CHAPTER XIV

Chapter 147,031 wordsPublic domain

THE CONTEST OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE AND THE CALIPHATE

641-717

Dynastic troubles after the death of Heraclius—Wars of Constantinus (Constans II.) with the Caliphate—His publication of the ‘Type’—His invasion of Italy and war with the Lombards—Reign of Constantine V.—His successful defence of Constantinople—Tyranny of Justinian II.—His deposition—Usurpations of Leontius and Tiberius—Justinian restored—Anarchy follows his murder—Rise of Leo the Isaurian.

At the moment of the death of the unfortunate Heraclius the East-Roman Empire was left in a most disadvantageous position for resisting the vigorous attack which the Moslems were pressing against its remaining provinces. Yielding to the influence of his ambitious wife Martina, the old emperor had left the imperial power divided between Heraclius Constantinus, the offspring of his first wife, and Martina’s eldest son Heracleonas. The elder of the young emperors was twenty-nine, the younger only sixteen. [Sidenote: Troubles at Constantinople, 641.] Their joint reign opened ill, for Heraclius Constantinus and his stepmother, who acted in all things as the representative of her young son, were at open discord. But before three months had elapsed Heraclius Constantinus died; it is probable that his decease was due to natural causes, but the Byzantine public believed otherwise, and Martina was openly accused of having poisoned her stepson. Her conduct was not such as to render the charge improbable, for she at once proclaimed her son Heracleonas sole emperor, although Heraclius Constantinus had left two young boys behind him.

This was more than the Constantinopolitans would stand. Rioting at once broke out, and the senate, which about this time assumes an independent attitude, very different from its usual obedient impotence, made the most strongly worded representations to Martina and her son, threatening the worst consequences if the sons of Heraclius Constantinus were excluded from the succession. In terror of their lives Martina and Heracleonas bowed to the popular will, and allowed the boy Constantinus to be crowned as the colleague of his uncle; he was no more than eleven years old at his coronation.

The joint rule of the two lads, under the regency of Martina, lasted less than a year. In September 642 the senate executed a _coup d’état_; Martina and her son were seized and banished to Cherson. On the accusation that they had poisoned Heraclius Constantinus they were cruelly mutilated: the tongue of the empress and the nose of Heracleonas were slit—the first instance of such a treatment of royal personages, but by no means the last in Byzantine history.

THE HOUSE OF HERACLIUS.

[Sidenote: Constans II., 641-68.] Constantinus IV., or as he was more usually but less accurately styled Constans II.,[37] thus became the sole ruler of the East ere he had finished his twelfth year. The real government was, for some time, carried on by the senate—a fact which vouches both for the loyalty of the empire to the house of Heraclius and for the great rise in the power of the senate during the last two or three generations. In earlier days there is no doubt that some powerful general would have seized the throne. But Constantinus, though his minority was not untroubled by revolts, was permitted to grow up to man’s estate, and to assume in due course the personal control of the empire.

Footnote 37:

There is no doubt that his real name was Constantinus, or in full Flavius Heraclius Constantinus. But the Western historians, and some of those of the East, call him Constans. Probably this was a mere convenience to distinguish him from his father, Heraclius Constantinus, and his son, Constantine IV. (or V.).

It is astonishing that more evils did not come upon the State during the boyhood of Constantinus. The energetic caliph Omar was still urging on the Arabs to conquest, and with no firm hand at the helm it might have been expected that the ship of the East-Roman state would have run upon the breakers. But though the Saracens still continued to make way, the rate of their progress was checked. Alexandria, the last Christian stronghold in Egypt, had fallen during the short reign of Heracleonas. The resources of the empire were drained for an attempt to recover it, and in the second year of Constantinus a considerable expedition, under a general named Manuel, fell unexpectedly upon the place and retook it. The Arab governor of Egypt, the celebrated Amrou, had to besiege the place for more than a year before it yielded. Irritated by its long resistance he cast down its walls and massacred many of its inhabitants. It would seem that the Saracen arms were for the next few years more engrossed in the final conquest of eastern Persia than in assaulting the Roman empire. It was not till Yezdigerd, the last of the Sassanian kings, had been defeated and stripped of the farthest corners of his dominion that the Arabs turned once more to the West.[38]

Footnote 38:

The final subjection of Persia was not complete till 652, though the battle of Nehavend, the last which Yezdigerd risked in the open field, was in 641.

