ROME AND ROMANIA, 27 BC-1453 AD

Emperors of the Roman and the so-called Byzantine Empires; Princes, Kings, and Tsars of Numidia, Judaea, Bulgaria, Serbia, Wallachia, & Moldavia; and the Sultns of Rm Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.
William Butler Yeats (18651939), "Sailing to Byzantium"

Rome casts a long shadow. I am writing in the Latin alphabet. I am using the Roman calendar, with its names of the months. I use Roman names for the planets in the sky, which also get applied to the days of the week. Sentences I write contain borrowed Latin words with some frequency [e.g. sententia, continre, Latinus, frequentia, for example -- exempli gratia]. Nietzsche said, "The Romans were indeed the strong and noble, just as those stronger and nobler hitherto on earth never existed, never themselves would have been dreamt" [Zur Genealogie der Moral, Reclam, 1988, p.42; see discussion of this translation]. But this is just the problem. What Nietzsche admired was unapologetic power, conquest, and domination. This no longer seems so admirable, and the Empire founded by Julius Caesar and Augustus, as a form of government, does not look like an advance in the course of human progress. Even to Machiavelli, the despotism of Caesar was a grave retrogression in comparison to the Roman Republic. While a thoughtful Emperor, like Marcus Aurelius, expressed ideals adopted from Stoic cosmopolitanism, the unity and universality of Rome soon expressed itself as the unity and universality of a state religion, Christianity, whose intrinsic exclusivism and intolerance became characteristic of the Middle Ages. This is also no longer to be regarded as admirable. Nevertheless, the very success of Rome makes us, like it or not, her heirs, in countless matters great and small -- like monogamy, which has no Biblical basis. Indeed, the Romans were rather more successful than is usually thought. The corpus of Roman law, let alone Greek literature, was not preserved at Rome, but at Constantinople, Roma Nova-- as we see Michael Psellus in the 11th Century contrasting "the ancient and lesser Rome, and the later, more powerful city" [Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Penguin, 1966, p.177]. What most people would probably regard as an obscure and possibly unpleasant footnote to Mediaeval history, the Byzantine Empire, was in fact still the Roman Empire, still known to Western Europeans, "Latins" or "Franks" at the time, as Romania, already the name of the

Empire in Late Antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the Greeks used their own word for "Greeks," Hellnes, to mean the ancient pagan Greeks, as the word is used in the New Testament -- sometimes the Latin word for Greeks would be borrowed, as Graikoi, if this was needed for contemporary reference, as for the language. In 1354 Demetrius Cydones even translated the Summa Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas Aquinas into Greek as the Book against the Hellenes. Mediaeval Greeks, and the other citizens of the Empire, Armenians, Albanians, Vlachs, etc., were themselves always Romans, Rhmaoi, and the Empire was always h Rhmain Arkh, h Rhmain Basilea, "the Empire of the Romans," or even Rhmania, as in Latin. It is then natural that Classicists, to whom the Romans were the last people who proudly weren't Christians, would prefer the hostile modern neologism "Byzantine" for the continuing Empire, rather than pollute the memory of Augustus and Trajan with that of Justinian, Heraclius, or Basil II. Yet even Justinian was still speaking Latin -- and what Classicist will dare, and I dare them, to fault the others for speaking Greek? The very people, indeed, thanks to whom we possess Classical Greek and its literature. A Western outpost of Constantinople like Venice long provided a pipeline of influence from Romania, even in little things, like the fork (the one for eating -- forgotten after the "Fall of Rome" and unknown among the Franks), which arrived there in 1004 or 1005. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 (at the connivance, sadly, of Venice), and then refugees from the fall of the City to the Ottomans in 1453, rather crudely, but effectively, brought much of the heritage of the Roman East back into the hitherto poorer Mediaeval civilization of the West. Much remaining from the Classical world was lost, nevertheless, not with the Germanic invasions, the "Fall," and the Dark Ages, but in these later disasters. Sometimes only pitiful fragments were salvaged from them. Thus, half of the literature described by the Patriarch Photius in the 9th century is now lost. When we realize how much was preserved, in literature, art, and institutions, at Constantinople from the soi disant "Fall of Rome," it helps us realize how much Mediaeval Romania was, indeed, still the Roman Empire, just as they tell us. In an age when the politically correct fall all over themselves to say "Beijing" rather than "Peking" or "Mumbai" rather than "Bombay," it is extraordinary to find historians who not only do not call the Mediaeval Roman Empire what it was, but who seem to have even forgotten than "Romania" was actually its name in both Latin and Greek. This is getting to be a large text file (369.4K), and with older internet connections it may take a long time to load, especially because of all the maps and genealogical charts, which are large graphic files. There is also an audio file (827.1K), if anyone wants music: This is the "Dance of the Knights" from the ballet Romeo and Juliet by Sergei Prokofiev -- I think it evokes the ponderous, ominous, and majestic character of the Empire. Despite the overall size, Romania.htm has not been broken up, so as to preserve and emphasize the continuity of the history of Rome and Romania from Augustus all the way to Constantine XI. It is a long story -- Gibbon's version is now published in

three large volumes [The Modern Library], and he only began with the Antonines. Google describes this file as, "A thorough investigation into the Eastern Roman Empire." Somebody has not looked at it very carefully. We begin here with Augustus. But I have in fact never seen a book or treatment of the Roman Empire that addresses it as an institution with a continuous history from Augustus to Constantine XI. Classicist "Roman" historians lose interest in the 4th century and throw in the towel in the 5th, while "Byzantinists" generally begin with Constantine. This is a distortion due to modern prejudices, written by historians whom the Romans would have dismissed as "Franks." Some historians, e.g. Peter Brown or A.H.M. Jones, tie together "Roman" and "Byzantine" time; but a general sense of the continuity of the history has not caught on.

Index

Introduction Animated History of Romania Consuls of the Roman Republic Sources I. First Empire, "Rome," 27 BC-284 AD o A. "PRINCIPATE," 27 BC-235, 261 years 1. JULIO-CLAUDIANS Consuls of the Roman Empire The Roman Army in 14/24 AD Roman Coinage 2. The Bosporan Kingdom 3. Armenia, 401 BC-428 AD The Patriarchs of Armenia 4. Numidia 5. Judaea 6. Nabataeans 7. FLAVIANS & ANTONINES The Roman Army in 74/79 AD The Roman Army in 138/150 AD 8. SEVERANS The Roman Army in 230 AD o B. CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY, 235-284, 49 Years Crisis of the Third Century Chart II. Second Empire, Early "Romania," 284 AD-610 AD o A. "DOMINATE," 284-379, 95 years 1. TETRARCHS Chart of the Tetrarchy Late Roman Capitals 2. CONSTANTIANS The Approaches and Environs of Constantinople The Theodosian Walls of Constantinople

Cross Section of the Walls The Patriarchs of Jerusalem The Patriarchs of Antioch The Patriarchs of Constantinople 3. VALENTIANS Flavius Vegetius Renatus o B. CRISIS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, 379-476, 97 Years 1. THEODOSIANS The Roman Army, c.408 AD Bishops & Archbishops of Milan Maronite Patriarchs of Lebanon Syrian Orthodox Patriarchs of Antioch King Arthur Scotia: Picts, Britons, & Scots Visigoths Burgundians Vandals Western Provinces of the Notitia Dignitatum, c.400 AD Eastern Provinces of the Notitia Dignitatum, c.400 AD 2. LAST WESTERN EMPERORS the End of Roman Gaul o C. THE EAST ALONE, 476-518, 42 Years 1. LEONINES Ostrogoths Roman Coinage o D. RETURNING TO THE WEST, 518-610, 92 years 1. JUSTINIANS Lombards Provinces at the Death of Justinian, 565 AD 2. Georgia, 588-1505 3. Ghassanids, 220-638 III. Third Empire, Middle "Romania," Early "Byzantium," 610 AD-1059 AD o A. THE ADVENT OF ISLAM, 610-802, 192 years 1. HERACLIANS The Organization of the Themes and Exarchates, at the Death of Constans II, 668 AD 2. Armenia, 628-806 AD Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem 3. SYRIANS (ISAURIANS) 4. Doges (Dukes) of Venice, 727-1797 Patriarchs of Aquileia, Grado, and Venice o B. REVIVAL AND ASCENDENCY, 802-1059, 257 years 1. NICEPHORANS 2. AMORIANS (PHRYGIANS) 3. Bulgaria before Roman Conquest Macedonian Bulgaria

4. MACEDONIANS the Varangian Guard Mt. Aths 5. Armenia, 806-1064 IV. Fourth Empire, Late "Romania/Byzantium," 1059 AD-1453 AD o A. THE ADVENT OF THE TURKS, 1059-1185, 126 years 1. DUCASES The English Varangians 2. Seljuk Sult.ns of Rm 3. COMNENI 4. Lesser Armenia Patriarchs of the Great House of Cilicia 5. Kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, 1099-1489 Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem County of Edessa Principality of Antioch County of Tripoli Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem o B. THE LATIN EMPIRE, 1185-1261, 76 years 1. ANGELI 2. Bulgaria, Asens 3. LATINS Latin Patriarchs of Constantinople Kings of Thessalonica Dukes of Athens Princes of Achaea 4. Epirus 5. Trebizond 6. LASCARIDS o C. THE LAST DAYS, 1261-1453, 192 years 1. Serbia 2. Bosnia 3. Bulgaria, Terters 4. The Oghullar of Rm Aydn Oghullar Sarukhn Oghullar Menteshe Oghullar Germiyn Oghullar H.amd Oghullar Tekke Oghullar Jndr Oghullar Qaramn Oghullar

Eretna Oghullar Dulghadr Oghullar Osmanli Oghullar 5. PALAEOLOGI The Flag of Romania The Morea & Mistra 6. Romanians V. Fifth Empire, Ottomans, Islamic Byzantium, 1453 AD-1922 AD, 469 years o The Patriarchs of Constantinople o Animated History of Turkiya o The Shihb Amrs of Lebanon, 1697-1842 AD o The House of Muh.ammad 'Al in Egypt, 1805-1953 AD Modern Romania, Ottoman Successor States in the Balkans o Modern Romania Index 1817, Serbian Autonomy 1834, after Greek Independence 1858, after the Crimean War o Romnia, 1599-present 1875 Congress of Berlin, 1878 o Montenegro, 1697-1918 1908 o Greece, 1821-present 1912, before the Balkan Wars o Serbia & Yugoslavia, 1817-present 1913-1914, after the Balkan Wars, & before World War I o Bulgaria, 1879-present 1925, after World War I o Albania, 1914-present 1943, Axis Occupation in World War II 1947, after World War II o Macedonia, 1991-present 1999, Ethnic Cleansing o Kosovo, 2002-present o Armenia, 1991-present o Georgia, 1991-present Culmen Europae

Philosophy of History Home Page

Sources

Discussion of the period covered by this page, with sources on Roman and "Byzantine" history, upon which the actual tables and genealogies are based, may be found in "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, and Other Reflections on Roman History." One Roman source not mentioned there is the handy Who Was Who In The Roman World, edited by Diana Bowder [1980, Washington Square Press, Pocket Books, 1984]. That was the first book I ever saw that organized Roman Emperors into logical dynastic or event centered groups. Another source I have recently enjoyed is Justinian's Flea by William Rosen [Viking, 2007], not the least because it cites this very webpage [note 2:36, p.331]. Otherwise, it is a fine book with a good appeciation of Late Antiquity, and with some details that I have already added here. Other sources are given here at the points where they are used. This page is continued and supplemented by the material in "Successors of Rome: Scotia", "Successors of Rome: Germania", "Successors of Rome: Francia", "Successors of Rome: The Periphery of Francia", "Successors of Rome: Russia", "The Ottoman Sultns", and "Modern Romania". Related earlier history may be found at "Historical Background to Greek Philosophy" and "Hellenistic Monarchs", and the "Consuls of the Roman Republic". Note that Greek words and names are not phonetically transliterated but are actually Latinized in both spelling and morphology. Thus, the name that could be transliterated from Greek as "Doukas," is written "Ducas." The epithet of Basil II, "Bulgaroktonos," "Bulgar Slayer," is rendered "Bulgaroctonus." This is contrary to increasing usage but is, as Warren Threadgold says [A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. xxi], what the Romans would have done themselves when writing in the Latin alphabet. Since the Latin alphabet is used here, and since the Roman Empire originally used Latin as its universal language, never forgotten in Greek Romania, that is the practice here. Some say that this is a "detour" through Latin, but that is the historic and customary route by which Greek words came into English. Exceptions would be for Greek words that simply have Latin translations. Thus, Greek Rhmaioi, "Romans," corresponds to Latin Romani (not "Rhomaeoe"). A kind of exception to this would be when the Greek word is part of a compound. For instance Tsar Kalojan of Bulgaria was called the "Roman Killer," Rhmaioktonos. This would Latinize as Rhomaeoctonus. The maps are originally those of Tony Belmonte, edited to eliminate references to "Byzantium" and with corrections and additions. Tony's historical atlas (with Tony) disappeared from the Web. It was painstakingly reassembled by Jack Lupic, but then his site has disappeared also. Corrections and additions are based on The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (Colin McEvedy, 1967), The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Colin McEvedy, 1961), The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (Colin McEvedy, 1992), The Anchor Atlas of World History, Volume I (Hermann Kinder, Werner Hilgemann, Ernest A. Menze, and Harald and Ruth Bukor, 1974), and various prose histories. My graphics programs do not seem to be quite as sophisticated as Tony's, so maps I have modified may not look as professionally done as his originals. Rome and Romania Index

I. FIRST EMPIRE, "ROME," 27 BC-284 AD, 310 years

Trajan was most conspicuous for his justice, for his bravery, and for the simplicity of his habits. He was strong in body, being in his forty-second year when he began to rule, so that in every enterprise he toiled almost as much as the others; and his mental powers were at their highest, so that he had neither the recklessness of youth nor the sluggishness of old age. He did not envy nor slay any one, but honored and exalted all good men without exception, and hence he neither feared nor hated any one of them. To slanders he paid very little heed and he was no slave of anger. He refrained equally from the money of others and from unjust murders. He expended vast sums on wars and vast sums on works of peace; and while making very many urgently needed repairs to roads and harbors and public buildings he drained no one's blood for any of these undertakings... For these deeds, now, he took more pleasure in being loved that in being honoured. His association with the people was marked by affability and his intercourse with the senate by dignity, so that he was loved by all and dreaded by none save the enemy. Dio Cassius (c.150-235 AD), Roman History, Book LXVIII, Translated by Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library, Dio Cassius, VIII, Harvard U. Press, 1925, 2005, p.369371. In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury.... During a happy period (A.D.98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Modern Library, p.1 The "First Empire" is what often would be considered the entire history of the "Roman Empire." It is definitely the end of the Ancient World. If "Rome" means paganism, bizarre Imperial sex crimes, and thePax Romana, then this would indeed be it. A later Empire that is Christian, more somberly moralistic, and more beset with war, sounds like a different civilization, which it is, and isn't. That the earlier civilization didn't "fall" but merely became transformed is a truth that both academic and popular opinion still hasn't quite come to terms with. If the decadence of pagan religion and despotic emperors was going to be the cause of the "fall" of Rome, then it certainly should have fallen in the Crisis of the Third Century. That it didn't would seem almost like a disappointment

to many. But the greatest of the 3rd century Emperors, like Aurelian, don't get popular books, movies, and BBC television epics made about them. They begin to pass into a kind of historical blind spot. The Pax Romana seems real enough in certain places, but there were not many reigns without some major military action. As long as these were remote from Rome, people would have thought of it as peace. Once Aurelian rebuilt the walls around Rome, things had obviously changed. Indeed, perhaps Rome did "fall" in the Third Century, if by the "Roman Empire" we mean a state ruled, controlled, and centered in the City of Rome. Somewhere between Decius and Diocletian, that was lost. The Emperors ceased to live at Rome, there was not much happening there that influenced events, and even the Army was mostly recruited elsewhere. The Empire decentered and turned inside out, something that popular discourse and even many historians have failed to either recognize or acknowledge. Rome and Romania Index A. "PRINCIPATE," 27 BC-235, 261 years
1. JULIO-CLAUDIANS Augustus 27 BC-14 BC when Octavian receives the title "Augustus" -- which C. (Octavius) Julius Caesar AD Octavianus Augustus then becomes the name by which we know him. We defeat of Varus by Arminius, might think that the Empire, Imperium, begins with destruction of three legions, Augustus becoming Emperor, Imperator, but that is not abandonment of Germany, 9 the case. Imperator simply means "commander," and this AD; Alexandrian Year, 23 BC had long been in use with a specific meaning.

The Roman Empire "officially" begins by tradition in 27

An imperator was someone with a military command and imperium, which meant both military and civil authority in the area of his command. This made Julius Caligula 37-41 C. (Julius) Caesar (Germanicus) Caesar essentially the dictator of Gaul, once he had Claudius I conquered it. That was dangerous, indeed fatal, for the 41-54 Ti. Claudius Drusus Republic; but in those terms Julius Caesar began the Invasion of Britain, 43 creation of the Roman Empire already as an "emperor." So, while we think of "Augustus" as thename of the first Nero 54-68 (L. Domitius Ahenobarbus) Nero Emperor, it was simply a title, whose import was well Claudius Drusus remembered by subsequent Emperors. It accompanies the non-dynastic institutional changes that were effected or completed by Augustus. The institution thus created now gets called the Galba 68-69 Ser. Sulpicius Galba "Principate," from Princeps, "Prince" (literally, "comes first"). The idea of the Principate is that the forms of Otho 69 M. Salvius Otho the Republic are retained, and the Emperor superficially Vitellius is simply still an official of the Republic. Augustus was 69 A. Vitellius not a king. He did not even hold the Republican office of Dictator, as Julius Caesar had. But Augustus otherwise assembled offices and authority sufficient to explain the power that he had actually obtained by force. In principle, Rome is still SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus, "the Senate and the People of Rome." This institution continues for some centuries, and there never was a subsequent question that the Emperor might become a King, as had been widely feared, expected, or desired with Julius Caesar. In time, the Emperor came to be regarded as superior to any mere king, as
Tiberius I
Ti. Claudius Nero

14-37

the reach and authority of many Emperors was indeed great beyond precedent or (local) comparison. While it seems natural and obvious to take Augustus as the successor to Julius Caesar and his new Imperial government as the successor to the Roman Republic, there was another way of looking at this. The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c.100-c.170 AD), who was concerned about the dating of astronomical observations, laid the foundation for all ancient chronology with the Canon of Kings, a list of rulers beginning with the Babylonian King Nabonassar in 747 BC. The Canon thus starts off withBabylonian Kings (and some Assyrians thrown in), jumps to Persian Kings in 538 BC, to Alexander in 332 BC, to the Ptolemies in Egypt in 305 BC, and finally to Augustus, at the death of Cleopatra, in 30 BC. It continues to the reign of Antoninus Pius. These particular connections occur because (1) the Babylonians had the most advanced astronomy of their age, (2) Babylonian records continued seamlessly into the Persian and Hellenistic periods, (3) elements of this, including considerable data, had been translated into Greek, and (4) Ptolemy himself operated in Alexandria, where these translated Babylonian records were freely available, where Greek astronomy itself reached maturity, and where Ptolemy had at hand the simplest calendar of the Ancient World, the Egyptian 365 day year, which continued to be used in astronomy until the introduction of Julian Day Numbers. Thus, we have the curious mixture of an astronomer whose name is in Latin and Greek, who lives in Egypt, and who uses the Era of a Babylonian King (Nabonassar) in conjunction with the Egyptian calendar. This all is striking for Ptolemy's willingness to use the best of all that was available to him -though it may still surprise some, as we now know independently from Egyptian records, that the astronomy of the Egyptians themselves, except for (or perhaps because of) their year, had less to offer than the Babylonian. Thus, Augustus may be seen as more than a Roman ruler, as, indeed, the successor to the universal equivalents of the eponymous archons (the Athenian officials used for purposes of dating) for all of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and European civilization. From Antoninus Pius, the Canon could easily be continued with Roman Emperors all the way to 1453, using a clue of the numbering given by the Venerable Bede, who has Maurice as the 54th Emperor. Even the presence of the Latin Emperors present no anomaly, since Assyrian Kings were interpolated with Babylonian Kings. The last ephemeral Western Emperors, so important for the mythology of the "Fall" of Rome, were, of course, simply ignored by Bede. The Canon can then obviously be continued from 1453 with the Ottomans, who make for a succession in Constantinople in an even more seamless fashion than Augustus takes over from Cleopatra. The Canon of Kings, then, as a succession of Kings, will end in 1922, when no monarch conquers or replaces Mehmed VI. It is a moment, indeed, in the aftermath of World War I, when the idea of monarchy alone as a legitimate form of government, without popular and parliamentary qualifications, pretty much ends. The Principate is the period that fits everybody's main idea of the "Roman Empire." Caligula and Nero, and Robert Graves's version of Claudius, are objects of endless fascination, moralizing, guilty pleasure, and not-so-guilty pleasure. Whatever these emperors were actually like, this approach began with the Romans themselves, with Suetonius's list of Tiberius's sexual perversions, lovingly reproduced in Bob Guccione's silly movie Caligula (1979, 1991). Whether Tiberius was really guilty of anything of the

sort is anyone's guess, but we don't hear much in the way of such accusations about subsequent Emperors, except for a select few, like Caracalla and Elagabalus. Meanwhile, Augustus had secured the Rhine-Danube frontier, and Claudius conquered most of Britain. Augustus originally wanted an Elbe-Danube frontier, but one of his armies (of three legions) was caught in a catastrophic ambush and destroyed. The Romans gave up on the Elbe permanently. Only Charlemagne, by the conquest of Saxony, would secure what Augustus had wanted. The shadow of the Republic persisted during this period, and someone like Claudius could still dream of restoring full Republican government. The year 69 pretty much ended these dreams, since the first free-for-all scramble for the throne revealed that the army, and only the army, would determine who would be Emperor. Strangely enough, despite the occasional anarchy, this would be a source of strength for the Empire, since the state always did the best with successful soldiers at its head. Unsuccessful soldiers faced the most merciless reality check (whether killed by the enemy or by their own troops); but purely civilian Emperors, like Honorius, could endure one disaster after another without their rule necessarily being endangered.

The Roman Army under Augustus contained 28 Legions (Legio, Legiones), not counting the Praetorian Guard. At some 5500 men each, this gives a full strength Army of 154,000 men. However, this does not count the Auxilia, units like cavalry and others that consisted of those who are not Roman citizens (though they gained citizenship from service). The entire Army, therefore, was more like 300,000 men, less than half of what it would number in the Late Empire. In his attempt to extend Roman power to the Elbe, Augustus lost three Legions at the battle of the Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD. The numbers of the lost Legions were never used again (likewise with the Legions later disbanded for rebellion). All the Legions were originally simply numbered. Once they begin acquiring epithets (cognomen, cognomina), likeLegio X Fretensis, we start getting more than one Legion with the same number, but with different epithets, e.g. Legio III Gallica, Legio III Cyrenaica, Legio III Augusta pia fidelis, Legio III Italica concors, and Legio III

Parthica. This is a little confusing. The logic of the matter is that eventually the legions begin to be numbered in relation to their cognomen, not in the absolute count of the Army. Thus, Septimius Severus raised legions for his attack on the Parthians (195 AD), which quite logically are numbered Legio I Parthica, Legio II Parthica, & Legio III Parthica. Eventually there would also beLegio IV Parthica, Legio V Parthica, & Legio VI Parthica, but these were not raised by Severans. We find all the numbers used up to XXII (Legio XXII Primigenia pia fidelis), but then Trajan raisedLegio XXX Ulpia Victrix. I suspect that he used "XXX" because 29 Legions already existed, despite the numbers used. The office of the Roman Consuls, and dating by them, continues under the Empire until Justinian. They can be examined on a popup page. The abbreviations used in the full names of the Emperors can be found elsewhere with the discussion of the tria nomina. Emperors are commonly known by particular parts of their names, or by nicknames, e.g. Caligula, "little boot," or Caracalla, "little hood" -- both names given them as children in the army camps of their fathers (Germanicus and Septimius Severus, respectively). The family of the Julio-Claudians seems like one of the most complicated in history. This chart eliminates many people in the family to focus on the descent and relation of the Emperors. Caligula and Nero are descendants of Augustus, through his daughter Julia (from his first marriage); but Claudius and Nero are also descendants of Mark Antony, who of course committed suicide, shortly before Cleopatra, rather than be captured after his defeat by Augustus. The use of crowns to indicate the emperors is at this point anachronistic, but it is convenient. The crown for Christian Roman Emperors, which of course will not occur until Constantine, is shown with a nimbus, like deified earlier Emperors, because they are always portrayed with halos, like Saints, and are said to be the "Equal of the Apostles." Indeed, not just Christians Emperors, but Empresses and their children are shown with halos. This is not something that ones sees in Western Europe.

No less that four foreign cultures have been planted into North Africa over the centuries. The Kingdom of Numidia was originally promoted by Rome as an ally against the Carthaginians. In the Second Punic War (218-201), Masinissa went from fighting effectively for Carthage to an alliance with Rome. His cavalry is largely what enabled Scipio Africanus to defeat Hannibal at Zama in 202. He was then supported by the Romans in eliminating his Numidian rivals. However, when he wanted to marry the wife of the great Numidian king Syphax, the Carthaginian princess Sophonisba, the Romans demanded that she be handed over to them. Masinissa enabled her to poison herself instead. Rome supported Masinissa the rest of his life. He died shortly before Carthage itself was exterminated in 146. Numidian allies thus enabled Rome to overthrow the first foreign culture in North Africa, the Phoenician (or "Punic" to the Romans). The Numidians then, of course, discovered what being an "ally" of Rome really meant, and war resulted as later Kings tried to preserve their independence -- especially the War of Jugurtha (112-105). Like the native kingdoms of 4. KINGS OF NUMIDIA Anatolia, Numidia was soon converted into a Masinissa c.215-149 Roman province, opening the way for the Gulussa & Mastanabal 149-c.145 introduction of a Latinate culture. If no other events had intervened, North Africa today Micipsa 149-118 would probably boast its own Romance Adherbal & Hiempsal I 118-116 language, like Spanish or French. This, however, was not to be. The Vandals interrupted Jugurtha 118-105 Roman rule, but not long enough to make any War with Romans, 112-106 lasting difference, if Islam had not soon arrived. Gauda 105-? When it did, this became the most durably planted foreign culture, with a large colonial Hiempsal II c.88-c.50 element, as the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt later Juba I c.50-46 directed an invasion of ethnic Arab tribes -- in Juba II c.30 BC-c.22 AD revenge for North African defection from the Fatimids, and from the Shi'ite cause. The last Ptolemy c.22 AD-40 culture planted was that of France, beginning Roman Province with the occupation of Algeria in 1830. Eventually, something like 30% of the population of Algeria was French colonials, who began to fight as the era of de-colonization threatened their position. This brought about the fall of the French Fourth Republic in 1958. Interestingly, the two greatest French Existentialist writers and philosophers were on opposite sides of the issue. Jean Paul Sartre had become a dogmatic Marxist who demanded Algerian independence at any cost, while Albert Camus, whose most famous book, The Stranger, is set in Algeria, could not so easily dismiss the poor French farmers who had lived in Algeria for nearly a century -- Camus also suspected that Sartre's doctrinaire leftism concealed a bit of collaboration with the Germans in World War II. The return of Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958 ushered in harsh medicine about Algeria. De Gaulle decided that France should cut her losses, and the colony was abruptly granted independence in 1962. This began a bitter exodus of the French colonials and the nauseating torture and massacre of all those Algerians who were associated with the colonial regime. The cycle of terrorism continues even today, as leftist ideology has collapsed into an unhappy civil conflict between military rule and Islamic fundamentalism, and frightened Algerians have

increasingly fled....to France. Unfortunately, the French economy, with stupefying labor law, has created national double digit unemployment, far higher in the heavily Moslem immigrant community, which is then supported by the French welfare state in public housing projects that have become virtual No Man's Lands outside many French cities. The idle and resentful unemployed then turn to....Islamic fundamentalism.
5. LEADERS & KINGS OF JUDAEA Hasmoneans Judas Maccabaeus 167-161 Jerusalem Occupied, 164 Jonathan Simon John Hyrcanus I Aristobulus Alexander Jannaeus Aristobulus II Hyrcanus II Antigonus Herod I the Great Archelaus Herod II Antipas Philip Herod Agrippa I Agrippa II 161-152 King, 152-143 142-135 135-105 104-103 103-76

Salome Alexandra 76-67 67-63 63-40 40-37 Herodians King, 37-4 BC Ethnarch, 4 BC6 AD Tetrarch, 4 BC39 AD Tetrarch, 4 BC37 AD King, 37-44 King, 50/53100? Pompey captures Jerusalem, 63

The success of the great struggle of the Maccabees to free the Jews from the Seleucid Kings is still commemorated in the holiday of Hanukkah, based on an incident when the Temple was reconsecrated after the liberation of Jerusalem. Little oil was available for the Temple lamps, but what there was burned miraculously for eight days. The burning of candles for Hanukkah coincides, however, with similar fire rituals of many people at the darkest time of the year, in December, and Hanukkah has also taken on the giftgiving attributes of Christmas -- exemplifying the adaptation of religious rituals to several purposes. Explanations of Hanukkah often awkwardly refer to the "Syrians" instead of to the Seleucid Greeks -- but it would certainly seem more politic today to risk offending the Greeks than to have the modern Syrians, who had nothing to do with the Seleucids, feel accused of ancient tyranny. Modern Israel and Syria have enough recent issues to deal with. The hard won independence of Judaea fell within a century to Rome, which for a time, as elsewhere, tolerated a fiction of local rule -- the Herodian dynasty owed its power entirely to Roman favor. This did not mollify the Messianic hotheads, who inevitably sparked a rebellion that led to the final destruction of the Temple, the end, in a sense, of ancient Judaism, massacres and mass suicides, as at Masada, and the increasing Diaspora of Jews into the Roman world. Out of this also came the story of a peaceful Messiah, who had been executed and resurrected, whose cult eventually overwhelmed Rome itself, transforming Hellenistic Romanism into a culture of both Athens and Jerusalem. Jews themselves derived little enough benefit from this transformation, since Pauline Christianity had repudiated the ritual requirements of the Law and the new religion became increasingly estranged from the old. Once the new religion became the State Religion of Rome, the rigor with which Judaism had rejected the old gods now became public

Jewish Revolt & War, 66-73: Destruction of Jerusalem, 70 AD; Fall of Masada, 73; Revolt of Bar Kokhba, 132-135

policy, to their own disability. Christianity never had the provision found in Islam, however grudging, for the toleration, within limits, of kindred religionists. The fate of Jews in Christendom, as of the basic attitude of Christianity to Judaism, thus became a matter of dispute. Where Christianity began as sect of Judaism, perhaps just a continuation of the Essenes described in detail by Josephus, some post-Pauline Christians wanted Judaism repudiated completely and the Hebrew Bible simply rejected. The most elaborate version of this turned up in Gnosticism, where the God of the Old Testament was reduced to a minor and malevolent deity. The "Jealous" God of Judaism was not regarded as having the right attitude to be the true Father of Jesus. The Orthodox decision in the matter was that the God of the Old Testament was indeed the God of the New Testament, the Jews were indeed the Chosen People, and that the Covenants with Abraham, etc. were not only valid in their own right but essential links to the New Covenant established by Jesus. No less an authority than St. Augustine said that Jews must be tolerated so that the Biblical prophecies of the Coming of Christ would be preserved by a disinterested, or even hostile, source. Augustine, interestingly, did not doubt that Jews could be trusted to faithfully preserve the Hebrew text of the Bible -- as they did. Now, Christianity granting a role for Judaism in Christianity is very patronizing to Judaism, but it did provide a ground for the toleration of Judaism, which no other principle at the time did (no one having heard of Liberal society). There were shameful exceptions to this toleration, but through the Middle Ages the overwhelming majority of Church authorities staunchly condemned attacks on the Jews. The Popes themselves even refuted, twice, the "blood libel" that Jews used Christian blood for Passover matzos (which would have been a grotesque violation of Jewish dietary laws anyway).

The genealogy of the Hasmonaeans is from The Complete World of The Dead Sea Scrolls (Philip R. Davies, George J. Brooke, & Phillip R. Callaway, Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2002, p.42). The incestuous marriages of the children and grandchildren of Herod the Great, perhaps typical of a Hellenistic dynasty, like the Ptolemies, were very hard to understand. The chart in my edition of Josephus (The Jewish War, Penguin Classics, 1960, p.410) did not make things very clear, but then my colleague Don Smith helped straighten things out for me. There seems to be some question about the parentage of Herodias and Agrippa I -- with Davies, Brooke, & Callaway going for Aristobulus. Aristobulus and his brother Alexander, descendants of the Hasmonaeans through their mother, were both executed by Herod. Since Mediaeval Jews shared in the continuing trade and commercial culture of the Middle East, and were often its only representatives in impoverished and ruralized Latin Europe, they became fatefully associated in European eyes with the commercial and financial practices that Europeans at once needed, wanted, misunderstood, and resented. A similar problem later occurred all over again in Eastern Europe, where the Kings of Poland were eager to bring in a more sophisticated population, unwelcome in Western Europe, to develop the country and strengthen the throne. Such resentments in time found theoretical expression in Marx's view that

the Jews embodied the archetype of grasping and exploitive capitalism. This made them class enemies, but that was soon enough converted into race enemies when Marxism mutated into Fascism and Naziism. Jews who thought they had escaped the class and race animus in the Soviet Union soon came to be suspected, purged, and, increasingly, murdered by Stalin, while Hitler, of course, decided to kill them all. This helped promote the idea, not surprisingly, that all Jews should return to Palestine and found a Jewish State, which is what happened. After 2000 years, however, the Zionists found that they didn't have a lot in common with the modern Arabic speaking population of the place they returned to -- rather than learn Arabic, they even decided to revive Hebrew, which was already dying out as a spoken language in the days of the Hasmoneans, and which some Jews refused to speak as being a sacred language (they still speak Yiddish). After sixty years, this conflict between Israel and Arab Palestinians has still not been resolved. By some estimates, e.g. Paul Johnson in his A History of the Jews [HarperPerennial, 1988], Jews constituted as much as 10% of the population of the Roman Empire. I am not familiar with the basis of this estimate, but I am familiar with the difficulty of estimating Roman population at all. I find so high a figure inherently improbable. Judaea, although the "land of milk and honey" in the Bible, is a pretty barren place. This is not going to support a large population, especially on the basis of ancient agriculture. That there should be as many Jews there as, for instance, Egyptians is impossible. Of course, a large part of the estimate is based on the Diaspora population. Even in the time of the Ptolemies, Alexandria already had a very large Jewish population. But that is a key point: the Diaspora population is mostly going to be urban; but the urban population of the Roman Empire is unlikely to have been more than 20% of the whole. Even today, 85% of the population of Tanzania, whose growth was ruined by the socialism of its post-independence government, is still in agriculture. If the population of the Empire was as much as 20% urban, and Jews were 10% of the population, then Jews would have to constitute nearly half of the population of every city, especially including Rome itself (with a population of a million or more people). That is nothing like the impression we get from the records, where so large a group in Rome would be felt on a constant basis. So this "10%" seems like a gravely inflated figure, though we may never have a really accurate one. I now see Lea Cline, of the American Academy in Rome (and evidently a graduate student in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin), saying that the Jewish population of Rome in the 1st century AD was probably about 30,000 people (I say literally saw her, on the Naked Archaeologist). The basis for this are records for the number of "synagogal communites" present in the city. Since, from records about numbers of bakeries, tenements, etc., the population of Rome can be estimated as at least a million people, this puts the Jewish population at no more than 3%. This sounds more like it, especially when the Jewish population of Rome is liable to reflect both an urban concentration of Roman Jews and the special concentration effected by the importance of the Roman capital itself -- Jews had been there since well into the Hellenistic Period. If it is impossible that the percentage of Jews in Rome could be lower than in the Empire as a whole, that gives us a good ground for evaluating the percentage given by Paul Johnson.

The maps here begin with Rome at its height under Trajan. Trajan's occupation of lower Mesopotamia was impressive but brief. After taking Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, "he conceived a desire to sail down to the Erythraean Sea" [i.e. the Persian Gulf -- Dio Cassius, Book LXVIII, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard U. Press, 1925, 2005, p.415]. Sailing down the Tigris to "the Ocean," he wished he were, like Alexander, on his way to India, "if I were still young" [p.417]. Indeed, he would die within the year (117 AD). Visiting Babylon in order to sacrifice to Alexander at the place of his death, "he mostly saw nothing but mounds and stones and ruins" [p.417]. It had been long since Babylon had been an important city. Putting down revolts in Mesopotamia, it is not clear how much Trajan really intended to retain, since he installed his own candidiate for Parthian King (Parthamaspates) in Ctesiphon. In any case, Trajan had added upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Dacia to the Empire. This, as it happened, involved all the most organized states on the borders of Rome, excepting only Kush. The Pax Romana thus was often a matter of war on the frontiers in order to preserve the peace within. But when Hadrian withdrew from some of Trajan's conquests, he was then troubled by the revolt of Bar Kochba in Judaea.

7. FLAVIANS & ANTONINES Vespasian

T. Flavius Vespasianus

69-79

Jewish Revolt & War, 66-73; revolt of Civilis, four legions disbanded, 69-70; Destruction of Jerusalem, 70; Fall of Masada, 73 Titus
T. Flavius Vespasianus

79-81

Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 79; Colosseum dedicated, 80 Domitian

T. Flavius Domitianus

81-96

Dacian Wars, 86-89 Nerva

M. Cocceius Nerva

96-98 97-117

Trajan
M. Ulpius Traianus

Dacia conquered, 101-102, 105106; Nabataean Petra annexed, 106; Armenia & Mesopotamia annexed, 114; Jewish Revolt, 115-117 Hadrian
P. Aelius Hadrianus

117-138

Bar Kochba's Revolt in Judaea, 132-135 Antoninus Pius

T. Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus

138-161 161-169

Lucius Verus
L. Aurelius Verus

Parthian War, 162-168 Marcus Aurelius 161-180 M. Aurelius Antoninus Embassy in China?, 166; German War, 168-175 Commodus
M. Aurelius Commodus Antoninus

177-192

non-dynastic Pertinax
P. Helvius Pertinax

193 193

Didius Julianus
M. Didius Severus Julianus

The Flavians Vespasian and Titus were both great soldiers and, to the Roman historians, virtuous and admirable men. Unfortunately, Titus's brother Domitian was not quite of the same stamp, and then went on to reign longer than his father and brother. He was succeeded by a fraternity of soldiers who adopted each other to secure competent and peaceful succession. The "Five Good Emperors" (in boldface) became the ideal of generations, all the way to Gibbon, for peaceful and benevolent government. Trajan was the first Emperor born in the provinces (Spain) and briefly, with his Mesopotamian campaign, expanded the Empire to its greatest extent. In the Middle Ages, Trajan had such a powerful reputation for goodness that the story began to circulate that God had brought him back to life just so he could convert to Christianity. Dante even includes that in the Divine Comedy. Antoninus Pius became the only Roman Emperor in 1500 years to be called "the Pious," but we really know precious little about his reign. This may simply illustrate the principle that goodness and peace (the height of the "Pax Romana") is boring. The peace ended under Marcus Aurelius, the closest thing to a "philosopher king" until Thomas Jefferson, but also a very competent general, who smashed a major German invasion across the Danube, while consoling himself with Stoicism for the miseries of war, plague, and personal loss. Marcus's only real failure was to leave the Empire to his worthless son, Commodus -- dying in a place of modern note,Vienna (Vindobona). Hereditary succession, although eventually stabilized in Constantinople, would prove a dangerous principle at many moments in Roman history. The incompetence and viciousness of Commodus then set off his assassination and the second great free-for-all fight for the throne, in 193. This was not without its comic aspect, when the Praetorian Guard killed the disciplinarian Pertinax and literally put the throne up for sale. The wealthy Didius Julianus made the best bid but had no other ability to secure his rule. He was murdered as Septimius Severus, a notably humorless man, approached Rome -- and then also abolished (temporarily) the Guard. When Jerusalem fell to Titus in 70 AD, the Temple and

buys throne from Praetorian most of the city were demolished. The furniture and Guard for 25,000 sesterces per sacred vessels of the Temple, including, Josephus says, man the red curtains of the Inner Sanctuary, were carried off in Syria, 193Niger C. Pescennius Niger Justus 194 Clodius Albinus
Decimus Clodius Albinus

in Britain & Gaul, 193-

to Rome -- portrayed on the Arch of Titus. They remained there until 455, when the Vandals sacked the city and removed their loot to Carthage. When Belisarius overthrew the Vandals for Justinian in 533 and found the items from the Temple in Carthage, they were sent back toConstantinople. Since it has previously been noted that the Ark of the Covenant, despite Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), was not carried off to Tanis, one might wonder what subsequently happened to it. Although Josephus speaks of Titus taking away "the Law," he describes nothing like the Ark. Later, Mediaeval sources (e.g. Mirabilia Urbis Romae, c.1143, The Marvels of Rome, Italica Press, New York, 1986, p.29) speak of the Ark having been in Rome, but this was long, long after the fact. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Temple had once before been destroyed, by Nebuchadnezzar, in 587 BC. It is not clear that anything of the Temple survived, and so the Ark could well have been destroyed then -- or concealed on the Temple Mount, where the Templars supposedly found it.

The map shows the disposition of the Legions shortly after the end of the Jewish War. One Legion from the campaign, Legio X Fretensis, remains in Judaea, while the other two that were given to Vespasian at the beginning of the campaign, Legio V Macedonica and Legio XV Apollinaris, have returned to the stations on the Danube. Some sources say that there were four legions involved in the Jewish War, but I have found no indentification of what the fourth would have been. Britain, of course, has now been added to the Empire. My sources disagree on the station and numbering of some of the Legions. The revolt of Civilis in 69-70 led to the disbanding in 70 AD of four legions that participated in the revolt: Legio I Germana (or Germanica), Legio IV Macedonica, Legio XV Primigenia, and Legio XVI Gallica. These are indicated on the first map of the Army given above.

Of particular interest in the disposition of the Legions in the reign of Antoninus Pius is Legio VI Victrix. On the first map above, it is to be found in Spain. Next it is on the Rhine. Now it is in the North of Britain. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius the Prefect of Legio VI Victrix will be one Lucius Artorius Castus. As discussed below, this man and his name -- Artorius -- may figure in the legends of King Arthur. Otherwise, we see that Dacia has been added to the Empire. The concentration of Legions around Judaea again is in the aftermath of Bar Kochba's Revolt (132-135). Legion IX Hispana may actually have been lost in the revolt, or been disbanded for some reason in its aftermath. What happened is unclear. A curious footnote to the period of the Antonines is an entry in the Chinese History of the Later Han Dynasty, the . It is recorded that in the year 166 an embassy

arrived in Lo-Yang from a ruler of , "Great Ch'in," named Andun. This had come up from Vietnam after, apparently, travelling by sea from the West. Andun looks like it might be "Antoninus," which could mean either Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, both of whom used the name. Thus, "Great Ch'in" is usually taken to mean Rome, and the embassy was sent to explore ways to redirect the silk trade around the route, the Silk Road through Central Asia, dominated by the Parthians. If so, nothing came of it. The possibility of any communication between the great contemporary Empires of Rome and the Han is tantalizing. My impression has been that Chinese attempts to establish some communication overland were frustrated by the Parthians. Since we know that the Romans had knowledge of and trade with India and Ceylon, and that Chinese pilgrims like Fa-Hsien went by sea from India to China (399-414), it is not at all impossible or unlikely that some Romans, in the days of the Kushans in India, could have done what the Hou Hanshu says. The History was actually written in the 5th century, and the

Chinese were aware that Iranians, which by then meant the Sassanids, were still frustrating attempts at direct trade with "Great Ch'in." Although Hollywood, and Italian cinema, used to turn out one Roman themed movie after another, frequently with religious overtones (called "sword-and-sandals" epics), the genre all but died with a 1964 movie about Commodus, The Fall of the Roman Empire (a tad premature there on the "Fall"). Except for Fellini's strange Satyricon (1970), the pornographic Caligula (1979), and the comic Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), the next Roman movie would not be released until 2000, with Ridley Scott's big budget and successful Gladiator. This is also, as it happens, about Commodus. The closing implication of Gladiator is diametrically the opposite of the 1964 movie, with the good guys apparently having won and a hopeful future in the offing. Neither movie, of course, gets it quite right. The competition for the throne in 193 was not very edifying, and absolutely none of the players appear in Gladiator, not even Pertinax, the prefect of the city of Rome. On the other hand, the story does not pretend to historical accuracy about the events. Commodus did like to fight gladiators, but he was not killed that way, and certainly not by a wronged general. There is no evidence that Commodus killed his father, or any hint that Marcus considered a non-hereditary succession. Even in the movie it is clear that his provision for such a thing came far too late to be effective. Gladiator is a good movie and a good story, but it is not a serious attempt to present real Roman history. Because of its success, however, one can hope that other events in Roman history, 8. SEVERANS however fictionalized, will have a chance to make it onto 193Septimius Severus the screen. L. Septimius Severus 211
prohibition of conversions to It took a little time for Septimius to put down all the Judaism or Christianity, 202 would-be Emperors in the provinces, but he did so with

determination and ferocity. The virtues of nobility reputed to Trajan, of culture to Hadrian, of piety to Antoninus, and of philosophy to Marcus Aurelius were all missing in 209Geta Septimius Severus. He also doesn't seem to have P. Lucius Septimius Geta 211 considered anything other than hereditary succession, Roman Citizenship to all free despite having a particularly nasty son, Caracalla, as the persons, 212 candidate. His attempt to balance Carcalla with his brother Geta simply got Geta murdered. Another factor, however, 217Macrinus M. Opellius Macrinus 218 was the loyalty inspired in the troops to the family. Septimius had bluntly advised his sons (in the Greek we Diadumenian 218 M. Oppellius Diadumenianus have from Dio Cassius), Homonoete, tos stratitas ploutzete, tn alln pntn kataphronete, "Stick together 218Elagabalus M. Aurelius Antoninus [be of one mind], enrich the soldiers, and be contemptuous 222 of all the others." Caracalla, although not sticking with his 222Alexander Severus brother, maintained his popularity reasonably well, until he M. Aurelius Alexander 235 terrified enough soldiers to precipitate his inevitable murder. This set off another brief free-for-all, until loyalty to the Severan family
Caracalla
M. Aurelius (Septimius Bassianus) Antoninus

198217

prevailed. The "family," however, turned out to be the entirely matrilineal creation of Severus' sister-in-law, Julia Maesa, who brought her two grandsons, entirely unrelated to Severus, to the throne. The bizarre Elagabalus (sometimes "Heliogabalus"), styling himself the god of his grandmother's Syrian solar cult (and engaging gladiators in combats more amorous and carnal than Commodus had contemplated), and then the amiable and reasonably effective Alexander thus wrapped up the dynasty. Alexander was killed after the overdue reality check of battle, against the newly aggressive Persians. He was not that bad, but evidently not good enough for his own troops, who killed him and his mother -- that his mother was along with him on a military campaign probably seemed no better to the soldiers than it does now. Septimius Severus himself was one of the two Roman Emperors (Constantius Chlorus was the other) to die (a natural death) at York (Eboracum) in Britain.

The disposition of the Legions in the Severan Army now is looking pretty familiar. Warren Treadgold [Byzantium and its Army, 284-1081, Sanford, 1995, p.45] says that the Army of 235 AD contains 34 legions plus the Praetorian Guard. On the map above, I only show 33, as gleaned from the sources cited. Treadgold estimates the total Army, legions plus auxiliaries, at around 385,000 men. In the sources given, the legions are only named by A.H.M. Jones [The Later Roman Empire, 284-602, Volume II, Johns Hopkins, 1986, pp.1438-1444]. Jones tentatively places Legio IV Italica in Mesopotamia, which would raise the total legions to 34, as in Treadgold. These are the last days of the Classic Army of the Principate. After the Crisis of the Third Century, the structure, constituents, and even command ranks of the Roman Army are going to be very different. The traditional legions persist by name, but they are absorbed into command structures where they eventually lose their old identity.

