The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Page 20

  It was perhaps inevitable that this rivalry should produce two distinct factions within the government. On the Emperor's side the leading influence was that of an Isaurian chieftain whose original name, Tarasicodissa Rousoumbladeotes, he very sensibly changed, before marrying Leo's daughter Ariadne, to Zeno. But Aspar too had adherents within the Palace, the chief among whom was Basileus, the brother of the Emperor's wife Verina. The two could scarcely have been more different. Aspar was a barbarian of little or no culture, who spent his leisure hours, wrote Priscus, 'with actors and jugglers and all stage amusements'; as a convinced Arian, he came near to denying the godhead of Christ; as a leader of men, he was the finest general of his time. Basiliseus, by contrast, was a Hellenized, well-educated Roman; a fanatical monophysite, for whom Christ was divine rather than human; something of a joke in Constantinople by reason of his consuming desire for the imperial diadem, which he made no attempt to conceal; and, as would soon be proved, a man totally unfitted for any sort of command. Despite their differences, however, they were flung together by their common hatred for the Isaurians; and when the Emperor decided in 468 to launch a massive naval expedition against King Gaiseric and his Vandals, he was persuaded by his wife and Aspar to put Basiliseus at its head.

  To many a Roman, this expedition seemed long overdue. Thirteen years had passed since Gaiseric's sack of Rome, during which time the Empire had not stirred against him. The West, to be sure, was so near the point of collapse as to be no longer capable of avenging the insult; but the apathy of the East was harder to defend. Certain apologists for Marcian had attempted to excuse his inertia by claiming that in his youth, while a member of Aspar's ill-fated campaign of 432 against the Vandals, he had been captured, taken with a group of fellow-prisoners to the palace at Carthage, and there forced to wait for several hours in the courtyard with no protection from the broiling sun. Soon he had laid down to sleep; and Gaiseric, looking down from a window, had been astonished to see a huge eagle hovering above him, shading him with its wings. It was, he immediately understood, a sign from heaven; the young man clearly had a great future in store. Summoning him to his presence, he offered to release him on the spot in return for a promise that, whatever his destiny, he would never again take up arms against the Vandal Kingdom. Marcian had agreed, and had kept his word for the rest of his life.

  It was a good story; but it is unlikely to have been widely believed.

  Marcian had been a straightforward, down-to-earth character, not at all the sort to whom miracles occur. He had, on the other hand, inaugurated a blessed period - which Leo was to continue after his death - of peace, prosperity and good government, after eighteen years of which there could be no justification for leaving the Vandals still unpunished. Besides, he had another, even better reason for intervention: Gaiseric, a fanatical Arian, had initiated a savage persecution of the orthodox Christians. A number of churches and monasteries had been burnt to ashes, and many venerable ecclesiastics, if not actually put to death, had been dispossessed, driven from their homes, and even occasionally tortured. Leo's long-awaited announcement of his proposed expedition was therefore greeted with relief and satisfaction, and preparations began. They were conceived on a colossal scale: over a thousand ships, we are told, were collected from all over the eastern Mediterranean, and a hundred thousand men. If these figures are correct, the combined naval and military force should have been more than enough to wipe the Vandals off the face of Africa, and under virtually any other commander would certainly have done so.

  Not, however, under Basileus. According to Procopius - our only source for the campaign1 - it began promisingly enough, with two highly successful subsidiary expeditions in which Marcellinus, Lord of Dalmatia, drove the Vandals from Sardinia while a Byzantine general named Heraclius landed in Tripolitania with a small force and advanced on Carthage from the south-east. Basileus had meanwhile landed at a place called Mercurion near Cape Bon; but instead of marching directly on the Vandal capital and taking the enemy by surprise, he settled down there and showed no inclination to go further. This gave Gaiseric precisely the opportunity he needed. He sent envoys to Mercurion to say that he would do all that the Emperor required of him, and asking only for five days' grace, during which he would make the necessary arrangements. Basileus, already congratulating himself on a bloodless victory, was only too ready to agree.