[Sidenote: War in Africa.] The only point of the Roman frontier which was seriously attacked was Africa. The sandy waste between Egypt and Barca had less terrors for the Arab than for any other invader. Encouraged by the fact that Gregory the exarch of Africa had rebelled and proclaimed himself emperor, so that he could hope for no aid from Constantinople, the Saracen general, Abdallah Abu-Sahr crossed the Libyan desert and attacked Barca. Gregory came out against him, but was defeated and slain: Barca and Tripoli fell to the invaders, but Carthage and the rest of Africa relapsed into allegiance to Constantinus, when the usurper was slain. The Saracen frontier stood still at the Syrtes (646-7), and it took half a century more of fighting before the Romans were evicted from the western half of their African possessions.

Meanwhile the caliph Omar had died, and his weaker successor, Othman, proved less dangerous to the Eastern empire. His generals, however, invaded Cyprus, and overran the island: unable to permanently hold it, because of the preponderance of the Byzantine fleet, they contented themselves with exacting a tribute, and retired (642). But encouraged by the result of this, their first expedition by sea, the Saracens commenced to build a great war fleet, and in a few years they were in a condition to dispute the command of the eastern Mediterranean with the Roman galleys, who since the destruction of the Vandals in 533 had known no rivals on the sea.

Meanwhile Constantinus had grown up to manhood, and, luckily for the empire, proved to be the kind of sovereign required in those days of adversity. He was a stern warlike prince, possessed of no small share of the military ability of his grandfather Heraclius. He was always in the field, headed his own forces by sea no less than by land, and deserved success by his courage and perseverance if he did not always obtain it. Occasionally he was harsh and cruel, but such faults are more easily pardoned in an emperor who had to face such a time of peril than are cowardice and indolence.

[Sidenote: Saracen victories, 652.] In 652 Constantinus sent a second expedition against Alexandria: it was met at sea off the Canopic mouth of the Nile by a great Saracen fleet, gathered from the ports of Syria and Egypt, and defeated with great loss. Three years later the enemy took the offensive, Muavia, the governor of Syria, gathered a great armada to attack the southern coast of Asia Minor, while he himself marched by land to force the passes of the Taurus and invade Cappadocia. Constantinus put to sea with every ship he could launch, and met the Saracens at Phoenix, off the Lycian shore. Here the greatest naval battle which the Mediterranean had seen since the day of Actium was fought: the two fleets grappled, and the crews struggled desperately hand to hand for many hours. Constantinus was in the thickest of the fighting, his imperial galley was boarded, and he only escaped by throwing off his purple mantle, and springing into another ship when his own was captured. At last the Saracens won a decisive victory, and it seemed as if they were about to become the masters of the Ægean (655). Even before the battle Rhodes had fallen into their hands, and the long-prostrate Colossus had been sold for old brass to a Jewish dealer, and exported to Syria to be melted down.

The empire, however, was to be saved from the humiliation of seeing a hostile fleet approach the Dardanelles for yet twenty years. In 656 the caliph Othman was murdered, and his death was immediately followed by a savage civil war among the Saracens. The two claimants for the vacant dignity of ‘Successor of the Prophet,’ were Muavia, who held Syria, and Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, who held Mesopotamia and the new Arab capital of Kufa. Engrossed in his struggle with Ali, Muavia was fain to leave the Roman empire unmolested. In 659 he bought peace from Constantinus on the curious terms that he should pay for every day that the peace lasted a horse and a slave. This treaty proved the salvation of the empire: for the first time for twenty-seven years it was free from Saracen war, and Constantinus could pause and take thought for the reorganisation of his much-harassed dominions. In the five years of peace which were now granted to him, he contrived to make a considerable improvement in their condition.

