HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE PART 1

A new Rome: AD 330
Constantine, now in firm command of the entire Roman empire (the first man for a long while to be in that position), is planning another initiative as significant as his adoption of Christianity. Immediately after the defeat of Licinius he sets about rebuilding Byzantium as a Christian capital city - one in which pagan sacrifice, the central rite of imperial Rome until this time, is specifically forbidden. The city is ready by AD 330 for a ceremony of inauguration. Byzantium acquires two new names - New Rome and Constantinople, the city of Constantine. The Roman empire, within eighteen years of Constantine's first victory, has a new religion, a new centre of gravity and a significant change of culture.
Greece has always been the main cultural influence on Rome, and Greek is the language of the inhabitants of Byzantium. With the founding of Constantinople, the older culture effectively absorbs its vigorous younger challenger. Even the name Constantinopolis is Greek (polis meaning city). Yet Constantinople is also the new Rome, capital of the Roman empire. The Greeks of this city will long continue to describe themselves as Romans. For several centuries Constantinople represents both the end of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Byzantine empire. Meanwhile Rome gradually establishes a new identity - as the seat of the Christian pope.
Byzantium offers the Roman emperor a clear strategic advantage as a centre of operation, for it is much closer than Rome to the threatened regions of the empire. The main problems in the past century have been defending the Balkans from invaders beyond the Danube and protecting the Middle East from the Persians. Byzantium, renewed now as Constantinople, sits firmly between these troubled regions.
Constantine and his city: from AD 330
The emperor wastes no time in building monuments to proclaim Byzantium a Christian city. The focal point is a structure called the milion or milestone, from which all distances in the empire are now to be measured. It consists of four triumphal arches supporting a dome. Nearby is the first church built here by Constantine. In this Greek city it is dedicated not to a martyr but to a concept, Holy Peace - the church of St Eirene. Probably before the end of Constantine's life, work begins on its famous neighbour, complete by 360 and sacred this time to Holy Wisdom - St Sophia.
Falling ill in AD 337, Constantine is at last baptized - only a few days before his death. It has often been asked why he left this necessary act of Christian commitment so late. The answer is probably so as not to waste the magic of baptism, which washes away sins. An emperor can hardly live a blameless life, and there are many blots on Constantine's record - such as his unexplained execution of his eldest son and his second wife in 326. A late baptism guarantees a clean record on the day of judgement.
Three sons of Constantine: AD 337-361
On the death of Constantine, in AD 337, the empire is divided between his sons Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans. Since the time of his father, Constantius, the family has had a streak of constancy in its choice of names. The sons inherit the parts of the empire which they have already ruled, on behalf of their father, as Caesars. Constantius II, though not the eldest, has the lion's share - Greece, Constantinople and the entire eastern empire. His elder brother, Constantine II, has Spain, Gaul and Britain. The youngest, Constans, controls Italy and Spain.
Peace and wisdom, in honour of which churches are now rising in Constantinople, do not make the brothers any more loving than other imperial families. Large numbers of their male relations are butchered at the start of the reign, and Constantine II meets his death in Italy in 340 when marching against Constans. Ten years later Constans is murdered in Gaul by an army commander with an eye on the throne. From AD 350 Constantius II is the only legitimate emperor. With difficulty he recovers control of the entire empire. But from the point of view of Christianity, on which he is as keen as his father, he makes one cardinal error. He gives command of the west to his cousin Julian.
Julian the Apostate: AD 337-361
Son of a half-brother of Constantine the Great, Julian escapes the massacre of male members of the family which follows Constantine's death - probably because he is only six at the time. In his early 20s he studies in Athens, which still retains its status as the centre of Greek learning and pagan philosophy. Brought up strictly as a Christian, Julian now becomes a devotee of Greek culture. He is himself a talented writer in Greek, and several of his works survive. Little of this would be remembered today, but for the unexpected accident of his becoming emperor. Subsequent events, in the two brief years of the 'apostate' on the throne, have mesmerized Christian historians.
In AD 356, when Julian is twenty-five, the emperor Constantius II appoints him Caesar in command of the Roman armies in Gaul. To everyone's surprise the young intellectual proves a brilliant general, winning a succession of victories over powerful tribes along the Rhine border. In 359, needing reinforcements against Persia, Constantius orders many of Julian's best legions to march east. Instead, the troops stationed near Paris mutiny and proclaim Julian emperor. He moves slowly eastwards with them to what would have been a rebellious confrontation. But in 361 Constantius, moving westwards to meet him, dies in Asia Minor. Julian is emperor.
