerus, 24o ; goes Cathari, 173 over to Imperialists, 241 n., 242 Catharine IL, of Russia, 265 Bury, Professor, cited, 1i, 39, 58 n., Catherine, wife of Isaac Comnenus, 731, 88, rr6, rr8, 157 n., x65 . 294 289 n", 351. 357, 489 ; quoted, Celer the Illyrian, 353-4 73 ; estimate of, 289 n. Central authority, aggrandisement Butelinus, 69 of, 3, 231 ; centralising tendency Byblos, 374 nunder Justinian, 47-8 Byzantine Emperors. See Emperors Cerularius, Michael, Patriarch, 293-4 Byzantine Empire. See Empire and n., 296 Byzantine spirit, characteristics of, Chages, Constantine, 266, 272 220 Chaldia, Seljuk pillage of (1055) . 448 Byzantium (Constantinople)Chamich, Father, quoted, 34o-z College at, for officials, x31 Chanoranges, 3631 Comnenian sack of (ro8r), 331-2 Charles Martel, III, rr8, x56 Mahometan siege of (7 680), 9o Charon, Alexius, 294 Siege of (718), irr Chatatures, 305 Chazes, Governor of Achaea, Zoo CABADAs, King of Persia, 351-3 Cherina, John, 224 Cabalaca (Cabala) capital of Albania, Cherson :375 Justinian II .'s expedition against, Caballinus, Constantine, 174 roe-3, 488 Cabasilas, Constantine, 269 Khazar alliance with, r03, rte Cab silas, Nicolas, 432, 439 Theophilus' policy towards, 18r, Cabbelias, 382 407 Caesarea, siege of, 378 China, analogy from vassals of, 412-313 CaesarismChinese colonies in Armenia, 352 n. Hereditary character of, 35 n. Chlorus, Constantius, cited, 231 Popular character of, 50-z Choerosphactes, 320 Calabrya, battle of (1077), 321, 472 Chosroes the Great, ofArmenia, 350 Callinicum, battle of, 355 Chosroes, King of Persia, 37, 355, Cailinicus, Patriarch, 94 363-5 Colocyres, 231 Chosroes II ., 367, 368-70 Camakh . See Ani C6osroes III. of Persarmema, 350
Campanares, Prefect of the city, 268 Camulianus, Theodore, 397 es, E ta hills, 4 amt anc 6 yz usen us us 47 . 6c Can a' Capttalvestments for,8-_-57 - and n. C C Capital, the, schemes for removal of,
96
_
~` , i . a
Christopher, Emperor, x68, 204, 208 Chrysargyron, abolition of, by Anastasius 1 ., 17, IS, x46, 263 n . Chrysocbir, x8i:
Church, Eastern :-
Armenian converts to, 337 Armenian relations with. See under Armenia, Church of ,
t
E
IK
INDEX Church, Eastern (continued)-
BasilI.,thepuppet of,r5r Bishops, civil duties of-under Justinian, 58-9 and nn. ; in Iconoclastic period, 122 ; appear to bishops in civil suits, 55 n.4. See also Clergy Central power supreme against, 74 ; opposed by (in seventh century), 97 Clergy. See that heading Constans' attitude towards, 88-9 Constantine the Great's attitude towards, 3, 58, 89 Constantine IV .'s attitude towards, 89 Counterpoise to central power of State, 124. 155, 164-5 Democratic affinities of, in Iconoclastic period, 122 Exarchate overthrown (eighth century), 113, 1r4 Hellenic spirit represented by, 345 Heraclius' attitude towards, 85 . 339 Justinian's attitude towards, 357 Justinian II.'s attitude towards, 95-7 Imperial relations with, since Constantine, x23-4 Influence of, in Heraclian period, 119-22 ; after defeat of Iconoclasm, x64 Isaac L's relations with, 295-6 Leo Ill.'s attitude towards, iii, rr8, 3122-3 Monasteries founded by, characteristics of, x2o Monks. See that titk Nicephorus' exactions from, 231 Statesmen prelates of, 373 Pauperising tendency of (sixth cenfury), 42 Patriarchs. See that heading Western Church compared with, 120, 124 Chusan, 391 CiliciaArmenian remnant in, 376. 458 . 462 Seljuk war with Armenian kingdom (11107), 477 Civic position, rank based on, 9 Civic riot, period of, 431-2 Civil ServiceBasil I. supported by, 3178 Career in, 26 Decline of, in sixth century, 19 ; later decay, 8o-z, too Development of (285-337), 5 Fees payable on institution to office in, 56 Founder and patrons of, imperial, r Isaac I., thwarted by, 295, 297n.1 Justinian II . hostile to, 931 Military party, rivalry. with, 342, 34~ n. Officials of. See Civil Servants
Civil Service (continued)-
503
Pre-eminence of, in5thcentury,9-xx Recruitment of, x62 Training for, ii, r6, 26 Triumph of, over central power in seventh century, 95-7 Civil ServantsChecks on, 58-9 and nn. College for, rr, 16 Distrust of, by prince and people, 55 n " 4 Estates of, law regarding, 153-4 Increase in numbers and position of. 311, 53-4 Lesser AgentsEfforts to control, x6-i8, 32 Misdemeanours amongst, 53-7 Ministerial departments in control of, 20 Priests and warriors contrasted with, rig Provincial governors. See that title " Senators " a title of, 5 Civilian spirit, period of, zenith and decline of, 7-8 Classical state, ideal of, 3-5 Cleopatra, 349 Clergy . See also BishopsCivil officers chosen from among, 49= Feudal champions hated by, 343 n" Impatience of,with ordinary life, 120 Influence of, during Heraclian period, rr9 Clencal patronage in Anglican Church, go Colonia, 358 Commodus, Emperor, 4, 176 Communal villages, 145-8, 3150 Comn&, 294 Comnena, Anna, cited, 475, 477 ComneuiEstimate of, 294, 297 n.1 Triumph of (1081), 231-2, 294 ; significance of, 465 Comnenus, Alexius. See Alexius Comnenus, Isaac (Duke of Antioch), created WaQror, 328 ; invests Alexius as Emperor, 331 Comnenus, Isaac, Emperor. See Isaac I. Comnenus, John (brother of Isaac), 163, 292. 294, 300. 450 Comnenus, Manuel, Prefect of the East, 242, 294 Comnenus, Manuel (1070), 457 Comnenus, Nicephorus, Governor of Vasparacan, 257, 429 Constans II. or III., Emperor (Constantine III.), proclamation of, quoted, 87-8 ; policy of, regarding Armenians, 376-8 ; financial activities of, x x8 ; conspiracy ending reign of, 112 ; assassination of, 38o; otherwise mentioned, i6o, 340,379
504
INDEX
Constantia, battle of, 366 ConstantinetheGreat, Emperor, atti-
tude of, towards the Church, 3, 58, 89 ; policy of, 2o ; prefecture under, 34-5 ; indifference of, towards Rome, 88 Constantine II . (Constantius), Emperor, i89, 235 Constantine III. See Constans Constantine IV., Emperor, hostility of, to clerical feudalism, 89, Imperial prestige under, go ; brothers associated with, go ; otherwise mentioned, 85, 379. 381, 487 Constantine V., Emperor, accession of, 113 ; marriage of, :E68 ; demands Pepin's daughter for his son, 115 ; transplantations by, 391 ; vigorous initiative of, i5o ; hostility of, to ecclesiasticism, 88 ; achievements of, 98 ; events of reign of, summarised, x1:3-15 ; inconsistent records of reign of,. rr6-i7 ; general recovery under, 3:x6-z8 ; transition period of the Empire under, 117; plague durmg reign of, x44 ; death of, 115 ; otherwise mentioned, 335. 339. 489,493 Constantine VI ., Emperor, conspiracies against, 125, 392 ; Thomas the Slav taken for, 129 ; disappointment and deposition of, 396 ; treatment of Mouschegh, 340, 39-7 ; final dethronement of, 397 ; uncles of, 125-6. 392 ; otherwise mentioned, 171, 368 Constantine VII. (Porphyrogenitus), Emperor, illegitimacy of, 172 ; rumoured plot against, z96 ; claims to reign alone, 203 ; promotes Romanus, 204 ; marriage with Helena, daughter of Romanes, 2o4 ; restoration of, under will of Romanus, 212 ; death of, 224 ; popularity of, 141, 218 ; estimate of, 220-3 ; estimate of reign of, 194, 218 ; regulations of, as to imperial marriages, 168, 324 n. ; policy regarding the provinces, 221-2 ; Armenian Policy . 414 ; bargain with the Emir of Edessa, 420 ; cited, 185, 3192 ; novels of, cited, 154 Constantine VIII., Emperor, overthrows his father, 2zr ; imprisonment and death of, 212, 219 ; mentioned, 208, 419 Constantine IX ., Emperor, palace restraints on, 239; with Basil against the pretenders, 246 ; method of life of, 254 ; death of, 259 ; estimate of, 257 ; ministers of, 256 ; public events of reign of,
258 ; otherwise mentioned, x65, 209, 210, 430
Constantine X. (Monomachus~, Emperor, marriage of, with Zoe,