A bit of an intellectual revival took place at the court of Septimius Severus. This has been called the "Second Sophistic" and was largely due to the interests of Julia Domna. In a history of the Sophists written at the time, by Philostratus, he says that Julia attracted a circle of mathematicians and philosophers. However, this actually meant something more like "astrologers and sophists," and the revival was more of a retrospective on ancient philosophy than a movement that contributed much original or of interest to it. Nevertheless, such an inspiration and preoccupation has been compared to similar concerns in theRenaissance. A characteristic of the Second Sophistic, which we see in the earlier historian, philosopher, and official (he repelled the Alans from Cappadocia) Arrian of Nicomedia (c.87-c.145 AD, Consul 129), is the movement to write in Attic Greek, rather than in the Koin of the Hellenistic Period. This is usually dismissed as an affectation and a frivolity. Perhaps it was, but it is also directly comparable to the concern of Renaissance writers to restore the "purity" of Ciceronian Latin over the received Mediaeval Latin that had survived to their time. Renaissance writers are rarely belabored for affectation because of this. And indeed, where Greek and Latin are taught today, the student, as it happens, begins with Attic Greek and Ciceronian Latin. More than an affectation, this practice accompanies the circumstance that the earliest and most interesting and important literature in these languages, especially for new scholars, is in the Attic and Ciceronian dialects -- from Thucydides and Plato to Caesar and Cicero himself. These are the languages, our Classical languages of Western civilization, and their literature, that we do not want forgotten -- while they are in greater danger in our time than ever before: a Shakespeare with "little Latin and less Greek" is a scholar of Classics compared to most graduates of modern universities. Latin used to be taught in my High School, but now it is not even taught in the college where I teach. Rome and Romania Index B. CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY, 235-284, 49 Years This map looks like it should be from the Fifth Century. The Goths, not yet divided, are here, but they come in part by boat, which we will not see with them later. The Franks

here duplicate the later course of the Vandals, through Gaul, Spain, and North Africa, but without the same effects. Later, the Franks will not be a principal invader but will be the ultimate beneficiary of the invasions. The Alemanni also will be less active later, remaining in Germany and leaving their name as the word for "German" in Romance languages. Rome is weakened by revolt in the West and a Palyrmene takeover in the East. But in this era Roman institutions prove resilient enough to restore thestatus quo ante (with troubling strategic withdrawals). But the Germans remain across the Rhine and Danube, growing in numbers and sophistication. One might even say that all this was a dress rehearsal for the later invasions. In the theater, if the dress rehearsal goes poorly, the opening will go well. This is what happened. The Gallic Empire of Postumus began under Gallienus. Postumus, of course, probably would rather have overthrown the Emperor, but he was not able to defeat him and was otherwise involved with fighting Germans. In best Third Century tradition, he was killed by his troops. This form of succession continued until Tetricus and his son surrendered to Aurelian, on condition of their peaceful retirement. This episode echoes the attempt of the usurper Constantine in the Fifth Century, though that failed to suppress the Germans in that era and merely served to absorb the attention of Roman forces that could have been better used, in conjunction with those of Constantine himself, against the common enemy. The Palmyrene Empire had a very different origin and course. Odaenath, the King of Palmyra (c.260-266), was a Roman ally. After the capture of Valerian, he actually defeated and expelled the victorious Persians. This earned him Roman gratitude and titles, like Dux Romanorum. It also left him as the de facto ruler of the East. Odaenath was murdered and succeeded by his wife Zenobia, who then joins Cleopatra and Boudicca (Boadicea), if not Dido, in the ranks of the conspicuous and romantic female enemies of Rome. This grew gradually, as Roman weakness tempted Zenobia's ambition. When she moved into Egypt and Asia Minor in 269-270, trouble was definitely brewing, but it was her proclamation of her son Vaballathus as Emperor that brought Aurelian out against her. She was exhibited in Aurelian's Triumph but then allowed to live out her life on a pension in Rome. Palmyra became a Roman outpost. Today, its ruins are extensive, beautiful, and evocative, out in the emptiness of the Syrian desert, next to the Oasis and the small modern city. The Oasis gave the city its importance as an essential link in the caravan short-cut across the desert from Mesopotamia to Syria. Even greater enemies of Rome have far less to show for themselves today.

Maximinus I Thrax
C. Julius Verus Maximinus

235-238 238 238 238-244 244-249

SONS, BROTHERS, etc. Gordian II

M. Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus

Gordian I Africanus
M. Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus

238

Balbinus & Pupiens

D. Caelius Calvinus Balbinus & M. Clodius Pupienus Maximus

Gordian III
M. Antonius Gordianus

Philip I the Arab

M. Julius Philippus

Philip II
M. Julius Severus Philippus

247-249 251 251 253

Herennius Decius
C. Messius Quintus Decius

249-251

Q. Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius

Hostilian
C. Valens Hostilianus Gallus

Trebonianus Gallus
C. Vibius Trebonianus Gallus

251-253 253

Volusian
C. Vibius Afinius Gallus Veldumnianus Volusianus

Aemilian
M. Aemilius Aemilianus

Valerian II Valerian I
P. Licinius Valerianus P. Licinius Cornelius Valerianus

Caesar, 253-258 255-259

253-260

Saloninus
P. Licinius Cornelius Saloninus Valerianus

German invasions, 257; defeated and captured by the Sassanid Gallienus P. Licinius Egnatius ShhShapur I, 260
Gallienus

253-268

Postumus
M. Cassianius Latinius Postumus

in Gaul, 259-268

invasion by the Goths, 267 Claudius II Gothicus

M. Aurelius Claudius

268-270

Quintillus
M. Aurelius Quintillus

270

Defeat of Goths, 269 Victorianus

M. Piavonius Victorinus

in Gaul, 268-270 in Gaul, 270-273 Palmyra, 267-272 270-275 Withdrawal from Dacia, 271 Tetricus II
C. Pius Esuvius Tetricus

Tetricus I
C. Pius Esuvius Tetricus

270-273 270-273

Zenobia
Septimia Zenobia

Vaballathus
L. Julius Aurelius Septimius Vaballathus Athenodorus

Aurelian
L. Domitius Aurelianus

Tacitus
M. Claudius Tacitus

275-276 276-282

Florian
M. Annius Florianus

276

Probus
M. Aurelius Probus

The chaos that had threatened in some earlier successions (in 69 and 193) now arrived in 238, when we can say that there were five Emperors in one year. The complexity of the following period can only be appreciated, or even understood, by reviewing the "Crisis of the Third Century" chart. Few Emperors reigned long or died natural deaths. Gordian III's six years would count as lengthy for the period, but his murder would prove all too typical. The musical chairs of murders did not help prepare the Empire for increased activity by the Germans and Persians. Decius and Herennius were killed in battle by the Goths in 251 -- the only Roman Emperors to die in battle (against external enemies) besides Julian (against the Persians, 363), Valens (against the Goths again, 378), Nicephorus I (against the Bulgars, 811), and Constantine XI (with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, 1453). Valerian's relatively long reign ended with the unparalleled ignominy of being captured by Shapur I -the only Roman Emperor captured by an enemy until Romanus IV in 1071. His son Gallienus then endured one invasion and disaster after another, with the Empire actually beginning to break up.

Numerian Carus
M. Aurelius Carus

282-283

M. Aurelius Numerianus

283-284 283-285

Carinus

Nevertheless, Gallienus rebuilt the army and, excluding Senators from legionary commands, put in place the generals who, although his own murderers, conducted the reconstruction of the Empire. He thus now tends to get some credit, even with the apparent collapse around him. Despite a short reign (and a natural death), Claudius II began to turn things around by defeating the Goths, commemorated with a column that still stands (but is rarely seen in history books) in Istanbul. His colleague Aurelian then substantially restores the Empire, only to suffer assassination, initiating a new round of revolving Emperors. This finally ended with Diocletian, who picked up reforming the Empire, militarily, politically, and religiously, where Aurelian had left off. Not much in the way of dynasties in this period. Many Emperors, of course, wanted to associate their sons with them to arrange for their succession; but in the violent ends of most Emperors, the sons usually died with them. Gordian III, Gallienus, and Carinus are the principal exceptions, ruling in their own right after the death of fathers or, with Gordian, uncle and grandfather. The invasions and political troubles of the Third Century shook the religious and philosophical certainties upon which Rome had previously thrived. Exotic religious cults, like Mithraism and Christianity, now began to exert wide appeal; and a profound shift occurred in philosophy. We no longer hear much of Stoics or Epicureans, but whole new perspectives and concerns are ushered in by the mystical Egyptian Plotinus (d.270), who even enjoyed some Imperial patronage under Gordian III, Philip the Arab, and Gallienus. He makes the Second Sophistic look superficial indeed. With his return to the epistemology and metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus, as such the founder of Neoplatonism, picks up the mainstream of development of the Western philosophical tradition, which had somewhat detoured in the Hellenistic Period through revivals of Presocratic doctrine (Heraclitus for the Stoics, Atomism for the Epicureans). Plotinus's student, disciple, Boswell, and editor Porphyry(d.>300), who enjoyed patronage from Aurelian, promoted Neoplatonic principles, wrote an introduction to Aristotle's logical works, the Isagoge, which became an indispensable text in the Middle Ages, and even began organizing the defense of traditional religion in his Against the Christians -though the Neoplatonic version of traditional religion now looks much more of a piece with Christian sensibilities than with things like the peculiar and archaic practices

examined by Frazer in The Golden Bough. The cultural and intellectual sea change of the period, soon followed by Diocletian's reforms and then Constantine, usher in the distinctive world of Late Antiquity. Classicists start to become nervous and irritable.

275 AD Rome and Romania Index

II. SECOND EMPIRE, EARLY "ROMANIA," 284 AD-610 AD, Era of Diocletian 1-327, 326 years
Thus Constantine, an emperor and son of an emperor, a religious man and son of a most religious man, most prudent in every way, as stated above -- and Lincinius the next in rank, both of them honoured for their wise and religious outlook, two men dear to God -were roused by the King of kings, God of the universe, and Saviour against the two most irreligious tyrants and declared war on them. God came to their aid in a most marvellous way, so that at Rome Maxentius fell at the hands of Constantine, and the ruler of the East [i.e. Maximinus Daia] survived him only a short time and himself came to a most shameful end at the hands of Licinius, who at that time was still sane. Eusebius of Caesarea (c.260-c.339), The History of the Church [translated by G.A. Williamson, Penguin Books, 1965, p.368]

L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco, The next who follows, with the laws and me, sotto buona intenzion che f mal frutto, with a good intention which bore bad fruit, per cedre al pastor si fece greco: made himself Greek, to cede [the West] to the Pastor. ora conosce come il mal dedutto Now he knows how the evil derived dal suo bene operar non li nocivo, from his good action does not harm him, avvegna che sia 'l mondo indi distrutto. though the world should be destroyed thereby.

Dante Alighieri (12651321), The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, XX:55-60 [Charles S. Singleton, Princeton, Bollingen, 1975, pp.224-225, translation modified], speaking of Constantine in the Heaven of Jupiter and of the "Donation of Constantine" (Constitutum Donatio Constantini) to the Pope -- a document later exposed (1440) by Lorenzo Valla (c.1407-1457) as a forgery. The "Second Empire" is a period of transformation whose beginning and end seem worlds apart. Even at the beginning, however, Classicists find themselves becoming uncomfortable, in large part because they are now rubbing shoulders with Byzantinists, Mediaevalists, and, worse, historians of religion and, gasp, even of the Church. In the Middle Ages, this was regarded as a triumphant period, when the Roman Empire was redeemed and ennobled with its conversion to and transformation by Christianity -becoming a "Romania" whose name is now not even familiar as the name of the Roman Empire. In Modern thought, this construction tends to be reversed, with the superstition and dogmatism of Christianity dragging the Classical World down into the Dark Ages. At the same time, however, there is still a strong attraction to the idea of blaming the collapse of the Empire on the characteristics of pagan Roman society -- slavery, the Games, sexual license, corruption, etc. Since this is more or less the Christian critique of pagan society, we have the curious case of critics maintaining the perspective of Christian moralism even while rejecting Christianity as the appropriate response. This not entirely coherent approach also results in the doublethink of moral satisfaction with the "fall" of the (Western) Empire in 476 while carefully ignoring the survival and resurgence of the Empire in the East. The truth, as it happens, is one of continuity. The very same institutions, both Roman and Christian in sum and detail, that failed in the West in the face of the German threat, did just fine in the East, long outlasting, and in two dramatic cases defeating, the German successor kingdoms. Nevertheless, these were hard times, and worse lay ahead. What neither Trajan nor Constantine nor Justinian could have anticipated were the blows that would fall next. Rome and Romania Index A. "DOMINATE," 284-379, 95 years

290 AD Intrinsically one of the most interesting and Diocletian Augustus 284-305, retired 305, died 311 or 313 important periods in C. Aurelius Valerius 286-305 East Diocletianus Roman history, the Maximian Tetrarchy unfortunately Augustus 286-305 Usurper 306-308, 310 West M. Aurelius Valerius West suffers from the Maximianus relative poverty of the Constantius I sources we have for it. Caesar 293-305 West Augustus 305-306 West Chlorus Fl. Valerius Constantius Despite the rich literature of the 4th Galerius Caesar 293-305 East Augustus 305-311 East C. Galerius Valerius century, Diocletian Maximianus never got a Tacitus or Maximinus II Suetonius, and what Daia Caesar 305-309 East Augustus 309-313 East Ammianus Marcellinus Galerius Valerius Maximinus may have said about him is now lost. Part of Severus Caesar 305-306 West Augustus 306-307 West Fl. Valerius Severus this may be because history moved so Constantine I the Caesar 306-307 Augustus 307-308 West, Great West, 308-309 West 309-337 West, 324-337 East quickly after Fl. Valerius Constantinus Diocletian. He could [Maxentius still have been alive M. Aurelius Valerius Usurper 306-312, Italy when Constantine Maxentius] legalized Christianity, Licinius and it was, of course, Augustus 308-324 East Valerius Licinianus Licinius Constantine whom
1. TETRARCHS [Domitius Alexander] Usurper 308-311, Africa

subsequent Christian writers wanted to glorify. But Diocletian created a system that was the closest to a constitutional order than Rome ever had. Its enemy was hereditary succession, which had triumphed in Constantine, if imperfectly, by the end of the period. So here, not just in religion, we have a turning point. The succession by appointment, adoption, or marriage of the Antonines is now seen for very nearly the last time. The complexity of this, and of events, can be seen, not just in the following genealogy, but in the Chart of the Tetrarchy. As the first Emperor with a very clearly Greek name (Diocls, before being Latinized to Diocletianus), Diocletian foreshadows the later Greek character of the Empire. It is also from this point that the status of the Emperor is elevated far beyond that of a mere official to a being with semi-divine status, altering the form of government from the "Principate" to "Dominate," from Dominus, "Lord." The Roman Court now begins to adopt the structures and ritual of the Persian Court, where the Great King has always been semi-divine. The symbolic accouterments of the Emperor, like the Purple (Porphyrius) robe and red shoes, become fixed until the Fall of Constantinople. The fiction that the Emperor is actually a kind of Republican official is now gone -- although the ultimate executive offices of the Republic, the Consulates, survive until Justinian. He is a Monarch in form and substance. This elevation was simply transformed, not rolled back or abolished, by the Christianization of the office. Indeed, Christian Emperors, beginning with Constantine, would always be portrayed with halos, like saints, and were called the "Equal of the Apostles." European monarchs never went that far. In 305 Diocletian actually retired from office, going to live at his retirement villa (more like city) at Split (Spalatum) near Solin (Salonae) in Dalmatia (now Croatia) -- see J.J. Wilkes, Diocletian's Palace, Split: Residence of a Retired Roman Emperor[Oxbow Books, Oxford, 1986, 1993]. This may have been at the urging of Galerius, who was eager for full power, and was taken with ill grace by Maximian, who tried to return to power twice and was finally killed. By 308, with Severus killed by Maximian's son Maxentius and Constantine proclaimed Augustus by his troops, Diocletian was called to a conference atCarnuntum on the Danube in Upper (Superior) Pannonia (just down the river from modern Vienna, Roman Vindobona). Diocletian was even offered the throne, but declined it -- saying he would rather grow vegetables. The result of the conference was the demotion of Constantine to Caesar (again), the appointment of Lincinius as Augustus, the second retirement of Maximian, and the declaration of Maxentius as an outlaw. A noteworthy act at the conference was the dedication of an altar to the god Mithras, as the fautor imperii, "protector of the Empire." Mithraism considered Mithras to be a sun god, associated and assimilated with Sol Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun," whose cult existed independently of Mithras and had been promoted since Aurelian. Mithraism, although popular in the Army (only men were initiated), was not an Imperial or prestige cult, until this dedication, Deo Soli Invicto Mithrae, "to the god Mithras the Unconquered Sun." We might see this as one of the last acts in the development of state paganism, before Constantine becomes a patron of Christianity and gods like Mithras disappear.

One of the most famous aspects of Diocletian's rule is the famous "Edict on Maximum Prices" of 301 AD. Since Diocletian himself explains the law as needed to prevent some from profiteering off of the basic needs of others, this is turns out to be relevant to many modern debates. The "greed" of those who make a profit while prices rise is still a point of useful political appeal for many politicians and leftist activists. It looks, however, like prices, especially agricultural prices, were rising under Diocletian because the tax burden had become so large that many people simply abandoned their farms -- Diocletian also tried forbidding this. Since Dioceltian himself was not a sympathetic person to Christian writers, the charge of "greed" tends to get turned around, as the contemporary writer Lactantius, appointed by Diocletian himself as a professor of Latin literature in Nicomedia, the capital, says, "...Diocletian with his insatiable greed..." Lactantius' account of bureaucratic excess and behavior could apply in many modern situations: The number of recipients began to exceed the number of contributors by so much that, with farmers' resources exhausted by the enormous size of the requisitions, fields became deserted and cultivated land was turned into forest. To ensure that terror was universal, provinces too were cut into fragments; many governors and even more

officials were imposed on individual regions, almost on individual cities, and to these were added numerous accountants, controllers and prefects' deputies. The activities of all these people were very rarely civil... [J.J. Wilkes, Diocletian's Palace, Split: Residence of a Retired Roman Emperor, op. cit., p.5] Not only now are there whole countries where the dependent classes exceed the numbers of the productive classes (e.g. Italy or France), but in the United States the fate of the Social Security system will probably be sealed when the number of beneficiaries exceeds the number of contributors. These modern systems, although voted in by popular majorities who like "free lunch" welfare politics, are run by bureaucrats whose behavior, of course, is "very rarely civil" either to contributors or beneficiaries. And modern bureaucrats are protected from accountability by "Civil Service" status and their own politically active and powerful public employee labor unions. Yet politicians rarely characterize or criticize such people for their own self-interest or greed, although this phenomenon is now well understood and described in Public Choice economics. While the behavior of the bureaucrats is understandable, the harshest truth is that, with sovereignty no longer invested in a autocrat like Diocletian, the ultimate "greed" today is derived from the voters.

The map reflects some recent developments in scholarship. Previously, the Goths were regarded as already divided into the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, with the Ostrogoths developing an "empire" that was thought to have stretched all the way back to the Baltic Sea. This culminated under King Ermanaric (i.e. "King [riks] Herman," where "Herman" itself is from [h]er[i], "army," and man, "man"), who committed suicide when defeated and subjugated by the Huns around 370. Now it looks like, for all their divisions, the Goths were not divided, or identified, in the terms that later became familiar for the

Kingdoms in Spain and Italy. Ermanaric was King of the Greuthungi, and it is unlikely that he ruled a domain that stretched to the Baltic. Indeed, it doesn't even look like it even reached the Don in the east. The Goths who were granted asylum on Roman territory in 376 were the Tervingi, led by Alavivus and Fritigern. After their revolt, however, the Greuthungi joined the Tervingi. With some other Gothic groups, these allbecame the Visigoths. The Ostrogoths developed later, around a core led by the Amal dynasty. These changes in view are now recently explained by Peter Heather in The Fall of the Roman Empire[Oxford, 2006]. Although the Huns subjugated all the Goths but the Visigoths, the Goths nevertheless exercised considerable cultural influence on them. Thus, we find Attila with a Gothic name, "Little Father." But while atta was the Gothic word for "father," it is curious that ata is still the Turkish word for "father." Indeed, adda was Sumerian for "father." Winfred P. Lehmann (A Gothic Etymological Dictionary, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1986, p.46) explains these correspondences as a coincidence of "nursery words" -- "No need to assume borrowing in spite of earlier attestations, such as Hitt[ite] attas, which Puhvel [Hittite etymological dictionary, 1984] derives 'from infantile language'" [p.46]. This strikes me as a bit unsatisfactory, though perhaps no more than the alternative: that this is another fragment of evidence for a connection between Indo-European and Altaic languages, and Sumerian. If the Tetrarchy was a major turning point in Roman history, with Constantine we are Constantius I right around the corner and looking down a 293-306 W Chlorus very different avenue of time. Here is where Fl. Valerius Constantius the die-hard paganophile Romanists check Constantine I the out, and where the Byzantinists check in. But 306-337 W+E Great Fl. Valerius Constantinus the changes that take place are mostly, as they had been for some time, gradual. Even Christianity legalized, 312; Ecumenical Constantine's Christianity was a gradual Council I, Nicaea I, Nicene Creed, 325; Constantinople, Roma Nova, founded, affair. He did not actually convert until on construction begun, 4 November 328; his deathbed; and although he outlawed Constantinople dedicated, 11 May 330 pagan sacrifice, he did not close the temples or otherwise show disrespect or hostility to Constantine II 337-340 W Fl. Claudius Contantinus the old gods, and in fact seems to have long Constans I still invoked Sol Invictus, the "Unconquered 337-350 W Fl. Julius Constans Sun" of Aurelian and Diocletian. He may [Magnentius have imagined a sort of syncretism such as 350-353 W Fl. Magnus Magnentius] had been common in the old religions but that was not going to be tolerated in Constantius II 337-361 E+W Fl. Julius Constantius Christianity -- indeed, an element of Amida on the Tigris falls to Persians, 359 syncretism remains in the name of the Holy Day of the week for Christianity, "Sunday," Gallus 351-354 E, Caesar which Constantine himself called "the day Fl. Claudius Constantius Gallus 355-360 W, Caesar; 360- celebrated by veneration of the sun itself" Julian the Apostate (diem solis veneratione sui celebrem). Fl. Claudius Julianus 363, Augustus
2. CONSTANTIANS non-dynastic Jovian
Fl. Jovianus

363-364

When Constantinople was built, the old acropolis was left alone. Indeed, it may have

been left alone for much of the Middle Ages -- I am only aware of a couple of Mediaeval institutions in the area. One was the Church and Monastery of St. George of Mangana, which had a hospital attached. Another was a complex built by Alexius Comnenus with an orphanage and a home for old soldiers, the blind, and other disabled persons. It sounds like there was room for Alexius to build these institutions. In the Eighth century there is a reference to the Kynegion, an arena that survived from earlier Roman animal fighting shows. The comment in the Brief Historical Notes is that the ancient pagan statues in the arena still contain dangerous powers. A statue is supposed to have deliberately fallen on and killed a man named Himerios in the reign of Philippicus Bardanes [cf. Judith Herrin, Byzantium, The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Princeton & Oxford, 2007, p.123]. The astonishing thing is that any such statues should still have been there almost four hundred years after Constantine. In the same way, a statue of Athena is supposed to have still been standing on the acropolis when the Fourth Crusade arrived in 1203. Remarkably, this may have been the bronze statute of Athena Promachus which had stood in the open on the Acropolis at Athens, reportedly visible from out to sea, and was moved to the new city by Constantine. The statue was finally only then torn down because some thought that by her outstretched hand she was beckoning to the Crusaders. It is now hard to tell what may have been on the acropolis all that time because the site was finally put to a new use by the Ottomans, who built the great Topkap Palace there. It is certainly the right place for such a building, and so one is a little surprised to learn that no secular building, as far as we know, was put there all the years of Romania. The impression is of much other Classical statuary in Constantinople. Thus, we learn quite by accident that a massive statue of the goddess Hera stood in the Forum of Constantine. We learn about it because the Latin Emperors pulled it down to melt it for the bronze. The contemporary historian Niketas Choniates consequently called theFranks "these barbarians, haters of the beautiful." Desperate for money, they treated much other art the same way. Even the beginning of Constantine's attachment to Christianity is obscure. The story that he saw a vision of the Cross in the sky with the inscription Hc Vince ("By this [sign, sign] Conquer") before (or during) the battle of the Milvian Bridge, when he defeated Maxentius in 312, comes very much later in hagiography. The earliest mention of anything of the sort, by Lactantius again, is that Constantine had a dream where he was shown the "cypher of Christ," the Greek letters Chi and Rho, which he caused to be put on the shields of his soldiers. Later versions thus increase the dramatic and miraculous elements of the event, using what later would become the most symbolic of Christianity, the Cross. Using a Christian symbol in any form, however, and for any reason, would have been dramatic enough. There is an interesting variation in the pronunciation in English of Constantine's name. British usage tends to render the "i" as the customary long English vowel "i" -- the equivalent of the word "eye" or the first person pronoun "I." We could represent this as the "Constanteyen" Constantine. American usage tends to use the "Continental" version of the vowel "i," i.e. as in French, Spanish, or Italian. We could represent this as the "Constanteen" Constantine. Since in Latin "Constantine" is Constantinus (with all Continental vowels), we already have the French device of replacing the Latin case ending with a simple "e" which then becomes silent. While there is obviously no

"correct" pronunciation in this respect, it does strike me as affected when Americans use the British pronunciation. Constantine's Empire went to his three sons, who might have shared it with their cousins, but killed most of them instead. The sons, however, ended up with no heirs themselves, and the last family member on the throne, Julian, was one of the cousins who had escaped the massacre. Julian, whose own writings have been preserved, is one of the better known but stranger figures of the century. Quixotically trying to restore paganism, he only seemed to demonstrate that the old gods were spent and nobody's heart was really in it anymore. Although apparently a fine enough military commander against the Franks, Julian's short reign ended with another Quixotic effort, against Persia. It was not so much the war itself as the ill conceived scale of the invasion, which left Julian all but stranded with his army, deep in Mesopotamia, with the Persians avoiding battle but constantly harassing him. Somehow this had not happened to Alexander, Trajan, Heraclius, or the forces of the Caliph Omar. It cost Julian his life, and his religious cause, since the Christian Jovian was then chosen by the Army.

378 AD

Jovian did not last long (apparently WEST EAST killed by carbon 364- monoxide 364Valentinian I Valens 378 poisoning from a Fl. Valentinianus 375 W Fl. Valens E charcoal heater -367-383 Commanders great earthquake still a danger in the Gratian Fl. Gratianus W Magistri Militum in Crete, 365; modern world), and defeated and killed the Army chose by theVisigoths, another Christian. 375-392 Valentinian II Battle of 375Flavius Valentinianus W With Valentinian, Adrianople, 378 Merobaudes 384 and his brother (a Frank) [384[Magnus 383-388, Valens with whom 388] Maximus,Macsen Britain, he divided the Wledig inWelsh] Gaul Empire, the Revolt of Magnus Maximus, with Merobaudes, Christian nature of defeated by Theodosius I at Aquileia, 388 Romania was sealed. But the continued, Bauto 384Theodosius 379- future seemed Valentinian II 375-392 (a Frank) 385/8 I, the Great 395 secure enough. W Fl. Theodosius E Arbogast 385/8Valentinian was [Eugenius 392-394 (a Frank) 394 vigorous and Fl. Eugenius] W competent, even if Revolt by Arbogast with figurehead Eugenius, his brother wasn't defeated at Frigidus River, 394 so much. 394-395 W Unfortunately, Valentinian died, apparently of a heart attack (or perhaps a cerebral hemorrhage) in a fit of anger over the insolence of some representatives from the Huns. With Valens as the senior Emperor, he didn't wait for assistance before moving to put down a revolt by the Visigoths, who had recently been admitted as refugees from the Huns but were now rising up against mistreatment by their hosts. The resulting battle was close and hard fought but turned into a catastrophic rout, with Valens himself falling. Gratian appointed Theodosius as the new Eastern Emperor to restore the situation (marrying him to his sister), which seems to have about the most useful thing he accomplished, before his murder.
3. VALENTIANS

Meanwhile there was a fateful development in the governance of the West. When Valentinian died, Gratian had already been raised to the status of Augustus and clearly was the legitimate Emperor of the West. However, the Frankish Magister Militum Merobaudes raised Gratian's young brother Valentinian (II) to the Purple. There was no particular reason to repudiate this action, except that it was obviously a ploy by Merobaudes to create a puppet Emperor. The success of thiscoup was a chilling precursor to the eventual Fall of the Western Empire, whose final Emperors became the futile play things of Germanic commanders. Merobaudes confirmed his disloyal intentions at the death of Gratian, when he threw his support to the usurper Magnus Maximus. Theodosius defeated and killed both of them at Aquileia in 388. Valentinian

II's own death drew Theodosius west (again) to put down the usurper Eugenius -- who, apparently for the first time now, was merely the hand-picked figurehead of the German Master of Soliders, Arbogast -- another death knell for the Western Empire. At the Frigidus River in 394 Theodosius put his Visigothic allies, faithfully honoring their treaty with the Empire, in the forefront of the battle. The slaughter of the battle, on a scale with Gettysburg, soured the Visigoths on the value of their cooperation. They would soon become a loose cannon within the Empire, shattering essential supports of Roman power as the tribe rolled around. Thus, things in the West went steadily down hill after Valentinian I, with a troubling weakness of the Throne in comparison to powerful Germanic soldiers. Although the Battle of Adrianople need not have fundamentally affected the strength of the Empire, it acquires great symbolic meaning in retrospect because of the more permanent damage subsequently done by the Visigoths and the profound weakening of the Empire that attended it. It is in the reign of Valentinian II that we find the classic De Re Militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, the most important study of military science for many centuries. This is often favorably compared to the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, but Vegetius provides us with a much more thorough and discursive treatment. Unlike Sun Tzu, however, Vegetius did not have the chance to direct armies himself, much less produce victories commensurate with the wisdom of his advice. Nor does he give us a military historian's analysis of the battles of his era, which would have included the Battle of Adrianople. This is a grave loss to history and military science, especially as it allows false lessons to be drawn from Adrianople (as discussed elsewhere). A great earthquake on Crete in 365, which thrust up the coast some 20 feet, has recently become a matter of interest for modern geologists. An account of it by Ammianus Marcellinus includes what may be the first detailed description in history of the phenomenon of a tsunami, :

...the solid frame of the earth shuddered and trembled, and the sea was moved from its bed and went rolling back. The abyss of the deep was laid open; various types of marine creatures could be seen stuck in the slime, and huge mountains and valleys which had been hidden since the creation in the depths of the waves then, one must suppose, saw the light of the sun for the first time. [Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire, (A.D.354-378), Penguin Classics, 1986, p.333] Not realizing that the sea would come back, people wandered down to the revealed places. As the water "burst in fury" and surged up onto the land on its return, thousands were killed, towns were leveled, and "the whole face of the earth was changed" [ibid.]. As far away as Alexandria, the tidal wave tossed ships onto the tops of buildings; and Ammianus himself later inspected a decaying ship that had been carried inland ad secundum lapidem, "to the second milestone," near Mothone (or Methone) in the

Peloponnesus. Edward Gibbon, contemptuous of the Late Empire and its historian, and apparently never having heard of such phenomena, didn't believe Ammianus: Such is the bad taste of Ammianus (xxvi.10), that it is not easy to distinguish his facts from his metaphors. Yet he positively affirms that he saw the rotten carcass of a ship, ad secundum lapidem, at Methone, or Modon, in Peloponnesus. [The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Modern Library, p.899]. Tsunamis are not so rare, however, that it is not in the living memory of many to have seen the seafloor bared or ships thrown about in just the manner described, most recently in Indonesia in 2004. The modern historian might do well to consider how the death and destruction of the great earthquake may have weakened the resources of the area on the crucial eve of the struggle with the Visigoths. Rome and Romania Index B. CRISIS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, 379-476, 97 Years

The map shows the key incursions that would fatally undermine the Western Empire. After the death of Theodosius I, the Visigoths begin to move around in the Balkans. In the course of dealing with this, the Rhine frontier becomes stripped of troops. When the Suevi, Alans, and Vandals crossed the frozen Rhine on New Year's Eve of 407, nothing stood in their way when they looted their way across Gaul and Spain. As they settled down in Spain, the Visigoths arrived in Italy. Later in 407, the usurper Constantine took his troops out of Britain, simultaneously to secure Gaul and to establish himself as

Emperor. Honorius, secure in Ravenna (as Rome, after a fashion, burned), had to tell the British (410) they were on their own. One of the most interesting people in the diagram is the Empress Galla Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius I, the wife of Constantius III, and the mother of Valentinian III. With Honorius and Constantius she was buried in the chapel of Saints Nazarius and Celsus in Ravenna. J.B. Bury (History of the Later Roman Empire Vol. 1, Dover 1958, p. 263) says that "her embalmed body in Imperial robes seated on a chair of cypress wood could be seen through a hole in the back till A.D.1577, when all the contents of the tomb were accidentally burned thourgh the carelessness of children." Mosaics in Ravenna from this period already show the books of the Bible bound in codices, i.e. familiar bound books rather than scrolls.

1. THEODOSIANS, WEST 394-395, West

WESTERN COMMANDERSMagistri Militum Theodosius I, the Great

Theodosius may 1. THEODOSIANS, have been called EAST "Great" mainly for
379395, East

establishing Athana sian Orthodoxy and Fl. Theodosius for actions against paganism like Council II, Constantinople I, Arianism condemned, 381; Destruction of closing and the Serapeum, 391; Abolition of the Olympic Games, 394 (?) sometimes Stilicho (half destroying temples 395-408 Vandal) and ending the 395Arcadius Suevi, Vandals, & Alans Fl. Arcadius 408 E Olympic Games 395-423 Honorius cross Rhine, 1 January (which, however, Fl. Honorius W 407 seem to have continued in some 410-421 Constantius III form for another Fl. Constantius 421 W century). Gladiatorial combat ended in Colosseum, 404; Otherwise, he did Rome sacked by Visigoths, 410; Gaul recovered get the Goths under from Constantine "III," 411; Visigoths destroy control and left the 408Alans and Siling Vandals in Spain, 416 450 E Empire, to all Theodosius Longest appearances, sound 407-411 reign in II in and prepared for the [Constantine Fl. Theodosius Roman Britain, Castinus 422-425 "III"] History future. Gaul & to date Unfortunately, there Spain were two very defeated by Vandals in serious problems. 423-425 John Spain, 422; backs usurper One was that the Johannes W John, 423-425 Goths remained a Felix 425-430 unified and aggressive tribe Council III, Valentinian within the Empire, 425-455 Atius 430-432, Ephesus, III Fl. Atius ready to begin W 433-454 Nestorianism Fl. Placius Valentinianus condemned, 431 rampaging again at any time. Another Boniface 432 was that Honorius 450Marcian [Petronius 457 E and Arcadius, the 455 W Maximus] two sons between Vandals invade Africa, 428, take Hippo, 430, repulsed from Carthage, whom Theodosius 435; Suevi defeat Andevotus, Count of Spain, at the Jenil River, 438, divided the Empire, take Mrida, 439, Seville, 441; Vandals take Carthage, 439; expedition were young and against Vandals cancelled, 441; Council IV, Chalcedon, Monophysitism inexperienced. condemned, 451; Attila the Hun halted at Chlons, 451; Atius stabbed Leaving the Army to death by Valentinian, 454; Rome sacked by Vandals, 455 in the hands of the German commander Stilicho set the stage for all the evils of divided authority and palace intrigue. The result of this would be disaster. When the times called for a strong soldier

Emperor, there wasn't one -- and there would not be one for some time, perhaps not until Heraclius. With the Goths running wild, and an alliance of German tribes crossing the frozen Rhine on New Year's Eve of 407, the institutions were not prepared to bounce back the way Rome had in the 3rd Century. A characteristic moment came when the commander Atius, sometimes called "the Last Roman," who had defeated the Huns at Chlons-sur-Marne (Campus Mauriacus or the Catalaunian Plains, with substantial help from theVisigoths, whose King Theodoric I was killed), was murdered by the incompetent and jealous Emperor Valentinian III. Valentinian's own murder, as the Vandals symbolically arrived to plunder Rome, then left the throne completely at the mercy of the next person to get control of the Army, who was the German Ricimer. Ricimer could not himself, as a German, become Emperor, so he could only retain power by keeping the Emperors as figureheads, or killing them. This was not a formula for retrieving the situation. The Theodosian dynasty thus ends in the West with a combination of triumph, betrayal, and chaos. This era of miserable collapse nevertheless contained instances of formidable intellectual development. St. Augustine of Hippo (395-430), whose name still evokes strong reactions even in our own day, and who died as the Vandals were besieging Hippo, still stands as the most prolific author in the Latin language, with 93 surviving works to his credit, not counting numerous sermons and letters. This is a positive embarrassment for Classicists, who are usually not very interested in Latin literature after 100 AD and who would rather think that the writing from Augustine's era was all by half-literate, ignorant, and bigoted Patristic Fathers writing in Vulgar Latin. Unfortunately for this conceit, Augustine himself, inspired by Cicero, was a student of Classical Latin rhetoric and taught it at Carthage, Rome, and Milan (the Capital, remember) before he ever thought of converting to Christianity. The study of Latin without the study of Augustine involves a certain self-imposed blindness. Meanwhile, another North African author, far less accomplished as a writer, nevertheless made an epochal contribution to the character of education in the Middle Ages. This was the obscure Martianus Capella. Capella, a pagan and apparently a practicing lawyer at Carthage, seems to have died before the Vandal invasion. His seminal contribution to learning, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, created the system of the Seven Liberal Arts: thetrivium (hence "trival"), of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium, of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Capella even included a system of astronomy in which Mercury and Venus orbited the sun. This later caught the attention of Copernicus. Capella was popularized by Cassiodorus and hence made his way into subsequent education, such as with Isidore of Seville -- who, like Capella, is often called an "Enyclopedist." The idea of the Liberal Arts has now rather shrunk, and instead of including things like logic, mathematics, and astronomy, one might often think, given current academic practice, that only rhetoric remains (with grammar itself rejected as "elitist"). So one is left with the question, "Which attitudes sound more like the ignorance of the Dark Ages?"

Diocletian had begun creating a very different kind of Army in the Late Empire. The old Legions actually still exist, but they largely have been settled on the land as fixed frontier forces, the Limitanei, and the old legionary establishment has been reduced to 1000 men, with the number of legions accordingly multiplied -- for instance, only one legion had previously been stationed in Egypt, the Legio II Traiana, but there are eight by the time of the Notitia Dignitatum (II Traiana, III Diocletiana, V Macedonica, XIII Gemina, II Flavia Constantia, I Maximiana, I Valentiniana, & II Valentiniana, though this is not always the full legion). The frontier units are not shown on the map above, but their regional commanders are, the "Dukes" -- dux, "leader" (pl. duces). This is a title that will have a long history in the Middle Ages. The units that are shown on the map above are parts of the new Mobile Army, the Comitatenses, which were originally commanded by the Augusti and Caesares of the Tetrarchy -- hence, they "attend" or "accompany," comitor, the Emperors, as their "train, retinue," or "following," comitatus. An individual "companion" of an Emperor is a comes (pl. comites), or "Count," another title with a long history in the Middle Ages. In origin, however, a Count has a higher station than a Duke, the opposite of what we see much later. The sixth-century historian Agathias says that at one time the Army had a full strength of 645,000 men. This accords well with the data of the Notitia Dignitatum, which gives the whole establishment of the Army, apparently for the East in 395 AD and for the West circa 408 AD. Diocletian and Constantine, both accused of massively expanding the Army, thus produced a total force roughly twice as large as the Army of the Principate. There is no doubt that this was needed for the challenges of the Age -- indeed, it would prove inadequate to concentrate what would in fact be needed against the Visigoths and the other migrating German tribes. In the map at right we see the Limitanei and the Comitatenses for the Western Army. It is noteworthy that some differences have developed between the organization of the Western and the Eastern Armies. In the West, the regional commanders of the Mobile Army are Counts. Britain features both a Duke of Britain, on the frontier, and a Count of Britain, with a unit of the Mobile Army. The Count of Illyricum is in the Western Mobile Army, but the Master of Soliders of Illyricum is in the Eastern. In the Western Army, above the Counts are the units commanded by the "Master of Soldiers," Magister Militum (or "Master of Foot," Magister Peditum), and the "Master of Horse," Magister Equitum, of Gaul. These are the commanders-in-chief of the Western Army (distiguished by purple color), with the Master of Soldiers becoming the effective "Generalissimo" of the Western Empire.

In the map at right for the East, we see the Limitanei and the Comitatenses for the Eastern Army. The units of the Eastern Mobile Army all are commanded by their own Master of Soldiers, with two units as "Soldiers of the Emperor's Presence." Since there are two of those, one might think there is one each for East and West. However, they apparently operated together and were part of the Eastern Army. Thus, the unity of the Eastern Army was focused more directly on the Emperor himself, which may have helped the Eastern Empire avoid the situation in the West where the Emperors became mere figureheads. It is noteworthy that the Counts in the East, of Isauria and Egypt, are both in areas behind the actual frontiers. The Count of Egypt commands an army that from its size could easily have belonged to the Comitatenses. The Count of Isauria commands in an area known for rebellion. He has such a small force, however (Legio II Isaura & Legio III Isaura -- Legio I Isaura Sagittaria was with the Mobile Army of the East), the rebellions cannot have been too serious. Perhaps the problem was more like banditry. Nevertheless, this is where Leo I would draw recruits, including his future son-in-law and Emperor Zeno, to replace the Germans in the Eastern Army. In the Notitia Dignitatum the Western Comitatenses have a slight numerical superiority over the Eastern, yet it was the Western Army that seems to evaporate after 407, especially in Gaul, which on paper was the greatest strength of any formation in the whole Army. Unfortunately, the Mobile Army as often was used for civil wars as for backing up the frontiers, and it was natural for Emperors to neglect the Limitanei and reinforce their own personal forces. This did not work out well, especially when the Western Army became the personal force, not of the Emperors, but of a Magister Militum who soon was usually a German, like Stilicho or Ricimer. Gradually, the Limitanei fade from historical view and hardly seem to exist at all by the time German tribes cross the borders en masse in the Fifth Century.

On the map, the Visigoths have actually become allies of the Romans. In return for cleaning (most of) the Germans out of Spain, they are legally settled in Aquitaine. Two German tribes, however, are left unmolested. The Suevi establish themselves, for centuries, in Galicia, and the Asding Vandals cross over into Africa. Of all the blows the Roman power, the latter would prove to be one of the worst. Rome could no longer draw grain from North Africa. Much worse, the crafty Vandal King Gaiseric ("King Caesar") built a fleet after securing Carthage in 439. He then did what the Carthaginians so many centuries earlier had not been able to do: secure control of the seas. In 455 they did what Hannibal could only have dreamed of, arriving at Rome by sea, breaking into and looting the city, and carrying the booty back to Carthage. Meanwhile, around the same year, Hengest the Jute, followed by Angles and Saxons, founded the Kingdom of Kent. It is noteworthy that the Venerable Bede (673-735) numbered Theodosius II as the 45th and Marcian as the 46th Emperors since Augustus. This is considerably less than the count we might make now and it interestingly implies that Bede possessed a sort of "official" list from which many ephemeral Emperors were excluded [note]. After Roman Britain disappeared from history, when the usurper Constantine "III" took his troops to Gaul, Bede's History of the English Church and People is just about the first that we then hear of it, three hundred years later. What events filled that time became strongly mythologized, especially around the figure of King Arthur. Bede does not mention Arthur, but he does talk about a British leader against the Angles, Ambrosius Aurelius, who gained a period of peace after defeating the invaders at Badon Hill in about 493 (or 518). This becomes an element of the Arthur story. I suspect that the vividness of the Arthur stories, like that of the Greek epics and of the Mahbhrata in India, is an artifact of a literate society that for a time lost its literacy but remembered, after a fashion, what it was like. The literature on the problem of Arthur and Britain in this period is vast. Two

of the more interesting recent books might be The Discovery of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe [Guild Publishing, London, 1985] and From Scythia to Camelot, A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail by C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor [Garland Publshing, Inc, New York, 1994, 2000]. Littleton and Malcor made the significant discovery that the scene of Arthur's death in Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, where the sword Excalibur was thrown into a lake, occurs in almost identical terms in the legends of the Ossetians in the Caucasus. There is a possible connection, since the Ossetians are descendants of the Alans, and Marcus Aurelius had settled a tribe of Alans, the Iazyges, whom he had defeated in 175 and taken into Roman service, in the north of Britain, where many of them ended up at Bremetenacum Veteranorum, south of Lancaster. The legion to which the Iazyges were assigned, 2. LAST WESTERN WESTERN the Legio VI Victrix, was EMPERORS [names in COMMANDERSMagistri commanded by one Lucius brackets not recognized by Militum Artorius Castus. "Artorius" East] looks like the Latin source of Avitus 455-456 W Eparchius Avitus the name "Arthur." There is nothing certain about the Majorian 457-461 W Julius Valerius speculations and disputes over Maiorianus all this, however, except that expedition they will be endless [note].
against Vandals fails, 461 461-465 W [Libius Severus] Anthemius
Procopius Anthemius

interregnum 465-467 W 467-472 W

Ricimer (half Visigoth & half Suevic)

456472

Joint E/W expedition against Vandals fails, 468 [Olybrius

Anicius Olybrius

472 W Gundobad, King of Burgundy Ecdicius son of Avitus 472474 474475

interregnum 472-473 W [Glycerius] 473-474 W 474-480 W deposed in Ravenna, retreats to Dalmatia, 475 [Romulus "Augustulus"] 475-476 W

Julius Nepos

Orestes

475476

The last twenty years of the Western Empire are mainly the story of the commander Ricimer. The last Western Emperor really worthy of the name was probably Majorian, who was a military man in his own right and operated with success in Gaul and Spain. The naval expedition he organized against the Vandals in 461 (one of no less than five attempts to put down the Vandals in this era) failed when Gaiseric, apparently with good intelligence, destroyed the Roman fleet in its ports in Spain. Majorian was murdered by Ricimer on returning to Italy. Henceforth, the Emperors were mainly puppets and operations were confined to Italy. More than the coup of Odoacer in 476,

Odo(w)acer (a Scirus)

476493

deposes Orestes & Augustulus, 476; Nepos killed, 480; defeated, besieged, & killed by Theodoric, 489-493

this signaled a real institutional change in the Western Empire. The German Ricimer would now hold the real power, with little better than figurehead Emperors. With Ricimer either unconcerned or distracted, the rest of the Western Empire fell by default to the Vandals, Visigoths, and Burgundians. A Roman pocket under local commanders remained in the north of Gaul until the Frankish KingClovis subjugated it in 486. Britain had been abandoned to illiterate mythology. Ricimer was once perusaded to accept an Emperor from the East, Anthemius, and to participate in another assault on the Vandals; but this was a disaster, and he ended his "reign" with another figurehead on the throne. After Gundobad, a nephew of Ricimer and shortly to be King of Burgundy (where he would outlive most of his contemporaries), briefly had his own figurehead on the throne, a new nominee of the Eastern Emperor, Julius Nepos, was installed. The first commander of Nepos, Ecdicius, was a son of the former Emperor Avitus. Ecdicius, however, was soon followed by a new commander, Orestes. There was now some difficulty, however, with the German troops of the Empire accepting a non-German commander. This problem reached a head when, rather than working together to get things organized again, Nepos was chased out to Dalmatia by Orestes, who assumed command and then put his own son, a child -- Romulus the "little Augustus" -- on the throne. The German troops wanted to be settled on the land in Italy, which Orestes resisted. So in 476, Orestes and his son were then deposed by the German Odoacer (who originally had been in the guard of Anthemius), who decided to do without a figurehead Emperor. This was the rather anticlimactic "Fall of Rome." Odoacer even returned the Western Regalia to Constantinople. Nepos, meanwhile, was still in Dalmatia. Odoacer was rid of him by 480. Since Odoacer, de jure, was a faithful officer of the Emperor in Constantinople, one could say that the last institutional existence of the Western Empire surived until Odoacer was overthrown by the Ostrogoths in 493. The real difference, however, had come in 456, when Ricimer gained control of the army. His long tenure structurally prepared the way for the demise of the Western Empire. In 2007, we have a movie, The Last Legion, that is about Romulus Augustulus, Odoacer, et al. This is an extensively fictionalized and even silly version of events, where Romulus Augustulus flees to Britain and becomes, well, King Arthur -- with Ben Kingsley as some sort of Merlin. Since the project is clearly a fantasy, it does not merit much notice, except for the points that would give people the wrong idea about the era. The worst part of the story may be that it has it that Odoacer was a (filthy, wild) Goth attacking Rome (a former ally rather like Alaric). Odoacer was not a Goth, but from a lesser German tribe, the Sciri, and he was not attacking Rome, but simply a member of the (barbarized) Roman army. Odoacer in fact was eventually deposed (from Ravenna, of course) by Goths, the Ostrogoths under Theodoric. The distortion is certainly made to preserve the image of Rome (the City) being conquered by barbarian hordes. At the same time, we get the notion that Romulus Augustulus is somehow the descendant or heir of Julius Caesar. There is no evidence of this, Caesar himself had no descendants, and the other heirs were pretty much wiped out by 69 AD (though the movie actually says that the unrelated Tiberius was the last of the ruling Caesars!). The Eastern Empire does come in for mention in the movie, but only so that it can absurdly contribute a female warrior, played by an actress from India, to the defense of Rome. Hollywood (or, in this case, the Euro Italian-French-British co-producers) should save this stuff for the

coming remake of Conan the Barbarian.

