The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (18 page)

Symeon was now twenty-nine. As a boy he had been sent to be educated in Constantinople, where he may have studied, along with Leo, at the feet of Photius himself. Returning to his homeland, he too had become a monk; but monastic disciplines had done nothing to curb a warlike and ambitious spirit, and when the call came to assume the throne of his father he was not slow to respond, In Byzantium, the news of his accession was received with considerable relief, and for a year all went well. Then in
894
Stylian Zautses, for reasons at which we can only guess, awarded the monopoly of trade with Bulgaria to two of his own proteges. Immediately they imposed a dramatic increase on the customs dues payable by Bulgar merchants on all goods imported into the Empire, simultaneously transferring the entrepot from Constantinople to Thessalonica, where sharp practices were a good deal less likely to be detected. The Bulgars were appalled. At a single stroke, the substantial freight trade from the Black Sea down the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn had been destroyed; to make matters worse, the Thessalonica road was rough and frequently impassable in winter, and meant far greater distances to cover. Symeon at once sent an embassy to Constantinople in protest, but Leo as always supported his Logothete and nothing was done.

He had underestimated Symeon; but he did not do so for long. Within weeks, a Bulgar army had invaded Thrace. The imperial forces were already fully occupied in south Italy and on the eastern frontier. The Empire's one outstanding general, Nicephorus Phocas, was urgently recalled; and although the troops that he was given to command were raw and only semi-trained, he and the
drungarius
1
Eustathius - who blockaded the mouth of the Danube - were able to hold the situation while the Emperor, by now seriously alarmed, turned for
assistance to the Magyars. These
savage warrior people, after several centuries of slow westward migration from Siberia, were now occupying the Moldavian and Transylvanian lands beyond the Danube and were consequently the northern neighbours of the Bulgars, for whom they had no very great liking. They needed little enough encouragement to swarm across the river - the Byzantines providing the boats - into

1 The
drun
gerius
was the commander-in-chief of the imperial navy - though not of the local levies raised from the cities along the coast, which were under the authority of the
stratego
i
of their respective Themes. At this period the
drungarius
,
despite his importance, ranked below these
strate
goi;
within another half-century, however, he would occupy a place in the military hierarchy second only to that of the commander-in-chief of the land forces, the Domestic of the Schools.

Bulgar territory, leaving the usual trail of devastation and destruction in their wake. But if Leo could summon a barbarian tribe to his aid, so too could Symeon. Beyond the lands of the Magyars, in the plains of southern Russia, dwelt another nomadic tribe, the Pechenegs. Bribed with Bulgar gold, they fell on the Magyar rear, with results even more catastrophic than their victims had inflicted on Symeon's kingdom. The Magyars, as soon as they heard the news, returned with all speed to save their wives and children from this new terror, only to find their way blocked by a huge Pecheneg host. Unable to remain in Bulgaria, where Symeon was now advancing against them, they had no choice but to continue their old westward migration through the Carpathian passes into the great Pannonian plain - the land which we now call Hungary, and which is still their home.

With the Magyars finally off his back, Symeon was able once again to devote his full attention to the Byzantines, on whom in
896
he inflicted a crushing defeat at Bulgarophygon, near the modern Babaeski, in European Turkey. Unfortunately for the Empire, Nicephorus Phocas had been recalled
by Stylian to Constantinople; h
is successor Catacalon possessed little of his energy and strategic imagination. Somehow this lacklustre commander managed to escape with his life; few of those who fought with him were equally fortunate.
1
Leo had no choice but to sue for peace; but it was only after five years of long and patient diplomacy, and a reluctant agreement to pay a large annual tribute, that he obtained it. The staple at Thessalonica was closed, and Constantinople once again became the centre for Bulgarian trade. The war, which had been caused by what should have remained a minor commercial dispute, had proved an unmitigated disaster for the Empire. It had also permanently and decisively changed the map of Central Europe. Bulgar susceptibilities could no longer be ignored: Symeon had shown that he was a force to be reckoned with.

He had also succeeded in dangerously reducing Byzantine military power at a time when the Empire needed to mobilize all its available resources against the Arabs. With the departure of Nicephorus Phocas, the Saracen advance in south Italy could no longer be held in check:
1
August
902
saw the fall of Taormina, the last imperial stronghold in

1
One of the other survivors was so revolted by the carnage that he retired to Mount Joannitsa near Corinth, where he spent the rest of his life on top of a pillar - earning later can
onization as St Luke the Stylite
.

Sicily; while in the East, Armenia was left practically defenceless and the Muslim forces began a new advance into Cilicia. The situation in the Aegean was no better; that same year also saw the destruction of the wealthy and well-defended port of Demetrias - now Volos - in Thessaly. The worst catastrophe of all, however, occurred two years later when a Greek renegade, Leo of Tripoli, led a Saracen fleet up the Hellespont and into the Marmara. Eustathius sailed out against him, but lost his nerve at the last moment and retired without risking an engagement. The command was hastily transferred to a certain Himerius, who succeeded in forcing the Saracens to retire; instead of returning to their home waters, however, they made straight for Thessalonica. The city resisted for three days, but its walls were in disrepair and its two commanders at loggerheads; the sudden death of one of them after a fall from his horse might in other circumstances have proved a blessing in disguise, but it came too late. On
29
July
904
the defences crumbled and the Saracens poured through the breach. The bloodshed and butchery continued for a full week; only then did the raiders re-embark with their priceless plunder and - we are told - more than
30,000
prisoners, leaving the second city and port of the Empire a smoking ruin behind them.

