Part 3

But in spite of his great power, in many ways he was a democratic emperor who was elected or at least chosen by a process carefully set down by law. First he had to be named by either the senate or the army. Then he had to be approved by whichever of those two bodies that had not named him in the first place. Finally he had to be hailed by the people. (This was true even when the emperor seized power or when an emperor named his son co-emperor so that he would be sure to succeed him. He still had to be approved and hailed.) But once the emperor was elected, he was “the emperor chosen by God,” for the Byzantines firmly believed that God guided them in everything they did. From then on, it was not only treason but wicked and sinful to oppose the emperor. That is, unless you were successful. If you led a successful revolution, it meant that God had chosen you to take the old emperor’s place!

The empress—the Augusta, or _basilissa_, as she was also called—was almost equally important. To be sure, in the long history of the Byzantine Empire, only three women actually mounted the throne to rule in their own name, and only one of these amounted to anything. This was the wicked Irene who wanted to marry Charlemagne and who blinded her own son so she could stay in power. However, she did not call herself empress. She called herself emperor of the Romans just as if she had been a man.

But even though she rarely ruled, the empress was not shut up in a harem, and many empresses had great power and even greater influence.

Ariadne, the widow of an early emperor, went before the people and told them that her husband was dead. “Choose us a new ruler!” they clamored. She named a palace official, and then she married him. He was a very good ruler.

Zoe, the daughter of another emperor, did even better. She married three men, and each in turn became emperor.

More than that. The nephew of her second husband persuaded her to adopt him and name him her co-emperor. Then he had her hair shorn and shipped her off to the Princes Islands, in the Sea of Marmara, as a nun.

The crowds surged around the palace. “Where is our lovely lady,” they shouted, “whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather ruled before her?” The usurper had to bring her back, but even that did not save him. He ended in a monastery himself.

Saint Theodora (the wife of an emperor and the mother of one) used her influence to end a religious dispute that had disturbed the state for more than 100 years, while another Theodora, who was far from a saint, saved it from revolution.

This happened when the Greens and the Blues (the rival political parties) joined forces and revolted against Justinian, the greatest Byzantine emperor of all. After they had burned much of the city, they surged into the Circus and called on the emperor to abdicate.

The mighty Justinian, who had even ordered a ship ready for a quick escape, was about to give in when suddenly his empress, Theodora, stood beside him. She was an ex-circus girl, one of the people herself.

“You can do what you want to,” she told him, her eyes flashing. “I am going to stay here. Anyone who puts on the crown must never take it off. If I die, I am going to be buried in imperial purple!”

The emperor was ashamed of himself.

“Drive them back to their warrens!” he ordered two of his toughest generals.

Within hours, the riots were put down.

But even when the empress did not do things like this, she was very important. For this reason a widower emperor remarried as soon as possible. Leo the Philosopher married four times and got into almost as much trouble as Henry VIII. If an emperor didn’t remarry, he made his daughter the Augusta.

“When there is not an Augusta,” wrote a Byzantine, “it is not possible to celebrate holidays or give banquets or entertainments in the manner prescribed by law.”

That may not seem important to us, but it was very important to the Byzantines. Since the emperor was God’s representative on earth, every official act of his life had to be like a church service, and in almost every one of the more than eighty occasions described in detail in an instruction book for emperors called _The Book of Ceremonies_, the empress took part.

It was something to see the royal pair on any great Byzantine holiday, for example, May 11, when they celebrated the founding of the city.

On this day the statue of Constantine the Great was paraded through the city in a golden chariot drawn by white mules, and the emperor sat in the Hippodrome waiting to pay honor to it. He was clad in robes that literally glittered. His principal garment was a tunic which reached almost to his ankles. This was called the _scaramangion_ and was so stiff with brocade that it could have stood by itself. Over this was a shorter garment called the _saigon_. It was purple, gold-embroidered, and seeded with pearls. On his head he wore the _stemmata_, or imperial crown. It twinkled with rubies and sapphires of the purest ray serene. On his feet were the _campagia_, or special boots that only the emperor could wear. These too were of imperial purple, although some people say this imperial purple was really a deep crimsony red.

The empress sat at his side, just as splendid as he. Her garments were much like his, but on her crown was a plume made of precious stones. She wore earrings that dangled far below her shoulders, and sometimes a neckpiece made of oval or pear-shaped pearls. If he was a solid gold emperor, she was a solid gold empress too.

Yet in spite of all the splendor and glory (and this is only a little bit of it), the Byzantine emperor did not have to be royally born. In the Byzantine Empire it was just as easy to rise from a hovel to the throne as it is to be born in humble circumstances and become President of the United States.

Many of the emperors did.

