Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

But Fallmerayer was not content with wiping out the Greeks from the Peloponnese. He next propounded the amazing statement that the history of Athens was a blank for four centuries after the time of Justinian, and explained this strange phenomenon by a Slavonic inundation in that Emperor’s reign. In consequence of this invasion, the Athenians were said to have fled to Salamis, where they remained for 400 years, while their city was abandoned to olive groves and utterly neglected. These “facts,” which the learned German had culled from the chronicle of the Anargyroi Monastery[33], which, however, distinctly says “three years,” and not 400, and refers to Albanians, not Slavs, have since been disproved, not only by the obviously modern date of that compilation, which is now assigned to the nineteenth century, and which refers to the temporary abandonment of Athens after its capture by Morosini in 1687, but by the allusions which may be found to events at Athens during this period of supposed desertion. Thus, we hear of an heretical bishop being sent there towards the end of the sixth century, and we have the seal of the orthodox divine who was Bishop of Athens a hundred years later[34]. An eloquent appeal was made by the Byzantine historian, Theophylact Simokatta, to the city to put on mourning for the Emperor Maurice, who died in 602, and sixty years later another Emperor, Constans II, landed at the Piræus on his way to Sicily, spent the winter at Athens, and collected there a considerable force of soldiers. Even some few traces of culture may be found there in the century which followed Justinian’s closing of the university. St Gislenus, who went as a missionary to Hainault, and a learned doctor, named Stephen, were both born at Athens, and the former is stated to have studied there. Finally, in the middle of the eighth century, the famous Empress Irene first saw the light in the city, which had already given one consort to an Emperor of the East. Thus, if comparatively obscure, Athens was not a mere collection of ruins in an olive grove, but a city of living men and women which had never (as Zygomalas wrote to Crusius in the sixteenth century) “remained desolate for about 300 years.”

The attacks of the Slavs and of the newly-founded Arabian power marked the course of the seventh century. In 623 the Slavs made an incursion into Crete, and that island, of which we have heard little under the Imperial rule, was also visited by the Arabs in 651 and 674. But though the Cretans were forced to pay tribute to the Caliph, Moawyah, they were treated with kindness by the politic conqueror. About the same time as this second Arab invasion, and while the main Arab force was besieging Constantinople, a body of Slavs seized the opportunity to settle in the rich plain of Thessaly, and it is from one of their tribes that the present town of Velestino, so often mentioned in the war of 1897, received its name. Yet this tribe soon became so friendly that it assisted the Greeks in the defence of Salonika against a Slavonic army—a further proof of the readiness with which the Slavs adopted the Greek point of view. It is clear also that the command of the Imperial troops in Greece was regarded as an important post, for we find it entrusted to Leontios, who made himself Emperor. The Greek islands were still used as places of detention for prisoners of position. Thus Naxos was chosen as the temporary exile of Pope Martin I by the Emperor Constans II, and the future Emperor Philippicus was banished to Cephalonia.

A new era opened for the Empire with the accession of Leo the Isaurian in 716. In the first place, that sovereign completed the reform of the system of provincial administration, which had lasted more or less continuously since the time of Constantine. In place of the old provincial divisions, the Empire was now parcelled out into military districts, called Themes—a name originally applied to a regiment and then to the place at which the regiment was quartered. The choice of such a title indicates the essentially military character of the new arrangement, which implied the maintenance of a small division of troops in each district as a necessary defence against the Avars, Slavs, and Arabs, whose depredations had menaced provinces seldom exposed to attack in the old times. Six out of the twenty-eight Themes comprised Greece, as she was before the late Balkan wars. The Peloponnese, with its capital of Corinth, formed one; Central Greece, including Eubœa, formed another, under the name of Hellas, but its capital was Thebes, not Athens; Nikopolis, which comprised Ætolia and Akarnania, and Cephalonia (the latter created a separate Theme later on, and including all the Ionian Islands) were two more; the Ægean Sea, popularly known as the Dodekannesos, or “twelve islands,” composed one of the Asian Themes, and Thessaly was a part of the Theme of Macedonia. Both the military and civil authority in each Theme was vested in the hands of a Commander, known as strategós, except in the case of the Ægean Islands, where the post was filled by an Admiral, called droungários. Under the strategós were the protonotários or “judge,” who was a judicial and administrative authority, and two military personages, one of whom, the kleisourárches, was so-called because he watched the mountain passes, like the later Turkish derben-aga. So far as Greece is concerned, the eclipse of Athens by Thebes, perhaps owing to the silk industry for which the latter city was famous in the Middle Ages, is a very noticeable feature of the new administration.

