THE SUCCESSORS OF JUSTINIAN
565-610
Justin II. and his unhappy financial policy—His troubles with the
Persians and Avars—Reign of Tiberius Constantinus—Accession of
Maurice—His victory over Persia—His failure against the Slavs and
Avars—Disasters in the Balkan Peninsula—Fall of Maurice—Tyranny of
Phocas—His unfortunate war with Persia—He is dethroned and slain by
Heraclius, 610.
The forty years which followed the death of Justinian were a period of
rapid decline and decay for the East-Roman world. The empire was paying,
by exhaustion within and the loss of provinces without, for the
spasmodic outburst of energy into which it had been galvanised by the
great emperor. He left to his heirs broad and dangerous frontiers in his
newly-acquired provinces, with an army which had got somewhat out of
hand, and a civil population shorn to the skin by the excessive taxation
of the last twenty years.
Justinian’s heirs were, unhappily for the empire, princes who tried to
maintain their great predecessor’s ambitious policy, at a moment when
the less brilliant, but more cautious and economical, rule of a second
Anastasius would have been the best thing for the East-Roman world. The
Emperor’s nephew, Justinus, son of his sister Vigilantia, mounted the
throne on his decease without meeting with any opposition. He had served
his uncle as _Curopalata_, or Master of the Palace, for the last ten
years, and had been able to make things ready for his own peaceful
succession, though Justinian had never consented to allow him to be
crowned as his colleague as long as he lived. [Sidenote: Justin II.,
565-78.] Justin was married to Sophia, the niece of the empress
Theodora, a lady who resembled her aunt in her masterful spirit, but was
far from rivalling her abilities. Justin and his wife had led a somewhat
repressed and constrained existence during the old emperor’s life, and
were set upon asserting their individuality the moment that Justinian
was buried. Justin had high ideas of the dignity of the imperial name
and the majesty of the empire, and had determined to inaugurate a
spirited foreign policy when he seized the helm of affairs. His first
measure was to refuse to continue any of the comparatively trifling
subsidies to barbarian princes on the frontier, which Justinian had been
content to pay in order to keep them from petty raids—much as the Indian
Government to-day subsidises the chiefs of the Khyber Pass. This
involved him in a long and ultimately dangerous war with the Chagan of
the Avars, a Tartar tribe newly established on the north bank of the
lower Danube, whom Justinian had paid to keep off the Huns and other
troublesome neighbours. The Avars, originally a race of no great
importance, obtained at this moment a great extension of power and
territory by allying themselves with the Lombards, in order to destroy
the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who dwelt north of Sirmium on the middle
Danube. After exterminating their Teutonic neighbours, the Lombards
passed on to invade Italy,[21] and left the Avars in possession of the
whole line of the Danube, from Vienna to its mouth. Thenceforth the
Avars were a scourge to the already half-desolate provinces of Moesia
and Illyricum. They ranged over the whole territory up to the Balkans,
in spite of the innumerable fortresses which Justinian had built and
garrisoned to defend the Danube bank. This trouble was continually
growing worse all through the reign of Justin II., and became an actual
source of danger, as well as of mere annoyance, in the time of his
successors.
Footnote 21:
See p. 181.
Another refusal of Justin to make a payment of money, which he
considered degrading to his majesty, was destined to bring on a struggle
even more ruinous than that with the Avars. It will be remembered that
the peace between Justinian and Chosroes of Persia, concluded in 562,
had stipulated for some payments from the East-Romans to the king. In
571 Justin refused to fulfil his obligations, and plunged the empire
into a wholly unnecessary war with his great Oriental neighbour. Several
causes conspired to induce Justin to undertake this struggle. He was
implored by the Christian population of Persian Armenia to deliver them
from the fire-worshipping Sassanians, and the Turks of the Oxus had sent
an embassy to promise him help from the East if he would assault
Chosroes. Dizabul, their great Khan, engaged to distract the forces of
the enemy by crossing the Oxus and invading northern Persia, while
Justin’s generals were to cross the Tigris and attack Media.