Little is known about the Roman pocket in the north of Gaul. We hear about Aegidius, the magister militum per Gallias, apparently appointed by Majorian. In the Notitia Dignitatum, the commander of Roman forces in Gaul was the magister equitum, Master of Horses instead of Soldiers. Ordinarily, the Master of Horses would be a title inferior to Master of Soldiers. The title of the Master of Horse of Gaul, however, may mean that he was second in command for entire Western Army, a serious position indeed. Since the strength of the forces in Gaul was some 32,500 men, this reinforces that interpretation -- although we then wonder why such a force seems to have been so ineffective when the Alans, Vandals, and Suevi invaded in 407. Bury speculates that Aegidius held both titles [J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, Volume I, Dover Publications, 1958, p.333]. Aegidius did not accept the fall of Majorian or recognize Libius Severus, but he was preoccupied fighting the Visigoths until his death in 464. He was followed by someone we only know as the Count (comes) Paul. "Count" ("companion" of the Emperor) is actually a high title, but Bury supposes he must have also held the "Master" titles also. Ricimer appointed his own magister militum for Gaul, Gundioc, the King of Burgundy (434-473). Both Aegidius and Paul had the help of the Franks, who remained loyal Roman allies, against the Visigoths and Burgundians. That changed when a new Frankish King, Clovis (Chlodwig), succeeded his father in 481. Meanwhile, Paul had been followed by the son of Aegidius, Syagrius. The Franks actually called him rex Romanorum, a good indication that his realm and authority were seen as quite independent -- indeed, there was no longer a Western Emperor at that point. It is not known what Syagrius called himself. Clovis defeated him at Soissons in 486. Syagrius fled to the Visigoths, who returned him for execution by Clovis. This was the end of Roman Gaul, 541 years after Caesar had completed its conquest in 56 BC -or perhaps 531 years since the defeat, capture, and death of the rebel Vercingetorix in 46

BC. Now the dominance of the Franks would begin, and in time Gaul would take their name. Rome and Romania Index

1. LEONINES Leo I 457-474 E

First Emperor Crowned by Patriarch of Constantinople; Joint E/W expedition against Vandals fails, 468 Leo II Zeno the Isaurian (Tarasikodissa) [Basiliscus] Anastasius I 473-474 E 474-491 E+W 475-476 E 491-518

reforms coinage, 498

C. THE EAST ALONE, 476-518, 42 Years Leo I purged the Eastern Army of Germans and so turned the East away from the process of barbarization that had rendered the Western Army useless. A last chance to recoup things for the whole Empire came in 468, after Leo had gotten Ricimer to accept the Theodosian relative Anthemius as Western Emperor. A joint amphibious campaign was put together to recover Africa from the Vandals. This should have succeeded, but it failed through a combination of incompetence, treachery, and bad luck. Ricimer may not have really wanted it to succeed, and it wasn't long before he got rid of Anthemius. After Odoacer decided not to bother with a Western Emperor, Leo's Isaurian son-in-law, Zeno, found himself as the first Emperor of a "united" Empire since Theodosius I, but little was left of the West. Only Odoacer in Italy vaguely acknowledged the Emperor's suzerainty -- we don't know what allegiance to Constantinople, if any, remained in the Roman pocket in northern Gaul. Nothing was done about this at the time, and Anastasius, by temperament or by wisdom, concentrated on allowing the East to rest and build up its strength. Part of that involved reforming the coinage, which is one of the benchmarks for the beginning of "Byzantine" history.

On the map we see the classic form of the German successor Kingdoms of the Western Empire. By 493 Theodoric the Ostrogoth, invited by the Emperor Anastasius, had taken out Odoacer in Italy. This was just in time to save the Visigoths, who were defeated by the Franks in 507 and pushed out of Gaul. The result has the look of a nice balance of power, but there is no telling how long that might have lasted. What upset things was not any internal development, but a most unexpected revival and return of Roman power. In the beloved story of the "Fall" of Rome, this sequel is usually what gets overlooked. Also noteworthy as a benchmark for the beginning of Byzantine history in the time of the Leonines is the apparent disappearance of the traditional Roman tria nomina, the three names of praenmen, nmen, and cognmen, which have been given with previous Emperors. The last Emperor with three full names may have been Majorian, Julius Valerius Majorianus. In general, the Valentian and Theodosian Emperors only had two names, e.g. Valens, Fl. Valens, and Theodosius I & II, both Fl. Theodosius. From Marcian onward there is no evidence of any traditional Roman nomenclature. Why is this happening? Well, even though it had been some time since the nmen had lost its connection to the actual ancestral gens (the clan), and all the names were becoming like titles, the system of the tria nominastill bore an essential connection to the Roman family cult of ancestor worship. No Confucian venerated ancestors in a household shrine more devoutly than the pious Roman. But this could not survive with the adoption of Christianity. A Christian receives a single Christian name. Indeed, it is a while before we get names, like Michael or John, that look more Christian than Roman and Greek, like Jovian, Leo, or Heraclius (still commemorating Heracles -- and so Hera); but the trend is obvious. Indeed, the names beginning with the Valentians look like the perfunctory addition of "Flavius" to the single basic name of the Emperors -- even of Atius, "Flavius Atius." Eventually we get the return of surnames, at first for nobility. The first Dynasty with a family name will be the Ducases in the 11th century. It took a

few more centuries before surnames became common among European Christians of all classes. Another momentous transition is in architecture. The lovely temples of Classical antiquity, like jewels in the landscape, disappear. Christian churches of the period often look like piles of bowls or dark fruitcakes. Or we simply get the basilica, a Roman courthouse. Churches often are not even visible from a distance, because they may be packed around with other buildings. Why is this happening? Were Christians just anaesthetic? No. The aesthetic was certainly changing, but the most important difference was just the difference in purpose between a temple and a church. A temple was the house of a god, with little space inside but for the god and a few priests. It was not supposed to contain a body of worshipers. The public side of the temple was the exterior, the visible sign of the god's presence. With a church, however, the purpose was not to house God, whose presence was ineffable, but to house the congregation, the ekklsa, the "assembly" that gave its name in many modern languages for "church" (which itself seems to be from kyriakos, "of the Lord"). The public side of a church is thus the interior, not the exterior, and the outwardly ugliest early churches often contain marvelous inner spaces, with rich decoration. These quickly become awesome spaces, as in Sancta Sophia, for centuries the greatest church of Christendom. Roman domes could do what most Roman temples did not try to do. As it happens there was a precedent for this. Hadrian's Pantheon in Rome is undistinguished and unremarkable from the outside yet contains a wonderful interior under the largest dome of pre-modern engineering. The dome of Sancta Sophia is smaller but used more dramatically. The Pantheon is essentially one large, really nice room. Sancta Sophia holds a vast space -- the 184 foot rise of the dome on its piers can easily contain the 151 foot Statue of Liberty. Eventually, a form of church evolved that transformed the basilica into a building with a monumental external face and a monumental internal space. These would be the Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, but it would be centuries before the technology could handle the spidery supports, of walls pierced with windows and held by buttresses, that both size and relatively lightness required. Then the basilica and the dome would be combined, to produce in the Renaissance the new largest church in Christendom, St. Peter's in Rome. But this would happen as culturally Francia surpassed Romania. The instructive comparison is with the practice in Islm, where the purpose of a mosque was similar to that of a church. This can be seen in the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, based on Syrian churches, which is all but invisible from the outside, hidden in the midst of the city, but contains two marvelous spaces, a courtyard and the lovely interior of the prayer hall, with mosaics as in churches of the time. On the other hand, a monument of the same era, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, stands conspicuously like a pagan temple, high on the Temple Mount itself. But the purpose of the Dome is more like a temple. It was built less for a congregation than for the Rock itself, commemorating the Temple of Solomon and the site of the Prophet Muh.ammad's "dream journey" to heaven. Finally, the Ottoman mosques of Sinan (c.1500-1588), based on the model of Sancta Sophia, produce the monumental Islmic equivalent of the cathedral. Rome and Romania Index

D. RETURNING TO THE WEST, 518-610, 92 years

1. JUSTINIANS Justin I Justinian I

Peter Sabbataeus

565 AD Justinian took the rested strength of the East and threw it, commanded by his great general Belisarius, against the Vandals and Ostrogoths. The Vandals, caught off guard, collapsed quickly. In 540 the Ostrogoths surrendered to Belisarius, who had to rush East to meet a Persian invasion. He was too late. Khusro I had already sacked Antioch (540). Then in 541 the resistance of the Ostrogoths revived, and the plague hit the Empire. The campaign in Italy then took another 11 years, with men and money very short. Successful, if exhausted, Justinian was then able to secure part of southern Spain. Meanwhile he had built the greatest church in Christendom, Sancta Sophia [note], codified Roman Law, and driven the last pagans, at Plato's Academy, out of business. This wore out the Empire, but it could easily have recovered to new strength if further blows had not fallen. The Lombards invaded Italy in 568; and although they were unable to secure the whole peninsula, or the major cities (except in the Po valley), they became a source of constant conflict for most of the next two hundred years. Meanwhile, the Danube frontier had become very insecure. As early as 540 (again) Bulgars and Slavs were raiding into the Balkans. Maurice not only restored the frontier but crossed it to apply the "forward defense" of the Early Empire. Unfortunately, this hard campaigning became unpopular with the troops; and in 602 they murdered Maurice and his whole family.

518-527 527-565

Plato's Academy closed , 529; Nika Revolt, 532; North Africa regained from Vandals, 533; Rome regained, 536; end of dating by Consuls, 537; Plague, 541-545; Ostrogoths defeated, 552; Council V, Constantinople II, Monophysitism condemned again, 553; Andalusia regained from Visigoths, 554 Justin II 565-578 574-578, Caesar; 578-582, Augustus Lombards Invade Italy, 568 Tiberius II

Sirmium besieged by Avars,Slavs invade Balkans, 579; Sirmium ceded to Avars, sack of Athens by Slavs, 582 Maurice 582-602 Slavs attack Thessalonica, 586; Avars defeated four times north of Danube, 599; famine, troops on Danube mutiny, 602 non-dynastic Phocas 602-610

Under Phocas, things began to unravel. The Persians began the campaign that would net them the Asiatic part of the Empire, recreating the Persia of the Achaeminids, and the Danube frontier collapsed so completely that it would not be restored for almost four hundred years. As noted above, when the treasures taken by Titus from Herod's Temple in Jerusalem were recovered from the Vandals in 533, they were sent back to Constantinople. According to Procopius, the treasures were being carried in the Triumph of Belisarius when a Jew recognized them and passed word to the Emperor that keeping them in Constantinople would be inauspicious. Their removal from Jerusalem had brought misfortune on Rome and then on the Vandals. So Justinian "became afraid and quickly sent everything to the sanctuaries of the Christians in Jerusalem" [Procopius, History of the Wars, II, Book IV, ix 5-10, translated by H.B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard U. Press, 1916, 2006, p.281]. There, if they indeed arrived, they disappear from history. There is no reason not to think that they would have been safely kept, but the city was then captured, looted, and destroyed by the Persians in 614. At that point many treasures, like the True Cross, were carried off to Ctesiphon (though returned after the victory of Heraclius in 628). There is no mention, however, of the fate of anything, generally or specifically, from the Temple in Jerusalem. Since the Jews of Jerusalem helped the Persians, it is possible they took charge of their own treasures, but there is no report of that, and no further historical report at all about the fate of the objects -- except perhaps for the fabulous stories about the Templars, who supposedly found many things in Jerusalem, though these reports are from much later and of an incredible character. The great Menrh of the Temple, described in detail by Josephus and shown on the Arch of Titus, is certainly not something to be easily overlooked. Procopius, unfortunately, does not detail which items were among the treasures recovered by Belisarius. If the Menrh was there, any Jew of Constantinople certainly would have recognized it quickly and easily. We are thus left with a considerable mystery, and it is a little surprising that there are not, at least, legends about the fate of the Temple items. One possibility concerns Procopius' reference to "the sanctuaries of the Christians." This could mean all sorts of things and generally has been interpreted at referring to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, Justinian himself was building a large new church in Jerusalem, which actually came to the called the "New," Nea, Church. This was later demolished by the Arabs, but its substructure survives under the Jewish Quarter of Jersualem. That substructure includes a vast cistern, such as Justinian also built in Constantinople. This has suggested to some that crypts of the church may also survive, possibly with items like Temple treasures, which might have been hidden from both Persian and Arab invasions. By the time the Templars arrived in Jerusalem, they might not even have been aware that the Nea Church had existed -- the cistern was only discovered by Israeli archaeologists after 1967. It seems like a thin hope, but since the Arabs don't report finding any Temple treasures, and no Jewish source mentions taking possession of them, the Nea Church is the sole remining lead. The arrival of the Plague in Egypt in October 541 was the beginning of an epidemic that cost the City of Constantinople alone perhaps 200,000 citizens. The percentages of people who died in the Empire may compare with those of the Black Death in the 14th century, though by then the population of Europe had grown much larger. Justinian

himself contracted the disease, but recovered. There is no doubt that this was the Bubonic plague. The historian Procopius describes it with clinical accuracy, especially the characteristic black swellings, the buboes -- a Greek word that Procopius uses, perhaps for the first time for this disease. But the Plague was not the only problem. The climate was changing -- this may indeed have precipitated the plague, providing more aggreeable conditions for rats and fleas. After what is now called the "Roman Warming," we get into the "Dark Ages Cooling." The tree ring record of 540 in Ireland is that "the trees stopped growing." Procopius said that, "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year [536], and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed" [translated by H.B. Dewing, Procopius, History of the Wars, II, Book IV, xiv 5-6, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard U. Press, 1916, 2006, p.329]. Other records give similar accounts. The dimness of the sun may be from increased, thin cloud cover, from changes in solar output, volcanic debris, or other causes. Indeed, ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland show a sharp spike in volcanic gasses in 535. It is of such magnitude as to indicate a major eruption. Since the eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815 resulted in a "year without summer," it is not hard to imagine the eruption of one of the major Indonesian volcanoes (or elsewhere; the source of the volcanic signature has not been identified) producing similar results for 535-536. It is not clear that the eruption alone would produce the effects seen over many years, for the weather would be colder and the growing season shorter for some time (as noted for 540). The eruption may have reinforced what was already a cooling trend. Whatever the cause, the climate would adversely impact the population at a time, on top of the deaths from the Plague, when the lack would gravely affect the fate of the Empire. Without the manpower to put down the Ostrogoths more swiftly and effectively, Justinian would devastate Italy in a way that would not have otherwise been necessary and that not been effected by the original "barbarian invasions" as such. With the return of Roman power to the West, new arrangements of government emerge. Justinian abolished the dioceses. The effective Imperial governers of Italy and Africa are the Masters of Soldiers of the Armies of Italy and Africa. By the time of Maurice, the Master comes to be called the Exarch ("out-ruler"), and Italy and Africa themselves are each an Exarchate. Still the capital of Italy under the Ostrogoths, Ravenna becomes a Roman capital again, not of a Western Empire, but just for the Exarchate. Justinian lavished classic artwork on the city which survives until today. Indeed, the most familiar portraits of Justinian and Theodora are from mosaics in the Church of San Vitale. The Exarchate continued until the fall of the city to the Lombards in 751. In Africa, the Exarchate was centered at Carthage, which enters its last phase as a player in Roman history. With less to show for its life in this period, the city fell to the Arabs in 698. Afterwards, Carthage itself, although not deliberately destroyed as the Romans once did, simply fades from history. Nearby Tunis becomes the local metropolis. The office of the Roman Consuls, the chief executive officers of the Roman Republic, and dating by them, continued under the Empire until Justinian, who now replaces them with dating by Regal years. They can be examined on a popup page. As the end of an

institution that began at the very beginning of the Republic, it is hard to exaggerate the symbolic importance of this event. The Roman state is now a monarchy in every detail.

3. GHASSANIDS Jafnah I ibn Amr 'Amr I ibn Jafnah Tha'labah ibn Amr al-Harith I ibn Th'alabah Jabalah I ibn al-Harith I al-Harith II ibn Jabalah "ibn Maria" al-Mundhir I Senior ibn alHarith II al-Mundhir II Junior ibn alHarith II 327330 327340 al-Aiham ibn alHarith II al-Nu'man I ibn al-Harith II 'Amr II ibn alHarith II 220265 265270 270287 287307 307317 317327 327330 327342 330356 361391 361362 391418 418434 al-Harith III ibn al-Aiham 434456 434453 453472 453465 486512 512529 529569

The Ghassanids were an Arab tribe occupying the hinterland behind Syria and Jordan. This was the area that had previously seen rule by theNabataeans and then by Palmyra. Evidently it was difficult for the Romans to maintain direct rule over an area whose inhabitants might largely be pastoral and nomadic. Indirect rule ended up accomplished by an alliance with the Ghassanids. In the time of Justinian the Ghassanids became organized enough to be called a "kingdom" by historians, and they become an important part of Roman frontier defense in 529 when Justinian replaces the earlier Roman clients, the Salihids, with the Ghassanid al-Harith V, now the official Romanphylarch or ruler of the tribe (phylum). Such client kingdoms might be said to represent the first entry of the Arabs into Mediterranian history. If they constitute a pre-Islamic move north of Arab people, then both the Romans and the Persians converted the threat of nomadic encroachment into elements of the preexisting balance of power between Romania and Persia. For the Persians, indeed, had their own client Arab tribe, the Lakhmids, who occupied the hinterland west of the Euphrates. The rivalry between Ghassanids and Lakhmids was not just as proxies for the Powers, but, as can be imagined, the two tribes had become rivals anyway, and there was also a religious dimension. The Ghassanids were Christians, and the Lakhmids had remained pagan. While the religion of the Ghassanids in general would be expected to be a unifying factor with respect to Rome, there developed a difficulty. The Ghassanids became Monophysites. Indeed, when al-Harith V nominated

Jabalah II ibn al- 327Harith II 361 Jafnah II ibn al-Mundhir I

al-Nu'man II ibn al-Mundhir I al-Nu'man III ibn 'Amr ibn al-Mundhir I Jabalah III ibn al-Nu'man al-Nu'man IV ibn 434al-Aiham 455 al-Nu'man V ibn al-Harith al-Mundhir II ibn al-Nu'man 'Amr III ibn alNu'man 453486 Hijr ibn alNu'man

al-Harith IV ibn Hijr Jabalah IV ibn al-Harith al-Harith V ibn Jabalah

Roman subsidy, 529; nominates Jacob Baradaeusas Bishop of Edessa, 542; defeats Lakhmids, 554; end of Roman subsidies, 563 al-Mundhir III ibn al-Harith 569581 Abu Kirab alNu'man ibn al570582

Jacob Baradaeus Bishop of Edessa, it led to the takeover of the Syrian Orthodox Church, henceforth the "Jacobite" Church, by Monophysites. This was not something that Justinian would let stand in the way of sensible policy, but he nevertheless made one crucial mistake. When al-Harith defeated the Lakhmids in 554, Justinian, chronically short of money, discontinued his subsidy to the Ghassanid ruler. This may also have happened because Justinian had just obtained the means of growing Silk -- silkworm eggs smuggled out of the Central Asia. This rendered the Arabian border and Arabia less important for Rome as a means of circumventing Persian control of the silk trade. The discontent of the Ghassanids with this dismissal of their importance would be magnified when later Emperors began a harassment like that inflicted on the Monophysite Coptic and the Syrian Orthodox Churches. Since the Ghassanids were rather like the keystone in the defensive arch based on Egypt and Syria, the disaffection of these populations seriously weakened the Roman frontier. This was already evident during the Persian invasion of 614-628, and nothing had been done to heal it by the time of the Arab invasion of 636. Soon the Ghassanids converted to Islam and disappeared from history. The list here is entirely from Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies. An extensive discussion of the Ghassanids can be found in Justinian's Flea by William Rosen [Viking, 2007, pp. 242, 303, 306, & 318]. Despite the treatment of the Ghassanids in many Byzantine histories, which often give rulers of related states, I have not seen a list in any history. Since the names of the Ghassanids include the familiar Arabic patronynmic element, ibn, the genealogy of the dynasty could actually be constructed without too much difficulty. It will also be noted that brothers often rule simultaneously, as with the several sons of al-Harith II who begin ruling in 327. AlHarith II himself, with the epithet "ibn Maria" and living in the time of Constantine, is likely to be the tribal chief who converted to Christianity. Rome and Romania Index

III. THIRD EMPIRE, MIDDLE "ROMANIA," EARLY "BYZANTIUM," 610 AD-1059 AD, Era of Diocletian 327-776, 449 years
Romania has suffered most terrible evils from the Arabs even until now. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (d.959) quoting the Chronicle of Theophanes (c.815) [De Administrando Imperio, Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik, Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 1967, 2008, p.94] The Constantinopolitan city, which formerly was called Byzantium and now New Rome, is located amidst very savage nations. Indeed it has to its north theHungarians, the Pizaceni, the Khazars, the Russians, whom we call Normans by another name, and

the Bulgarians, all very close by; to the east lies Baghdad; between the east and the south the inhabitants of Egypt and Babylonia; to the south there is Africa and that island called Crete, very close to and dangerous for Constantinople. Other nations that are in the same region, that is, the Armenians, Persians, Chaldeans, and Avasgi, serve Constantinople. The inhabitants of this city surpass all these people in wealth as they do also in wisdom. Liutprand of Cremona (c.920-972), 949 AD, "Retribution," The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, translated by Paolo Squatriti [The Catholic Press of America, 2007, p.50]. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "Sailing to Byzantium," alluding to the mechanical birds reported at the Macedonian court. To most people thinking of the "Roman Empire," we are well into terra incognita here. Yet in 610 the character and problems of the Roman Empire would not have been unfamiliar to Theodosius the Great. A Persian invasion was nothing new. How far it got, all the way to Egypt and the Bosporus, was. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Danube frontier was not now the doing of Germans but of Slavs and Steppepeople -- the latter beginning with the Altaic Avars, whose kin would dominate Central Asia in the Middle Ages. The Persians were miraculously defeated; but before the Danube could be regained or the Lombards overcome in Italy, a Bolt from the Blue changed everything. The Arabs, bringing a new religion, Islm, created an entirely new world, which both broke the momentum of Roman recovery and divided the Mediterranean world in a way whose outlines persist until today. Nevertheless, the Empire, restricted to Greece and Anatolia, rode out the flood. It must have been a hard nut, since the Arab Empire otherwise flowed easily all the way to China and the Atlantic. It was hard enough, indeed, that by the end of the "Third Empire" it had been in better health than any Islamic state. The promise of new ascendency, however, was brief, both for internal and external reasons. Meanwhile, there has been a cost paid, as we might expect, in prosperity and material culture. This is conspicuous in the coinage, where the previous style of low relief profile portraits is still typical in Justinian's day. However, we also start to get face on portraits, whose quality is less good. By the time of Heraclius, face on portraits are dominant, and soon exclusive, while their character ceases to be low relief and becomes cartoonish. This will improve again later, but the coinage will never have the photo-real quality that we expect in modern coinage and that was often present

in the best work of the First Empire. That the gold coinage of the solidus still exists at all, however, is testimony to the fact that the prosperity and material culture of Romania never fell as far as it did in Francia. Rome and Romania Index A. THE ADVENT OF ISLAM, 610-802, 192 years

1. HERACLIANS Heraclius 610-641 conquest of Mesopotamia, 607610, Syria, 611-613, Palestine, 614, Egypt, 616, & invasion of Anatolia, 626, by Shh Khusro II; his defeat, 623-628; Salona destroyed by Avars, residents move to Spalatum, 620; Cartagena falls to Visigoths, 624; Avar Siege of Constantinople, Aqueduct of Valens broken, 626; occupation of Armenia, 633; Palestine lost to the Caliph 'Umar, 636; Syria lost, 640; Egypt invaded, 640 Constantine III & Heracleon Constans II Pogonatus 641 641-668, last Emperor to visit Rome as a possession

Egypt lost, 642; Genoa (Liguria) lost to Lombards, 642; campaign against the Lombards, 663; assassinated at Syracuse, 668 Constantine IV 668-685 Siege of Constantinople by theCaliph Mu'wiya, 674-677; Council VI, Constantinople III, Monotheletism condemned, 680-681 Justinian II Rhinotmetus 685-695, 705711

Seldom has fortune and ability so blessed a ruler only to turn so completely against him in the end. With the Persians in Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia, the Roman Empire seemed doomed to complete collapse. Things even got worse after Heraclius arrived from Africa and seized the throne. The Persians arrived at the Bosporus and the Avars at the walls of Constantinople. But then in one of the most brilliant, but far more desperate, campaigns since Alexander, Heraclius audaciously invaded Persia itself. Confident that Constantinople was impregnable, he even wintered with the army in the field, devastating Persia, until Shh Khusro II's own son rose up and overthrew him. The peace restored the status quo ante bellum; and Heraclius began to use the title of the defeated monarch, the traditional Persian "Great King." Thus Basileus, the Greek word for "King," became the mediaeval Greek word for "Emperor" (although, actually, Procopius was already using it that way in the days of Justinian) -- as Greek now (or hereabouts) replaces Latin as the Court language. But then, barely eight years after this exhausting victory, the Arabs, united by Islm, appeared out of the desert and quickly conquered Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. Jerusalem would never be recovered, except temporarily by theCrusaders. Old and ill, Heraclius had to watch his life's work largely melt away, while people said it was the Judgment of God because he had married his niece. But a core for the Empire had been saved.

Loss of Armenia, 693 non-dynastic Leontius Tiberius III Philippicus Bardanes (Vardan) Anastasius II Theodosius III 695-698 698-705 711-713 713-715 715-717 Carthage falls, 698

Constans II was the last Emperor to campaign in northern Italy and visit Rome as an Imperial possession (later the Palaeologi went to beg for help). He was also the last to exert real control over the Popes, arresting Martin I (649-653, d.655) and exiling him to the Crimea. Once in Italy, he stayed, apparently wishing to move the capital of the Empire there. After he was assassinated at Syracuse (668), nothing further came of this. Under Constans the structure of the Roman Army was fundamentally changed to deal with the new circumstances of the Empire. As the traditional units, largely familiarfrom the 5th Century, fell back from the collapsing frontiers, they were settled on the land in Anatolia, to be paid directly from local revenues instead of from the Treasury, whose tax base from Syria and Egypt had disappeared. The areas set aside for particular units became the themes, which remained the military bedrock of Romania until the end of the 11th century and soon replaced the old Roman provinces as the administrative divisions of the Empire. Thus, the Army of the East, driven out of Syria, was settled in the Anatolic Theme, where it would guard the obvious route for invasion or raids from Syria: the Cilician Gates through the Taurus Mountains. Although invasions and raids there would be, the Arabs never did secure any conquests beyond the Gates. Where the Army of the East in the Late Empire numbered about 20,000 men, the forces of the Anatolic Theme varied from about 18,000 in 773 to 15,000 in 899 [Warren

Treadgold, Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081, Stanford, 1995, p.67].

As the remnants of the Late Roman Army were settled on the land (like the earlier Limitanei), there were also standing forces that accompanied the Emperor, like the old Comitatenses. There was already one such unit in the Late Empire, the Scholae. This would grow into a new Standing or Mobile Army, the Tagmata. Eventually the Tagmata consisted of the Scholae, the Excubitors, the Hicanati, the Numera, the Optimates, the Walls, the Watch, and, finally, the Varangian Guard. In 899, the Tagmata together numbered about 28,000 men, while the entire Army, Themes and Tagmata combined, added up to about 128,000 men [Treadgold, op.cit.]. This was less than half of the Augustan Army and not even a quarter of Constantine's; but considering that the Empire is reduced to the lower Balkans and Anatolia, it is proportionally still robust, especially in an Age when a paid military establishment was impossible in most of Europe. As with the decline of the Limitanei, the late Macedonian Emperors began to neglect the Thematic forces and rely on the Tagmata, which soon filled with mercenaries. Some mercenaries could be quite faithful, like the Saxon refugees from Norman England who served in the Varangian Guard for a couple of centuries (the Egklinovaraggoi). This worked reasonably well while there was money. But when the finances collapsed, loses could not be made good, or the more mercenary warriors retained. This led to fiascoes like the hire of the Catalan Company (1303), who mutinied (1305) and seized the Duchy of Athens (1311). Even under the Palaeologi, landed frontier forces (now the akritai) remained the best investment but were imprudently neglected, with disastrous consequences. After Constantine IV withstood the first Arab siege of Constantinople, burning the Arab fleet with the famous and mysterious "Greek Fire" (which sounds like nothing so much as napalm, since it could burn under water), it looked like the Empire would survive. With the last member of the dynasty, Justinian II, we have a curious experiment in humanity. When the Emperor was deposed in 695, instead of being killed, his nose was

cut off. Hence his epithet, Rhinotmetus, "Cut Nose." It was expected that this would disqualify him from attempts at restoration. It didn't, and Justinian returned to power in 705. Henceforth, deposed Emperors, or other politically threatening persons, would be blinded. This was more effective (although the blind Isaac II was restored by the Fourth Crusade), though now it may not seem particularly more humane than execution. Otherwise, the end of the dynasty demonstrates one drawback of the new themes: they represented such military force that the strategus, their commander, was continually tempted to revolt. This problem was soon addressed simply by dividing the themes into smaller ones. The maps of Romania now become much smaller. Egypt, Palestine, Spain, and North Africa are gone forever. Footholds in Italy and the Balkans remain. Greece and the Balkans would be recovered in time, but everything in Italy would eventually be lost also. For the time being, the heartland of the Empire will be Asia Minor. Although this would provide the resources for revival, even for colonization back into Greece, it was 3. SYRIANS (ISAURIANS) still open to Arab raids. They could not be precluded for a couple of centuries.
717-741

Leo III

Siege of Constantinople by theCaliphs Sulaymn & 'Umar II, 717-718; volcanic eruption of Thera (Santorini), 726; Tax Revolt in Italy, end of Imperial authority in Exarchate, Exarch Paulicius assassinated, 727; Edict establishing Iconoclasm, 730 Constantine V Copronymus 741-775

While Leo III held off another Arab siege of Constantinople, the position of Romania in the West deteriorated. With Africa gone, it became harder to project authority into Italy and harder to resist the Lombards. John Julius Norwich (A History of Venice, Vintage, 1989) links the election of the first Doge of Venice with Leo's prohibition of images; but the election was in 727, during a tax revolt, not in 730, when Leo did prohibit images, alienating the Western Church. The prohibition of religious images began the Iconoclasm controversy. One way to understand it is to realize that the conflict between Islm and Christendom was not just a contest of arms but, mutatis mutandis, an ideological struggle. Christians were not being accused, to be sure, of oppressing the workers, but they were being accused of being polytheists (because of the Trinity) and idolaters (for making and venerating images). Indeed, some Islmic attitudes are familiar from later religious ideological conflict, since disgust and condemnation of a priesthood and celibacy, not to mention the use of images, could later draw sympathy from Protestantism. TheThousand and One

revolt of Artavasdus, 741-743; plague, 745-748; Ravenna Falls to Lombards, 751; Iconoclast Council, 754; defeat of Bulgars, 763; Aqueduct of Valens restored, 767; defeat of Bulgars, 774 Leo IV the Khazar Constantine VI Irene 775-780 780-797 780-790, Regent 792-802 Council VII, Nicaea II, Iconoclasm condemned, 787; Black Sea freezes, winter of 800-801

Nights derives great humor from the notion that the incense burned by Christians (but not, of course, by later Protestants) was made from the dung of bishops. Since Leo III is considered to have come from either Syria or the nearby Isauria, his concern about this issue is supposed to have resulted from his sensitivity to the effect of Islmic charges on the previously Christian populations of the areas, like Syria, conquered by Islm. Conversions did not have to be effected by force, which was prohibited by the Qur'n anyway, but by powerful persuasion (and, easily understood in modern terms, tax incentives). So Leo, a sort of proto-Protestant, decided to clean up Christianity's act. This did not find any traction in the West, however. The Latin Church felt no sting from Islmic ideology. Leo's successes against the Arabs, obvious evidence of the favor of God, became associated with Iconoclasm. After images were restored by Irene, and military reverses seemed to follow, the favor of God was apparently withdrawn. The final Iconoclast period (815-843) was of such mixed military fortunes, with a serious defeat in 838, that worries about the favor of God faded, as Papal support for images had never faltered. A geologically significant event occurred with the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera (Santorini) in 726. The volcano had been active since 718, but the eruption of 726 blew ash as far away as Macedonia. This may have been the largest eruption in Europe since Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. Such an event may have contributed to Leo's sense that the Wrath of God had been provoked and that something like Icoclasm was the proper response. In the longer view of history, the most striking thing about the event is its echo of the great eruption of Thera that is now dated to have been between 1627 and 1600 BC (right at the end of the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period). This wiped out what seems to have been a very large city of the Minoan Civilization on Thera. With ash, earthquakes, and tsunamis affecting Crete, the eruption may have delivered a devastating blow to that Civilization, which then limped on in part through its Greek, Mycenaean adaptation. Memory of the event may account for the stories of Atlantis related by Plato. Today Thera is a popular tourist destination, though the bay of the caldera is too deep for ships to anchor. Recently (April 6, 2007), the cruise ship Sea Diamond sank in the bay, with the loss of two passengers. The final fall of Ravenna to the Lombards in 751 led to the intervention of the Franks in Italy, at the urging of the Pope. Romania would never return to Central or Northern Italy. Nevertheless, the form of the Exarchate of Ravenna across central Italy, a corridor held between the Lombards in the north and those in the south, survived as the "Donation" of theFrankish King Pepin to the Pope -- the Papal States, whose history ran from 754 to 1870, 1116 years.

Thus, although politically insignificant after 751, Ravenna nevertheless casts a kind of shadow deep into modern history -- including the name that, as a Roman capital, the city gives to the surrounding region, Romagna -- a word that looks like "Romania" where the "i" has patalalized the "n," the equivalent of Romaa. This was on the watch of Constantine V, who came to be called "Copronymus," "Name of Dung" -- certainly one the harshest, crudest epithets in the history of royalty. Nevertheless, Constantine's reign may be regarded as generally successful, and the epithet is simply due to his persecution, including torture and execution, of those opposed to Iconclasm. In another proto-Protestant move, Constantine began forcing monks and nuns, strong supporters of icons, to marry. Otherwise, there were military successes against the Bulgars and even Arabs, where the Abbasid Revolution disrupted the attention of the Caliphate. Constantine also began developing mobile military units, the tagmata, in addition to the landed thematic forces that had become fundamental to Roman military power. This represented the first steps back to a paid professional army and so is a sign of a reviving economy. The Empire, however, would never be able to remain strong without the themes, and their collapse at the end of the 11th century would be the end of Romania as a hegemonic power. As Frankish power waxed, the Pope took the step of crowning the Frankish King Charles as Emperor in 800. This was during the reign of Irene, who had taken the throne exclusively for herself, the only Empress ever to do so, by having her son Constantine VI blinded (he died, too). Although Irene restored the images and reconciled the Eastern and Western Churches, the Pope decided to arrogate the authority of crowning a proper, male Emperor to himself (later justified with the fraudulent "Donation of Constantine" document, by which Constantine I had supposedly given the entire Western Empire to the Pope). While Charlemagne even offered to marry Irene, who could have regarded him as only the rudest of barbarians, this all signaled a fundamental parting of the ways between the Latin Europe of Pope and Franks (Francia) and the Greek Europe of Romania. Note the parallels between the reign of Irene and that of the slightly earlier Empress Wu (685-705) of T'ang Dynasty China. Because she did restore the Icons, Irene was later venerated as far away as the St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai -although by then Sinai had been lost to Romania for almost two hundred years. She does not seem to have gotten as much credit closer to home, perhaps because Iconoclasm returned for a while.

4. DOGES (DUKES) OF VENICE, 727-1797 Orso (Ursus) Ipato Teodato (Deusdedit) Ipato Galla Gaulo Domenico Monegaurio Maurizio I Galbaio Giovanni and Maurizio II Galbaio Obelerio Antenorio 727-738 742, 744736 756 756-765 765-787 787-802 802-811

Venetia & Dalmatia submit to Franks, 806; Roman fleet reestablishes authority, 807 Beato Angello Partecipazio Giustiniano Partecipazio Giovanni (I) Partecipazio Pietro Tradonico Orso I Badoer (I Partecipazio) Giovanni Badoer (II Partecipazio) 808-811 811-827 827-829 829-836 836-864 864-881 881-888

Venice was the "Most Serene Republic," or the "Queen of the Adriatic." The title of Doge derives from that of a late Roman commander of a military frontier, Dux ("leader"). This is cognate to English "Duke." The Doges were always elected, from a variety of families, as their names indicate. Over time their powers were increasingly limited, as Venice evolved into an oligarchic Republic. The Duke of Venetia at first would have been like many other Romanian officials in Italy, but Constantinople rarely had occasion or ability to exert direct rule over Venice, so over time the city drifted into independence, competition, and eventually belligerence. The name "Venice" is derived from the name of the Roman province that embraced the whole area, Venetia. The principle city of Venetia was Aquileia. Although sacked by the Goths, the Huns, and the Lombards, Venetia remained the most important city of the region for most of the middle ages. However, in the troubled times, people would flee the mainland to barrier islands along the coast or to islands in the lagoons behind them. Aquileia itself thus acquired a counterpart, Grado, on the nearby barrier island. To the west, a community formed on Rialto Island in the much larger lagoon seaward from Padua. Farming or building on such islands was a challenge. Earth needed to be brought in or dredged up to fill plots created from woven grasses. Substantial buildings required foundations of logs driven down into the muddy soil. Eventually this allowed a large city to rise on the Rialto. As its strength grew, the Rialto became powerful and preeminent and took on the name of the whole province -- Venetia, Venezia, Venice. The power of Aquileia was reduced by Austria, and finally the city itself was annexed by Venice in 1420. The Patriarchate that had been seated at Aquileia, and then had been divided with Grado, ultimately moved to Venice alone. Since 1451, Venice has been the seat of the Patriarchs of Venice, whose story can be examined in a separate popup. Although it is commonly thought that the mainland was abandoned in the 5th century and the whole population moved permanently to places like the Rialto, this does not seem to have been the case. It was a more gradual process, and the success of Venice may have been due

Venice effectively independent, 886 Pietro I Candiano Pietro Tribuno Orso II Badoer (II Partecipazio) Pietro II Candiano Pietro Badoer (Partecipazio) Pietro III Candiano Pietro IV Candiano Pietro I Orseolo Vitale Candiano Tribuno Menio (Memmo) Pietro II Orseolo Ottone Orseolo Pietro Centranico 887 888-912 912-932 932-939 939-942 942-959 959-976 976-978 978-979 979-991 991-1008 1008-1026, 1030-1032

to the realization that it provided defense, not against barbarian invasions, but in the face of the Frankish Emperors and other mainland powers. Venice, indeed, would be immune to conquest until Napoleon. Venice was briefly in the power of Franks. According to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Venetians told King Pepin, "We want to be servants of the emperor of the Romans, and not of you" [De Administrando Imperio, Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik and translated by R.J.H. Jenkins, Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967, p.121]. Eventually the Venetians agreed to pay tribute, but it steadily declined to a merely nominal sum. The list of Doges is taken from Byzantium and Venice, A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations, by Donald M. Nicol [Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1999], and Storia di Venezia Volume II, by Eugenio Musatti [4th edition, Fratelli Treves Editori, Milano, 1937]. A complete list can also be found in A History of Venice, by John Julius Norwich [Vintage Books, 1989]. After the Schism of the Eastern and Western Churches (1054), there came to be growing religious hostility between Venice and her metropolis. However, Venice never quite fit in to the political system of Francia. For a while, as noted, the Republic paid tribute to the Carolingians but quickly enough shook off any obligation. Playing Constantinople and the West against each other, Venice never really acknowledged the authority of the Frankish or German Emperors and in time was relatively safe in its lagoon from attempts to impose imperial authority, whether from East or West. With the decline of Romania, Venice largely pursued its affairs at the expense of Constantinople and only came to be pushed out of the area altogether by the Ottomans. When Alexius Comnenus signed a pact with Venice in 1082, the Republic became a partner with the now beleaguered Constantinople. During the honeymoon period we get the completion of St. Mark's Cathedral -- a mature Romania seeding its culture into the maturing Venice. The honeymoon didn't last. The pact gave Venice a choke hold on the trade of Romania and on naval power in Romanian waters -- on at least one occasion Venetians burned Roman warships on the stocks before they could be completed. Although Alexius didn't have much choice at the time, this led to retaliation later. Manuel I arrested all Venetians in 1171 and little but hostile relations followed -- even peaceful exchanges revealed tragic inequality, as when the Imperial Crown Jewels were pawned with Venice in 1343. The fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204 was largely engineered by the Doge Enrico Dandolo, who was actually buried in Sancta Sophia. By the settlement with the Crusaders, Venice was ceded 3/8 of the Empire, and the Doge henceforth styled himself quartae partis et dimidiae totius imperii Romaniae Dominator ("Lord of a quarter and a half [of a quarter] of the whole Empire of Romania"). Norwich interestingly translates this as "Lord of ... the Roman Empire" (p.147), but the phrase was imperium Romaniae, "Empire of Romania," not imperium Romanum, "Roman Empire." Venice was obviously not claiming 3/8 of the Empire of Trajan, but of the

much reduced mediaeval Romania (this looks like part of the conspiracy of ignore the word "Romania" in Roman and "Byzantine" studies). This fragmentation of Romania helped Venice maintain her advantages, but it weakened the whole in the face of the eventual Ottoman threat. Venice could neither hold off the Turks nor support a local state strong enough to do so. When the Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus took Constantinople back from the Crusaders, he conferred commercial advantages, not on Venice, but on her hated rival, Genoa, which, of course, had been Roman until lost to the Lombards in 642. This confirmed that Italy rather than Romania would be the center of trade and naval power in the Christian Mediterranean. Genoa was even granted the city of Galata, just across the Golden Horn from Constantinople itself, in 1267. As the Turks fatally invested Constantinople in 1453, it was Genoa rather than Venice that contributed to its defense -though Galata itself remained neutral. The most famous Venetian of the 13th century, and possibly of all history, was Marco Polo (c.1254-c.1324). Polo's business travels with his father and uncle to the China of Qubilai Khan might have gone unrecorded, like the stories of many other such travelers, if he had not been taken prisoner by the Genoese in 1298. Languishing in prison in Genoa, Polo began telling his story to a fellow prisoner. This happened to be the Pisan writer Rustichello (or Rusticiano), who thought that Polo's tales might make a good book and wrote it up, in French. This Divisament dou Monde, "Description of the World," soon to be called Il milione, "The Millions," was more a catalogue of places than a narrative of travels. Nevertheless, it was a sensation -- though people had trouble believing the numbers and scale of the places and domains described. One story about Polo himself is that he was questioned about just this on his deathbed. He replied, "I haven't told the half of it." Now that we know independently about the Mongol Empire, even this anecdote has the ring of truth. China alone was vast beyond the reckoning of 13th century Europe. Although serious questions have been raised about some of Polo's claims, details of his story, like the custom of the Chinese to send things to the dead by burning paper copies of them, are still familiar and unique features of Chinese culture. The legend that Marco introduced noodles from China is now commonly discounted, but there is little doubt that someone did that in this era. The Romans were not eating pasta, but at some point we realize that the Italians are. If we we ask where such a preparation existed previously, the answer is China -- something probably as old as Chinese history and still the traditional alternative to rice in any Chinese (or Japanese, etc.) restaurant. What seems extraordinary about Venice now is how a mere city had become a Great Power, contending on terms of equality, if not superiority, with all of Romania. The tail wagging the dog indeed. And while Venice was never the equal of Turkey, it was for long one of the major belligerents contesting Ottoman advances. What this reveals is the stark difference in wealth between the cash economy of a commercial republic (Venice began minting gold Ducats in 1284) and, on the one hand, the poverty of subsistent kingdoms, like other Western European states and, on the other hand, the fractured economy of Romania, which had previously perpetuated commercial traditions. Venice was soon joined by other Italian cities, like Pisa and then Genoa, in exercising the power made possible by their wealth.

As commercial life began to grow in the North, the Italians began to lose their advantage. After Flanders and the Netherlands became centers of trade and manufacture, the Dukes of Burgundy first benefited from this wealth, then the Hapsburgs, and finally the Netherlands as an independent power. The latter eventuality is especially revealing. The Netherlands was a commercial republic again as Burgundy and the Hapsburg domains had not been. What's more, Amsterdam became the center of European banking, with that preeminence passing from, as it happened, the cities of Northern Italy (remembered in "Lombard Street" in the City of London). The next financial centers, of Europe and the World, would be London and then New York. In the course of all that history, the apparent power of the Italian cities was punctured like a balloon in 1494, when King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. This is one of the events regarded as marking the end of the Middle Ages. It certainly revealed the comparative disadvantage into which the Italian powers had fallen. A nice recent movie about this period was Dangerous Beauty (1998), about a popular courtesan who ends up in a tug-of-war between Venetian nobility and the (rather unwelcome in Venice) Holy Inquisition. We happen to notice in the course of the movie that Venice has been expelled from Cyprus by the Turks (1571). Just as bad or worse for Venice's position was the Age of Discovery. The Italian cities had grown strong on the trade of the Levant, and the new Atlantic powers wanted very much to have a way to avoid their mediation, let alone that of Turkey and Mamlk Egypt, in the transfer of goods from India and further East to Europe. Columbus, therefore, was out to make an end run. Since he ran into the Americas instead of Asia, this diverted Spanish energies, but for Portugal Vasco da Gama did the job of getting to India around Africa in 1498. This eliminated Italy or the Turks from any central position in world trade. They could only fade, in the most literal sense, into back-waters. The Ottomans briefly tried to project their power into the Indian Ocean, occupying Yemen, pressing upon Ethiopia, and even sending to aid to the distant Sultn of Acheh in Sumatra; but the effort, like other Ottoman initiatives, soon petered out.

The decline of the Turks in the 17th century allowed a brief Venetian resurgence, whose most striking event, however, was probably the destruction of the Parthenon in 1687, when a Venetian cannonball detonated an Ottoman powder magazine -- the ruin of the Acropolis was not produced by the Goths, the Huns, or any event of the Middle Ages, but by modern warfare. By that time a city state was going to be no match for the colonial and maritime powers that were rapidly becoming modern nation states. Venice

lapsed into a kind of 18th century version of Las Vegas, a curiosity and a diversion -and Las Vegas has now reciprocated with the Venetian Hotel. It was such a Venice that produced the memorable career of Giovanni Casanova (1725-1798), who saw the best and the worse of the City. After invading Italy and defeating the Austrians, Napoleon had to exert little enough power to eliminate what had become an anchronism. The French were a little puzzled by the hostility of the Venetians to their occupation, since the rousing Republican rhetoric of the French didn't have the effect they expected -- but it was in a place that was, well, already a Republic. Napoleon, indeed, might have taken some lessons from the venerable and terrifying Venetian system of secret police and secret inquisitorial courts. One of the sights of Venice, the "Bridge of Sighs," is a covered way that secretly transported prisoners back and forth from their secret trials to their hopeless cells. However hostile to the French, the spirit of Venetian independence was soon forgotten, and it was the Sardinian Kingdom of Italy that detached Venice from Austria in 1866. The Venice of the subsequent period appears in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912), which has been described as, "a symbol-laden story of aestheticism and decadence..." Venice was just the place for that.

On the other hand, the art of Venice, in music -- as with Antonio Vivaldi (1680-1743) -painting -- as with Titian, Tiziano Vecilli (1477-1576) -- and architecture, is an enduring and vivid monument. Part of this is a hint of the lost beauty of Constantinople, since St.