The revival of the pagan cult: AD 361-363
It is not known exactly when the new emperor, Julian, decides to reinstate the ancient gods of Rome and Greece . At first he behaves with religious tolerance - returning to their sees, for example, Catholic bishops who have been exiled by Constantius, a committed follower of Arius. But by 362 Julian is making a prominent display of the ritual sacrifices which he carries out personally at revived pagan temples. When Christians protest, he removes their relics from ancient shrines, imposes special taxes on Christian priests and gives preference to pagans in the civil service.
Julian is repeating, in reverse, the actions of his uncle Constantine in favouring Christianity. He intends to put in place a network of pagan priests and officials throughout the empire of the kind established by the Christians. This view of tomorrow does not appeal to yesterday's elite. To what extent the young emperor might have achieved his aim is one of history's interesting speculations. In Christian eyes God gives a swift and decisive answer when Julian is killed, in 363, in a skirmish against the Persians. A rumour, first heard a century later, offers wry satisfaction. It is said that in his dying words the apostate cedes victory to Christ: Vicisti, Galilaee (Thou hast conquered, Galilean).
The frontiers of empire: AD 364-378
The death of Julian in warfare with Persia leads indirectly to a rare spell of peace on that frontier. The army selects as emperor a member of the royal household, by the name of Jovian, who extracts the Roman legions from a dangerous situation by making major concessions. Large tracts of territory in Mesopotamia and Armenia, long disputed, are abandoned to Persia. Jovian dies of natural causes less than a year after becoming emperor. His concessions are regarded as shameful in Constantinople, but it is another forty years before war with Persia resumes.
On the other permanently threatened frontiers of empire, the Danube and the Rhine, the situation is very different. The pressure of barbarian tribes, themselves suddenly under threat from the Huns, is at last about to break down the barriers and flood the western empire. The catastrophe begins when the emperor Valens is defeated and killed by the Visigoths at Adrianople in 378. His successor, Theodosius - an emperor subsequently accorded the title 'the Great' - solves the problem in the short term by settling the Visigoths as federates within the empire, or allies. But the intrusion of Goths, Vandals and Huns will over the next century disturb and finally destroy the Roman empire in the west.
Christian emperor and Christian bishop: AD 379-390
Theodosius becomes the eastern emperor in AD 379 and rapidly settles the religious splits within the empire by declaring pagan worship and Christian heresies (such as Arianism) to be illegal. A law of 380 orders all citizens to subscribe to the Catholic doctrines agreed under the chairmanship of Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicaea in 325. A close link between church and state, with the state giving the lead, becomes a characteristic of the eastern or Byzantine empire. But Theodosius discovers, in a famous clash, that western bishops have authoritarian ideas of their own.
The cleric who sets a high standard for the western church in its relationship to the secular powers is Ambrose, bishop of Milan. In AD 390, when Theodosius is in Milan, there is a riot in Greece by supporters of a popular charioteer. A city governor is killed, and Theodosius sends orders for a brutal reprisal. The charioteer's fans are invited into a circus for a special performance. Then the gates are locked. More than 5000 are slaughtered by troops in a massacre lasting three hours.
When news of the atrocity reaches Milan, Ambrose refuses to give communion to the emperor unless he does public penance for the crime. Theodosius at first stays away from church. But eventually he appears, bare-headed and wearing sackcloth in place of his sumptuous imperial robes. He repeats the performance on several occasions before Ambrose relents, finally giving his emperor the sacrament on Christmas Day. In the threat of excommunication the western church discovers a powerful weapon for dealing with wayward rulers.
Rome and Constantinople: 4th - 5th century AD
The balance between Rome and Constantinople, and the potential for an upset, is becoming more clearly defined. Two imperial courts, east and west, have been a familiar part of the empire's history. In effect they are more like two army camps, permanently on the move. If they come too close to each other, the result has often been war. With two rival cities, both interested in political and religious priority, the situation is more complex. In the mid-4th century, under Constantius II, the senate in Constantinople is given equal authority with that of Rome. A few years later, at the Council of Constantinople in 381, it is stated that the bishop of Constantinople is of equal status to the bishop of Rome.
On the religious front an uneasy truce is maintained for several centuries. The final schism between Rome and Constantinople, acknowledging the separate Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, becomes only gradually evident during the Middle Ages. In the military sphere the pace is forced by events largely beyond the emperors' control. Theodosius rules the entire empire with considerable skill until 395, and his descendants remain at least nominally in control of both east and west until 455. But any measure of peace in the west has been bought by compromise with German tribes.