An early emperor had been a butcher. Another had been a swineherd from Macedonia, and the great Justinian was this swineherd’s nephew. The savage Phocas was originally a centurion (a top sergeant). Still another had once been a donkey trader who moved from one country fair to another. Basil I was raised as a Balkan farm boy. He was very tall and strong and attracted the attention of the reigning emperor because he could tame horses. A later emperor had been a petty officer in the navy. Still another was originally a dockyard worker.

Many of the empresses were humbly born too. Besides Theodora, the circus girl, there was one who had been a cook, and a third who was the daughter of a saloonkeeper. Even Saint Theodora was brought up in poverty because her father, who had once been a courtier, had given all his money to the poor.

Saint Theodora became empress when the emperor picked his bride by following an old custom of the Byzantine emperors. Wishing to marry, he sent messengers throughout his realm, telling them to bring back the most beautiful young women they could find. Seventeen were paraded before him, and when the one he was about to choose annoyed him by a flippant answer she made, he chose Theodora.

Theodora did not intend to stay poor like her father. One day, her husband, the emperor, looked out of the window and saw a rich, heavily laden merchant vessel sail in and tie up to a wharf.

“I wonder who owns it,” he mused.

“It is mine,” said the empress.

The emperor flew into a fury. _His_ wife should not be engaged in trade like some huckster. He made her sell it, but he did let her keep the profits.

Because these rulers were the emperors chosen by God, the Byzantines bowed their knee to them as the ancient Egyptians had to the Pharaohs. But because they were from the people, and also because the Byzantines had sharp tongues and liked to be sarcastic, the people sometimes gave their rulers a rough time.

There were more than 100 emperors in the long period of the Byzantine Empire, and many of them were given nicknames. Some of these nicknames were far from flattering.

Here are just a few: Justinian Nose-Cut-Off. (This was Justinian II, not the great Justinian.) Constantine the Stable Boy. Michael the Stutterer. Michael the Drunkard. Constantine Born-in-the-Purple. Basil the Bulgar Slayer. Michael Thinks-He’s-a-Soldier. Even one empress had a nickname; Leo the Philosopher’s fourth wife was called Zoe Black Eyes.

The emperors had to put up with sarcastic epigrams, disrespectful poems, and uncomplimentary stories. Here is one of them: Michael Thinks-He’s-a-Soldier had a passion for city planning, but he hated to spend money. One day the Byzantines saw a principal avenue all torn up. The pavement had been removed and workmen were everywhere.

“What is happening?” asked one of them. “Oh, yes! I remember! That’s where the emperor lost one of his halfpenny dice when he was a small boy. He’s tearing up the pavement to find it!”

But in spite of all this, or maybe because of it, the Byzantine state was about as solid as was possible. Not even revolutions could really shake it.

One reason may have been the fact that since the emperors came from every class and were often changing, the Byzantines were constantly getting new and vigorous blood in their government. But another reason was the wonderful and well-organized body of bureaucrats who helped the emperor govern the empire. When there was a strong emperor, these men carried out his orders. When there was a weak emperor, they did the best they could, until a new, strong emperor mounted the throne.

There was really nothing like this group in any other government in the world until modern times. They were trained public servants, headed by high officials who were appointed by the emperor.

The most important of these officials was the Logothete of the Dromos. (The word _logothete_ really means accountant, but it is like a secretary in the United States Cabinet.) He was also known as the Grand Logothete. He was secretary of state, minister of police, and secretary of the interior.

Besides that, there was a Logothete of the Treasury who was like the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States; a Logothete of the Military Chest, who was the paymaster general of the army and navy; and a Logothete of the Flocks and Herds who was in charge of all the vast imperial estates. Among other things, he ran the imperial horse farms where practically all the horses needed by the empire and the army were raised.

There was also the Sacellerius, or Controller General; the Quaestor, or Minister of Justice; the Grand Domestic, or commander in chief of the army; and the Grand Drungarius, or secretary of the navy. These are only a few of the most important officials.

Under these department heads—and even more important—were the humble clerks who really did the work of government. These clerks were banded together into a body called the _logothesia_ which was almost like our modern civil service. They were well paid, and even the lowest-ranking workers had unlimited opportunities for graft. In those days, graft was not considered dishonest; it was more like the tip that you give to a waiter for his service.

The clerks were also rewarded with honors. Every Byzantine working for the government had two titles. One described his job, such as chief clerk to the third assistant to the _eparch_, or lord mayor of Constantinople. The other was the rank given to him to recognize his services. Around the emperor alone there were twenty-six ranks, ranging in order of importance from _caesar_ down to _nipsistarios_, a man who sprinkled symbolic holy water on the sovereign. In the city and throughout the empire were sixty other ranks. The badge that was the symbol of each of these was as important to a Byzantine as his pay.