Mark's Cathedral, crowned with four great horses from the Hippodrome and countless other treasures looted from Constantinople in 1204, is a copy of the vanished Church of the Holy Apostles, the burial place of Constantine and his successors (whose site is now occupied by the Fatih Jamii, the mosque, institute, and burial place of Meh.med II, the Conqueror [Ftih.] of Constantinople).Although decorated with loot, the present church was completed earlier, in 1094 (or 1071), with the help of artisans from the still friendly Emperors. The Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal, the Campanile bell tower (campana, "bell"), the Lido barrier island, and other structures and sites have now contributed their names, if not their images or functions, in countless modern landscapes. Oxford University even has its own Bridge of Sighs (right, at Hertford College), though it apparently was never used for the same purpose as the Venetian (mercifully). Cambridge University also has a Bridge of Sighs, across the Cam River (at St. John's College). The Campanile on the Berkeley campus of the University of California (the Sather Tower, below right), on the other hand, almost identical in appearance to the one in Venice, houses a fine carillon, a sort of organ with bells instead of pipes. Poised between Francia and Romania, Venice thus preserves much of the beauty and atmosphere that was lost and forgotten after successive catastrophies to Constantinople. The City ended up itself as something out of its time, a Mediaeval Republic in an age of nation states, even as now it is rather like a living museum, slowly sinking into the lagoon that originally gave it refuge. Indeed, the low muddy islands in the lagoon, once a redoubt, now are Venice's greatest peril. With zero elevation, the City is vulnerable to high seas, high tides, and any significant changes in sea level. Pumping out ground water under the City, long the simplest source of fresh water, threatened to leave it permanently awash. That danger was soon recognized and attempts have even been made to restore the water, though that is more difficult. Barriers may soon seal off the lagoon from the Adriatic, but this raises the problem of discharging the waste water brought down from inland cities. Any durable solution promises to be difficult, expensive, and perilous to the traditional character of the City. Patriarchs of Aquileia, Grado, and Venice Rome and Romania Index

B. REVIVAL AND ASCENDENCY, 802-1059, 257 years 400 years after the opportunity might have originally presented itself, a German finally claimed the title of Roman Emperor. This was the Frank Charlemagne, in a move legitimized by the Pope and by the reign of a woman, Irene, in Constantinople. For a while, Francia looked larger and much more powerful than Romania, but institutionally it was nowhere as sound or durable. The Empire of Charlemagne fragmented among his heirs and lapsed into feudalism, a system for government without cash or literacy. Meanwhile, Romania, with institutional continuity, commercial culture, and education, began to recover its strength, despite some severe blows continuing to fall. The reigns of Irene and Nicephorus I begin what Warren Threadgold calls The Byzantine Revival, 780-842 [Stanford Nicephorus I 802-811 U. Press, 1988]. Despite the loss of most of Europe and Nicephorus killed in battle continuing Arab raids into Anatolia, the population and the by Bulgar Khan Krum, 811 economy of the empire were actually growing, and Nicephorus was able to start transplanting colonies of people Stauracius 811 from the east back into Greece. This soon led to the recovery Michael I 811-813 of most of the Greek peninsula. It is hard to know how much Rhangab this means Modern Greeks are descendants, not just of Leo V the 813-820 Greeks, but ofPhrygians, Galatians, Isaurians, and other Armenian ancient (and extinct) inhabitants of Anatolia. Unfortunately Iconoclasm restored, 815; for him, the "revival" was not without its setbacks. first Varangian (Viking) Nicephorus ended up killed in battle against the Bulgars, and 2. AMORIANS raids in Anatolia, 818 (PHRYGIANS) his son Stauracius, proclaimed Emperor, turned out to be paralyzed from a spinal wound. Michael Rhangabe then was Michael II the 820-829 inactive and indecisive and was overthrown by Leo the Stammerer Armenian, an in-law of the subsequent Amorian dynasty. It Crete lost, 823 Sicily would be some time before the Bulgars could be seriously invaded by Aghlabids, defeated, much less subdued. Until then, it would be impossible 827 to restore the Danube border.
1. NICEPHORANS Theophilus I 829-842 Caliph Mu'tas.iminvades Anatolia, defeats Romans at Dazimon, sacks Ancyra & Amoricum, 838;Varangians arrive at Constantinople, 839 Theodora Michael III Regent, 842-856 842-867

In this period, aptly called the "Second Dark Age," the Arabs took to the sea -- which they had done before, but not previously in a sustained and systematic way. With the simultaneous advent of the Vikings, this made both Franks and Romans vulnerable in North and South. Crete was lost for over a century, and fighting began on Sicily that would last for 50 years and result in the permanent loss of the island.

Final repudiation of Iconoclasm, 843; Varangians attack Constantinople, 860 (Theophilus II) 867

In this period we also find the last of Iconoclasm laid to rest, though one will note even today that the Orthodox Churches prefer Icons rather than sculpture for sacred images. The resolution of this conflict removed a point of friction between the Western and the Eastern Churches. It did reveal, however, how easily such conflict could arise. The later (1054) Schism of the Churches would be over apparently much more trivial issues -- the real issue, of course, was simply authority. The military successes of Iconoclast Emperors came to a dramatic end in 838, when the Caliph Mu'tas.im invaded Anatolia, defeated and very nearly captured Theophilus, and then destroyed the Emperor's own home town, Amoricum, enslaving the population. When Theophilus died young, leaving only a young son, the Empress Theodora, as Regent, moved to end Iconoclasm. At a Countil in 843, on the first Sunday in Lent, the Iconoclast Patriarch John the Grammarian was deposed and the Iconophile Methodius installed as Patriarch. The Icons were restored. Orthodox Churches still commemorate the restoration of the icons on the first Sunday of Lent, which is called the "Sunday of Orthodoxy." Since Orthodox Churches use the Julian Calendar, this day can be more than a month after the first Sunday of Lent on the Gregorian calendar. The arrival of the Varangians (839), which meant the Vikings who had come down the rivers of Russia, added a new element to Roman history. Constantinople became to them Miklagar, or Mikligar (Mikligarr with the nominative ending), but often rendered Miklagard or Miklagarth -- the "Great City." Here the element mik- is cognate tomag- in Latin magnus and meg- in Greek megas, both "great." Curiously, there is an archaic adjective in English, "mickle," meaning "great" or "large," which is this very same word. A cognate survives in recent English, the humble word "much." The other element, gard (Old Norse garr), "enclosed," is cognate to English "garden" and "yard" (and the name "Garth") as well as to gorod and grad, "city," in Russian -- as in Tsargrad for Constantinople. The "Great City" (we could say "Mickleyard" with English words) could not have been more appropriate, since Constantinople was the largest city in Europe until at least the 13th century. Relations with the Varangians rocked back and forth between war and trade, mainly depending on what they thought they could get away with -- they would be prepared for both. The contact in 839 was an embassy, which had encountered sufficient difficulties coming down the rivers of Russia that it requested the good offices of the Emperor in negotiating passage back by way of the Frankish realm of Louis the Pious. Louis already knew about Viking raids and was

3. BULGARIA BEFORE ROMAN CONQUEST Asparukh

suspicious that these travelers, although vouched for by Tervel c.701-c.718 Constantinople, were Sevar c.718-750 nevertheless of their kind. Kormesios 750-762 Assured (falsely) that they were not, the embassy was Vinekh 762-763 allowed to pass. Soon, Teletz Varangians would have little after defeat by Romans, Teletz fear of traversing Russia and killed, Vinekh deposed, flees to would begin raiding Roman Romans, 763 territory and even attacking Constantinople. As it happened, the Norsemen were rather less successful Umar 763 against the Romans than they were against the Franks, Baian 763-765 and bouts of attacks were usually followed by treaties -Tokt 765 where such reconciliation was rarely necessary in the West. To the Varangians, the Roman Emperor becomes Telerig c.765-777 in Old Norse the Stlkonungr, the "Great King," with defeated by Romans, 774 "great" in this case borrowed from Old Russian (as Kardam c.777-c.803 in Stolnyi Knyaz, the "great prince" of Kiev -- stolnyi does not have this meaning in Modern Krum c.803-814 Russian), and "king" (konung) familiar from Kills Emperor Nicephorus in other Germanic languages (e.g. German knig). This battle, 811; uses his skull as a echoes Megas Basileus in Greek, the translation of the drinking cup title of the Great Kings of Persia and the origin of the Dukum 814-815 use of Basileus for "Emperor" in Mediaeval Greek.
Ditzveg Omurtag 814-816 814-831

Qaghan, c.681-701

We are approaching the point in European history where the remaining pagan peoples of Europe will be Malamir/Malomir 831-836 assimilated to Christian civilization. Bulgaria will lead Presijan 836-852 the way, but it will soon be following by Hungary, Qaghan, 852- Poland, Russia, and Scandinavia. The Pechenegs (or 870 Patzinaks), a Turkic steppe people, will remain pagans Boris I/ Emperor Emperor/Tsar, until they are swept from history by the Cumans and Michael I 870-889, Mongols. On the east edge of the map is the Khanate of d.907 the Khazars, also Turkic, who actually converted to Council VIII, Constantinople Judaism. They would be Roman allies until disappearing in the 11th century. Shown on the map are the tracks of IV, 869-870; conversion of Bulgaria announced several raids by theMagyars into Francia. It is striking how far afield they go. A more intimate picture is Vladimir 889-893 provided elsewhere for Burgundy.
Simeon I the Great Peter I Boris II 893-927 927-969 969-972, d.986

Bulgaria conquered by John I Tzimisces, 971 Macedonian Bulgaria; state organized in western Bulgaria

Although today the Bulgarians are thought of as simply a Slavic people, like the Russians or Serbs, they were originally a nomadic Turkic steppe people, more like the Huns or Mongols. The first title of their leaders

here, qaghan, is recognizably more Mongolian than the form more familiar from Turkish, khn. The Slavs, who had breached the Danube with the Avars, but who had little in the way of indigenous political organization, then came under the control of the Bulgars, the next nomadic group to pop off the end of the steppe. A related people, the Khazars, who remained on the Lower Volga, became long term Roman allies against the Bulgars. Other related peoples, the Patzinaks and Cumans, followed the Bulgars off the steppe and into the Balkans, though not permanently south of the Danube. After the Cumans, the Mongols were the last steppe people to come into Europe. Through the Middle East, of course, the Turks (and the Mongols) came off the steppe and ultimately, permanently, into Azerbaijan, Anatolia, and Thrace. Fans of Robert E. Howard's (1906-1936) classic pulp fiction character Conan the Barbarian, will find the name of the Bulgar Qaghan Krum somewhat familiar -- it is rather like Conan's own personal god, "Crom." Krum, indeed, seems very Conan-like. Not only was the Emperor Nicephorus killed in battle, but Krum took his skull and turned it into a drinking cup. This sounds like "barbarism" indeed -- though Lord Kitchener (1850-1916) may have had something similar in mind when he removed the body of the Sudanese Mahdi from his tomb, after taking Khartoum in 1898. More recently, readers of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [J.K. Rowling, Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic, Inc., 2000] will remember that the champion Bulgarian Quidditch player was none other than Viktor Krum.

What happened to the Bulgars was assimilation. The Patzinaks pushed them off the steppe, they began to speak the language of their Slavic subjects, and they began to aspire to the civilization, if not the throne, of Constantinople. The conversion of the Bulgars, indeed, was a complicated political act, with sophisticated negotiations that played the Popes off the Emperors. Greek influence ended up predominating, but the Bulgars continued jealous of their autonomy -- the precedent of an autocephalous Church set the pattern for other Orthodox Churches, as in Russia, created under Roman auspices. The Qaghan Boris took the Christian name Michael (though both names would be used in the future), but retained a status comparable to the Roman Emperor. The newly invented Cyrillic alphabet was used for the Slavic language of the new national Church. This language, Old Church Slavonic, is the oldest attested Slavic language and retains features apparently ancestral of most modern Slavic languages. Although remaining a formidable foe, the Bulgars were probably softened by their assimilation and civilization. As the Empire itself grew in strength, the day came when Bulgaria was defeated and subjugated. The first step merely left it leaderless, as John Tzimisces took Emperor Boris II off to Constantinople. A new state was organized in the west, however, by the sons of the Bulgar governor Count Nicholas. These "Sons of the Count," Cometopuli, eventually got an Emperor back after Boris and his brother Romanus escaped captivity. Boris was accidentally killed, so Romanus became the (largely figurehead) ruler. The Emperor Basil II then smashed and annexed this state, with a ferocity that that might have made Krum (or Conan) proud. Samuel is supposed to have dropped dead when he saw that Basil had blinded all the survivors of the Bulgarian army (leaving every tenth man with one eye to lead the rest). Bulgaria would not reemerge until the Asen brothers led it to independence in 1186. After the Turkish conquest,modern Bulgaria did not emerge until 1878. Lists of Bulgarian rulers can be found in various Byzantine histories, but the genealogy here only comes from the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.156-159].

4. MACEDONIANS Basil I 867-886 Aghlabids sack Ostia & (suburbs of?) Rome, including the Vatican, 846; Varangiansattack Constantinople, 865; Ecumenical Council VIII, Constantinople IV, 869-870 -reconciles Eastern and Western Churches but is later repudiated by East; conversion of Bulgaria announced. Syracuse falls to Aghlabids 878; Venice effectively independent, 886

The greatest dynasty of Middle Romania begins with the Empire still losing ground. Raids by the Arabs, Vikings, and now Magyars are giving all of Europe a very bad time. Only the 10th Century would see a gradual recovery, as Slavs, Norsemen, and Magyars all became settled and Christianized, though the Normans remained vigorous and aggressive in both North and South, i.e. conquering England and expelling Romania from Italy. Much of the good work of the Dynasty was accomplished by in-laws during the minority of the legitimate heirs, though the culmination came when one heir, Basil II, came of age and completed the conquests himself. Leo VI the Wise 886-912 Although traditionally called the "Macedonian" dynasty, Basil I was probably Armenian, like several of the other Varangians/Russians attack Emperors-by-marriage. But, ironically, the dynasty may Constantinople, 907 actually descend from Michael III rather than from Basil. Alexander 886-913 Basil had been induced to marry Michael's mistress; and although the marriage continued even after Basil had Constantine VII 913-959 overthrown Michael, the first children may still have been Porphyrogenitus Michael's. Varangians/Russians attack
Constantinople, 941, 944; In the early days of the dynasty we get a benchmark on Treaty, 944; embassy with the survival of Classical and later Greek literature. Liutprand of Cremona fromBerengar II of Italy, 949 The Bibiotheca of the Patriarch of Romanus I Lecapenus Romanus II 919-944 959-963 Stephen & Constantine 944-945 Crete recovered, 961; foundation of Great Laura Monastery on Mt. Athos, 963 Nicephorus II Phocas 963-969 Cyprus recovered, 964; Cilicia & Tarsus recovered, 965; embassy with Liutprand of Cremona from Emperor Otto I, 968; Antioch recovered fromH.amdnids, 969 John I Tzimisces 969-976 Russian Prince Sviatoslavdefeated, Bulgaria conquered, 971; Charter for Mt. ths, 972 Basil II Bulgaroctonus 9631025

Constantinople Photius(858-867, 877-886) contains 280 reviews. This is not a catalogue of existing literature, or of a particular library, not even that of Photius. It is a treatment of works familiar to Photius, apart from the mainstream of general education, that Photius is recommending to his brother Tarasius. Thus, popular authors like Homer, Plato, Aristotle, or the Greek playwrights (except for some lost plays of Aeschylus!) are missing from the list. Photius' treatment ranges from brief descriptions and evaluations to long summaries and discussions. Of the 386 works mentioned by Photius, 239 are theological. Nevertheless, only 43% of the text actually focuses on them. The majority of the text (in a book whose modern edition in Greek is 1600 pages long) is thus secular. For example, in addressing A History of Events After Alexander (in ten books) by the Roman historian Arrian of Nicomedia (an early member of the Second Sophistic), we get a long summary of those very events, which are often obscure enough that every description helps. Although much of Arrian survives, and his Anabasis Alexandri is the best account of the campaigns of Alexander, all we have of A History of

rebellion of Bardas Phocas, 987-988; Varangian Guard, 988; Conversion of Russia, 989; Bulgarian Army

Events After Alexander is Photius' summary. Our benchmark is that about half of the works mentioned by Photius, like the Events, are now lost. It is distressing to think of what survived, despite the Dark Ages, and then what later disasters, like the Fourth Crusade, may have cost us. It is hard to imagine an undisturbedConstantinople being subsequently so careless with its literary heritage. At no other Court of the age could visitors have found the nobility quoting Homer. [cf. Photius, The Bibiotheca, A selection translated with notes by N.G. Wilson, Duckworth, London, 1994.] Photius, whose Bibliotheca was only part of his literary output, was a major political figure and himself was responsible for the mission of Cyril and Methodius to convert the Slavs.

The map shows Romania in 1000 AD, at the Millennium, with the height of Middle Romanian power rapidly approaching. The extent of Bulgaria is open to question. Some sources say it stretched to the Black Sea. Whatever, it will soon be erased. The climax of Mediaeval Romania came with the Emperor Basil II Bulgaroctonus ("Bulgar Slayer," Bulgarentter in German). He also happened to be ruling at the turn of the first Millennium, which is of some interest as we have now seen the year 2000. Christendom had been having a bad time for several centuries, but things were looking up in 1000. After a long minority with in-laws ruling as co-regents, Basil defeated and captured an entire Bulgarian army in 1014. He blinded every prisoner, except for one eye left to every tenth man, so they could lead their fellows home. The Tsar Samuel is supposed to have dropped dead when he beheld the mutilated men returning. There is no contemporary record of this mass blinding, and its historicity is now often questioned. Whether anything quite like this happened or not, however, Bulgaria only lasted four more years before being annexed. Meanwhile, the Varangians had created a powerful state at Kiev; and, as the "Rus," their name came to be attached to it -- giving us "Russia." The alternation of war and trade that had characterized Roman relations with the Varangians, and which led to sharp defeats of Russia by John Tzimisces, took a greater turn toward friendship in Basil's day with the conversion of St. Vladimir to Christianity (989). Part of this process involved the marriage of Basil's sister Anna to Vladimir, and the provision by Russia of mercenaries for what now became the Emperor's "Varangian Guard." The Guard became the loyal shock troops and Life Guard of the Emperor, and are usually identifiable in historical accounts, even if not named as such, by their description as pelekophoroi (pelekyphroi in Attic Greek), "axe bearers," from the single bladed axe (plekys) they carried as their primary weapon. There also seems to have been some identification of this weapon with the fasces carried by the Lictors of theRoman Republic.

After the formation of the Varangian Guard, it quickly no longer became a matter of mercenaries provided by Russia. The fame of the unit spread quickly, and soon individual recruits were arriving, not just from Russia (and now of Slavic and not just Varangian origin), and not just from the immediate source of Russian Varangians, Sweden, but from as far away as Norway, Denmark, and even Iceland. These included the very interesting Harald Hrdrde (or Haraldr Sigurarson), the subsequent King of Norway who would die in 1066 at Stamford Bridge, while invading England. The deeds of Harald and others would be recounted in the Icelandic Sagas, often written much later with fabulous or fanciful additions, but with sufficient detail to pin down their historical origins. Also, numerous rune stones have been found in Sweden, often at churches for the now Christian Swedes, that stand as cenotaphs or commemorative monuments to men who left for Romania (Grikland, Kirkium, etc., "Greece") and never came back. Some were installed before leaving by the men themselves. Some, of course, may have been for traders rather than members of the Varangian Guard, but a few mention deaths fighting in Serkland, i.e. Islamic lands (where the "Saracens" are), or in Lakbarland, i.e. Langobardia, "Italy." In time, the Norse recruits apparently obtained their own church in Constantinople, at least in part dedicated to St. Olaf of Norway, perhaps enshrining a sword that was supposed to have been his [cf. The Varangians of Byzantium by Sigfs Blndal and Benedikt S. Benedikz, Cambridge University Press, 1978, 1981, 2007]. Having experienced the Millennium of the year 2000 in our day, we have the movie, End of Days (Universal, 1999), with Arnold Schwarzenegger personally battling Satan, who is said to be released every thousand years (a somewhat loose reading of the Book of Revelation). This would mean that a similar difficulty occurred in 999, as well as 1999. Arnold wasn't around then, but Basil II was -- not only a great warrior but an Emperor who maintained a monk-like celibacy, and who was seen by most Christians as the principal defender of Christendom, as the Emperors had been since Constantine. Somebody missed a bet for a good movie, or at least a flashback, about that -- End of Days itself could have had a flashback explaining how Satan was easily thwarted in 999 by the undiminished wisdom, strength, and preparedness of Basil, Pope Sylvester II (this was before the Schism), and the Patriarch Sergius II of Constantinople. The monks of the "Holy Mountain," Hgion ros, Mt. ths, could be brought into any story of the Millennium. The Great Laura Monastery, the first of many in this most sacred place, the Mt. Hiei, , of Orthodox Christianity, had recently been built (961-963) by St. Athanasius. Tradition holds with some earlier foundations, and several small hermitages, as well as individual hermits in caves and elsewhere, certainly had been there for some time; but the Great Laura is the first for which there is contemporary historical documentation. ths is the most north-eastern of three peninsulas that extend out into the Aegean Sea from the larger peninsula of the Chalcidice. There are still 20 active monasteries on the Mountain, with a number of smaller settlements and institutions. The road from the mainland ends at Uranopolis (or Ouranoupoli, one now usually sees spellings that reflect

modern Greek pronunciation -- I have Latinized many of the names, but the spelling of the monasteries especially reflects this trend). From there one (men only) must take a boat down to Daphne. From Daphne a road, recently built, goes up to Caryes (Karyes, Karyai), the town that is the administrative center of the Mountain, on the land of the Koutloumousiou Monastery. Although most Greek churches operate under the authority of the autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church, Mt. ths is still under the direct jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, i.e. the "Ecumenical" Patriarch in Istanbul. Over the years, monasteries were founded, not just by Greeks, but by Georgians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Russians, and even Italians. The Italians are now gone (there being the Schism and all), but there are also (modern) Romanians present, though they do not have their own monastery. Mt. ths thus unites all the Orthodox Churches who share the theology of Constantinople. The mysticism of the theology of Mt. ths contrasts with the humanism of Mistra -- this is discussed elsewhere in relation to the Renaissance. Sadly, the great triumph of Romania was short-lived. The last Emperors of the Dynasty, all by marriage, squandered the strength of the State, debased the coinage, and neglected the thematic forces that had been the military foundation of Romania for four hundred years. Imperial guards of mercenaries, as Machiavelli could have warned, could not be relied upon in all circumstances, especially after the finances of the state were messed up. Before things had gone that far, however, we see that the attempt of Michael V, at the death of his uncle (?) Michael IV, to depose the Empress Zo provoked a popular revolt. This included the Varangian Guard, which may have actually been commanded at the time by Harald Hrdrde (1042). According to Norwegian accounts, Harald led the Guard to seize and blind Michael. This personal loyalty to Zo was the best tribute to the faltering Macedonian dynasty. Most symbolically, the breach between the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054 was the one that became permanent and henceforth separated the One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church into the Pope's Latin Church, usually called "Roman Catholic," and the Patriarch of Constantinople's Greek Church, traditionally called "Greek Orthodox" -- along with the other autocephalous "Orthodox" Churches (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, etc.). There had been similar estrangements earlier, which had always been patched up without much in the way of hard feelings. This was the expectation at the time; and the handling of the matter was so casual that later, when it became apparent that the breach was becoming permanent, the original documents could not even be found. The estrangement in religion came at a very bad time. When the Turks invaded Anatolia and the Crusading forces arrived from Francia, the Schism was a source of constant irritation and mistrust. It provided some rationalization for the seizure of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade; and later, when the Churches were apparently reconciled by the Palaeologi, it left most Greeks so disaffected that their

support for their own government was compromised. Thus, for centuries, Christian forces were divided and weakened in the continuing confrontation with Islm. Here we see the confusion over the paternity of Leo VI. Subsequently, in the minorities of Constantine VII, Basil II, and Constantine VIII, we see multiple reigns from Imperial in-laws. John I and Nicephorus II were extremely vigorous and successful in retrieving Romanian fortunes, finally to be sealed by the adult Basil. After the death of Constantine VIII, only Theodora and Zo, both nuns, remained of the dynasty. Zo endured three marriages to provide male sovereigns. These in-laws were as bad for the Empire as the earlier ones had been good. After the death of Constantine Monomachus, Theodora briefly reigned alone at the end of the line. Note the marriage of Maria Argyropoulaina to a son of the Doge of Venice. This was arranged by Basil II well before the marriage of Romanus II Argyrus to Zo. Maria is supposed to have introduced thefork to Venice when arriving there with Giovanni in 1004 or 1005 [cf. Judith Herrin, "Venice and the Fork," Byzantium, The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Princeton & Oxford, 2007, pp.203-205]. The genealogy of the Macedonians is supplemented here with an abbreviated tree showing the major foreign marriages of the Dynasty. The marriage of Constantine VII to the daughter of Hugh of Arles is shown above, but there are four other marriages noted here. Two of them are not attested by all sources. Leo VI did have a daughter Anna (by his second wife), and marrying her to Hugh's predecessor in Burgundy, while his son married Hugh's daughter, produces a reasonable reciprocity; but marrying a true Porphyrogenita (Porphyrogennetos -- in Greek a compound, although feminine, retains the second declension ending, -os, otherwise used for masculines), a "Born in the

Purple" Princess, to a barbarian king (which is what Louis III would have seemed to most), is something that some sources say was inconceivable, which is why all that the Emperor Otto II got was merely the niece of an Imperial in-law, John Tzimisces. Theophano was no Porphyrogenita (though some sources can be found referring to her as John's own daughter, or even as a daughter of Romanus II). Constantine VII himself asserted that a Porphyrogenita could not be married to a foreign prince -- although he then made an exception for the Franks. The most significant exception, however, would be St. Vladimir, who certainty did marry the Porphyrogenita sister, Anna, of Basil II and Constantine VIII. Since this attended the conversion of Russia to Christianity (989), with the material contribution of Russian (Varangian) troops to the Roman Army, it could well have been thought worth the price. The final marriage here is the potentially the most interesting but also somewhat problematic. Brian Tompsett's Royal and Noble Genealogy gives a sister "Irene" for the Empresses Zo and Theodora, who is said to have married Vsevolod of Kiev, grandson (by an earlier marriage) of St. Vladimir. I have not seen a single Macedonian genealogy that lists such an "Irene." This is of great interest because their son, Vladimir II, was the grandfather of Ingeborg of Novgorod, who married (1118) Knut Lavard Eriksson, the father of King Valdemar the Great of Denmark (1157-1182). Through the intermarriages of the subsequent royalty of Denmark, we get connections to many of the rulers of Europe. Thus, it is sometimes said that Queen Elizabeth II of England is a descendant of the Emperor Basil I. But that would only be true if Irene really was a Macedonian. Other sources have a slightly different claim. The Royal Families of Medieval Scandinavia, Flanders, and Kiev, by Rupert Alen and Anna Marie Dahlquist [Kings River Publications, Kingsburg, CA, 1997], says that Irene (or Irina) was "a daughter of Constantine IX Monomach" [p.160]. That is a lot different. Constantine was the Empress Zo's third husband. She was already 64 when they married, so there is not much chance that Irene was her child, but Constantine was a widower (twice), and it is not surprising that he would have previous children, although Byzantine histories don't seem to bother addressing the issue. Vladimir II is called "Monomakh," which thus sounds like a tribute to his Roman grandfather. Constantine IX's parentage for Irene is confirmed by the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2,Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, p.81] and Volume III, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser, Ergnzungsband[Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, p.218]. This gives us a much more reasonable picture. It does mean that Queen Elizabeth is not a descendant of Basil I (or Michael III, whatever); but she is a descendant of Constantine IX Monomachus, as can be seen on this popup. The genealogy also shows the descent of Elizabeth from Harold II of England, who was killed by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Harold's daughter Gytha, has it happens, married Vladimir Monomakh. The marital arrangements of Constantine Monomachus have another curious feature. After two wives died, Constantine wished to marry Maria Scleraena (presumably not the same Maria Scleraena who had been married to John Tzimisces in the previous century).

Third marriages, however, were generally forbidden by the Orthodox Church. So Constantine, in exile, simply lived with Maria. Recalled from exile and married to the Empress Zo (with the third marriage rule waived), in a marriage that may have been in name only, Constantine eventually brought Maria right into the palace and lived with her rather openly the rest of her life. The potential for ongoing confusion over this genealogy is evident in The Varangians of Byzantium by Blndal and Benedikz [op.cit.]. Thus, they say: In June [1043], when a large fleet under the command of Vladimir (Monomakh), son of Jaroslav, assailed the City, the Byzantines met it in the Bosphorus and defeated the combined force of Russians and Scandinavians, largely thanks to the use of Greek fire. [p.104] This seems to confuse the eldest son of Jaroslav, Vladimir (sometimes even "II"), who died in 1052, with Vladimir II Monomakh, the grandson of Jaroslav and Constantine IX. The statement in its own terms is peculiar in the use of an epithet, "Monomakh," that echoes that of the Roman Emperor, in the name of a Russian leading an attack on that very Emperor. This is unlikely on its face -- or that someone named after the Emperor would already be old enough to have such a command (Vladimir Monomakh was born in 1053). Instead, it is more reasonable that the marriage that produces Vladimir Monomakh was the result of the peace that followed the defeat of the Russian attack. Blndal and Benedikz do not try to explain the anomalies that their identification generates. A very brief non-dynastic interlude. Isaac I was the first of the Comneni and can be found on the genealogy of the Comneni below. Rome and Romania Index
non-dynastic Michael VI Stratioticus 1056-1057 Isaac I Comnenus 1057-1059

IV. FOURTH EMPIRE, LATE "ROMANIA/BYZANTIUM," 1059 AD-1453 AD, Era of Diocletian 776-1170, 394 years
Then followed a scene of massacre and pillage: on every hand the Greeks were cut down, their horses, palfreys, mules, and other possessions snatched as booty. So great was the number of killed and wounded that no man could count them. A great part of the Greek nobles had fled towards the gate of Blachernae; but by this time it was past six o'clock, and our men had grown weary of fighting and slaughtering. The troops began to assemble in a great square inside Constantinople. Then, convinced that it would take them at least a month to subdue the whole city, with its great churches and palaces, and the people inside it, they decided to settle down near the walls and towers they had already captured....

Our troops, all utterly worn out and weary, rested quietly that night. But the Emperor [Alexius V] Murzuphlus did not rest; instead, he assembled his forces and said he was going to attack the Franks. However, he did not do as he had announced, but rode along certain streets as far away as possible from those occupied by our army, till he came to a gate called the Golden Gate through which he escaped, and so left the city. Geoffroy de Villehardouin (d.1218), "The Conquest of Constantinople," Chronicles of the Crusades, Penguin, 1963, p.91 "Then we must go higher. We must go to him whose office is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms. We must call on the Emperor." "There is no Emperor." "No Emperor..." began Merlin, and then his voice died away. He sat still for some minutes wrestling with a world which he had never envisaged." C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945, Scribner, 2003, p.290 The "Fourth Empire" begins with a blow, from an Islm reinvigorated by the Turks, which represents not only a further diminution of the Empire, but a portent of the actual collapse and end of the Empire altogether. The catastrophic defeat at Manzikert alienated much of what had for long been the heartland of the Empire, Anatolia. It was a mortal wound, never to be made good; but the Empire nevertheless twice managed to struggle back up into at least local ascendancy, first under the Comneni and then under the Palaeologi. The Comneni had help, of a very dangerous sort, in the form of the Crusaders. Defeat by the Turks was not the cruelest cut of the period. That was when the Crusaders, manipulated by Venice, took Constantinople in 1204. With the Latins, the Empire fragmented into multiple Greek and non-Greek contenders: Nicaea, Epirus, Trebizond, Bulgaria, and Serbia, not to mention the Turks. While the Palaeologi, building on the success of Nicaea, reestablished Greek rule, only Epirus of the other successor states came back under Imperial control. The Empire of Michael VIII did seem to have a chance, but a new Turkish state, of the Ottomans, soon surged into dominance. It took more than a century for the Ottomans to scoop up all the spoils, but, like a slow motion car crash, the outcome has a horrible inevitability. Rome and Romania Index A. THE ADVENT OF THE TURKS, 1059-1185, 126 years 1060 AD -- Romanian territory is intact, but the military and financial foundations of Roman power have been undermined. The coinage is debased for the first time since

Constantine. Resources have been wasted absorbing Armenia, and the forces of the Armenian themes have been disbanded. Local Islamic states are no threat, but the Seljuks are on the way.
1. DUCASES Constantine X Ducas Eudocia Romanus IV Diogenes 1059-1067 1067-1071 1068-1071 Loss of Armenia, 1064

Defeated and Captured by Seljuk Great Sult.n Alp Arslan, Battle of Manzikert; Bari captured byNormans, 1071 Michael VII Parapinakes Nicephorus III Botaniates 1071-1078 1078-1081

The Ducases had the misfortune of suffering the most catastrophic defeat of Roman arms since the Arabs won Palestine and Syria at Yarmuk in 636: The defeat by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071, a battle lost more to treachery than to military superiority. And Romanus IV Diogenes became the only Roman Emperor besides Valerian to be captured in battle by an external enemy. What had hitherto been the heartland of Romania in Anatolia, now became a bleeding wound to Turkish conquest, never to be recovered. Simultaneously, the Normans won, for all time, the last Roman city in Italy. The Ducas genealogy is given below with theComneni. They were the first Roman dynasty with a surname, which shows some of the social changes that took place during the long period of the Macedonians.

By about the time of Manzikert, there were interesting new recruits to the Varangian Guard. Where Harald Hrdrde had failed to conquer England in 1066, William the Conquerer, within days of the Norwegian defeat, would succeed at Hastings. The Norman Conquest spelled the dispossession of the native Saxon nobility, who then began to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Many of them consequently were drawn to the Varangian Guard. Having lost England to Normans/Vikings, Englishmen served the Empire that had withstood them. They would continue to do so for more than three centuries -- the first reference to Englishmen in the service of Romania was in 1088, the last in 1404 -- 316 years. According to Geoffroy de Villehardouin, there were still "Englishmen and Danes" defending Constantinople when the Fourth Crusade arrived in 1203. After the Greek recovery of the City by the Palaeologi in 1261, we have some indication that the surviving Varangian Guard may have been entirelyEnglish. In 1272 Michael VIII Palaeologus wrote a letter to Henry III of England concerning the Englishmen in his service, now called theEgklinovaraggoi (Enklinobarangi in Latin). Like the Norsemen, the English Varangians seem to have had their own church in Constantinople, dedicated to Saints Nicholas and Augustine of Canterbury (the Apostle to the English). Under subsequent Palaeologi, however, they fade from history. Before the English Varangians, relations of their Norman conquerers had themselves briefly served the Emperor Michael IV. Two of the original de Hauteville brothers from Normandy were in a group of 300 Normans under George Maniaces in Italy in 1037-1038. The eldest de Hauteville brother, William, earns his sobriquet "Iron Arm" by defeating the Amir of Syracuse in single combat in 1037. The disaffection and revolt of the Normans would then drive Romania out of Italy by 1071, spelling the final alienation of Italy, retrieved by Belisarius in 536, from Constantinople (after 535 years) -- but then

it also led to the recovery of Sicily from Islam (1061-1091), specifically the Zirid Amirsof Tunisia and the reunion of all Southern Italy into one Kingdom (1130). This brought the South of Italy into the history of Franciafor the first time -- in the 13th century, under the German Emperor Frederick II, it could even be said to briefly be the center of that history, as Frederick made Palermo his capital.
2. SELJUK SULT.NS OF RM Sleyman I ibn Qutalmsh Kilij (Qlch) Arslan I Malik Shh Mas'd I Rukn ad-Dn Kilij Arlsan II 1078-1086 1092-1107 1107-1116 1116-1156 1156-1192

Myriocephalon, 1176; Konya sacked byFrederick Barbarossa on the Third Crusade, 1190 Kay Khusraw (Khosru) I 1192-1196, 1205-1211 1196-1204 1204-1205

killed in battle by Theodore Lascaris, 1211 Sleyman II Kilij Arlsan III 'Izz ad-Dn

Catastrophe. The heartland of the Empire in Anatolia is completely overrun. Italy is lost to the Normans, forever. Only the Balkan European possessions, secured not long before, enable Romania to endure and recover, somewhat -- with the dangerous help of the Crusaders. Armenians, recently settled in Cilicia, are surrounded, although this will be the origin of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia that will endure until 1375. The triumphant Normans meanwhile have invaded Sicily, which they will permanently recover from Islam.

The first Turkish and Moslem state in Anatolia ironically began against the wishes, virtually in rebellion against, Kay Kws I 1211-1220 the Seljuk Great Sult.n Malik Shh (1073Kay Qubdh I 'Al' ad-Dn 1220-1237 1092), who was even negotiating with Alexius Kay Khusraw II Ghiyth ad- 1237-1246, Comnenus for the withdrawal of the Turks Dn 1257-1959 from the region and whose troops actually Defeated by Mongols, Battle of Kse Dagh, killed Sleyman I. However, even the Great Sult.n was in no position to force such a becomes vassal, 1243 withdrawal, and Roman resistance was so Kay Kws II 1246-1257 weak that Sleyman had no difficulty Kilij Arslan IV 1248-1265 establishing his capital at Nicaea. The best that Alexius could do was to keep him back Kay Qbdh II 1249-1257 from Nicomedia. Meanwhile, even western Kay Khosru III Ghiyth ad1265-1282 cities like Ephesus were falling. The Turkish Dn position was secure until defeat by the First Control by Mongol Governors, 1277 Crusade in 1097. Then Alexius was able to recover the western cities. The Turks fell back 1282-1284, on Iconium (Konya), which became their 1284-1293, Mas'd II 1294-1301, capital for the rest of the history of the 1303-1307 Sultanate of Rm. Although sacked by Frederick Barbarosa on the Third Crusade 1284, 1293(1190), Konya was lost forever to Romania. Kay Qbdh III 1294,
1301-1303 Mas'd III 1307 Deposed by Mongols, 1307

The Sultanate already, however, seemed to have lost its edge. The devastating defeat of Manuel Comnenus at Myriocephalum (1176) was not followed up, and the subsequent decline of Romania was The Oghullar of mainly from internal Rm weakening and fragmentation (readying it for the Fourth Crusade). Aydn Oghullar The Sultanate was then defeated by the Mongols in 1243 and spent Sarukhn Oghullar the rest of its history in vassalage. The final fall, in 1307, coincided Menteshe Oghullar with a very fragmented, but vigorous, period of new Turkish states Germiyn Oghullar -- the Oghullar or "sons" of Rm. H.amd Oghullar Part of his vigor may have resulted from an influx of refugees from Jndr Oghullar the Mongols. The Beys of Aydn captured Ephesus in 1304, but the Qaramn Oghullar most serious portent for the future was the capture of Prusa (Bursa) Eretna Oghullar in 1326 by the Ottomans. This quickly spelled the end of Romania Dulghadr Oghullar Osmanli Oghullar in Asia, and by 1354 the Ottomans had a foothold in Europe. Only Tamerlane delayed the ultimate Ottoman 3. COMNENI conquest.
Alexius I Comnenus Tekke Oghullar

concession to Venice, 1082; appeal to Robert II of Flanders (?) & Pope Urban II, 1095; First Crusade, 1096-1099; entertainsEric I of Denmark, who addresses Danish Varangians, 1103 John II Manuel I 1118-1143 1143-1180 captures Leon I of Armenia, 1137

This list is from Clifford Edmund Bosworth's The New Islamic Dynasties [Edinburgh University Press, called Kirjalax in Icelandic; trade 1996]. The Empire has recovered as much as it is ever going to, and actually seems in relatively good shape, with deference all the way from Jerusalem to Hungary. But the Sultnate of Rm is a nut that cannot be cracked -the true seed of doom for Romania. And Roman trade and shipping is now dominated by Venice. With the Turks at Nicaea, the Normans ready to land in the west, the currency debased, the army dispersed, and the treasury empty, Alexius Comnenus had his job cut out for him. The results were satisfactory enough, but a couple of the desperate measures that the desperate times called for would have unfortunate long term consequences. The trade privileges given to Venice in 1082 eventually made Romanian trade, and even the Navy, the plaything of Italian city states. Calling on the West for military aid against the Turks had the very unexpected result of Pope Urban II calling in 1095 for a "Crusade" to liberate the Holy Land and Jerusalem from Islm.

1081-1118

Second Crusade, 1147-1149; homage of Thoros II of Armenia,Reynald of Antioch, & Baldwin IIIof Jerusalem, 11581159; secures Dalmatia, Croatia, & Bosnia, 1167; all Venetians arrested in Romania, 1171; Myriocephalon, defeat by Kilij Arlsan II, 1176 Alexius II 1180-1183 Serbia independent, 1180; Bela IIItakes Dalmatia, Bosnia, & Sirmium Andronicus I 1183-1185 Emperor Isaac Comnenus on Cyprus, 11851191

It is usually said that Alexius wrote a letter to the Pope asking for aid and that this inspired Urban to call for the Crusade. Alexius is also said to have written a letter to Count Robert II of Flanders, whose father, Robert I, had recently (1089) been on pilgrmage to Jerusalem and evidently developed a relationship with Alexius on the way. The received text of the letter to Robert is suspicious, and it may be that an embassy from Alexius, more than a simple letter, dealt with both the Pope and Robert. As it happened, Alexius developed a better relationship with Robert II than with most of the Crusaders on the First Crusade and, as the Count passed through Constantinople on the way home from Jerusalem, bestowed on him a relic that was supposed to be an arm of St. George. This special relationship between Constantinople and Flanders foreshadows, sadly, the later election of Count Baldwin IX as Latin Emperor after the Fourth Crusade takes the City in 1204 -- "sadly" because the friendship with Alexius was replaced by the hostile conquest of his descendants, the Angeli. Most of the Crusaders passing through Constantinople gave Alexius a very bad feeling. The possibility of what actually happened a century later, when the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople, was already very real. So Alexius bundled them as quickly as possible into Asia, where they defeated the Turks, making it possible to drive them out of western Anatolia together. This was of great material help to Romania, but the Turks remained based at Iconium (Konya). The Roman Army (with the thematic apparatus long gone) was never up to the task of dislodging them entirely. That this could have been done was revealed when Frederick Barbarosa, passing through on the Third Crusade, broke into Konya and sacked it (1190). That he died shortly thereafter steals the thunder from this act, but it is noteworthy. Meanwhile, the greatest military successes of the Comneni, by Manuel I, when his suzerainty was acknowledged by Lesser Armenia, Antioch, and even Jerusalem, were undone by a devastating defeat in 1176 at Myriocephalum ("Ten Thousands Heads"). Shortly thereafter Serbia breaks away, beginning a process of disintegration that would never be entirely reversed. The Englishmen in the Varangian Guard of Alexius I were not entirely able to escape their Norman nemesis. At the battle of Dyrrhachium in 1082, where Normans from Sicily under Robert Guisgard de Hauteville were trying to establish a beachhead in what is now Albania, a promising start turned into a rout of the Roman army, with many of the English Varangians slaughtered by the Normans. Nevertheless, despite this painful setback, and some others, Alexius finally was able to win the war and, with the help of the Venetians and even Seljuks, eject the Normans. The death of Guisgard in 1085 ended the threat, as the Normans otherwise concentrated on recovering Sicily from Islam -though there was no love lost when Guisgard's son Bohemond passed through Constantinople on the First Crusade (he then became the first Prince of Antioch, violating an agreement to return the city to Romania). Norse recruits to the Varangian Guard continued as Alexius entertained Scandinavian monarchs on Crusade or pilgrimage, particularly the Kings Eric I the Evergood of Denmark and Sigur I the Crusader of Norway. Alexius at first distrusted Eric, as he did all the Crusaders, and had him camp outside Constantinople. We are told, however, that his spies reported Eric urging the Danish Varangians to serve the Emperor faithfully. Eric was then invited into the City and honored -- at least according to the

Norse sources. Unfortunately, the pious King never made it to Jerusalem but died and was buried on Cyprus. Alexius is remembered in the Icelandic Sagas asKirjalax, evidently from Kyrios Alexios, "Lord Alexius." The name was also used, confusingly, for subsequent Comneni. Anna Comnena (d.1153), daughter of Alexius I, wrote a history of her father's reign, the Alexiad. Most of it was written after she was banished to a convent by her brother, John II, whom she apparently had tried to assassinate. This particularly intense form of sibling rivalry was in part the result of Anna's expectation that she would be closer to the seat of power, i.e. that the Emperor would be her husband. The birth of John spoiled this, and Anna, perhaps a feminist before her time, never accepted the wisdom of his succession. She blamed him for subsequent disasters but, since the Alexiad doesn't cover his reign, she never quite says what they were. The real disaster, Myriocephalum, happened after her death to her nephew, Manuel I. One reference to the Alexiad that I remember from childhood, that Anna says her father didn't trust the Crusaders because they didn't have beards and smelled of horses, I have been unable to find in the text.

Fr om the few and questionable foreign marriages of the Macedonians, with the Comneni we find a large number of well attested ones, many with Crusaders but one making connections as distant as Spain. I was aware of few of these until a correspondent, Ann Ferland, began to point them out. The marriage of Maria of Montpellier, whose mother was Eudocia Comnena, to King Peter II of Aragon led to all subsequent Kings of Aragon and of Spain. A great deal of European Royalty, right down to the present, thus would be descendants of Alexius I Comnenus. Rome and Romania Index B. THE LATIN EMPIRE, 1185-1261, 76 years

1. ANGELI Isaac II Angelus 1185-1195 Bulgaria independent, 1186 Third Crusade, 1189-1192; Cyprus seized from Isaac Comnenus byRichard the Lionheart, given toGuy of Lusignan, 1191 Alexius III 1195-1203, d.c.1211

The worst and most disastrous dynasty in Roman history. Alexius IV brings in the Fourth Crusade, with impossible promises, to restore his incompetent father, and only succeeds in losing Constantinople to a foreign enemy for the first time ever. This may qualify as the true "Fall of Rome." The damage was bad enough, with many treasures and archives destroyed or carted off to Venice. Unlike the Goths at Rome in 410, the Crusaders stuck around for 60 years, with steadily decreasing success.

Kingdom of Lesser Armeniaindependent, 1198-1375 Isaac II (restored) Alexius IV Alexius V Mourtzouphlos 1203-1204 1203-1204 1204, d.1204

Fourth Crusade, 1202-1204 Constantinope falls to Fourth Crusade, 1204

In 1195, Isaac II, or the new Emperor Alexius III, sent three Varangians on a mission to Scandinavia to seek recruits for the Varangian Guard -- this is revealing when previously Danish and Norwegian monarchs had themselves come to Constantinople. We are told that Hreiarr sendimar (i.e. "the Messenger") went to Norway (to King Sverre), Ptr illska went to Denmark (to King Canute VI the Pious), and Sigurr grikker ("the Greek") Oddsson went to Sweden (to Knut I or Sverker II). Hreiarr had the toughest time that we know of, since Sverre, anticipating war, had no warriors to spare. Allowed to recruit among farmers and merchants, it is not clear that Hreiarr, who became embroiled in local events, ever returned to Constantinople. On the other hand, Ptr may have returned with the actual Danes who were subsequently observed by Geoffroy de Villehardouin in 1203. There are many stories about Sigurr Oddsson, but it is not clear whether his mission was successful. Since there are references to Englishmen but not to Scandinavians in the Varangian Guard of the Palaeologi, this may be last the time when Norse warriors actively traveled to Constantinople [cf. Blndal and Benedikz, op.cit., pp.218-222]. Alexius III, having fled the Crusaders who installed Alexius IV and restored Isaac II, takes up residence at Mosynopolis in Thrace. Alexius V Mourtzouphlos, part of the popular reaction again the Crusaders and their friends, Alexius IV and Isaac II, conducted the last defense of the City but then fled. He sought refuge with Alexius III, who was, after all, is father-in-law, but who, however, had him blinded and expelled. Captured by some French Knights and returned to Constantinople, Mourtzouphlos was

thrown to his death from the Column of Theodosius. Alexius III ultimately tries to get the Turks to defeat the Lascarids and install him at Nicaea. Unfortunately, Theodore Lascaris personally killed the Sultn of Rm in single combat. Alexius is captured, blinded, and sent to a monastery. He dies, forgotten, some time after 1211.