[Sidenote: State of the Empire, 659.] When he took stock of his realm, Constantinus found that in the East five great districts were irretrievably lost: the nearer half of the exarchate of Africa, from Tripoli to the Libyan desert, Egypt, Syria, and the greater part of Roman Armenia had fallen into the power of Saracens. Moreover, in Europe, the troubled years between 610 and 659 had brought about the complete loss of the inland parts of the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs, whose incursions had already grown so dangerous in the reign of Maurice, had now obtained complete possession of the whole of Moesia, and of the inland parts of Thrace and Macedon. Their settlements extended to within a few miles of the gates of Adrianople and Thessalonica, both of which cities they from time to time besieged without success. They had even encroached south of Mount Olympus, and thrust forward their colonies into some parts of Greece. The imperial dominions were restricted to a coast-slip running all round the peninsula, from Spalato in Dalmatia to Odessus on the Black Sea. In the West we have seen, while detailing the history of the Lombards, that the East-Romans now preserved only the exarchate of Ravenna, the duchies of Rome and Naples, the southern point of Italy, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

Recognising that he must look to reorganisation rather than to reconquest for restoring the strength of the empire, Constantinus devoted himself to securing his borders. The moment that the civil war of the Arabs broke out, and left him free to move elsewhere, he marched against the Slavs of the Balkans, defeated them, and reduced them to pay tribute. It was hopeless to dream of driving them back across the Danube, and the emperor was contented to accept the existing state of things, and to secure the coastland of Thrace and Macedonia from further molestation, by imposing a line of demarcation between the Slavonic tribes and the much-reduced provinces (657-8).

The emperor’s attention was now drawn to Africa and Italy. His presence was needed there no less than in the Balkan peninsula, if the Lombard and the Saracen were to be finally checked from advancing. In 662 he sailed for the West, and was busy there for the next six years, right down to the moment of his death. Constantinus hated the capital: he was sufficiently autocratic in his notions to dislike the control that the senate had been wont to exercise over him in earlier years, and he cordially detested the mob of Constantinople. He had fallen out with them on the same grounds that had once proved fatal to the popularity of Zeno. [Sidenote: The ‘Type’ of Constans.] The city was torn with the religious feuds between the Orthodox and the Monothelites, and the emperor, to calm the storm, had issued an edict of comprehension called ‘the Type,’ in which he forbade all mention of either the single or the double will as residing in the person of Our Lord. Without satisfying the heretics, the Type succeeded in irritating the Orthodox to great fury: they persistently accused Constantinus of being a Monothelite himself, and made his life miserable by their clamour. There was yet a third reason for his quitting Byzantium. In 660 he had conceived suspicions, whether true or false we know not, that his brother Theodosius was plotting against him. He promptly condemned the young prince to death, but after the execution his mind had no rest: we are told that his dreams were always haunted by the spectre of his brother, and that the palace where the deed was done grew insupportably hateful to him. If these tales be true, he left Constantinople to seek ease of spirit, no less than to restore the failing powers of the empire in the West.

It was probably in the period 657-662, before his departure from the capital, that Constantinus recast the provincial administration of the empire in accordance with the needs of the times. It seems that the institution of the ‘Themes,’ or new provinces, must date from this, the only space of rest and rearrangement to be found in a long age of wars. The old provinces, as arranged by Diocletian, and somewhat modified by Justinian, had been small, and in each of them civil and military powers were kept separate, the local garrison not being under the control of the local administrator. The needs of the long Persian and Saracen wars had led to the practical supersession of the civil governors by the military commanders, for it was absolutely necessary that the men trusted with the preservation of the empire should be able to control its local administration and finance. [Sidenote: Creation of the Themes.] The new provinces were few and large, and ruled by governors, who had civil as well as military authority. They were called ‘themes,’ after the name of the military divisions which occupied them, a ‘theme’ being originally a force of some 4000 regular cavalry detailed for the protection of a district. The names of the original Asiatic themes easily explain themselves, ‘Anatolikon’ and ‘Armeniakon’ the two largest, were the regions garrisoned by the ‘army of the East’ and the ‘army of Armenia.’ ‘Thrakesion,’ farther west, shows that the original ‘army of Thrace’ had been brought over into Asia to give aid against the Saracen. ‘Bucellarion’ was named after the Bucellarii,[39] a corps originally formed of Teutonic auxiliaries. The theme called Obsequium (Opsikion) was held by the Imperial Guard. Only the Cibyrhaeote theme, along the southern coast of Asia Minor, was named from a town, and not from the troops who garrisoned it. In the West, there seem to have been originally three themes in the Balkan peninsula, Thrace, Illyricum, and Hellas, and three beyond it, Ravenna, Sicily, and Africa. Each theme was governed by a stratêgos, whose military title shows his military character, and was garrisoned by its own local force of regular troops, the core of which was in each case a division of 4000 heavy cavalry. The full force of the twelve themes would give some 48,000 horsemen for the field, in addition to the less important infantry, the local militia used for holding fortresses, and the irregular hired bands of barbarian auxiliaries of many different races.