27o ; relations with Sclermna, 271 ; 273 ; alliance of, with Arabs437 Armenian policy of, 236,'438 ; arbitrates between Liparit and Bagrat, 44.3 ; treatment by, of Princes of Arkni, 446 ; union with Alan princess, 279 ; sends Bryennius against the Turks, 29z ; ill-health of, 264, 282 ; estimate of, 270, 271, 279, 283-6; estimate of reign of, 271 ; plots during reign of, 271 et seq ; civil ministers of, 279-8z ; favourite of, 284 ; otherwise mentioned, 296, 307,444 Constantine XI . (Ducas), Emperor . imprisoned by Michael IV., 265; named successor to Isaac Comnenus, 297 ; relationswith Isaac, 298 n~; summons Armenian patriarch, 451 ; dealings of, with Nicephoritzes, 307 ; declining health of, 3oo ; estimate of, 298300. 343 n.; mentioned, 455 Constantine XII., Emperor, sent against Romanus, 304-5 ; sent against Bryennians, 314 ; relations of, with Alexius, 3r ; pays homage to Botaneiates, 319 ; rebels against him, 325 ; mentioned, 304 Constantine XIII., Emperor, 324, 330-1 Constantine I., King in Cilician Armenia, 474 and n., 477 Constantine Archoclines, 270 Constantine, son of Burtzes, 257 Constantine, son of Reuben, 463 Constantine, son of Thoros, 482 Constantine (Chamberlain of Zoe), 198, 203, 204, 211 Constantine the Paphlagonian (Nohilissimus), 261, 265, 267-9. 434, 439 Constantinople . See Byzantium Constitutions of Justinian, cited, So, 66 ; estimate of, 33 Consular largess, 61 and n.1 Consulate, abolition of, by Justinian, 17,48 Contostephanus, 251 Contract, freedom of, replacing caste system, 150-1 Cordova, estimate of, 259 Cordylus, 408 Corippus, Creseonius, cited, 72, 361 Cositar fort, 463 Cosmas, revolt of (eighth century), ill Cosmas the Postmaster (tenth centory), 211 Court Chamberlain, influence of, 12
Credit system, absence of, in Byzantine Empire, 157
i
c F f; ;> t2
j
INDEX
505
Crete, 227, 228, 403 Cricorice, 412
David III. (the Restorer), King of Georgia, 472, 483
DALASSENA, Anna (mother of the Comneni), 305. 307, 317 Dalassenus, Constantine, 259, 265, 270 Damascus, siege of (634), 373 Damianus (chamberlain), 170 Damianus (Drungaire of the Watch), 199 Danielis, x44 Danishmand, 466 n., 475 n.2, 480 Daphnopates, Theodorus, 224 Dam. 354, 368 Dardanian Emperors, prefecture under, 37
Ducats, Andronicus (eleventh century), 305 Ducas, Constantine (9x2), relations of, with Samonas, x89-9o : failure and death of, x97-9, 298 ; Pretender claiming to be, 2o2-3 Ducas, Constantine, Emperors. See Constantine XI . and Constantine XII. Ducas, Irene, 317 Ducas, John, the Cmsar,returns from Bithynia, 304 ; decides for the Comnenian dynasty, 3o6 ; relations with Ntcephoritzes, 307. ; retires to Bithynia, 3o8 ; expedi-
Criminal law of Byzantine Empire, comparison of, with modern codes, 163 ; with eighteenth century codes, x86 Crinitas, Theodorus, 220, 231 Crispin (Norseman), 303-4, 308 Crum's ravages, 4o8 Crusaders, 473-4, 48x-2 Ctenas, 3192 Curcuas, suggested identity of, with Gourgenes, ¢09, 420 Curcuas, John, Captain of the Hicanates, x86-7, 409, 417 Curcuas, John, the younger, arrests Theodorus, 2o5 ; defeats plot of Adrian and Tazates, 2io ; achievements of, in the East, 404, 4x6-x8 ; long control by, of Eastern frontier, 2x4-x6, 4o9xo ; successes of,against Russians, 214, 418 ; plotted against and cashiered, 4T8-19 ; restored to favour, 222 Curcuas, Romanus (cousin of John Zimisces), 229, 418, 42o Curcuas, Theophilus, 214-x5, 418 Curial colleges, 344 Curial system, x¢6, x49, x62 CuropalatArmenian Governor so styled, first, 373 Division of office of, 450 Erroneous chronicle regarding title of, 228 Status of, 113, 182, 359 Curt, Bulgarian King, 425 Curticius (Armenian), 185 Curticius (brigand chief), 409 Curticius (Macedonian-Armenianeleventh century), 323, 328 . 46o Curticius, Manuel (Armenian, tenth century), 2131, 219, 24x, 423 Curupas, Emir of Candia, 228 Cutulmish, brother of Togrul, 447 Cutulmish, cousin of Togrul, 441 Cyprus, 185, 230 Cyriac, Patriarch (seventh century), 79 Cyriacus, Patriarch (eleventh century), ¢3o
David (son of Sennacherib), King of Sebast6, 427, 428, 432 David, Prince of Taik, 423, 425 David, son of Gagic, 459 462 David the Saharhounian, 370-3 David Kilig Arslan I ., 471, 472 David Lackland, Bagratid King in Albania, 431, 434, 453 David Tiberius III., Emperor, 87 Death sentence, infrequency of, 163-4 Denies, influence of, in seventh century, 8o Demetrius, Prince of Anakuph, 264, 435 Democracy of Byzantine Empire, 59-6o, x67 Deputies, Justinians abolition of, 56 and n.3 Deren, Constable of Persia, 364 Despotic States, popular voice in, 8o, 223, 235-6 Diehl cited, 39 n., 58 n. ; quoted, 73 Diocletian, Emperor, 7, x0, 108 Diogenes, Constantine, Governor of Sirmium, 258, 26o Diogenes, Romanus. See Romanus IV. Diogenes, son of Romanus, 472 Divination, 409 Djabalas, Ghassanid King, 398 Dobrouni, 325 Domentziolus, 367, 370 Domestic of the Schools, title of, 219, 394 Dominicus, Captain of the Foreign Legion, 199 Domitian, Bishop, 368 Domitian, Emperor, 4o n.1 Dorotheus, 354-5 DovinBurning of, by Mohammed (7o5), 386 Sack of, by Arabs (64o), 375 Situation of, 358 n. Ducange cited, 420 Ducas, Andronicus (ninth century), xgo Ducas, Andronicus (tenth century),
INDEX tion of, against Russell, 3o8-g; proclaimed Emperor, 309 ; imprisoned,ransomed,andbanished to monastery, gio; relations with Alexius, 3r7, attitude towards Botaneiates, 319 ; supports insurrection of Alemus, 33o-r Ducal, Nicolas, x98, 2or, 2o2 Ducas, Stephen, x98 Ducas family, 184 n. Duel, first, in Byzantine history, 257-8 Duke, title of, 239. 438 Dyrrachium, battle of, 469 Dzophk (Tzophk), fortress of, 474. 480 EARTHQUAKE in Armenia, 481 Ectoga of Isaurian Emperors, r6z, 164
Economic fallacies, 157 EdessaBaldwin's principality at, 473 Crusaders welcomed by, 473 Miraculous veal of, 416 Sieges of, 452-3 Tribute of, 263 and n. Turkish acqmsition of (ro87), 46970 Edessa, Patriarch of, 470 EgyptMichael IV.'s treaty with, 266 Theoctistus' success against, 263 Eladas, John, 197, 198 Eladicus, 198 Elective monarchy, 99-Ioo Eleutherius; Exarch, 371, 377, 394 Elmacin cited, 394 Elmout, 451 Emilianus, Patriarch of Antioch, 31819 Emir, application of title, 466 n. Emir-al-Omra, office of, 422 Emperors, ByzantineAlien princes, courteous attitude towards, 428, 438 Assessors in law courts, as, 2211 Balkan peninsula, from, 114, 19, 486 Dardanian, prefecture under, 37 Efficiency of, 442 Generosity of, in relief of distress, 263 Hereditary principle of succession bY. 345 ignorance of, regarding the realm and its needs, 307 Isolation of, 75-6 Judicial interventions of, 302 Legitimacy, principle of, 127, 134, 13,8. 3172 . 1197. 212, 247-8 Leniency of, to conspirators, 12, 1178, 246, 248. 273. 276 . 278. 300, 361, 4711, 472 Marriage of, restrictions on, z68-9, 324 nMercantile class supporting, 25 Military Regents, 2o5-6
Emperors, Byzantine (continued) -Restrictions imposed on, x68, 2x6, 324 n. Soldierliness demanded of, 285 Status of, in doubt, loo ; Justinian's estimate of, r6o ; later reduction to negligibility, 485 Empire, ByzantineArmy of. See Army Character of, 343-4. 4=2. 440' modernity of, in sixth century, 356 Church, attitude towards. See Church Conflicting interests in, 238 Disaffected classes non-existent in, 157 n. Feudalism in . See Feudalism Financial expedients of. See that Treading
Population of, change in, after 750, r44-5 Recuperation power shown by, 24, 26 Talk bequeathed to, 425 EnglandAristocratic character of, analysed, 1o Georgian period in, 154. 163 English colony at Cibotus, proposal as to, 473 Episcopate. See Church, EasternBishops Eroticus, Theophilus, 271-2 Erovant I., 349 Esarhaddon (Sennacherib), parricides of, 341, 347 Esdras, Patriarch, 372, 373. 375 Eudocia, daughter of Constantine IX., 258 Eudocia Ingerina, 172, 182, x84 Eudocia Macrembolitissa, Empress, assumes imperial power, 300-1 ; marriage of, with Romanus Diogenes, 202, 225-6, 3o2-3, 456 ; banished to aconvent, 304 ; her dislike of Nicephoritzes, 307 ; Eastern affairs in reign of, 455 Eunapius cited, ii Eustathius, Cptain of the Foreign Legion, 256 Euprepia, sister of Constantine X., 283 n. Euphrosyne, daughter of Constantine p1 132 Elcarchate ss of under Constantine v. . 335 Executive v. Exchequer, 272 n.1 Exedarus (Ardashir), 349 Expert, government by, 26, 35 nEvagrius cited, 75, 362, 365
+' - -l f e t
FALLMERAYER cited, 479
Farinelli, 189 FeudalismAchievements of, for the Empire, 343 n.