The Angeli continue the foreign marriages of the Comneni. One is particularly noteworthy. Irene Angelina, daughter of the Isaac II, married a son of Frederick Barbarossa, Philip of Swabia, who contended with Otto of Brunswick for the German Empire. They had no sons; but the marriages of their four daughters are among the most interesting in European history. In a reconciliation of Philip's feud, the oldest daughter, Beatrice, married Otto himself. But they had no children. The younger daughters, Kunigunde, Marie, and Elizabeth, married King Wenceslas I of Bohemia, Duke Henry III of Lower Lorraine and Brabant, and King & St. Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon, respectively. All of these marriages produced children with living modern descendants,

especially among the Hapsburgs and the royal family of Spain, as can be traced at the linked genealogies. Since Isaac himself was a great-grandson of Alexius I Comnenus, this means that a large part of modern European royalty, through this connection alone, have been descendants of the Angeli and Comneni. My impression is that Roman Imperial descent for recent royalty has often been claimed through the Macedonians, but the only certain line, as we have seen, may be from Macedonian in-laws. On the other hand, descent from the Comneni and Angeli appears to be well attested and with multiple lines. Another fruitful line will be from Maria Lascarina, who married Bela IV ofHungary. Since the Lascarids themselves derive from Anna Angelina, Maria's mother, that connects up to the whole Comneni-Angeli house. Maria's son, Stephen V of Hungary, had a daughter, Katalin, who married the Serbian King Stephen Dragutin, who had a daughter the married a Bosnian Ban, with many descendants. This line all the way to the Hapsburgs can be examined on a popup.
2. BULGARIA, ASENS John I Asen Peter II Asen Kalojan Asen, the Roman Killer 1186-1196 1196-1197 1197-1207

captures Baldwin I, 1205; kills Boniface of Montferrat, 1207 Boril John II Asen 1207-1218 1218-1241

In 1204, the Pope recognized Kalojan as "King of the Bulgarians and the Vlachs" (Geoffroy de Villehardouin, calling him "Johanitza," even says "King of Wallachia and Bulgaria"). Indeed, the Asen brothers, founders of the dynasty, were themselves Vlachs, i.e. modern Romanians. This is therefore not a purely ethnic Bulgarian state. It also came close to succeeding to the throne in Constantinople, though later overpowered by the Mongols, Serbia and, of course, the Ottomans.

Defeated & Captured Theodore Ducas of Epirus, 1230; Mongolinvasion, 1242 Kaloman I Michael II Asen Kaloman II Constantine Tich Ivan Mytzes Ivalio John III Asen 1242-1246 1246-1257 1257-1258 1257-1277 1278-c.1264 1277-1279, d.1280 1279-1284?, d.<1302

The principal setback to the Bulgarian state was the Mongol invasion of 1242, which itself was almost an afterthought as the Mongols abandoned the conquests Asens replaced by Terters of Poland and Hungary in 1241 and were returning to Russia. The Chingnizids needed to go to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan. What followed for Bulgaria was a period of internal conflict, between members of the Asen dynasty and outsiders. Two unrelated usurpers, Constantine Tich and Ivaljo, figure in the table above. Another unrelated figure, however, Ivan Mytzes, becomes an Asen in-law

and the father of the last Asen Emperor, John III. This is a confused period, with pretenders contending and dates uncertain. John III fled to the Mongols and then to Constantinople. He was succeeded in Bulgaria by his erstwhile minister, George Terter. The list of Bulgarian rulers is from various Byzantine sources, including the only source of the genealogy here, which is the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa[Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.160162]. Although John III lost Bulgaria, his descendants figured in affairs in Constantinople for some time. Since his granddaughter married the Emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, whose daughter Helena married the Emperor John V, all the subsequent Palaeologi are his descendants.

While the conquest and sack of Constantinople have rightly been regarded as one of the worst cases of vandalism and Baldwin I 1204-1205 betrayal in world history, a stab in the ofFlanders back against the state and the civilization Captured by Kalojan Asen, that had been the repository and guardian 1205 of Classical, Western, and Christian Henry culture during most of the Middle Ages, 1206-1216 ofFlanders and an insult by Latin, Frankish, Western Europe against the Greek and Orthodox East, one thing must Peter de 1217 be admitted: This was not what the Crusaders had in mind. It Courtenay wasn't their idea or their intention. The whole project had Yolanda 1217-1219 been cooked up by Venice and conducted from beginning to ofFlanders end by the Doge Enrico Dandolo. The betrayal it represents, Robert I de then, was of a more intimate character, since Venice was in 1221-1228 Courtenay origin, culture, and tradition one of Romania's own. In the John of most attenuated sense, it was still a de jure possession of 1228-1237 Brienne Constantinople. The Crusaders, who thought that getting to Outremer by sea would be easier than marching overland, 1228-1261 did not reckon on the scale of demands for payment by titular Baldwin II Venice, or on the cynical manipulations that would follow. Emperor Pope Innocent III wasn't too happy about it either, and the 1261-1273 Crusaders earned excommunication for fighting Christians, titular for Venice, rather than Moslems, for Christendom. However Philip II Emperor they got to Constantinople, of course, they still didn't need 1273-1285 to sack the City. We can blame them for that. In the end, of titular course, the blame doesn't matter. The damage was done. Catherine de Empress There would be hell to pay, and several modern conflicts in Courtenay 1285-1307 the Balkans and between Turkey and her neighbors are arguably still the result. titular
3. LATIN EMPERORS AT CONSTANTINOPLE Charles of Valois

Nevertheless, the demonology of blame has some modern significance. If Venice is ignored and titular Catherine of significant spleen directed at the Crusaders, there may be a Empress Valois particular reason for this, derived from a sort of anachronistic 1313-1346 hostility that is directed at the Crusades in general: Where titular Philip II of we see them condemned as imperialism, euro-centrism, Emperor Tarento racism, or the oppression of the Third World -- terms that 1313-1331 would have been incomprehensible to anyone in the 13th titular century -- something is going on that owes little to history Robert II Emperor and much to modern ideology. To Islamic Fascism, its 1346-1364 enemies are always "Crusaders," whether or not they are even titular Christians. To the Leftist sympathizers of Islamic Fascism, Philip III Emperor the Crusaders are simply viewed through the prism of their 1364-1373 own Marxism and "anti-imperialist" Leninism. The effect also exemplifies moralistic relativism, with the Islamic Conquest of the Middle East

Emperor 1301-1313

itself ignored, complacently accepted, or approved, while any counter-attacks to that Conquest, which is what the Crusades were, are viewed with furious moral indignation. The double standard is blatant and shameless -- its very incoherence is not even an embarrassment to the post-modern deconstructionists who think that logical consistency is itself Euro-centric oppression. Thus, reactions to the Fourth Crusade, as to all the Crusades, may be more of a mirror to the present than an understanding of the past. The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade did not result in the establishment of the authority of the Latin Emperors over the whole of the previous Empire. Greek authority was maintained in three major locations, at Nicaea, at Trebizond, and in Epirus, and a couple of minor locations, at Rhodes, later to fall to Venice, and at the fortress of Monembasia in the Peloponnesus (Morea), which fell in 1248. All three major Greek rulers eventually proclaimed themselves Kings of Thessalonica emperors, which means that at one point four rulers were claiming the Imperial dignity within the old Empire -- not to Boniface 1204-1207 mention the Bulgarian and Serbian Tsars who also wanted to ofMontferrat inherit it. The Emperor at Nicaea was the one to return to Constantinople, but the Emperor at Trebizond was the last to fall to the Turks.
Demetrius 1207-1224, d.1230/9 Thessalonica taken byEpirus, 1224

Besides the 3/8 of the whole retained by Venice, including Adrianople and Gallipoli, the Latin Empire ended up included three significant feudal dependencies, all subjugated and organized by the leader of the Fourth Crusade, Boniface the Margrave of Montferrat: theKingdom of Thessalonica (1204-1224), with Boniface himself as king, the Duchy of Athens (1205-1456), and thePrincipality of Achaea (1205-1432). Boniface was denied the Imperial throne by the Venetian votes, apparently because it was thought that he might make too strong an Emperor. Instead, Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, was elected Emperor. Baldwin's reign would be short and pathetic, but one does have to say: this is a long way from Bruges. Flanders itself, inherited by Baldwin's daughters, would continue to play a role in European history far out of proportion to its size, as its wealth contributes to the power of the Dukes of Burgundy and then the Hapsburgs. The Latin Emperors could have used some of that wealth. Their fragment of Romania had a similarly reduced tax base, and the Venetians dominated trade with an immunity to taxation. The result was that classical bronzes were melted down for the metal, and even the copper and lead roofs of churches were stripped and sold. None of the damage of the conquest was made good, while regular maintenance of walls and structures was neglected. The Greeks recovered a depreciated and degraded city in 1261. Boniface himself was killed in 1207 and the Kingdom of Thessalonica turned out to be the most short-lived of the Crusader states in Romania, falling to Epirus. In 1311 the Duchy of Athens was seized by the Catalan Company, which had mutinied against the Palaeologi. The Principality of Achaea eventually got mixed up with the Anjevians and finally was inherited, much too late, by the Palaeologi in 1432; but the Duchy of Athens never returned to the control of Greek Romania. It fell to Meh.med II in 1456. After the restoration of Greek rule in Constantinople, a claim to the Roman throne passed down through the descendants of Baldwin II.Charles of Anjou, who had his own designs on Romania, married a daughter to Baldwin's son Philip. Later, Charles'

grandson Philip married the heiress, Catherine of Valois, of the claim. None of these claimants, however, ever had much of a chance of returning to Constantinople. Many of them, however, were also Princes of Achaea, where their succession and genealogy are given in detail. The nimbus is not used for the Latin Emperors in the genealogy because, as Roman Catholics, they would have acknowledged Papal supremacy to a degree that the Orthodox Emperors in Constantinople never would. Latin Emperors could not be "Equal to the Apostles." In the scramble for a Greek successor to the Angeli, Epirus was in a good position, from which considerable progress was made. Thessalonica was the second city Michael I of the Empire, and its capture reasonably prompted 1204-1215 Ducas Theodore Ducas to proclaim himself Emperor. From there, however, things only went down hill. Theodore 1215-1230 was himself defeated and captured by the Bulgarians, Theodore 1227-1230, Emperor which would add him to the number of Valerian and Ducas in Thessalonica, Romanus IV if we considered him a proper Emperor of d.c.1254 Romania. But the chance of that dimmed further when takes Thessalonica, 1224; Theodore's successors were defeated by Nicaea,
Defeated & Captured by John II Asen, 1230 1230-1237, Regent in Thessalonica, d.1241 1237-1242, Emperor in Thessalonica Despot, 1242-1244 Defeated by John III Ducas Vatatzes, reduced to Despot, 1242 Demetrius 1244-1246 Thessalonica falls to John III Ducas Vatatzes, 1246 Michael II 1231-1271 Granted title of Despot of Epirus by John III Ducas Vatatzes, 1249 Nicephorus I 1271-1296 Thomas Nicholas Orsini John Orsini Nicephorus II 1296-1318 1318-1323 1323-1335 1335-1337, 1340, & 1355-1359 4. DESPOTS OF EPIRUS AND EMPERORS AT THESSALONICA

Manuel

John

Epirus absorbed by Andronicus III, 1337, 1340

reduced to despots, and then Thessalonica itself fell to

Nicaea.

Epirus itself proved difficult for either Nicaea or the Palaeologi to subdue and rule, so the despots continued there for a while, continuing under some rulers unrelated to the Ducases. By the time Andronicus III was able to annex the territory, the Empire as a whole was too far gone for it to have helped very much.

5. EMPERORS AT TREBIZOND Alexius I Comnenus 1204-1222 Andronicus I Gidus John I Axuch Manuel I Andronicus II George John II Alexius II Andronicus III Manuel II Basil Irene Palaeologina Anna Comnena Michael John III Alexius III Manuel III Alexius IV John IV David 1222-1235 1235-1238 1238-1263 1263-1266 1266-1280 1280-1297 1297-1330 1330-1332 1332 1332-1340 1340-1341 1341, 1341-1342 1341, 1344-1349 1342-1344 1349-1390 1390-1416 1416-1429 1429-1459 1459-1461

A very poor excuse for an "empire," Trebizond spent much of its existence in vassalage to the Mongols and Turks who ruled the plateau behind it. It started, however, with an heir to the Comneni and a reasonable ambition of moving on to Constantinople. After realistic chances of that past, Trebizond ended up with the dubious honor of being the last of the Greek states to fall to the Ottomans, in 1461. Lists of the Emperors of Trebizond can be found in various Byzantine histories, but the genealogy here only comes from the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume III, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser, Ergnzungsband [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, pp.235236].

Trebizond falls to Meh.med II, 1461

1354 AD

In the genealogy of the Comneni of Trebizond, there are noteworthy marriages to Kings of Georgia. There is also the interesting episode of Irene, daughter of Andronicus III Palaeologus, briefly succeeding her husband Basil as ruling Empress. She was then succeeded by her sister-in-law Anna. Most extraordinary is a marriage at the end of line. A daughter, Theodora, of Emperor John IV married Uzun H.asan, a Khan of the White Sheep Turks (1457-1478), the very Khan who conquered the Black Sheep Turks in 1469 and created a regional state that stretched from Eastern Anatolia, where the White Sheep Turks originated, into Eastern Irn. This continued until the Safavids came to power in 1508.

Constantine Lascaris Theodore I Lascaris

1204 1206-1222

kills Kay Khusraw (Khosru) I in battle, 1211 John III Ducas Vatatzes Theodore II John IV 1222-1254 1254-1258 1258-1261

The Greeks at Nicaea were perhaps the best placed to move on Constantinople, except that they were on the wrong side of the Bosporus. This was remedied, mainly by John Ducas Vatatzes, by defeating the Greek rivals at Thessalonica and creating a state that straddled Europe and Asia. This created the kind of stranglehold on Constantinople that the Turks would duplicate later. Constantinople was regained on a chance betrayal to the Nicaean general and Regent, Michael Palaeologus. Once in power in Constantinople, Michael disposed of the actual Nicaean heir, John IV. The Lascarids, who were actually mostly the family of John Ducas Vatatzes, thus only served to obtain the restoration of Greek Romania for the Palaeologi. Rome and Romania Index C. THE LAST DAYS, 1261-1453, 192 years

1. SERBIA Tichomir Stephan I Nemanja

The Golden Age of Serbia. Independence from Romania and then the passing of the most vigorous Great Prince, 1168days of Bulgaria meant an opportunity for a Serbian 1169 bid for the Imperium.
1169-1196, d.1200

Serbia independent, 1180 Stephan II the First-Crowned Stephan III Radoslav Stephan IV Vladislav Stephan Urosh I Stephan Urosh II Milutin 1196-1217 King of Serbia, 1217-1228 1228-1234 1234-1243 1243-1276

This opportunity was seized by Stephan Dushan, who ended up with most of the western Balkans and was crowned Tsar of the Serbs and Romans by the autocephalous Serbian Patriarch whom he had just installed (1346) at Pec. His long reign, however, was not quite long enough, and his death set off the kind of internal dissentions that had ruined many another state in Romania.

Stephan Dragutin 1276-1282 1282-1321

Stephan Urosh III 1321-1331 Dechanski 1331-1345 Stephen Urosh IV Tsar of the Serbs Dushan and the Romans, 1345-1355 Stephen Urosh V the Weak

Then, all too soon, the Ottomans arrived. Defeats in 1371 and 1389 crushed Serbia. The agony of the defeat by Murd I at Crnomen, 1371; Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the "Field of the collapse of dynasty & authority Blackbirds," still echoes today in the fierceness of Stephan Lazar I Prince, 1371-1389 the attachment of modern Serbs for the area, now largely populated by Albanians. As it happened, the battle of Kosovo, "Field of the Sult.n Murd I died at Kosovo, but his son, Blackbirds," defeat by Murd I, 1389 Byezd the "Thunderbolt," was, if anything, even Stephan Lazar II Despot, 1389-1427 more vigorous than his father. In 1396 Byezd Lazarevich destroyed a Crusade, led by the King ofHungary and future Emperor Sigismund, at Turkish vassal, 1396 Nicopolis (Nikopol). Not even Byezd's defeat and George 1427-1456 capture by Tamerlane (1402) revived Serbian Brankovich prospects.
1355-1371 Lazar III Brankovich 1456-1458 Regent, 1458-1459, d.1473 Helene Palaeologina

annexed by Turkey, 1459

Lists of Serbian rulers can be found in various Byzantine histories, but the genealogy here only comes from the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.143-149].

The dynasty of Stephan Dushan is followed by two families of princes. Stephen Lazar and his son endured the Turkish defeat and conquest and were reduced to despots. They were followed by the Bronkoviches, father and son. The wife of Lazar III Brankovich, Helene, was a daughter of Thomas Palaeologus (d.1465), Despot of the Morea and brother of the last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI. After the death of Lazar, Helene was Regent of Serbia until the Turkish annexation.

5. PALAEOLOGI Michael VIII Palaeologus 1259-1282

Prince of AchaeaTERTERS1259; 3. BULGARIA, captured, Restoration of Greek rule in 1280-1292, Constantinople, 1261; Laconia & George I Terter d.c.1304 Monembasia (soon Despotate of Morea) ceded as ransom for the Mongol vassal, 1285 Prince of Achaea, Smilech Genoesegranted Galata, 1292-1295/8 1261; 1267; Anjeviansdefeated, 1281; the Caka/Tshaka 1295/8-1298/9 Sicilian Vespers, 30 March 1282 -Theodore Sicily revolts against & massacres the 1298/9-1322 Svetoslav end of Anjevian threat French; George II II 1322-1323 Andronicus 1282-1328 reductionSHISHMANS of army & navy; Venetians mint Ducats after Roman Michael III 1323-1330 debasement, 1284; defeat by Shishman Amir'Osmn at Magnesia & Bapheus John IV Stephan Ottoman conquest (near Nicomedia), 1330-1331 begins, 1302; 1331-1371 John V AlexanderCatalan Company hired, 1303, revolts, 1305; Ephesus 1355-1371, lost Sracimir Johnto Beg of Aydn, 1304; Knights of d.1396 the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the Hospitalers, on Rhodes, 13081360-1393, John1523; Prusa [Bursa] lost, 1326 VI Shishman d.1395 Michael IX heir of disintegration of state, Andronicus, 1385;Ottoman vassalage, 1387, 1295-1320 1388, Conquest, 1396 Andronicus III 1321-1341

The second Bulgarian dynasty of the period was always at a disadvantage, ground between the Mongols, Serbs, Hungary, and the Ottomans. Ottoman conquest and annexation came in the same year (1396) as the Sult.n Byezd's defeat of a Crusade, led by the King of Hungary and future Emperor Sigismund, at Nicopolis (Nikopol), where John Sracimir was killed. Over time, the Turks clearly regarded Bulgaria as strategically more important than Serbia or the Romanian principalities, and no local autonomy was allowed at all until the Russo-Turkish War of 1876-1878 and the Congress of Berlin (1878) forced it. Even then Bulgaria was divided and full independence did not come until 1908. Meanwhile, a fair number of Bulgarians had converted to Islm. Since they were regarded as traitors by Christian Bulgarians, many of them migrated to Turkey, where they still live.

The list of Bulgarian rulers is from various Byzantine sources, including the only source of the genealogy here, which is the Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und defeat by Orkhn, 1329; Nicaea Sdeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, [I.znik] lost, 1331; Nicomedia [I.zmid] Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.162-163].
lost, 1337; Epirus annexed, 1337, 1340 1341-1376, 13791391

John V

Umur I, Beg of Aydn & ally of John Cantacuzenus, defeated by Venice & Romania, looses harbor of Smyrna, 1344; Grand Duke of Moscowcontributes money to repair St. Sophia, 1346; Black Death arrives at Constantinople, 1347 John VI Cantacuzenus regent, 1341 1341-1354, abdicated

Civil War, 1341-1347; Crown Jewels Michael Palaeologus restores the Greeks to Constantinople, and for a time Romania acted as a pawned to Venice, 1343; Bubonic Plague, 1347; revenue of Galata seven Great Power again, fending off Charles of Anjou, times that of Constantinople, 1348; Genoese from Galata burn Roman shipyard, 1348; War betweenVenice & Genoa, 1350-1355;

with Genoa now replacing Venice as commercial agents and Italians-of-choice in Constantinople. But it was a precarious position. Michael himself sowed the seeds of disaster by confiscating land from the tax exempt akritai (sing. akrits), the landed frontier (kros) fighters of Bithynia. This weakened defenses that Andronicus II weakened further with military economies, failing to follow the maxim of Machiavelli that the first duty of a prince is war. Once the Ottomans broke the Roman army in Bithynia (1302), they, and other Turks, quickly reduced Roman possessions in Asia to fragments, never to be recovered. Bithynia (Prusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia) became the base of Ottoman power, with Prusa, as Bursa, the Ottoman capital.

In this period flags in the modern sense were just beginning to come into use; and there were 14th century banners that would have evolved into a proper flag for Romania, given the chance. We find a field with a Cross, like many Crusader banners and flags, with the addition of curious devices, which look like images and mirror-images of something between the letter B, the letter E, and broken links of a chain. These are sometimes said to have already been used by Constantine I and have been variously interpreted. One possibility is that they are stylized forms ofCrescent Moons, originally symbolic of the divine patroness of Byzantium, the goddess Artemis. The stylized forms

have been inherited in the arms of Serbia, and crescents are used as a Serb national symbol, seen at left -- something that has probably become a sign of terror to non-Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. If it was the Crescent that was originally used in Constantinople, this may have been directly inherited by Turkey. A Crescent is now commonly taken as symbolic of Islm, but this may not antedate the Turkish flag. The star on the Turkish flag is sometimes said to be Romanian also, symbolizing the Virgin Mary, but it does not occur on the earliest Turkish flags. However, Whitney Smith [Flags Through the Ages and Across the World, McGraw-Hill, 1975] shows a flag identified only as "medieval Russian" that shows a cross with four crescents and four stars also [p.174]. The crescents are oriented differently, but this design seems too elaborate not to have Roman antecedents. The banner that Whitney Smith shows for Romania itself [p.45] has the flag with the distinctive devices quartered with a simple red cross on white. One does not find this banner, or other Roman symbols, shown or discussed in the standard Byzantine histories. This seems peculiar, and Smith gives no reference for his banner. Wikipedia does cite a Spanish atlas circa 1350, the Conoscimento de todos los Reinos. If we do not know of it from Greek sources, that is probably why it does not figure in the Byzantine histories. I would like to know more about the history and meaning of such a banner. The red cross on white came to be identified as the Cross of St. George, which is how we see it as the flag of England -- something that is coming into increasing use today, when England often has sports teams separate from Scotland (which uses the Cross of St. Andrew). But St. George has been widely popular and is the patron of many places, including Genoaand some other Italian, German, and Spanish states, and Georgia in the Caucasus. Wikipedia also says that ships from London began using the Cross of St. George in the Mediterranian in 1190 precisely to benefit from the protection of Genoa -- the Doge was paid an annual tribute for the privilege of this use. Since Genoa became the ally of Constantinople under the Palaeologi, I wonder if the banner actually reflects that alliance. In modern custom, the upper left corner, the canton, is the key quarter, so the quartering we see could be something used in the first place by the Genoese. The Romans would have no reason to shun St. George, but I am not otherwise aware of him being particularly iconic for the identity of Romania -- as I have noted, Byzantine histories have little discussion of such symbols. There is also the issue of just how and when the red cross on white becomes associated with St. George. In 1188, red on white was chosen for the Crusaders of France and white on red for those of England, but this was apparently a random assignment and did not involve any preexisting attachment of France, or of these colors, for St. George. If St. George was the patron of Genoa, this could be the origin of the association. It is curious that the church of the English Varangians in Constantinople was dedicated to St. Nicholas and St. Augustine of Canterbury. One would have expected a church of English warriors to involve St. George, ifSt. George was already associated with England. Since the red on white cross, as a symbol of St. George, has become distinctive of England, I beign to wonder to what extent it actually reflection the history of English involvement with Romania. Indeed, if the Cross of St. George here originated with Genoa, its interpretation as an English symbol could well have been due to the English Varangians themselves, who would have fought under it for many years. It is attested that by

1277,the English cross had settled on the red on white coloring, and this was at the time of perhaps the heyday of English Varangians under Michael VIII -- who wrote a letter about them to King Henry III of England in 1272. I might therefore entertain the speculation whether what became the traditional coloring of the English Cross of St. George might actually have been derived from the Romanian as well as the Genoese versions. This would be a monument unlike any other to the history of the English involvement in Constantinople. Since most histories of England ignore the very existence of English Varangians, the connection of the Cross of St. George to them falls into a kind of secret history. The double headed Eagle is also a Romanian device, said to have been introduced by Michael VIII Palaeologus, with the two heads looking towards the Anatolian and European halves of the Empire, as the Emperor did from Constantinople. Or, Donald M. Nicol [Byzantium and Venice, a Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 249] says, it was adopted by Andronicus II to symbolize the division of authority with his grandson, Andronicus III -- though it far outlasted that particular division. Eagles were used by many to imply Roman antecedents, but the double headed eagle was adopted in particular by the Holy Roman Empire, by Imperial Russia, and by the Serbs. It also occurred on the flag used by George Castriota, or Skanderbeg, when he drove the Turks out of Albania, between 1443 and 1463. Thus, when Albania became independent from Turkey, Skanderbeg's flag was revived. In the last days of Romania, as all else was being lost, one domain expanded. That was the Despotate of the Morea, the Mediaeval name of the Peloponnesus. After the Fourth Crusade, the last of the Morea, the fortress of Monembasia, had fallen to the Latins in 1248. But then Monembasia and Laconia were returned in 1261 as ransom for William II de Villehardouin (1246-1278), Prince of Achaea, who had been captured in battle in 1259. On Mt. Taygetos, to the west above the ancient city of Sparta, the castle of Mistra (or Misithra) had been founded by Prince William in 1248. Under the Palaeologi, this grew into a complex of buildings and became a surprising center of art and learning as well as the capital of the Despotate. Indeed, one could even say that the Renaissance began there, since many of its scholars, with their books, fled the Turkish Conquest to Italy, which was ready for them. The Morea became a kind of Viceroyalty under the Cantacuzeni Despots. Under the Palaeologi, starting in 1383, the Despot (sometimes more than one) was usually a son or brother of the Emperor. The last Emperor, Constantine XI, began as a Despot of Morea. He very nearly acquired Athens in 1435. His brother, the last Despot, Thomas, married the Heiress of Achaea and came into possession of the Principality and all the Peloponnesus in 1432. By then there was little time left for further successes. The last thing left to Thomas by the Ottomans was, again, the fortress of Monembasia. Thomas never took the obvious step of declaring himself the new Emperor in succession to his brother, and he turned over Monembasia to the Pope in 1461. The Pope thus became, as Popes had long desired, the ruler of all the Roman Empire.

The Fall of Constantinople, on May 29, 1453, is one of the most formative, epochal, colorful, and dramatic episodes in world history. As the final end of the Roman Empire, it was a much more revolutionary and catastrophic change than the "fall" of the Western Empire in 476, in which power remained in the same hands of the current magister militum. That the greatest Christian city of the Middle Ages should pass to Islm held a symbolism that was lost on none. But the defenders had little active help from a Europe that four hundred years earlier had launched armies all the way to Jerusalem. The most active help was from an unofficialItalian contingent from Genoa (which officially did not want to break relations with the Ottomans), led by the accomplished soldier Giovanni Giustiniani Longo. Giustiniani was perhaps militarily the most effective leader of the defense. When he was wounded and left the walls, one is then not surprised to learn that the city fell on that day. As the last Emperor's name, Constantine XI, recalls the founder of the city, Giustiniani's name echoes the Emperor, Justinian, who recovered Genoa itself from the Ostrogoths. But it was only the introduction of cannon that made the breach in the Long Walls possible at all. Because of all that it is a little puzzling that there has never been, to my knowledge, a Hollywood movie about the event. This may have been in great measure because of the scale of the location. The Theodosian Land Walls of Constantinople are 6.5 kilometers long, almost 4 miles. Since the ruins of the walls could not be used, and the whole length could not be built (as the whole Alamo was build by John Wayne for The Alamo), it would have been necessary to use models, which, with the older technology, would have looked very cheesy. Models now, however, can look much, much better -- the models for Lord of the Rings (2001) even came to be called "big-atures" instead of "miniatures" they were so large; and even better than that, shots can be done digitally. This would also work for the other problem, which would be showing the general situation of the city between the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn. A live shot of the modern buildings would not help. Now, however, the whole thing could be done digitally, or live shots could be digitalized and edited, to remove modern buildings and render mediaeval ones. This would also help with scenes in Sancta Sophia. The movie would have to show church services there, but my understanding is that these are not allowed in the modern building, even though it is now a secularized museum rather than the mosque it became at the Conquest (there is a small Islamic chapel, but not a Christian one). No problem. All we need is a photograph, and Industrial Light and Magic can put Constantine XI and the whole gang right into it with all the paraphernalia of the Greek Orthodox Church. Even so, it is questionable how interested Hollywood will ever

be, even after Gladiator, and even when the legendary material, like the Virgin Mary retrieving her Icon, or the various versions of the death of Constantine, simply cry out for cinematic representation. With the present conflicts involving Islm, some might consider the whole topic inflammatory; and it is very possible that Turkey would not allow location filming for such a movie. The surname Palaeologus survives today, but it is not clear that any modern Palaeologi are descendants of the Imperial family. In the genealogy, we see considerable intermarriage outside the Empire, even to Tsars of Bulgaria. The marriage of Zo-Sophia to Ivan III of Moscow is the one most filled with portent, but the last Russian Tsar to be their descendant was Theodore I (1584-1598). John Julius Norwich (Byzantium, The Decline and Fall, Knopf, 1996, pp.447-448) notes that there is buried in St. Leonard's church in Landulph, Cornwall, England a "Theodore Paleologus" (d.1636) from Italy, who is said to have been a direct descendant of John, son of Thomas, Despot of the Morea. However, Thomas is not known to have had a son John, and so the claim of descent, regardless of any other merits, is questionable. Theodore had a son Ferdinand, who died in Barbados in 1678. Ferdinand had a son "Theodorious," who returned to England and died in 1693, leaving a daughter, "Godscall," whose fate is unknown.

What John Norwich seems to have missed is that there were undoubted lines of Palaeologi (Paleologhi) in Italy, descended from the Emperor Andronicus II, whose second wife was Yolanda, the Heiress of the Margraves of Montferrat. While Andronicus's eldest son succeeded in Constantinople, his son by Yolanda, Theodore, succeeded to Montferrat. The main line of the Palaeologi of Montferrat continued until the death of the Marchioness Margaret in 1556. But branch lines continued much longer, perhaps even to the 20th century. This is covered in theErzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.260261], which, however, only indicates that the lines continue after the 16th century. The Theodore buried in Cornwall could very well have simply gotten confused about his genealogy. He might have been a genuine Paleologo from Italy. While there may or may not be surviving Imperial Palaeologi, Constantine XI lives on in legend. When the Turks had manifestly broken through and the Fall of the City imminent, the Emperor reportedly threw off the Imperial Regalia and disappeared into the thick of the fight. There is no doubt that he died. A body was later identified and a head displayed, but some doubt remains about the identification. A story arose that Constantine sleeps under the Golden Gate (like Barbarossa under the Kyffhuser), or that he would reenter the City through that Gate. Generations of Turkish governments took these stories with sufficient seriousness that the Golden Gate remains bricked up to this very day.

6. ROMNIANS WALLACHIA Tihomir Ioan Basarab I c.1290-1310 Voivode, Prince 1317-1352 Dragosh Nicholas Alexander 1352-1364 Sas Balc Bogdan I the Founder Vladislav I Vlaicu Radu I Dan I Mircea the Old Vlad I 1364-1377 1377-1383 1383-1386 1386-1418 part, 1394-1397 Ologul (Iuga) 1399-1400 Latcu Costea Petru I al Mushatei Roman I Stephen I Voivode, Prince 13521353 1354-1358 1359 Prince 13591365 1365-1373 1373-1375 1375-1391 1391-1394 1394-1399 MOLDAVIA

Initial Ottoman Control, 1395 Michael I Dan II 1418-1420 1420-1431

Alexander the Good 1400-1432 1432-1433, 1435-1442

Radu II the 1421, 1423, & Poor 1447 Alexander I 1431-1436 Vlad II Dracul Mircea Basarab II 1436-1442, 1443, 1447 1442 1442-1443 Prince ofTransylvania, 1441-1456 Regent ofHungary, 1446-1456 1447 1447-1448, Vladslav II 1448-1456 Vlad III Tepesh,

Ilias, Elias

Stephen II Petru II Roman II

1433-1447 1444-1445, 1447, 14481449 1447-1448

Wallach, as in Wallachia (or Walachi a), is a cognate of the English words "Welsh" and "Wales." We get the same word in German, as Welsch or Walsch, from Old High German Walah or Walh. In Old English it was Wealh or Walh. In Mediaeval German, we see Walen used to mean Italy in the description of the titles of the Holy Roman Emperor by the Sachsenspiegel -Saxon Mirror, a legal text of 1230 -- the Emperor is the Here der Walen, the "Lord of Italy." We see that word today in the names of the Walensee (or Wallense e) and Walenstadt in Switzerland, where it means, what? the "lake of the Italians" or the "city of the Italians"? Well, probably not. Welschen originally was a German word for Celts (perhaps from the name of the Celtic tribe, the Volcae, in Latin) and then the Romano-Celts and then just for Romans. In Switzerland, the Walen place names commemorate the presence of Romance speakers at the boundary or within the area taken over by German speakers

Iancu de Hunedoara (Jnos Hunyadi)

Ciubar

1448-1449

Alexandrel Bogdan II Petru Aron

1449, 14521454, 1455 1449-1451 1451-1452, 1454-1455, 1455-1457,

1448, 1456-

-- though the area around the Walensee is now overwhelmingly German speaking. In Switzerland we do have Italian speakers, but there is also a separate Romance language, Romansh, part of the Rhaeto-Romance group (Rtoromanische Sprache -- named after the Roman province of Raetia). Welsch can mean different things in different places. In Swiss German, it tends to mean the French language in Switzerland (which, in French, is Romandspoken in Romandie -- a dialect of Franco-Provenal or Arpitan). In increasingly archaic Standard German (it is not listed in my Cassell's German Dictionary), it can mean, indeed, Italian. And, as we have seen, the very similar English "Welsh" will mean the Celtic speaking Britons of Wales (Cymru in Welsh, Cambria in Latin). Wealh in Old English apparently was used to indicate pockets of British settlement after the conquest of the Angles, Saxons, etc., as in the place-names Walcot, Walden, Walford, and Wallington. We also have English and Scots surnames, like Wallace, Walsh, and Waugh, that have the root (cf. A Dictionary of Surnames, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp.563-564, 568). We get Valland used in Icelandic for France (Francia Occidentalis). Even now, Walloon is used for French speakers in Belgium. This Germanic word for Romans seems to have been left, perhaps by the Goths, in the Balkans. It turns up as Vlach in Czech, one of many words for the Romance language, and its speakers, in Slavic languages. The Latin form "Blachus" and the Greek "Vlakhos" also occur. We see surnames in Polish, Wloch, Russian, Volokhov, (the Uralic language) Hungarian, Olasz, etc. In modern parlance, the convention for some time was that Romance speakers south of the Danube spoke "Vlach" and those north of the Danube spoke "Romanian." "Romanian" is now also coming to be used for the languages (Arumanian, etc.) south of the Danube also, with "Daco-Romanian" used to specific the north of the Danube language. The Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia are the first Vlach/Romanian states that we see north of the Danube. They appear in the period after incursions from nomadic Steppe empires ceased. They were never subject to the Roman Emperors in Constantinople, and they occupied territories that had been abandoned by the Roman Empire in the Third Century, or never occupied by it in the first place. The arrival of the Turks subjected them to Ottoman suzerainty, but this was of varying rigor. The lines of Princes continued, but by 1711 the Sult.n began to sell the seats to Greek tax farmers, a destructive practice that continued until 1821.

The most famous person in these lines is certainly Prince Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia. In legend and horror, one might almost say romance, this cruel man has grown into the paradigmatic vampire, Count Dracula, though his home has been slightly relocated, from Wallachia to Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains (between Transylvania and Moldavia). For a while, I was under the impression that Prince Vlad Dracul (1436-1442, 1443, 1447) was Vlad the Impaler. However, a Romanian correspondent straightened me out, that Prince Vlad the Impaler was not Vlad Dracul but instead the subsequent Prince Vlad T,epesh (1448, 1456-1462, 1476, also "Vlad Draculea"), his son. The correspondent also pointed out the interesting career of Iancu de Hunedoara (Jnos Hunyadi) as Prince of Transylvania and Regent of Hungary, for which links have been installed. Vlad the Impaler's career had many ups and downs. Once while in exile in Hungary, he married a sister of the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus (Latin corvinus, crow or raven-like), who himself happened to be the son of Iancu de Hunedoara. The association of Vlad with vampires has now drawn Corvinus into that legend, as we see in the Underworld [2004, 2006, 2009] movies -- although without the slightest reference to the real history of Matthias or de Hunedoara. The title of these rulers was Voivode, a word that we even find in Bram Stoker (Dracula, Penguin Books, 1897, 1993, p.309). This term no longer appears in convenient Romanian or Hungarian dictionaries, for any of its meanings (c.f. NTC's Romanian and English Dictonary, Andre Bantas, NTC Publishing Group, 1995; Hippocrene Concise Dictionary, Hungarian, Hungarian-English, English-Hungarian, Gza Takcs, Hippocrene Books, 1996; or Hippocrene Standard Dictionary, English-Hungarian Dictionary, T. Magay & L. Kiss, Hippocrene Books, 1995). Those meanings began with "duke" or "prince" and ultimately declined to merely "governor," which would have been appropriate to Wallachia or Moldavia under the Turks. This word is actually Slavic, and is thus discussed under Eastern Europe, but its ultimate origin was the Roman title (dux, "leader") in Greek, stratlats ("army,"stratos, "leader," elaunein, "to lead"), which was also the source of German Herzog. The Vlach language of the Principalities, not a written language in the Middle Ages, came to be written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The unified country itself became first "Roumania" or "Rumania," later further Latinized into "Romnia," and soon the Cyrillic alphabet was traded in for the Latin alphabet, as the Roman roots of the people were increasingly emphasized. The issue of Romnia and the Vlach language and people is discussed further in "The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History."

In contrast to the original Romania, i.e. the Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum), the north-of-the-Danube state might usefully be characterized as "Lesser Romania" (Romania Minor) on analogy to "Lesser Armenia" in the Taurus; but this would probably be considered insulting by modern Romnians. Perhaps "Later Romania" (Romania Posterior, Recentior) would be better, like theLater Han Dynasty -- making the Empire into the "Former Romania" (Romania Prior), like the Former Han Dynasty. However, since Armenia is rarely called "Greater Armenia" in contrast to Lesser Armenia, we might simply leave Romnia as Romnia and make the contrast with "Greater Romania" (Romania Maior) as the Roman Empire, where clarity is needed. The map shows all the territories that ultimately were assembled into modern Romnia. Transylvania, although predominately Romanian speaking, was part of Hungary all through the Middle Ages right down to the end of World War I. Bessarabia also became part of Romnia at that time, was subsequently annexed to the Soviet Union, and now is the independent, and painfully impoverished, nation of Moldova. The list of Princes here is taken from the Regentenlisten und Stammtafeln zur Geschichte Europas, by Michael F. Feldkamp [Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart, 2002, pp.142144 & 259-261]. Romnia, Lines of Princes Continued Modern Romania Index Rome and Romania Index

Rome and Romania is continued in The Ottoman Sultans, 1290-1924 AD, Successors of Rome: Germania, 395-774, Successors of Rome: Francia, 447-present, Successors of Rome: The Periphery of Francia, and Successors of Rome: Russia, 862-present. Consuls of the Roman Empire Roman Coinage Philosophy of History Home Page
Copyright (c) 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

Rome and Romania, 27 BC-1453 AD, Note 1 Bede identifies several Emperors by number. This includes Claudius, #4, Marcus Aurelius, #14, Diocletian, #33, Gratian, #40, Arcadius, #43, Honorius, #44, Theodosius II, #45, Marcian, #46, and Maurice, #54. This numbering works if we eliminate three of the four Emperors of 69 AD, the ephemeral Emperors of 193 and 218, a couple of them from the Third Century, most of the Tetrarchy and Constantiancoregents, and, most importantly, all of the Western Emperors after Honorius. The latter is especially striking because Bede mentions Valentinian III: "In the year of our Lord 449, Marcian became Emperor with Valentinian and fourty-sixth successor to Augustus" [Bede, A History of the English Church and People, Penguin Classics, translated by Leo Sherley-Price, 1955, 1964, p.55]. Since Theodosius II was already identified as the 45th Emperor, there is no number left for Valentinian (Emperor since 425), let alone Constantius III or John, who had been legitimate Emperors of the West. From Marcian to Maurice, the numbers only work if we then ignore all the rest of the Western Emperors, out of nine of which four were even recognized by the East. So Bede doesn't recognize any. Although writing in the 7th and 8th centuries (673-735), in the days of multiple AngloSaxon kingdoms in Britain, Bede nevertheless had a strong sense of the continued existence of the Roman Empire. He knows that the Empire is now centered in Christian Constantinople, and his awareness of this is strong enough that it actually erases the existence of the last Western Emperors. The idea common now that the Roman Empire fell in 476, wouldn't have made sense to Bede. He didn't even recognize the Emperor who "fell," Romulus Augustulus, as a successor of Augustus (neither did the East, for that matter). Ephemeral and puppet Emperors (whether in the 2nd or 5th centuries) don't make the cut in his reckoning. This is of a piece with most of the rest of Mediaeval opinion and perception, East and West. Since the Schism of 1054 between the Latin and the Greek Churches had not occurred yet, Bede would have seen the contemporary Emperor (a late Heraclian, mostly) invested with all the aura and authority of Constantine the Great. Return to Text Rome and Romania, 27 BC-1453 AD, Note 2 The 2004 movie King Arthur uses some of Littleton and Malcor's information to rework the Arthur legend into something like real history. However, its use of it, and of other history, although meriting an A for effort, involves some confusions and anachronisms. In the movie, the Iazyges are called "Sarmatians," which they were, but the more general name obscures the unique experience of the Iazyges in being settled and assimilated as Roman soldiers. Indeed, that circumstance is ignored, as the movie shows the Sarmatians apparently still living out on the steppe (in yurts) and somehow still obliged in the 5th century to furnish draftees to the Roman army. The Romans, however, were never in any position to send press gangs out onto the steppe, and such a foray in the 5th century,

through Germans and Huns, is unbelievable. Nor is there any reason why Sarmatians well beyond Roman borders should pay any attention to obligations assumed three centuries previously. But the plot of the movie requires that the Saramatians feel exiled during their service in Britain. Instead, the Iazyges, men, women, and children, would have all been settled in Britain; the veterans all would have been given Roman Citizenship as the reward of their service; and by the fourth century they would have felt as Roman and/or British as anyone. The yearning of Arthur's men to go home is thus a purely fictional device. That Arthur himself still bears the name of Artorius Castus, his ancestor, is a fictional device also, but actually a rather clever and not impossible one. The background offered in the movie about Sarmatian service in the Roman army leaves out that this involved the war fought by Marcus Aurelius featured in the movie Gladiator. A tribute to Gladiator might have been made but isn't. Instead, we get a gross anachronism, as the shields of what would have been Marcus's army in 175 AD already bear the Chi-Rho symbol of Constantine's Christianity. This may have just been a matter of economy in the prop department, where all the shields were prepared for the 5th century army. However, even this was a mistake, since we know from the Notitia Dignitatum that there were a great many designs used on Roman shields in the Christian Empire, including, remarkably, the first attested instance of the Chinese swirling YinYang symbol. Shields were unique and distinctive to the units. Beyond this, almost all the history in the movie is confused. The Western Emperor is not even mentioned, and the Pope is portrayed as directing political and military events. This is what Mediaeval Popeswanted to do, but it has nothing to do with the 5th or 6th centuries, when the Popes had no such power and would not have imagined that they did. Actual Italian Romans are portrayed unpleasantly, which creates a distinction (and a conflict) that wouldn't have existed in Late Antiquity. In general, Romans were Romans -- the movie perpetuates the idea that "Rome" meant the City, when this limitation was long gone. More importantly, the Romans never deliberately withdrew from Britain, and certainly not as late or as callously as shown in the movie. The usurper Constantine (407-411) stripped Britain of legions in order to invade Gaul and seize the Throne. When he was defeated, Honorius had to inform the British that, with the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans raging across Gaul and Spain, the forces simply did not exist to re-garrison Britain. Since the battle of Badon Hill is supposed to have happened eighty to a hundred years later, there is a fair bit of history that the movie reduces, in effect, to a couple of days. Finally, we have Saxons so confused or foolish as to land in Britain north of Hadrian's Wall. This would not have done them much good (as is obvious in the movie) and was way, way out of their way. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes all crossed the North Sea and landed well south of the Wall. Only Vikings from Norway would later show any interest in the future Scotland. Finally, an early sequence in the movie has Arthur venturing north of the Wall to retrieve a Roman settler. What is this guy doing there? And how could his estate survive, surrounded by hostile Picts, especially when he treats the locals with appalling cruelty? This doesn't pass minimal standards of credibility. The latter device may have some historical connection. We are told that St. Patrick wrote a letter to Ceretic (or Coroticus), a Briton or Roman governing the local tribe of the British Damnonii, complaining about his practice of selling Irish captives as slaves to the

Picts. Ceretic was the beginning of the British Kings of Strathclyde. This is the right era, since Ceretic is supposed to have reigned c.450's-470's, whileSt. Patrick died in 461, and the right place, north of Hadrian's Wall. If this is what the movie is referring to, it fails to distinguish between Britons, Picts, and Irish; and Ceretic is certainly in no need of being rescued by Romans for cruelty to those he ruled. The cruelty would have been to one set of pagans (i.e. the Irish in Scotland, the Scots, who were still pagan until converted by St. Columba [d.597], although St. Patrick was meanwhile converting the Irish in Ireland) being sold to another set of pagans (the Picts). Although St. Patrick's solicitude for the Irish anywhere is understandable, Christians in general did not worry about enslaving pagans -- which is why the word "slave" is derived from "Slav," who were enslaved long before they converted to Christianity. The peculiar or anachronistic devices in the movie all serve to create dramatic tension and conflict, which is well within understandable poet license. In this it is perhaps moderately successful, but some distortions seem gratuitous, especially the negative impression left of Christianity. Pagans were generally tolerated at the time (not tortured or starved to death), but the Army and probably the Britons were overwhelming Christian. That Arthur found himself on the wrong side of one of the obscure contemporary theological disputes is a cute touch (based on the British monk Pelagius, whose teaching was condemned in 418) but is obviously introduced merely as a device to alienate him from the Church and from Rome. This fits the plot of the movie but cannot have had much to do with the substantive problems facing 5th century Britons. The matter in dispute, free will versus predestination, was never wholly settled to the complete denial of one or the other. Indeed, Catholic orthodoxy was more favorable to free will than Protestants like John Calvin would be later. Return to Text Rome and Romania, 27 BC-1453 AD, Note 3 Sancta Sophia is Latin for "Saint Sophia" or, since sopha is Greek for "wisdom," "Sacred Wisdom." This is not the form of the name usually seen. Justinian spoke Latin, but in time Greek became the Court language at Constantinople. In Greek the Church was Hgia Sopha, which locally would have been the name used from the beginning. As Mediaeval Greek developed, however, the "h" ceased to be pronounced and the "g" softened into a "y." This later pronunciation is even preserved in the Turkish name of the Church, Aya Sofya. For many years, the version I seem to remember seeing was Santa Sophia, which would have to be Italian. Because of the later Italian influence in Romania, this version of the name certainly would have been used. Or, I may have just been seeing "St. Sophia" and thought of it as Santa because of living amid all the Spanish place names in California, where sancta has also become santa (e.g. Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Santa Cruz, etc.).

