by Cyril Mango
If one were to identify a single principle that underlay the Byzantine conception of the virtuous life, it would be that of order (taxis). Supremely manifested in the heavenly court, it permeated the whole world. Absence of order (ataxia), i.e. randomness or turbulence, was characteristic of barbarians and demons. In human affairs order entailed the observance of established principles. What we call the Book of Ceremonies of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus is described as an ‘Exposition of imperial order’ and in its one-page Preface the word taxis and its derivatives occur eight times. Disregard of precedent, we are assured, would make the imperial institution unsightly and in no way different from the uncultivated regimen of ordinary people. If the quality of taxis was more essential to the conduct of the emperor than to that of ordinary individuals, the latter, too, were subject to its discipline, especially through their attendance at church. The revolution of the liturgical year with its fixed and mobile feasts and fasts, its daily commemoration of saints, its appointed lections, hymns, and processions, was for every Christian the supreme manifestation of the harmonious and orderly relation between man and God.
Byzantinism, as Leont’ev was right in stressing, showed little concern for human prosperity and, in particular, had no programme for the future. There was no expectation of a millennium on earth, of any physical or spiritual betterment. All one could look forward to were the final convulsions of a tired and sinful world, followed by the Second Coming. The Judge’s verdict would be final. By denying the doctrine of Purgatory (admittedly a late invention), the Byzantines affirmed that in the next world as in this one there would be no development.
Faces of Constantine
CYRIL MANGO
Gold medallion of Constantine coupled with the Sun god. Mint of Trier, AD 313.
Colossal marble head of Constantine, now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. The nose is original.
The Tetrarchic emperors cultivated a deliberately brutal, Mussolini-like type of portraiture, marked by a thick neck, stubble beard, and grim expression indicative of military hardship and determination. Constantine preferrred to appear as the ‘founder of peace’ fundator quietis) ever-youthful and clean-shaven in the manner of Augustus. His colossal marble head from the Basilica Nova in Rome (c .315), eight times lifesize, with its aquiline nose, jutting chin, and enlarged eyes may or may not represent his true features, but does convey the calm majesty expected of a cult statue. His identification with the deity, initially Apollo-Helios, was expressed on his coins by his bust overlapping that of Sol Invictus, and after 324 less overtly by a heavenward gazing head reminiscent of that of Alexander the Great.
Constantine became a Christian saint, indeed ‘the equal of the Apostles’ (isapostolos), the only emperor to have been so honoured, and made the subject of several hagiographic Lives that bear little relation to reality. Yet he killed both his wife and his eldest son, was baptized by a heretic, and, after his death, was accorded a pagan deification. In the forum that bore his name at Constantinople his statue, once more in the guise of Helios, set up on his porphyry column, was the object of a public cult. No wonder that his personality has been variously interpreted. Was he a thug and an opportunist or ‘a sincere man who sought the truth on the threshold of a dark century’ (A. Piganiol)?
Mosaic of Constantine in the south-west vestibule of St Sophia, Constantinople.
As a saint, Constantine appears regularly in Byzantine church decoration. In the tenth-century mosaic of St Sophia in Constantinople, he is shown dedicating to the Mother of God a model of the city he had founded. He is still beardless, perhaps in deference to the antiquarian spirit of the times, but long-haired, haloed, and attired in the ceremonial dress of a Byzantine emperor. Normally, however, in the medieval period he is portrayed bearded, as every grown man had to be, accompanied by his mother St Helena, both of them grasping the True Cross, which she had discovered.
Sts Constantine and Helena, wall painting in the church of Asinou at Nikitari, Cyprus, AD 1106.
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The Eastern Roman Empire from Constantine to Heraclius (306–641)
PETER SARRIS
‘Licinius was thus besieged by Constantine in Nicomedia, whereupon he gave up hope, realizing he did not have sufficient men for a battle. Going out of the city, therefore, he threw himself before Constantine as a suppliant, and bringing him the purple, acclaimed him as emperor and lord … Constantine sent Licinius to Thessalonica as if to live there in security, but not long after broke his oath, as was his custom, and had him hanged. The whole empire now devolved on Constantine alone.’ Thus did the pagan historian Zosimus, writing around the year 500, record the final victory in the year 324 of the Roman emperor Constantine over the last of his imperial rivals. This victory gave Constantine undisputed mastery over the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, the wealthiest and most densely populated region of the entire Roman world.
These prized territories Constantine added to the western provinces of which he had gained control during the course of a prolonged period of uncertainty and strife within the empire that dated back to the year 306. Although at times presented in the Christian sources as the result of some sort of divinely inspired mission, Constantine’s ascendancy, as Zosimus reminds us, can only be understood in the context of the brutal and opportunistic manoeuvring of ambitious men which characterized the politics of the later Roman empire.
