After Heraclius

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THE LONG SEVENTH CENTURY: ‘THE ROME THAT ALMOST FELL’ A detailed chronology of the Christian Roman Empire of Constantinople, AD 578-718 THE ‘END OF ANTIQUITY’ IN THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN; AND IMPERIAL RESISTANCE TO THE FIRST JIHAD FROM TIBERIUS II TO LEO III With extensive notes on the Byzantine army in the era of the emperors Maurice and Heraclius, AD 582– 641 by MICHAEL O’ROURKE mjor (at) velocitynet (dot) com.au Canberra Australia March 2010

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Within a century of the death (AD 632) of Muhammad, Muslim armies swept across Roman North Africa and into Spain as far as the Pyrenees. In the East too the Arabs swallowed up Roman Palestine and Syria; but they failed to conquer Roman Asia Minor. Cilicia in SE Asia Minor was the decisive line where the first jihad was successfully resisted. It was the East Romans (“Byzantines”, Rhomaioi) who were the only power in western Eurasia able to hold back, or decisively hold back, the elsewhere irresistible Islamic tide.* (*) The jihad ran out of steam in southern France (as it now is: held by the Franks) and on the Volga River (held by the Khazars) in 727-32; but as I read it, the ending of the jihad in those regions was a choice, not a result forced upon the Caliphate. This paper deals mainly with the usual battles between armies and the familiar political machinations of the ruling castes. But I have also inserted asides on those changes in material life that exemplify the ‘End of Antiquity’ in the Mediterranean basin. For example, in the countryside we see the slow abandonment of professionally-crafted pottery and ceramic roof tiles in rural areas in favour of home-made wooden bowls and thatched roofs. We also observe—specifically in Byzantine Italy—a process by which open, undefended settlements gave way to the fortified hilltop sites that typify the early Middle Ages.

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INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................... 5 ITALY: CAMPAIGN BY THE LOMBARDS OF SPOLETO.................................................................. 8 THE AVARO-SLAV INVASION OF THE BALKANS...........................................................................10 THE SETTLING OF THE SLAVS IN GREECE .................................................................................... 14 FROM POTTERY TO WOOD...............................................................................................................................16 THE REIGN OF MAURICE, 582-602....................................................................................................... 19 THE DESTRUCTION OF ATHENS........................................................................................................................ 21 PAGAN SLAVS OCCUPY CHRISTIAN GREECE........................................................................................................25 FOURTH VISIT OF THE PLAGUE TO CONSTANTINOPLE........................................................................................... 26 MESOPOTAMIA: THE BATTLE OF SOLACHON, 586.............................................................................................. 27 FROM OPEN TOWNS TO FORTRESS-VILLAGES, 555-598..................................................................................... 40 SLAVERY CONTINUES......................................................................................................................................41 ITALY: CONTEST FOR THE VIA AMERINA...................................................................................... 44 THE ECLIPSE OF TRADE IN THE WEST............................................................................................................... 54 THE REIGN OF PHOCAS, 602-610.......................................................................................................... 57 LOMBARD AND BYZANTINE ITALY IN 603..........................................................................................................59 THE END OF ANTIQUITY: FORTIFIED HILLTOP VILLAGES IN ITALY........................................................................ 60 MUTILATION REPLACES EXECUTION.............................................................................................. 66 URBAN POPULATION DECLINE SINCE 550.......................................................................................................... 72 THE REIGN OF HERACLIUS, 610-641................................................................................................... 76 THE REDUCTION OF ROMAN DALMATIA........................................................................................ 78 COLLAPSE OF IMPERIAL RULE IN THE BALKANS..................................................................................................79 PUBLIC BATHS...............................................................................................................................................80 THE PERSIANS TAKE JERUSALEM, 614............................................................................................. 81 THE DEMISE OF ROMAN SPAIN........................................................................................................... 83 DARK AGES IN THE WEST...............................................................................................................................87 THE END OF ANTIQUITY ‘DELAYED’ ON CRETE, AD 620. ................................................................................. 89 PERSIAN CONQUEST OF ROMAN EGYPT......................................................................................... 94 THE ROME-RAVENNA AXIS.............................................................................................................................97 THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERACLIUS’S EASTERN CAMPAIGNS................................................................................ 100 THE LAND AND SEA SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 626...................................................................................... 110 FINAL DEFEAT OF THE PERSIANS.................................................................................................................... 113 CONTRACTION OF THE STATE APPARATUS ................................................................................118 BORDERS IN 633, ON THE EVE OF THE MUSLIM INVASIONS................................................................................. 120 FIRST MAJOR MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN BATTLE................................................................................122

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MUTILATION: NOSE-SLITTING, BLINDING, CASTRATION.......................................................128 ROMAN JERUSALEM SURRENDERS TO THE MUSLIM ARABS, 637/38................................... 129 THE NEW FRONTIER IN THE EAST...................................................................................................131 THE ARMY OF MAURICE AND HERACLIUS: TROOP TYPES, ARMAMENT, TACTICS......140 BYZANTINE ARMS AND ARMOUR.....................................................................................................147 SCIENTIFIC WARFARE................................................................................................................................... 154 THE BATTLE OF YARMUK, 636 ..........................................................................................................155 THE 'END OF ANTIQUITY' AS A PROCESS OF RURALISATION................................................. 160 THE END OF LONG-DISTANCE TRADE: THE EVIDENCE OF POTTERY................................ 160 CITIES: GOING BACKWARDS.......................................................................................................................... 161 NUMBERS IN THE EAST ROMAN ARMY, 641-775............................................................................................ 163 THE REIGN OF CONSTANS II, 641-668............................................................................................... 167 ROMAN ALEXANDRIA FALLS TO THE MUSLIMS........................................................................ 169 A SIMPLER LIFE: WOOD DISPLACES CERAMICS IN THE WEST.............................................172 FIRST MUSLIM NAVAL RAID AGAINST SICILY, 652.................................................................... 185 EAST ROMAN MARINES................................................................................................................................ 188 THE “BYZANTINE DARK AGE”: CONTRACTION OF TRADE AND A TRANSITION TO EXCHANGE IN KIND........................ 194 THE CREATION OF THE THEMES (THEMATA).............................................................................195 DAMASCUS REPLACES MEDINA AS THE CAPITAL OF THE CALIPHATE............................ 199 EMPEROR CONSTANS’ ITALIAN EXPEDITION, 662-663...................................................................................... 201 THE DEEP DARK AGES, 650-850................................................................................................................. 211 THE REIGN OF CONSTANTINE IV, 668-685...................................................................................... 211 FURTHER LOSSES IN ITALY, 668-687.............................................................................................................214 GREEK FIRE................................................................................................................................................ 217 CHRISTENDOM’S DARKEST HOUR...................................................................................................218 SLAVIC GREECE?......................................................................................................................................... 219 THE ARAB ASSAULT OF 677.................................................................................................................224 THE FOUNDING OF BULGARIA.......................................................................................................... 228 THE DEFENCE OF THRACE AGAINST THE BULGARS................................................................ 230 ISLAM AND THE END OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY...................................................................... 234 FROM SANDALS AND TOGAS TO BOOTS, TROUSERS AND TUNICS: MEN’S COSTUME, AD 150-600......................................................................................................................................................... 235

