§ 2. The Eastern Empire.
♦The Eastern Empire.♦
The effect of the various changes of the seventh and eighth centuries, the rise of the Saracens, the settlement of the Slaves, the transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks, seem really to have had the effect of strengthening the Eastern Empire which they so terribly cut short. It began for the first time to put on something of a national character. ♦It takes a Greek character.♦ As the Western Empire was fast becoming German, so the Eastern Empire was fast becoming Greek. ♦Rivalry of the Eastern and Western or Greek and Latin Churches.♦ And a religious distinction was soon added to the distinction of language. As the schism between the Churches came on, the Greek-speaking lands attached themselves to the Eastern, and not to the Western, form of Christianity. The Eastern Empire, keeping on all its Roman titles and traditions, had thus become nearly identical with what may be called the artificial Greek nation. It continues the work of hellenization which was begun by the old Greek colonies and which went on under the Macedonian kings. ♦Fluctuations in the extent of the Empire.♦ No power gives more work for the geographer; through the alternate periods of decay and revival which make up nearly the whole of Byzantine history, provinces were always being lost and always being won back again. And it supplies also a geographical study of another kind, in the new divisions into which the Empire was now mapped out, divisions which, for the most part, have very little reference to the divisions of earlier times.
♦The Themes as described by Constantine Porphyrogennêtos.♦
The Themes or provinces of the Eastern Empire, as they stood in the tenth century, have had the privilege of being elaborately described by an Imperial geographer in the person of Constantine Porphyrogennêtos.[11] He speaks of the division as comparatively recent, and of some themes as having been formed almost in his own time. The themes would certainly seem to have been mapped out after the Empire had been cut short both to the north and to the east. The nomenclature of the new divisions is singular and diversified. ♦Asiatic Themes.♦ Some ancient national names are kept, while the titles of others seem fantastic enough. Thus in Asia Paphlagonia and Kappadokia remain names of themes with some approach to their ancient boundaries; but the Armenian theme is thrust far to the west of any of the earlier uses of the name, so that the Halys flows through it. Between it and the still independent Armenia lay the theme of Chaldia, with Trapezous, the future seat of Emperors, for its capital. Along the Saracen frontier lie the themes of Kolôneia, Mesopotamia—a shadowy survival indeed of the Mesopotamia of Trajan, of which it was not even a part—Sebasteia, Lykandos, Kappadokia, and Seleukeia, called from the Isaurian or Kilikian city of that name. Along the south coast the city of Kibyra has given—in mockery, says Constantine—its name to the theme of the Kibyrraiotians, which reaches as far as Milêtos. The isle of Samos gives its name to a theme reaching from Milêtos to Adramyttion, while the theme of the Ægæan Sea, besides most of the islands, stretches on to the mainland of the ancient Aiolis. The rest of the Propontis is bordered by themes bearing the strange names of Opsikion and Optimatôn, names of Latin origin, in the former of which the word obsequium is to be traced. To the east of them the no less strangely named Thema Boukellariôn takes in the Euxine Hêrakleia. Inland and away from the frontier are the themes Thrakêsion and Anatolikon, while another Asiatic theme is formed by the island of Cyprus.
♦The European Themes.♦
The nomenclature of the European themes is more intelligible. Most of them bear ancient names, and the districts which bear them are at least survivals of the lands which bore them of old. After a good deal of shifting, owing to the loss and recovery of so many districts, the Empire under Constantine Porphyrogennêtos numbered twelve European themes. Thrace had shrunk up into the land just round Constantinople and Hadrianople, the latter now a frontier city against the Bulgarian. Macedonia had been pushed to the east, leaving the more strictly Macedonian coast-districts which the Empire still kept to form the themes of Strymôn and Thessalonikê. ♦Use of the name Hellas.♦ Going further south, the name of Hellas has revived, and that with a singular accuracy of application. Hellas is now the eastern side of continental Greece, taking in the land of Achilleus. The abiding name of Achaia has vanished for a while, and the peninsula which had been won back from the Slave again bears its name of Peloponnêsos. But Lakedaimonia now appears on the list of its chief cities instead of Sparta. This and other instances in which one Greek name has been supplanted by another are witnesses of the Slavonic occupation of Hellas and its recovery by a Greek-speaking power. Off the west coast the realm of Odysseus seems to revive in the theme of Kephallênia, which takes in also the mythic isle of Alkinoos. Such parts of Epeiros and Western Greece as clave to the Empire form the theme of Nikopolis. ♦The Hadriatic lands.♦ To the north, on the Hadriatic shore, was the theme of Dyrrhachion, and beyond that again, the Dalmatian and Venetian cities still counted as outlying portions of the Empire. ♦Possessions of the Empire in Italy.♦ Beyond the Hadriatic, southern Italy forms the theme of Lombardy, interrupted by the principality of Salerno, while Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi were outlying posts like Venice and Ragusa. Sicily was still reckoned as a theme; but it was now wholly lost to the Saracen. ♦Chersôn.♦ And far away in the Tauric peninsula, the last of the Hellenic commonwealths, the furthest outpost of Hellenic civilization, had sunk in the ninth century into the Byzantine theme of Chersôn.
♦Seeming Asiatic character of the Empire.♦
The first impression conveyed by this geographical description is that the Eastern Empire had now become a power rather Asiatic than European. It is only in Asia that any solid mass of territory is kept. ♦Nature of its European possessions.♦ Elsewhere there are only islands and fringes of coast. ♦Maritime supremacy of the Empire.♦ But they were almost continuous fringes of coast, fringes which contained some of the greatest cities of Christendom, and which gave their masters an undisputed supremacy by sea. If the Mediterranean was not a Byzantine lake, it was only the presence of the Saracen, the occasional visits of the Northman, which hindered it from being so. Then again, the whole history of the Empire, if a history of losses, is also a history of recoveries, and before long the Roman arms again became terrible by land. The picture of Constantine Porphyrogennêtos shows us the Empire at a moment when neither process was actually going on; but the times before and after his reign were times, first of loss and then of recovery. ♦Loss and recovery of Crete. 823-960.♦ Early in the ninth century Crete was suddenly seized by Saracen adventurers from Spain; about the same time began the long and slow Saracen conquest of Sicily. ♦Loss of Sicily. 827-878.
Advance in Italy, Dalmatia, and Greece. c. 802.♦ But, almost at the moment when Sicily was lost, the Imperial province in Italy was largely increased, and the Imperial influence in Dalmatia was largely restored. About the same time Peloponnêsos was won back from the Slaves. ♦Recovery of provinces in the East. 964-976.♦ In the latter half of the tenth century Crete was won back; so were Kilikia and part of Syria, with the famous cities of Tarsos, Edessa, and Antioch on the Orontes. ♦Conquest of Bulgaria. 981-1018.♦ Presently Basil the Second overthrew the Bulgarian kingdom in Europe and the Armenian kingdom in Asia; the lands at the foot of Caucasus admitted the Imperial supremacy, and the Byzantine rule was carried round the greater part of the Euxine. ♦Loss of Cherson. 988.♦ Cherson indeed was lost; the old Megarian city passed into the hands of the Russian. At the other end of the Empire, the recovery of Sicily was actually begun, and, if the Saracen was not driven out, his power was weakened in the interest of the next set of invaders. ♦The Eastern Empire under Basil the Second.♦ Early in the eleventh century the Eastern Rome was again the head of a dominion which was undoubtedly the greatest among Christian powers, a dominion greater than it had been at any time since the Saracenic and Slavonic inroads began.