  It was the greatest mistake of his life. Gaiseric spent the five days preparing his war fleet, together with a number of empty hulks to be used as fire-boats. The wind then turned, exactly as he had foreseen; and on the fifth day his ships sailed before a fresh following breeze into

  i History of the Wars, 111, vi. Despite Gibbon's strictures (p. 16m.), Procopius is probably quite reliable here. The true facts would have been well known in his day; and he had, moreover, been a member of the expedition against Carthage of 553, in which Bclisarius succeeded where Basileus had failed.

  Mercurion, towing the hulks behind them. Just as they entered the harbour, the sailors lit the fuses, releasing the blazing hulks to bear down into the centre of the densely packed Byzantine fleet. Basileus and his men were powerless to stop them or to quench the flames, which spread almost instantaneously from one vessel to the next. 'And,' writes Procopius,

  as the fire advanced, the Roman fleet was naturally thrown into confusion, and the noise of the wind and the crackling flames was mingled with the cries of the soldiers and sailors as they shouted commands to one another, using long poles to push off the fire-boats and each others' ships . .. And now the Vandals too were among them, ramming and sinking their vessels, taking prisoner such of the soldiers as attempted to escape and seizing their arms for plunder.

  Within a few hours it was all over. The wretched Basileus, who had taken flight at an early stage of the battle, returned to Constantinople, where the mood of anger, disappointment and humiliation was such that he was obliged to seek refuge in St Sophia. Only after impassioned entreaties by his sister the Empress did Leo agree to spare his life.

  It was fortunate for Leo that the blame for the North African debacle fell so squarely on the head of its leader. If anyone else was held responsible it was Aspar, who was suspected in some quarters of having secretly sided with his fellow-Arian Gaiseric and bribed Basileus to betray his trust. This rumour was almost certainly baseless; it was, however, a reflection of Aspar's extreme unpopularity, which was in no way diminished two years later when he persuaded - or, more likely, intimidated - the Emperor into agreeing to the betrothal of his younger daughter, the Princess Leontia, to his own second son Patricius, and proclaiming the latter Caesar. Just what pressure he was able to bring to bear on Leo to do this we can only guess; but given the Emperor's strict orthodoxy and his repugnance to the prospect of an Arian successor it must have been considerable.

  In other fields as well, the activities of Aspar and his sons were causing concern. Already in 469 they had tried to assassinate Zeno and very nearly succeeded; and towards the end of 471 the elder son, Ardabur, was found to be involved in dark intrigues with the Isaurian faction in an attempt to win it over to his father's side. For Leo, this was the last straw. One morning in the imperial palace his guards suddenly drew their swords and cut down both Aspar and Ardabur; Patricius was badly wounded, but is thought eventually to have recovered.

  It was presumably these murders which led the contemporary historian Malchus to give Leo the nickname Makelles, the Butcher; he also shows his dislike by describing him as 'a repository of every vice' and castigating him for his rapaciousness and avarice. Yet even Malchus has to admit that Leo was generally accounted the most fortunate, or most successful - eutuchesteros - of all the Emperors that had preceded him, and there can be little doubt that he was, though perhaps not loved, at least respected by the vast majority of his subjects. If he hardly deserved his title of 'the Great' - bestowed on him, apparently, for his religious orthodoxy rather than for any outstanding strength of character or brilliance of statesmanship - he was on
the whole a just and merciful ruler; and when he died on 3 February 474 he had, by the standards of the time, remarkably little blood on his hands.

  Five months previously, Leo had nominated his successor: not, as everyone had expected, his son-in-law Zeno but the latter's seven-year-old son, called Leo like his grandfather. Whether the Emperor's decision was taken out of personal animosity towards Zeno, whether he felt that the Isaurians were not of imperial calibre or whether he simply wished the diadem to pass to his own flesh and blood we cannot tell; in the event, however, the question proved academic - Ariadne having instructed her son, when his father came to him to make his formal obeisance in the Hippodrome, to crown him co-Emperor on the spot. It was as well that she did. Nine months later young Leo was dead.