Odoacer, king of Italy: AD 476-493
German mercenaries by now form an important part of any Roman army, and Roman armies play a major role in the making and breaking of emperors. This is the case in a fairly normal putsch of AD 476, but it is followed by an unusual demand from the mercenaries. They want to settle in Italy. They suggest that a third of every landowner's estate should be made over to them. The suggestion is not as unreasonable as it sounds. Roman soldiers have in the past been rewarded with land, and barbarian tribes have been settled in provinces of the empire as federates. But it is a shocking thought to Romans that this provincial system might apply to Italy itself. The mercenaries' demand is rejected.
There is an immediate mutiny. The tribesmen elect one of their number, Odoacer, as their king. He leads them to a rapid victory, but immediately makes it clear that his intention is not to destroy the western empire. He wants to be part of it. He sends ambassadors to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople, acknowledging the emperor's rule but asking to be allowed to govern Italy as king of his own people. Zeno reluctantly agrees, subject to certain points of protocol. The senate in Rome accepts the fait accompli with better grace, for Odoacer proves an effective ruler within the traditional Roman system. He even finds land for his German tribesmen without causing undue upheaval.
The end of the Roman empire? AD 476
The acceptance of Odoacer as king of Italy in 476 causes this year to be seen as the end of the Roman empire. And in a real sense it is. Kings and popes, neither of them part of Roman imperial tradition, will henceforth wield power in the Italian peninsula. But this is the perspective of hindsight. To historians Constantinople is by this time the capital of the young Byzantine empire. To Europeans in the 5th century it is still the centre of the very ancient Roman empire. In imperial terms there is nothing new about chaos and upheaval in the west, and Roman emperors in Constantinople will continue to take active steps to reassert their authority. In 488 this is done with the help of the Ostrogoths.
Theodoric the Ostrogoth: AD 487-526
The Ostrogoths have as yet intruded less than the Visigoths upon the imperial territories of Rome and Contantinople. In recent times, in their region north of the Black Sea, they have been subdued by the Huns. But after the collapse of the Huns, in the mid-5th century, the Ostrogoths press down across the Danube into the Balkans. In 487, under the leadership of Theodoric, they almost succeed in capturing Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor, Zeno, finds a brilliant short-term solution to this immediate problem. Having recently had to relinquish Italy to one barbarian, Odoacer, he now invites Theodoric to invade Italy and take Odoacer's place.
Theodoric arrives in Italy in AD 489. In the twelve months from August 489 his Ostrogoths confront Odoacer in three separate battles. In each they are victorious, but they fail to dislodge Odoacer from his stronghold at Ravenna. This is eventually achieved by negotiation, with the bishop of Ravenna as the intermediary. It is agreed that Theodoric and Odoacer will rule Italy jointly. On 5 March 493 the gates of the city are opened to Theodoric. Ten days later Theodoric invites Odoacer to a banquet. During it he kills his guest with his own hand, after which Odoacer's retinue is murdered.
Theodoric's long reign in Italy begins with this treachery, but the murder of Odoacer proves untypical of the Ostrogothic king. His thirty-three years on the throne bring a period of calm to turbulent Italy, justifiably earning him the title Theodoric the Great. He is the first barbarian king from the Germanic tribes of northern Europe to establish a settled and civilized rule - to which his buildings in Ravenna still bear witness. His achievements win him a lasting place in legend, as Dietrich von Bern. Theodoric never deviates from his arrangement with Constantinople. He rules in Italy as the emperor's appointed military governor - becoming thereby an accepted part of the Roman empire rather than its enemy.
Theodoric has the good sense to leave the administration of Italy virtually unchanged and in the hands of Romans. They are prevented from serving as soldiers, but similarly Goths may not join the bureaucracy. The arrangement suits even the papacy. Though himself an Arian, Theodoric makes no attempt to interfere in Roman Catholic affairs. Indeed he is so much trusted that when there are two rival claimants to the papal see, in 498, he is invited to choose between them. Nevertheless the rule of a barbarian Arian in Italy is unacceptable in the longer term. The inadequacy of Theodoric's immediate successors prompts the campaign of 535 by Justinian to recover Ravenna.

Justinian and Theodora: 527-548
The emperor who comes to the throne in527 restores the western empire to much of its former glory, reforms the legal and administrative system of his realm, and commissions churches and mosaics which emphasize the imperial dignity of Christianity. He also contracts a marriage which makes him and his bride the most famous couple in Byzantine history. He is Justinian. His wife, an ex-courtesan, is Theodora. They feature in mosaic, facing each other from opposite walls, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna.