"
INDEX Feudalism (con#nued)'-
Cilician Armenia, in, 474,478 Fiefs within the Empire in relations of, 428 Implication of term, 342. n. Prevalence of, in Byzantine Empire before Crusaders, 412 Sub-infeudation, 359 Vassal states of the Empire in relations of, 354. 357 Financial expedients of the EmpireBasil L's reforms, 18o Leo VI .'s policy, z92 Private wealth, war against, 43-4, 92-3- :146, I5-. x63 Findlay quoted, 6, 16, 20, 24, 122, I24. I3o-I, 142-3, 191, 193-'4 . 297 n.1 ; quoted and criticised, 95-7 ; cited, 74-7, 89, 1114, r r6, r7o ; estimate of, 3122 Fiscal character of Roman legislation, 146 Fiscal oppression in sixth century, 43 Follis, remission of, by Marcian, 117 Foreign Legion, captaincy of, z99. 2118-19 Foundling hospitals, Ix7 FranceBourbon rdgime in, 157 n. Bureaucracy of, 53 Governing class in, 311 Kings of, licence permitted to, 270-1 Military impatience of civilian dictation in, 206 Orleans regency, x95-6 FranksAlliance of, with Imperialists, 321 Eastern posts of, 446-7 ; disaffection in, 449 Origin of power of, in Gaul, 327 Freeholders, 148 Frontier defenceArmenian policy of, 166 Eastern frontier underJohn Curcuas, 2x4-316 John Zimisces'strengthening of, 237 Frontier depopulation, z82 Frost, theGreat, 109, 114 GABRAS, Constantine, 480 Gabras, Gregory, 4711-2 . 479 Gabras, Theodore, Duke of Trebizond, 47x-2 Gabrielopulus, 196 Gagic (Cakig), King of Vasparacan, 4I4-415 Gagic I., King of Ani, 426 Gagic, King of Kars, 452 Gagic, last King of Ani (1042), 43-. 437-9. 459, 462 Gagic, son of Abbas, 462 Gallienus, Emperor, z68, 352, 403 Gandzac, Emir of, 462 Gandzac Patriarch of, 463 -
Ganzac--
507
Persian defeat near, 367 Turkish capture of (1,088), 470 Garidas, John, Captain of the Foreign Legion, 199, 203 Gaul, origin of Frankish power in, 327 Gelzer cited, 342 n. Genesius quoted, r29 and n. ; cited, 167 n.8, 193,4o8 George, King of Iberia and Abasgia, 427, 429. 434 George II ., Caucasian King, 470 George of Taron, 424 George, Prefect of the East, 369 George the Paphlagonian, 261, 265 Georgia (see also Iberia)Armenian remnant in, 376 Rebellion in (1022), 429 Georgius of Cyprus cited, 109, 337 Germanicea, 391 Germanus (sixth century), 79, 367 Germanus, Patriarch, 380 Ghassanid Bedawins, 355 Ghevond. See Leo V. Gibbon cited, 176 n., 201, 209-ro, 357. 476 ; quoted, 294 n., 473 n., 486 Gisela (daughter of Pepin), 115 Gitacius (Armenian), 359 Gomechtikin, General, 321, 460 Gongyles, Anastasius, x99 Gongyles, Constantine (9114), 199 Gongyles, Constantine the Paphlagonian, Admiral of the Fleet, 219.227 Gontharis, 360 Gordian 111. , 362 Gordian family, 162 Gorduen~, 349. 350 Gorigos, King of Albania, 463, 470 Gorioun, Ardzrounian Prince, 386 Gosselin, 303 Goths, Eastern wars as affecting struggle with, 355 Gourgenes, King of Abasgia (9r5), 413, 414 Gourgenes, King of Iberia, 426-7 Gourgenes (? Stephen), King of Iberia (sixth century), 358. 359. 364 GreeceMaYnotes in, 213 Sclavonisation of, 326 Greek Church. See Church Greeks (Byzantines)Perfidy of, accepted estimate as to, 186, 198. 415, 432, 439 ; solitary instances of Byzantine duplicity, 248, 292, 425 Politicalcapacity and limitations of, i08 Gregoras, Senator, 198 Gregory, Bishop of Antioch, 367 Gregory, Bishop of Ephesus, 183 Gregory, Bishop of Tours, cited; 363 Gregory, Duke of Trebizond, 479 Gregory, father of Patriarch Basil, 472
508 .
INDEX
Gregory, General of the Obsicians,
2 Gregory, kt¢yto-Tpos, lord of Betchni, 425, 427. 43=, 438, 451 Gregory, p,&ytQrpos, grandson and great-grandson of, 474. 48o Gregory II., Patriarch, 455 Gregory I. the Great, Pope, 45, 8o Gregory Ill., Pope, irr Gregory XIII ., Pope, 474 Gregory, Ardzrounian Prince, 386 Gregory, Prince of Taron (898), 411 Gregory the Illuminator, 337 . 350 Gregory, son of Musalacius, 398 Gregory the Taronite (99o), 251. 425 Gryllus the Pig, 1711-2 Gubazes, King of Lazica, 359 Guilds of artisans, 489 Guiscard, Robert, 324, 330 Guzes, John, 361E Gylas (Hungarian), 224
Heraclius IV., Emperor, go
Heraclius, brother of Absimarus, I0I-2 Heretics, intolerant dread of, Herv6 the Norman (Hervey), 135-7 303, 445, 8Himerius (Homerius), Admiral, rgo, 196,410 Hom, Patriarch of, 467, 470 Hormisdas, Shah of Persia, 366 Humbertopoulus, 33o HungariansAlliance with, against Symeon, r85 Argyrus family successful against, 224 Romanus L's policy regarding, 213-I4 HunsCabades restored to his throne by, 353 Christianising of chiefs of, 357
HABIB (11 friend of Rome "), IASITA (Michael Jasitas), 276, 437-9 375, 378 Hachtdan, 448 Iberia (see also Georgia)Hadrian, Emperor, 3, 4 Connection of, with the Empire Hamazasp, 378. 381 under Romanus III., 434 Harridan, Emir of Aleppo, 226-7 Justinian's relations with, 357 Harith, King of the Ghassanid BedKings of, Bagratid, 435 awins, 355 Revolt of, against Justinian IL, 38&7 Harran, 480 Territory claimed by, conceded by Harthan, 477 Romanus L, 2115-116 Harun, Governor of Aderbaidjan, Iberians, Nicephorus' bodyguard of, 392, 394, 395. 4oc-r 230 Hassan, 434-5 lconium, Turkish capital transferred Hegel quoted, 24, 26, 28, 311 to, 466 n. Helen (daughter of Robert Guiscard), Iconoclastic movement324 Constans the pioneer of, 88 Helen, sister of Theophilus, 4o4 Estimate of, 74, 123 Helena, Empress, daughter of RomLeo III. the beginner of, Ill anus, 204, 207, erg-2o Nature of, 89, 34.5 Helena, sister of Constantine X., Unpopularity of, 113 283 n" Iconoclastic period, brief review of, 8 Heracliads, unpopularity of, 485 Iconoclasts. See Isaurians Heraclian periodIconodules, reaction consequent on Clerical influence in, 119-22 victory of (842), 134, =511, 154 Survey of, 82 et seq. Ignatius, Patriarch, 172, 1183. 380 Heraclius L, Emperor, discontinues Image-worship, restoration of, under political" bread, 44, 85 ; clerical Michael III., 134 ; reaction coninfluence under, 74, rig et seq., sequent on, 151, 154 official class under, 81, 92 ; local Impersonality of the State in fifth nobility under, 84, 487; early century, zo years of reign of, 83-6 ; Avar and imprisonment, 94 Persian invasion in reign of, 82, Inger, Russian chief, 2114 rog ; relations of,with Avar Khan, Ingerina, Eudocia, 172, i82, 184 351 ; African expedition of, 86 ; Irene, daughter of King of the Alans, successful policy of, in the East, 307 371 ; Persian triumph of, go ; atIreneEmpress, usurpation by, 127, tempt to secure Armenian Con1~9,225 ; Armeniacs' hostility to, formity, 339, 372 ; attempts to save 125, 340 ; Eunuch-rdgime under, a Marciomte,120,136; character126, 189, 287, 393-4 ; conspiracies istics of, 486-7 ; guileful policy of, against, 392, 398 ; Ioonodule 85 . 9o ; barbarity of, r2o ; otherCouncil (785), 395 ; estimate of wise mentioned, 7, 365. 485 reign of, Ira; otherwise menHeraclius Constantine II., Emperor, tioned, 8, z44, 164 87 Isaac I. (Comnenus), Emperor, upHeraclius III., Emperor, 87, 119 bringing of, 294 ; slighted by
, 1
INDEX Michael VI., 29o ; saluted Emperor, 244, 291. 450 ; joined by 292 ; negotiations Catacalon, with Imperial envoys, 281, 293 ; proclaimed Emperor by the Senate, 293-4 ; brief reign and abdication of, 295-6 ; relations with the Church, 296 Isaac, Exarch, 371 Isaac, Patriarch, 384. 385 Isaac (Sahak), Prince of Paper6n, 462 Isaurian dynastyEcclesiastical opposition to, 1121-4 Financial success of, 118 Legislation of, repealed by Basilian Code (goo), x63 Methods of, rio Periods of, 98. io6-34, 137 ; annalists of, io8-9 Plutocracy legislated against by, 16r Recovery, general, under, x65-6, I86 Redaction of law under, unpopularity of, 181: Taxation under, increase in, 151 Isdigerd, 351 Isdigerd II., King of Persia, 351 Isidorus quoted, gr Islam, methods and decline of, 44o-r Istibrak (? Stauracius), 398 ItalyLass of, i:3 Separatist movement in, in eighth century, 11r-112 Ivan, son of Liparit, 448
.
