The Empresses of Constantinople

by Joseph McCabe

During the four years that followed Sophia ruled with the power and rigour of an autocrat. When Tiberius, seeing the vast sums of money which she and Justin had amassed, and affecting to regard it as unjustly extorted, began to squander it on the people, she deprived him of the key of the treasury. It is not unlikely that he was trying to win popularity independently of her. When nobles, mindful of her attitude, asked if they might visit the wife of the Cæsar, she angrily told them to “be quiet,” as it was “no business of theirs.” It was, in fact, rumoured in the city that, as two contemporary writers assure us, she urged Tiberius to divorce his wife and prepare to marry her. We shall see later that, in spite of the rigorous teaching of the Church, a Byzantine Emperor, with the tacit connivance of the archbishop, more than once divorced his wife. As Justin lingered, and no one dared visit the trembling ladies in the Hormisdas palace, the courage of the provincial matron failed and she fled back to her native town.

In September 578, however, Justin passed the imperial crown to Tiberius, and died nine days afterwards. Sophia had more than the strength, but less than the penetration, of her aunt Theodora, and she very quickly discovered that she had misjudged the submissive Cæsar. I have already rejected the fable that he now revealed to the citizens for the first time the existence of his wife. It is more plausible to assume that his servants were at work among the citizens ensuring that, the moment he appeared in the kathisma in his stiff gold tunic, the cry should ring out: “Let us see the Roman Empress.” He submitted with alacrity to the voice of the people. Officers of distinction were at once despatched to Thrace, to bring Ino to the palace, and Sophia retired in great chagrin to her quarters.

Ino, like so many of the Roman Empresses, remains a mere name to which are attached a number of singular and romantic adventures, but a little consideration of her behaviour in these adventures affords an occasional glimpse of her personality. A simple and, no doubt, quite uncultivated provincial matron, she had gladly exchanged the troubled splendours of a palace for the tranquil plainness of her former home in Daphnudium. The faithful Tiberius had occasionally visited her in her retirement, and it was doubtless understood that when the death of Justin made him free to defy Sophia she should return to the Court. The day had arrived, and her humble home in the provinces was now besieged by nobles and officers who were eager to escort her across the sea to the bronze-roofed palace. “Come in the morning, and we will start immediately,” Ino told them. In the morning, however, they found that Ino and her daughters, disliking the pomp of an escort and the scenes which their passage would cause, had quietly departed during the night, and they followed in very evil temper to Constantinople.

Tiberius and the Senators and nobles met Ino at the city quay, and she was presently clothed in the gold tunic and purple mantle of the Empress. In a covered litter, accompanied by a crowd of eunuchs and chamberlains, she proceeded from the palace to the great church of St Sophia between the living hedges of the populace. It was here that her name was changed to Anastasia. Since the introduction of Empresses with provincial or pagan names a custom had arisen of changing the name at coronation, and the right to do so had been genially accorded to the people. On this occasion the ceremony was more animated than usual. The greens, standing under their banner at their appointed station, raised the cry of “Helena”; from the next station the blues raised the counter-cry of “Anastasia,” and “so fiercely did they contend,” says the bishop, “with rival shouts for the honour of naming her that a great and terrible riot ensued and all the people were in confusion.” The blues seem to have been in the majority, and from her baptism of blood Ino emerged with the royal name of Anastasia; from the cathedral she presently returned to the sacred palace as Empress or “Queen” Antastasia.

From that moment we lose sight of the new Empress, and must imagine her peacefully vegetating in the marble-lined halls and the superb gardens of her palaces. The interest passes once more to Sophia. As soon as she realized that Tiberius had shaken off her control she removed large sums of money and much treasure from the main palace, and went to live in her Sophian palace by the Julian Port. Tiberius, knowing her temper and the vicissitudes of imperial life at Constantinople, regarded this action with distrust, and tried to disarm her. “Dwell here, and be content, as my mother,” he urged, pressing her to remain in Daphne. She refused to do so, and he was content to assign her an imperial Court and make it known by decree that she was to be honoured as his “mother.” He then married Charito, the daughter of Anastasia, to a distinguished officer, raised him to the rank of Cæsar, and prepared to meet the intrigues of his adopted mother.

The strong and ambitious woman chafed in the small world to which she found herself reduced and soon began to quarrel with the Emperor. Justin had begun the building of a lighthouse at the Julian Port, near the great brass statues of himself and Sophia, and Tiberius pressed Sophia to complete it. She pointed out that it was a work of public usefulness, and therefore the Emperor must undertake it. Tiberius refused, and the relations between them were strained. Here, unfortunately, our informant becomes less generous with the interesting historical matter which he mingles with his narrative of Church affairs. He tells us only that the “proud and malignant” old Empress “set on foot plots without number against Tiberius,” and was at length deprived of her imperial status and retinue. Sophia was probably still in the prime of life—Byzantine women usually married about the age of fifteen—and this drastic step would merely dispose her to more violent action, but it soon became apparent that a greater power than that of kings and queens was about to intervene. Tiberius was consumptive. In the summer of 582, after less than four years’ enjoyment of his easily won honours, he felt that the end was approaching and sought a successor.