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THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN II: FIRST PERIOD, 685-695.................................................................238 REORGANISATION OF THE NAVY, 687-89....................................................................................... 244 MONOTHELITES AND MARONITES....................................................................................................................254 THE RESTORATION OF GREECE.......................................................................................................................258 THE REIGN OF LEONTIUS, 695-698.................................................................................................... 259 THE LAST EXPEDITION TO AFRICA................................................................................................................. 259 THE REIGN OF TIBERIUS III (APSIMAR), 698-705..........................................................................261 THE FALL OF ROMAN CARTHAGE, 698........................................................................................... 261 THE END OF ANTIQUITY: COINS, POTTERY AND TRADE.................................................................................... 264 MUSLIM NAVAL RAIDS IN THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN................................................269 JUSTINIAN II’S SECOND REIGN, 705-11............................................................................................ 271 THE REIGN OF PHILIPPICUS BARDANES, 711-13.......................................................................... 278 THE ARAB-BERBER INVASION OF SPAIN....................................................................................... 279 NO MORE BATH-TAKING?...............................................................................................................................282 REIGN OF ANASTASIUS II, 713-715.....................................................................................................283 THE REIGN OF THEODOSIUS III, 716-717.........................................................................................285 THE LAST GREAT ARAB ASSAULT................................................................................................... 287 THE REIGN OF LEO III, 718-741...........................................................................................................291 THE ARAB SIEGE OF 717-18........................................................................................................................ 292 SARDINIA AND CORSICA LOST TO THE EMPIRE.................................................................................................. 295 ABOUT THE AUTHOR..................................................................................................................................... 297 SOURCES AND REFERENCES..............................................................................................................298

Introduction “... the catastrophe of the seventh century is the central event of Byzantine history.” - Cyril Mango 1980: 4. “The passion to go to heaven in the next life may have been operative with some [Muslims], but the desire for the comforts and luxuries of the civilized regions of the Fertile Crescent was just as strong in the case of many.”

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Philip Hittti 1970: 144.

“The Arabs benefitted enormously from the ruinous war in which the Byzantines and Persians had just worn each other out. The Byzantines wisely kept many of their troops in reserve (the Persians didn't), which allowed them to stop the Arabs at the first strong natural barrier - the Taurus Mountains in southeast Anatolia. Egypt, Syria, and North Africa were protected only by deserts, which weren't barriers for the Arabs. - Warren Treagold, interview 2005, at http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/12/10-questions-forwarren-treadgold.php# (accessed 2010). In late Sixth Century, the Christian Roman Empire of the Greeks, which we call ‘Byzantium’, continued to rule nearly the whole of the Mediterranean littoral. If Constantinople was ‘The Rome That Had Not Fallen’, it nearly did go under during the late Seventh and early Eighth centuries, as we shall presently see. The only Mediterranean shores not controlled by the restored Roman Empire in AD 575 were in present-day Morocco, which was held by various Berber chiefdoms, and the Catalonia-Provence coast, which was divided between the Visigoths (Catalonia) and the Franks (Provence). In Spain there was a Byzantine province called Spania in the southeast. It contended against the Visigothic kingdom that dominated most of Iberia. The majority population of Ibero-Romans, and (in the south-east) their Greek governors, differed in religion from the Visigoths: the former were Catholic Christians, while the Goths were Arian* Christians. Or instead of Catholicism, we might speak of ‘Athanasian Christianity’, the forerunner of modern Latin Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. (*) Arianism, after the name of its formulator, Arius, was a Christological view held by many in the early Christian Church. It claimed that the created Jesus Christ and the uncreated God the Father were not always contemporary. God the Father comes first and is superior to Christ. Although the Son is a divine being, he was created by the Father (and thus inferior to Him) at some point in time, before which he did not exist. Hence Arianism is ‘non-trinitarian’. The contrasting term is ‘Catholic’, the orthodox teaching that Christ the Son is both fully divine and fully human, at once distinct from and similar to God the Father - a “mutual indwelling” of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This trinitarian doctrine became the orthodox or prevailing view. In North Africa, East Roman rule ran from Algeria through Libya to Egypt. In Italy, the Empire still held about half the peninsula, Old Rome included, against a

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new and sometimes energetic set of Germanic invaders, the Lombards. The troops of one Lombard dux had already occupied the central-south (inland Campania) around Benevento. And here again the Latin-Italians and their ‘Greek’ governors differed in religion from the Lombards: the former were Catholic Christians while, the Lombards, like the Visigoths, were Arian Christians. The whole East—from the NW Balkans through Greece (“Hellas”) and Asia Minor to Syria, Palestine and Egypt—remained Roman (Greek: Rhomaike). The two great powers opposing Byzantium were the Sassanian Persian empire and the Avar Khanate. The Roman-Persian frontier cut north-south through Upper Mesopotamia to NW Arabia. In eastern Europe, the Danube River was the border. To the north the pastoralist horse-warriors known as the Avars (either a Turkic-speaking people or an ethnically heterogenous grouping) controlled the whole Transdanubian region from present-day Austria to modern Ukraine. Most of the population under Avar suzerainty was German, Turkic (‘Hunno-Bulgar’) and Slavic-speaking.