JAxisSAaiES, 366 Jasitas (Iasita), Michael, 276, 437-9 JewsPersecution of, in eighth century, IrI Supremacy of, in trade, 158 job, ruler in Coele-Syria, 374 n., 377 John, King of Ani, 429 John Sembat, King of Ani, 430 John XII., Pope, 183, 228 John, chief of the Mardaites, 382 John (eunuch-698~, ror John (eunuch-781), 393 John (eunuch) minister of Constantine X., 279-80 John (alace-eunuch-zo79), 328-9 John (general of Imperialists-989), 424 John (official in the Hellespont), 54 and n.3 John (Syncellus), 260 John Cathoticos, 414 ; cited, 378, 38I 413 John of Cappadocia, 37. 38, 40 John of Ephesus cited, 70 John, son of Gagic, 462 John} the Deacon, 121, 49Z John the Grammarian, Patriarch, 403
549
the Papblagonian (Orphanotrophus), power of, 26o, 266, 268-9 ; downfall of, 266-8, 3oo John the Patrician (Pitzigaudes), 9r, 241, 242, 488 John the Taronite, 472 John Zimisces, Emperor, accession of, 420-1 ; ecclesiastical policy of, 1159 ; success of, against Saracens, 227 ; relations with Nicephorus, 230 ; in command of the Eastern troops, 230; achievements of, in the East,404, 421-2 ; under influence of Basil the chamberlain, 232-3 ; Armenian bodyguard of, 234 ; settlement of Bulgaria under, 234-5; alliance made by, with Armenian princes, 235 ; successes against Bagdad, Damascus, &c., 236 ; expansion of feudalism under, 342 n. ; illness and death of, 154, 237; mentioned, 1167, 3174,187, 219 Joseph, rulerin Ccele-Syria, 374 n., 377 Justin I., Emperor, 114, 211 ; relations of, with Persia, 3511 ; policy of, regarding vassal states, 354 Justin II., Emperor, provincial policy of, 23, 58 . 73 ; Persian policy of, 362; Armenian policy of, 363--4 ; anecdote of, 68-q ; speech of, at adoption of Tiberius Constantine quoted, 70-2 ; estimate of, 7o ; cited, 119 ; otherwise mentioned, 7, z84 Justinian I., Emperor, appeal of, to his people, 65-6 ; policy of, as to Senate, 12 ; consulate abolished by, 117 ; internal policy of 54-65 ; fiscal system of, 355 ; domestic disorders of his reign, 41-4 ; military enterprise of, 447 ; alleged bribery by, of invaders, 46 ; Persian wars of, 354-5 ; army policy of, 274 ; vassal policy of, 357 ; spread of Christianity the policy of, 357 ; later years of, xq ; estimate of, 39 n" , 49 ; Procopius' estimate of, 4o ; personal power of, 25 ; quoted-on the imperial role, x60 ; Code of, 22, r6o ; Constitutions of. See that heading; otherwise mentioned, 7, 38, 149. 11$3, 163, 339, 343, 408, 4113 .444-5 Justinian II., Emperor, policy of, towards official class and church, 91, 95, 97 ; Armenian affairs in reign of, 338, 383 ; Armenian policy of, 383, 387-8 ; transplantation policy of, 493 ; effects removal of Mardaites, 381-2 ; overthrow of (695), 94, 100. 485 ; restoration of, roe, 488 ; cruelties and death of, ro2-3, rr2 ; otherwise mentioned, 7, 386-7 John
.
ao
INDEX
KARS, cession of, to Rome, 454 Kendroscavi, fortress of, 477 Kesoun, 463. 476, 477 Khatchatour, Duke of Antioch, 452. 46o Khatchic, Governor, 434 Khatchic, Patriarch, 423 Khatchic,Patriarch(nephewofPeter), 438. 4511 . 454-5 Khatchic-Khoul the Lion, 432 KhazarsImperial alliance with, 384 Merwan's repression of, 389 Pillaging by (683), 381 Khazars, Khan of the (65x), 375 Khazi(Ghazi),Ahmed(Danishmand), 475 X.2 KhorasanGreat Sultan in, 466 n. Seljuk ravages from, 48.t Khoutha, Prince of Sassoun, 368 Khtric, Governor of Bergri, 432-3 Kieffaffair, analogy from, 115-116 Kilig Arslan II., 466 n. Korbouga (Carbaran d'Oliferne), 475 and n.1 Kropotkin, Prince, 15 LACHANOURACON, Michael, 11x5, 392. 394-6 Ladislas, Bulgarian King, 252, 258 Lambrdn, fort of, 459. 462 Lamprus, Governor of Melitene, 273 LandInvestment, as, 157 Seizure of, for debt prohibited, 6i n'2 Usury for advances on, 6z n.2 Land tenure and agricultureAgricultural changes (eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries), 143 Assessments for land-tax, Basil's care regarding, i8o-i Communal villages, 145-8. 150 Constantine VIL's policy regardmg' 221 Kinds of, 145 Leo III.'s reforms regarding, r49-5r Magnates, encroachment of, 147, 152-3 Officials' estates, x53-4 Power and influence united with territorial possession, 151, 153 Private estates, 148-51 Sales to strangers forbidden, 147 Soldiers' fiefs, 153 Landed interest, imperial concern for, x8 Latifundia, ISz Latin movement eastwards, 303 Lawentius the Lydian, John, cited, 19,34-9, 4= . 53,64,68 ; estimate of, 33-4, 39
LawConnotation of term, 27 Exemption from operation of, general claims to, 76-7, 8o Law of nature, exaltation of, in Classical State, 5 Lazarus, John ("Abb6 Dubois"), x96-7 Iazi of Colchis, the, 3,114 LazicaDux appointed over, 356 Georgian David III. controlling, 472 Loyalty of, to the Empire, 387 Theoctistus' expedition to (843), 407 War with, 356-7,359 Lebeau-quoted, 294 n. ; cited, 357 Lecas, 325 Lecapenus,Emperor . See Romanus I. Legitimacy, adoption of principle of, 127, 113¢, 138. =72. 197. 212, 247-8 Leo I., Emperor, 17, 84. 408 Leo III. (Conon), Emperor, question as to ancestry of, 382, 388 ; early experiences of, in the East, 3867; accession of, 106-7, 494-5 ; financial policy of, rill ; policy of, towards the Church, 1z2-4 ; agrarian reforms of, 118, 1149-511' death of, rri ; Ecloga of, r6o, r64 ; achievements of, 98, roll ; events of reign of, summarised, rxr-r2 ; general recovery during reign of, 150 ; estimate of, rob ; otherwise mentioned, 8, 89, 340+ 343. 493 Leo IV., Emperor, proposed alliance of, with house of Pepin, ; Armenian generals of, 392 115 ; relations of, with artisan guilds,489 ; otherwise mentioned, 126, 400 Leo V. (Ghevond), Emperor, attitude of, in monk and soldier feud, 132 ; family connections of, i69' 340-11 ; death of, 128 ; otherwise mentioned, 336. 402, 409 Leo VI. (the Wise), Emperor, uncertain parentage of, 127, 11"72, 182 ; relations of, with Bagratid kings, 408-ir ; Armenian policy of, 410-112 ; well served by Nicephorus Phocas,410; plotsagainst, x86-8 ; appoints Lecapenus High Admiral, 417 ; estimate of, x88, 3192-3 ; codification oflawunder r8r ; favourites of, z88-9i ; otherwise mentioned, 153,191, =97. 215 Leo VIII ., Emperor, 218 Leo VI ., Armenian King in Cilicia, 6 Leo (Ghevond), Armenian King, 480, 481-2 Leo (colleague of Procopius), 186 Leo (rpwroflecrufpcos), 2411, 242
k
` "
INDEX Leo, brother of Aetius, 398
Leo, son of Bardas, 399-400 Leo Diaconus cited, 420 Leo Grammaticus cited, 405 Leo, the Cilician, 44, 481 Leontius, Emperor, styled General of Hellas, 488 ; effects removal of the Mardaites, 382 ; overthrows Justinian, 94, zoo-r ; becomes Emperor, 384 ; massacred by Justinian, zz2 Lerond . See Leo V., Emperor Lewis the Debonnair, z68 Liberalism, claim of, 77 Liberi coloni, z48 Lichudes, Constantine, 279, 293.296, 441 Lip-it (1048), 44x-4, 448 Liparit (c. x090), 470 Local government, Justin's concession towards, 23, 58. 73 Local usage, 122, :5o, r6o Locust plague, 263 Logotketes, office of, 92, 93, iz8 Lombards, homage from, to Constantine IV., 9o Longibardipoulos, 311 Longinus, brother of Zeno, i2, 118 Luitprand of Cremona cited, 159, 223, 289 Lyeandus theme, 182, 1185, 201, 215, 4311 Lycanthus, Governor of Lycaonia, 291, 292 MACEDONIA-
Ravages in, 251 Romanus I.'s policy regarding, 213 Sclavonisation of, 326 Macedonian, significance of term, 273,408 Macedonian faction, 275 Macedonian troops, 291, 313, 3315 Magniac (Maniaces), activities of, in the East, 262, 263, 434 ; in Sicily, 265 ; imprisoned, 265 ; released, 266 ; magister militum in Italy, 269 ; revolts, 272 Mainotes, 2113 Malenus, 174 Maleinus, Eustathius, 242, 244, 428 Maleinus, Nicephorus, 409 Malek Shah, accession of, 459 : Armenian rule of, 464, 469 ; alliance of, with the Empire, 466 n., 468 ; claim of, to the Euxine, 469, 4731 ; conquest of Antiochby, andclaim to Mediterranean Sea, 470 ; death of, 470-1 Mamigonian clan, i66-7,35r-2 andn. Mam-kon, 352 n. Mandzikert, assembly at (651), 377 Manglabites, 210, 211 Maniaees. See Magniae Mauc(outch6, Governor of Ani, 462, 463, 469, 472
511