A contemporary ecclesiastical writer seems to suggest Sophia when he tells us that Tiberius died of poison, administered to him in a dish of mulberries, but we may accept the kindlier view that he was delicate and consumptive, and brought about a crisis by some indiscretion at table. A popular officer from the Persian wars named Maurice was in the city at the time, and Tiberius—passing over, for some unknown reason, the elder daughter of Anastasia and her husband—offered him the hand of the younger daughter, Constantina, and the crown. Maurice, an undistinguished provincial like Tiberius—he came from Cappadocia—was crowned on 5th August, and married Constantina a few days afterwards. It is expressly recorded that the marriage was celebrated with great magnificence. Maurice was a robust, clean-shaven, ruddy-featured young man: a man whose goodwill was as obvious as his incapacity to restore a stricken Empire. The personal features of the Empresses are never described by the Byzantine writers, but we are told that Constantina made a brave show in her bridal tunic of cloth of gold, edged with purple and sprinkled with diamonds, amongst the crowd of richly dressed nobles. The citizens honoured the new dynasty with banquets and illuminations, little dreaming of the horrible tragedy which would extinguish it in blood.

Tiberius died a week later, and Anastasia seems to have survived her husband only a few years. Sophia returned to the palace after the death of Tiberius, and spent her last years in tranquillity. But the twenty years’ reign of Maurice is barren of interest for the biographer of the Empresses, and we must pass quickly over its mediocre annals to its tragic termination. Twelve months after the coronation Constantinople was again seething with joyous excitement. Constantina had a son, and it was the first time in two hundred years that a boy had been “born in the Porphyra”: an appalling comment on Byzantine court life. Very costly gifts were brought to the little Theodosius, as he lay with his mother, a week or two later, under sheets of cloth of gold to receive the ladies of the city. Four years later the boy was made Cæsar, and brothers and sisters followed him into the world with great regularity, until Maurice saw a family of nine children about him, giving promise of an endless dynasty. Anastasia died a few years afterwards. Sophia is mentioned only once more in the chronicles. Fourteen or fifteen years after the coronation of Maurice we read that Sophia and Constantina presented the Emperor with a magnificent crown, and that he offended them by piously suspending it over the altar in one of the churches. We do not know in what year she died, but it is clear that she did not live to witness the horrible fate of Maurice and Constantina. No grave blunder was committed by Maurice as long as she remained in the palace, but it must have been soon after her death that he began to incur the disdain of the people and the army, and to prepare the tragedy which closed his life and that of his Empress.

The causes of that tragedy belong to history; it is enough to note here that Maurice converted the disdain of the troops into fierce anger by refusing to redeem a number of them who had fallen into the merciless hands of the barbarians. From that moment even the rabble of Constantinople could insult him with impunity. One day when he and his eldest son Theodosius were walking barefoot at the head of a religious procession, they were stoned and compelled to run for their lives. On another day the crowd found a man with some resemblance to Maurice, clothed him in black, crowned him with garlic, and drove him on an ass through the city amidst a chorus of jeering and execration. Then some troops which he had ordered to winter in the hard lands beyond the Danube revolted and marched upon Constantinople under their leader Phocas. Maurice nervously ordered games in the Hippodrome, and bade the people not be alarmed. They were not alarmed, as they had little idea of loyalty to the despised Emperor, and there was as yet no question of raising to the purple the brutal officer in command of the insurgent troops.

Phocas and his troops had now reached the outskirts of the city. One day Theodosius and his father-in-law, Germanus, were hunting in that region when a messenger of Phocas accosted them and proposed that Theodosius should replace his father on the throne, or else Germanus should take the crown. Although they refused, Maurice heard of the invitation, and accused them of conspiracy. Germanus fled to the altar, and Maurice, scourging his son for warning Germanus, sent guards to drag him from the church. This provoked a rising of the people, and Maurice fled across the water with his family. Maurice, now an old man of sixty-three, was nearly wrecked in crossing during the night, and was racked with gout. He had some years before befriended the King of Persia, and he now sent Theodosius to ask help from that monarch. The young man was, however, presently recalled by a messenger who said that his father intended to meet his fate with religious resignation. He returned to find that his father and five brothers had been butchered, and his mother and three sisters confined in a private house, at the command of the Emperor Phocas.