CHRONOLOGY BEGINS HERE: 570-72: Spain: Visigoths vs Byzantium: The key source, John of Biclaro, relates that (1) king Leovigild, 569-586, invaded Byzantium’s Hispanic territory in 570 and devastated the regions of Baza [in today’s Granada province] and Malaga*; (2) in 571 he recovered from the Byzantines the town of Asidona in the far SSW; and (3) following an autochthonous rebellion by the Ibero-Romans of Cordoba, Leovigild occupied that town in 572 (NCMH, ed. Fouracre, p.184). (*) A line drawn SW to NE runs from coastal Malaga through mountainous Granada to inland Baza. 578-641: A series of four emperors, all without blood relation to their predecessors. 578-82: TIBERIUS II Constantine Aged about 38 at accession. Of Thracian origin; friend of emperor Justin II. Tiberius had served first as Count of the Excubitors or commander of the palace regiment. In that position he was instrumental in having Justin elevated to emperor (565). De facto ruler from 573 as adviser to the empress Sophia, and formally appointed "Caesar" or deputy emperor in 574. "Tiberius by the Arabs, and Maurice by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars", says Gibbon, citing the 13th century Christian Arab writer

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‘Abulpharagius’ (Abu-l-Faraj, Bar Hebraeus) and the Italian (Lombard) historian Paulus Diaconus, d.799. By this is meant having Greek as their mother-tongue: Justinian I's line, originating in Illyria, were by birth Latin-speaking. One imagines that Tiberius was a Thracian Greek-speaker. Maurice, emperor from 582, was an ‘Armeno-Greek’: a Cappadocian of (probably) Armenian ancestry; he would have spoken no Latin. Tiberius’s coins show him as beardless. Phocas, acc. 602, q.v.,was the first long-bearded emperor. 578: 1. Having assumed the throne, Tiberius declines to marry the empress dowager, Sophia. 2. (Treadgold 1997: 373 prefers a date of “ca 577”:). Theophanes relates that Tiberius recruited 15,000 ‘federates’ for the army in the East. Whitby 1988: 268 proposes that they were the German (Gothic) mercenaries used in 574 by general Justinian. Their formal enrolment enlarged the Army of the East to 35,000 men. The commander, the ‘Count of the Federates’, was the future emperor, Maurice, aged 39, hitherto Count of the Excubitors or palace guard commander (Whitby, preface p. xx). Italy: Campaign by the Lombards of Spoleto

3. NE Italy: Faroald of Spoleto’s* Lombards reduce the Byzantine fortresses of Castel Trosino and Murro, E of Spoleto, and they besiege Ascoli Piceno, inland S of Ancona, from several sides and plunder it (578). The Lombards strangle citizens, demolish towers, destroy churches and palaces, dismantle the town walls. (In Paul the Deacon’s History, Faroald first appears as duke of Spoleto in 579, but we assume he actually took the title some years earlier.) “[Byzantine] Strategy was centred on the control of fortified places, both towns and castella, controlling the routeways, passes, river crossings and ports; key towns with strong garrisons and dukes as commanders generally formed the focal point for defensive zones. Larger forts appear to have had dependent territories to allow for closer defensive controls” (Christie p.371). (*) A town, SE of Assisi, in the highlands about midway between Rome and the Rimini-Ancona sector of the Adriatic coast. The ancient highway known as the Via Flaminia, connecting Rome to the Adriatic coast, divided into two legs at Narni, just inside modern Umbria. The newer and slightly longer eastern leg, the Via Flaminia Nova, ran northwards through Terni and Spoleto to Foligno. Whoever controlled Spoleto could potentially cut communications between Ravenna, the political capital of Byzantine Italy, and Rome, the seat of the Papacy. And being inland, Spoleto could not be surprised by an imperial fleet arriving unannounced.

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4. (578-80:) Slavs flood into the Balkans. In the year 578, when Tiberius Constantine was in his fourth year as Caesar and co-ruler with Justin II, a horde of some “100,000” Slavs, according to the historian Menander, fl. 582, gathered in Thrace and ravaged it, together with “many other places”. Presumably they entered Macedonia in 579. They apparently forced the pass of Thermopylae, because they 'plundered Greece' in 580. Alternative dating: ca. 582. Meanwhile the Rhomaniyans transported “60,000” allied Avar horsemen and their khagan (monarch)—16,000 would be more credible—south across the middle Danube. These allies repulsed the Slavs and freed thousands of Byzantine prisoners. See 579, 582. c. 578 or 579: Campania: The future Pope Saint Gregory the Great, or whoever it was who wrote them, relates in the Dialogues [3.27-28] two episodes in a persecution of Catholics by the Lombards. In one case, 40 imprisoned Italian peasants (“husbandmen”) were executed for refusing to eat from meat sacrificed by the Lombards to their idols. The killers were either a pagan minority element among the mainly Arian Christian Lombards or more likely pagan allies of the Lombards such as the Gepids. In a second incident, 400 prisoners were ordered to participate in the satanic worship that the Lombards were conducting in sacrificing a goat’s head to the devil. The Lombards demanded that the prisoners bow in adoration to the goat’s head, but most refused to do so. The historicity of this is queried by Clark 2003: 130. 578-80: 1. NE Italy: Lombards carved-out the duchy of Spoleto in the sector between Rome and Ancona. Spoleto is nearly half-way along a line drawn north-east from Rome to Ancona on the Adriatic (western) coast; it is a little nearer to the former. Faroald of Spoleto strengthened and extended the duchy with the aim of isolating the other imperial territories from Rome (Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum III. 13). In 578-579 his Lombards besieged the imperial capital Ravenna, occupied the port of Classis, and burned the fortresses of Petra Pertusa and Foro Cornelio (Imola: on the Via Aemilia west of Ravenna). Then in 580 he advanced into the Marche and Abruzzi occupying a number of fortress-towns, namely Pontiano (Norcia: just east of Spoleto), Fermo, Ascoli (east of Imola), Castel Trosino, Pens, Marsi (Rieti: S of Spoleto), Furcona (l'Aquila: SE of Spoleto*), Valva [Sulmona: further SE from l’Aquila], Teramo [SE of Spoleto], Camerino [NW of Spoleto], cutting off Frasassi [further NW, in the direction of Ancona] and Rossa, and occupying the stronghold of Pierosara [also NW of Spoleto, inland from Ancona]. See next. (*) Rome, Spoleto and l’Aquila are points on an equilateral triangle.