As it happens, it must be the case that I was seeing "Santa Sophia," because I see it now, in the Fourteen Byzantine Rulers by Michael Psellus [translated by E.R.A. Sewter, Penguin, 1966]. In the translator's introduction we've got "Santa Sophia" on page 10. Return to Text

Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, and Other Reflections on Roman History
What do you think of the state of Romania? Does it stand as from the beginning, or has it been diminished?
Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati, 634 AD, A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602 [The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986], p. 316

Decadence
Everyone knows why the Roman Empire fell. It became "decadent," meaning weak and immoral. The Romans were so busy at their orgies (often with their siblings), throwing Christians to the lions, poisoning their spouses, parents, and children, and eating exotic parts of animals (like hummingbird tongues), in between visits to the vomitorium so they could eat more, that they didn't notice all the Germans gathering on the frontiers. Then the ruthless pagan Germans rode in, trampled under their horses' hooves the few poor debauched legionnaires who remained, still foolishly fighting on foot, sacked Rome, destroyed civilization, overthrew the last emperor in 476, and ushered in the Dark Ages, from which Europe only emerged with the Renaissance, a thousand years later, when gunpowder finally could defeat mounted warriors. As the columnist Joseph Sobran wrote recently: Christianity built a new civilization on the "ruins" of the old.

Although accepted by no real historians, this cartoonish image looms large in popular discourse, is lovingly promoted in the movies, like Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1970), is often assumed in political and moral debates -- where some practice (e.g. pornography) or policy (e.g. gay rights) is frequently said to represent the decadence that brought about the Fall of Rome -- and is inadvertently often reinforced by various kinds of serious scholarship. A very fine book by George C. Brauer, Jr., published in 1967, was called The Young Emperors: Rome, A.D. 193-244. It was about a period in which several emperors were in fact young men, usually coming to the throne because of some hereditary connections. Reissued in 1995, the very same book was retitled: The Decadent Emperors: Power and Depravity in Third-Century Rome. This is a sexier title; and, since the "young emperors" of the period did include a couple of the more vicious, alarming, and bizarre characters among Roman emperors, Caracalla and Elagabalus, one is not disappointed to read the book for evidence of Roman decadence. Similarly, another very fine book, by Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures, A World View, published in 1996, states flatly in its section on Jewish history, "the last Roman emperor was overthrown in 476 A.D." [p. 238]. Reinforcing the idea that the German invaders were pagan hordes who only slowly came to Christianity, morality, and civilization, Sowell says: "After the Visigoths began to abandon paganism for Christianity, beginning with the Visigothic King Reccared in 589, a new era began" [p. 244]. A little digging, however, and the whole idea of Roman "decadence" begins to look more than a little peculiar. The list of particularly cruel, dissolute, and outrageous emperors -- Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus -- although impressive, comes to an end more than two hundred years (222-476) before the "Fall" of the Empire -- and the recent two hour History Channelspecial, "Roman Vice," didn't even manage to make it past Nero (implying that the whole history of the Empire was just more of same). But if Rome fell because Elagabalus wanted to marry a gladiator, then the effect was delayed, extraordinarily, by longer than it took the United States to get from George Washington to Bill Clinton. What happened during that period?

Well, with the Germans, indeed, on the frontiers (along with the Persians, Alans, etc.), the emperors up until 395 were mostly soldiers. They were a pretty grim lot, usually engaged in pretty grim business. Diocletian (284-305) doesn't seem to have spent much time in thevomitorium -- though, as the only emperor ever to actually retire from office, he did build a nice retirement village at Split (Spalatum) in Dalmatia (now Croatia). He said he would rather grow vegetables than try to regain the throne. Not our idea of the typical Roman emperor. More like Candide. Ethnically, Diocletian is supposed, like several of his colleagues, to have been an Illyrian, a people whose modern descedants might be the Albanians. Be that as it may, he is the first emperor (after, well, Philip the Arab) with a certifiably Greek name: Diocls. This is a name similar in form to Heracles (Hras klos, the "fame/glory of Hera"), with the stem for "Zeus" substituted for the stem for "Hera" (Dis klos, the "fame/glory of Zeus"). This was Latinized to Diocletianus when Diocls became Emperor. Diocletian also managed to go his entire reign with only one brief, ceremonial visit to Rome. The possession of the City, or residence there, was no longer of much political significance. Nobody had to "march on Rome," as Septimius Severus did, to become Emperor. Shortly after Diocletian, the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and all the charming archaic features of paganism, naked athletes at the Olympics, priestesses of Apollo in trances, ithyphallic Hermae on street corners, priests of Astarte cutting off their genitals, orgiastic Dionysiacs, etc., began to disappear. The empire of 476 was therefore, except for philosophers and yokels (paganus, "pagan," means "rural"), in an official Christian hammerlock. Steady political and legal pressure would eventually eradicate the old religions and gods. The Roman army, which had previously been strongly Mithraic, showed its sympathies by electing the Christian Jovian on the death of the pagan Julian in 363, and then the Christian Valentinian I, who would remove the Altar of Victory from the Senate in Rome, in 364. Indeed, at the time, the accusation was that Christianity itself was the cause of the empire's problems. What did they expect when they scorned Victory herself? St. Augustine of Hippo answered this charge in the City of God by denying that it even mattered -- only the City of God was eternal -- even as the Vandals took Hippo in the year of his own death. The charge was later taken up by Edward Gibbon, who saw religious superstition as more enervating than the antics of any Caligula or Elagabalus. Such a charge was still being repeated by James G. Frazer in his classic The Golden Bough [1890, 1900, 1906-15, note]. The picture of ferocious pagan hordes overcoming, not intoxicated catamites, but ascetic and otherworldly Christians is a little different from the standard one, but perhaps it would do....if not for another little problem: The Goths, who defeated and killed the emperor Valens at Adrianople in 378, and who later established kingdoms in Spain (the Visigoths, 416-711) and Italy (the Ostrogoths, 493-553), were themselves literate Christians, converted by St. Wulfila (or Ulfilas, c.311-c.383, "Little Wolf"), who also designed the alphabet to write Gothic (which thus became the first written Germanic language) [note]. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 310, the Empire was understandably shocked, but these savage hordes....respected the churches! They had entered the Empire by permission as refugees from the Huns and only went to war

because of their mistreatment: They had been reduced by the Romans to selling themselves into slavery for the sake of meals of rat meat -- at a rate of one rat for one slave. This now makes one wonder whom to call the barbarians. The Visigothic king Reccared in 589 was not converting from paganism to Christianity, but from the heterodox Arian form of Christianity, advocated by Wulfila himself, to orthodox Catholicism. That made the Pope very happy, but it did not exactly effect a sea change in Visigothic religious practice. Similarly, the other German tribes who did the most damage to the Empire, the Vandals and Lombards, had also been Christians for some time. The only major German tribe that wasn't Christian was the Franks, and they never even got near Rome, much less sacked it. The Franks mostly stepped in after Roman authority had already collapsed in Gaul; but the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis (481-511) to Catholicism does make it sound like German tribes catching up with civilization. Not quite. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric (493-526) oversaw as much civilization in Italy as it had had in a while. Great literature was produced by Cassiodorus (c.490-c.583) and Boethius (476-524). Theodoric's tomb at Ravenna later became the model for a chapel built by Charlemagne at Aachen -- and an equestrian statue of Theodoric was actually removed to Aachen by Charlemagne. Italy certainly suffered more from the Roman reconquest (536-552) than from the Germanic occupation. Like Diocletian, Theodoric only bothered to visit the City of Rome once, on the 30th anniversary of his rule. Another problem is with the "Fall" itself. No German chieftain sacked Rome or killed an emperor in 476. Instead, an officer in the army, Odoacer, who did happen to be German, deposed the commander of the army (the Magister Militum, "Master of Soliders"), Orestes. Since the titular emperor was Orestes's young son, known as "Augustulus," the "little Augustus," Odoacer sent him packing to a monastery. These events, also, took place, not in Rome, but in Ravenna, which had been the capital for most of the century. In the normal course of things, Odoacer would have set up his own titular emperor and then seen about getting recognition from the eastern emperor in Constantinople. That would be difficult, since the eastern emperor already recognized someone else as western emperor: Julius Nepos, who had been overthrown by Orestes in 475 but who was still holding out in Dalmatia (in Diocletian's own retirement palace, which made a very nice fortified town all through the Middle Ages). As it happened, Odoacer decided not to bother with a titular western emperor. He sent the imperial regalia back to Constantinople and informed the emperor that he would be content with his Roman military title and recognition as a German king. The emperor agreed, and before long Odoacer took care of Julius Nepos as well (480). Thus Rome (or Ravenna) "fell" in 476 (or 480) less with a bang than with a whimper, and without noticeable institutional change or unaccustomed violence -- the fall of Constantinople in 1453 would be a far different matter. [note].

Rome and Romania

But wait a minute! "Eastern emperor"! "Constantinople"! What was that all about? Indeed, if word that "the last Roman emperor was overthrown in 476 A.D." got back to

the people of that year, it would have come as a very great surprise to all, and especially to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople. Not only was he a Latin speaking Roman emperor, but after Odoacer's coup in 476, he was the Roman emperor, with the regalia of the West duly returned to him. And on his throne emperors continued to sit for the next thousand years, reckoning their direct succession from Augustus Caesar. How this happened of course goes back to Diocletian and Constantine again. Diocletian realized that it was so much trouble for an emperor to rush from the Rhine to the Danube to the Euphrates that he decided to appoint some colleagues to share his authority. First there was a coemperor, Maximian, then two junior colleagues, Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. The senior emperors were the Augusti, and the junior emperors and heirs apparent were Caesares. Diocletian then took for himself the business of the eastern half of the empire, with Galerius to help, and left the west to Maximian, with Constantius to help. The system is called the "Tetrarchy," the "Rule of Four." Diocletian also established a precedent by retiring in 305, after twenty years of rule (perhaps with the urging of Galerius). He also prevailed upon Maximian to do the same, with Galerius and Constantius becoming Augusti, appointing two new Caesars, Severus and Maximinus Daia. This was the closest Rome ever got to a constitutional, non-hereditary system of rule. It didn't end up working very well, but it was, with marriage alliances, still close to the system of Imperial adoption used by the Antonines. Trouble arrived soon enough. Constantius Chlorus died unexpectedly at York (like Septimius Severus) in 306. His troops, enthusiastic about him and his family, immediately elevated his son Constantine to his position. This was irregular, but Galerius consented in ill grace as long as Constantine agreed to the status of Caesar rather than Augustus. Constantine agreed, and the Caesar Severus was recognized as the new western Augustus. Unfortunately, Severus had a problem. Since Constantius had now been succeeded by his son, Maximian's own son Maxentius didn't want to be left out. He seized Italy and even persuaded his father to come out of retirement. When Severus tried to establish himself in Italy, he was killed in battle.

This left everything pretty much a shambles, but we need not worry too much about that. Constantine eventually defeated and killed Maxentius (in 312), an event around which the fateful story of his vision of the Cross (or something) grew up, and in the end he assumed sole rule of the Empire by defeating Galerius's successor Licinius (who had been appointed in 308) in 324. But this was now a new empire. Not only did Constantine begin to institute Christianity, but the city of Rome itself had along the way assumed a very secondary importance in the life of the state. As we have seen, Diocletian seems to have visited the city only once. Rome had become Romania: a great Empire with a City, rather than a great City with a Empire. As Peter Heather puts it [The Fall of the Roman Empire, Oxford, 2006], Rome was now an "inside-out" Empire -- the center and the periphery had exchanged places (as illustrated in the animation at left). This transformation is scrupulously ignored in popular treatments of the Roman Empire, even in apparently well researched presentations on venues like the History Channel. They treat the fate of the Empire as tied to the fate of the City, when their stories had long been separated and the City had ceased to be the center of events, politically, culturally, or militarily [note]. All free Roman subjects had been citizens since Caracalla. The emperors who restored the empire in the Third Century, Claudius II, Aurelian, and Diocletian, had all come from Illyricum. There was little time for the emperors to spend at Rome; and for military reasons, Milan (Mediolanum) and later Ravenna became the practical western capitals, as Diocletian had taken up residence at Nicomedia (the modern Turkish Izmit, badly damaged by an earthquake in 1999) in Bithynia. The Roman citizens of the city of Rome were now distinct in no truly important way from the rest of the empire, though they still continued to receive subsidized food shipments and formal respects. "Roman" now meant the Empire and the citizens, and only secondarily the City [note]. Thus, Christianity did not build a new civilization on the ruins of the old, it was the old civilization (the ruins came later), transformed by a religion that had grown up out of its own internal elements: the uncompromising Monotheism, exclusivity, historical drama,

and destiny of Judaism, the divine King so dear to the Egyptians, the Hellenistic mystery religion's promise of immortality through initiation, the elaborate doctrine and argumentation of Greek metaphysics, and finally the unity and universality that Aurelian and Diocletian had already tried to institute through a cult of Sl Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun." The birthday of Christ was even conveniently moved to the birthday of the solar Mithras: December 25th (it's still on January 6th in Armenian chuches); and it is noteworthy how the push for the divinity of Christ consistently came from the Egyptians -- Athanasius of Alexandria had to contend with the Arian sympathies of several emperors. Orthodoxy did not firmly settle on Athanasianism until Theodosius I. But then the Egyptians continued pushing: The orthdoxy of both divine and human natures for Christ was not good enough; the Egyptians didn't like the idea of two natures. The most extreme version was that the one nature was entirely divine. Condemned at Chalcedon, the Monophysite ("One Nature") doctrine remains the view of Egyptian Christians, the Copts, to this day (though most now regard the one nature as both human and divine). But we have one last echo of Mithras: the sacred day of Christians is Sunday, established by Constantine, not because it is the day of the Resurrection, but because it is "the day celebrated by veneration of the sun itself" (diem solis veneratione sui celebrem).

Christianity thus brewed itself up over a couple of centuries as the first multicultural religion, a peculiarly Roman, which is to say a Latinized, Hellenistic, Middle Eastern religion. Indeed, the official name of the "Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church" (Sancta Romana Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia) doesn't even give much of a hint that it refers to Christianity, though you know for sure it has something to do with Rome. The match of religion with times is evident enough in the circumstance that only one emperor subsequent to Constantine, Julian the Apostate, briefly and tragicomically tried to return to the old gods. Constantine then built his New Rome (Roma Nova), better situated militarily than the old, a Christian Rome, decorated with the spoils of the dying paganism (including great bronze horses from Delphi, later relocated to Venice, and the Wonder of the World Statue of Zeus from Olympia, whose face evidently inspired portraits of Christ), but also with its own Senate, its own Consuls, its own chariot races (in the hippodrome), its own factional riots (between the Greens and the Blues), and its own grain subsidies, drawn from Egypt and North Africa like those of Rome itself. The site was a natural wonder

and a military engineer's dream, perhaps more beautifully situated, on hills flanked by water, than any great modern city save San Francisco or Hong Kong. Even the Ottoman City was described thus by English traveller George Sandys (15781644) in 1610: There is hardly in nature a more delicate object, if beheld from the sea or adjoyning mountains: the loftie and beautifull cypresse trees so intermixed with the buildings that it seemeth to present a city in a wood to the pleased beholders. Whose seven aspiring heads (for on so many hils and no more, they say it is seated) are most of them crowned with magnificent mosques, all of white marble round in forme... [quoted by Jonathan Harris, Constantinople, Capital of Byzantium, Hambledon Continuum, London, New York, 2007, p.190, original spelling] This City became Constantinopolis, the City of Constantine, later shortened in Greek to Stamboul, and now remembered in Turkish as Istanbul [note]. We see Michael Psellus in the 11th Century surprisingly contrasting "the ancient and lesser Rome, and the later, more powerful city" [!, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Penguin, 1966, p.177]. It is now hard to grasp Constantinople as a greater city than Rome, but there would have been little in Rome's favor in Psellus' day. The great triple land wall of Constantinople, with almost two hundred towers, finished under Theodosius II (408-450), was perhaps the greatest fortification in world history, standing unbreached, through countless sieges, against Germans, Huns, Avars, Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, Vikings, Cumans, Crusaders, Mongols, and Turks, for more than a thousand years, protected by the Blessed Virgin of the miraculous Spring of Blachernae, finally to shatter only under the cannonballs of the Sultn Meh.med II. Even so, in the midst of Istanbul, it mostly still remains standing, its breaches merely allowing modern streets to pass [note].

"Oh!" you say, "You mean Byzantium! That's not Empire! That's some horrible That certainly would have been news to Zeno, or to Justinian (527-565), or the 11th century (9631025). "Byzantium," although the original Greek city where was founded, and often used for the Procopius), was not a word that was to the Empire, or to anything about it, inhabitants, or even its enemies. The always of the "Romans," Rhmaioiin Arabs and Turks the Empire and land simply Rm, , "Rome" [note]. expanded from Old Rome into all focused and contracted from the onto the New Rome. "Byzantium" is will and scorn adopted and modern historians, who didn't want to did not, after all, "fall," leaving them eventual and proper heirs. As G.W. Brown, and Oleg Grabar say, the Empire" is "a modern misnomer informed contempt" (Late Antiquity, Postclassical World, Belknap Press, Press, 1999, p.vii). When Liutprand (c.922-972) and Frankish enjoys, in from Otto I, with their own successors of Rome, arrived at the Nicephorus Phocas in 968, they bore from the Pope) addressed to the Greeks." For this "sinful audacity," in prison [Jonathan Harris, Constantinople, Continuum, Evidently even they had not heard of name of the Empire [note]. While "Byzantium" is indeed used convience and custom by most the awkward question of when "Byzantium" begins. If Rome "fell" "Byzantium" should begin there; but rarely used. Since Constantinople explained, Byzantine histories with Constantine, often in 324, when

the Roman medieval thing!" to Constantine, or even to Basil II in name of the Constantinople City (as by ever used to refer by its rulers, its emperor was Greek; and to were As Roman identity Romania, it shrinking Empire in fact a term of ill substituted by admit that Rome personally as the Bowersock, Peter term "Byzantine redolent of illA Guide to the Harvard University of Cremona an embassy pretentions as Court of a letter (evidently "emperor of the they were thrown 2007, p.62]. "Byzantium" as the merely as a term of historians, there is "Rome" ends and in 476, then clearly this boundary is itself must be commonly begin Constantine had

defeated Lincinius and acquired the East. This is what one finds in A.A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire [University of Wisconsin Press, 1961], George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State [Rutgers University Press, 1969], and John Julius Norwich, Byzantium, The Early Centuries [Knopf, 1989]. On the other hand, David R. Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values [Seaby, 1987] is the direct continuation of hisRoman Coins and Their Values [Seaby, 1988], and he chooses to make the division at the reign of the Emperor Anastasius just because Anastasius carried out a major reform of the copper coinage. Others take Phocas or Heraclius, under whom the Danube Frontier collapsed and the Arab invasion occurred, as the first "Byzantine" emperors: A.H.M. Jones' monumental and authoritative The Later Roman Empire 284602[Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986] and Mark Whittow's complementary The Making of Byzantium, 600-1015 [University of California Press, 1996] take that approach. We also see this division in Andreas Thiele's Erzhlende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europischen Geschichte, where "Rom" covers genealogies from Julius Caesar to Phocas (Volume II, Part 2, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser II Nord-, Ost- und Sdeuropa, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.262292), while "Byzanz" goes from Heraclius to the Emperors of Trapezond (Volume III, Europiche Kaiser-, Knigs- und Frstenhuser, Ergnzungsband, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, pp.213-236). The most recent thorough history, however, Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society [Stanford University Press, 1997], begins where many of the explanations must begin, with Diocletian himself in 284 -- elsewhere [Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081, Stanford, 1995, p.viii], Treadgold lists possible dates for the beginning of Byzantium as, besides 284, "324, 395, 476, 565, 610, or 717." Whatever point one picks between Diocletian and Heraclius (or Leo III, Treadgold's "717" date), there is clearly a transition period, but all the later empire could still be distinguished from the earlier simply by calling it what its inhabitants did: "Romania." "Byzantine," for whatever reason it is used, still carries a connotation of the mediaeval, dark, nasty, labyrinthine, and treacherous -- the disapproval of even modern and secular Western Europeans for what Mediaeval Latins would dismiss as the Greek "Schismatics." Curious how the attitude stays the same despite the changes in culture, faith, politics, etc. [note]. A final date for the transition could be 750, which is used by Peter Brown and others to terminate "Late Antiquity." This could date the fall of the Omayyads, or the final fall of Ravenna to the Lombards (in 751). Both these events are significant, but they seem like variations on developments already far progressed. So why should modern historians have ever scorned the successors of Augustus in Constantinople? Well, it isn't just them. The scorn goes back a little earlier. Nothing after Alexander Severus (222-235) is quite Roman enough for many scholars. The Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, of which I have the 1959 edition [Funk & Wagnalls, New York], only gives the vocabulary of classical authors from "about 200 B.C. to A.D. 100." Thus a number of late meanings, for words like comes or dux, or late vocabulary altogether, like diocesis (diocese, Greek dioksis), Diocletian's new administrative groupings of provinces, are missing. This leaves one without the connections to the mediaeval and modern meanings of "count," "duke," or "diocese." Obviously the Latin literature or history after 100 A.D. was not worth considering -- a

slight certain to be a disappointment to the great historian of the fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus, or to Flavius Vegetius Renatus, the founder of military science, whose book (De Re Militari) was used straight through the Middle Ages into Modern times, or to Theodosius II and Justinian who took the trouble in the fifth and sixth centuries to gather Roman law together into law codes, or to Justinian's contemporary Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, d.524), whose commentaries on Porphyry's Isagoge (the "Introduction") and Aristotle's On Interpretation, and his On the Consolation of Philosophy, were among the few clues to Greek philosophy preserved in Western Europe until the return of Greek literature beginning in the 12th century. Although Boethius lived under King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths, he was Roman Consul for the year 510, and his sons Consuls for 522. This truncation of Classical Latin literature is also evident in the classic Latin textbook, which I bought in 1967, Frederic M. Wheelock's Latin[Barnes & Noble, 1956, 1966; revised as Wheelock's Latin by Richard A. LaFleur, HarperResource, 2000]. The periods of Latin literature include divisions of the Golden Age, 80 BC-14 AD (with Ciceronian, to 43 BC, and Augustan, from 43, subdivisions), the Silver Age, 14 AD-138 BC (to the death of Hadrian), with an "Archaising Period" coda (to "fill out the 2nd century"), and then the "Patristic Period" all the way to the "Medieval Period," with a conventional cutoff, apparently, around 476, and a great deal of talk about the "Vulgar Latin" used by the Church Fathers [Wheelock, pp.xxv-xxix, LaFleur, pp.xxxiii-xxxvii]. The "Patristic Period" leaves one with the impression that there was no secular Latin literature of the era -- indeed, Wheelock says that "most of the vital literature was the work of Christian leaders, or fathers (patrs)" [p.xxviii] -- and in fact none of the Sententiae Antquae in Wheelock draw on Ammianus or Boethius, though we do get Isidore of Seville (d.636) and the Venerable Bede (d.735) without any cautions that these are Mediaeval and "vulgarized" texts (Boethius and even Bede, but not Isidore, are represented in the Loeb Classical Library). Secular Late Antiquity thus gets ignored and bypassed -- perhaps from a disinclination to admit that it even existed -- without this motivated by any admiration for Chistianity. Similarly, the Oxford History of the Classical World, Volume II, The Roman World (Oxford University Press, 1988), which is 422 large format pages long, devotes a miserable 22 pages to the last two hundred years before 476. The chapter is called "Envoi: On Taking Leave of Antiquity." Evidently, the editors couldn't take leave fast enough. Such impatience can also be seen in the large format and lavishly illustratedChronicle of the Roman Emperors by Chris Scarre (Thames and Hudson, 1995, 1999; 232 pages of text). From Augustus to 235 AD, 52% of the time from Augustus to the "Fall" in 476, is covered by 65% of the text. The crisis of the Third Century, from 235 to 284, and the remaining time, from Diocletian until 476, each receive about 17% of the text, although in time they are (only) 10% and 38%, respectively. Thus, 192 years of Roman history, including a century (the 4th) with extensive ruins and literature, are given less than half the space that one might expect. Closer inspection reveals something else. Not a single pre-476 monument of Constantinople is shown, not the pillars of Claudius II or Constantine, nor the Walls of Theodosius II (though they are at least mentioned). In fact, after the Arch of Constantine and a part of one of his churches in Rome, there is not a single monument or building

illustrated in the text, not even anything from Ravenna, the capital of the last Western Emperors. No wonder things could be wrapped up so quickly. One is left with the false impression, merely scanning the pages, that nothing was built, an impression as false and misleading (though consistent with expectations for decadence or the Dark Ages) as the title of the last chapter, "The Last Emperors," which disposes of everyone after Constantine (139 years -- George Washington to Herbert Hoover) in just ten pages. In The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome, also by Chris Scarre [1995], 75 pages are devoted to the Roman Empire. Of this, 21 pages, 28% of the total, cover everything from Diocletian on. This is better than the Oxford History or the Chronicle, but it still represents 38% of the time. Finally, there is The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy [Thames & Hudson, 2003]. With a text of 214 pages, Part V of the book, "The Army of Late Antiquity," starting with Diocletian, is only 16 pages long, 7% of the total -- again for 38% of the time. For a summary treatment, Goldsworthy does a good job; but for an army that was twice as large as that of the Principate, with a much more complex organization, whose performance involves many very critical historical questions, the lack of proportion is obvious. Thus, while there is a nice two page feature on Julian's Battle of Strasbourg, it is perplexing not to have such a treatment of one of the most important battles in history, the defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople. Indeed, why Valens lost the battle is one of the most important questions in all of Roman, or even world, history. What's the problem? Well, the first two hundred years of Roman history do make a pretty compact cultural and historical unit. The culture and religion are still pagan, the office of emperor maintains some pretense of republican form, Roman power is more or less triumphant and unchallenged, and there are those wonderfully entertaining "decadent" emperors, upon whom every indulgence and sexual excess can be projected (which may actually be what the Roman historians were doing themselves). That takes us from Augustus to Alexander Severus (30 BC to 235 AD). Then we have a world of trouble. Palmyra takes the East. Gaul and Spain break away. The Goths sack Athens. Pirates rake the seas. The Empire seems to be disintegrating. Soon philosophy turns from the grim determination of Stoicism to the otherworldly consolations of mysticism, whether in the pagan Neoplatonism of Plotinus or the new religions like Christianity, Mithraism, or Manicheanism. The emperors, who could no longer survive spending their time on debaucheries in Rome, were not, at first, very mystical; but the Zeitgeist caught up with them in Constantine's Christianity. This is all often too much for the Classicists, whose bias then distorts their estimation even of the facts of Late Antiquity. If inattention to the 3rd century onwards was due to a lack of events, a lack of literature, or a lack of ruins and archaeology, it might make some sense. But none of those things are lacking. It is the interest that is lacking: the 3rd century on is just not the "real" Rome anymore. Classicists are all versions of Livy, whose historiography was driven by moral judgments that Rome was just not what it used to be (see what he says about Cincinnatus). Fortunately, there has been a reaction against this for a while now. Peter Brown's great The World of Late Antiquity 150-750 [HBJ, 1971] zeros in on many myths and misconceptions about the late empire and has inspired great interest and more critical appraisals of the period. Despite the date in the title, Brown essentially begins with the transformations of the 3rd century. This is, in essence, when Rome

became Romania. But to those for whom "Rome" merely means the City, not the Empire, that is the problem. The transformation and universalization of the state means a loss of interest, despite complete continuity, even in language (for a while). The new era for Romania begins neatly enough. The Era of Diocletian, beginning in 284, continued to be used in Egypt long after his death. Indeed, the Era of Diocletian is still used in Egypt by the Egyptian Christians, the Copts, in conjunction with the months of the ancient Egyptian calendar (Thout, etc.) and the leap day that Augustus Caesar imposed on the city of Alexandria in 26 BC. Thus, September 11, 1996, was the first day of the Year 1713 for the Copts. The Anno Domini Era itself was "inspired," if that is the right word, by the Era of Diocletian. In the Sixth Century, Dionysius Exiguus, who was making up the Easter tables for the Julian calendar with Alexandrian astronomical data, was offended that Christians should be using the era of a persecutor of Christians. He thought that Christians should be using an era based on the life of Christ. He didn't get it quite right (Jesus cannot have been born after 4 BC), but his system eventually became universal in Christendom and then simply universal -- now often called the "Common Era." The Copts, of course, had no intention of paying tribute to Diocletian. They call theirs the "Era of Martyrs," in homage to the martyrs, not to the person, of Diocletian. The Era of Diocletian does suggest the unit of a later, or perhaps second, Empire. Its natural end is not 476, but 610, as in Jones and Whittow. The natural period ends, not with the German kingdoms in Italy, Spain, North Africa, and Gaul, two of which were actually restored to Rome by Justinian, but with the collapse of the Danube frontier and the advent of Islm. The emperor Heraclius (610-641), who had to deal with those appalling events, ushers in profound changes in the Empire. As the armies retreated from the shattered frontiers, they were settled in areas of Anatolia intended to support them in the absence of all the revenues from the lost provinces. This was the beginning of the "theme" military divisions, which eventually replaced the old Roman provinces. Also Greek rather than Latin began to be used for all official purposes. Heraclius himself, very symbolically, adopted the Greek title of "king," basileus, in honor of his crushing defeat of the Persian emperor, who had always been called the "Great King," megas basileus -- though the Greek term autokratr, "Autocrat" was always regarded and used as the equivalent ofimperator (a practice that survived in Russia, where the Emperor was officially "Tsar and Autocrat"). Further divisions are clear enough: from 610 to the end of the Macedonian Dynasty in 1059 we have a period, almost exactly covered by Whittow, of disaster, survival, recovery, and triumph. This great story gives us "Middle Romania," when a transformed empire found a new identity, achieved remarkable status and, at least against the Bulgars, exacted a terrible revenge. Finally, from 1059, when the late Macedonian Dynasty had already subverted, through debasement, favoritism, and neglect of the army, the pillars of Middle Romanian power, we have the decline, with periodic partial recoveries (the Comneni & early Palaeologi), all the way down to what John Julius Norwich calls the "almost unbearably tragic" end with the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Whether "Late Byzantium" or "Late Romania," we have the story whereby the Cosmopolitan Empire of Nations, founded on conquest and history and refounded on

religion, vanishes altogether. It is replaced, however, with an Islmic Empire, that of the Turks, Rm and Rumelia, that in some ways, mutatis mutandis, was not unlike Romania. That survived until the last Sult.n was deposed in 1922, and Constantinople ceased being a capital, and a home for Emperors (Tsargrad), for the first time since Constantine.
First Empire Second Empire Third Empire Fourth Empire Fifth Empire ROME EARLY ROMANIA MIDDLE ROMANIA LATE ROMANIA TURKIYA ROMAN EMPIRE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE EARLY BYZANTIUM LATE BYZANTIUM ISLMIC BYZANTIUM 284-610 6101059 10591453 14531922 27 BC-284 AD Era of Diocletian 1327 Era of Diocletian 327-776 Era of Diocletian 776-1170 Era of Diocletian 1170-1639 310 years 326 years 449 years 394 years 469 years

On a timeline, we can see the way this divides up the period (leaving aside the Ottoman sequel). I have extended the "Roman Empire" line up to its traditional termination in 476, which is still significant as the customary boundary between Ancient and Mediaeval Times. In terms of practice, the "Byzantium" line could begin almost anywhere within the "Late Roman Empire" period, or later. The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 itself is one of the traditional termination dates for the Middle Ages, though less popular than Columbus in 1492. [note] With Heraclius the Roman Empire had returned to what in a sense had always been its true character: a Hellenistic Kingdom. When Constantine XI was killed by the Turks in 1453, it was, in many real ways, the end of the Hellenistic world. The meaning of this will be considered in turn; but first, it must be asked: "Well, OK, the Empire of Diocletian and Constantine has a natural transition to the collapse under the miserable emperor Phocas in 602-610, but can the collapse of the western Empire be so easily dismissed? Is 476 really so insigificant? Can the kingdoms of the Germans be so demoted? And why, after all, did the Western Empire collapse?

The Emperors Who Weren't

These are good questions, which brings us back to Odoacer, and his predecessors. The Roman Empire looked fine in 395, the year of the death of Theodosius the Great. The frontiers were secure, orthodoxy was established, the Visigoths were pacified, and Theodosius, doubtlessly with a mind at peace (he had even patched up a nasty

excommunication by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan [not Rome, notice]), left the Empire to his young sons, Honorius and Arcadius, under the protection of his trusted, and in fact trustworthy, commander, Stilicho. Stilicho was Odoacer's first precedessor: a German commander of the Roman army. This might sound odd, but it didn't seem so odd at the time. Germans had long been in the Roman army. Marcus Aurelius, who was Roman enough for any scholar, took a whole tribe of barbarians, the Iazygians (who had fought with Germans but were actually Iranian), into the Roman army. This had not created problems. And the army had always filled up with the most warlike inhabitants of the Empire. At the time, German refugees and interlopers were certainly the most warlike.

But with Stilicho, something was different. His young charges were weak and worthless; and worse, they had divided the Empire into east and west again, and the two courts were intriguing against each other, with Stilicho often caught in the middle. The Visigoths started acting up, and for obscure reasons Stilicho may have avoided, or lost, or been prevented from, having the chance to annihilate them. That, in retrospect, is what needed to be done. Germans in the army was one thing, but an independent, belligerent tribe in the midst of the Empire was something else. Theodosius had allowed, or been compelled to allow (he could not defeat the Goths), this to happen. The Visigoths, after their experience before Adrianople, were not going to be dispersed in settlement or in the army as Roman practice previously would have required. The individual Visigoths who were off in the Roman army at the time of Adrianople had been murdered. So now the tribe stuck together. Arther Ferrill, in The Fall of the Roman Empire, the Military Explanation [Thames and Hudson, London, 1986], identifies this as the fatal, catastrophic mistake in Roman policy. Germans in the Roman army became Romans. Germans in a German tribe remained German; and as the Roman army assimilated itself to the influence of the German model, it lost its advantage of discipline over its German enemies. It became a kind of German tribe itself. Still, this need not have been fatal. Stilicho could have swept aside the intrigue, organized his resources, and annihilated the tribal Visigoths through one simple act: seizing the throne. He didn't, and eventually was murdered by Honorius (in 408). What happened next is revealing: the army seemed to disintegrate. The Visigoths swept into Italy and took Rome in 410, while Honorius sat safe in Ravenna. A Roman Army of Italy remained, but the Goths brought into the army by Stilicho were killed or expelled (many joined the Visigoths). This reduced the effectiveness of the force, perhaps also because of the loss of discipline, to the point that the Visigoths could not be met in battle with any chance of success. In seizing the throne, Stilicho would have lost legitimacy with the East, but by not seizing the throne, Stilicho and his successors passed on after them weak civilian governments, often with young emperors and scheming regents, at a time when the ferocity of third century warrior emperors was badly needed again. In 410, only fifteen years after the death of Theodosius, the western empire had become all but paralyzed, with the Goths in Rome itself, and Britain stripped of troups by the usurper Constantine, who moved into Gaul. The western emperors never recovered, as Britain itself was henceforth left to its own devices. What may have been personal loyalty to the Throne in Stilicho obviously becomes something else later: the commander Ricimer, who presided over a critical era in the

dissolution of the western Empire, 456472, made two or three emperors himself, briefly accepted a candidate from the east (Anthemius, 467-472), and through the whole business did not do what now seems like the obvious: He did not get his own army to elevate him to the Purple. Like more than half a dozen commanders from Stilicho to Odoacer, Ricimer did not do what every legionary commander on the frontier back in the third century dreamed of doing: becoming emperor himself. These were "the emperors who weren't," the soldiers who passed up the time honored Roman custom of killing an emperor, cleaning out the intrigue, paying off the veterans, and then marching out to massacre the barbarians. Why in the world would they not have done that? It doesn't make any sense. A book about them from 1983 by John Michael O'Flynn, is called Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire [U of Alberta Press], giving them the title used by Joseph Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek in World War II to show that they outranked everyone. Why would someone who outranked everyone be content to "serve" some weak, pathetic puppet emperor? The answer is simple enough: They were Germans. They were not Roman citizens. They were resident aliens. They could have all kinds of Roman titles. They could aspire to be recognized as German kings federated with Rome, but they were simply not qualified to be emperors [note]. Just because Caracalla had made all Roman subjects into citizens did not mean that anyone who wandered in over the Rhine or Danube was automatically a citizen. They weren't. One commander, Gundobad, was already king of the Burgundians and simply returned to his tribe when Julius Nepos and Orestes deposed him (and his puppet emperor Glycerius) in 473. Nothing, indeed, is so revealing about the extraordinary symbiosis of Romania and Germania in the fifth century. The illiterate (who weren't illiterate) pagan (who weren't pagan) German hordes (who were actually in the Roman army) who trampled down the Roman legionnaires with their invincible cavalry (we'll get to that shortly) played by such Marquess of Queensberry Rules that it never occurred to them to claim a position that their citizenship didn't entitle them to! It was more than three centuries before a German, a Frank finally, dared to claim the imperial status for himself; and Charlemagne had the excuse of a woman, for the first time, on the throne in Constantinople (Irene, 780-802) and a Pope who was perfectly happy to inflate his own authority into that of emperor-maker.

So the western Empire crumbled, not because of decadence, not because of Christianity, not because of pagan hordes, but because of the scrupulous observance of the privileges of citizenship. That the Germans did not otherwise have any military advantage is also an important point. Cavalry may have decided the battle of Adrianople, but not because the Goths were all mounted, or because the Romans did not have much or much very good cavalry, or because cavalry had some kind of real military advantage over infantry. In most of military history, cavalry could decide battles only when infantry had become tired or disorganized and the cavalry managed to strike at a decisive moment. This happened at Adrianople. On their left flank, the Roman cavalry had actually defeated the Visigothic cavalry and driven it away. In the time honored manner, it began to sweep around to the rear of the Gothic army, to surround and destroy it. Unfortunately, it ran into the fortified Gothic camp, built with wagons into an effective defense against cavalry. This checked and damaged the Roman forces, just as German reinforcements arrived. The Roman cavalry was then defeated in turn, and the Goths were able to sweep around the Roman left. It was thus not really Gothic cavalry that won the battle, but, ironically, Gothic fortifications. When the Flemings and Swiss discovered in the 14th and 15th centuries that they could stop a charge of mounted and armored knights with nothing more sophisticated thanpikes, it became obvious that all infantry had ever needed to win battles was discipline, determination, and some money. Gunpowder had little to do with the end of feudal knighthood. Rich cities and determined citizen soldiers had everything to do with it. Cavalry had dominated in the meantime, to any extent that it ever did, just because the money didn't exist to raise real armies and there was a premium on the mobility of the smaller, feudal forces, where the nobles could also supply their own horses [note]. The traditional story about German cavalry doesn't even make a lot of sense: As Ferrill points out, an effective cavalry requires not one but many horses per rider. Whittow mentions Marco Polo's observation that each Mongol warrior maintained as many as 18 remounts. And horses need to be fed. This is not easy to do without organized logistics, unless you are nomads living on natural grassland like the steppe. The Mongols could move an entire mounted army from China to Hungary, but beyond that they encountered

difficulties. The German tribes were in no position to maintain such a large mounted establishment. The Romans were. The Romans had stud farms and all the grain and logistics to maintain their cavalry. They had been doing it for some time. What the Romans lost then was their discipline and organization, and this occurred through the Germanization of the army, even as the German commanders of the same were no more ready to seize the ultimate Roman honor for themselves than the Romans were to bestow it on them. This dilemma did not go unobserved or entirely misunderstood at the time; and the emperor Leo I (457-474) had in fact taken steps to remedy it: He purged the eastern army of Germans and brought in the most warlike Roman citizens he could find, rebellious Isaurians from the mountains of Anatolia, to brace up the ranks. With them came the future emperor Zeno himself, who assumed a properly Greek name in place of his clearly un-Greek original one: Tarasikodissa. This was just what the doctor ordered for the eastern Empire. And when Zeno invited the Ostrogothic king Theodoric to get rid of Odoacer and rule Italy, the eastern empire stood free of a German presence for the first time in a century. Soon the tables would be turned. Recently, Peter Heather, who also rejects arguments about Roman decadence, argues in his The Fall of the Roman Empire [Oxford, 2006] that the Roman system was simply overwhelmed by the numbers of the immigrating tribes, that the Roman Army, although large enough on paper, could only bring to bear forces that were actually outnumbered by the Goths, Vandals, Suevi, etc., and that the occupation of Roman lands in Gaul, Spain, and North Africa damaged the Roman tax base enough that the Army could not recover. In his view Constantius and Atius went a long way to restoring the integrity of the Western Empire. Constantius defeated the usurper Constantine, recovered Gaul for the Emperor, and then got the Visigoths to help him destroy most of the Alans and Vandals in Spain -- unfortunately leaving the Suevi and Asding Vandals to do more damage. Nevertheless, this was progess, and Constantius was even made co-Emperor for it, marrying Honorius's sister and fathering Valentinian III. Unfortunately, Constantius then died, and before a strong hand could be restored, the Vandals crossed over into Africa. This was all some very bad luck, but not all was lost. When Atius gained control, it looked again like there was someone to handle things. The Vandals were stopped, and when they did move again and took Carthage, a joint East-West expedition was organized against them in 441. As Heather asserts, and the Romans agreed, it was essential that North Africa be regained, for its tax base, its food supply, and, I might add, to recover control of the Sea from the Vandals. Unfortunately, the expedition was cancelled because Attila became aggressive and all forces were needed against him. Previously, Atius had been able to call on the Huns for support. While the defeat of the Huns was followed by Atius's murder and a period of confusion, Ricimer accepted the Eastern candidate, Anthemius, as Western Emperor, as part of a plan for another joint expedition in 468 against the Vandals. With 1000 ships, this should have worked, but the Romans did not exactly have a lot of experience in amphibious operations, and the Vandals fleet was able to break up the landing. The treasury of Leo I had been exhausted by the effort, and as Heather puts it, this was the fatal moment when Western recovery became impossible. The Western Empire collapsed in a shambles, leaving only Italy to central control.