Another reform of Leo the Isaurian aroused the intense indignation of the inhabitants of Greece. We have seen that the spread of Christianity in that country had been facilitated by the assimilation of pagan forms of worship in the new ritual. It was natural that a race, which had been accustomed for centuries to connect art with religion and to seek the noblest statuary in the temples of the gods, should have regarded with peculiar favour the practice of hanging pictures in churches. When therefore Leo, whose Armenian origin perhaps made him personally unsympathetic to the Greeks, issued an edict against image-worship, his orders met with the most bigoted resistance in Greece. It may be that a more searching census for the purposes of the revenue had already rendered him unpopular; but to those who know how strong is the influence of the Church in the East, and what fierce disputes an ecclesiastical question kindles there, the edict of the Emperor will seem ample ground for the Greek rising of 727. An eruption at the volcanic island of Santorin was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure at the doings of the iconoclast sovereign; while Pope Gregory II addressed two violent missives to the Emperor, and probably encouraged the agitation in Greece, which still acknowledged him as spiritual head of the Church. The “Helladikoi,” as they were now called, and the seamen of the Cyclades fitted out a fleet under the leadership of a certain Stephen; and, with the co-operation of Agallianos, one of the Imperial military officials, set up an orthodox Emperor, named Kosmas, and boldly set sail for Constantinople—a proof of the resources of Greece at this period. But the result of this naval undertaking was very different from that which Greece had equipped on behalf of Constantine. A battle was fought under the walls of the capital between the two fleets. The Emperor Leo, availing himself of the terrible invention of the Greek fire, which had been used with such deadly effect in the recent Saracen siege of Constantinople, annihilated his opponents’ vessels. Agallianos, seeing that all was lost, leaped into the sea; Stephen and Kosmas fell by the axe of the executioner. We are not told what punishment was meted out to the Greeks, but, in consequence of the strong attitude of opposition which the Papacy had taken up to the Emperor, Leo in 732 deprived the Pope of all jurisdiction over Greece, and placed that country under the ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The next important event in the history of Greece was the great plague, which broke out at Monemvasia in 746 and spread all over the Empire. The political consequences of this visitation were far-reaching. For not only was the population of Greece diminished by the increased mortality there, but it was further lessened by emigration to Constantinople, where there were openings for plasterers and other skilled workmen, and where great numbers had died of the epidemic. The place of these emigrants in the Peloponnese was taken by Slav colonists, and this is the true explanation of the Slavonic colonisation, which Fallmerayer placed so much earlier. In the celebrated words of the Imperial author, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, “All the open country was Slavonised and became barbarous, when the plague was devouring the whole world[35].” It seems from the phrase “open country,” that such Greeks as remained behind crowded into the towns, and that the rural districts were thus left free for the Slavs to occupy. And this is confirmed by the Epitome of Strabo’s Geography, compiled apparently about the end of the tenth century, which states that at that time “All Epeiros and a large part of Hellas and the Peloponnese and Macedonia were inhabited by Scythian Slavs.” The memory of this Slavonic occupation has been preserved by the Slavonic names of places, which Colonel Leake was the first to notice. That the Slavs excited the alarm of the Byzantine government is clear from the fact that in 783 Staurakios was despatched by the Empress Irene to crush their efforts at independence. The Empress was actuated by love of Greece as well as by motives of policy, for she was a native of Athens, like her predecessor, Eudokia. At the age of seventeen she had been selected by the Emperor Constantine Copronymos as the wife of his son, Leo IV, and the premature death of her husband left her the real mistress of the Empire, which she governed, first as Regent for her son and then as sole ruler, for over twenty years. One of the earliest acts of her Regency was to send the expedition against the Slavs. Those in Thessaly and Central Greece were forced to pay tribute; those in the Peloponnese yielded a rich booty to the Byzantine commander. But the Slavs were not permanently subdued, as was soon evident. Irene, for the greater security of her throne, had banished her five brothers-in-law to Athens, which was, of course, devoted to her, and was at that time governed by one of her kinsmen. But the five prisoners managed to communicate with Akamir, a Slav