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2. Rome: In 578 and again in 580, the restored Senate, in its last recorded acts, had to ask for the support of emperor Tiberius against the approaching Lombard dukes, Faroald I of Spoleto and Zotto of Benevento.* In 580 a full-scale embassy comprising representatives of both the senate and the pope went from Italy to Constantinople (Menander Protector, cited by Hendy 1985: 409; Haldon 1990: 36; and Wikipedia, 2010, ‘Roman Senate’). See 579 – attempt on Rome. Also 582: Franks subsidised to attack the Lombards. (*) Inalnd Benevento was (is) strategically located on the ancient highway that ran from Capua across the spine of the peninsula to Brindisi on the heel of Italy. The Appian Way divides at Benevento. The upper leg or Appia Traiana goes east into north Apulia (Puglia): to Canosa and then SE to the coast at Bari and thence down the ‘calf’ to Brindisi. The other leg, the older Via Appia proper, ran from Benevento SE through the middle of S Italy to Venosa, across the inland border of Puglia to Gravina, and on to the south coast at Taranto and thence across the heel to Brindisi. 578-82: (or 579-85:) Gregory, aged 38-42: the future patriarch of Rome, served as Pope Pelagius’s permanent envoy in Constantinople; probably his main mission was to persuade the emperor to send aid to Italy against the Lombards. Cf 579.

Above: Avars as imagined by a modern illustrator. The Avaro-Slav invasion of the Balkans

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578-88: Greece: The Avaro-Slav invasions of, or raids into, the Balkan peninsula and Greece (noted earlier) in the years 578-588 are recorded by Michael Syrus (the Jacobite patriarch d. 1199) and the Chronicle of Monemvasia. Haldon 1990: 44 proposes that the raids began “before 577”. Archaeology shows that other factors were also at work. In the case of Peloponnesian Olympia, the ancient city* was apparently suddenly buried by a deep deposit of riverine alluvium. This may have resulted from the blocking of the river by the earthquakes of 522 and 557. The town’s* life may have largely ended in 557; but we also have evidence of a small Justinanic [pre AD 565] fortress at Olympia in which coins of 567 and 575 were found (Hodges & Whitehouse p.57). So perhaps all that remained for the Slavs to capture was a small fort. (*) ‘City’ has an odd meaning in the writings of the historians. It does not mean (as we use it) a large urban centre but rather any urban settlement, however small, that also governed the region around it. I have frequently substituted the word “town” as a reminder that there were few large centres . . . The pagan Slavs, says Michael Syrus, took many prisoners and carried away many objects from the churches, as, for example, the ciborium [large chalice-like vessel] of the church of Corinth which their king used as a throne to sit on. The Chronicle of Monemvasia says* that the invasions of the Peloponnesus by the Avars prompted many of the Peloponnesians to emigrate, the Corinthians going to the island of Aegina, which, of course, is not very far from Corinth (offshore in the Aegean). The people of Argos went to the island of Orobê (in the Argolic Gulf), the Spartans to the coastal fortress of Monemvasia, the inhabitants of Patras to Calabria and the Lacedaemonians to Sicily. This was a token of the permanent colonisation of Greece by Slavs. Some have argued that Corinth and the eastern Peloponnese always remained in imperial hands, and it was in the west, centre and south that the Slavs settled. Athens too continued into the 600s (Hodges & Whitehouse 1983: 60; Fine 1991: 61, citing Charanis). If so, we must imagine that not all the Corinthians fled to Aegina and/or that they returned thence to Corinth. As Curta 2005: 111 remarks, the relatively large number of coins from Justin II to Phokas now in the collection of the Patras museum is believed to demonstrate that one cannot take the Chronicle of Monemvasia very seriously, since it is precisely during that period of time that, according to the Chronicle, the inhabitants of Patras had moved to Reggio Calabria. (*) Quote: “In another incursion they [the Avars and Slavs] placed under their control all of Thessaly and Greece, Old Epirus, Attica and Euboia. They attacked and forcibly subjugated the Peloponnesus, expelling and destroying the noble and Hellenic peoples, and they themselves settled there. Those Greeks who were able to flee from the blood-stained hands of the Avars scattered themselves in various places: the inhabitants of the city of Patras resettled in the area of Rhegium Calabria, the Argives on that island called Orobe, and the Corinthians

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came to dwell on the island named Aegina.” 579: The East: Spring: Death of the Persian shah Khusro I, and accession of his son Hormisdas or Hormizd IV, r. 579-590. Protracted peace negotiations (spring/summer 579). When negotiations fail, the Byzantines prepare to renew the war (autumn/winter). See 580. Negotiations are deliberately protracted by the Sassanians, preventing a major campaign in 579. The 50,000 Byzantine troops in the East were becoming difficult to pay and threatened mutiny when their pay was overdue (John of Ephesus, VI. 28; Treadgold, 1997: 226). 2. First major Lombard attempt to take Byzantine Rome. Lombard soldiers under duke Faroald of Spoleto besiege Rome. Emperor Tiberius sends resources - men, money and materiel - to aid the local generals in Italy (and also Spain: see 3 below). This included grain sent from Egypt, a nice illustration of the enduring power of the empire (Maxwell-Stuart p.46). Also c.579: The duke of Spoleto takes Classis, the port located alongside Byzantine Ravenna (Paul the Deacon, History III.13, cited by Collins 1991: 190). The taking of Classis, the port of Ravenna, by Faroald probably occurred about 579, while Longinus was still prefect. The ‘city’ (port-town) was afterwards (in the 580s) recovered from the Langobards by Droctulft, a ‘barbarian’ in imperial service: “With the support of this Droctulft, … the soldiers of the Ravenna people often fought against the Langobards, and after a fleet was built, they drove out with his aid the Langobards who were holding the city of Classis” (Paulus Diaconus III, 19). Lombardo-Byzantine Coins An exceptional issue - an early, rare imitative half-siliquae of Tiberius II – is best attributed, due to its monogram, to Duke Farwald/Faroald of Spoleto. He occupied Classis, the port of Ravenna, and held it for some 10 years (c. AD 579590?). This was no doubt the occasion for the issuing of coins, although the mint was in the city proper (Paulus D. XIII; Grierson & Blackburn 2007: 63). 3. To relieve the pressure in Spain, Tiberius concludes an alliance with the Gothic prince Hermenegild (aged about 15) who has converted [or will covert – in about 582?] to ‘orthodoxy’ or ‘Catholicism’ and was rebelling against his Arian father king Liuvigild or Leovigild.* See 579-85. Contemporary sources vary in their portrayal of Hermenegild, with most painting him as a traitor who rebelled against his father for political gain. Gregory the Great [aged about 39 in 579] as pope, 590-604, championed Hermenegild as an exemplary martyr who had died in defence of the orthodox Faith. (*) Isidore of Seville says that Leovigild, 569-586, was the first to sit upon an elevated throne and wear royal (Byzantine-style) robes; hitherto the