Footnote 39:

See page 131 for a Visigothic use of the word Bucellarii.

Constantinus was the only Eastern emperor who ever paid a large and even preponderant share of attention to his Western dominions. The long stay of six years which he made in Italy and Sicily caused his Eastern subjects to suppose that he had designs of restoring Rome to the position of capital of the empire, or even, perhaps, of raising Syracuse to that distinction. Such a project seems so inconvenient from geographical reasons, that we can hardly credit it; probably Constantinus’ personal dislike for Constantinople, while sufficing to keep him away from it, did not make him scheme to transfer the seat of empire elsewhere.

There is no doubt, however, that Constantinus was determined to reassert the supremacy of the empire in Italy against the Lombards, and also to take care that the exarchs and the popes should not grow too strong and independent. [Sidenote: The fate of Pope Martin.] Even before he sailed for Italy his jealousy of the power of the papacy had been shown by his dealings with Pope Martin I. That prelate had dared to hold a synod at Rome, in which he condemned the ‘Type’ or Edict of Comprehension issued by the emperor (649). Constantinus never pardoned this: he bided his time, directed the exarch to seize the person of Martin at a convenient opportunity, and had him shipped off to Constantinople. There he was tried for contumacy, thrown into chains, and banished to Cherson, in the Crimea, where he died in exile (655).

[Sidenote: Campaign in Italy, 663.] Constantinus left the Bosphorus in 662 with a large army, and sailed for Taranto. There he landed, and at once fell upon the duchy of Benevento, the southernmost of the Lombard States in Italy. The time of his attack happened to be unfortunate, for Grimoald, duke of Benevento, had seized the Lombard crown, and his son Romuald was ruling the duchy under him. For once in a way, therefore, Pavia and Benevento were united and ready to act together. The Lombard historian, Paulus Diaconus, has preserved the details of the campaign of Constantinus—whom he usually styles Constans, as do so many other writers. The emperor captured, one after another, all the Lombard cities of south Italy, including Luceria, the chief town of Apulia. He drove Romuald into Benevento, and held him closely besieged there, till he gave up his sister Gisa as a hostage, and promised to pay tribute. He would not have granted such easy terms, but for the fact that he had learnt that king Grimoald, with the whole force of Lombardy, was marching against him.

Departing from Benevento, Constantinus moved on Rome, leaving a part of his army under a Persian exile named Sapor to watch the Lombards. This division was cut to pieces at Forino, and after he had received the news, the emperor seems to have given up his idea of re-conquering central Italy. He contented himself with visiting Rome and receiving the homage of pope Vitalian, who met him at the sixth milestone, at the head of the whole Roman people, and escorted him into the city. But Rome took little profit from the advent of an emperor, a sight it had not seen for two hundred years. Constantinus plundered it of many ornaments, and in particular stripped the Pantheon of its tiles of gilded bronze and sent them to Constantinople (663).

After staying only twelve days in the ancient capital, the emperor turned on his heel, and instead of proceeding against the northern Lombards, led his army through Naples into Lucania and Bruttium as far as Reggio. King Grimoald and his son do not seem to have molested him in this long march. [Sidenote: Constans in Sicily, 664-8.] Constantinus then crossed the straits of Messina into Sicily, and established himself at Syracuse, which he made his residence for more than four years (664-8). His attention was engrossed by the forward movement of the Saracens in Africa. Muavia, having secured the sole caliphate by the death of his rival Ali, had at last recommenced his attacks on the empire in 663. His troops pushed forward in Africa and seized Carthage, from which, however, Constantinus succeeded in driving them out, and once more pushed them back to Tripoli. It must have been in this African war that he spent the treasures which he is said to have wrung out of the people of Sicily, Sardinia, and south Italy by ‘exaction such as had never been heard of before,’ even tearing the sacramental plate from the churches, and selling as slaves those who refused to pay. These harsh proceedings did as much to weaken the power of the empire in the West as the military successes of Constantinus did to strengthen it.

It was at Syracuse that Constantinus met his end. While he was bathing in the baths that were called Daphne, his attendant Andreas smote him on the head with his marble soap-box, so that the skull was broken, and then fled away. [Sidenote: Murder of Constans, 668.] The blow was fatal, and with this strange death perished that plan of restoring the empire in the West which had been the favourite scheme of Constantinus. His murder was probably the result of a conspiracy, for when it was known, an Armenian officer named Mezecius proclaimed himself emperor in Sicily, and reigned there for a few months.