This war, which the emperor undertook with such a light heart, was
destined to last no less than nineteen years (572-591), and to drag on
into the reigns of two of his successors. [Sidenote: Persian War of
Justin.] It was quite as inconclusive, and quite as costly in men and
money, as had been the previous struggle in the reign of Justinian. On
the whole, the Romans lost no territory during its course. Their
farthest frontier stronghold of Daras was the only place of importance
that fell into Persian hands in the earlier years of the war, and the
secondary fortress of Martyropolis, in the Armenian Highlands, the only
loss of its later years. Both were destined to be recovered, and the
second Roman line of defence, based on Edessa and Amida, held good. If
the armies of Chosroes once succeeded in penetrating into Syria, it is
only fair to add that the imperial troops made several incursions into
the Persian border-lands of Arzanene and Corduene. It was not so much by
the loss of fortresses or the ravaging of territory that the war was
harmful to the empire, as by the long, fruitless drain of taxation that
it brought about. Where the tax-gatherer of Justinian’s time had shorn
the population close, the tax-gatherer of Justin’s was obliged to flay
them, in order to wring out the necessary solidi. Having begun the war
at his own pleasure, Justin found that he could not conclude it in a
similar way. The Persians hoped to win by exhausting the empire’s
resources, and were set on protracting the weary game.
In the ninth year after his succession to the throne, Justin was seized
with suicidal mania, and had to be placed in close restraint for all the
rest of his life. On his first lucid interval he nominated as his
colleague, and crowned as Caesar, a respectable military officer, named
Tiberius Constantinus, who, in conjunction with the empress Sophia,
acted as regent for the demented emperor till 578. Sophia, a proud and
restless woman, kept most of the power in her own hands, for Tiberius
was not of a pushing or ambitious disposition. His accession to power
made little or no difference in the policy of the court, which was still
guided by the empress.
While Justin saw the Balkan peninsula ravaged by the Avars, and the
Mesopotamian frontier beset by the Persians, he was destined to suffer a
still more grievous loss in another region of his empire. The Lombards,
emigrating from the middle Danube, followed the track that the
Ostrogoths had taken eighty years before, and threw themselves on the
newly-recovered province of Italy, only fifteen years after it had been
finally secured to the empire by the victories of Narses at Taginae and
Casilinum. Their fortunes will be described in another chapter. Here it
must suffice to say that ere the end of the reign of Justin II. they had
torn two-thirds of the peninsula from the grasp of the East-Roman
governors.
In 578, four years after he had fallen into a state of lunacy, Justin
II. died, and his colleague, Tiberius Constantinus, became sole ruler of
the empire. Tiberius II. was a thoroughly upright and well-intentioned
man, who had been chosen as heir by his predecessor solely on the ground
of his merits, and in spite of the fact that Justin had a son-in-law and
several cousins to whom he might have left the legacy of power.
[Sidenote: Tiberius Constantinus. 578-582.] Like Titus in an earlier
age, Tiberius II. was the darling and hope of the whole population of
the empire, and, like Titus, he was cut off in the flower of his years
after a very short reign. He had time, however, to give some earnest of
his good intentions by cutting down the grinding taxation of Justin II.
by a fourth, and remitting all arrears owed to the state. But he was
unable to do away with the cause which made taxation so heavy, the
wretched lingering Persian war, and, till the empire could obtain peace
within and without, the remission of taxation only meant the inadequate
performance of the duties of the state, and the rapid accumulation of
public debt. Tiberius succeeded, however, in making a truce with the
Avars, though to obtain it he had to give up the great border-fortress
of Sirmium, the central point for the defence of the line of the Danube
and Save, and also to promise to make one of those payments of money
which his predecessor had regarded as degrading the majesty of the
empire. Being free from war in the Balkans, Tiberius concentrated no
less than 200,000 men on the Persian frontier, and his troops, under the
general Maurice, won many successes, and invaded Media. But the
obstinate king Hormisdas, who had now succeeded Chosroes on the throne,
refused to listen to any proposals for peace, and the war dragged on.
In the fourth year of his reign Tiberius was suddenly stricken down by
disease, and died while only on the threshold of middle age. Like his
predecessor, he chose as his heir not any relative, but the best man
that he knew. Eight days before his death he invested with the royal
diadem his general Maurice, who had lately distinguished himself by a
great victory in Mesopotamia, and was universally respected for his
sterling merit and modesty. Maurice immediately married his benefactor’s
daughter, Constantina, and ascended the vacant throne in peace.
Like Tiberius Constantinus, Maurice was an eminently well-meaning ruler,
and a man not destitute of ability, but the times were too hard for him,
and his very virtues often conspired to lead him into unfortunate
actions. [Sidenote: Maurice, 582-602.] His reign of twenty years
(582-602), though not wanting in successes, was still a continuation of
the unhappy period of decline and decay which had set in since the year
of the great plague of 542. The worst of the troubles of Maurice was the
complete exhaustion of the imperial finances. The liberality of Tiberius
II. had drained out the last solidus from the already depleted treasury,
and the new emperor started with a deficit, which remained as a
perpetual nightmare to him all through his reign. Maurice was of a
prudent and economical disposition; the adverse balance cut him to the
heart, and he adopted all sorts of schemes—wise and unwise—to make
receipts and expenditure balance. The war expenses were, of course, the
main disturbing element, and Maurice went so far in his zeal for
retrenchment that while hostilities were still in progress he
endeavoured, on more than one occasion, to cut down the soldiers’ pay,
and economise the expenditure of provisions and military stores. This
policy had the most disastrous results. Several times it led to mutiny,
and at last it cost Maurice his throne and life.