  One of Zeno's first acts on his succession was to put an end to the Vandal War. As his peace-maker he appointed a distinguished senator, Severus, raising him to the rank of Patrician as a sign of the importance that he attached to the mission; and he could not have made a better choice. Severus impressed Gaiseric by refusing to accept any presents for himself; far better than any gift, he said, would be the release of the Roman captives. The Vandal King immediately freed all those who were in bondage to himself and his family and gave Severus permission to redeem as many more as he could.1 Peace was signed before the end of the year; never again were the Vandals to cause the Empire concern.

  It was an auspicious start; but already the storm-clouds were gathering. By now the Isaurians had made themselves thoroughly unpopular. Unlike the Germanic tribesmen they were subjects of the Empire, and could not therefore technically be called barbarians; in their behaviour, however,

  1 Much of the necessary ransom money was personally raised by Severus on his return, from the sale of the magnificent robes and gold and silver vessels by which he had impressed the Vandal court with the majesty of Byzantium.

  they had proved a good deal more objectionable than the Germans had ever been. The preferential treatment that they had received from Leo had gone to their heads: they were arrogant and noisy, with a regrettable propensity for violence. Inevitably, much of the hostility that they aroused now became focused on their most distinguished representative, the Emperor himself - who also had to face the implacable hatred of two powerful enemies within his own household: Verina the Empress Mother, and her brother Basileus.

  The objectives of these two were not identical: Basileus, who had been understandably maintaining a low profile since the Carthaginian expedition eight years before, had emerged from his retirement on Leo's death still determined to secure the diadem for himself; the Empress, on the other hand, wanted it for her recently acquired lover Patricius, Master of the Offices at the palace.1 Both, however, were united in their primary object - to get rid of Zeno; and with the aid of an Isaurian general, Illus - who had suddenly turned, for reasons unexplained, against his imperial benefactor - they managed to recruit a number of powerful adherents to their cause. In November 475, as the Emperor was presiding over the games in the Hippodrome, he received an urgent message from his mother-in-law: army, Senate and people were united against him, he must flee the city at once. The thought of resistance, or that Verina's words might have been largely bluff, never seems to have occurred to him. That very night he slipped away from Constantinople with his wife and mother, to seek refuge among the mountains of his native Isauria.

  With Zeno out of the way, and the cause of Patricius espoused only by Verina, Basileus was proclaimed Emperor - remarkable testimony to the power of human ambition. He began by ordering - or at any rate permitting - a widespread slaughter of Isaurians in the capital; but if the purpose of thus eliminating the enemy faction was to strengthen his own hold on the throne, it failed. Basileus did not last long. He lost the sympathy of his sister by having her lover assassinated; he antagonized his subjects by vicious taxation; and he incurred the lasting enmity of the Church, first by his openly-expressed monophysite opinions and then by his ham-fisted attempts to impose them throughout the Empire. In these he was encouraged by the former monophysite Bishop of Alexandria, the aptly named Timothy the Weasel, who had been expelled from his see after the Council of Chalcedon and whom Basileus now saw fit to restore. At the insistence of this poisonous cleric, he not only abrogated the decrees of Chalcedon but even tried to abolish the

  1 And no relation, it need hardly be said, to the son of Aspar.

  Patriarchate of Constantinople, causing Patriarch Acacius to drape the high altar of St Sophia in black and to put all his priests into mourning; meanwhile Daniel, the famous stylite of the city,1 actually descended from his pillar for the first time in fifteen years, haranguing the people and terrifying Basileus into the withdrawal of his edict. The heavens, too, showed themselves against the usurper: there could be no other explanation for the appalling fire of 476 which, beginning in the bazaar of the bronze-smiths, spread to the Basilike, the public library founded by Julian which was said to contain 120,000 books - including the intestine of a serpent, 120 feet long, on which were inscribed the entire Iliad and Odyssey in golden characters. Another tragic loss was the Palace of Lausus with its celebrated collection of antique sculpture, including the Hera of Samos, the Athena of Lindos and the Aphrodite of Cnidus. After all this it came as no great surprise when lllus, disgusted with the ruler whom he had helped to put on the throne, turned his coat again, joined Zeno in his mountain retreat and began to plan his restoration.