For the last five years of Constantinus’ long absence in the West there had been grievous trouble with the Saracens in Asia Minor, against which the caliph Muavia had launched his hosts for five successive summers. The raids of his generals reached as far as Amorium in Phrygia, which was stormed by the Arabs, and promptly retaken by the Romans in 668. The nominal control of affairs in Asia had been left to the emperor’s eldest son Constantine, when his father sailed to the West. [Sidenote: Constantine Pogonatus, 668-85.] On the news of the murder at Syracuse and the usurpation of Mezecius, Constantine, now aged eighteen, sailed in person to Sicily, put down and executed the usurper, and then promptly returned to Constantinople. He had been beardless when he set out, but returned next year with his face covered with hair, wherefore the people of the capital gave him the nickname of ‘Pogonatus,’ the bearded, by which he is generally known. Curiously enough the name would have been far better applied to his father whose beard was enormous, while that of Constantine V. did not exceed a very moderate limit.

Constantine Pogonatus was his father’s true son, a hard-working, hard-fighting, and somewhat high-handed Caesar, who kept the empire well together, and spent all his energy in holding the Saracens in check, a task in which he won great success. He reigned for seventeen years (668-85), of which the first ten were a time of unbroken war with the Caliphate. The first beginning of this struggle was not very favourable for the empire; in 669-70 the generals of Muavia pushed their way as far as the sea of Marmora, and in 672 the Caliph thought success so nearly in his grasp that he prepared for a formal siege of Constantinople, the second that it had undergone in the century. Using the harbour of Cyzicus as their base, the Saracens, under a general named Abderrha-man, and the Caliph’s son Yezid, beleaguered the city for six months (April-September, 673). They were finally forced to retire after a naval engagement in which the Imperial galleys had the better, largely owing, it is said, to the newly invented ‘Greek fire,’ by which they burnt many of the Moslem ships. [Sidenote: Constantine V. saves Constantinople.] When forced away from the Bosphorus, the Saracens fell back on Cyzicus, which they succeeded in holding for no less than four years, making occasional sallies from it towards Constantinople, of which every single one was repelled with loss by the emperor. At last the Arabs, after losing their general, and seeing Abu Eyub, one of the last surviving companions of Mohammed, perish before the walls, raised the siege. Their fleet was destroyed by a storm off the Lycian Coast: their land-army was attacked on its retreat by the East-Romans, and defeated with a loss of 30,000 men.

So great was the blow inflicted on the Caliph by the entire failure of his army before Constantinople, that he was glad to conclude an ignominious peace with the emperor, by which he engaged to pay 3000 pounds of gold to Constantine, and to send him fifty Arab horses for every year that the treaty lasted (678).

The fidelity of the East-Romans to the house of Heraclius was thus justified by the victory of Constantine; it is a pity that only a very meagre account of his campaign has come down to us, owing to the dearth of chroniclers in the seventh century. We know, however, that the fame of his triumph went all over Europe, and that ambassadors came from the Avars, the Lombards, and even the distant Franks to congratulate him on beating off an attack which had threatened serious consequences to the whole of Christendom.

[Sidenote: The Bulgarians.] For the remainder of his reign Constantine enjoyed a well-earned peace, disturbed only by some slight bickering with a new enemy, the Bulgarians. This Ugrian tribe, who had dwelt for the last two centuries beyond the Danube, crossed the river in the end of Constantine’s reign, and threw themselves upon the Slavonic tribes who held Moesia. They subdued the Slavs without much difficulty, and defeated a Roman army which Constantine led by sea to the mouth of the Danube. Recognising that it was impossible to reconquer the long-lost Moesia, the emperor made peace with Isperich, the Bulgarian king, and allowed him to settle without further opposition in the land between the Danube and the Balkans, where the Slavs had hitherto held possession (679). A new Bulgarian nation was gradually formed by the intermixture of the conquering tribe and their subjects: when formed, it displayed a Slavonic rather than a Ugrian type, and spoke a Slavonic not a Ugrian tongue.