The Persian war continued through the first nine years of Maurice’s
reign, as long as the reckless and obstinate king Hormisdas remained in
power. On the whole it was fortunately conducted. Two able officers,
named Heraclius and Philippicus, obtained the mastery over the Persians,
and won several battles. They would have done even more if Maurice’s
policy of ‘economy at any price’ had not led to mutinies among the
soldiery, who struck work, and retired behind the border when they heard
that their pay was to be reduced. It is hard to conceive how Maurice
could be so unwise; for he had considerable military experience, and
wrote an excellent book on tactics, _The Strategicon_, which served for
three hundred years as the manual of all Byzantine officers. Apparently
the economist prevailed over the soldier in his composition.
Luckily the mutiny of 588 did not ruin the empire; the troops returned
to duty when their grievance was removed, and won more victories over
the Persians. Hormisdas grew unpopular with his subjects, and was
deposed and slain by a usurper named Varahnes. His young son, Chosroes,
fled to the Roman camp, and threw himself on the mercy of his hereditary
foe. This led to the end of the war; Maurice lent the young prince
supplies and auxiliaries to start a rebellion against Varahnes.
[Sidenote: Persian War ended, 591.] The rising succeeded, and the
grateful Chosroes made peace with the empire the moment that he was
restored to his father’s throne (591). The terms, like those of the
peaces of 532 and 562, amounted to little more than the restoration of
the state of things which had preceded hostilities. Maurice recovered
the lost fortresses of Daras and Martyropolis, and gained the Christian
districts of Persarmenia, a new acquisition to the empire, but not one
of much importance.
But the troubles of Maurice, military and financial alike, did not cease
with the end of the Persian war. The faithless Avars, disregarding the
terms of peace which they had sworn to Tiberius II. in 581, were once
more ravaging the Balkan peninsula. In the second year of Maurice’s
reign they burst over the Danube, and seized the fortresses of
Singidunum and Viminacium, whose garrisons had been reduced by the needs
of the Persian war. Unable to raise a new army, Maurice sent them a
subsidy which kept them quiet for two years, but in 585 the Tartar horde
took arms once more, and threw themselves upon Thrace. Nor was it only
with the wild Avars that Maurice had to deal. We now hear of the Slavs
as becoming for the first time a serious danger to the empire. Their
tribes had for some time dwelt in obscurity along the lower Danube and
in the South-Russian plains, having flooded in to occupy the void space
left by the migration of the Goths in the fourth century. At the
accession of Maurice some of them were subject to the Avars, others were
still independent, but all showed a tendency to move southward over the
Danube. The Slavs were individually not very dangerous enemies to the
empire; they were in the very lowest stage of civilisation, hardly yet
accustomed to till the soil, and living the precarious life of fishers
and hunters. They did not fight in the open field, but lurked in forests
and morasses, issuing forth to plunder by night, and only attacking
their foes when they could take them by surprise. It is said that they
practised the curious stratagem of lying hid in shallow pools, showing
nothing above the surface of the water save the point of a hollow reed,
through which they breathed. The story sounds improbable, but Byzantine
authors quote several occasions on which it was actually used.
Many Slav tribes, seeking refuge from the domination of the Avars,
crossed the Danube in their light canoes, and established themselves in
the wooded slopes of the Balkans, or the marshes of the Dobrudscha,
where they found the cover that they loved. The Moesian provincials had
been so thinned by two hundred years of raiding suffered at the hands of
Goth, Hun, and Avar, that the Slavs found the land almost wholly
uninhabited. Outside the great Danube fortresses, and the large towns
like Naissus or Sardica, the population had almost entirely disappeared.
[Sidenote: The Slavs cross the Danube.] Avoiding battles with the
garrisons of the towns, the Slavs slipped between them, and spread over
the face of the deserted land, pitching their rude huts in the most
secluded spots that they could find. They were not only intruders, but
enemies, for they were keenly set on plunder, waylaid every party of
travellers that strove to pass from town to town, and laid ambuscades
for every body of soldiers that was not too numerous for them to cope
with.