Mansour, Calipb, 391
Manuel (Armenian general under Michael I. and Leo V.), r67, 402, 404,405- 407 Manuel, Prince (Armenian general under Theophilus), 341 Manuel, brother of Vartan, 363 Manuel, nephew of Basilacius, 323, 46o Manuel, regent for Michael III., r67, =70 Manuel, son of Leo Phocas, 23o ManzikertRomanus IV. defeated at (ro7i), 304,457 Siege of, second (1053) . 447 Marcian, Emperor, 14, 16'117 . 21,338 Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 4 Mardaites, 382 Marinus, father of Theodore, x67and n"1 Marinus, Prefect, 36 and n.4, 37,48 Martina, Empress, 86-7, 225 Martyropolis, 353, 358, 368, 382 Mary, daughter of Alexius, 472 479 Mary (Irene),d4ughterofChristopher, 207,213 Mary, Empress, 307. 324, 330 Mary, sister of Theodora, 404 Maslema, x06, 494-5 Masoud, 466 n., 483 Masoudi cited, 398 Master of the troops in the Court, title of, 362 Matthew of Edessa cited, 237, 475 n-, 48r
Maurice, Emperor, in the East,365-7 ; policy of, 75 ; failure to restore order, 78-9 ; murder of, 63, 83, zit ; otherwise mentioned, 45, 337. 354. 367. 486 Maxentius, Stephen, x84 Maximin, Emperor, 178. Medixvalism, characteristics of, r r9 Mejej (Mizizius) (sixth century), 361-3 Mejej (Mitius, Mecetius, Mezzetius) (seventh century), 372, 377, 380 Melias of Lycandus (Metric, Mel, Mleh), against Bulgarians, 201 ; left by Ashot at the Roman Court, 410 ; founds Lycandus theme, 182, 185, 411 ; with Curcuas, 4118 Melias, son of preceding, 235 and n. Melissenus (934), 215 Melissenus, Leo, 246, 2511, 466 n. Melissenus, Nicephorus (Nicephorus V.), general under Romanus IV., 457; Turcoman principality of Rum founded by, 3=5-16, 327--9 ; faithful to civilian regime, 318 ; negotiations of, with Alexius, 331 Meliten6Chusan's capture of, 391 Curcuas' captures of, 215 Seljuks' sack of, 451
INDEX Meliten6, Emir of, 173
'
Melusianus, 446 , Menander cited, 362 ; quoted, 364 Merwan, 389 Merwaniche . 336 Mesopotamia theme, 182, Or Michael, Count of the Court., 399, 400 Michael, Duke of Selabinia, ioo Michael I., Emperor, 126-9,167 Michael II., Emperor, contested succession of, 403 ; marriage of, with Euphrosyne, 132 ; estimate of, 175 ; mentioned, x57 n. Michael III., Emp., regency during minority of, x69-7o ; death of, 175 ; character of, 170-2 ; spendthrift habits of, irq ; estimate of, z76 ; estimate of reign of, 1134 ; otherwise mentioned, x65, 167,
79,182, 213. 257 Michael : IV., Emperor, intrigue of,
with Zoe, 261 ; claims Ani, 430-1 ; dealings of, with King of Sebaste, 432 ; Armenian homage to, 435 ; ill-health of, 264 ; building schemes of, 266 ; foreign affairs under, 266 ; adoption of an heir by, 266 ; last days and death of, 267 Michael V., Emperor, at inaugural ceremony, 264; releases Magniac, 265-6 ; downfall of, 268-9 ; estimate of, 267, 2; ; Armenian activity under, 43x Michael VI . (Stratioticus), Emperor, position of, 288 ; conspiracy of Theodosius Monomachus, 289; sligbts warrior faction, 289-90 ; insurgence and failure of Bryennius, 290- r ; restores Bryennius to his command, 29z ; insurrection of Comnenus, 292-4; Hervey's revolt against, 448-9 ; downfall of, 294 ; mentioned, 281,455 Michael VII., Emp., pacifies Varanguns, 3o3 ; proclaimed sole Emperor, 304 ; offers terms to Romanus, 305 ; Eastern policy of, 458; relations of, with Nicephoritzes, 307 ; pardons Russell, 3oq ; ransoms John Ducas, 310 ; treatment of Bryennius, 312 ; relations with Alexius, 317 ; retirement of, 3I9> 460 . Archbishop of Ephesus, 324, 460 ; estimate of, 281, 306, 315 ; nominal extent of dominions of, 459,* mentioned, 226,3o7 Michael Rhangabus, 183 Michael Cyrus cited, 388 Michael the Taronite, 457,472 Mlhran, 364, 370 Military element. See Army Miramians, 367 Misimians, 361
Mleh-
Development of name, 235n. Meaning of name, Oar n.1 Mleh demeslikos, 235 and n., 421-2. (See also Melias) Moawiah, Governor of Syria, 375, 377-8I Moderator, Arabian, status of, under Justinian, 54 n.4 Mohammed, "First of Emirs," 471 Mohammed, Grand Sultan, 466 n, Mohammed, nephew of Caliph Abdal Melik, 384, 385 Mohammed, son of Ahmed Kbazi, 475 n,2 Monachus, George, quoted, 4oo MonasteriesRevenues of, attempt to restrict, 156 Western and Eastern contrasted, 154-6
Monastic life as penalty, 182 MonksJustinian's attitude towards, 64 Revolutionary movements joined by, 122 Soldiers, feuds with, x32 Monomachus, Constantine. See Constantine X. Monomachus, Theodosius, 284 Montanists, persecution of, in eighth century, ii i Morogeorge, Governor of Naupactus, 258 MosesII Patriarch, 363 Moslemah, son of Caliph Abdalmelek, 384 Mouschegh (Musel), Alexis, 212, 405-6 Mouschegh (Musel6), Alexius (790), 340, 396 Mouschegh family, 368, 369, 370, 374 Muntasir, Abdallah, 240-1 and n. Municipal franchise, Justinian>s curtailment of, 47-8 Municipal power, monopoly of, with the rich, z62 Mosel. See Mouschegh Musicus (Mousegh), z88 Mutilation, r63 Myacius, Theodorus, zoo-5 Mystakon, John, 366, 367, 368 n. NAMES, Hellenizing, of, 340, 439 n" Naples, revolt of, under Constantine VII:, 224 Narses (Armenian Camsarid-543), 358, 368 Narses the Camsarid (698), 385 Narses, great-grandson of Gregory Adywrpor, 474-5 Narses, Italian leader, 253 Narses, Patriarch, 376-8 Narses (under Justinian), Ig6 National debt, Byzantine prototype of, 192
'
')
?y, f-
INDEX Nationality-
513 95 . =or, 489 . 490, 495 ; estimate
Freedom ofByzantinepublic service from conditions of, 184 Spirit of, 23 Neapolitan Government, analogy from, 48 Neferkert, Emir of (tenth century), 426 Nepherkert, Emir of (eleventh century), 461 Nestorlans, 338-9 Neumann, C., cited, 297 NicePretenders' headquarters at, 328 Seljuk capital at, 329, 465 Surrender of (1097), 466 n., 473 Nicephoritzes, influence and malversations of, 307-9 ; exactions of, 3111 ; attempt of, to stop Botaneiates, 318 ; torture and death of, 320 Nicephorus I., Emperor, ancestry of, 355 ; efforts of, for national defence, 126, r29 ; Armenian revolt against, 34o ; relations with Bardanes. 398-4oo ; eunuch support of, 398 ; estimate of, 401-2 ; humanitarian leniency of, 127-8 Nicephorus II . (Phocas), Emperor, prefect of the East, erg ; appointed Commander of the East
of, zo8-9, x16 ; source of history by, 49, Nicephorus (retired priest), 445 Nicephorus Bryennius. See Bryennius Nicetas (admiral), x84 Nicetas (chamberlain), z82,3184 Nicetas, Duke, in Iberia, 256 Nicetas (eunuch), 394. 398 Nicetas (false coiner), 261 Nicetas (patrician and eunuch), 234 Nicetas (under Romanus L), err Nicholas (eunuch), 269 Nicolas (great chamberlain of Constantme XI .), 256 Nicolas, Patriarch, x96, 1198 Nika riots, 25 . 37 . 42 Nisibis, Roman surrender of, 350 Nobilissimus, title of, 267 Nobility, State service as basis of, 9,27-8 Nomenclature, adaptation of, to classical etymology, 340, 439 n. NormansArmenians compared with, 448-9 English refugees from, proposed colony of, at Cibotus, 473 Norse Princes in Russia, 231-4 Novels of Justinian. See Constitutions
Saracens, 228, 4o4; rivalry with Bringas, 228-9 ; acclaimed Emperor, 229 ; takes personal command of the war, 230 ; murder of, 232 ; ecclesiastical policy of, 156. 159 ; unpopularity and political errors of, 2311 ; estimate of, z56, 232 ; Novels of, cited, 3154, 156 ; mentioned, 174, 417, 420 Nicephorus III., Emperor (Nicephorus Phocas Botaneiates), fight of, with Radulf, 293 ; ransomed by Constantine XI .,'2gg ; disorder amongst troops of, 456 ; 'suitor for Eudocia, 3or ; disloyalty of, to John Ducas, 309 ; insurrection of, as Nicephorus III., 314, 318-2o, 460 ; alliance with Turks against, 46o ; negotiations with Bryennius, 320-1 ; honours Bryennius, 322 ; helpless position of, 322, 325. 328 ; relations with Basilacius, 323 ; marries wife of Michael VII., 307, 324 ; immures Constantine XII 325 ; resigns and takes the tonsure, 331-2 ; estimate of, 320, 328 Nicephorus "the fourth." SeeNicephorus III. (Botaneiates) Nicephorus V. See Melissenus Nicephorus, Caesar, 396 Nicephorus, Patriarch, Leo V.'s treatment of, 132 ; quoted, 93 . VOL. II .