The later years of Constantine V. were better known to contemporaries as the time of the holding of the council of Constantinople, than as the time of the foundation of the new Bulgarian kingdom. To settle the dispute on the divine and human wills of Christ, the emperor summoned an œcumenical synod, at which the Western churches were well represented. It finally condemned the Monothelite heresy, which for the future ceased to be the great question debated between the churches (680-1). But a new controversy, that on Iconoclasm, was ere long to break out.

[Sidenote: Character of Constantine V.] To the misfortune of the empire the able and hard-working Constantine died in 685, at the comparatively early age of thirty-six. We hear little that is unfavourable to him from any chronicler: his sole crime seems to have been the cruel act of slitting the noses of his two brothers Heraclius and Tiberius in 680, to disqualify them from holding imperial power. They had hitherto been nominally the colleagues of Constantine, and were honoured with the title of Caesars, but in the interests of his own son Justinian, now a growing boy, the emperor determined to make it impossible for them to aspire to the supreme power. It appears to have been a cruel and unjustifiable act, and unless the Caesars had given provocation, a fact of which we have no hint in any chronicler, it was a grievous blot on the otherwise excellent character of Constantine V.

The young Justinian, second of that name, mounted his father’s throne in 685, when only in his seventeenth year. The accession of this prince was a fearful misfortune for the empire. He possessed the qualities of his grandfather Constantinus in an exaggerated form, being arbitrary, cruel, reckless, and high-handed, yet so brave and capable that his throne was not easy to shake. [Sidenote: Justinian II., 685-95.] He started on his career too young, and might have come to better things if his father had lived for another ten years; but, abandoned to his own devices ere he was well out of his boyhood, he developed into a bloodthirsty tyrant. The first few years of his reign, ere he had felt his feet and fully realised his own desires, were comparatively uneventful. The Saracens were occupied in civil wars since the death of Muavia, and gave no trouble: the caliph Abd-el-Melik was only too glad to renew with Justinian the treaty that his predecessor had made with Constantine V. Unmolested by the Saracens, Justinian sent armies into Iberia and Albania, the Christian kingdoms under the Caucasus, and compelled them to pay him tribute. Soon after he undertook in person a great expedition against the Bulgarians, designing to push the Roman boundary once more to the Danube. He was very successful, beating the enemy in the field, and bringing back more than 30,000 captives, from whom he organised an auxiliary force for service in Asia.

Justinian’s triumph over the Bulgarians emboldened him to undertake the greater scheme of winning back Syria from the Saracens. In 693 he picked a quarrel with the Caliph on the most frivolous grounds: when the annual payment due under the treaty of 686 was tendered to him, he refused to receive the money, because the coins were not the old Roman _solidi_, which had hitherto circulated in Syria and Egypt, and still formed the bulk of the Saracen currency, but new Arab ‘dirhems’ with Abd-el-Melik’s name upon them, which the caliph had lately begun to strike. [Sidenote: Justinian’s Saracen war, 693.] But any pretext was good enough for Justinian: he declared war with a light heart, and led his armies in person across the Taurus into Cilicia. At Sebastopolis near Tarsus he suffered a fearful defeat, mainly caused by the desertion to the Saracens of the unwilling recruits whom he had enlisted from among the captives of the Bulgarian War. When he had rallied his army Justinian was cruel and illogical enough to order those of the corps who had _not_ deserted to be put to death—lest they might follow their comrades’ example in the next battle (693). In the next year the emperor lost Roman Armenia by the revolt of its Governor, a native Armenian named Sumpad, who deserted to the Saracens. Other disasters followed, and the Arabs harried the ‘Anatolic’ and ‘Armeniac’ themes.

Meanwhile the young emperor had been making himself most unpopular at home by the exactions necessary for the support of his unlucky war, and still more by persisting in building expensive and unnecessary palaces in the capital, while the war still raged. His two finance ministers, Theodotus, a lapsed abbot who had quitted his monastery, and the eunuch Stephanus, are reported to have gone to the extremes of cruelty in dealing with the citizens. It is said that Theodotus was wont to torture defaulting tax-payers by hanging them over smoky fires and half stifling them. Stephanus preferred the rod: it is said that he even presumed on one occasion—during Justinian’s absence—to seize and beat the empress-dowager Anastasia. The emperor only punished him by ordering him to complete, at his own expense, a building on which he was then engaged.