It was this government, and most of all its lower-rank employees, that really ran the Byzantine Empire, for nobody could get on without them. Emperors and even logothetes came and went, but the Byzantine civil service clerks were always there. If an army had to be sent to an overseas province, the clerks knew how many ships and how much time it would take to get there. If there was a famine, they knew how many bushels of wheat were needed to feed Constantinople, and where to get them.

They were for the most part plain citizens from all over the Byzantine state who had come to the capital not to get rich but just to make a living. They were noisy. They liked to argue. They were quarrelsome and jealous. As they jostled through the crowded streets toward their homes or pushed their way onto the crowded Mesé to buy silk for their wives or food for their larder, they reeked of garlic and highly spiced fish. But they kept the empire alive.

A ROMAN ARMY ON HORSEBACK

The army kept the empire going too.

It called itself the Roman army; and this Roman army of the Greek Byzantine Empire was about as efficient as any body of armed men between the time of Julius Caesar and the days of gunpowder and artillery.

Actually, though, Julius Caesar would have been astonished if he had seen it. Who, he would have asked, were these swarthy-skinned, black-bearded men with their quick and glinting Asiatic eyes? The commands seemed to be given in Latin, but the accent made them hard to understand. Why were so many of them on prancing, spirited horses?

Caesar would have remembered his legions like the famous Tenth Legion with which he landed in Britain. Rome had conquered the world with her legions. The legion was a body of from 4,000 to 6,000 citizen-soldiers. Except for a small handful who were mounted for scouting, the legion was made up entirely of foot soldiers. The tough men who fought in its ranks were clean-shaven, and each one carried a large shield. He wore a round helmet and a leather cuirass, and was armed with a short Spanish thrusting sword (that is, you didn’t hack with it) and a short throwing spear called a _pilum_.

But when in 378 A.D., a mighty Roman emperor was surrounded and crushed by barbarian horsemen in a Balkan valley not more than 150 miles from Constantinople, the infantry and the legion did not look unbeatable any more.

The Byzantines decided not to rely on it.

So first Caesar would have seen a large array of well-equipped men on sturdy chargers. These were the heavy cavalry, later known as _cataphracts_. They were as renowned as any Byzantine troops. They wore steel caps, and on each cap was a crest showing the colors of that _bandon_, or horse regiment. They also wore long mail shirts, steel gauntlets, steel shoes, and sometimes a light surcoat. Even the horses, at least those of the officers and the men in the front rank, had steel head armor and breastplates. For weapons, each man had a broadsword, a dagger, a bow and a quiver of arrows, and a long lance with a banderole, also in the _bandon_ colors. They could charge like knights, or by acting as bowmen, they could fight a distant enemy.

Then Caesar would have seen the light troopers, or _trapezidae_. These too were cavalry, but they were the light cavalry. They did carry shields, but for body armor they wore only a cuirass of very light mail or horn. For weapons, they had only a lance and a sword.

There was still infantry in the Byzantine army, but it was now pretty unimportant. It was used mostly for holding ground which the cavalry had won. But even the infantry was divided into two groups. The heavy infantry were about as well armored as the _cataphracts_. For weapons, they carried a short, heavy battle ax and a dagger. They could stand off a barbarian cavalry charge. The light infantry wore no armor, but carried long-range bows. The Byzantine method of fighting was something like the German blitzkrieg, with cavalry taking the place of swiftly moving tanks and the foot soldiers following behind.

The Byzantines did much more than change their army into something swift and moving, however. They did more than divide the old clumsy legion into smaller units almost like our modern regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons. They spent a lot of time thinking about the whole business of fighting and may even have been the inventors of carefully planned strategy. They would not have been at all surprised at our modern war colleges where even generals are taught in the classroom what to do on the field of battle.

As a matter of fact, at least three Byzantine emperors wrote very good books on the art of war. These books included much more than just how to equip and drill an army. They also told the general exactly how he should fight his battles, and they emphasized that he must have a different kind of warfare for each different kind of foe.

The Franks, for example—and by the Franks, the Byzantines meant German and north Italian peoples quite as much as French and Normans—believe, said the books, that a retreat under any circumstances is dishonorable. Better die than show your back to the enemy. They are also very careless about outposts and scouts. So if you are fighting the Franks, you should try to trap them in a place where they will be at a disadvantage. Then you can annihilate them.

With the Turks—and by the Turks, the Byzantines also meant the Hungarians, the Patzinaks, and all the people of the Asiatic steppes—it is another matter, the books continued. They are light horsemen who carry bow and arrow as well as javelin and scimitar. They are hard to surprise because they always post mounted sentinels. Also you must be careful if you pursue them, for they don’t stay defeated but rally quickly. However, the heavy Byzantine _cataphracts_ can ride them down and cut them to pieces. They are supposed to do so. And the Turks do not dare attack the Byzantine infantry because of its strong and powerful bows.