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Gothic kings preferred to wear the same everyday dress as their nobles. — Wolfram 1997: 269. Hermenigild renounced Arianism in 579 or in 582, was confirmed in the ‘othodox’ faith by Leander, the Catholic metropolitan of Seville, and took the name of Joannes or John (Cath. Encyc., citing Greg. Tur. v. 39; Greg. Magn. Dial. iii. 31; Paul. Diac. iii. 21). Leander became at first a Benedictine monk, and then in 579 Bishop of Seville. In the meantime he founded a celebrated school, which soon became a centre of learning and orthodoxy. He assisted the 12 years old (sic: others offer 13 and 16) princess Ingunthis, a Frank, to convert (ca. 579) her 15 years old husband prince Hermenegild, the eldest son of Leovigild, and defended the convert against his father's reprisals. 4. Tunisia: Gennadius, the 'Master of Soldiers' or military governor in Africa, defeats the 'Moors' [Berbers] under their king Gurmul or Garmul. Peace resumes in Africa. 5. The middle Danube: Seeing the emperor distracted in Persia [cf below: 58081], the Avars of “the Pontic-Caspian steppe”, i.e. the Danube-Black Sea region hitherto Byzantine allies - seek to extort control of Sirmium [west of Belgrade]; when this is refused they attack and capture the city (581; or siege 580-82). In their wake come the Slavs, who will penetrate, in a form of permanent migration, down into the Balkan peninsula as far as Greece (see 581-82). 579-85: Visigothic Spain is divided between Leovigild (at Toledo) and his elder son Hermenigild (rival throne at Seville). The latter cooperated with the Byzantine governors controlling the imperial enclave in the south. Cf 621-31. the struggle shaped itself as a conflict of confessions and nationalities, of Arianism and Catholicism, of Goth and Roman, although Leovigild had adherents among the provincials, and Hermenigild counted some Gothic partisans. In 579, soon after his marriage to a Frankish princess (Clovis, the king of the Franks, had converted to Catholicism around the beginning of the sixth century), Hermenigild declared himself the independent monarch over the southern part of the peninsula. For three years, Leovigild seems to have accepted the situation, making no attempt to regain control, while Hermenigild, for his part, did not seek to expand the territory under his rule. Then, some time around 582, Hermenigild converted to ‘Catholicism’ (trinitarian Christianity), under the influence of Isidore’s brother Leander, or according to Gregory, Pope or archbishop of Rome, he was converted by a friend of Leander. 579-90: Pope Pelagius II, an ethnic Goth, i.e. Italo-Goth, born in Rome, presumably before 540. His father’s name was Unigild (Richards 1979: 166). He sent Gregory, the future patriarch of Rome, to be his representative in Constantinople. See 584.

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580-81: 1. The East: Maurice’s 2nd campaign: To prevent mutiny, the army general Maurice orders an advance against Persia, and raids beyond the Tigris. See 581. The Settling of the Slavs in Greece

2. The NW Balkans: In 580 Bayan revealed his true colours, and his Avars mounted a large-scale attack against Sirmium. As Byzantine forces tried to turn back his assault, the Sklaveni descended into the Balkans en masse. An army of it is said - 100,000 "Slavonians" poured, ca. 581, into Thrace and Illyricum. By 586 they had penetrated as far south as the Peloponnesus. For the next ten years, Byzantine forces appeared unable to dislodge either the Avars or the Slavs. From this time dates the arrival in Greece of Slav settlers in large numbers - as distinct from the earlier raiding expeditions. Thus says Heurtley p. 39; also Kobylinski in CNMH ed Fouracre vol 1, p.541. See 581-82, 597 and 609. John of Ephesus specifically dates this to three years after the death of Justin II, i.e. 581 (quoted in Fine 1991: 31). The Slavic takeover can also be seen in the disappearance of coinage. The latest coins in Macedonian coin hoards date to the reign of Justin II, d. 578, and the latest in the Peloponnese to that of Constans II, acc. 641 (Kobylinski in CNMH vol 1 p.542). At Delphi, by around 580–590, the abandonment of patrician villas becomes evident; pottery kilns were then installed within their walls and functioned until 610–620 (Morrisson & Sodini, ‘Sixth Century’ in Laiou ed., 2002). This may reflect the departure of the Byzantine ruling caste and a takeover by Greek or Slav peasants. How many Slavs were able to remain behind, after about 580, in permanent settlements in Greece? This has been a much-disputed question since the early 19th century, but the numbers must have been reasonably large. Evagrius writes thus: “The Avars, having twice made inroads as far as the socalled Long Wall [inner Thrace], besieged and enslaved Singidunum (Belgrade), which Justinian had restored and heavily fortified, Anchialus [on the Black Sea coast: modern Bulgarian Pomorie], and indeed all Greece [kai thn 'Ellada pasan], together with other cities and garrisons, destroying and burning everything, while most of the armed forces were engaged in the East.” c. 580: 1. Italy: The Lombards briefly captured Classis or Classe, the coastal town and port, on the doorstep of Ravenna itself. Or earlier, in 578. Cf 582. 2. Spain: fl. the chronicler, John of Biclaro, ca 540-after 621. He was an ethnic Visigoth born at Santarem in Lusitania (modern Portugal) who must have been from a Catholic family, to judge from his name. He was educated at Constantinople, where he devoted between seven and 17 years to the study of