Justinian is born in483 into a peasant family in the Balkans, near Skopje, but from his early years he receives a good education in Constantinople; his uncle has risen to high command in the army and becomes emperor in 518 as Justin I. Theodora is of much less respectable origins. Born the daughter of a bear-keeper in the circus at Constantinople, she makes her mark as a child actress and then as a courtesan in various cities of north Africa and Anatolia. In Constantinople she attracts the attention of Justinian, nearly twenty years her senior. He persuades his uncle, now emperor, to revoke a law banning marriage between men of senatorial rank and actresses.
Justinian and Theodora are married in525 in Constantine's church, the first Santa Sophia. Two years later Justinian's uncle dies and they become emperor and empress. Until her early death, in 548, Theodora plays an almost equal role with her husband in running the empire - not least in the resolve which she shows in persuading him to stay in Constantinople in the civil disorder which nearly ends his rule, the so-called Nika revolt of 532. The rioters burn many of the most famous buildings of the capital city, including the church in which Justinian and Theodora were married. Together the couple supervise its replacement with one of the world's most spectacular buildings.
Santa Sophia: 537
In Santa Sophia in Constantinople (completed astonishingly in only five years) the architects working for Justinian achieve with triumphant skill a new and difficult feat of technology - that of placing a vast circular dome on top of a square formed of four arches. The link between the curves of two arches (diverging from a shared supporting pillar) and the curve round the base of the dome is made by a complex triangular shape known as a pendentive (see Squinch and pendentive). Santa Sophia (or Hagia Sophia, the two being Latin and Greek for 'Holy Wisdom'), is not the first building in which a pendentive is used. But it is by far the most impressive.
A code of law: 527-534
By the time of Justinian nearly 600 years have passed since the last years of the Roman republic, in the 1st century BC. Many laws from all these centuries are still in force, but they exist only in scattered and often rare manuscripts. Consistency is impossible. Justinian begins his reign with an energetic programme of reform in the administration of the civil service, in the collection of tax and in the field of law. Tackling corruption in the bureaucracy and improving the tax revenue bring immediate unpopularity (seen in The Nika revolt of 532). But tidying up the Roman law is an achievement for which Justinian has won lasting fame.
On his accession Justinian inmediately appoints a ten-man commission to collate all the statutes of past administrations and thus provide a clear version of the constitution. They complete their task in fourteen months. The resulting Codex Constitutionum is published in529. In 530 Justinian sets a team of sixteen to the task of assembling the opinions of the jurists. This too is completed within three years and is published in 533 as Digesta. The result modifies to some extent the conclusions of the earlier Codex, which is issued in a revised form in 534.
The Codex of 534 is the Justinian code of law which has come down in history. It consists of twelve books containing 4652 laws and amendments, spanning the four centuries from Hadrian to Justinian himself. This great legal effort, carried out on the emperor's behalf, is not legislation in the same sense as the Napoleonic code of civil law (which breaks new ground). It is more in the nature of academic clarification - of inestimable value in its own time to legal practitioners, and in subsequent ages to those who study Roman law.
Justinian's armies: 532-561
When Justinian comes to the throne, the empire is engaged as usual in the struggle in the east against Persia. A peace is agreed in532 with a new Persian monarch, Khosrau I (who breaks it dramatically in his raid on Antioch in 540). Later a series of settlements culminate in a 50-year-truce signed in 561. The eastern frontier is a distraction from the campaigns which more greatly inspire Justinian. He is determined to recover the Roman empire in the west from heretical barbarians. With the help of a brilliant general, Belisarius, he has considerable success - against the arian Vandals in north Africa, the Arian Ostrogoths in Italy and the Arian Visigoths in Spain.
Byzantine Africa: 6th - 7th century
The expansionist energy of Justinian in Constantinople, and of his great general Belisarius in the field, brings the whole of the North African coast back under Roman rule for one final century. In 533 Belisarius defeats the Vandals in battle, captures their king and enters Carthage unopposed. The authority of the emperor is restored, though the northwest tip of the continent is never again brought fully under control (in spite of pioneering efforts by Belisarius in the building of castles). Carthage rejoins Alexandria as a great imperial city on this important coast, rich in grain. But in the next century they both fall, in turn, to an entirely unexpected new power - the Arabs.