chieftain who lived at Velestino, and a plot was formed for the elevation of them to the throne. The plans of the conspirators fell into the hands of Irene’s friends, and the prisoners were removed to a safer place. Irene, however, was dethroned a little later by Nikephoros I, and banished to Mitylene, where she died. In spite of her appalling treatment of her son, whom she had dethroned and blinded in order to gratify her greed of power, tradition states that she showed her piety and patriotism by the foundation of several churches at Athens. Some of her foundations disappeared in the storm and stress of the War of Independence; others were removed to make way for the streets of the modern town; but the Church of the Panagia Gorgoepekoos, or so-called old Metropolis[36], which still stands, is ascribed to her, and the ruins of the monastery which she built and where she at one time lived strew the beautiful island of Prinkipo. Even with her death her native city did not lose its connection with the Byzantine Court. Among her surviving relatives at Athens was a beautiful niece, Theophano, who was married to a man of position there. Nikephoros, anxious, no doubt, like all usurpers, to connect his family with that of the Sovereign whom he had deposed, resolved that the fair Athenian should become the consort of his son, Staurakios. He accordingly snatched her from the arms of her husband and brought her to Constantinople, where her second marriage took place. But this third Athenian Empress did not long enjoy the reward of her infidelity to her first husband. Staurakios survived his father’s death at the hands of the Bulgarians a very few months, and his consort, like Eudokia and Irene, ended her life in a monastery.

The Slavs of the Peloponnese believed that their chance of obtaining independence had come during the troubled reign of Nikephoros, when the Saracens under Haroun Al Rashid and the growing power of the Bulgarians menaced the Byzantine Empire. They accordingly rose, and, after plundering the houses of their Greek neighbours, laid siege in 807 to the fortress of Patras, which was the principal stronghold of the old inhabitants in the north-west of the country. The Slavs blockaded the city from the land side, while a Saracen fleet prevented the introduction of supplies by sea. The besieged, knowing that the fate of Hellenism in the Peloponnese depended on their efforts, held out against these odds in the hope that they would thus give the Imperial commander at Corinth time to relieve them. At last, when all hope of deliverance seemed to have disappeared, they sent out a horseman to one of the hills in the direction of Corinth to see if the longed for army of relief was in sight. His orders were to gallop back as soon as he caught a glimpse of the approaching Imperialists and to lower the flag which he carried, so that his comrades in Patras might have the glad news at once. But his eyes in vain searched the road along the Gulf of Corinth for the gleam of weapons or the dust that would announce the march of soldiers. Sadly he turned his horse towards Patras, when, at a spot where he was in full view of the walls, his steed stumbled and the flag fell. The besieged, believing that help was at hand, were inspired with fresh courage, and, sallying from the gates, inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Slavs, which was followed up after the arrival of the relieving force three days later by the restoration of the Imperial authority along the west coast. At that age so great a victory was naturally ascribed to superhuman aid. St Andrew, the patron-saint of Patras, who, as we have seen, was believed to have suffered martyrdom there, and whose relics were then preserved there, had caused the scout’s horse to stumble and had been seen on a milk-white steed leading the citizens in their successful onslaught on the Slavs[37]. The gratitude, or policy, of the government showed itself in the dedication of the spoil and captives to the service of the church of St Andrew, and the Slavonic peasants of the neighbourhood became its tenants and paid it a yearly rent. The Archbishop of Patras, who had hitherto been dependent upon Corinth, was raised by Nikephoros to the rank of a Metropolitan, and Methone, Korone and Lacedæmon, were placed under his immediate jurisdiction. The political object and result of this step, which was ratified by later Emperors, was to hellenise the vanquished Slavs by means of the Greek clergy. Moreover, the policy of Nikephoros in organising Greek military colonies round the Slav settlements in Greece, tended to check Slavonic raids. Public lands were bestowed on these colonists whose establishment contributed much to the ultimate fusion of the two races. Thus, the defeat of the Slavs before Patras and the wise measures of Nikephoros prevented the Peloponnese from becoming a Slavonic State, like Servia or Bulgaria, and from that date the tide, which had at one time threatened to submerge the Greek nationality there, began to ebb. Of this phenomenon we shall be able to watch the progress.