The detailed narrative of this power struggle is difficult to reconstruct with any certainty, although its broad outline can be traced. From 293 to 305, under an arrangement introduced by the emperor Diocletian, and known to historians as the ‘Tetrarchy’ (‘the rule of four’), the Roman empire had been governed by two emperors, each bearing the title of Augustus. The senior of these was based in the East, the other in the West. Each Augustus had serving under him a Caesar, a deputy who in turn was expected to succeed as Augustus in his own right. In 305 the apparently ailing eastern Augustus, Diocletian, and his western counterpart, Maximian, had abdicated. Accordingly, they were succeeded by their respective Caesars: Galerius in the East, and Constantius in the West. Galerius appointed as Caesar in the East his eldest nephew, Maximin. In the West, he foisted upon Constantius as Caesar an officer of his own entourage by the name of Severus.
The Tetrarchs (Diocletian and his colleagues). Statues of Egyptian porphyry originally attached to columns, these were brought to Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and remain displayed in the square in front of St Mark’s.
In 306, Constantius died at York, on his way to campaign against the Picts. In spite of the superior claims of Severus, Constantius’ army in Britain acclaimed as ruler Constantius’ son—Constantine. This act of usurpation incited others to follow suit, and the army in Rome acclaimed as Augustus a certain Maxentius, son of the former western emperor Maximian, who went on to gain effective control over both Italy and Africa.
As senior Augustus, Galerius tried in vain to reassert control of the situation. Ignoring the reality of Maxentius’ power in the central Mediterranean, he appointed another western emperor, a former military colleague of his by the name of Licinius, after he had withdrawn his support from Severus. There were now five Augusti: Galerius and Maximin in the East, Licinius, Constantine, and the usurper Maxentius in the West. The constitutional and political arrangement introduced by the emperor Diocletian less than twenty years earlier lay in ruins.
In 310, in a final attempt to salvage something from the wreckage, Galerius sought to prise Rome from the control of Maxentius, in a military campaign that ended in ignominious failure. In 311 Galerius died, his power in Asia Minor and the East devolving fully upon Maximin, though with Licinius exercising control over the European provinces that had formerly been under the sway of the eastern Augustus. The death of Galerius set the scene for the process whereby the remaining Augusti sought to liquidate one another once and for all.
In 312 Constantine achieved the success that had evaded Galerius, and defeated his major western rival,
the usurper Maxentius, at the battle of the Milvian bridge. This stunning victory granted Constantine control of Rome. Constantine later ascribed his triumph to the fact that, prior to the battle, he had abandoned the religion of his ancestors and adopted Christianity. Certainly, from 312 onwards, one finds Constantine publicly declaring his support for the Christian Church, and favouring it with ever greater largesse. In 313, in a parallel move, Licinius defeated Maximin in Thrace and went on to establish himself as ruler in the East. There followed a series of military clashes between the two remaining Augusti. It was not, however, until 323 that Constantine took war to Licinius in a concerted fashion, defeating him first at Adrianople, then in 324 at Chrysopolis near Nicomedia.
In recognition of his victory, Constantine ordered that the ancient Greek settlement of Byzantium, located on the European shore of the Bosphorus and in the near vicinity of Nicomedia, be rededicated in his honour under the name of Constantinople. He further decreed that the city be adorned with the civic splendour befitting an imperial foundation. Within five years or so, much of the initial phase of this work was deemed to be satisfactorily complete, and ‘the city of Constantine’ was formally consecrated on 11 May 330. Constantine established a senate there and remained in the city for much of the time until his death in 337.
The legend of St Constantine is illustrated here in three episodes: Constantine’s dream; the battle of the Milvian bridge with the appearance in the sky of the victorious sign of the cross; the invention of the True Cross by the empress Helena.
The history of the civilization we call Byzantine is inextricably bound up with the figure of the emperor Constantine. It was Constantine’s city that was to serve as the capital and bastion of the medieval Byzantine empire. It was Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, his establishment of his new faith as the favoured religion of the Roman state, and the extension of his rule over the culturally Greek-dominated eastern half of the Roman world, that permitted the fusing of Christian religion, Roman imperial tradition, and Hellenic intellectual culture that was to characterize the emergent Byzantine thought-world.
Yet it is worth pausing at the very outset to remember that Constantine did not regard himself as having founded a new empire, let alone a new civilization. Constantine was a Latin-speaker, who came to the east as an outsider. He restored, he did not fracture, the unity of a Roman empire ruled by one man as dominus orbis terrarum—the ‘lord of the world’. Upon his conversion to Christianity, Constantine would appear to have had only a dim intimation of the nature of the faith. Initially at least, in his public imagery and propaganda, Constantine continued to use forms, expressions, and motifs which, whilst not exclusively pagan, nevertheless could appeal to a pagan audience. As late as 323, Constantine’s officials were still minting coins dedicated to the pagan cult figure of the Sol Invictus—the ‘Unconquered Sun’. Constantine was careful not to offend the powerful pagan elements within the ruling class of his empire, whose co-operation and support he needed.