From 585 to the very end of his reign Maurice was engaged in a desperate
struggle against Slav and Avar, which raged over the whole of the Balkan
peninsula. The invaders gradually pressed southwards, though they
suffered many defeats, and though whole tribes of Slavs were sometimes
exterminated. The enemy, though individually contemptible, seemed to
draw on endless reserves of strength, as horde after horde slipped
across the Danube, and threw itself into the glens of the Balkans. The
effect of these invasions is well described by a contemporary
chronicler, John of Ephesus: ‘The first years of Maurice were famous for
the invasion of the accursed people called Slavonians, who overran
Greece and all the lands about Thessalonica and Thrace, plundering many
towns, and devastating and burning, and reducing the people to slavery.
They have made themselves masters of the whole country, and settled in
it by main force, and dwell in it as though it were their own. Four
years have now passed, and still they live at their ease in the land,
and spread themselves abroad, as far as God permits them, and ravage and
burn and take captive, and still they encamp and dwell there.’
Ever since the Persian war ended, the reign of Maurice had been one
unbroken series of misfortunes; the only remedy that the emperor could
find for the evil times was an economy that verged on avarice. This
foible at last caused his ruin. In 599 the Chagan of the Avars demanded
of him ransom-money for 12,000 Roman prisoners who had fallen into his
hands; the emperor refused to pay it, though he had the required sum of
solidi ready at hand. The Chagan thereupon massacred the whole body of
prisoners. The Roman world raised a cry of horror, and threw the blame
upon the avarice of Maurice, not the savagery of the Avars. Henceforth
his throne was unsafe; but the crowning blow to his power was given by
another piece of unwise economy. After a successful campaign against the
Slavs in 601, the army of the Balkans had pursued them across the
Danube. Maurice sent orders that the victorious troops should winter in
the open field, upon the bleak townless plains of Wallachia, in order to
save supplies.
Instead of obeying, the soldiery drove away their generals, placed a
Thracian centurion named Phocas at their head, and marched on
Constantinople, loudly proclaiming that they were coming to depose the
emperor. So unpopular had Maurice made himself with the army, that he
found that he could not trust even his household troops, and in despair
armed the Blue and Green factions, and set them to guard the city walls.
[Sidenote: Rebellion of Phocas.] But the factions were a broken reed
when disciplined troops had to be faced, and Maurice soon found himself
deserted by every one. He fled to Chalcedon, hoping to raise aid in the
Asiatic provinces, where he was less unpopular than in Europe.
Meanwhile, the army entered the capital, and proclaimed Phocas as
emperor, though he was but a rough uncultured boor, who had headed the
mutineers simply in virtue of having louder lungs and a heavier hand
than his comrades. The usurper sent officers to seize his unfortunate
predecessor, and caused him to be beheaded, along with his four sons,
the youngest of whom was a mere infant in arms. Maurice met his death
with a courage and dignity that moved the hearts of those who had so
lately reviled him. ‘Just art Thou, O Lord God, and just are Thy
judgments,’ he exclaimed as the executioner raised his sword, and died
with a prayer on his lips.
From the foundation of Constantinople down to the death of Maurice the
Eastern crown had never before been the prize of successful rebellion,
nor had any legitimate emperor fallen by the hands of his subjects.
Revolts there had been, but they had never gained permanent success. It
was an evil day for the empire when the army found that they could make
an emperor, and the orderly succession of elective Caesars, chosen by
their predecessors or by the Senate, came to an end.
The new ruler of Constantinople proved to be a brutal ruffian, beside
whose vices the faults of Maurice seemed shining virtues. Ignorant,
cruel, licentious, and thriftless, he made his lusts his masters, and
soon became the detestation of all his subjects. Phocas showed ability
in one thing only, he was most successful in tracking out and
frustrating the numerous conspiracies which were ere long framed against
his life. All whom he rightly or wrongly suspected were visited with
cruel deaths; among others he slew his predecessor’s widow, Constantina,
and her three little daughters, because he found that their names were
often used as a rallying cry by plotters. On mere suspicion he seized
and burnt alive Narses, the general of the East, the most distinguished
officer in the army. Other objects of his dread were flogged to death,
strangled, or cruelly mutilated.
Meanwhile, the reign of terror at home was accompanied by disaster
without. The decaying military and financial strength of the empire
suddenly collapsed into utter ruin under the rule of the vicious boor
who had replaced the economic Maurice. The Slavs and Avars wrought their
wicked will unhindered on the European provinces, and pushed their
ravages up to the wall of Anastasius. In the East matters fared even
worse. The young and able king of Persia made the murder of his
benefactor Maurice a _casus belli_, and took arms to avenge his ‘friend
and father.’ From the first opening of the war the Romans fared badly;
never had such an unbroken series of disasters met their arms. Early in
the struggle Phocas had provoked the Eastern army by recalling and
burning alive their commander Narses. They fought feebly, were
ill-supplied by the incapable tyrant, and badly led by his creatures who
were placed at their head. [Sidenote: Disastrous Persian War, 603-10.]