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Latin and Greek. After Leovigild's death in 586, John was released and founded a Benedictine monastery at Biclaro (the exact site is undetermined), where he presided as abbot and finished his Chronicle (in 590), before he was appointed Catholic Bishop of Gerona in Catalonia under the new episcopal government. – Wikipedia, 2009, ’John of Biclaro’; the text of his Chronicle can be found in Wolf 1999. For John, in theory, the emperor still united all Christians under one monarchy on earth, just as they would be in heaven. The great change of his Chronicle is that Leovigild is portrayed as a legitimate ruler inside the kingdom of the Goths, which is effectively Spain. There was now a second legitimate monarchy under God, that of the Visigoths in the West. In his writings, conflict with the Byzantines was minimised, so that the two legitimate authorities were not seen to be in conflict. John mentions that Leovigild recaptured all or some of the territory around Baza, Malaga, Sidonia, and Cordoba (Cordoba [572] and Sidonia were retaken by the Visigoths but Malaga itself remained in imperial hands). All of these places were part of the Byzantine Empire, with the possible exception of Cordoba, which may have been independent. But John does not mention that Leovigild took this territory from the Byzantine Empire, so that Leovigild does not appear to be an enemy of the Greco-Romans. —Map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spania; accessed 2009; and discussion by Johnson, online 2009. 581: 1. The East: Summer: The army general Maurice and the Arab king al-Mundhir campaign down the Euphrates. The Sasanians ravage Upper Mesopotamia and defeat the Byzantines in Armenia. Winter: Tiberius attempts to negotiate with Hormizd. Iraq: Maurice and his Arab ally ‘Alamundarus’ [al-Mundhir] advance down the Euphrates almost as far as the Persian winter capital ‘Ctesiphon’: Persian Tisfun, on the Tigris south of modern Baghdad. A Persian flanking movement forces Maurice to retire. He disavows the long-standing alliance with the Ghassanid Arabs, which leaves the Eastern frontier exposed. 2. According to Norwich, 1988: 273, this was the year that Tiberius created a new elite corps of 15,000 ‘barbarian’ feoderati (Federates). Others prefer 578: see there. Source: Theophanes AM 6074; Bury LRE II: 80. c. 581; between 577 and 584: Italy: The Lombards of Benevento destroy the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino [founded ca 529]. All the monks escaped to Rome. It would be more than a century before they returned to M0nte Cassino. Italy: The End of Antiquity and the Opening of the “Dark Ages” While the Lombards did settle parts of the peninsula intensely, they spent the first generation - 570-600 at least - in unremitted plunder. This had irreversible

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consequences in ecological terms for Italy and southern Gaul. In Gaul, inland cities reverted to towns because they were cut off both from denuded countryside as well as from the Mediterranean coast, its trade and culture. In Italy, remaining landowners fled in large numbers for coastal areas, depriving cities [read: towns] of wealth and vitality. The old Roman administrative structure and personnel were eliminated permanently, with only Byzantine outposts, Lombard duchies, and Papal possessions remaining. The countryside was abandoned by defenceless peasants, who fled to the mountain villages. It is from this time that the ancient terrace system of agriculture was perforce abandoned, both in Italy and the Balkan areas afflicted by Slavs and Bulgars. In the ensuing generations, terraces left untended due to Lombard ravaging or plague-related mortality could not stop rains from causing continued erosion. - On the interaction of human and natural factors, see Squatriti 199. Alluvial deposits today called ‘younger fill’ swept down from mountains and corrupted previously fertile soil. From the 580s-620s, then, we can locate the onset of the Dark Ages throughout the Mediterranean.” – Source: www.sparknotes.com/history/european/middle1/section1. - accessed 2004. Others would argue that, at least in the West, the onset came earlier. Wickham, for example, sees the fatal weakening of the Western Empire taking place in the half-century after the loss of Africa to the Vandals in the 430s (Early Middle Ages 2005: 730). This “broke” the fiscal ‘spine’ of trade and taxation between Roman Africa and Roman Italy. But if trade declined, it did continue in the West until the 600s. From Pottery to Wood The literary evidence confirms a marked economic decline. In the 600s pottery was replaced by wood. In Italy there is a sharp fall in the number of surviving inscriptions and the disappearance of high quality glazed pottery (“African Red Slip* Ware”). The late 500s see the appearance of wooden dishes, plates and cups. Fired-clay amphorae [giant pitchers commonly of 39 litres] will give way to wooden barrels (Brown 1984: 7; also Hodges & Whitehouse 1983: 25 ff). Or at least this was the case in the West; amphorae contained to be manufactured at Ganos on the Thracian (western) shore of the Sea of Marmara until the end of the empire (Jeffreys et al. 2008: 434). (*) ‘Slipped” means colour-coated. ‘Slip’ is the slurry formed when water is mixed with clay; the moulded vessel was immersed in the slip to form its outer coat. ‘African Red Slip Ware’ was a type of decorated tableware produced from the late first century AD until the mid seventh century in the area of modern

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Tunisia and exported around all of the Mediterranean, reaching even to Scotland in the north and Ethiopia in the south at the peak of its distribution. Other ‘red slips’ were produced at Phocaea on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and near Paphos in Cyprus (”Cypriot Slip Ware”). In the East many productions of both amphorae and fine table wares were to end in the later seventh century; this was a systemic collapse. For example, it is now definite that “Phocaean RS” (PRS: sophisticated ‘red slip’ ceramics from Phocaea in the west Aegean), once traded across the whole Mediterranean, ceased to be produced in the period 670-700, somewhat later than used to be thought. This is clear from excavations at Emporio on Chios, Gortyn on Crete, and in the Crimea. Trade in PRS had been contracting since the 500s, but the local RS [local types of less sophisticated red slipware] productions did not replace it, for they ceased as well. They were replaced by coarser types (Wickham 2005: 784 ff). As we have said, however, amphorae contained to be manufactured at Ganos on the Thracian (western) shore of the Sea of Marmara until the end of the empire (Jeffreys et al. 2008: 434). 581-82: 1. The middle Danube: As noted, after a siege of two years, the Avars took (581) Sirmium, the major Roman fortress in the north-west, upstream from our Belgrade. The following year Tiberius cedes Sirmium officially (582) and agrees to pay outstanding payments to the Avars, namely 100,000 silver pieces. Meanwhile the Slavs have pushed as far south as Athens, which they sacked. —Goette 2001: 76 Cf 582, 586, 592. Massive attack on the Balkans: Slavs and Avars invade the region around Athens, c.582. John of Ephesus, also called John of Amida, reported that the Slavs plundered all of Hellas and the regions around Thessalonica, taking many towns and forts in the early 580s. The "city" (town) of Athens itself, although much reduced, remained in imperial hands. But by 588, except for Corinth, all the antique ‘cities’ (towns) of the Peloponnesus were "wiped out" (Mango’s phrase: pp.24, 70; also Cameron p.160). It might be better to say: the already faded Roman towns were now finally abandoned. It is debated how much the few surviving urban centares contracted. Recent studies of Arykanda, Athens, Corinth and other sites suggest that the