How far does Peter Heather's perspective go in explaining events? A good way, but there are still anomalies. His book begins with striking examples of Roman Legions fighting effectively against overwhelming barbarian forces. We never learn why purely Roman forces should have been so relatively ineffective in the Fifth Century. Little good was accomplished without barbarian help. Stilicho relied on Gothic recruits, Constantius on the Visigoths themselves, and Atius on the Huns. Arther Ferrill's argument provides an explanation. Roman discipline was compromised by too many unassimilated barbarian recruits. Where purely Roman forces were involved, with a good chance of success, in the expedition of 468, a combination of bad luck and bad strategy doomed it. How well it could have succeeded can be seen inBelisarius's landing of 533, with half as many ships, which was dramatically successful. If the expedition of 468 had gone as well, there is no telling what the consequences might have been. But by 533 it was really too late to revive the Western Empire the way it had been. Roman forces in the traditional form, in the West, had ceased to exist. Which perhaps raises another question. When Hannibal wiped out whole Roman armies, Rome simply raised new ones. There doesn't seem to have been a problem with the tax base. Perhaps the loss of Roman strength in the 5th century was not entirely an artifact of barbarization. The paid, professional Army of the Late Empire was no longer a citizen army, and it could not simply be expanded rapidly with drafts of civilians. So I detect a number of problems in the Fall of the West: (1) divided authority, without soldier Emperors, where a successful commander, like Atius, could be murdered out of envy, or German commanders were ineligible for the Throne; (2) loss of discipline as German recruits overwhelmed the traditional Roman model of discipline and organization (Flavius Vegetius in De Re Militari, c.390, himself liked this explanation); and (3) the inability of the Roman State to effectively draw on its manpower. The previous impression, that the Late Empire had declined in population and prosperity is something that Peter Heather effectively argues against. That leaves an institutional problem. The citizens of Romania were not expected, one and all, to become soldiers, the way those of Rome were in the 3rd Century BC. This was a problem effected simply by centuries of general peace, in which a merely professional army was sufficient [note]. The paradigm of the mounted knight, derived from the small forces used by barbarian nobility, would, significantly, be overthrown by citizen armies, those of Flanders, as at the Battle of the Golden Spurs against France in 1302, and those of the Swiss, as at the Battle of Sempach against the Hapsburgs in 1368, or especially at the Battle of Nancy against the Duke of Burgundy in 1477. A similar phenomenon could be seen when the professional armies of the 18th century were swept away by the mass citizen drafts of the French Revolution. The Roman Republic benefited from a comparable mechanism, but the Empire, largely because of its very success, had lost that advantage. Reflections on Roman History is continued in The Vlach Connection, and Further Reflections on Roman History Animated History of Romania Philosophy of History

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"Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 1 Frazer's statement reveals several significance prejudices and confusions: The religion of the Great Mother, with its curious blending of crude savagery with spiritual aspirations, was only one of a multitude of similar Oriental faiths [I suspect we are expected to include Christianity among them, ed.] which in the later days of paganism spread over the Roman Empire, and by saturating the European peoples with alien ideals of life gradually undermined the whole fabric of ancient civilization. Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; it set the safety of the commonwealth, as the surpreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in a world to come. Trained from infancy in this unselfish ideal, the citizens devoted their lives to the public service and were ready to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank from the supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the interests of their country. All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religion [i.e. Christianity] which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects worth living for, objects in comparison with which the prosperity and even the existence of the state sank into insiginificance. The invevitable result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthy city seemed poor and contemptable to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A general disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the family were lossened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is only possible through the active cooperation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common good. Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around

them. The obsession lasted for a thousand years. The revival of Roman law, of the Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and literature at the close of the Middle Ages, marked the return of Europe to native ideals of life and conduct, to saner, manlier views of the world. The long halt in the march of civilization was over. The tide of Oriental invasion had turned at last. It is ebbing still. [The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion, A New Abridgement from the Second and Third Editions, edited with an introduciton by Robert Fraser, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 359-360] This extraordinary passage tells us rather more about the 20th century than it does about the 4th or 5th. The chilling, "unselfish ideal" of the "subordination of the individual to the community" blossomed in Frazer's own lifetime into the totalitarian principles of Fascism and Communism. Despite the megadeaths and horror effected by such ideals, they still survive in the trendy doctrine of "communitarianism." Frazer has forgotten the philosophical basis of the Britain of his own day in John Locke's precept, also enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of the individual. Again, this foundational principle, upon which modern Britain and America built their power and prosperity, is still under attack, for instance in the grotesque biography of Thomas Jefferson byJoseph J. Ellis, oozing with contempt and condescension for individual rights and the principles of the American (or English) Revolution. Frazer thus starts off on a false and dangerous note. Even accepting this appalling ideology, however, there are already other problems. The Roman state for its last five centuries was ruled by absolute monarchs. Romans were then not sacrificing themselves for the "community" but for the Emperor. Frazer would have known of much the same phenomenon from the French Revolution, when dying for Liberty gave way to dying for Napoleon. In the 20th century it would become dying for Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Peron, Mao, Castro, etc. True "patriotism" for the real "common good" is a matter easily subverted, but it is always pitched as equally "unselfish." The historic barrier to such perversions was the modern ideal of civil rights, which shield the individual from the state. Frazer is unaware of this, probably because it didn't exist in Classical thought. That many other people are unaware of it has led to the erosion of freedom and the rebirth of statism, as the idea of "civil rights" has itself come to be used to attack civil rights. Frazer thus represents a frightening side of intellectual history. All we need is a strong interpretation of European "native ideals of life" to produce the racism to turn political totalitarianism into real Naziism; but even without that, we have notions that remain alive and threatening in our own day. And most people probably think that Frazer was simply attacking Christianity. As history, this passage is also confused and hopeless. If the Roman Empire "fell" because unworldliness made people unwilling to fight and die for the "community," Frazer must account for (1) why the Eastern Empire, arguably more effete and religious than the Western, rode out the Germanic invasions and survived another 1000 years, and (2) Islm: No one, not even Nietzsche, would doubt for a second the "manliness" of the Arab armies that extinguished Sassanid Persia and swept Romania out of Egypt,

Syria, and North Africa (classified by Nietzsche among the "noble races" of conquerors). The survival of Constantinople and the conquests and triumph of Islm (ultimately over Constantinople itself) make complete nonsense out of Frazer's thesis. To be sure, monasticism is not characteristic of Islm; but this is not the central issue: Frazer cannot account for the willingness to die for Heaven as a factor in supporting the secular domain of the Islamic ummah ("community"). It is simply not true, as Frazer says, that "men refused to defend their country." The type of the Emperor Basil II, who remained celibate but crushed the enemies of Romania, would seem to be incomprehensible on Frazer's principles -- not to mention the Crusading monastic orders of knights like the Hospitallers. Ibn Khaldn (1332-1406) gives us a better understanding of such history than Frazer. Frazer is also being rather dishonest. The "Oriental faith" he is talking about is obviously Christianity, although he does not say so. Yet with the world-denying element of Christianity, looking to salvation from the world rather than in it, where did that come from? It is not obviously there in Judaism. Instead, it looks more like the theme of Mystery Cults that go all the back, at least, to the Eleusian Mysteries. This was long before Rome was even a cloud on the horizon. The later "Oriental" Roman Mystery Religions, like those of the Great Mother, Isis and Osiris, or Mithras, look more like assimilations to the Eleusian paradigm than the other way around. Another problem with Frazer's thesis is how the Middle Ages ended. The "obsession" with saving one's soul certainly did not end with the Middle Ages, otherwise the wars of the 17th century, or the laws of Calvin's Geneva, are very hard to understand. The "revival of Roman law," although a real early modern event in western Europe, has the little difficulty, again, that such law was never lost in Constantinople -- in fact, the corpus of Roman Law as we have it, is largely the product of the Christian Emperors Theodosius II and especially Justinian in Constantinople. Roman Law was given to us by the "wrong" Romans, in Frazer's historiography. "Aristotelian philosophy" returned in the 12th and 13th century, and the ancient art and literature in great measure came with Greek refugees from the fall of Constantinople. Again, the "wrong" Romans. In fact, the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople, Venice and Genoa dominated Romania, and Europe ultimately defeated Islm all because of commercial culture, the very thing that today is attacked by the intellectual descendants of Frazer as selfish and "immoral." Individual freedom and the rights of property make commercial culture, and modern civilization, possible, but these do not appear on Frazer's ideological radar screen. The dissociation of the individual from the state, condemned by Frazer as part of the "Oriental" corruption of Roman virtue, in fact produces one of the sources for the principles ofindividual dignity and rights, the glory of a modern civilization, like the British "nation of shopkeepers," still despised by too many today who should certainly know better. Return to text

"Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 2 Wulfila did not, to be sure, convert all the Goths en masse and all at once. There was disinterest, resistance, and even hostility at first, especially among the elite. The Gothic King Athanaric expelled Wulfila in 348 and wished to suppress Christianity. This didn't work very well in a tribal group where the very idea of police power didn't exist. When the Goths were allowed across the Danube in 376, much of the leadership still appears to be pagan; but by the time the Goths sacked Rome in 410, they were Christian enough to respect St. Peter's and other churches. The looting, as much as anything of the sort could be said to be, was restrained and limited. If only the same could have been said about the looting of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 3 If Rome "fell" in 476, people naturally suppose that something must have happened at Rome in 476. Since nothing did, we get the phenomenon of people mentally filling in the blank. Thus, Jean-Benot Nadeau and Julie Barlow say, in The Story of French: After the sack of Rome in 476, they [the Franks] moved into the province of Gaul, establishing themselves around Lutetia (now Paris). [St. Martin's Press Griffin, St. Martin's Press, 2006, p.23] Clearly, Nadeau and Barlow do not know that there were no events at Rome in 476 having any relation to the "fall" of Rome. They reasonably suppose that the City must have fallen to some barbarians and consequently would have been sacked. They also seem a bit vague about what happened in Gaul, since the Franks actually didn't do anything that year either. Clovis was not in Paris until he defeated Syagrius in 486. I don't mean to beat up on Nadeau and Barlow; for the problem is not them but is certainly the false impression that popular culture, and even many presentations of academic history, has given people. I don't want to blame the victims. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 4

A good example of a preoccupation with the City of Rome, rather than the Empire, was a recent (3 December 2005) History Channel treatment of Roman history in relation to Roman architecture ("Rome: Engineering an Empire"). The last example of Roman architecture discussed were the Baths of Caracalla, who was also the last Emperor even mentioned. Giving a typical cursory and distorted summary of the "Fall," the show says that an "invading tribe" cut the aqueducts into Rome in 537. This might strike one as a little odd, since the City is supposed to have already Fallen in 476. Why would someone be cutting the aqueducts after the Empire was already gone? What is left out is that the tribe was not "invading." They were the Ostrogoths, already the rulers of Italy since 493, trying to retake Rome after a Roman army, led by the great general Belisarius, had begun the reconquest of Italy. The invaders were Romans, not Germans. The Ostrogoths sieged Rome for over a year until Roman reinforcements arrived from the East. Cutting the aqueducts would have been a reasonable siege strategy. It was not mere Vandalism. Saying that Rome was "repeatedly" sacked by barbarians, no mention was made that this meanttwice. Twice was bad enough -- the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455 -- but it doesn't quite amount to "repeatedly" (well, we could count the Arabs in 846, but that may be getting into a different time frame); and of course Belisarius recovered the loot of the Vandals when he destroyed their kingdom in North Africa. Meanwhile, the bulk of the show, which was about Roman architecture, completely ignored Roman works in Constantinople, like the aqueduct of Valens, the great Land Walls, or the monumental Church of Sancta Sophia -- or the tombs and churches of Ravenna, where the mosaics of Justinian and Theodora are some of the most often reproduced images in history (though, to be sure, there was a separate treatment of these in a later show, bundled with the dissociation of Rome from Constantinople, in "Byzantium: Engineering an Empire"). Indeed, if the Romans kept building impressive structures, even in the 6th century, this spoils the impression of the "Fall" and the tendentious moral of the story. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 5 Peter Brown mentions, in The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750 [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971, p. 41], that "the empire itself was now called Romania." Professor Brown informed me personally, when I happened to meet him on the campus of Princeton University (5 October 1999), that there are two extant 4th century texts that use the term "Romania," one of them in Greek. I thought the latter especially striking, when at the time I thought that the Mediaeval usage in Greek usually was just "the Empire of the Romans" (h [tn] Rhmain Basilea -- Latin Imperium Romanorum) rather than "the Empire of [the] Romania" (h [ts] Rhmanas Basilea -Latin Imperium Romaniae). Now I know better, but I had already noticed that the an- stem can be seen in the four Emperors namedRomanus. In Latin Romanus simply

means "Roman," and so one might suspect that in Greek the Emperors would have been named Rhmaios. Not so. Their name was written Rhmanos. In the Mediaeval period, the term Romania was used in Latin, of course, to refer to the contemporary lands of the Empire -- rather than the full Empire of Trajan -- especially by the Venetians and theCrusaders who took Constantinople and then ruled, for a while, most of those lands. A 7th century Latin text casually using "Romania" is given at the top of this page. As noted, I was long under the impression that the Greek form of Romania, Rhmania, was just not used in Mediaeval Greek. I did not see it in Procopius or Anna Comnena, for instance. But it was used. I now find it in the significant book De Administrando Imperio by the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus [cf. pp.62, 94, 204, 214, 220, 222, & 224 in Greek -- Greek text edited by Gy. Moravcsik and translated by R.J.H. Jenkins, Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967]. It is also to be found all through The Chronicle of Theophanes[edited by Harry Turtledove, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982, pp.34, 45, 47-48, 61-62, Most terrible evils has Romania suffered etc.]. from the Arabs even until now. Indeed, Constantine sometimes quotes Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (d.959) passages from Theophanes that use the quotingThe Chronicle of Theophanes (c.815) [De Administrando Imperio, op.cit., p.94] term (as quoted at right). I don't know how common this usage was, but I will find out as I examine other primary sources. As it happens, "Roman Empire" was expressed as h Rhmain Basilea, but thenh Rhmana was equivalent to that whole expression. An example of how I could go years and read extensively and yet not be aware of the use of Rhmana in Greek may be seen with Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society [Stanford University Press, 1997]. This is a comprehensive and impressive book. Treadgold tells us quickly [p.3] that "something calling itself the Roman Empire remained in the East" after the "Fall" of Rome in 476 and that "the name 'Byzantine Empire' was never used at the time." A good start. However, we can read the entire book and never learn that the Empire was called Romania in Latin and Greek from Late Antiquity through the rest of its history. "Romania" is in the index, but it is only used in reference to the modern Kingdom and Republic of Romance speaking people in the Balkans, which was united as "Romnia" (or "Roumania," "Rumania," etc.) in 1859. Another example would be the more venerable History of the Byzantine State, by George Ostrogorsky [1940, 1952, 1963, Rutgers University Press, 1969]. The word "Romania" is not in the text at all. We have "Rumania" used in reference to the modern state (once), but that's it. Even more recent than Treadgold is The Oxford History of Byzantium [edited by Cyril Mango, Oxford University Press, 2002]. Here "Romania" not in the text at all, in Greek or Latin. We learn from the editor that "Byzantines" regarded

themselves as Romans, but we are favored with a characterization of this as "The pretence of Romanity" [p.2]. Now who is Cyril Mango to imply that the identity of the successors of Augustus and Constantine in Constantinople was a pretence? Presumably an affectation? Did they get the purple robe and red shoes from a theatrical costumer, like King Ferdinand of Bulgaria? No. As David Carradine says in Kill Bill, Part II [2004], with an Emperor in Constantinople, "Those are his clothes." Romania is their country. Yet even Mango then features a sensible discussion of the "elusive birthday" that separates Rome from Byzantium [p.2, from AD 284 to 716]. But his implication that the only alternative to "Byzantine" for the Empire would be Constantinopolitanus makes it look like he thinks the Empire must be named after a City -- makes it look like he is simply unaware (!) of the existence and use of the name Romania. Some books ignore the word "Romania" but then use quotations where it does occur. This then requires some kind of parenthetical explanation (unless it is to be translated, as John Julius Norwich does, as the "Roman Empire"). That is what we see with Judith Herrin (below), where "Romania" occurs in a Latin quote, and is then incorrectly glossed as "a western name for the empire." That mistake is not going to be made by Walter E. Kaegi in Byzantium and the early Islamic conquests [Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992], who features three different quotes containing "Romania," two of them from Greek sources -- St. Anastasius the Sinaite [p.208], the Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati [p.211], and The Chronicle of Theophanes [p.228]. Kaegi glosses the uses as "i.e. the Byzantine Empire," with no further discussion. Even more venerable than Ostrogorsky is A.A. Vasiliev's History of the Byzantine Empire [University of Wisconsin Press, Volume I, 1961, Volume II, 1964], the first volume of whose original Russian edition came out in 1917, followed by the second volume [1923-1925] and then various translations in many years between 1928 and the Wisconsin editions. Vasiliev uses "Romania" a couple of times. On page 15 of Volume I, we get it in reference to the Latin Empire. Then in Volume II [pp.462 & 463], we get it the same way, translating the Partitio Romaniae, the treaty that partitioned Romania between Venice and the Crusaders in 1204 (where Vasiliev consistently and unaccountably renders the Latin Partitio Romanie [sic]). So far, this looks like the way Herrin treats the matter. However, Vasiliev apparently knows better, for he glosses "Romania" with "as the Latins and Greeks often called the Eastern Empire" [p.462]. This is a strange way to put it, since "Latins and Greeks" practically meanseverybody, while no contemporaries called Romania "the Eastern Empire." If "the Greeks" are calling the Empire "Romania," then clearly this is the name of the Empire to its own subjects, yet Vasiliev manages to admit this only in the most obscure and roundabout way. Perhaps the most recent treatments of Byzantium would be The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, c.500-1492, edited by Jonathan Shepard [Cambridge University Press, 2008] and The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys with John Haldon and Robin Cormack [Oxford University Press, 2008]. Both of these massive books involve formats where different scholars write different chapters. The results can be uneven in histories of this form, with choppy treatment,

discontinuities, and oversights. The Oxford Handbook, divided by topic, verges on encyclopedic form and so avoids the expectation of narrative continuity. No sooner does one open the Cambridge History than this sentence is encountered: "Byzantium lasted a thousand years, ruled to the end by self-styled 'emperors of the Romans'" [p.i]. "Self-styled" often means that someone has just up and decided, out of nowhere, to call themselves something. One would never guess from such a characterization that we are dealing rulers in unbroken institutional, religious, and cultural succession from the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. They were "styled" Emperors of the Romans because they had always been, back to Augustus. "Self-styled" can also mean, of course, just that this is what they called themselves, which is quite true. But there is an ambiguity there, with an edge, like Mango's "pretense of Romanity." It's like: Weren't these people smart enough to know that they weren't Romans anymore? Evidently not. "Romania" is given in the index only in relation to an entry in the Glossary: Romania 'land of the Romans' (i.e. Byzantines); by the seventh century a term for the Christian empire of the east; from the thirteenth century, used of the former lands of the Byzantine empire which had been partitioned and were being governed by the Venetians, Franks and other westerners. [pp.900-901] Unfortunately, although Peter Brown is listed in the Bibliography [p.984], the editor seems to have missed Brown's information that the use of "Romania" dates from the 4th century, not the 7th. It therefore was originally more than "the Christian empire of the east." Nor are we told about relative uses of the name in Latin and Greek. The index of the Oxford Handbook lists only one use of "Romania," and this is in reference to the modern state, not the Roman Empire [p.200]. On the first page of text we learn of the Empire that, "Its emperors and citizens thought of themselves as Roman (romaioi)..." [p.3]. We thus have the same indirect acknowledgement and distancing, "thought of themselves," as we have seen elsewhere in this literature. On the second page, however, we have the interesting statement, "...although classicists (albeit often grudgingly) would admit that without the intervention of Byzantine scribes no texts in ancient Greek would have survived to the present day" [p.4]. One then wonders, Why "grudgingly"? Why would a Classicist not be happy to acknowledge that all of Greek literature is owed to Romania? Indeed, thanks to the Bibiotheca of the Patriarch Photius, we have an idea how much was lost thanks to the rough handling of the Crusaders and the Ottomans. These are all oversights and slights that strike me as peculiar. There seems a positive resistance, with a selective memory (or sheer, unbelievable ignorance), to acknowledge the historical reality of the usage of "Romania," and this is a grave lapse of responsibility, or competence, for a historian. Even the way Treadgold refers to "something calling itself the Roman Empire," like Shepard's "self-styled" Emperors, sounds like we don't necessarily approve of this. "Well, we don't call it that!" No, we have this "Byzantium" name to use, so that we won't confuse virtuous pagan Romans like Trajan with miserable ByzantineChristians like Basil II -- or so we won't confuse

virtuous Greek Christians like Basil II with miserable pagan tyrants like Caligula. Either way (as with Cyril Mango and others), there seems to be a tinge of hostility or arrogance or contempt. That certainly originated with the introduction of "Byzantium" for the Empire in the 16th century. By then the Empire was gone, and Renaissance scholars were thinking ofthemselves as the true successors of Rome -- and more of Trajan than of Constantine -- rather than the Emperors in Constantinople. While the Empire had always been "Romania" in Latin, well, that sounds just too Roman when we're really talking about a bunch of superstitious, treacherous Greek Christians from the Dark Ages. We can see just how bad Western European attitudes have been about Mediaeval Romania with William Smith (1813-1893), the editor of A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography [1872, I.B. Tauris & Co., 2006]. Smith, of course, has no entry for "Romania," which one might think would be a very important term indeed in Roman geography and was certainly used in the period the dictionary covers. But we don't get how he really feels until we find the entry for "Constantinopolis" [pp.657-665]. There is what can only be called a most remarkable venting of high Victorian spleen against all of "Byzantine" history: The city of Constantine, the birth of an elder and effete age, has throughout its long history borne the stamp of its parentage, and displayed the vices of its original conformation. The position of the Byzantine empire is unique; geographically it was European, but nationally it reflected the Oriental type of character. It had indeed Roman blood, but the people who had sprung from the loins of Mars, and were suckled by the she-wolf, gave it little but their name. It did not speak their tongue, and was completely severed from the old republican associations and free spirit which still survived the fall of Roman liberty. The despotism of the court of Contantinople could not endure even the forms of free institutions, and the relics of municipal privileges which inherited from Rome have had so much influence in moulding the law and constitution of modern Europe. The Caesar of the East was the counterpart of his Moslem conqueror, and the change from the Proto Sebast to the Sultan would have been one simply of name, had it not been for the superior energy and virtues of the first Osmanli princes. The one like the other had his viziers, his janissaries, his slaves, and his eunuchs alternately cajoling and tyrannizing over prince and people. Through the dreary monotony of the history of the Eastern empire, so deficient in moral and political interest, there are always coming into view the characteristic features of Asiatic tyranny: -- the domestic treason, -- the prince born in the purple, -- the unnatural queenmother, -- the son or the brothers murdered or blinded, -- the sudden revolutions of the throne, -- the deposition of the sovereign, but the government remaining the same, -- and the people careless as to who or what their tyrant might be. Every thing by which a people can outwardly show what is within -- literature, art, and architecture, displays the influence of the East. The literature learned, artificial, florid, but deficient in elegance and grace, and without a spark of genius to illumine it. The art but the figure of their ceremonial life, deficient in all deep and sincere feeling, and showing, under the hardness of the shape, and the sameness of the expression, the dull and slavish constraint to which it was subject. A purer faith had indeed freed the later Greeks from the degradation of the seraglio, had given an impulse to intellectual development, and infused a sense of the responsibilities of power to which their Ottoman conquerors were

strangers. But even Christianity failed to reconcile the conflicting elements and hostile influences of the East and West, and was itself penetrated by an admixture of Oriental thought and sentiment. And in later times, after the severance of Constantinople from the Latin Communion, the rest of Europe had no sympathy for what was considered an alien creed. Standing in this isolated position on the very outposts of Western civilization, and cut off from that by differences of language, manner, and religion, Constantinople, unable to comprehend but rather despising that vigorous Teuton stock upon which the elder races were engrafted, did not incorporate any of those elements which have gone to make up the aggregate of modern Europe; while, on the other hand, it is difficult to trace the slight reaction that the Greek empire has had upon the West, till its fall, when it contributed so mainly to the revival of letters and the modern spirit, by the dispersion of ancient literature and culture. [Volume I, p.660, boldface added] So this is the thanks that Romania gets as the main bulwark of Europe against Islam for eight hundred years, all the while perserving and nurturing the Classical heritage that Smith himself must admit "contributed so mainly to the revival of letters and the modern spirit" -- an extraordinary achievement for some "race" so deficient in virtue, spirit, feeling, taste, morality, liberty, etc. I must conclude that Professor Smith would not have been among the English who fled the Norman Conquest to find refuge and employment with the Roman Emperor after 1066. He sees "Byzantium" as inferior to (1) "true" Romans, (2) the Ottoman Turks, (3) Modern Greeks, (4) Latin Catholicism, and (5) the "vigorous Teuton stock" that brought down the Western Empire. In short, the history and civilization of Constantinople, for a thousand years, was apparently worse than anything that has ever existed, except that, by the way, we owe her our entire knowledge of Greek literature and culture and our preservation from Conquering Islam. How such a debased people would have had the interest or dedication to preserve things like Greek literature or Roman law, or the courage and manliness to withstand the Arabs, is a little confusing. But then Smith (like Frazer above) seems rather confused himself. He has missed how "the people who had sprung from the loins of Mars" had become all the free inhabitants of the Empire in the Third Century. The Court language of Constantinople was indeed no longer "the tongue" of Cicero, but then it was the tongue in which Marcus Aurelius wrote his diary, and in which, according to Suetonius, Julius Caesar spoke his last words -- let alone the tongue of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Thucydides, etc. Why Smith would despise this tongue, i.e. Greek (a language whose name, note, he does not mention here), is surprising. As for the features of "Oriental tyranny," there are few that do not seem characteristic of the antics of Caligula or Nero, if not often already the court of Augustus. The original king-making Jannisaries were, after all, the Praetorian Guard -- a corps, like the Varangian Guard, happily free of the child-stealing and forced conversion that fed the Jannisaries. And after many "sudden revolutions," with the "deposition of the sovereign, but the government remaining the same," we might have thought this to be a characteristic of the Roman Empire in general, not some "Oriental" feature of the government in Constantinople. But the statement about a "people careless as to who or what their tyrant might be," is false on its face. The populace that deposed Michael V in order to restore Zo, or Alexius IV for an anti-Crusader Alexius V, obviously had strong feelings about who the legitimate Sovereign should be. On the other hand, we see little

of that in Mediaeval Western Europe, where for centuries urban populations scarcely existed to dispute the long succession of many dynastic governments. To be sure, Diocletian introduced forms of the Persian Court into Roman ceremony. Smith could damn this as "Asiatic tyranny," but then it is a transformation that antedates Constantine, Christianity, and Constantinople, let alone Justinian, Heraclius, or Basil II (note Frazer's discussion tracing the "Oriental" influence to Christianity itself, something Smith does not seem to do). Yet these forms did not prevent the populace of Constantinople from often expressing its preferences and abruptly ending many reigns and dynasties. Somehow, I don't think that Smith would recognize these expressions as revealing a consciousness of "liberty." I bet the populace of Constantinople was just a mob. Smith, however, ignores rather than comments on this circumstance. Most extraordinary is his dismissal of Orthodox religion, an "alien creed," for which "the rest of Europe had no sympathy." From this statement one would not know that the Russian and other Orthodox churches, covering a considerable part of the area of Europe, would not join in his lack of "sympathy." Quite the opposite. Nor would one know that Smith himself, and his fellow countrymen, no longer retained any sympathy for the "Latin Communion" that split itself from the Orthodox churches. As we often see in history, and even scholarship, the hostilities of earlier sectarian divisions survive even when the earlier loyalties themselves have been renounced. Smith despises the Greeks with all the feeling of a Papist, yet, not only was he no Papist, he was a "dissenter" who, rejecting the Church of England, could not attend Oxford or Cambridge. More consistent would be the sentiment of Francis Ford Coppola, who thinks that, "The Orthodox religions, Greek Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, is [sic] in fact the original Christianity and, for my part, I think the most beautiful expression of Christianity..." When one sees so much antipathy with so little self-consciousness or reflection, there is no doubt some deeply irrational commitment is involved. We also see this in another brief comment by Smith: ...the Byzantine builders founded an architecture peculiarly their own. Of this the cupola was the great characteristic, to which every other feature was subordinate. In consequence of this principle, that which at Athens was straight, angular, and square, became in Constantinople curved and rounded, concave within, and convex without. Thus the old architecture of Greece owed its destruction to the same nation from which it had taken its first birth. [ibid. p.661] Of all the bile we find in Smith, this passage may be the most extraordinary. What "Oriental" influence corrupted the angular simplicity of Greek architecture? Oh, there wasn't any. The source of the domes and arches used in Constantinople was from Roman architecture and engineering. We see nothing of the sort in Egypt, Babylon, or Jerusalem, and domes in Islamic architecture are all due to the influence of Romania. Smith must resolutely forget his own knowledge of buildings like the Pantheon or the arches of Roman aqueducts marching across the countryside. In other words, Mediaeval Romania wasn't Roman enough for Smith, except for its architecture, which is now not Greek enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The shocking bias and self-deception of someone like William Smith may not be surprising in the footsteps of Edward Gibbon, but I suspect that the oversights or dismissive comments of the likes of Warren Treadgold or Cyril Mango inevitably are its faint echo in recent historiography. As with the Dissenting Smith following Papal condemnation of the Greeks, it is an inertia hard to shake, just as modern liberal American historians insensibly join in the derision of Ulysses S. Grant, following the precedent of Southern and Confederate-sympathizing historians from the era of Segregation. They should be ashamed to do that, but they often seem as lacking in reflection as William Smith. In the end, I would say that Mediaeval Christian Greeks, far from having "failed to reconcile" the different elements of their heritage, seem more comfortable with the mixture of their own Roman and Classical past and their Christian present, which made them at once both Romans and Christians (indeed, to be Roman meant being a Christian), than modern historians who are neither Greek nor Roman and may or may not be Christians. Indeed, modern "education" now junks the whole business, and the modern student knows no Classical languages and possesses only the haziest ideas about the history involved. The modern West, at least in elite culure, no longer is conscious of its heritage or conscientious for its preservation. What we are lacking, indeed, is another Constantinople and its own honorable and heroic spirit. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 6 I hear from Phoevos Panagiotidis, in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex (Aug 29, 1998), that the Modern Greek "Stamboul" is derived from the Turkish "Istanbul," not the other way around. Panagiotidis says that: In detail: Greeks shortened Constantinoupolis to "Polis" (plainly "City") as early as the 11th century (we have that satirical poem about the multitude of ethnicities in the streets of "Polis"). The mainstream theory has it that Turks mistook "Is tin Polin" ("to the City", pronounced /Istimbolin/) to be the actual name of the city. This derivation of the Turkish name Panagiotidis regards as no more than a folk etymology (although it is already found in William Smith, p.659): Now, as a linguist, I see two arguments against that: 1. How come we got this /i/ ---> /a/ ("Istimbol" ---> Istanbul). This should trouble anyone who knows the odd thing about the phenomenon of "vowel harmony" in Turkish (it should sound something like "Istnbul" or "Istenbul").

2. Why mistake the expression "to the city" as a name? This fits in perfectly with the Ottoman (yes!) and Greek stereotype that Turks are stupid, but this is nowhere close to science... Since I am not a real Byzantinist, I am not familiar with the primary sources for what I have cited in the text. However, the thesis that "Stamboul" comes from "Istanbul" seems unlikely to me, and not just because of the folk etymology proposed for "Istanbul." In the first place, "I.stanbul" (with the dotted "i") bears the unmistable mark of being a borrowed name, since it violates Turkish vowel harmony. Panagiotidis is aware of a vowel harmony problem but has not got the vowel harmony rules quite right, since to truly follow them "I.stanbul" would have to be "I.stenbil." "I.stanbul" breaks two rules, since it has back vowels (a & u) following a front vowel (i) -- front vowels must follow front vowels -- and it has a rounded vowel (u) following an unrounded vowel (a) -- only unrounded vowels followed unrounded vowels. These violations are characteristic of borrowings into Turkish, not of native Turkish coinages. Thus, the choices are that "I.stanbul" is borrowed from either Greek or from the standard classical sources of Turkish borrowing, Persian and Arabic. To address Panagiotidis's other points, it is not surprising that the major city of Romania should be called "the City" (h Polis). This is not an abbreviation of the city's name. People around San Francisco Bay refer to San Francisco itself as "the City." On the other hand, "Konstantinopolis" is a name that is so long as to beg for abbreviation. In the past, "San Francisco" was reduced to "Frisco" (though these days that name is out of favor in the city itself, and not even much elsewhere). Similarly, "Philadelphia" is still commonly called, by one and all, "Philly." "Stamboul" is an obvious parallel, preserving a large fragment of "Con-stan-tino-pol-is." The assimilation of the "n" to the "p," as "m" (labialized), and of the "p" to the "n" as "b" (voiced), is not surprising for Greek. A similar parallel to the modern local disdain for "Frisco" might be the view reflected by Panagiotidis himself that "Stamboul" is not really Greek. A linguistic objection might be made that the "ou" (Greek ) in "Stamboul" shows that it is not originally Greek. A real Greek abbreviation should be "Stambol." The "ou" might suggest instead that the Turkish name actually derived from Arabic rather than Greek, since Arabic, which did not originally have an "o," renders Greek "o's" as "u's" (Turkish itself has an "o"), and Arabic is where the device of adding "i" to an initial "st" cluster comes from. This, however, would simply move the abbreviation question back a step. This means that there was an Arabic abbreviation? Was the Arabic name based on a Greek abbreviation? Etc. But the answer to the "ou" may have been suggested by Panagiotidis himself, who uses, in passing, the Mediaeval and Modern Greek version of Constantinople, Konstantinoupolis. This is based, not the Classical Greek combining form, -o-, but on the uncombined h Konstantinou Polis, "the City of Constantine." This gets us an "ou" immediately adjacent to "po," and it could well transpose into the place of the "o." Since it is reasonable to expect that, over the course of a thousand years, there was some Greek abbreviation of Constantinople, "Stamboul" sure looks like it. An interesting light on this may come from an engraving of 1635, which is a view of the Istanbul skyline from up behind Galata. A Turkish colleague of mine had this displayed

in his home; and after I expressed such admiration for it, he actually made a copy for me. The text is in Latin and German. The title in Latin is Constantinopolitanae Urbis Effigies, ad vivum expressa, quam Turcae Stampoldam vocant. Here we do actually have the vowel "o," which, with the absence of the prefixed "i," makes the name look more like what the city would be called in Greek, rather than in Turkish. I have examined the Greek text of Anna Comnena's Alexiad (which does not seem to be available in print -- it ought to be in the Loeb Classical Library) and was intrigued to find that, while she often uses the form Konstantinoupolis, she also just as frequently leaves out the polis altogether, saying h Konstantinou, "the, of Constantine." What she clearly has in mind, then, is the grammatical genitive, not a combining stem, with emphasis on Constantine rather than on the "City." Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 7 Some idea of the relative area of Constantinople can be taken from the following maps, which overlay Constantinople onto modern San Francisco and Manhattan. The overlay map is at left, where the walls (of Theodosius, Constantine, and Byzantium) and major roads and monuments shown, but not labelled. The waters of the Golden Horn and a rim of the Sea of Marmara are left opaque below, obscuring the modern cities underneath, which introduces a confusing element. However, the other open ground in Constantinople is left transparent. Directions are kept rectilinear, with North at top. In San Francisco, the Great Walls of Theodosius can be seen running south from the West Yacht Harbor, through the Palace of Fine Arts, south-west across the Presidio, and south across Golden Gate Park, near the De Young Museum, down along approximately 9th or 10th Avenues, down well south of the University of California Medical Center. The Hippodrome and Acropolis area of Constantinople falls in the area of San Francisco south of Market Street and not far from the base of the Bay Bridge. The southern shore of Constantinople runs roughly from the south-east corner of Golden Gate Park east to the point where Interstate 80 breaks off from US 101. Then it sweeps off north-east past where I-280 now ends (its northern extension was demolished after the 1989 Loma

Prieta earthquake). Chinatown falls in Galata.

In Manhattan, the Great Walls of Theodosius are shown beginning up around West 86th Street right at Riverside Drive. The Golden Horn goes south-east across Central Park along the 86th Street Traverse, hitting the East River and Roosevelt Island at about 74th Steet. The Hippodrome and Acropolis areas lie across the River in Brooklyn. The Great Walls would run south-west slightly into the Hudson River, then inland through the Chelsea District. The Golden Gate, near the southern end of the Walls, would lie right in the middle of Greenwich Village, very near the corner of West 4th and West 11th Streets (a little confusing -- West 4th curves up from Washington Square, while West 11th turns down at Greenwich Avenue). The Fifth Military Gate, where the Turks broke through in

1453, would be on the Hudson docks about even with 62nd Street.

To the Russians, Constantinople was Tsargrad, the "City of the Emperor." Since the Ottomans replaced one emperor with another, the city actually endured as Tsargrad from 330, when it was dedicated by Constantine, to 1922, when the last Ottoman Sultn abdicated: no less than 1592 years. Without the Ottomans, it endured 1123 years, until 1453. This might be compared with the duration of the Papal States, which lasted from the Donation of Pepin in 754 until Rome was occupied by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870: 1116 years. If we count from Constantine's death, in 337, to 1453, the City lasted exactly 1116 years also. Now Istanbul is just another large European city. The Pope, however, has had the Vatican, at least, back as a sovereign Papal State since 1929. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 8 The practice in Arabic is to use a mass noun for a whole people and an adjective for individuals. Thus ar-Rm, Ynn, , "the Rome," means "the Romans," and al-

(obviously from "Ionia"), "the Greek," means "the Greeks." A Roman is

then Rm, genies, al-Jinn, adjective, Jinn, "Jeannie").

, and a Greek Ynn,

. Arabic usage for the mass of

, "the Jinn," tends to carry over into English, though the , is much more familiar in its Anglicized form ("genie," if not

Today, terms like Rm (for Asian Romania) and the related Rumelia (for European Romania) have disappeared in their original usage as place names, but the former is contained in an important place name in Turkey, the city of Erzurum, the Roman Theodosiopolis. This looks like a Turkish version of a phrase in Persian, Arz-iRm, (pronounced Arz-e-Rum in Modern Persian), the "Land" (ard., , in Arabic, eretz in Hebrew) "of Rome." This is in eastern Anatolia, what the Romans would already have considered part of Armenia, far from the heartland of the Sultanate of Rm, and so the name may well date from the earliest phase of the Turkish conquest. Indeed, we find Marco Polo mentioning it already in the 13th century (as part of Armenia). Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 9 This is reminiscent of an episode in Chinese and Japanese history. In 607, Prince Shtoku supposedly wrote a letter for his aunt, the Empress Suiko, to the Chinese Emperor Yang Ti of the Sui Dynasty. He referred to Japan as the land where the "Sun Rises," (Nippon, Nihon), and to China as the land where the "Sun Sets," , and

(Nichibotsu). To the Chinese, however, there could be only one Emperor,

Son of Heaven, . The ruler of Japan was simply the "King of Wa," , i.e. of the "land of dwarves." Yang Ti was furious at the pretention of there being another Emperor, and of China, the "Middle Kingdom," , being reduced to the place where the "sun sets" (which can also mean "dies" or "drowns"). Yang Ti informed his officials that he was not again to be shown a letter from barbarians who did not know how to address the Emperor of China. The Emperors of Romania, aware that they had once had Western colleagues, were more tolerant of recognizing an Imperial title among the Franks.

Liutprand (or Liudprand) had been on an earlier embassy to Constantinople, in 949. This was to the court of Constantine VII on behalf of Berengar II of Italy (at the time still just Regent for King Lothair II). Liutprand accomplished his mission, which was to arrange a marriage between Lothair's sister, Bertha (renamed Eudocia in Greek), and Constantine. Unfortunately, Bertha died the same year. Liutprand apparently was happy on the 949 embassy but had a bad experience on the one in 968. He did not get along with the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas and vented his dislike of Romania, as recounted in his work "Embassy" (cf. "The Embassy of Liudprand," The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, translated by Paolo Squatriti, The Catholic Press of America, 2007, pp.238282). The curious thing about Liutprand's dislike of the contemporary Greek Romania is that he traces its evils back to Rome itself, all the way to Romulus (whom he calls a "fratricide," "from whom also the Romans are named, was born in adultery; and that he made an asylum for himself in which he received insolvent debtors, fugitive slaves, homicides, and those who were worthy of death for their deeds"). Thus, in his very hatred of Constantinople, he agrees that this is indeed the Roman Empire, with its sins traced back to the founding of the City of Rome. What he celebrates are the Germans, whom he lists comprehensively as "Lombards [himself], Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians [i.e. Lorraine], Bavarians, Swabians [i.e. the Alemanni], Burgundians." It did not matter that Liutprand was at the time representing Otto I as the "Emperor of the Romans." Nicephorus was pushing his buttons, and Liutprand's true sympathies emerge. The ideology of Otto wanting to be the true Roman, according to which Nicephorus would be addressed as "Emperor of the Greeks," was a recent notion that Liutprand evidently did not always keep in mind. Disputing the Roman identity of Romania, of course, eventually culminates in calling it "Byzantium." Liutprand's embassy in 968 was also to arrange a marriage. Because of the poor relationship with Nicephorus, the embassy failed, and Liutprand returned home. However, after Nicephorus was killed by John Tzimisces in 969; Liutprand returned (971) and arranged a marriage between a niece of John, Theophano Scleraena, and the son of Otto I. The German Emperor Otto III would then be the son of Theophano and Otto II. Since Otto III died without issue, the succession jumped to his cousin Henry, the Duke of Bavaria, and then to the Salians. The princess of Constantinople thus had no other descendants on the German throne. Liutprand himself, returning home with Theophano in 972, died on the way. Note that the Venerable Bede (673-735) also considered Romania the "true" Roman Empire from the reign of Honorius, completely ignoring the last Western Emperors and what now we consider the "Fall" in 476. Thus, from Bede in the 8th century to Liutprand in the 10th, the judgment of the learned in Francia, taking Constantinople to be the capital of the continuing Roman Empire, was unchanged. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 10

Judith Herrin's recent Byzantium, The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire [Princeton & Oxford, 2007] introduces the word "Romania" in a curious way. It is not in the index, but we first encounter it in the text in Latin, in the title of the Partitio terrarum Imperii Romaniae, the "Partition of the lands of the Empire of Romania" [pp.263-264], i.e. the document that split up the Empire after the taking of Constantinople by Venice and the Fourth Crusade. The word "Romania" is then glossed as "a western name for the empire" [p.264]. Since this was the late Roman name for the Empire, whose use had simply continued in the West, and, as noted above, I have also seen it used in Greek by Theophanes, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and others, Herrin's statement is starkly and seriously false. One will not encounter "Romania" much in secondary sources, and so the casual dilettante such as myself could be excused for not being familiar with it, but Herrin, as a Byzantinist, has no such excuse. But what is more intriguing is that she applies no such gloss ("a western name for the empire") to the word "Byzantium," although early on she does mention of "Byzantium" that the "name was not given to it until the sixteenth century, when humanist scholars tried to find a way of identifying what remained after the collapse of Old Rome in the West" [p.25]. By her own admission, they already had a name for it, unless, of course, they simply didn't want to use a name with "Rome" in it. Herrin displays a similar reluctance; and she uses "Byzantium" constantly and unproblematically, despite the fact that it is, by her own admission, supremely "a western name for the empire" -- although one now used by Greeks also. In relation to the quote above, that "Byzantine Empire" is "a modern misnomer redolent of ill-informed contempt," Herrin is at pains to address the "ill-informed contempt" part but gives us nothing, and expresses no appreciation, that the word might be "a modern misnomer." Indeed, Herrin's book would seem to represent the flip side of the "Rome is the City of Rome" school of historiography, with an equal and opposite proposition that "Byzantium is the Empire of Byzantium." For instance, Herrin says of the Emperor Constantine XI, as the City was about to fall to the Turks: ...the most Christian emperor called out in Greek to his people to prove themselves to be true Romans. In so doing, he summoned a history that stretched back from 1453 to the dedication of the city in 330, one thousand, one hundred and twenty-three years earlier, and identified the Byzantines with their glorious forebears, the pagan Greeks and Romans. [p.329] Now, there was nothing unusual about an Emperor addressing his people either in Greek, which is what he spoke, or as "Romans," which is what they were. In so doing however, one might wonder why Herrin thinks this particularly refers to the dedication of Constantinople in 330. If you are a Roman, this already bespeaks historical continuity back to Augustus if not to Romulus and Remus. Herrin makes it sound like Constantine's subjects are ordinarily addressed as "Byzantines" and that he has used some novel expression to remind them of the "pagan Greeks and Romans." No. It is Herrin, not

Constantine, who thinks of there as being some discontinuity between "Byzantium" and Rome. But this is the modern idea, "redolent of ill-informed contempt," not the Mediaeval idea. The contempt here in Herrin, or at least the dissociation, is for the Roman identity of "Byzantium," as the opposite of Western contempt or neglect for Constantinople. Herrin returns the neglect, if not the contempt, with a certain shocking carelessness for Roman history of Late Antiquity. Thus, she says: ...and the last Roman Emperor in the West was deposed in 476, leaving a half-Vandal, half-Roman general, Stilicho, in control of Italy. [p.13] Unfortunately, Stilicho had been assassinated in 408. Herrin is thinking of Odoacer. Similarly, she says of the original Constantine, who was proclaimed Emperor by his father's troops in 306, that "he was not recognized by Licinius, the senior emperor in the East" [p.4]. Again, unfortunately, Licinius was not made an Emperor until 308, and he was at that point junior to Galerius (d.311) and Maximinus II Daia (d.313). Indeed, in 308 he was junior to Constantine, who nevertheless was demoted to Caesar (until 309) -Constantine rather resented this. Outside of Roman history, Herrin is also a bit careless. Thus, when she mentions the overthrow of the Omayyads by the Abbasids, she says this "split the Islamic world into rival caliphates, leaving the Umayyads based in Spain" [p.324]. However, this event was in 750 AD, and the Omayyads in Spain did not claim a Caliphate until 912 -- which then only lasted until 1031. This short-lived regime did not exactly split the Islamic world -- that would be done by the Shi'ite Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt (969-1171). We also get the statement that "The Seljuk Turks were a Mongol people speaking an ancient Uighur language" [p.325]. Perhaps I have missed something, but my understanding is that the several Turkish and Mongolian languages are in separate branches of the Altaic family of languages, while Uighur and the Oghuz language of the Ottomans, Azeris, and Turkmen, which is probably where Seljuk would have fallen, have been separate members of the Turkish group. As with the confusions over Roman history, I think what this reveals are the pitfalls of overspecialization in history. Perhaps a Byzantinist can't really be expected to know when there was a Caliphate in Spain or if Turkish isn't a kind of Mongolian, but it is shocking that a Byzantinist could not get straight some simple facts of Late Roman history. But Herrin, like the Classicists with nothing but contempt for "Byzantium," shares their perspective on the fictitious rupture and chasm that separates "Rome" from "Byzantium." "Romania" bridges the gap but is ignored. After writing to Judith Herrin about some of these issues, I actually did receive a very nice reply in the matter of the usage of "Romania": You're quite right that Rhomania, in Greek, was always used for the empire by its inhabitants and the Latin equivalent goes back to late antiquity. During the Middle Ages, however, I've found less use of Romania in the West and, especially after 800, more references to the 'empire of the Greeks'. After their conquest of Constantinople in 1204,

westerners use the term Romania in Latin much more frequently, at the very point where it increasingly drops out of use by the Greeks. So Romania is the ancient western name, which had a revival from the thirteenth century on, as witnessed by the Assizes de Romanie etc. And yes, Byzantium is an entirely western creation based on the name of Byzantion, which remained in Greek medieval usage to designate the capital. I shall try to clarify this in a reprint, if that's possible. With renewed thanks and all best wishes, Judith Herrin [15 May 2009] What goes unexplained here is how, if Herrin is so familiar with the ebb and flow of this usage, something that is so much a misdirection or misrepresentation as "a western name for the empire" could make its way into her book. What I would hope is, not just that the erroneous gloss should be corrected, but that a brief discussion, even no more than is included in her e-mail, should be introduced early in the book to properly inform the reader about what the "Byzantine Empire" was actually called by its contemporaries. A reference she makes here incidentally answers a question I had above, about A.A. Vasiliev citing the Partitio terrarum Imperii Romaniae as the Partitio Romanie. We see the point of confusion revealed in the name of the Les Assises de Romanie, a law code, the "Assizes of Romania," in French, from the Latin Empire. "Romanie" is thus simply the French form of "Romania." Vasiliev substituted the French word for the Latin genitive Romaniae -- as Herrin herself here casually mixes the English "Assizes" with the French "de Romanie." Of course, when we realize that "Romania" was used in French as well as in Latin and Greek, this makes it all the more peculiar that the principal "Byzantine" histories should not explain, discuss, or sometimes even mention the word. Herrin begins her book by saying: One afternoon in 2002, two workmen knocked on my office door in King's College, London. They were doing repairs to the old buildings and had often passed my door with its notice; 'Professor of Byzantine History'. Together they decided to stop by and ask me, 'What is Byzantine history?' They thought that it had something to do with Turkey. And so I found myself trying to explain briefly what Byzantine history is to two serious builders in hard hats and heavy boots. Many years of teaching had not prepared me for this. I tried to sum up a lifetime of study in a ten-minute visit. [Princeton U. Press, 2008, p.xiii] I have discussed the response I would give to the workmen it more detail elsewhere. Here I am reminded of a story told by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. When he was a

child, he wondered what the stars were. He went to his local library and asked for a book about the stars. The librarian gave him a book about the famous Hollywood actors, the "stars," of his day. Once corrected on the error, the librarian gave him a proper astronomical book. It began with the answer to Sagan's question: The stars are other suns. I think that the simplest answer to anyone asking, "What is Byzantium?" is just, "Byzantium was the Roman Empire." This is the best answer because it may elicit the obvious response, "I thought that the Roman Empire Fell in 476," to which, of course, the rejoinder is, "No, it didn't." The follow-up is easily explained. What is less easily explained is why even the educated should be unaware or deceived about the whole business. A historian like Herrin gives us good information about Byzantium, in its own terms, but leaves the basic question still sufficiently confused that she is awkwardly left uncertain how to answer it herself. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 11 Warren Treadgold, in the previously cited A History of the Byzantine State and Society, provides a dramatic graphic (p.8) for the history of the Empire beginning with Diocletian. Adapted and colorized from Treadgold's graph, here we see the full extent of Diocletian's Empire, about three and three quarter million square kilometers, the rapid collapse of the Western Empire, the substantial but ephemeral restoration under Justinian, and then the cyclical expansion and retreat over the centuries of the surviving Empire. Diocletian's Empire was around 3.75 million square kilometers. A good comparison would be modern India, at 3,287,590 km2. To make up the difference, about 462,000 km2, we could add Papua New Guinea, at 462,840 km2. But British Imperial India, with Pakistan and Bangladesh, was substantially larger, at 4,235,201 km2. The full Roman Empire looks larger than it was because it was wrapped around so much water. The largest modern states are muchlarger in area than Rome: Australia is 7.68 (more than twice the size of Rome), the United States 9.37, China 9.56, Canada 9.97, and Russia

17.08 million km2. Some accounts of the Roman Empire make it seem larger by adding in the area of the Mediterranean Sea (the Mare Nostrum, entirely enclosed by Roman territory), which from Gibraltar to the Bosporus is 2.51 million km2, giving a grand total of 6.26 million km2. Still not quite as large as Australia. Justinian's Empire peaked at just over 2 million square kilometers, while the area of modern Mexico is 1,958,200, Indonesia 1,904,570, or Saudi Arabia 2,149,690 km2. The Empire of the Macedonians, after a long recovery, topped out at about 1.25 million km2, while the combined area of modern France, Germany, and Italy is 1,209,730 km2 -- or of South Africa 1,219,916 km2. The Empire of the Comneni was about 750,000 km2, which is rather close to modern Chile at 756,950 or Zambia at 752,614 km2.

The modern Chinese expression for "Roman Empire" is , where Roma has been rendered phonetically (Luoma). Phonetic writings are the modern practice. There may actually be a Classical Chinese name for Rome, however -, "Great Ch'in." But this identification is tentative, depending on whether the embassy that arrived at the court of the Later Han Dynasty in 166 AD actually was from Rome. It seems likely. But at this point it is easier to use the phonetic writing. In differentiating the different periods of Roman history, we can follow the precedents in Chinese history, where dynasties are distinguished by compass directions and "early" or "late." Thus, we have the "Former" or "Western" Han and then, when the dynasty changes and the capital moves, the "Later" or "Eastern" Han. Well, the Roman Capital definitely moved, and we can use "West" and "East" in the broader Chinese senses, rather than in the way "Western" and "Eastern" are used for Roman history only when the Empire was actually divided in half. The Roman or Western Roman Empire is thus Romania, is "late,"
First Empire Second Empire Third Empire

, while the Eastern Empire, or (e.g. "former"), "middle," , and

. "Early,"

, can be used for the different periods of "Eastern" Rome.