A generation elapsed without a renewal of the Slav agitation in the Peloponnese; but about 849 a fresh rising took place. On this occasion the appearance of a Byzantine commander in the field soon caused the collapse of the rebels. Two Slavonic tribes, however, the Melings and Ezerits, which inhabited the slopes to the west, and the plain to the east of Mount Taygetos, were enabled by the strength of their geographical position to make terms with the Byzantine government, and agreed to pay a small tribute which was assessed according to their respective means[38]. The Church continued the work of the soldiers by building monasteries in the Slavonic districts, and from the middle of the ninth century the Greek element began to recover lost ground. Nearly all the Slavs and the last of the Hellenic pagans in the south of Taygetos were then converted, and the adoption of Christianity by the Bulgarians cannot have failed to affect the Slavonic settlers in the Byzantine Empire. Of the revived prosperity of Greece we have two remarkable proofs. In 823 that country raised a fleet of 350 sail for the purpose of intervening in the civil war then raging between the Emperor Michael the Stammerer and a Slavonic usurper, and this implies the possession of considerable resources. Still more striking is the story of the rich widow, Danielis of Patras. About the time of the Byzantine expedition against the Slavs of Taygetos, the future Emperor, Basil I, then chief groom in the service of a prominent courtier, was at Patras in attendance on his master, who had been sent there on political business. One day, as the comely groom was entering the church of St Andrew, a monk stopped him and told him that he should become Emperor. Shortly afterwards he fell ill of a fever, which, by detaining him at Patras after his master’s departure, proved to be a blessing in disguise. Moved by philanthropy or the prophecy of the monk, Danielis took the sick groom into her house, bade him be a brother to her son, and, when he had recovered from his illness, provided him with a train of thirty slaves to accompany him to Constantinople, and loaded him with costly presents. When, in 867, the monk’s forecast was fulfilled, and Basil mounted the Imperial throne, he did not forget his benefactress. He not only promoted her son to a high position in his court, but invited the aged lady to Constantinople. In spite of her age and infirmities, Danielis travelled in a litter, accompanied by 300 slaves, who took in turns the duty of carrying their mistress. As a gift to the Emperor, she brought 500 more, as well as 100 maidens, chosen for their skill in embroidery, 100 purple garments, 300 linen robes, and 100 more of such fine material that each piece could easily be packed away in a hollow cane. Every kind of gold and silver vessel completed the list of presents, which would not have disgraced a brother sovereign. When she arrived, she was lodged like a queen and addressed as “mother” by her grateful protégé. Basil’s gratitude was rewarded by fresh favours. Danielis called for a notary and made over to the Emperor and her own son a part of her landed estates in the Peloponnese. Finding that Basil had tried to atone for the murder of his predecessor, which had given him the throne, by the erection of a church, she had a huge carpet manufactured by her own workmen to cover the splendid mosaic floor. Once again, on the death of her favourite, she journeyed to Constantinople to greet his son and successor. Her own son was by that time dead, so she devised the whole of her property to the young Emperor Leo VI. At her request, a high official was sent to the Peloponnese to prepare an inventory of her effects. Even in these days a sovereign would rejoice at such a windfall. Her loose cash, her gold and silver plate, her bronze ornaments, her wardrobe, and her flocks and herds represented a princely fortune. As for her slaves, they were so numerous that the Emperor, in the embarrassment of his riches, emancipated 3000 of them and sent them as colonists to Apulia, then part of the Byzantine Empire. Eighty farms formed the real property of this ninth century millionairess, whose story throws light on the position of the Peloponnesian landed class, or archontes, at that period. Danielis was, doubtless, exceptionally rich, and Patras was then, as now, the chief commercial town in the Peloponnese. But the existence of such an enormous fortune as hers presupposes a high degree of civilisation, in which many others must have participated. Even learning was still cultivated in Greece, for the distinguished mathematician Leo, who was one of the ornaments of the Byzantine Court, is expressly stated to have studied rhetoric, philosophy and science under a famous teacher, Michael Psellos, who lectured at a college in the island of Andros, where his pupil’s name is not yet forgotten[39].