reduced wall circuits so common in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages often bear little or no relationship to the inhabited extent and general vitality of their associated urban centers. In many instances, such reduced enceintes served as military strongholds and places of refuge in times of invasion and strife, to be occupied only on an occasional basis by often much greater populations which continued to live and work (often in some style) in extensive residential and commercial neighbourhoods outside the fortified circuits (see Henning 2007).

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Browning, p.91, proposes that, in the north Balkans, the old classical cities had already ceased to function effectively as cities before they were captured; and sometimes the Slavs even found the city sites abandoned. Slav settlers filled the vacuum left when the Avar army proceeded elsewhere. Coin hoards and other evidence show that Slavs had settled—they were no longer just raiding—as far as Hellas, east-central Greece as we know it, by 608-09 (Haldon 1984: 44). 3. d. Agathias, lawyer, historian and poet, aged about 46. His unfinished History of the reign of Justinian starts where Procopius stopped, in 552, and goes on to 558, dealing mainly with the military operations of Narses and others against the Ostrogoths, Vandals and Persians. In addition, about 100 of his poems, many of them love poems, survive in the famous ‘Greek Anthology’. The history of Menander ‘Protector’ or “Guardsman” covers the period to 582: ed. and English trans. The History of Menander the Guardsman, trans. R.C. Blockley, Liverpool 1985. 582: 1. Famines in various parts of the empire. This was accompanied by an epidemic in Syria (Stathakopoulos p.317). 2. The East: Summer: The Persian general Tamkhusro invades, but is defeated and killed at Constantina, NE of Edessa (Whitby 1988: 272). Defeated Sasanian troops camp near Dara. Death of Tiberius in Constantinople. Return and accession of Maurice, r. 582-602. Autumn: John Mystacon is appointed commander in the East. Campaign in Arzanene or eastern Armenia: N of modern Diyabakir. A Persian advance is defeated: defeat and death of Tamchosro at Constantia (June). But Maurice cannot follow up, having to retire to the capital, where Tiberius is dying. Maurice is crowned Augustus (emperor) the day before Tiberius dies, 13 Aug 582. Autumn: campaign in Arzamene. Prior to Tiberius' death in 582, it was Sophia who was consulted as to a possible successor. Her recommendation of the general Maurice was adopted. If she planned to marry Maurice, as Gregory of Tours states, then she was outmanoeuvred. Maurice chose Tiberius' daughter Constantina. 3. Constantinople pays the Franks to attack the Lombards: “[T]he emperor Maurice sent by his ambassadors to Childepert, king of the Franks, 50,000 solidi to make an attack with his army upon the Langobards and drive them from Italy, and Childepert suddenly entered Italy with a countless multitude of Franks. The Langobards indeed entrenched themselves in their towns and when messengers had passed between the parties and gifts had been offered they made peace with Childepert. When he had returned to Gaul, the emperor Maurice, having learned that he had made a treaty with the Langobards, asked for the return of the solidi he had given in consideration of the overthrow of the Langobards. But Childepert, relying upon the strength of his resources, would not give an answer in this matter” (Paulus, Hist. Lang.. III.17).

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Circa 582, as noted, there was temporary but devastating Slavic and Avar attack on Athens. For over 200 years, from 587 to 805, the Slavs will control much of the Peloponnesus. From 582: The Franks begin to dominate the Lombards of northern Italy. * * * To recap. The Rhomaioi reorganised their domains in Europe to resist the invaders. Although the Lombards seized parts of the south of Italy, the imperial governor was able for several decades to maintain a Byzantine corridor between Rome and Ravenna. All the Balkans, however, except for some coastal cities, were lost to the Avars, a powerful group of Eurasian nomads, and the Slavs who came with them. Descending from the Danube River under the Khagan Bajan (acc. 565), the Avars entered the empire in about 573, when the emperor [Justin II 565-78] was preoccupied by his wars with Persia (572, 576-78 and 589). The Avars besieged the key city of Sirmium and captured it in 582. The Avars The Avars fled westward after their Turkish vassals destroyed their great Mongolia-based empire (552). They moved to what we know as the Russian steppes, where the East Roman emperor Justinian paid them (574) to subjugate the Huns and Slavs who had been raiding Roman provinces in the Balkans. The empire of the Avars peaked at the end of the 6th century when it reached from the upper Danube to the the Volga. They were partly responsible for the southward migration of the Serbs and Croats. The Avar state, weakened by internal dissent, was later destroyed by a combined Frankish and Bulgarian attack in 796. The status of the Avars as barbarians was confirmed for the Romanic/Byzantine writers by their dress: the Avars wore long kaftans of leather or fur descending to the knees, trousers, and moccasin-like boots (Browning p.189). The Slavs, Greek: Sklavenoi, had occupied the whole northern side of the Danube since as early as AD 400. In the next two centuries they formed part of many mixed raiding parties that pressed into the empire. The first Slav siege of Thessaloniki or Salonica dates to 586 (or perhaps 597) and another probably took place in about 604, during the reign of Phocas. The Reign of Maurice, 582-602