Armeniacs' and Anatolics' triumph over, 494-5 Artavasdus supported by, 125 Importance of, 485. 487 Philippicus deposed by, 489-90 Theodosius unsupported by, 492 Turbulence of, ro4-6, 113, 491 Otherwise mentioned, 128, 487 Ochin, Prince of Lambr6n and Duke of Tarsus, 459. 462, 469, 474. 476 Ocom, 448 Octagon Library, burning of (730), log, Ill Octavianus, 24 Office, sale of, 157 n. Official class. See Civil Service Oligarchy under formula of absolutism, 25 Opsarus, John, 291 Orphanotrophus, John . SeeJohn the Paphlagonian Orthodoxy, victory of, over iconoclasm, laxity and reaction consequent on, 134, 1511, 154, 171 Otchopentir, John and Gabriel, sons of, 426 Othman, 384, 388 Otho I., Emperor, 228 Otto II ., Emperor, r6g n. Otto III., Emperor, 258 Oursel. See Russell
(954), 226 ; successes against the
OBSICIANS-
PACURIAN (Bacouran), 330, 468 Pacurias, 359 2-K
,
a"14
INDEX
Palace government, x4o-2 Palace officials joined with soldiers,
'
"
Persian troops at Sinope, x33-4 x66 Persecution in Roman Empire (3oo),
x86 337 Palmologus, George, 3r8, 328-9 Personal monarchyPalseologus, Nicephorus, 3ro Recovery due to resumption of, iravuirepciPavror, title of, 472 under Isaurians, zz7-r8 Paper6n, fortress of, 459. 462 Restoration of, under Leo, roq-xo Pappus (Bab), 361 Personal will of ruler, subordination Parisos to Onti, 462 of, to law of State, 5, 6, x3-x4, Parthiax6, 21, 26 Armenian relations with, 349 Peter, Count of Obsicians, 397 Hostilities of, with the Empire, 357 Peter, King of Bulgarians, 207, 2x3, Pasagnathes, V,7-8 232 Paschal chronicle cited, 85 Peter, Patriarch, 429, 438 Patriarchs- . Petra, siege of (550), 36x Imperial rlations with, 1122, 155 Petronas, 173 Influential position of, under the Pharasmanes, Commander at Hieroregency of Theophano, 122, 228 polis, 457 Secular and Imperial, in Basilian Pharasmanes, Governor of the Iron period, 183 Fortress, 387 Patricius, Emperor, 112 Phatloun, Emir of Ani, 459 Patronate, early Roman, 53, Phatloun, grandson of first Emir, Patzinaks470 Bryennians' relations with, 314-x5, Phazes, Iberian Prince, 358, 359 321 Philadelphia, Roman garrison in, 480 Chersonese threatened by, 407 Philaret, Duke ofAntioch, 461, 466-7, Defection of, from Constantine X., 470 444 Philip II ., King of Spain, 40 n. Devastation by (eleventh century), Philippicus, brother-in-iaw of Mau325 rice, 366, 367 Diogenes' success against, 258 Philippicus, Emperor (Vardan, BarMeesia overrun by, 263 danes, Bardanitzes), unsuccessRomanus'success against, Sox ful rising by, xo2 ; assumes the Tat's activities, 312 purple, 103 ; saluted Emperor, Terror inspired by, 47r 488 ; forms settlement in MeliVictory of (,05o), 445 ten6, 388 ; blinded and deposed, Zoe's alliance with, 200-2 104, 489 ; characteristics of, 103, Pahl, Emperor of Russia (x8ox), 175 840, 490 ; mentioned, 1x2, 341 Paul the Deacon cited, 380 Phocas, Emperor, elected by the Paul the Orphanotrophos, 2xo troops, 369 ; reign and estimate Pauliciansof, 8o ; barbarity of, x2o ; otherDefeat of, at Tephrick, x81 wise mentioned, 83, x09, 1312,485, Nicephorus L's relations with, 402 487 Outrages by (eleventh century), 325 Phocas, Bardas (Cwsar), against the Persecutions of, 135-7,1173 Bulgarians, 2or ; against RusPhilippopolis, at, 469, 472 sians, 214 ; Domestic of the Transplantations of, 391 Schools, 2x9 " named Caesar, Views of, z5z 230 ; recalled against Sclerus, Pepin, Constantine V.'s overture to, 242-3 ; revolt of, against BasilII ., 31115 244-6 ; death of, 246 ; greed of, Peranes, son of King Gourgenes, 358, 226-7 Phocas, Bardas (patrician), 257 Perc, nn Emirate of, 264 Phocas, Bardas, son of Leo, 233, 234 PersarmeniaPhocas, Constantine, 219, 226 Government of, altered (428), 351 Phocas, Leo, Commander against Persian rule and persecutions in, Bulgarians, 201-4 ; Governor of Cappadocia, 219, 226 ; General 362-3 Rival claimants to, 365-7 of the West, 228 ; Curopalat, Status of (385), 350 23o ; banished to Lesbos, 233 Persiaconspiracies and penalty of, 234 Armenian hostilities with, 346 Phocas, Leo (eunuch), 230-r Armenian sphere of, 377 ; policy Phocas, Nicephorus, Emperor. See regarding, 338-9 Nicephorus II ., Emperor Hostilities with the Empire (sixth Phocas, Nicephorus, grandfather of century), 353-5, 364 the Emperor and Governor of Roman subsidies paid to, 353. 355 Lydia, x84-5, 4x0
! ,I
, z (
s pppi
INDEX Phocas, Nicephorus,, son of pretender Bardas, 248, 429 Phocas, Nicephorus, son of Leo, 233', 234,246 Phocas, Peter, 233, 239. 240, 242 Phocas, family, 226, 410 Photius, Patriarch, 172, 183, 184,400 Phrygians, Armenian affinity with, 347n.1 Pinzarich, Emir of Tripoli, 262, 263 Pitzigaudes (John the Patrician), 9z Plague, the Great (eighth century), 114,144 Plato's political theories, application of, 35-3 Plotinus, 352 Pobyedonestcheff, M., cited, 15,121 Political interest restricted to personalities, 76-7, 82-3 Polyeuctus, 228-30 Popular control, no demand for, in sixth century, 20-22 Population of Byzantine Empire, change in, after 750, 144-5 Pouzan, 469, 471 Prmtors, public demands on, 317 Prsetorship, Justinian s reform of, 55 n"2 PrecedentImperial respect for, 13, 22 Justin's reforms thwarted by, 71-2 Prefecture, abasement of, 34-8 Prerogative, senatorial attitude towards, 76,86 Price quoted, 67 Prince's Isle, 268, 305 Priscus, 84, 85 . 90, 366 Prisons, opening of, by conspirators, 289. 319. 488 Private interest, claims of, to supersedelaw, 77 Private wealthBurdens imposed on, 146, 151-2, 162 Isaurian legislation regarding, r6r Official raids on, 43, 92, x63 Revival of, under Isaurians, :65-6 Privileged classes, evils of, 67-8 Procopius cited, 119, 228, 358 n", 359 ; Anecdota of, cited, 39-48 ; estimate of, 33 . 39-41 Procopius the apwro6co-rcd pros, x86 Procurators thwarting Governors, 272 n,1 rp6e8pos, title of, 256 Promotion, rules of, disregarded by Leo VI., . 193 PronunciamentosPalace-intrigue replacing, x79 Period of, close of, 134 Provincial governorsDuties of, defined by Justinian, 57 and n.1 Misdemeanours of, 55-6 and n.1 Pefambulations of, prohibited, 56 n,3
515
Provincial government, Roman, changes in, 478-9 Prusianus, son of King Ladislas, 258, 26o, 442 Psellus, relations of, with Constantine X., 28o ; envoy to Comnenus, 293 ; position of, 3o6 ; estimate of, 280-1, 297 nn. ; cited, 249, 254-5, 260, 275 n-, 277. 279 . 282-4, 289 and n., 297 nn., 305 otherwise mentioned, 36 n-3,303 343 n. Pulchas, 468, 471 Pulcheria, Emperor, 1r, 14, 44, 139 Punishments, barbarous, x16-r7, rz93o, 188 RACE cleavage, 124-5 Radulf, 293 Radulph (Randolph), 303 Rambaud cited, 226 Rank, exemption from liabilities claimed by, 7, 9 Ravenna, capture of, r14 RegencyAbeyance of, under Constantine VII., 218 Importance of, in ninth and tenth centuries, x38-9 Regents, popular attitude towards, 209 Representative bodies, common characteristics of, 78-9 Retrenchment, Imperial efforts for, r7-r9 Reuben, King in Cilician Armenia, 463, 464. 472, 474 Reversions, purchase of, from the State, 1157 n. Revolutions(695). 94-5 100 7113),1104-5 ~7i6), ro5 (71:8),7o6-7 (820), r28-3i Revolutions, Byzantine, character of, 293,294 Rey in Hyrcania, 367 Rhedestus, wheat corner at, 308, 314 Roman Catholic priesthood, analogy from, 26 Roman lawEquitable administration of, under Basil, r8o Individualist and humanitarian character of, 145, 159-6o Local usage superseding, 122, 150. r6o Treason severely punished by, i6o Roman legislation, fiscal character of, 146 Roman society, disappearance of plutocratic basis of, r6r Romanus I. (Lecapenus), Emperor, Admiral oftheMeet,2oi-2, 417 ; favoured by Zoe, 203 ; created
516
INDEX
Romanus I, (eq#tinu4-
ftactaeoad'rWA 204 ; accession as Emperor, 2o5 ; Armenian policy of, ¢iq agrarian policy of, i46, Igq, 58 ; diplomacy with the Saracens, are-13 ; conciliatory foreign policy of, 2r3-:6 ; democratic sympathies of, 216-17 ; relations of, with Curcuas, 419 ; concessions of, to Moslems, 4x6 ; conspiracies against, 2ro ; fall of,