But while the Greeks had thus triumphed in the Peloponnese, they had lost ground elsewhere. Availing themselves of the disorders in the Byzantine Empire, when the Greek ships were all engaged in the civil war of 823, a body of Saracens, who had emigrated from the south of Spain to Alexandria, descended on Crete, at that time recovering from the effects of an earthquake, but still possessing thirty cities. Landing at Suda Bay, they found the islanders mostly favourable, or at any rate indifferent, to a change of masters. Reinforced by a further batch of their countrymen, the Saracens resolved to settle there. A Cretan monk is said to have shown them a strong position where they could pitch their camp; so they burnt their ships and established themselves at the spot indicated, the site of the present town of Candia, which derives its Venetian name from the Chandak or “ditch” surrounding it. The conquest of the island was soon accomplished—a clear proof of the islanders’ apathy when we remember the heroic defence of the Cretans in more recent times. Religious toleration reconciled many to the sway of the Saracens; in the course of years a number of the Christians embraced the creed of their conquerors, helping to man their fleets and sharing the profits of that nefarious traffic in slaves of which Crete, as in former days Delos, became the centre. One district, which we may identify with Sphakia, was permitted to enjoy autonomy. For Greece the rule of the Saracens in Crete was a serious misfortune. Cretan corsairs ably led by Christian renegades, in quest of booty and slaves, ravaged the Cyclades and the Ionian Islands, and menaced the coast towns of the mainland, whither the terrified inhabitants of Ægina and similarly exposed spots migrated in the hope of safety. The efforts of the Byzantine government to recover “the great Greek island,” which was now a terror to the whole Levant, were for more than a century unsuccessful, and during 138 years Crete remained in the possession of the Saracens. Occasionally their fleet was annihilated, as in the reign of Basil I, when the Byzantine admiral, hearing that they meditated a descent upon the west coast of Greece, conveyed his ships across the Isthmus in the night by means of the old tram-road, or diolkos, which had been used by the contemporaries of Thucydides, and has even now not entirely disappeared. By this brilliant device he took the enemy by surprise in the Gulf of Corinth, and destroyed their vessels. But new fleets arose as if by magic, and Basil was obliged to strengthen the garrisons of the Peloponnese. His successor, aroused to action by their daring attacks upon Demetrias and Salonika, both flourishing cities which they devastated and plundered, equipped a naval expedition, to which the Greek Themes contributed ships and men, with the object of recapturing Crete. But neither that nor the subsequent armada despatched by the Imperial author, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, was destined to succeed. At last, in 961, the redoubtable commander, Nikephoros Phokas, restored Crete to the Byzantine Empire. But even at that early period, Candia began to establish the reputation which it so nobly increased during the Turkish siege seven centuries later. Its strong fortifications for seven long months resisted the Byzantine general; but he patiently waited for a favourable moment, and at last took the place by storm. The most drastic measures were adopted for the complete reduction of the island. The broad brick walls of Candia were pulled down; a new fortress called Temenos was erected on the height of Rhoka some miles inland, to overawe the inhabitants. Some of the Saracens emigrated, others sank into a state of serfdom. As usual the missionary followed the Byzantine arms, and the island attracted many Greek and Armenian Christians; the name of the latter still lingers in the Cretan village of Armeni; among the former were some distinguished Byzantine families, whose descendants furnished leaders to the insurrections later on. In the conversion of the Cretan apostates back to Christianity, an Armenian monk called Nikon, and nicknamed “Repent Ye” from the frequency of that phrase in his sermons, found a fine field for his labours. The Christian churches, for which Crete had once been famous, rose again, and the reconquest of the island gave to Nikephoros Phokas the Imperial diadem, to the deacon Theodosios the subject for a long iambic poem, and to Nikon the more lasting dignity of a saint. But, in spite of his efforts, not a few Arabs retained their religion, and the Cretan Mussulmans of Amari are still reckoned as their descendants.