It was not only by heaping taxes on his subjects that Justinian made himself unpopular. He had a mania for seizing and imprisoning on suspicion senators and other important personages, and he was so merciless in dealing with military officers who met with any defeat, that to accept a command under him was considered the shortest way to the dungeon or the block. Meanwhile his ill-luck in the Saracen war made him as much detested by the soldiery as he was dreaded by their officers. In 695 a distinguished general named Leontius, the conqueror of Iberia and Albania,[40] was ordered by Justinian to take command of the theme of Hellas. Regarding this charge as a mere preliminary to disgrace and execution, Leontius in sheer desperation planned a _coup d’état_. [Sidenote: Fall of Justinian, 695.] At the head of a few dozen followers he burst open the prisons, and made a dash at the palace. Justinian was taken completely by surprise; he fell into the hands of Leontius, who slit his nose, and banished him to the distant fortress of Cherson, in the Crimea. His two detested ministers, Theodotus and Stephanus, were torn to pieces and burnt by the populace.

Footnote 40:

See p. 249.

With the fall of Justinian II. began twenty-two years of anarchy and disaster for the empire. Hitherto Constantinople had been singularly fortunate in escaping the consequences of military revolts and changes of dynasty. With the single exception of the usurpation of the tyrant Phocas, and his deposition by Heraclius, there had been no cases of the transfer of the imperial crown by violence for more than three hundred years. All the earlier emperors of the East had been either designated by their predecessors or peaceably elected by the senate and army. It was now to be seen how fatal was the breaking up of the rule of orderly succession: in the next twenty-two years there were no less than five revolutions at home, and abroad many grave disasters cut the empire short.

[Sidenote: Carthage lost, 698.] The three-years’ rule of Leontius was mainly distinguished by the final loss of Carthage and Africa. Already in Justinian’s time the province had been invaded and partially overrun by the generals of the Caliph. In 697 Carthage fell: it was recovered for a moment by an expedition sent out by Leontius, but in 698 it fell permanently into the hands of the Saracens. The Roman generals, however, escaped by sea with the main body of their army. Fearing to face the wrath of Leontius with such a tale of disaster, the returning officers conspired against him. They sailed to the Bosphorus, where their arrival was quite unexpected, caught the emperor, slit his nose, and threw him into a monastery. In his stead they proclaimed the admiral Tiberius Apsimarus as sovereign (698).

Tiberius II., a very capable man, clung to the throne for seven years. He was fortunate in his war with the Saracens: his armies defeated those of the Caliph, recovered Cilicia, and even occupied Antioch. But this success abroad did not save Tiberius from the wonted end of usurpers. He was overthrown by the banished and mutilated Justinian II., who now reappears upon the stage in a most startling fashion.

Justinian had been consigned by Leontius to the remote fortress of Cherson—the modern Sebastopol—on the north shore of the Black Sea. But being carelessly guarded, he succeeded in escaping, and reaching the court of the Chagan of the Khazars, the Tartar tribe who dwelt on the lower Volga and the shores of the sea of Azoff. [Sidenote: Adventures of Justinian.] In spite of his mutilated nose he succeeded in gaining the good graces of the Chagan, and received the hand of his sister in marriage. Hearing of this Tiberius II. sent a huge bribe to the Tartar, to persuade him to surrender his guest. The treacherous barbarian consented, and despatched an officer to arrest Justinian. But the exile got wind of the plot through a message from his wife, and instead of allowing himself to be seized, slew the Chagan’s emissary, and escaped to sea in an open boat, with half-a-dozen attendants. A storm arose, and the little vessel seemed likely to founder. ‘Make a vow to God that if you escape you will forgive your enemies,’ said one of Justinian’s companions to him, as the boat began to fill. ‘No,’ replied the reckless and inflexible exile, ‘if I spare a single one of them when my time comes, may God sink me here and now.’ The storm abated, the boat came safe to land, and Justinian fell into the hands of Terbel, the king of the Bulgarians. Terbel lent him an army with which to try his fortune, and with its aid he advanced to the gates of Constantinople. [Sidenote: Justinian restored, 705-11.] The city was betrayed to him by partisans within the walls, and he succeeded in getting possession of the palace, and of the person of Tiberius II. Justinian then dragged out of his cloister the deposed usurper Leontius, bound him and Tiberius hand and foot, and laid them before his throne in the Hippodrome. There he sat in triumph with his feet on the necks of the vanquished Caesars, while his partisans chanted ‘Thou shalt trample on the Lion and the Asp,’ an allusion to the names of the two fallen rulers (Leontius and Apsimarus). The two prisoners were then beheaded (705).

