XVII. The Literary Emperors And Their Time. (a.d. 886-963.)
The eighty years which followed the death of Basil the Macedonian were the most uneventful and monotonous in the whole history of the empire. They are entirely taken up by the two long reigns of Leo the Wise and Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[25] the son and grandson of the founder of the dynasty. Basil had been a mere adventurer, an ignorant and uneducated but capable upstart. His successors—strange issue from such a stock—were a pair of mild, easy-going, and inoffensive men of literature. They wrote no annals with their sword, though the times were not unpropitious for military enterprise, but devoted themselves to the pen, and have left behind them some of the most useful and interesting works in Byzantine literature.
If the times had been harder it is doubtful whether [pg 216] Leo VI. and Constantine VII. would have been strong enough to protect their throne. But the period 880-960 was less troubled by foreign wars than any other corresponding period in the history of the East-Roman state. The empire of the Caliphs was breaking up in the East—the empire of Charles the Great had already broken up in the West—the Bulgarians and other neighbours of the realm on the north were being converted to Christianity, and settling down into quiet. The only troubles to which the East-Roman realm was exposed were piratical raids of the Russians on the north and the Saracens of Africa on the south. These were vexatious, but not dangerous. An active and warlike emperor would probably have found the time propitious for conquest from his neighbours, but Leo and Constantine were quiet, unenterprising men, who dwelt contentedly in the palace, and seldom or never took the field.
Leo's reign of twenty-six years was only diversified by an unfortunate invasion of Bulgaria, which failed through the mismanagement of the generals, and for a great raid of Saracen pirates on Thessalonica in 904. The capture of the second city of the empire by a fleet of African adventurers was an incident disgraceful to the administration of Leo, and caused much outcry and sensation. But it is fair to say that it was taken almost by surprise, and stormed from the side of the sea where no attack had been expected. The armies and fleet of the empire would have availed to rescue the town if only its fall had been delayed a few weeks. When they had taken it the Saracens fled with their booty, and made no attempt to hold its walls.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the offspring of the fourth wife of Leo the Wise, and the child of his old age, was only seven when his heritage fell to him. For many years he was under the tutelage of guardians; first his father's brother Alexander ruled as his colleague, and became emperor-regent. Some years after Alexander had died an ambitious admiral named Romanus Lecapenus usurped the same position, declared himself emperor, and administered the realm. The life of Romanus was protracted into extreme old age, long after Constantine had reached his majority; but the ambitious veteran held tight to the sceptre, and kept the rightful heir in the background. Constantine consoled himself by writing books and painting pictures; it was not till he was nearly forty that he came to his own. Even then his success was not owing to his own energy; the sons of the aged Romanus had resolved to succeed their parent on the throne, in despite of the rights of Constantine. But when they declared themselves emperors and made their old father abdicate, an outburst of popular wrath was provoked. The mob and the guards joined to sweep away the presumptuous Stephen Lecapenus and his brother. They were immured in monasteries, and Constantine emerged from his seclusion to administer the empire for twenty years. He was somewhat weak and ineffective, but neither obstinate nor tyrannical; many abler men made worse rulers.
The chief achievements of both Leo and Constantine were their books. Those of Leo consist of a manual on the Art of War, some theological treatises, [pg 218] and a book of prophecies, a collection of political enigmas, which were long the puzzle and admiration of the East.[26] The first-named work is most valuable and interesting, bringing down the history of military organization, tactics, and strategy to Leo's own time, and giving us a perfect picture of the Byzantine army and its tactics, as well as incidental sketches of all the enemies with which it had to contend. The backbone of the force was still the “themes” or “turmæ” of heavy cavalry, of which every province had one. The number of the provinces had been much increased since the days of the emperors of the house of Heraclius, and this implied a corresponding increase in the troops. They were raised from subjects of the empire and officered by the Byzantine nobility, for as Leo observed, “There was no difficulty in obtaining officers of good birth and private means, whose origin made them respected by the soldiery, while their money enabled them to win the good graces of their men by many gifts of small creature comforts, over and above their pay.” The names of some of the great noble houses are found for generation after generation in the imperial muster rolls, such as those of Ducas, Phocas, Comnenus, Bryennius, Kerkuas, Diogenes, and many more. The pages of Leo's work breathe an entire confidence in the power of the army to deal with any foe; against Saracen, Turk, Hungarian, and Slav, instant and decisive action is advised; when caught, they should be fought and beaten. It [pg 219] is only when dealing with the men of the West, the Franks and Lombards, that Leo recommends caution and deprecates any rash engagement in a general action, preferring to wear the enemy down by cutting off his supplies and harassing his marches. We gather a very favourable impression of the Byzantine army from Leo's book; it was organized, armed, and supplied in a manner that has no parallel till modern times. Each regiment possessed its special uniform, and was equipped with regularity. There was none of that variety in arms and organizations which was the bane of mediæval armies. The regiments had each attached to them an elaborate military train, a small body of engineers, and a provision of surgeons and ambulances. To encourage the saving of wounded men, Leo tells us that the bearer company was given a gold piece for every disabled soldier whom it brought off the field after a lost battle. It would be hard to find any similar care shown for the wounded till the days of our own century.
The Byzantine fleet, as Leo describes it, had for its chief object the maintenance of the police of the seas in the Aegean, Levant, and South Italian waters. Its enemies were the Saracens of the Syrian and African coasts, and more especially the troublesome Corsairs of Crete, who were often beaten but never subdued till Nicephorus Phocas exterminated them in 961. The empire maintained three fleets, small ones in the Black Sea and in Western waters; but the largest in the Aegean. This was composed of sixty “dromonds,” or war-vessels of the largest rating; their great depôt was in the arsenal at Constantinople, but they could [pg 220] also be refitted at Samos, Thessalonica, and several other ports. Owing to their superior size, and still more to their employment of the celebrated Greek fire, the imperial fleets generally had the better of the Saracen, but though they checked his larger squadrons, they could never suppress the petty piracy by isolated sea-robbers, which rendered all mediæval commerce so dangerous.
The works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus are even more interesting than those of his father. His treatise called “On the Themes” is invaluable to the historian, as it gives a complete list of the Themes, their boundaries, inhabitants, characteristics, and resources, with some other incidental notices of value. Still more important is the book, “On the Administration of the Empire,” which contains directions for the foreign policy of the realm, and sketches the condition and resources of the various nations with whom the Constantinopolitan government had dealings. Constantine also wrote a biography of his grandfather, Basil the Macedonian, couched in terms of respect which that hardy usurper was far from deserving. But his longest and most ambitious work was on Court Ceremonies, a manual of etiquette and precedence, describing the official hierarchy of the empire, its duties and privileges, and containing elaborate directions for the conduct of state ceremonials and the interior economy of the royal household. On this comparatively trifling topic Constantine spent far more pains than on the works of larger interest which he composed. His books show him to have been a man of no great originative faculty, but [pg 221] gifted with the powers of a careful and methodical compiler, who loved details and never shirked trouble. His care for court pageants was very characteristic of the peaceful emperor, who had long been kept at home by his guardian, and forced to compensate himself by ceremonial for the want of real power.