The tenth century witnessed not only the recovery of Crete for the Byzantine Empire and for the Christian faith, but also the spread of monasteries over Greece. When Nikon had concluded his Cretan mission he visited Athens, where he is said by his biographer to have enchanted the people with his sermons, penetrated as far as Thebes, and then returned to Sparta, where he founded a convent and established his headquarters. Thence he set out on missionary journeys among the Slavonic tribes of the Melings and Ezerits, who had again risen against the Imperial authority and had again been reduced to the payment of a tribute. Those wild clans continued, however, to harry the surrounding country, and the monastery of St Nikon was only protected from their attacks by the awe which the holy man’s memory inspired. Long after his death he was adored as the guardian of Sparta, where his memory is still green, and the Peloponnesian mariner, caught in a storm off Cape Matapan, would pray to him, as his ancestors had prayed to Castor and Pollux. For Central Greece the career of the blessed Luke the younger was as important as that of St Nikon for the South. The parents of this remarkable man had fled from Ægina, when the Cretan corsairs plundered that island, and had taken refuge in Macedonia, where Luke was born. Filled with the idea that he had a call to a holy life, the young Luke settled as a hermit on a lonely Greek mountain by the sea-shore, where for seven long years he devoted himself to prayer. A Bulgarian raid drove him to the Peloponnese, where for ten years more he served as the attendant of another hermit, who, like the famous Stylites of old, lived on a pillar near Patras. After further adventures, he migrated to Stiris, between Delphi and Livadia, where the monastery which bears his name now stands.

The absorption of the Christianised Slavs by the Greeks was occasionally interrupted by the Bulgarian inroads, which now became frequent. Since the foundation of the first Bulgarian Empire towards the end of the ninth century, the power of that race had greatly increased, and the Byzantine sovereigns found formidable rivals in the Bulgarian tsars. About 929 the Bulgarians captured Nikopolis, and converted it into a Slavonic colony, which was only reconquered by considerable efforts. Arsenios, Metropolitan of Corfù, who was canonised later on, and was for centuries the patron saint of the island, where his festival is still celebrated and his remains repose, fell into the hands of these invaders, but was rescued by the valour of the islanders[40], and a new tribe, called Slavesians, probably an offshoot of the Bulgarians, made its way into the Peloponnese. The troublesome clans of Melings and Ezerits seized this opportunity to demand the reduction of their tribute, which had been raised after their last rising. The Government wisely granted their demand, and so prevented a formidable insurrection. Athens was also disturbed by a domestic riot. A certain Chases, a high Byzantine official, had aroused the resentment of the people by his tyranny and the scandals of his life. Alarmed at the threatening attitude of the inhabitants, who had been joined by others from the country, he took refuge at the altar in the Church of the Virgin on the Akropolis, the ancient Parthenon. But the sanctuary did not protect him from the vengeance of his enemies, who stoned him to death at the altar, thus showing less reverence for the Virgin than the ancient Athenians had once shown under somewhat similar circumstances for the goddess Athena.