211 ; death of, 219 ; estimate of, 208, 2x6-17 ; genealogical table of family of, 207 ; period of, 194 ; Novels of, cited, 154 mentioned, 182, 291 Romanus II ., Emperor, accession of, 224 ; estimate and death of, 225, 227 ; Novels of, cited, 1154 Romanus III. (Argyrus), Emperor, marriage of,with Zoe, 259 ; fiscal policy of, z46, 259-60 ; reverse of, in the East, 26x-2; building mania of, 263 ; Armenian sympathies of, 433 ; ill-health of, 264 ; death of, 2o9; estimate of reign of, 263-4 Romanus IV. (Diogenes), Emperor, relations of, with Nicephoritzes, go7 ; disgrace and sudden elevation of, 301-2, 417 ; marriage with Eudocia, 226, 3or, 456 ; mixed troops of, 303 ; campaigns of, in the East, 457-8 ; ruffles Armenian spirit, 458 ; defeated at Manzikert and after, 304-5 ; blinding and death of, 305, 342 ; estimate of, 3o6 Romanus, brother of Sciertena, 272 Romanus, ?grandson of Romanus Lecapenus, 237 Ruffinus . 35, 38 Rflm, Sultanate ofDifficulties of (rto6-r2), 480 Founding of, 3116, 327-9 Revival of kingdom of (11175), 475 X .2 Soliman Viceroy of, 466 Russell of Balliol (Oursel), rising of, 3°8 - 11, 459 ; success against Bryennians, 314; status of, 449 ; ?poisoned by Nicephoritzes, 320 ; mentioned, 303 RussiaByzantine alliance with, against Bulgarians, 23x-2 Invasion of (94t), 214 Mirs of, X46 Russia (modern)Armenian Church protected by, 338 Autocracy of, r5-116, 22, 76 Bureaucracy of, 53 Church and Court influence in, 235 Elizabethan r6gime in, x63 Trade in, foreign control of, 157
Russians-
Anemas' success against, 228 Chersonese threatened by, 407 Defeats Dristra, a34 Georgian quarrei with, 426 Relationsoft of, with the Empire at end of tenth century, 237
SACELLARIUSDerivation of term, :2 : Office of, 92-3
Sahak, Prince of Handzith, 425 Sahak (Isaac), Prince of Paper6n, 462 Sahour, Prince of the Andsevatsians, 374 S. Gregory of Narec, 423-4 Saint Martin cited, 348, 408 St. Narses of Lambr6n, 469 St. Sophia as asylum, 3x9, 330 Saisan, 466 n., 480, 482-3 Salonica, capture of, under Leo VI ., 274 Samaria, capitulation of (821), 130 Samaritan revolt, 42, 62 Samaritan senators, 64 Samonas the Saracen, 187-9r Samuel (Bulgarian leader), 251-2, 294, 424-5 Samuel Alusianus, Prince of Bulgaria, 303 Samuel of Ani, cited, 321, 429, 470 ; quoted, 459 Samukh, 291, 292, 449, 453. 454 Sangarius River, battle near, 308-9 Sapor, general (xor6), 427, 43= Sapor the Persian-born, 379-80 Saracens (see also Arabs)Armenia under influence of (650), 337 Asia Minor at the mercy of (7o511), 102 Byzantine subjects tendering vassalage to, 1106, x82 Cyprus in occupation of, 1185 Hostilities between the Empire . andByzantine successes-(718), It' (tenth century), 227, 230 ; (under Constantine IX.), 258 Conon's activities, 387 Naval expeditions under Basil, x81 Romanus Ill.'s defeat (zo3o), 261-2 Saracen raiding-(sixth century), 365 (early eighth century), 1o3, io6 ; (eleventh century), 266 ; annual slave raids, 393 Leo III. acclaimed by, 494 Persians in alliance with (529),354-5 Religious feud in the empire conducive to success of, X23 Samonas the court favourite, r87-9r Spain, in, 376 Tarsus priest on side of, 226 Zoe's peace with, r99, 204
r
i
517
INDEX Saraces, a Sardou'sSabagas cited, 356 Sargis-Vestes, 430-1, 437 Sassanid dynasty, Arsacid hostility against, 337. .346 Sathas, Constantine, cited, 399 Sclavonic strain, increase in, under Constantine V., i17 Scleraena, 270-i, 273 Sclerus, Bardas, success of, against the Russians, 234 ; revolt of (976). 238-43, 423-4 ; relations with the Caliph, 244 ; with the revolted Phocas, 245 ; released, 246 Sclerus, Basil (son of Romanus), 257-8,26o Sclerus, Constantine, 242 Sclerus, Nicetas, 184 Sclerus, Romanus (son of Bardas), 239, 242. 245, 246 Sclerus, Romanus (31056), 292 Schismatic disaffection in sixth eentury, 42 Schlosser cited, 1316 Schlumberger cited, 226 ; estimate of, 423 n. Sclavinia, 486 Scylitzes cited, 7o Scymnia, 359 Sebast6, battle Of, 383 Sebastophorus, title of, 271 n.2 Zbflaoros, title of, 324
Sel7'uks (contsnued)Possessions of (eleventh century), 466 and n. Quiescence of, in Michael VIL's reign, 3x5-r6 Rifm, in . See Rflm. Theodora's reign, Eastern inroads during, 447-8 Vasparacan invaded by (ioz6),427 Western migrations of, irresistible, 463-4 Sembat I. King of Armenia, 413 Sembat, brother of Basil L, 408 Sembat, brother of Thomic, 415-16 Sembat, Governor of Edessa, 467 Sembat, son of Ashot I., 411 Sembat, son of Leo V., 402-3 Sembat, son of Vahan, 371, 372 Sembat, son of Varaz(firot, 376, 378 Sembat, son-in-law of Regent Bardas, 409 Sembat the Bagratid (d. 6or), 367, '368,370 Sembat the Bagratid, brother o£ Ashot (698), 381, 383-6 Sembat (Symbatius), 174 Semiramis legend, 348 Sempad (Simbat, Symbatios), revolt of (seventh century), 340 SenateBasil L, attitude towards, 178--9 Claims of, to privileged position, 76-7
Alezius' successes against, 465, 481 Alliances of, with the Empire or Armenia, 3x6, 318, 321, 327. 448, 449, 452, 460, 461. 467 Bryennius captured by, in battle of Calabrya, 32r--2 Cilician Armenians at war with (1107), 477 Comnenian success against (1057), 297 n-1 Constantine XII. sent against, 325 Feuds among, 466 n., 467-8, 473 n" Gradual penetration of, into Asia Minor; 310, 326-7 Indifference of, to religious forms, 469 Kingdoms ofCharacteristics of, 466 n. Situation of, as an enclave, 467 Lesser Asia desolated by (early twelfth century), 482 Manzikert besieged by, a second time, 447 Meliten6 sacked by (io58), 451 Methods of, 451 Mildness of rule of, 459. 469 Name of, imposed upon Roman territory, 465 Origin of, traditions as to, 347 n.2 Position of, among Turks, 327
Finlay's estimate of, criticised, 96--7 Functions ofAdvisory and examining, is Constans' definition of, 87-8 Curtailment of, 141 judicial, i2 Liturgical, 17 Imperial agents at feud with, 5 Impotence of, under .Leontius and two following reigns, 488-9 Justinian's attitude towards, 47, 64 Leo Ill.'s accession approved by, 494-5 Nicephorus II., relations with, 229 Opposition by, to central authority, 67-8 Powers of. See subheading Functions of Prestige of, renewed under Heraelius, 831, 86 Revival of, under Michael III., 134-5 Treasury work withdrawn from, by Michael VI., 288 Senators (official class), 5, 7, 8 Sennacherib, King of Vasparacan, 248,426-9 Sennacherib (Esarhaddon), parricides of. 341. 347
ZeflaTT&a,ros, title of, 468 Seleucid monarchy, 349 Sel)uks_
VOL. II .
Composition of (285-337), 6 Continuity of policy assured by, 18 Detachment of members of, 162-3
2 K2
518
INDEX
Revolt of, against Michael VII., 311 Vassalage of, to the Empire, 213 Sergius, Magister militum, 379-80 Sergius, Patriarch, 86, 379 Servia, revolt of, against Michael IV., 266 Severus Alexander, Emperor, 3, 90 Scylitza (Cedrenus), quoted, 391, 403 Shalmanezer II ., 348 n. Shalmanezw Ill., 348 n. Shogun system, 127, 133, 207. 345, Si422, 428 cilyAlliance with, under Michael IV., 266 Loss of, under Michael IV., 265-6 Saracen acquisition of (827), 403 SiLntiarius, title of, 359 SimonyJustinian's abolition of, 56 and nn .Q, s Legal fiction of, 3o Sinecures, purchase of, x57 n. Singara, Roman surrender of, 350 Sinjar, 466 n. Sisarban, battle near, 367 Sisinnius eighth centur ), 114 Sisinnius (tenth centu;T 224 Sitas, 368 Sittas, 354, 356 Slar-Khorasan, the, 452-4 Slave-armies, policy of, 366 SlavsBasil L's policy as to, xsx Constantine V. . defeated by (760), 114 Incursion of, effects of, r6o Romanus L's policy regarding, 213 Smoke tax, 235 Socialism, 352-3 Socialist revolution (820), x28-31 Solacon, battle of, 366 SolimanL,Sultan,alliance of,withthe Empire, 318,321,327,460 ; conquests of, 466 ; secures all Asiatic provinces, 329 ; death of, 475 n.2 Soothsay~'ng, 409 Sophen6, 349 SpainGothic remnant in, 376 Loss of, to the Empire, 9o-1 Palace influence in, afterPhilip II., 188 Visigothic power in, origin of, 327 Spondylas, Duke of Antioch,256, 261 State controlIndividualist enterprise compared with, x61-2 Justification for, 62 State monopolyChurch as counterpoise to, z24, x55, x645 Dangers of, x65 State service. See Civil service
Statesmen, Byzantine, compared with English, 308 Stauracms (895), x88 Stauracius (eunuch), 39 -7 Stephanus, Patriarch P"3), 182, Stephe, 1183 Albanian Patriarch (x082), Step463 e, brother-in"law of John Orphanotrophus, 265 Stephen, Governor of Vasparacan, 44r Stephen, King of Iberia, 364 Stephen, Master of the Palace, 197, 2ro Stephen, son of Romanus L, 2o8, 211, 212, 219 Stephen the Persian, 9r-3 Stephen the Sebastophorus, 272-3 Stoicism, equity ideal of, 4 Strabospondyles, Leo, 290, 293 Stratioticus. See Michael VI . Studium, monastery of, 260, 294, Styli319 ns, Tzaoutzes, 187-8 Sub-infeudation, 359 Suidas, quoted, 93 Suleiman. See Soliman Sultan, application of title, 466 n. Surena (57x), 363 Surena (628), 372 Surnames, gradual formation of, 184 n., 235 n. Suzerainty . of the Empire, vassal states under, 354. 357 Swania, 359. 362 Syc6, Imperial defeat at, 11x5 Symeon, cited, x99 Symeon, Captain of the Night Watch under Constantine IX., 256, 259 Symeon, Joint Commander of the Foreign Legion, 203 Symeon, King of Bulgaria (893-927), 185, 196, 198, 200, 202, 2x2-113 Synesius cited, 47 Synnadenus, 330 SyriaJohn Zimisces' successes in, 236 Pashaliks of, made tributary by Nicephorus, 230 Syriac chronicler, anonymous, cited, 374 n, TACrxuscited, 196,338,349 ; quoted, 362 Tadjat, 392. 433 Tailu, 466 n., 475 n"2 Tancred, 476, 477, 480 Tarchaniotes, Basil, 293~ 3x3 321 TaronIndcpendence of, 370-2 Mamigonian settlement in, 352 n. Ravaging of, 358. 365. 374 Submission of, to the Empire, 4x5-116