ROME EARLY ROMANIA MIDDLE ROMANIA 27 BC-284 AD Era of Diocletian 1327 Era of Diocletian 327-776 310 years 326 years 449 years

284-610 6101059

Fourth Empire

LATE ROMANIA

10591453

Era of Diocletian 776-1170

394 years

For Chinese titles of monarchy and nobility, see Chinese Feudal Hierarchy. Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 12 I wish I can say that this was my own idea. Actually, I can say that, but I can't say that it was an idea that I had first. It was a thesis already in scholarly discussion. For instance, we find Michael Grant, in hisFrom Rome to Byzantium, The fifth century AD [Routledge, 1998], saying: With his fleet, Gaiseric controlled the western Mediterranean throughout his reign, and he died undefeated in 477: he never became western emperor, because it was understood that no German could do so; but he put Rome in the shade. [p.21, boldface added] Here Grant is talking about a King of the Vandals who was never a servant of Rome, or even an ally -- the Vandals were the only major German tribe who were consistently hostile and belligerent towards Rome. But the principle was the same for Roman commanders like Stilicho or Ricimer. With Gaiseric, it is not hard to imagine someone sacking Rome in 455 and then thinking, "Why not stay?" He had a better claim and grasp on power than most of the subsequent ephemeral emperors. But Germans were simply not Romans. A curious feature of this is that it had long been possible for barbarians to become Roman citizens, as the reward of service in the Roman Army. Why we do not see this device in play in the Late Empire is a good question. To be sure, citizenship was awarded after military service, which means that Germans in a position to seize the Throne, i.e. the ones on active service, are precisely the ones who will not yet be citizens. Also, tribal Germans, like the Visigoths, even as allies of the Romans, are not actually in the Roman Army at all and would never qualify for citizenship. The device of the king-making German commander may have begun with Arbogast, who was a Frankish Magister Militum under Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I. When Valentinian died, Arbogast raised the non-entity Eugenius to the Throne (392394). Since Eugenius was not of the Valentian or Theodosian Houses, we cannot say that Arbogast was denying himself the Throne on a principle of dynastic legitimacy. No, he was denying himself the Throne because no one, including himself, believed that a German non-citizen was qualified to become Emperor. This may be the first time that

such a thing happened in Roman history. Previous and subsequent usurpers like Magnus Maximus (383-388) or Constantine "III" (407-411) had no difficulty promoting themselves because there was no difficulty over their citizenship. By the same token, the Master of Soldiers Constantius (410-421) married Galla Placidia, fathered Valentinian III, and then was made co-Emperor before he died (as Constantius III, 421). Arbogast committed suicide after his defeat by Theodosius at the bloody battle of the Frigidus River in 394. Stilicho himself was then the successor of Arbogast as Magister Militum. Not everyone agrees with the thesis about citizenship. John Michael O'Flynn says of Orestes making his young son, Romulus Augustulus, Emperor instead of himself: ...the fact that he, though a Roman, declined to ascend the imperial throne himself casts doubt on the theory that his barbarian counterparts refrained from a similar move merely because they were barbarian. [Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire, U of Alberta Press, 1983, p.134] O'Flynn seems to think that since "real power" lay with the barbarian army, Orestes was better off as Commander rather than Emperor. Such altenatives, however, only exist because people like Arbogast and Ricimer had already held military power without the formal political power. This division was a novelty that had not recommended itself to Magnus Maximus, Constantine "III," or Constantius III. I don't think O'Flynn gives us the reason why, if it isn't just because the Germans are Germans. Orestes in his day certainly can have had the thought that he should seem German in order to help hold the loyalty of his troops (which he lost anyway). Avoiding the Throne would have been consistent with that. A more serious counterexample might be that of Aspar, the Alan Master of Soldiers in the East under Theodosius II and Marcian. Aspar was a king-maker who put forward both Marcian and then Leo I for the Eastern Throne. Indeed, Warren Treadgold says, "So great was Aspar's power that the intimidated senate apparently offered to elect him emperor, his Arianism and barbarian birth notwithstanding" [A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press, 1997, p.149, boldface added]. He then says, "Aspar would not risk accepting the title." Risk? Why not? "Since most Romans considered an Aspar or Ricimer ineligible to become emperor" [p.101]. Thus, if Aspar was offered the Throne, it was not politic even in his own judgment to take it. Since Leo then regarded this situation as perilous, as was becoming all too obvious in the West, he brought in the wild Isaurians who soon replaced German influence in Constantinople. Wild or not, the Isaurian Zeno, a Roman citizen, was soon on the Throne (474-491). Aspar was assassinated in 470 (or 471). Return to text "Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 13

Representative of how people used to think about this might be a 1940 statement by Lieutenant John Clarke (U.S. Army) in the preface to his translation of De Re Militari by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (c.390 AD): Cavalry had adopted the armor of the foot solider and was just commencing to become the principal arm of the military forces. The heavy armed foot-soldier, formerly the backbone of the legion, was falling a victim of his own weight and immobility, and the light-armed infantry, unable to resist the shock of cavalry, was turning more and more to missile weapons. By one of the strange mutations of history, when later the cross-bow and gun-powder deprived cavalry of its shock-power, the tactics of Vegetius again became ideal for armies, as they had been in the times from which he drew his inspiration. [edited by Brig. Gen. Thomas R. Phililps, U.S. Army, Roots of Strategy, Military Service Pub. Co., 1940, Stackpole Books, 1985, p.69] Thus, we get the picture that cavalry achieved a technological advantage over infantry that only the introduction of cross-bows and gunpowder could overcome. Unfortunately, the Romans had been dealing with armored cavalry for a long time. This had been introduced by the Parthians: the "cataphracts" (Latin cataphractus, Greek katphraktos, "mail-clad," or Latin clibanarius, from Greek krbanos orklbanos, an earthen or iron pot or pan). It is unlikely that any German cavalry was as well armored as the Parthians had been. And even if it was, this was nothing new. And although Vegetius complains about undisciplined soldiers in his day throwing away their armor, the gear of Roman soldiers was never heavier that what the modern soldier still carries. There was no problem of a Roman infantryman "falling a victim of his own weight and immobility." Infantry armies shrank in Western Europe, not from technological disadvantage, but from lack of money. They continued in Romania right through the Middle Ages. Then, as noted above, it was the pike, not cross-bows or gunpowder, that greeted cavalry when infantry revived in the West. Lieutenant Clarke might have paid some attention to what Vegetius says about cavalry in his own translation: Many instructions might be given with regard to the cavalry. But as this branch of the service has been brought to perfection since the ancient writers and considerable improvements have been made in their drills and maneuvers, their arms, and the quality and management of their horses, nothing can be collected from their works. Our present mode of discipline is sufficient. [p.174] Vegetius, who is so sensible of the problems with his contemporary Roman Army, seems quite satisified with the Army's cavalry. This is not consistent with the picture we might get, as from Lieutenant Clarke, of Roman cavalry operating at some kind of disadvantage vis vis the Germans. That was simply not the case. Return to text

"Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, etc.," Note 14 A new book weighs in on the "Fall" of Rome: How Rome Fell, Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy [Yale University Press, 2009]. So far, I have only seen reviews of the book, but they do not make it look promising. Goldsworthy's thesis is said to be that the Empire was weakened by civil wars and by the abandonment of the Republican system of consultation with the Senate. Unfortunately, any explanation of the Fall of Rome must simultaneously account for the collapse in the West and the lack of collapse in the East. That is to say, part of the Empire fell but not all of it. Both parts of Goldsworthy's argument would fail in this respect, since the East continued just fine despite this history of civil wars and despite the purely monarchical form of government. Indeed, the Roman Empire was created out of civil wars, and then recovered under Diocletian, and at other times, after nasty bouts of them. I am reminded of the Introduction by E.R.A. Sewter to his translation of Michael Psellus [Fourteen Byzantine Emperors, Penguin, 1966], where he says, "if they were so inferior, how did these wretched Byzantines manage to survive so long after the collapse of the West? and what about Santa Sophia? and wasn't a millennium rather a long time for a sustained decline?" [p.10]. To be sure. As I have examined above, I think much of the problem is the disinclination of Classicists, by a kind of self-deception, to credit the starkly obvious record of the survival of the Empire. Those Greeks simply were not, well Romans, according to us. But if the "Roman Empire" is to mean a State ruled from the city of Rome by native Italian Latin speakers (true "Romans"), then the Roman Empire indeed already had "fallen" in the Third Century. Philip the Arab, Diocletian, and others were no longer Italian. Trajan and Septimius Severus already were no longer Italian, though they were born from Latin colonial families. But once Caracalla made all free Roman subjects Citizens, that was the end of any legal ethnic distinctions in the Empire. Diocletian's Empire had Latin as its court language, but it was no longer based in Rome or governed or defended by natives of Latium. The Empire as such, not the City, was the nature of the State. It does not sound like Goldsworthy does a better job than many others in coming to grips with this circumstance. He likes the First Empire and thinks of the "Fall" as its end, the end of paganism and the dominance of the City. The transformation of the State and the Civilization, and its survival for twelve hundred years after Diocletian, is a disappointment to be ignored, distorted, or misrepresented to any extent possible. Return to text

The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History

The Vlach Connection

Whether what the emperor Justinian did, in recovering North Africa and Italy for the Empire, was a good idea is still argued by historians. At the same time, it is a bit ridiculous to sneer at the Eastern emperors because they weren't properly Roman, somehow, and then simultaneously fault the one who goes out and recovers nearly half of the old West from the Germans. Nevertheless, what Justinian was and what he did contain important elements of how the mediaeval world was becoming different from the ancient, and how the later empire was different from the earlier. What Justinian was is a large but little noted part of the story. He is supposed to have come from a Latin speaking family in Macedonia. Now, a Latin speaking family in, say, Spain would mean people whose language would eventually evolve into Spanish; in Gaul, into French; etc. A Latin speaking family in Macedonia would thus be people whose language would eventually evolve into the Romance languages called "Vlach" south of the Danube and, north of the Danube, Romanian. So, in short, Justinian was a

Romanian, whether in the modern or the ancient sense. A Romanian emperor of Romania. This leads into several issues.
1. Vlach is itself an interesting word. It seems to be a derivative from the same

Germanic word cognate to welsch in German and Welsh in English, both meaning Roman, whether the Romans be Latin-speaking or Celticspeaking. Vlach itself is Slavic (taking that form in Czech) and could mean Italian or Romanian, though the same word, with appropriate case endings, turns up in mediaeval Latin (Blachi) and Greek (Blakhoi, pronounced Vlakhi), only applied to the Romance speakers of the Balkans. It also occurs in Polish as Wloch, in Hungarian as Olasz, in Russian as Volokh, in Yiddish as Walach, and in various other forms even in those same languages (cf. "Vlach," A Dictionary of Surnames, Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges [Oxford University Press, 1988], p. 558). Vlach also significantly turns up in the name of the first Romanian principality:Wallachia (or sometimes "Walachia"). Thus, we can imagine the word being left behind in the Balkan Sprachbund by the German tribes during their stay in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. For many centuries Vlach was a spoken and not a written language. When it was committed to writing, the Cyrillic alphabet was used, in line with the Orthodox faith of the people. Later, a national consciousness arose in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, where the language came to be called "Romanian." The name was at first itself influenced by Turkish pronunciation, as Rumanian or Roumanian, but along with the adoption of the Latin alphabet and an attempt to Latinize the language more, the name also was more Latinized. For clarity, the language of modern Romania can be called Daco-Romanian. Several islands of Vlach speakers survive in Greece, Albania, and the former Yugoslavia, though the use of the word "Vlach" for these is dying out. Two islands of speakers in Albania and Greece are now said to speak Arumanian, while another island of speakers in Greek Macedonia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are said to speak Megleno-Rumanian. The Megleno-Rumanian speakers thus might be thought of as the descendants of Justinian's own people.
2. This throws an important perspective on the Eastern empire through the rest of its

history. When Greek replaces Latin as the Court language under the emperor Heraclius, historians begin to think of the empire as a Greek empire, even as Western Europeans (Franks) tended to think of everyone in the empire as Greek. But of course nothing of the sort was true. Greek stood to the later empire just as Latin had stood to the earlier: the language of higher culture and universal communication, but not the spoken language of all the ethnic components of the whole. Greek had a bit of that role in the earlier empire as well: Marcus Aurelius did not become Greek because he kept his diary in that language. At the same time, real Mediaeval Greeks were even hesitant to call themselves Greeks: Hellenes, the Greek word for "Greeks," tended to imply

the ancient pagan Greeks. Christian Greeks didn't need to call themselves anything but "Romans." Besides Greeks, the later empire had a very large element of Armenians, other groups whose languages were not written until later, like Albanians and Vlach speakers, and finally other indigenous ethnic groups to whom there are occasional references, like the Isaurians and Phrygians, whose languages are not well attested and who actually disappear completely in the course of the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. Indeed, it is not clear just how and when many of the ancient indigenous peoples of Anatolia disappear or are assimilated -- people like the Phrygians, Lydians, Dacians, Galatians (who were Celts), Cappadocians, etc. After Basil II had finally conquered Bulgaria, a large Slavic element of Bulgars and Serbs, centuries after their having broken through the Danube frontier, was finally also integrated into the empire. Even the Latin Emperors in Constantinople, aware of the history and multi-ethnic nature of the Empire, still called it Romania. Thus, while the modern Romanians preserve that identity as speakers of a Romance language, mediaeval Romania meant an empire of many peoples, united by the history of the Roman Empire and the Church, and simply governed in Greek. The greatest "Byzantine" dynasty, the Macedonians, starting with Basil I, seems to have actually been Armenian in origin, even as two of the in-law emperors in the same dynasty, Romanus I and John Tzimisces, were also. In this respect, again, the Roman Empire had assumed more fully the characteristic of a Hellenistic state -- which simply meant that anyone who learned Greek gained full political equality.
3. There is finally the mystery of the Daco-Romanian speakers in their current

territory. The Romance speakers of the Balkans enter history in the 12th century as the Vlachs: When the second Bulgariankingdom broke away from Romania in 1186, the revolt was led by the Asen brothers, who were Vlachs themselves. John Asen styled himself, in Latin, imperator omnium Bulgarorum et Blacorum. When the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa passed through in 1189, the Vlach element seemed predominant, since John was referred to as "emperor of the Vlachs and of the most part of the Bulgarians," "emperor of the Vlachs and Cumans," or "emperor of the Vlachs who was called by them emperor of Greece" [History of the Byzantine Empire, A.A. Vasiliev, University of Wisconsin Press, 1964, p.442]. The Asens may have emphasized the Bulgarian element simply because that was the independent institutional precedent, of state and church, that they were claiming. Since we do not previously hear about Romance speakers in the Balkans in any mediaeval history, and Vlach at that point was still not a written language, these people seem to just pop up out of nowhere. Much the same is true of the Albanians. Even more mysterious is the appearance of the Romance speakers north of the Danube, which had largely been terra incognita for the previous thousand years. Thus, anyone would wonder what had happened. Romance

speech means Roman colonization, and we have to go back all the way to the 2nd and 3th centuries to find out about that. Since Romanian nationalism naturally identifies itself with the present land of Romania, and also with the pre-Roman inhabitants of Dacia -- the plateau protected on south and east by the Carpathian moutains -- it stoutly maintains that Daco-Romanians have occupied the same territory continuously. On the other hand, the Hungarians, who ruled Transylvania (the same plateau) from the founding of their own state all the way, except for the Turkish occupation, to 1918, like to claim that they were actually there first, and that the Romanians came in later. These competing political claims, which often have overtones of self-interested ethnic myth-making, make it very difficult for outsiders to evaluate the arguments -- anyone might be reasonably suspicious of what any of the DacoRomanian or Hungarian sources say. What we know from Roman sources is that the province of Dacia, conquered and colonized by Trajan in 106, was abandoned around 271. This was, as we have seen, a very bad period for the Romans, and Dacia was a salient into territory mostly surrounded by increasingly active enemies. With the Roman withdrawl, the area drops out of recorded history for many centuries, and notice of Romance speakers there doesn't occur until something like the 14th century. Texts in the Vlach/Romanian language don't occur until the 16th century. Across the void of the Transylvanian plateau and Carpathian mountains, mediaeval historians only notice the passage of nomads -- Germans (Goths and Gepids), Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Patzinaks, Cumans, and, last but not least, the Mongols. The locations of Wallachia and Moldavia seem like virtual nomadic no-man's lands during much of the Middle Ages, with no literate culture and no civil organization or political authority apart from the nomadic empires. While the Romans withdrew their legions, administrators, and many colonists, it does seem unlikely that all the inhabitants of Dacia, which before the Roman conquest had been a fairly unified and formidable state, would have left. Any unassimilated rural population, especially, would have had no particular reason to leave -- rule by some Germans might not have seemed worse, and perhaps better, than Roman rule. The archaeology reported by modern Romanians indicates a continuity of the material culture, even if urban areas decline precipitiously and there is little in the way of epigraphic material. Romanians like to point out that rural costume even today looks like the Dacian costume of Trajan's Column in Rome. Coin hoards indicate, especially for the 4th century, a continuing cash economy, which means continuing trade contact with the Empire. That even allowed for the penetration of some Christianity. What percentage of this remaining population was Latin speaking, and what percentage was still using the old Dacian language, is impossible, in the absence of the records of a literate culture, to say. The withdrawn colonists, probably all or mostly Latin speaking, were settled just across the Danube in the Roman province of Moesia Superior (Upper Moesia).

That province was later subdivided into Upper Moesia (Moesia I) and, of all things, Dacia. This is now in the part of Serbia south of the Danube and east of Belgrade. This Dacia was later subdivided in two. These provinces were then collected, with Upper Moesia and other nearby provinces into the Diocese of Dacia. In late Roman times the area was Latin speaking and outside where Greek was commonly used (cf. A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Warren Threadgold [Stanford University Press, 1997], p.6). It is not hard to imagine the contacts that continued between the inhabitants north of the Danube, Romanized to a greater or lesser extent, and those who had withdrawn to the south, even as late Roman trade crossed back and forth all along the Rhine-Danube frontier. Not only did the original Dacia drop out of history in 271, but the later Dacias did so also, after the Avars and Slavs breached the Danube frontier and poured into the Balkans in 602. Only the conversion of Bulgaria to Christianity in 879, with the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet, returned the region to literacy. As it happens, only one other place in the Roman Empire dropped out of history in quite the same way. That was Britain. The withdrawl of Roman forces in 410 drops Britain into a void very similar to that of the Dacias, and for a while all that is apparent is the descent of sea-going Germans -- the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. When literate culture returns, dramatically evident in the history of the English church written by the Venerable Bede in 731, we suddenly see the results. Roman Britain has disappeared from most of the island, with Romanized Celtic speakers pushed into Wales and Cornwall. The Cornish were under such pressure that many of them crossed over to Brittany. The Celtic speakers of Cornwall have today disappeared, but the Bretons are very much alive and aware of their past. Although the Angles and Saxons inherited the old Roman place names, and came to tell the King Arthur stories by which the conflicts of the 5th century were vaguely remembered, Saxon England owed little enough to the culture it had displaced. Roman Britain survives in Wales and Brittany. Even pre-Roman culture survives in Spain, where the mountains in the North harbor the Basques, whose language has no obvious affinities to any other. This is revealing. The geography of England poses few obstacles to conquest, but both the Welsh and the Basques held out in mountains -- relatively modest mountains perhaps, no more than 3000 feet in Wales and not much more than 7500 feet on the south side of the Ebro

valley in Spain (though over 11,000 feet in the nearby Pyrenees), but something that could impose significant costs to invaders -- in the Middle Ages, the Basque country was the basis of the long independent Kingdom of Navarre. Americans need only remember how the Appalachians, which don't get much over 6000 feet, originally hindered westward movement. The Transylvanian plateau, in comparison to these, provides a formidable redoubt. The Danube River itself tells the tale, since it must make a broad detour to the south, around the whole area. The southern branch of the Carpathians, the Transylvanian Alps, has peaks over 8000 feet high, and even the western side goes up to 6000 feet in the Bihor mountains. This makes it immediately obvious why nomads tended to pass around, like the Danube. Nomads like flat grasslands, which are present on the Hungarian plain and in the Danube Valley of Wallachia, but not in the mountains or up on the Transylvanian plateau. We should expect to find an autochthonous population in Daco-Romania just as must as in Wales or Navarre. Consequently, it is no more difficult imagining the Dacians surviving than it is explaining the Welsh or the Basques. On the other hand, this makes it somewhat more difficult to explain why the original Dacian language would not have survived. The area of Daco-Romania was under Roman rule for a shorter time, about a century and a half, than Britain, about three and a half centuries, or than Spain, more like six and a half centuries. A Romance language did not take root in Britain, and even all the Romance dominance in Spain failed to entirely displace Basque. So why does the pre-Roman language not survive in modern Romania? The relatively brief Roman occupation hardly seems like the kind of thing that could have done so thorough a job, especially in the face of the organization and resistance that the Dacians originally offered. Nor was it Roman policy to deliberately stamp out local languages -- that was just a side effect of Roman colonization and the use of Latin as the administrative, literary, and, later, religious (i.e. Roman Catholic) language. The dominance of Romance speech in Daco-Romania thus might require some other impetus of Latinization. We may find that by asking what happened to all the Latin speakers south of the Danube, in the later Dacian provinces and diocese. If we look there now, one thing we find is that there are still Romance speakers. In the bend of the Danube River, where it breaks through the mountain barrier at the Iron Gate, which corresonds to the north part of the Roman Province of Dacia Ripensis, there is a Daco-Romanian speaking area even today, as part of Serbia. These are people who need not have moved in 1700 years. But most of the area of the Roman Dacias is occupied by speakers of Serbian or Bulgarian. On the other hand, the Vlach languages to the south, as I understand it, do not betray the influence of Greek that they should, had they originated in Macedonia and Albania. And there is, of course, the pocket of Istro-Rumanian, which is all the way West in Istria, which was part of Austria until World War I. Since all the Romance languages of the Balkans appear to come from one proto-language -- Proto-Romanian -- the dispersed pockets, like Arumanian, in Albania and Epirus, and Istro-Rumanian, must have originated in the same area. That looks to

be the Late Roman Dacias. The event to have have scattered the languages would have been the Avar/Slavic breakthrough in 602. Some of the people stayed more or less put, like the Welsh, while others scattered in the face of the invaders, like the Bretons. Since there are no historical records of this, as there are none for the Slavic migration itself, we are left with nothing but the evidence of the results. From Istro-Rumanian, we know that some went West. From Megleno-Rumanian and Arumanian, we know that some went South. However, the most obvious thing for them to do would have been to go north-east right back into the original Dacia. This was now no worse than heading south or west, which offered no real refuge (Roman authority having collapsed so completely), and could easily have been considered better, since they likely would have known from rumor that the invaders had mostly passed around the highlands. Hidden from history, like other Dark Age migrations, the Roman evacuees from Dacia could well have, in returning, provided the additional impetus of Latinization that erased the vestiges of the ancient Dacian language. Nor need this have been an all-at-once process. It looks like mediaeval Serbia started a bit west of the Moesia region, in modern Bosnia, and gradually moved east. In the meantime, the Roman Dacias, which included parts of modern Bulgaria, like the city of Sofia (Roman Serdica), could well have remained largely Vlach. This seems to be no less than what we see in the age of the Asens. As the second Bulgarian empire declined, however, the Serbs pushed to the east. This may have motivated continued Vlach exodus. The continued movement of peoples even in the modern period is a claim of the Serbs themselves, who say that Albanians moved into Kosovo after the Turkish conquest. This is very possible. It also makes possible the movement from the Roman Dacias. If this view of events is correct, then both Romanian and Hungarian nationalists are, after a fashion, correct. There was continuous Daco-Romanian occupation of Transylvania, and there was migration from what had been Roman Moesia, south of the Danube. Not south by much, however. The areas are still contiguous today. This is worse for Hungarian claims than for Romanian. What continued migration explains is the purely Romance character of Daco-Romanian. It also explains something else, however, which is the nature of the Romanian Church. The early Daco-Romanians of Transylvanian did not convert en masse or in any organized way to Christianity, or we would have heard about their bishops at the Ecumenical Councils, and they very well could have been Arians, like the Goths. Nor did Daco-Romanians acquire the religion of the Hungarians, for that would have been allied to the Church of Rome, not of Constantinople. Instead, the Romanian Church goes back to the conversion of the Bulgars. The appearance of "Roumanian" in the Cyrillic alphabet, as well as the influence of Old Church Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Bulgarian Church, on Daco-Romanian, are all evidence of that. After the conquest of Bulgaria by Basil II and the century and a half of rule from Constantinople, the Bulgarian Church was revived by the

Vlach Asens, with the Patriarchate at Trnovo. "The Primate of all Bulgaria and Vlakhia" (totius Bulgariae et Blachiae Primas, in Latin) is what the Patriarch called himself. This seat, and that of Russia, were the only independent Orthodox Churches authorized from Constantinople. As Bulgaria declined and Serbia arose, an independent Serbian Patriarchate was established at Pe (Kosovo) in 1346, just in time for the coronation of Stephan Dushan as "Tsar of the Serbs and Romans." Bulgaria, Serbia, and Wallachia, however, were soon all overrun by the Turks. By 1483, in the still, for the time being, independent Moldavia, there was metropolitan established in Suceava for the Romanian Orthodox Church. I have not found yet the year in which this was actually done, but the Romanian Church has been autonomous ever since [note]. The Orthodox faith of Romanians in Transylvania cannot have originated there except directly under the influence of the Bulgarians, who ruled it at the time of their conversion, or because of migration and influence of Vlachs, who had converted closer to the center of Bulgarian power. Once Transylvania passed to Hungary, any influence would have been for Catholicism, which evidently is something that we do not see. This is about the best I can do, for the moment, with the mystery of the Dark Ages in both Daco-Romania and the Late Roman Dacias. It might not satisfy all Romanians, and certainly not many Hungarians, but dealing with such an issue, outside the sphere of historical records, is intrinsically speculative and uncertain. At the same time, it is nice that somewhere the name of "Romania" is preserved in a modern nation, and it is also well worth remembering that there were people in the Balkans who spoke Latin, as we understand from Justinian's own family.

Taxes and Survival

Who Justinian was is thus of considerable interest; but what he did, of course, looms far larger. Of great significance for the development of mediaeval history was the drawn out struggle to defeat the Ostrogoths in Italy. Italy and Rome itself probably experienced far less devastation during the original Germanic "conquest" and the "fall of Rome" than it did during the Roman reconquest. They certainly represented no new source of strength to the empire, especially when, shortly after Justinian's death, the Lombards would seize the Po Valley and much of Tuscany and of the South of Italy. It is sad to see how far the land had fallen that at one time could lose whole armies to Pyrrhus or Hannibal yet quickly field entirely new ones. The city that had conquered the world and that had long ceased to be the center of power, now was the center of no power at all, except for such pretenses of power as the Pope could, and would, begin to claim.

How Italy could have gone from being the populous fountainhead of Roman conquest to being little more than a strategic liability, its fate in the hands of others for many centuries, is the remaining question about the collapse of the Romania in the West. Historians still are arguing over whether the population had declined or not, after the invasions and plagues of the third century, or what it ever even was. There was also plague in Justinian's day, and we know how devastating that could be from our knowledge of how the later Black Death carried off a third of the population of Europe. On the other hand, the measures taken by Diocletian are revealing in another respect: not only did he fix prices, a typical response to the inflation caused by constant debasement of the coinage, but he tried to fix everyone in their occupations, especially those on the land. The repetition of these measures is a clear indication that people were actually leaving the land, almost certainly to escape the crushing burden of taxation that Diocletian's new empire required. If agriculture was abandoned because it was unprofitable, or otherwise intolerable, for farmers, this would bode ill for the wealth, health, or size of the population. The agricultural work force can only profitably be reduced when agricultural productivity makes a larger work force unnecessary. There is little in fourth century law that encourages one to believe in increased agricultural productivity. At the same time, there is the evidence of how a change in policy towards the land produced a change in the fortunes of empire: The Emperor Heraclius has long been thought to have introduced the innovation of granting small farms to individual soldiers, on the condition of military service, created a system that would ensure not only a supply of military men but also create incentives for productivity on the part of these men who stood to derive all the benefit from their own labor. This would have been a strategy exactly the opposite of Diocletian's; and, while too late to prevent the disasters of the seventh century, it could lay a solid groundwork for Romanian revival in the ninth and tenth. It also protected the empire from feudalism, as the relationship of individual soldiers was with the central government rather than with sovereign feudal intermediaries. It's breakdown, indeed, has been thought to have occurred in the eleventh century, even as the empire appeared to have become invincible, when powerful families, whose names we begin for the first time to hear in the ruling dynasties -- the Ducases, Comneni, Angeli, etc. -- are allowed to usurp possession of the land and peonize the smallholdings. This has been thought to have

devastated the military strength of the empire, destroying the freedom and incentives of those from whom the backbone of the army had been drawn since Heraclius, curiously coinciding with the first debasement of the coinage since Constantine. The roots of Middle Romanian power were destroyed. The whole picture of Heraclius instituting military smallholdings, however, has now been questioned. Mark Whittow (The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025, U of California Press, 1996) calls many of the accepted views about late antiquity into question: There is little evidence that the plagues of the 6th century were devastating and, especially, there is no evidence that Heraclius introduced anything like military smallholdings. The Empire surived, it seems, more because of institutional strength and continuity than because of reforms or innovations. Soldiers were paid in cash and evidence about the inheritance or sale of land reveals no hereditary obligations to military service. These new arguments and information nicely reinforce the picture of "Early Byzantium" as the Roman Empire -- the army even continued to use Latin terminology longer than the central government -- but it puts us back to square one if we want to explain the decline in the strength of Italy. If taxation was driving peasants off the land in Diocletian's day, this burden may well have been mitigated by the time of Justinian. The late evidence from places like Egypt seems to be of prosperity rather than misery.

The Romanian Sui

Justinian, then, whether he was stuck with a flawed engine of power or not, nevertheless possessed a vastly more sophisticated and prosperous state than those created by the Germans. He began with a device that had been tried before, in 468, and should have succeeded then: A naval expedition against the Vandals in North Africa. The Emperor Leo had gotten the Western Commander Ricimer to agree to an Eastern candidate for the Western throne, Anthemius, and to participate in the joint expedition. This was exactly what was needed. The Vandal occupation of North Africa had cut off grain from both Italy and the East, and the Vandal navy had turned the western Mediterranean into a sea of pirates for the first time in centuries. Recovering North Africa would immediately return command of the sea to the Romans, secure the grain, and extend Roman control all the way to Spain. Leo's expedition should have succeeded, but it was ruined by treachery and incompetence. It is now unimaginable how different matters might have been if the Vandals had been removed so promptly, hardly twenty years after they had secured their control.

So Justinian had to do it all over again, in 533, with no help from a Western Emperor, though the Ostrogoths foolishly (for their interest) did not oppose, and actually somewhat assisted, Justinian's move. But this time, far from treachery or incompetence, Justinian could rely on the brilliance of the great general Belisarius, of whom Hannibal, who had tried to accomplish some of the same feats on the same kind of shoestring resources, could have been proud. The Vandals, caught off guard, fell like rotten fruit. Then it was the turn of the Ostrogoths, whom Belisarius quickly routed, in 536, but unfortunately could not finish off. The recovery of the Ostrogoths led to a protracted and desperate struggle. That was not settled until Justinian sent a new army overland with Narses, in 552, annihilating the Ostrogoths. Thus the reconquest of the West commenced. Curiously, much the same kind of process would begin in China in the very same century. Before judging whether Justinian was wise or foolish, reactionary or progressive, that comparison must be made. China had undergone an experience similar to Rome's. At the fall of the Han Dynasty (220 AD), the country had split up (the Three Kingdoms, 220-265), and then the North had been overrun by barbarians, who set up their own kingdoms (368). In the sixth century China bore more than a passing resemblance to Romania at the beginning of the same period, with Imperial control over one half, barbarian control over the other. Then Yang Chien [Jian] reunited the country and founded the SuiDynasty (590-618). No one calls the Sui emperors fools or reactionaries, because they succeeded, and they were followed by the glory of the great T'ang [Tang] Dynasty (618-906). Romania, in effect, had a Sui but no T'ang. Something cut short the reconquest, and it wasn't the Germans this time. The Romans had to deal with an astonishing Bolt from the Blue such as never menaced the Chinese (at least until the Mongol invasion).

The Islamic Tide

Even before the unpleasant surprise of the seventh century, it was no easy job for the Romans. There were two formidable enemies who had to be dealt with, the Lombards and the Persians; and the success of the empire against them, despite its ultimate futility, is testimony to the fundamental strengths of the state as well as the occasional brilliance of its leadership. The invasion of Italy in 568 by the Lombards, who had previously been allies, ended the era of Germanic movements and took the bloom, such as it was, off Justinian's reconquest. The inability of the Lombards to reduce the whole peninsula, and the inability of the Romans to throw them back out, created features of Italian political geography that survived until the 19th century. The Po Valley and Tuscany were gone forever, and the Lombards broke through to establish semi-independent, detached duchies (Spoleto and Benevento) in the South, leaving a curious corridor of Romania between Rome and the administrative capital, as it had been of the late Western empire, Ravenna. This corridor was later "donated" to the Pope by the Frankish King Pepin in 754, becoming the "Patrimony of St. Peter," or the Papal States. Although most of it was alienated during the Middle Ages, the warrior Pope Julius II (1503-1513) managed to get

it all back together. It survived as such until 1860, when all but the area around Rome went into the new Kingdom of Italy, and 1870, when the withdrawal of French troops to be defeated by Prussia left the Italians free to occupy Rome itself. The conquest of the Lombards by Constantinople, rather than by the Franks, certainly would not have produced such secular power for the Pope or a history of division for Italy. That such a conquest could well have happened is indicated by the success enjoyed by the Emperor Constans II when he moved up the Po Valley in 663. At the time, however, his attentions already could have been better directed elsewhere.

Even more serious, and briefly more successful, than the Lombards were the Persians. Ever since their advent in 224, overthrowing the Philhellene Parthians and helping to precipitate the Crisis of the Third Century, the Sassanids had aspired to reassemble the great Empire of the Achaemenids. As it happened, the Shah Shapur I (240-272) was the only enemy of Rome ever to capture a Roman Emperor alive: the luckless Valerian (253-260). Now, in league with the Avars, the ambitious Shah Khusro II (591-628) set out to accomplish this hope of centuries, and he mostly accomplished it between 607 and 616. It was one of the worst moments Romania ever had. The Danube frontier collapsed after the army mutinied, the worthless Emperor Phocas was elevated to the Purple, the Avars and Slavs poured into the Balkans, all the way to the Walls of Constantinople, the Persians occupied Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and a Persian army appeared across the Bosporus from their Avar allies (626). In the midst of this disaster, Heraclius landed from North Africa and seized the throne (610). The worst was not over, but Heraclius pursued the brilliant strategy of striking directly at the Persian homeland (623). The defeats he inflicted there, despite the distraction of Avar and Persian advances against Constantinople, which, as always, was impregnable, soon led to the overthrow of Khusro by his own nobles. Peace was made, the Persians evacuated, and by 629, the status quo ante had been restored (except for the uncontrollable Balkans).

It is hard to imagine a more brilliant and tragic figure than Heraclius. The military and institutional salvation of the empire was to his credit. Speaking Greek himself, the Roman Empire reverted to Hellenistic form; and Heraclius even took from the defeated Persian Shah his very title: the Great King, henceforth rendering the Greek basileus the official translation of the Latin imperator. Yet Fate allowed Heraclius only five years to rest on his laurels (629-634). Then an invincible army appeared out of nowhere: The fierce Arabs of the Caliph Omar carrying the incomparable Message and Enthusiasm of a new religion -- Islm. Sassanid Persia was utterly swept away (637-651). The final Shah, Yazdagird III (632651), was fated to be the last one for many centuries. Heraclius was lucky by comparison, but Palestine (636), Syria (640), and Egypt (642) were lost to Romania, and Christendom, forever. Sick, reviled for the sin of having married his own niece (God seems to have changed his mind by the time Philip II of Spain did the same in the 16th century), Heraclius must have died a very sad and broken man. If only he could have know that he had enabled his people to survive victorious for another four centuries, and to endure altogether for another eight.

The True Dark Age

When the Emperor Honorius informed the British, c.410, that they were on their own, Britain dropped out of history into a mythic age where King Arthur and his (anachronistic) knights bought a brief respite of peace against the tide of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. This sort of "darkness" wasn't quite as bad in Gaul; but it is still hard to tell what was going on much of the time, and the material culture evidently declined. Interesting information about the economic level of these regions is related by Mark Whittow: there is archaeological evidence (of the "coins lost under the cushions" sort) that the use of copper coins declined, which indicates when a cash economy gave way to a barter and subsistent economy. Copper coin vanished across Britain and Gaul in the 5th century, across Italy and the Balkans in the 6th, and finally in much of the rest of the reduced Romania in the 7th. As this all coincides with a decline, or disappearance, of historical records, the temptation to speak of the Dark Ages is irresistible. A slightly different light may be thrown on this when we consider what was happening. Britain and Gaul either passed out of or became solidly peripheral to the Roman world during the 5th century. The new Frankish Kingdom in Gaul was at first cut off from the Mediterranean by the Burgundians and Goths and later found the Lombards hostilely interposed between them and Romania, with whom they otherwise had cordial relations. Meanwhile, the decline of Italy clearly coincides, not with the establishment of Odoacer's realm and the Ostrogothic Kingdom, but with the long war of attrition in Justinian's reconquest and then the similar stalemate after the arrival of the Lombards. Similarly, the Balkan economy declined as Slav raiding increased and the Roman army was distracted by various 6th century wars with Persia. Nevertheless, Roman command of the sea after the end of the Vandals meant that the only practical means of long distance trade, by sea, remained open. And Whittow examines extensive evidence that most of the Roman economy in the 6th century empire was quite robust. Egypt, Syria,

and Asia Minor were as wealthy and productive as they had ever been. And there is one striking bit of evidence that at some level an international economy remained active even in the West: the Merovingian and Lombard Kings continued to mint gold coins. This all represents the hope of a steady recovery of trade and material culture in the future. However "dark" the 5th and 6th centuries were, this would not compare with the damage about to be done. The whole arrangement of prosperous provinces at the end of secure sea lanes was utterly destroyed by the advent of Islam. The true Dark Age follows when the arteries of commence are severed and the Mare Nostrum permanently disappears as such. The rural economy of 7th century Romania joins the low level of Britain, Gaul, Italy, and the Balkans when communication not just with wealthy Egypt and Syria is lost, but when any shipping in the Mediterranean becomes a perilous voyage through hostile waters. At first, Roman control of the sea persists, as the forces of Islam are unfamiliar with ships and such naval expeditions as are attempted focus on Constantinople itself (674677 and 717-718), to disastrous results against the fearsome superweapon of the age, Greek Fire. This allowed an amphibious counter-attack against Alexandria in 645 and seemed to hold out hope that North Africa could be retained. However, on land Islam would not be denied, as Egypt was secured in 646 and, with the aid of Berber conversion to the new religion, North Africa was reduced between 670 and 698. In the latter year Carthage, which had originally been destroyed by Rome in 146 BC, and rebuilt by Augustus in 29 BC, was captured and destroyed for a final time. But, as the Arab and Berber army of the Omayyad Caliphs crossed into Spain (711) and hence into Gaul, the islands of the Mediterranean remained in Roman hands. Soon, however, things began to slip. While Roman power could still be well projected into Italy in 663 and Pope Martin I (649-654) could still be arrested, brought to Constantinople, and exiled to the Crimea, none of this could be done any longer as the 8th century progressed. The long stalemate with the Lombards began to shift. Ravenna fell to them in 733, was recaptured, and finally was lost forever in 751. This was the end of Ravenna as a center of power, and thus culminates a period that began when the Emperor Honorius retreated there nearly 350 years earlier. It seemed that the collapse of Romanian power in Italy would then leave the Pope and Rome itself at the mercy of the Lombards. Pope Gregory III (731-741), however, took the fateful step of appealing to the Franks. In both 739 and 740 Charles Martel declined to intervene. After the final fall of Ravenna, the desperate situation called for desperate measures. Pope Stephen III (752-757) traveled to the court of Charles' son, Pepin (753-754), pleading for help against the Lombards. Since Pepin wanted to end the line of Merovingian Kings and become King of the Franks himself, Stephen held out the powerful offer of Papal blessing for this. Consequently, Pepin not only agreed to move against the Lombards, but undertook to return the entire Exarchate of Ravenna, the whole Romanian corridor across central Italy, to the Pope personally. Later, when Pepin's son Charles -Charlemagne -- actually conquered the Lombards and permanently ended their threat, Pope Leo III (795-816) rewarded him with the title of Emperor -- hardly the Pope's to bestow but, now well free of control from Constantinople, not a power that any Emperor there could prevent him from claiming.

With Charlemagne we see one further sign of economic decline: his prized coinage was not of gold, but of silver -- little silver pennies (denarii) and half-pennies (oboli). Gold coinage would not again be seen in Europe until the 11th century. Romania never sank so low, as Constantinople itself remained the center of a commercial cash economy, while, of course, Islam never had to experience anything like a "dark age": The prosperity of Egypt and Iraq, and the trade opened up through the whole world of Islam, kept the Middle East prosperous and creative for several centuries. The brief "Carolingian Renaissance," although lifting the curtain of history somewhat, could not disguise the trouble that lack of trade, cash, cities, and education would spell for the newly consolidated Frankish Kingdom. Lands that could not be administered by paid bureaucrats or controlled by paid soldiers drifted away under the autonomy of feudal suzerains. Meanwhile, Romania was losing its grip on the sea. The first of the Balearics fell to Islam in 798, Crete was taken in 823, and Sicily was invaded in 827. As Islam began to sweep across the Mediterranean, the West was reduced to isolation, ringed around and punctured with devastating raids, not only from the south, but also from the north by the newly active Norsemen and from the east by a new steppe people bumped off into the Hungarian plain, the Magyars. Some apparently isolated locations, as in the heart of Burgundy, were actually raided by Moslems, Vikings, and Magyars successively. This age of terror is sometimes called "The Second Dark Age" (cf. Martin Scott, Mediaeval Europe, Longmans, 1964), but in an important sense it merely continues the process that began with the original Islamic conquest of Egypt and Syria. The unity of the Mediterranean world was now forever shattered, and we see a strong clue why Rome never had its T'ang Dynasty: China was not a bubble of land around a sea. All the little peninsulas, islands, and valleys around the Mediterranean had always bred their own distinctive local cultures and civilizations. Rome, by extraordinary determination and fortune, had united them all and in great measure, over several centuries, had produced a remarkably united meta-culture, complete with a brand new synthetic meta-religion. Nothing quite so complicated had to be accomplished in China. Then, under the extraordinary and unexpected blow of Islam, we see the old Roman unity, maintained in theory even by the distant Franks, cracked, broken, and then shattered. Certainly it was a drawn out enough process to suggest the breakage of pottery; but as we draw back in time, it might seem more like the bursting of a bubble. The sea, so easily a means of communication and unity, also could be a fragile, vulnerable, weak center. As the predations of the Vandals hurried the fall of the Western Empire, so those of Islamic seafarers permanently severed Constantinople from any chance of projecting real power to the west or south. The naval supremacy that Rome had wrested from Carthage was now finally gone, returned to Phoenicia's Semitic kinsmen, and with it the last chance of completing Justinian's project.

Catholic and Orthodox

When the tide of decline finally turned, prospects everywhere changed rapidly. When the German King Otto I defeated the Magyars at the Lech River in 955, it ushered in a

new era, not just of German power, as Otto set Italy in order and obtained the imperial crown (recently fallen dormant) from the Pope, but of the rapid spread of European civilization. In 836 Cyril and Methodius had set out to convert the Slavs. That had led to the conversion of the Czechs and Croatians and especially, in 870, the Bulgarians. A Croatian, Tomislav, was recognized as a Christian King by the Pope in 924. But following Otto's victory, most of the rest of Europe followed rapidly. Poland acknowledged Otto, and Christianity, in 966; by 1000 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were mostly Christian; and in 1001 the Pope recognized St. Stephen as a Christian King of the Magyars, so that the last steppe people to ravage central Europe became the Kingdom of Hungary. Somewhat further afield, and more under the influence of Constantinople, St. Vladimir led Russia into Christianity in 989. Soon, Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the steppe would be the only remaining areas of paganism, all to fall to conquest or conversion by the 13th century. These explosive developments may be in great measure due, ironically, to the previous ravages. The ability of the Vikings to raid right through the heart of Europe, into the Mediterranean, through the rivers of Russia, and up to Constantinople itself is really a great testament to their organization and technological achievements. Like the 5th century Germans, the Vikings were a threat because they were sophisticated, not because they were primitive. The arrival of the Russian Vikings, or Varangians, at Constantinople in 839 led to Romanian influence on an organized Russian state at Kiev in little more than a century. In 957 the Regent of Kiev Olga was already travelling to Constantinople to be baptized. The nadir of the Dark Age thus most significantly contained the seeds of its own end. While the Germans had been folded into the Empire, degrading Roman civilization, only because of the pressure of the steppe peoples behind them (mainly the Huns), the Vikings and Magyars were mostly held outside and so spread rather than undermined the centers of culture. The Norman possession of Southern Italy and Normandy, and the brief Danish possession of England, were thus the exceptions that prove the rule. Although the southern littoral of the Mediterranean was lost to Christendom forever (except as imperial possessions for a while), Christian states on the northern side consolidated and expanded, including Romania itself, which returned as far as Antioch in Syria and regained the Danube frontier, against the now Christian Bulgarians, in the Balkans. Nevertheless, there was an increasing estrangement and differentiation between East and West, between Romania and Francia. The West was, as it happened, doing rather better than the East, spreading more broadly and developing faster. This would soon stand revealed in the most dramatic fashion, as Romania endured a catastrophic defeat and collapse while Francia surged back with a spectacular display of its strength and potential. The fortunes of Islam also figure in this; for although the losses of Romania would become the gains of Islam, there was overall merely a kind of rotation in the possessions of the Faith: As one ancient heartland of Christianity, Anatolia, slowly slipped under the Turks, so did one early conquest of Islam, Spain, slowly fall to the Reconquest. This process is curiously reciprocal, if we compare the red letter dates in the rise and decline of imperial Spain and Ottoman Turkey:

Turkey The Rise Battle of Manzikert, Seljuks open Anatolia to Turkish settlement 1071

Spain Fall of Toledo, beginning of Reconquista

1085 1212 1492

Seizure of Constantinople by Fourth Crusade, Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1204 Romania fragments Almohad power broken Fall of Constantinople to Mehmet II 1453 Fall of Granada, Reconquista complete

Turkey The Decline Second Seige of Vienna, Turks defeated Battle of Navarino, British intervention, Greek Independence Balkan Wars, World War I, loss of European and Arab possessions 1683 1827 19121918

Spain Battle of Rocroi, Spain defeated by France Mexican Independence, Monroe Doctrine Spanish American War, loss of Cuba and Philippines

1643 1821 1898

Thus, when the army of the Emperor Romanus Diogenes was destroyed by the Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071, enabling the Turks to sweep over Asia Minor all the way to the shores of the Bosporus, the fall of Toledo to the Christians, though not seeming anywhere near as significant at the time, began a process that later could be recognized as the Reconquest. Within a couple of centuries, Islamic Spain collapsed into a tiny remnant: In 1212 the last major Islamic power to span the Straits of Gibraltar, the Berber Almohad dynasty, was defeated at Las Navas de Tolosa just as catastrophically as Romanus had been defeated at Manzikert. Indeed, there was soon much less left of Islamic Spain than there had been of Romania, though little enough, in fact, was left of

Romania at that time, since a treacherous blow had cut through to the heart of the empire. But that is to get a little ahead of the story. Of equal significance in the 11th century was the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. Even the terminology of the schism betrays the same kind of Western bias as the use of the term "Byzantine." The single, true, and orthodox Church of the Roman Empire was the "Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." The term catholic itself was Greek, katholik, "on the whole, in general" i.e. "universal" -one of the Early Romanian Greek terms eschewed by Latin scholar purists. Nevertheless, when the Church split in 1054, the Pope somehow managed to retain the "Roman Catholic" label, while Romania was merely left with being "Greek Orthodox." Thus Whittow casually refers to "the fundamental division between the Roman and Byzantine worlds" [p. 161], despite Francia truly being "Roman" in no remaining recognizable sense except that it contained the City of Rome. (Mediaeval Europe, indeed, is never called "Roman" any more than the empire of Constantinople is -- "Latin" West and "Greek" East is more common and more appropriate, at least in being linguistically descriptive.) While the Roman Empire derived its name from the City, which subsequently lost its identity to the Empire itself, the Roman Church, beginning as the identity of the Empire, with no particular connection to the City (all the Ecumenical Councils were held at Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, or Constantinople), ultimately loses its identity, ironically, to the City -- all because of the Schism of the Church and the success of Papal claims in the West. (That those claims were eventually rejected by Protestants meant that the Christian Church was no longer Roman at all, in terms of either Empire or City.) Like the luckless Mensheviks who foolishly began calling themselves what the Bolsheviks called them, the "minority," the Greek Orthodox Church even calls itself this, despite having as good a claim to "Roman Catholic" as the Pope and despite being no more "Greek" historically than was Justinian or Leo V, the Armenian. Being "orthodox" is, of course, a nice twist since, if the Greek Church is Orthodox, does this make the Pope's Church .... Heterodox? The term "Orthodox" has clearly come to mean absolutely nothing except to distinguish, in a polite way ("Schismatic" is the impolite way), the Eastern Churches from the Western. Thus it is even applied to Monophysite Churches, like the Copts or Armenians, who were considered Heterodox ever since the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The final irony, or insult, is when "Greek Catholic" is used to apply to Greek Orthodox Christians who convert to Papal doctrine and authority but retain the rites of the Eastern Church. If we see the struggles of the Mediaeval Church as a propaganda war, the Papacy won it hands down (only to lose it, later, in Germany). The consequences of the disaster at Manzikert and the schism of the Church were vastly magnified, however, when it was clear what Francia could actually do if properly motivated and unified. When the Emperor Alexius Comnenus asked for some help against the Turks, he did not expect the Crusades, which suddenly swept over the Holy Land and soon enough swept over Romania itself. Animated History of Romania

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Copyright (c) 1996, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History, Note I have been informed by Simona Adela that the Metropolitanate seems to have been established under Prince Petru Musat of Moldavia (1374-1391). I am also informed by James Meyer-Bejdl that there was not an autocephalous Patriarchate established for Romania until 1865/1885. Return to text