XIII. The First Anarchy.
Justinian II., the last of the house of Heraclius, was a sovereign of a different type from any emperor that we have yet encountered in the annals of the Eastern Empire. He was a bold, reckless, callous, and selfish young man, with a firm determination to assert his own individuality and have his own way,—he was, in short, of the stuff of which tyrants are made. Justinian was but seventeen when he came to the throne, but he soon showed that he intended to rule the empire after his own good pleasure long before he had begun to learn the lessons of state-craft.
Ere he had reached his twenty-first year Justinian had plunged into war with the Bulgarians. He attacked them suddenly, inflicted several defeats on their king, and took no less than thirty thousand prisoners, whom he sent over to Asia, and forced to enlist in the army of Armenia. He next picked a quarrel with the Saracen Caliph on the most frivolous grounds. The annual tribute due by the treaty of 679 had hitherto been paid in Roman solidi, but in 692 [pg 174] Abdalmalik tendered it in new gold coins of his own mintage, bearing verses of the Koran. Justinian refused to receive them, and declared war.
His second venture in the field was disastrous: his unwilling recruits from Bulgaria deserted to the enemy, when he met the Saracens at Sebastopolis in Cilicia, and the Roman army was routed with great slaughter. The two subsequent campaigns were equally unsuccessful, and the troops of the Caliph harried Cappadocia far and wide.
Justinian's wars depleted his treasury; yet he persisted in plunging into expensive schemes of building at the same time, and was driven to collect money by the most reckless extortion. He employed two unscrupulous ministers, Theodotus, the accountant general—an ex-abbot who had deserted his monastery—and the eunuch Stephanus, the keeper of the privy purse. These men were to Justinian what Ralph Flambard was to William Rufus, or Empson and Dudley to Henry VII: they raised him funds by flagrant extortion and illegal stretching of the law. Both were violent and cruel: Theodotus is said to have hung recalcitrant tax-payers up by ropes above smoky fires till they were nearly stifled. Stephanus thrashed and stoned every one who fell into his hands; he is reported to have actually administered a whipping to the empress-dowager during the absence of her son, and Justinian did not punish him when he returned.
While the emperor's financial expedients were making him hated by the moneyed classes, he was rendering himself no less unpopular in the army.
After his ill-success in the Saracen war, he began to execute or imprison his officers, and to decimate his beaten troops: to be employed by him in high command was almost as dangerous as it was to be appointed a general-in-chief during the dictatorship of Robespierre.
In 695 the cup of Justinian's iniquities was full. An officer named Leontius being appointed, to his great dismay, general of the “theme” of Hellas, was about to set out to assume his command. As he parted from his friends he exclaimed that his days were numbered, and that he should be expecting the order for his execution to arrive at any moment. Then a certain monk named Paul stood forth, and bade him save himself by a bold stroke; if he would aim a blow at Justinian he would find the people and the army ready to follow him.