  The person most directly responsible for the downfall of Basileus was, however, neither Zeno nor Illus but his own nephew Harmatius. This ridiculous young man, well-known throughout Constantinople as a dandy and a fop, was promoted by his uncle - despite the flagrant affair that he was carrying on with Basileus's own wife, his aunt Zenonis - to the rank of magister militum, an appointment which so delighted him that he took to parading around the Hippodrome dressed as Achilles. Sent with an army against Zeno and Illus, he was invited by them to negotiate and was easily persuaded - by the promise of the Praetorian Prefecture for himself and the rank of Caesar for his son - to declare himself in their favour. Thus, in July 477, Zeno returned to his capital unopposed. The would-be Augustus - who had, for the second time, sought sanctuary in St Sophia - was prevailed upon to surrender, on the undertaking that his blood would not be shed; and the real Emperor, true to his word, exiled him with his family to the wilds of Cappadocia where, the following winter, cold and hunger did for the lot of them.

  After twenty months of exile, Zeno could at last turn his mind again to affairs of state. There had been several developments during his absence

  1 Daniel the Stylite had visited St Simeon on his column near Antioch, and on Simeon's death had determined to follow his example. After some time on a fairly modest pillar he moved to a magnificent double column erected for him by the Emperor Leo himself, crossing straight from one to the other on a makeshift bridge of planks. He died on 11 December 493, having remained aloft for a total of thirty-three years and three months. The author of his life claims that on this, his only venture down to ground level, he managed to persuade Basileus of the error of his ways and obtained from him a formal recantation in St Sophia; but this sounds suspiciously like wishful thinking.

  that demanded his attention - among them, the final collapse of the Roman Empire of the West.

  For seventeen years after the deaths of Aetius and Valentinian, the West had been dominated by the Suevian Count Ricimer,1 yet another of those barbarian kingmakers so characteristic of the time. He had brought on to the scene a succession of no less than five puppet Emperors. One of these, Avitus, he had forced to abdicate (but allowed to become Bishop of Piacenza) and two, Marjorian and Anthemius, he had had murdered. Two only had kept their thrones: Libius Severus and Olybrius, the latter having died of dropsy in October 472, two months after Ricimer himself. After a four-month interregnum Ricimer's son and would-be successor Gundobad had raised up yet another nonentity, Glycerius; but in Constantinople Leo I had refused to approve him, a
ppointing instead the husband of his wife's niece, one Julius Nepos. Landing in Italy early in 474, Nepos overthrew his rival with scarcely a struggle and was shortly afterwards proclaimed at Rome. Perhaps, men thought, the age of chaos was over. Ricimer was dead, Gundobad and Glycerius discredited; Julius Nepos had the blessing of the Emperor in Constantinople - by this time Zeno had succeeded Leo, but his policy towards the West was unchanged - and might well, with help from the East, re-establish Roman supremacy over the barbarian adventurers.

  But such hopes were all too quickly dashed. In August 475 Orestes, commander-in-chief of the army, rose in revolt against the new Emperor. He had had a curious career. Born in Pannonia, he had found his way while still a young man to the court of Attila, where he had been employed by the King of the Huns as his personal secretary and had played an important part in frustrating the murder plot connected with the embassy of Priscus. After Attila's death he had entered the imperial service, and had headed the household troops under the short-lived Emperor Anthemius; next, on Nepos's accession and his own promotion to the supreme command, he had been ordered to Gaul, there to arrange for the transfer of Auvergne, which had been ceded by the Senate to the Visigothic King Euric. Instead of obeying, however, Orestes took up arms against his sovereign and, with his army behind him, marched on Rome.