In 606 there came a sudden collapse; the great frontier fortress of
Daras fell, and from that moment the Persians pushed on without meeting
a check. They overran all Mesopotamia, ravaged northern Syria, and
pushed their incursions into Asia Minor, where no enemy had been seen
for a century. The armies of Phocas seem to have dispersed, or shut
themselves up within city walls, for we hear of no resistance to the
invader. In 608 matters grew worse still; from their base in Mesopotamia
and north Syria the Persians struck out boldly towards Constantinople.
Overrunning Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia their raiding bands
crossed the whole peninsula, and even penetrated to Chalcedon and eyed
the imperial city across the Bosphorus. Phocas, instead of hastening to
organise new troops, contented himself with ordering a persecution of
the Jews, whom he accused of having betrayed to the Persians some of the
towns of Syria.
In 609 the enemy once more overran Asia Minor, capturing among other
places the great city of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Again they met with
little or no opposition; the emperor’s attention was entirely taken up
with real or imaginary plots in the capital. It seemed that he would
allow the empire to be torn from him piecemeal, without striking a blow.
But relief was at last about to come to the suffering people of New
Rome. In Africa there ruled as exarch Heraclius, the veteran officer
whose victories had closed the old Persian wars of the time of Maurice.
He was capable and much beloved both by the provincials and by his army;
under his able rule Africa, alone among the provinces of the empire,
enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 609 Heraclius received emissaries from
Priscus, the commander of the imperial guard, one of the innumerable
persons who had fallen under the suspicion of Phocas. The messengers
bade Heraclius strike boldly at Constantinople, for Phocas was
universally detested, and no one would raise an arm in his defence. At
the same moment the exarch learnt that his tyrannical master had already
conceived doubts of his loyalty, and had thrown his wife and daughter
into prison.
[Sidenote: Rebellion of Heraclius.] Seeing that he must strike hard or
be crushed, Heraclius determined to rebel. He spent the winter of 609-10
in fitting out a fleet, and launched it against Constantinople before
Phocas had learnt of his revolt. The command was given to his eldest
son, who also bore the name of Heraclius, for the exarch himself was old
and ailing. At the same time, to make a diversion, he sent a body of
cavalry under his nephew, Nicetas, to invade Egypt by land; they were to
follow the line of the long coast-road through Tripoli and Cyrene.
When the fleet of the younger Heraclius reached the Dardanelles it met
with no resistance; on the news of its arrival, Priscus brought the
imperial guard to join the rebels, and the emperor found himself
deserted by all his soldiery. He strove, like his predecessor Maurice,
to arm the factions of the Blues and Greens; but no one would strike a
blow in behalf of such a worthless tyrant. Heraclius sailed unopposed to
the Bosphorus, and as he arrived off the palace he met a boat containing
the wretched Phocas, whom a private enemy had seized and cast into
chains. The prisoner was brought on deck and cast at the feet of his
conqueror. ‘Is it thus,’ cried Heraclius, ‘that you have governed the
empire?’ ‘Will you,’ the fallen tyrant replied, ‘govern it any better?’
Heraclius spurned him with his foot, and promptly consigned him to the
headsman.
Thus perished the first, but by no means the last, military usurper who
sat on the Constantinopolitan throne, overthrown, as he had been
elevated, by an armed rebellion. All the world with singular unanimity
testified to the worthlessness of Phocas, save one single adherent; but
this was no less a person than Pope Gregory the Great. Much to his
discredit the great pontiff had been a supporter, nay, even a flatterer,
of the Thracian boor who wore the eastern diadem with such ill grace.
But Gregory had been an enemy of the unfortunate Maurice, because that
prince—though orthodox in matters of doctrine—had shown scant respect to
the See of Rome. He had called some of Gregory’s epistles ‘fatuous,’ and
had allowed John ‘the Faster,’ patriarch of Constantinople, to assume
the title of ‘œcumenical bishop,’ a style which filled Gregory with
horror, and caused him to exclaim that the times of Antichrist were at
hand. Gregory therefore looked on Maurice’s murderer as the avenger of
the outraged dignity of the See of Rome, and did not shrink from heaping
upon him epithets of unseemly adulation; the choirs of angels, he said,
sang with joy in heaven at the accession of such a worthy Caesar! Truly
this was a painful episode in the life of a man who, in spite of all his
faults, has been justly hailed as a saint.
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