The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01 Read online

  Justinian too favoured the Blues, and before his succession spent much time and energy in securing their support. It was probably while doing so that he first met Theodora. She was by now in her middle thirties, as beautiful and intelligent as ever, and with all the wisdom and maturity that had been so noticeably absent in earlier years. He was at once captivated and, within a short time, enslaved. He made her his mistress and fathered a child who died in infancy, but this was not enough: despite her background, he was determined that she should be his wife. Inevitably, there were obstacles. One was a law which specifically forbade the marriage of senators and others of high rank to actresses; another, far more serious, was the implacable opposition of the Empress. On her husband's accession she had abandoned the name of Lupicina in favour of the nobler - if less original - Euphemia; but she was still essentially the peasant she had always been and, having finally found in her immediate entourage someone of still baser extraction than herself, she was determined to do her down in any way she could. While Euphemia lived the marriage was impossible, even for Justinian; but in 524, fortunately for him, she died. The old Emperor made no difficulties; he never attempted to stand against his nephew. Within weeks he had given his approval to a law permitting retired actresses on whom high dignity had been conferred to marry anyone they liked. The way was now clear, and in 525 the Patriarch in St Sophia declared Justinian and Theodora man and wife. Only two years later, on 4 April 527, they were crowned co-Emperor and Empress, and when on 1 August old Justin finally succumbed to the cancer from which he had long been suffering, they found themselves the sole and supreme rulers of the Byzantine Empire.

  The plural is important. Theodora was to be no Empress Consort, spending her life quietly with her attendant ladies in the gynaeceum and appearing with her husband only at the most solemn ceremonies. At Justinian's insistence, she was to reign at his side, taking decisions and acting upon them in his name, giving him the benefit of her counsel in all the highest affairs of state. She had come a long way in five years; her future appearances on the public stage were to be very different from those of the past.

  What the people of Constantinople thought of Justinian's marriage to Theodora is not recorded. If Procopius's account of her early life has any truth in it at all, there must have been many who saw it as a disgrace to the Empire. One suspects, none the less, that there were others prepared to adopt a less censorious attitude. Justinian had never acquired the common touch: he had always seemed somehow remote from his future subjects, chilly and withdrawn. Here at last was a sign that he was human, just like anyone else.

  But to be human is not necessarily to be popular. However splendid the games in the Circus, however open-handed the largesse scattered to the crowds celebrating his second Consulship in the year following his accession, however generous the financial aid made available to cities stricken by earthquakes - there were nearly 5,000 casualties at Antioch in 528, and half as many again at Laodicea in 529 - Justinian was never loved. His extravagances were all very fine, but they all had to be paid for. So did the war with Persia, which began when he had been only a few months on the throne and smouldered fitfully on till after the death of King Kavadh in 5 31; so did the 'Everlasting Peace' with which it ended, signed with Kavadh's successor Chosroes in September 532, which provided for the payment by the Empire of an annual tribute - though it was never so described - of 11,000 pounds' weight of gold a year. So too did the monumental construction programme, which Justinian had begun in his uncle's reign with the great church dedicated to Mary the Mother of God at Blachernae, where the Walls of Theodosius ran down to the Golden Horn, and which he had continued with the rebuilding of no less than seven others - many of them originally founded by Constantine - commemorating early Christian martyrs who had met their deaths in and around Byzantium. This alone would have been an impressive achievement; but it proved to be only the beginning. In the first days after his succession he continued with a foundation of his own, erected in grateful memory of two more martyrs, St Sergius and St Bacchus - a church which, by the originality of its architecture and the sumptuousness of its carved decoration, ranks in Constantinople second only to St Sophia itself.1

  For all these purposes and many others, the necessary funds could be raised - and indeed were - by a tightening-up and general streamlining of the system of tax collection. But such measures are never welcomed by those called upon to pay, and the widespread popular discontent was still further increased by the official appointed by the Emperor to put them into effect. This was a certain John of Cappadocia. We know nothing about his background, except that he came from Caesarea in Asia Minor and that he had little formal education. He was rough and uncouth, utterly devoid of any social graces; but Justinian recognized a superb administrator when he saw one, and in 531 promoted him to be Praetorian Prefect. In this capacity he instituted stringent economies in the provisioning of the army, launched a determined campaign against corruption, introduced new taxes - John of Lydia, one of our most valuable sources for the period, lists twenty-six of them - which fell, perhaps for the first time, as much on the rich and powerful landowners as on the poor peasantry, and did much to centralize the government, dramatically reducing the power of the senior provincial officials. Most of these reforms were long overdue, and John certainly

  1 This exquisite building, now a mosque known as Little St Sophia - Kcuk Ayasofya Camii - still survives below the southern end of the Hippodrome, just behind the Sea Walls. Its two patrons, Roman centurions converted to Christianity and subsequently martyred for their faith, had been particularly dear to Justinian since his youth, when he had been condemned to deaih after a plot against Anastasius and they, appearing to the Emperor in a dream, had obtained his release.

  left the financial machinery of the Empire in very much better shape than he found it. Unfortunately, he combined with his industry and efficiency a degree of moral depravity that aroused universal contempt. Those whom he believed to possess hidden and undeclared riches he thought nothing of subjecting to imprisonment, flogging or even torture; he was, moreover, a glutton, drunkard and debauchee who, according to his Lydian namesake, not only drained the province of Lydia of all its wealth but 'left behind to the wretched inhabitants of the country not a single vessel of any kind; neither was there any wife, any virgin, or any vouth free of defilement'.1 His activities in these fields are unlikely to have been confined to a single province, and it is small wonder that by the beginning of 532 John was the most hated man in the Empire.