In spite of this, it is not unreasonable to begin the history of Byzantium with Constantine’s victory over Licinius. For not only did Constantine’s military prowess create the cultural and ideological prerequisites for the emergence of the Byzantine world, but the establishment of his authority in the East further helped to catalyse a series of social processes which were to lead to the emergence of a very new type of society.
From 324, Constantine ruled over an empire that stretched from Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt in the east to the province of Britannia in the west, from North Africa in the south to the rivers Danube and Rhine in the north. Along these northern and southern frontiers, the empire faced tribes of generally quite primitive peoples, such as the various Germanic groupings beyond the Rhine, and the Berbers and Arabs of North Africa and Arabia respectively. To the east, the empire was confronted by the rather more formidable power of the ancient civilization of Persia. In essence, this was true in the fourth century as it had been in the second. Yet, in terms of underlying structure, the empire of Constantine was very different from that of his second-century forebears. Rather, this Roman world had recently undergone a period of marked transformation.
The Roman empire of the first and second centuries was city-based. That is to say, the regional elites of the empire lived in monumental urban centres termed civitates in Latin, or poleis in Greek. There, they were organized into civic councils styled curiae or boulai. It was primarily through these civic councils that the emperor ruled—his will being mediated to the councillors via imperially appointed governors, who, in turn, reported back to the emperor and senate of Rome on the condition of the provinces. Such a relatively devolved system facilitated rule over so wide an area. If, at a provincial level, communities enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, the highest offices of state were essentially the preserve of a markedly conservative, Italian-rooted, senatorial order focused on Rome.
This inherited system had come under great pressure in the mid- to late third century. Economic and cultural contact between Rome and the various barbarian peoples beyond the Rhine and the Danube had undermined these peoples’ native, somewhat egalitarian, social institutions, and led to the emergence amongst them of ever larger tribes and confederations. Whereas hitherto the military threat posed to Rome by the northern tribes had been relatively atomized, by the third century, more formidable groupings had come into being.
Concurrently, the closing years of the second century had seen the Roman empire extend its eastern frontier at the expense of the Persians. This defeat at the hands of Rome led to the downfall of the ruling Parthian dynasty, and a struggle whereby different aristocratic interests vied for ascendancy. In AD 205–6, there occurred a major revolt led by an aristocrat by the name of Papak. Papak died some time around 208, but by 224 his son, Ardashir, had established leadership of the Persian world as a whole. In September of 226, at the palace of Ctesiphon, Ardashir was crowned the first shah of the Sasanian dynasty. Ardashir soon sought to unite the aristocracy of Persia behind him by launching a series of prestige-garnering offensives against the Romans. This policy of aggression was followed by his son and successor Shapur I, who, in 260, launched a daring campaign into northern Syria, sacking Antioch, and capturing and humiliating the emperor Valerian.
It was the supreme misfortune of the Roman empire that the period of maximum Persian aggression coincided with a series of large-scale incursions into Roman territory by the northern barbarians. This was a situation for which neither the military, the emperor, nor the Roman senate had been prepared, and with which they seemed incapable of dealing. The inability of successive emperors to address this military crisis had led to political instability, as one ineffectual emperor after another was deposed and murdered by his own soldiers. Local society came increasingly to rely on its own resources, leading to the emergence of a series of separate (although not necessarily separatist) regimes—the empire of the Gauls in the west between 258 and 274, that of Palmyra and the east for a few years up to 272.
In response to this crisis, a social revolution took place. The emperor, hitherto appointed by the senate, came increasingly to be appointed by the army, and the army was appointing men from its own ranks. The result was a series of military emperors of humble origin, absolutely committed to the ideology of empire, but impatient of failure. This process culminated in 284 with the figure of Diocletian, who overcame his rivals, established himself as emperor, and waged a series of successful campaigns against foes internal and external alike.
The peace that Diocletian had restored to the empire gave him the opportunity to consolidate a series of administrative reforms. The creation of the ‘Tetrarchy’—the system of multiple rulers encountered earlier—gave the empire more devolved leadership, closer to the likely trouble spots. The Augusti and their Caesars resided in imperial capitals nearer the frontiers of the empire, such as Trier in the West, or Antioch in the East. At the same time, the administrative and fiscal system was restructured to facilita
te greater imperial control of provincial life. Military and civilian commands in the provinces were separated, and the size of the army increased. The provinces were reduced in size and increased in number so as to tighten central supervision of the city councils. As a result of the expansion of the army and an enlargement of the overarching imperial bureaucracy, the number of high-ranking military and civilian officials directly employed by the central imperial authorities would appear to have more than doubled. These posts were primarily filled by members of the dominant social stratum within the provincial city councils. To these officials access to the senatorial order was increasingly opened up. A new imperial aristocracy of service thus emerged.
Facing: Statues of magistrates continued to be erected in eastern cities until the sixth century and are often marked by a grim expression denoting determined probity. Here the governor Palmatus at Aphrodisias in Caria (western Asia Minor), late fifth or early sixth century.