The recovery of Byzantine Italy: 535-568
In535 a fleet sails from Constantinople with orders to re-establish direct imperial rule in Italy. The campaign is under the command of Belisarius, hero of the recent African successes. He begins his task in the south, capturing Sicily in 535 and moving north to take Naples and Rome in the following year. Once again the fortified capital city, Ravenna, proves the hardest place to subdue. The Ostrogoths hold out against him here until 540. When Ravenna finally falls in that year, the task seems complete. Belisarius returns to Constantinople. But Byzantine confidence is premature.
Within a few years the whole of Italy has been recaptured by the Ostrogoths, apart from three well guarded enclaves on the east coast (Ravenna, Ancona and Otranto). A long campaign by a eunuch general, Narses, eventually restores Byzantine control over the entire peninsula but this is not achieved until 562 - less than a decade before the arrival on the Italian scene of yet another Germanic tribe. The Lombards, invading in 568, rapidly overrun the rich north Italian plain, from which the Byzantines never again shift them. Their arrival introduces the many centuries in which a united Italy will be nothing more than a dream, based on nostalgic memories of imperial Rome.
Exarchate of Ravenna: 584-751
In an attempt to hold the remaining Byzantine possessions in Italy against the Lombards, the emperor Maurice groups them from about584 in a new administrative structure based in Ravenna. In command of the entire region is an exarch - a provincial governor with absolute power over both military and civilian affairs. At first the exarch governs most of Italy south of the Po, together with the coastal strip round the north Adriatic - including the modest settlements on the islands of the Venetian lagoon, recently established by refugees from the advancing Lombards. Corsica and Sardinia come under another exarch, ruling from Carthage. Sicily becomes linked more directly with Constantinople.
This swathe of territory soon proves impossible to hold. During the 7th century the Lombards steadily extend their territory in the north, and local dukes take possession of much of the south of Italy. In the 8th century ancient cities such as Naples and papal Rome show increasing signs of independence. In 726 even upstart Venice begins to choose its own dukes, or doges. By the middle of the 8th century the Lombards have seized much of the territory inland from Ravenna, and in 751 they take Ravenna itself. Byzantine influence on places such as Venice will remain strong. But Italy can no longer be said to be part of the old Roman empire.
Byzantium and Persia: 6th - 7th century
The final and most destructive chapter in the rivalry between the Byzantine empire and Persia begins in an improbable way. In591 both emperors find themselves fighting on the same side. Khosrau II has fled from Persia after the murder of his father. He enlists the support of the Byzantine emperor, Maurice, who marches east to restore Khosrau to his inheritance - in return for some useful territorial concessions in Armenia and Mesopotamia. The result is peace between the two sides until 602, when Maurice is murdered in a Byzantine upheaval. Khosrau, seeing his own opportunity, moves to avenge his friend's death. In the next few years the Persians devastate the Byzantine cities of the Middle East.
The first Christian city to fall to Khosrau's armies is Antioch, in 611. Damascus follows in 613. In the spring of 614 a Persian army enters Palestine and moves through the countryside, burning churches. Only the church built by St Helena in Bethlehem is spared; the Persians recognize themselves in the costumes of the Magi, seen bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus in a mosaic above the entrance. The army reaches Jerusalem in April. The Patriarch urges the inhabitants to surrender, so as to avoid bloodshed, but they resist for a month. When the city falls, it is said that some 60,000 Christians are massacred and another 35,000 sold into slavery.
From the point of view of the Christian hierarchy, far away in Constantinople, the Persians commit one even greater affront. After sacking Jerusalem, they carry off to Ctesiphon the most holy relic of Christendom, the True Cross of Christ. Its restoration to Jerusalem becomes an urgent matter of state.
Recovering the relic: 622-629
Under the emperor Heraclius, Byzantium has been quietly regaining its strength. In622 Heraclius feels ready to take the field against the Persians. His successes are as rapid and spectacular as the reverses of the previous decade. By 624 he has swept through Asia Minor and Armenia to reach Azerbaijan, to the north of Persia between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Here, as if avenging the violation of the True Cross, he destroys one of the most sacred fire temples of Zoroastrianism.
In the next few years the swings of fortune become even more extreme. In 626 a Persian army reaches the Bosphorus, but fails to cross the water to support a siege of Constantinople's massive walls by a barbarian horde of Slavs and Avars. In 627 a Byzantine army under Heraclius penetrates Mesopotamia far enough to defeat the Persians at Nineveh and destroy Khosrau's palace at Ctesiphon. From a position of strength Heraclius negotiates the return of the True Cross. He takes it back to be displayed in Constantinople, and then personally returns it, in 629, to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But the relic proves powerless against the next threat to Jerusalem in 638.