  One other official, however, ran him close; and that was the jurist Tribonian, who in 5 29 was appointed Quaestor of the Sacred Palace, the highest law officer in the government. John of Cappadocia, nightmarish as he may have been in other respects, was at least a Christian, and personally incorruptible; Tribonian, a Pamphylian from Side, was an unashamed pagan and venal to boot: Procopius remarks that 'he was always ready to sell justice for gain and every day, as a rule, he would repeal certain laws and propose others, according to the requirements of those who bought his services'.2 On the other hand - also unlike the Cappadocian - he was a man of quite irresistible charm, who astonished all with whom he came into contact by his immense erudition and the breadth of his learning. It must have been this last quality that appealed to Justinian; a considerable scholar himself, he had long contemplated an almost superhuman undertaking, and in Tribonian he found the one man capable of bringing it to fruition. This was a complete recodification of the Roman law. Such an attempt had already been made by Theodosius II in 438; but a century had passed since his day, and Justinian's plan was in any case far more ambitious: where his predecessor had contented himself with making a simple compilation of the imperial edicts, he aimed to produce an entirely new code, removing all repetitions and contradictions, ensuring that there was nothing incompatible with Christian teaching, substituting clarity and concision for confusion and chaos.

  Under Tribonian's chairmanship and guided by his encyclopaedic
r />   Herodotus (writing admittedly nine centuries earlier) tells us that the Lydians had the unfortunate habit of prostituting their daughters before marriage - although, he adds, 'apart from that, their way of life is very like our own'. But the moeurs of the ladies of Lydia had presumably changed since his day.

  History of the Wars, 1, xxiv, i6.

  knowledge, the special commission appointed by the Emperor pressed forward with almost unbelievable speed. On 8 April 529, less than fourteen months after work began, the new Codex was ready; and a week later it came into force, the supreme authority for every court in the Empire. A fuller edition, including Justinian's own laws, appeared five years later; already in 530, however, a second commission under Tribonian began another codification, this time of the principal writings of all the ancient Roman jurists. Known as the Digest - or sometimes as the Pandects - it was the first attempt ever made to bring these also into the framework of a methodical system. The commission was said to have 'condensed the wisdom of nearly two thousand treatises into fifty books, and recast three million "verses" from the older writers into 150,000': an astonishing achievement in only three years. Finally in 533 there appeared the Institutes, a handbook of extracts from the two main books designed for use in the imperial law schools. All these were written in Latin - still the language of law, but of very little else. The Empire had changed much since the days of Constantine; the Hellenization of his city was almost complete.

  In comparison with the immense weight of Tribonian's contribution to the imperial law, the irregularities of his professional life seem insignificant enough - particularly when we make allowance for Procopius's inveterate tendency towards exaggeration. There is no doubt, however, that he and John of Cappadocia were together largely responsible for the growing disaffection that marked the first five years of Justinian's reign. Few memories rankle so much as those of lost lawsuits that should have been won; and to the voices of disappointed litigants we must also add those of men who had been deprived of their positions (whether sinecures or not) and of those who, as a result of the tax reforms, had found their various sharp practices exposed and stopped. The latter were naturally somewhat less vocal; but any reticence in this respect was more than made up for by yet another class of malcontents: the Blues and the Greens. Once Justinian felt himself secure on his throne, he found that he no longer needed Blue support and so embarked on a policy of repression directed against both parties indiscriminately, limiting their powers and privileges and curbing their excesses with harsh, at times even savage, punishments. Thus, when the two factions came to blows after the races in the Hippodrome on 10 January 532, he did not hesitate to send in troops to restore order: and no less than seven of the ringleaders were condemned to death. Of these, five were executed without difficulty, but the remaining two were found to be still breathing when they were cut down. Rescued by a group of monks, they were hurried across the Bosphorus to sanctuary in the monastery of St Lawrence. There the City Prefect, Eudaimon, decided to starve them into submission and posted an armed guard outside the doors; meanwhile their followers demonstrated noisily, demanding that the two should be given their freedom.

  The two men were, as it happened, a Blue and a Green; thus for the first time the two factions found themselves with a common cause. Three days later, as Justinian once again took his place in the Hippodrome and gave the signal for the games to begin, his appearance was greeted by uproar. At first it seemed nothing unusual, but then, suddenly, he realized that this demonstration was different to any he had witnessed before: the Greens and the Blues were united, and their clamour was directed not at each other but at him. 'Nika! Nika!' they cried, using the normal word of encouragement - 'Win! Win!' - by which they were accustomed to cheer on the charioteers. In the past, however, they had invariably followed it with the name of the team they supported, each side trying to shout down the other. Now, in menacing chorus, they chanted the single word alone, over and over again. Factional differences had been forgotten. The crowd was speaking with one voice; and that voice was not pleasant to hear.