It was more than a disaster; it was a disgrace. Leo determined on revenge. The shattered fortifications of Thessalonica were rebuilt and strengthened; an intensive programme of ship-building considerably enlarged the fleet; and a plan was prepared for the autumn of
905
according to which Himerius, who had by now succeeded Stylian as Logothete of the Course, would sail round the coast to Attaleia — the modern Antalya - embark a land army under the command of the local military governor, Andronicus Ducas, and then continue to Tarsus, a port which was roughly commensurate with Thessalonica in size and importance and which would now, it was intended, suffer a similar fate. Himerius duly arrived at Attaleia with his fleet - only to find that Ducas had no intention of joining him and had effectively come out in open revolt against the Empire. At this point a lesser man, suddenly denied the forces he had been promised, might well have given up the whole operation; but Himerius, ill-equipped and inexperienced as he was, had no intention of doing any such thing. He pressed on regardless; and a few days later, having utterly destroyed the Saracen fleet that had sailed out to intercept him, he reduced Tarsus in its turn to ashes. Byzantine honour had been saved.

Andronicus Ducas had meanwhile retired, with as many of his army
as he had been able to persuade to follow him, some
150
miles northeast to a fortress near Iconium (the modern Konya). There he remained throughout the winter until March
906
when, learning of the approach of an imperial army, he withdrew with his son Constantine across the Saracen frontier and, after a brief pause in what was left of Tarsus, sought refuge in Baghdad. His story is neither edifying nor, in itself, particularly important; but it serves admirably to illustrate a grave new danger that was beginning to threaten the Empire: the rise of an increasingly powerful social class which had grown up in the course of the ninth century and was to cause serious problems during the tenth and eleventh. It consisted of a number of immensely rich families - in view of their size and ramifications, perhaps 'clans' would be a better word — possessed of extensive estates all over Asia Minor and sharing a long militaristic tradition, intermarrying among each other and showing little loyalty to the crown - if only because many of them had designs on it for themselves. Of these clans, that of the Ducas was probably the largest and certainly the most formidable; and Andronicus stood at its head. In the past he had given good service to the Empire, notably in
904
when he had led an expedition into Syria with extremely satisfactory results; but his sudden betrayal - prompted so far as we know by nothing more than resentment at finding himself subordinated to a commander whom he considered his inferior — demonstrates clearly enough the tenuousness of the ties that attached him, and many others like him, to the throne.

As things turned out it was the Emperor himself who was to be responsible, all unwittingly, for the ultimate downfall of Andronicus Ducas. He had arranged for an embassy to be dispatched to Baghdad, there to negotiate with the eleven-year-old Sultan al-Muqtadir an exchange of prisoners; and to it he now entrusted a secret letter to his former
strategos,
offering him pardon and reinstatement if he would only return to his old allegiance. Unfortunately, the letter was discovered; and its discovery proved Andronicus's undoing. Until then, the Sultan had believed him worthy of his trust; now, he was not so sure. Summoning the renegade into his presence, he gave him the choice between death and immediate conversion to Islam. Not altogether surprisingly, Andronicus chose the latter, but even this did not secure his freedom. He was placed, if not in confinement, at least under close surveillance; and shortly afterwards he died.

Leo's struggle against the Saracens was not quite over: it was to continue, indeed, for the rest of his life. The time has now come, however, to return to Constantinople, there to trace the vicissitudes of his emotional life during the second half of his reign.

His troubles had begun with his wife Theophano. During his father's lifetime the pair had been obliged to keep up appearances as best they could; after his own accession, however, relations between them had deteriorated fast. He had never liked her at the best of times, but now -perhaps to compensate for the love he could never give her - she had turned all her thoughts to religion, growing more and more devout until she became, even by Byzantine standards, mildly ridiculous. 'With morbid zeal,' writes her own biographer,
the Augusta applied herself to the salvation of her soul, treating all the pleasures of worldly life as dirt beneath her feet. Day and night her soul ascended to God in the chanting of psalms and in constant prayer; and unceasingly she drew near to Him through her works of charity. In public she wore the flowers of the purple and was clad in all the splendour of majesty. In private, secretly, she dressed in rags. Preferring the ascetic life to all others, she despised sumptuous food, and when delicate dishes were set before her she took bread and vegetables instead. All the money that she received, all the things so highly esteemed by people of this world, she distributed to the poor; her magnificent robes she gave to the needy; she ministered to the needs of widows and orphans; she enriched the monasteries, and loved the monks as if they were her own brothers.

At night, he continues, the Empress forsook her husband's bed, preferring a rough mat in a corner, from which every hour she rose to pray. A more unsatisfactory consort for a lusty young prince could hardly be imagined; moreover, Leo desperately wanted a son - and, as the anonymous biographer admits, 'he could not hope to have another child by her since her body, weakened and consumed by spiritual contemplation, was no longer capable of giving itself up to the delights of the flesh'.

In the winter of
892
their only child, Eudocia, died; Theophano withdrew into deeper and deeper seclusion and a year or two later, to her husband's unconcealed relief, retired to the convent attached to the Church of St Mary Theotokos at Blachernae where on
10
November
897,
not yet thirty years old, she followed her daughter to the grave. Leo gave her a magnificent funeral - considering the way he had treated her in her lifetime, it was the least he could do — and immediately summoned
his beloved Zoe to Constantinople. There remained the problem of her husband; but fortunately - some people thought a little too fortunately, but in the circumstances no inquiries were made and nothing was ever proved - Theodore Gutzuniates chose this peculiarly opportune moment to die in his turn. With unseemly dispatch his widow was installed in the Palace, and early in
898
the two lovers were married at last.