INDEX Tarsus-
Abel.Kharp's acquisition of, 435 Impertal connection with (end of eleventh century), 476 Saracen fleet from, defeated, 227 Story of unfrocked priest near, 226 Tarsus, Emir of, raiding by, x8z Tat, 312 Taticius (? Tadjat), 468 Tatzates, General of the Buccella392. 394, 395 TaxationCollection of taxes, Justinians provision regarding, 43-4, 65 isaurian period, increase in, 151 Rich, of the, x46, 147, r5r-2, 162 Smoke tax, 235 Tazates, 2ro-ix Tchamtchian cited, 368 n. Tchemekkik, meaning of, 420 Ten-shahpour, 363 Tephrick (Paulician stronghold), Vo Terbelis, King of Bulgarians, roe, 103, rr2, 488 Thecla, sister of Michael Ill., 168, I6g, 172, 182 Thematic system, 478 ; Leo Ill.'s dealings with, rro Theoctistus (chief minister of Michael 111.), 170 . 407 Theoctistus (ro3o), 262, 263 Theodora I., 37, 411, 1193. 360 Theodora II ., Empress (wife of Theophilus), family of, 166-7, r6g, 404 ; makes her peace with the Church, 134, x64 ; regency of, 135, 225, 287 ; wealth left by, x65, x76 ; retirement of, x7o Theodora III., Empress, declines marriage with Romanus, 259 ; proclaimed Joint-Empress, 268 ; joint rule of, with Zoe, 269 ; retires to her convent, 269 ; resides in the palace, 27o ; emerges on death of Constantine X., 280 ; administration, 287 ; eunuchr6gime under, 18g; Armenian policy of, 446 ; Eastern events in reign of, 447 et seq. ; cashiers Bryennius, 291 ; otherwise thentioned, 258, 275 n. Theodore, brother of Heraclius I., 373-4 Theodore (eunuch-782), 394 Theodore (eunuch-1057), 292 Theodore (Thoros), King in Cilician Armenia, 4711-3 and n., 477, 48 : Theodore, Prince of the Reschdounians, 373-6, 378 Theodore the Santabarene, z82, x83, 187 Theodorus (Joint-Commander of the Foreign Legion), 203 Theodorus (Sacellarius) ; .92, 373, Theadorus (tutor of Constantine VIL), 203, 295
519
Theodosian Code, value of, 16, as
Theodosiopolis, 215, 353, 358 x.,'39r, 4r6 Theodosius I., Emperor, 2o, 350, 362 Theodosius II ., Emperor, civil service in reign of, 5 ; .New University of, ii ; Armenian war under, 351 ; otherwise mentioned, 7, g, 14, 38 n., 139, 336339 Theodosius III ., Emperor, accession of. 105, 49x-2 ; Leo's contempt for, 494 ; fall of, 106, 492 ; estimate of reign of, xo6 ; mentioned, 112, 119 Theodotus, ex-Abbot, 92, 93 Theodulus of Synnada, 324. n., 330 Theophanes, source of writings of, 49r ; quoted, 70, 89-coo, 9r, 10i, 398. 400> 489-9I . 494-5 ; cited, 380, 388 ; continuators of, quoted, x29, 167 and n.2, 184 n., 193 . 405 ; estimate of, :o9, rz6, 28o Theophano, Empress, regency of, 225 ; slighted by the Senate, 229 ; second marriage of, 230, 287 ; neglected by Nicephorus, 23, ; recalled (976), 239 ; charges against, 2119 and n. Theophano, Empress (wife of Otto IL), i6g n. Theophilus, Emperor, marriage of, 166, 4o4 ; Manuel's relations with, 167, 405 ; revolt against, 133-4 ; genealogy of family obtaining chief places under, r6g ; wealth left by, x65 ; estimate of, 175 ; otherwise mentioned, 69, 172, 181, 1182, 193, 341 Theophilus of Byzantium cited, 364 Theophobus, 166, 374 . 404-7 469 Theophylact (finance-official), 271 Theophylact, kinsman of Lecapenus, 415 Theophylact, Patriarch, 182,183 ; estimate of, 155 ; cited, 711-2, 363. 370 Theophylact the Unbearable, father of Lecapenus, 185 n., 201, 417 Thomas, Patriarch, 92 Thomas, son of Mousmar, 401, 403 Thomas the Slav, 127, 129 Thornic (930). 415 Thornic (Tornicius), Leo, 451, 461 ; rebellion of, 273-7, 291. 293 Thoros (Theodore), King in Cilician Armenia, 471-3, 477, 481 Thothos, 436 ThraceBulgarian ravages in, 251 Mardaites transplanted to, 382 . Romanus L's policy regarding, 213 Tiberius I., Emperor, 113 Tiberius II . (Constantine), Emperor, Justin's speech at adoption of, 70-2 ; policy of, 72, 75 ; negotiations with Chosroes, 364, 365 ; mentioned, 45, 486
520
INDEX
Tiberius III . (Apsimar), Emperor,
Valentinian I., Emperor, x2o, 163
army reorganisation. by, xx8-ig ; Mardaites transplanted by, 382 ; estimate of, lot, 105 Tiberius IV., Emperor, go Tiberius V., Emperor, xr2 Tiberius (Emperor in Sicily), xxx Tiglath Pileser, 348 and n. Tigranes (Dikran), 348. 349 Tiridates, King of Armenia, 352 n". 362, 4o8 ; conversion of, to Christianity, 337, 345'-6 Tornicius . See Thornie Togrul 444, 447. 448, 453 Toleration, absence of, in ninth century, 130-x, x35-7 Totemism, x96 Toukhars, 384 Toutoush, 466 n., 467-8, 470-1, 475 x-2 TraitorsLeniency showntowards, by Byzantine Emperors, xz, x78, 246, 248, 273, 276, 278, 300, 361, 47x .47? Penalties against, under Roman law, x60 Trajan, Emperor, 35 n" 1 Transitional nature of sixth century, 45, 49 Transplantation ofcommunities, 144, 364, 382, 391, 424, 493 Trebisond Y of8,471-2 Trefoil family, 398 Tripoli, Byzantine relations with, 262. 263 . 266 Troglita, John, 361 Tsin-Hwang-Ti, Emperor of China, x09 TurkeyName, origin of, 465 Trade in, foreign control of, 157 Turks. See Seljuks Tutach, 310-x1 Tzanni, 356, 361-2 Tzath, King of the Lazi, 354 Tzimisees. Sea John Zimisces
Valerian, Emperor, 350 Varanes (Vabran, Bahram), Generalissimo of Armenia, 428, 431, 439-40 Varanes Ii ., 351 Varangians-Eastern posts of, 446-7 Mutiny of, against Romanus IV., against Nicephorus 302-3 ; IIL, 322 Varazdirot (son of Sembat), 368, 372, 376 Vard (Bardas) (57x), 363 Vard (Bardas), son of Armenian commander-in-chief, 378, 381 Vardan (634). 373 Vardan, commander of Armeniacs (772), 391Vardan Philippicus). See Philippicus Vardar ~Axius), battle near, 323 Vardariots, 468 Vartan, 363,364 Vasak, Duke of Antioch, son of Gregory Aiaycvrpos, 452, 461 Vasak of Betchni, father of Gregory PAT-POT, 427 Vasilatzes. See Basilacius VasparacaniaArzrunian family in, 336 Imperial alliances with, 199, 235 Seljuks resisted in (xor6), 427 Seljukian pillage of (ro48), 441 Supremacy Of, 412 Surrender of, to Rome, 428 Venality of office, 28, 30 Verina, 12 Vested interests, x80 Vestes, meaning of title, 430 n. Vicars, Justinian's abolition of, 56 and n.3 Village communities, x45-8, 150 Villeins, x48 Vitalian,-x2, 25, 85 Vitiges, Gothic King, 355 Vizierate, necessityfor (eleventh century), 306-7
URARTU (Ararat), 348, 376
WAGANCHI, 352
Tiophk (Dzophk); fortress of, 474,48o
Uzes, 299, 303,314t 321
VAHAN of Taron (tenth century), 416 Vahan(err. Manuel) (Mamtgonianseventh century), 372, 374 Vahan, Prince, son of Sembat, 374 Vahan the Mamigonian, Prince (fifth -t-Y)- 352. 363 Vahan the Wolf, Prince of Talon (605), 370-31 Vahanic, Patriarch, 420, 422 Vahca, fortress of, 474 Vabran. See Varanes Vakhtang, 371. 372 Val-arsaces, King of Armenia, 349 Valens, 327
Vladimir, 234
Wages of artisans, State interference regarding, 6x-2 Warfare, Byzantine, feudal character of, 314, 325-6 Weapons. See Arms Wheat manipulato0,301 Wilamowitz-M611endorf ted, 346 William of Tyre cited, 476 XIPHIAS, Nicephorus, 248, 252, 260 Xiphilin cited, 176 ZzNo, Emperor, 12, 14, 18, 84 Zimisces. See John Zimisces Zoe I., Empress(daughter ofTzaoutzes Stylianus), r85, x87, z88
INDEX Zoe, Empress (daughter of Constan-
tine XI.), neglected by heruncle, 258 ; marriage of, with Romanus, 259 ; intrigue of, with Michael IV., 261 ; hasty marriage with him, 265 ; ill-health of husbands of, 264 ; consents to adoption of an heir, 267 ; disgraced and reinstated with Theodora, 268 ; joint rule of, with Theodora, 269 ; marriage with Constantine Monomachus, 27o ; death of, 278' estimate of, 282 Zoe, Empress (mother of Constantine
521 VIL), banishment of, by Alex-
ander, x96 ; recall andsagacious administration of, 198-200. 225. 287, 413 ; policy Of, 253 ; peace with the Saracens, r99 . 2o4 ; spares Lecapenus, 202 ; attitude of, towards Phocas family, 203 ; reported attempt of, against Romanus, 2o4 ; expulsion of, to convent, 205 ; otherwise mentioned, 139, r4=, 229 Zoe, sister of Constantine XII., 3117 Zonaras, quoted, 68-9, 93-4, 95, 452, 489-92 ; cited, 9o; io9, 391
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