During his first reign Justinian had chastised his subjects with whips, it was with scorpions that he now afflicted them. He had returned from exile in a mood of reckless cruelty: the vow he had made was kept with rigid accuracy. Every one who had been concerned in his deposition ten years before was sought out, tortured, and put to death. Some of his doings rose to a monstrous pitch of inhumanity: the chief men of Cherson, who had offended him during his exile, were bound on spits and roasted: many patricians were sewed up into sacks and cast into the Bosphorus.

It is astonishing to find that the second reign of Justinian lasted for more than five years. His tyranny was such that an instant explosion of popular wrath might have been expected. But if reckless, he was also active, suspicious, and strong-handed, and crushed many plots before they could come to a head. [Sidenote: Justinian slain, 711.] At last he fell before a military revolt: the army, headed by a general named Philippicus, disavowed its allegiance, seized the tyrant, and beheaded him. His little six-year-old son, Tiberius, whom the Chagan’s sister had borne him, was torn from sanctuary, and murdered. Thus perished the house of Heraclius, after it had given five rulers to the empire during a century of rule (610-711). It had done much to save the state from the Saracens: all its members, even Justinian, had been men of ability, and Heraclius himself, Constantinus-Constans, and Constantine V. had each borne his part in the long struggle with credit, if not with complete success.

[Sidenote: Anarchy, 711-17.] There now followed six years of complete anarchy (711-17), during which the imperial annals are filled by the obscure names of Philippicus (711-13), Artemius Anastasius (713-715) and Theodosius III. (715-17). Each was the creature of a conspiracy, and each fell by the same means by which he had been uplifted. They were all feeble and incompetent sovereigns, far below the rank of the two earlier usurpers, Leontius and Tiberius Apsimarus. The importance of their reigns lies not in their struggle with each other, but in the general collapse of the system of defence of the empire against the Saracen, the natural result of the employment of the whole army in civil war. The generals of the caliphs Welid and Soliman, the sons of Abd-al-Melik (705-17) burst through the boundaries of the empire on every point. In 711 Sardinia, the westernmost province of the empire since the loss of Africa, was subdued by the Arabs. In the same year they crossed the Taurus, and sacked Tyana in Cappadocia. In 712 they overran Pontus and captured Amasia, in 713 Antioch in Pisidia fell, and with it much of southern Asia Minor. It appeared as if with the downfall of the house of Heraclius the power of self-defence had been taken away from the East-Romans. Nor was the lowest depth yet reached.

Emboldened by the easy successes of his armies over those of the ephemeral sovereigns who followed Justinian II., the caliph Soliman at last resolved to fit out an expedition on the largest scale against Constantinople. [Sidenote: Saracen invasion, 716.] A hundred thousand men advanced by land from Tarsus, while a fleet of more than 1000 sail gathered in the ports of Syria, and sailed round Asia Minor into the Ægean. The Caliph’s brother Moslemah was to head the whole expedition. Cappadocia was already in Saracen hands, and the Caliph’s vanguard was occupied with the siege of Amorium, the chief stronghold of Phrygia. That town, indeed, was saved from destruction by Leo the Isaurian, the governor of the Anatolic theme. But soon after, while the Arabs were still advancing, this same Leo, after concluding a private truce with the invaders, proclaimed himself emperor, and advanced against Constantinople, instead of reserving his strength to resist the armies of Soliman (716).

[Sidenote: Leo the Isaurian, 717.] Once more fortune favoured the newest rising against the emperor of the day. The troops of Leo beat those of Theodosius III., and then the latter voluntarily abdicated and sent to offer his crown to the victor. He was a mild and virtuous man, who had been raised to the purple against his will by his military partisans, and longed to return to his obscurity, feeling himself destitute of the power needed to cope with the insurgents, and still more unable to face the impending Saracen invasion.

Accordingly the senate and the patriarch formally elected the rebel Leo as emperor, and set him on the throne which had already changed masters seven times in the last twenty-two years. At length the empire had found a master who could defend what he had won, and was fully able to transmit his power to his heirs. The armament of Moslemah might be awaited without dismay, for the state was once more in the hands of one who could be trusted to use its resources aright. Leo was to dissipate once and for all the Saracen storm-cloud, and to free Constantinople from all danger from the East for more than three hundred years. But his achievements demand a chapter to themselves.