  The races began, but failed to reduce the tension and were soon abandoned. The mob poured out of the great circus, hell-bent on destruction. Their first objective was the palace of the City Prefect where, having forced an entrance by killing the guards who stood in their way, they released all the prisoners from the cells and set fire to the building. From there they passed on to the Praetorian Prefecture, then to the Senate House, the Baths of Zeuxippus and of Alexander, and even to the two great churches of St Irene and St Sophia, leaving a trail of flames behind them. By the end of the day all these buildings and countless others standing along the Mese had been reduced to smoking ruins.

  Meanwhile new fires were constantly being started, and for five days and nights the smoke lay thick over the city. On the second day the mob, returning to the Hippodrome, called for the immediate dismissal of John of Cappadocia, Tribonian and the City Prefect Eudaimon - a demand which Justinian, by now seriously alarmed, granted at once. On the third, their fury still unassuaged, they began shouting for a new Emperor - one of Anastasius's nephews, a man named Probus; when they found that he had left the city they set fire to his house and went rampaging on. At last, on 18 January, Justinian partly recovered his nerve and faced them in the Hippodrome, taking the entire blame for all the disturbances and promising a full amnesty if they all returned quietly to their homes. This tactic had been employed twenty years before by his predecessor with complete success; but the present situation was far more serious than anything that Anastasius had had to face. The few halfhearted cheers were soon drowned in catcalls, and the Emperor retreated hurriedly into the Palace.

  By now the rioters had found a new favourite. Hypatius, another nephew of the former Emperor, could look back on a distinguished military career, having commanded Byzantine armies both in Persia and against the rebel Vitalian in Thrace. Now an old man, he had no imperial ambitions and had indeed done his best to hide when the mob began calling his name; but they somehow ran him to earth and carried him shoulder-high to the Hippodrome where, in default of a diadem, he was crowned with a gold necklet borrowed from a bystander and seated on the throne in the imperial box. Meanwhile, in the Palace behind, a desperate Justinian was conferring with his advisers. Already some days before, he had ordered preparations to be made for himself and his court to flee the capital at short notice if the need arose, and he now argued that that moment could no longer be delayed.

  Suddenly, Theodora intervened. She did not care, she said, whether or not it was proper for a woman to give brave counsel to frightened men; in moments of extreme danger, conscience was the only guide. So far as she was concerned, the possibility of flight was not to be considered for a moment, even if it brought them safety. 'Every man', she continued,

  who is born into the light of day must sooner or later die; and how could an Emperor ever allow himself to be a fugitive? May I myself never willingly shed my imperial robes, nor see the day when I am no longer addressed by my title. If you, my Lord, wish to save your skin, you will have no difficulty in doing so. We are rich, there is the sea, there too are our ships. But consider first whether, when you reach safety, you will not regret that you did not choose death in preference. As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: the purple is the noblest winding-sheet.'

  After that, there could be no question of departure; the crisis, it was agreed, must be resolved by force of arms. Fortunately, two of the Empire's best generals were present in the Palace. The first, Belisarius, was still in his twenties. A Romanized Thracian like Justinian, he had

  1 Procopius, History of the Wars, I, xxiv, j $-7.

  recently been recalled from the Persian front and had been promoted to Commander-in-Chief. The second, Mundus, was an Illyrian who found himself only by chance in the capital, but who happened to have with him a sizeable force of Scandinavian mercenaries. The two quickly decided on a plan of action.

  Secretly they slipped out of t
he Palace, rallied their soldiers and, by separate and circuitous routes, marched on the Hippodrome. Then, at a given signal, they burst in simultaneously on the shouting, screaming mob, taking it completely by surprise. No quarter was given: Greens and Blues were slaughtered without discrimination. Meanwhile the Commander of the imperial bodyguard, an elderly and deceptively frail-looking Armenian eunuch named Narses, had stationed his men at the principal exits with orders to cut down all who tried to escape. Within a few minutes, the angry shouts in the great amphitheatre had given place to the cries and groans of wounded and dying men; soon these too grew quiet, until silence spread over the entire arena, its sand now sodden with the blood of the victims.

  As the mercenaries, exhausted by their butchery, picked their way among the 30,000 bodies, finishing them off where necessary and relieving them of such valuables as they possessed, the trembling Hypatius was led before the Emperor. Justinian, who probably realized how his old friend had been swept up in events beyond his control, was inclined to be merciful; but Theodora stopped him. The man, she pointed out, had been crowned by the people; despite his grey hairs, he might at any time serve as a focus for further rebellion. Her husband, as always, bowed to her will. On the very next day Hypatius and his brother Pompeius were summarily executed and their bodies cast into the sea.