The Slavs, on the other hand, are only dangerous when they are led by Bulgarian khagans or by viking princes, and even then they are only really dangerous when they are in the hills. The thing to do, said the strategy books, is to lure them to the plains in hope of plunder. And then destroy them.

But the really difficult enemy faced by the Byzantines were the newly risen Arabs, or Saracens.

These wild sheiks from the desert were fanatically brave, for Mohammed had taught them that the easiest way to get to heaven was to die killing the unbeliever. Their numbers were limitless, for after they had conquered Egypt and Syria they drew into their ranks every discontented person in the Middle East. Once a year they poured, like a horde of locusts, through the gates of the Taurus Mountains into what today is southern Turkey. Nothing, including the Byzantine army, could stop them.

But fortunately, if they were wild and brave, they were also greedy for plunder, and besides that they could not stand cold or rain. So once a year too, usually in October or November, they turned back again, and their mules and camels, loaded down with booty, could not move back as fast as they had come.

“This is the way to beat them,” said one of the strategy books. “Always know where they are. Whether you are eating, taking a bath or sleeping, never turn away a man who says that he has information. Whether he is a freeman or a slave—no matter who he is!”

And then track them down, catching them in the narrow, snowy, chilly mountain passes if possible. They won’t fight well when they are trapped and shivering. Or if they don’t go back of their own accord, raid their own country and in this way bait them back. But whenever you fight them, or anyone else, be sure you know what you are doing. Above all, don’t throw everything into the battle at once. The general with the last reserves always wins.

The Byzantines also taught their generals not only how to fight but when to fight, and also when not to fight, which was even more important. They believed that it was better to be safe than sorry. The Byzantine general was told that he must never be rash, and above everything he must never throw his troops into battle where they might be killed or wounded if he could win the day by stratagems or tricks.

To be sure, he must always keep his pledged word. If he didn’t, who would believe him next time? And the lives of captives must always be spared if possible. One day they might be on the Byzantine side.

But it was all right to send an officer under a flag of truce and have him pretend that he wanted to discuss terms for surrender, when he was really acting as a spy. In the meantime, the Byzantines could bring up reinforcements. It was all right to forge letters showing that an enemy commander was turning traitor and then arrange to have them fall into his general’s hands. It was all right to disguise soldiers as innocent herdsmen driving bleating sheep and lowing cattle, and have them lure the enemy into a prepared ambush. Obviously, a feigned retreat was a recognized part of the game. Even a real retreat did not disgrace a Byzantine general, although the Byzantines were just as brave and proud as anyone else. At least the general who retreated would have some soldiers left and could fight and win another day.

The Byzantines also believed that if you wanted a good army, you must pay it well and treat it even better. A general’s salary could be as much as forty pounds of gold a year, and even a recruit had cash in his pocket. When a soldier served his time he might also get a grant of land. There was a well-organized supply department, and the soldiers were always sure of beans, cheese, and wine, to say nothing of what they could plunder from the country. A special corps of engineers pitched their tents for them and set up huge baths. The soldiers were even allowed to have slaves and servants. The army itself provided a groom for every four cavalrymen, and every sixteen foot soldiers had an attendant who drove a cart carrying all they needed. There was even an ambulance corps of stretcher bearers and surgeons. The stretcher bearers were paid a gold coin for every wounded man they brought from the field.

This is what the Byzantine regular army was like, but besides that, especially in the early days, there were regiments or even whole tribes of Huns, Goths, Alans, and other barbarians who fought for the emperor under their own chieftains. Later on, particularly in Asia Minor, there were also the great feudal lords, or Border Men.

There is a wonderful Byzantine poem called _Digenes Akrites_ about one of these men. Its hero is Basil Digenes Akrites, son of an Arab emir named Monsour and a Greek lady of the noble Dukas family. For this reason he is called Digenes Akrites, which means “border man of two races.”

Basil was a valiant knight like Roland and Sir Lancelot, and in spite of his Arab father, he was a faithful Christian. And so when he wasn’t slaying lions, fighting cattle thieves, or rescuing lovely damsels, he was ready to join forces with the emperor and lead his men against the infidel.

But he only did this when he thought the emperor was right! When one of the emperors came to visit his castle he was quite willing to give him a lecture on how an emperor should act.

Both the barbarians, with their hard-riding horsemen, and the valiant border lords played an important part in defending the Byzantine Empire from its enemies, but the Byzantines never really trusted either group. A barbarian chieftain was far too likely to ride off with his hordes and found a kingdom of his own as Theodoric had done in Italy. A border lord from Asia Minor was too likely to try to become emperor himself. Indeed, more than one had.