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582–602: MAURICE. Greek: Mavrikios In full: ‘Flavius Mauricius Tiberius’. General of the army and son-in-law of the late emperor. Aged about 43 at accession. Wife: Constantina, dau. of Tiberius II. Son: Theodosius, co-emperor with his father ca. 589-602. The name itself comes from a possibly fictitious St Maurice, a black (Sudanese) soldier believed to have been martyred in ca. AD 287. The saint served in the empire’s Theban [Egyptian] Legion. The name first occurs BC, in Ptolemaic (Greek) Egypt: Cf Greek mauros, “dark, black” [Azia S. Atiya, ed., The Coptic Encyclopedia, volume 5, p. 1572. New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991]. As noted earlier, Lombard* and Syrian historians called the Emperor Maurikios the first "Greek" emperor. Cf 584.Born in Cappadocia, but perhaps of either Armenian or Italian descent, this would mean that Maurice spoke Greek as his native tongue. Evagrius says he was of Latin lineage [quoted by Whitby, preface p.xx]. (His predecessor was of Thracian descent, and presumably spoke Latin as his mother tongue, i.e. as well as Greek.) Redgate 2000: 237 doubts his Armenian ancestry, as this is asserted only by much later writers. (*) Paulus Diaconus, l. iii. c. 15 said: “primus ex Graecorum genere in Imperio constitutus”, ‘the first one from (out of) the Greeks by birth/descent appointed [constitutus] to the Supreme Power’. Maurice was a successful general when his father-in-law Tiberius II on his deathbed proclaimed him emperor. He failed to halt the Lombards in Italy but ended (591) the war with Persia, restored Khosru II to the throne, and defeated the Avars. Maurice obtained Armenia in 591 in return for restoring Chosroes II [Khusrau Parviz] (590-628) to the Persian-Sassanian throne, stolen by a usurper. Maurice and his generals eventually crushed the Avars in a series of sometimes poorly-managed military campaigns from 591/593 to 601, and briefly restored imperial control as far as the Danube. They then lost everything in a mutiny which placed the incompetent Phocas, r. 602-10, on the throne. —See generally Michael Whitby 1988. His strict discipline and miserliness caused mutiny in the Danubian army and he

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was obliged to flee. He was killed by order of the usurper Phocas, who was deposed (610), in turn, by Heraclius I. The historian A.H.M. Jones concludes the final era of classical antiquity with Maurice’s death, reasoning that the turmoil which shattered the Byzantine Empire in the next four decades permanently and thoroughly changed society and politics. The Destruction of Athens ca. 582: Greece: A raid by the Slavs, dated to 580 or 582, struck yet another blow at Athens. The evidence for this raid consists of a layer of destruction in the ancient Agora (market-square) in conjunction with the hoards of coins found in the stratum and also outside the Agora, at the Dipylon Gate and on the Acropolis. During the two centuries that followed, we have little historical testimony to the fate of Athens, and excavations have yielded only scanty finds. —Kazanki-Lappa, ‘Medieval Athens’, in Laiou, ed. 2002. Our next reference to Hellas comes in 653: see there. It is not known if the empire lost control of eastern Greece after 582; if it did, some kind of rule had been re-established by 653. 582-83: Gothic Spain: As we noted earlier, Leander, an Ibero-Roman who was Catholic bishop of Seville, together with the Catholic Frankish princess Ingunthis, aged 13 or 16, convinced (ca 582) her husband, prince Hermenegild, the eldest son of king Liuvigild, to convert to Catholic Christianity, or so says pope Gregory (Collins 1995: 47). Leander defended the convert in an uprising (583-584) that occasioned his father's reprisals. For an Arian monarch Catholicism was the religion of his Roman subjects and Arianism was a rallying-point to counter his Byzantine enemies in the south; thus conversion was a preamble to treason. Collins loc. cit. argues against the revolt being a Catholic reaction against Arian tyranny; he proposes it was just a power grab by the prince. But in any case the conversion of some of the principal Goths certainly began at this time. Liuvigild or Leovigild took the field against his son in 582 or 583, prevailed on the Byzantines to betray Hermenigild for a sum of 30,000 gold solidi, besieged the latter in Seville in 583, and captured the city after a siege of nearly two years [584 or 585]. –Cath. Encyc., “Hermenigild”. Gisgonza - also Gigonza, ancient Sagontia - was held by Byzantium until the reign of Witteric (603–610). If we follow Thompson, The Goths in Spain (1969: 329 ff), Gigonza (Giguenza) was (is) on the road south from Seville and close to Medina Sidonia [Asidona]. This may indicate that the whole south-west of the province of Baetica was still Byzantine in 600, from Málaga west to the Atlantic at the mouth of the Guadalete River near Cadiz [ancient Gades]. Perhaps Asidona [Medina Sidonia], supposedly taken by the Visigoths already in 572 (571

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according to the NCMH), was surrounded by Byzantine territory? Or was Gigonza an imperial outpost in Visigoth-administered territory? (I can find no Website that discusses this point.) 582-95: John ‘the Faster’, patriarch of Constantinople. See 595. 583: 1. NE Balkans: The Avars demand (May 583) an increase in the tribute paid to them. Then (summer) they invade the Balkans as far as Anchialus (midway down the Black Sea coast). Autumn: embassy of Comentiolus and Elpidius to the Avar Chagan. 2. The East: Summer: A new imperial campaign in Arzanene [SE Armenia]. The Greek Romanics capture Akbas (John Eph., HE, VI.36). The Persians attacked

the fort of Aphumon, but arranged that their garrison at nearby Akbas should signal them by fire if they were attacked by the Rhomaniyans. When the latter did so, the Persians from Aphumon quickly responded to the signal and returned, trapping the besiegers and forcing them to flee down a mountainside with heavy casualties (Whtiby p. 277; Theoph.Sim., I.12,17.). Winter: The Sasanians open negotiations.

583-84: Gothic Spain: Catholics vs Arians. As we have noted, Hermenegild, the eldest son of Leovigild, converted (579) to Catholic Christianity. Bishop Leander of Seville defended the convert in an uprising, 583- 584, that occasioned Leovigild’s reprisals. After besieging and taking Byzantine Seville, Liuvigild took his son prisoner in Córdoba and banished him safely north to Valencia, where he was murdered by Liuvigild's agents (585). While facing this rebellion in southern Spain (AD 583-584) Leovigild struck an issue of tremisses (coins) with a cross on steps on the reverse, a design which had been introduced for the very first time on Byzantine solidi by emperor Tiberius II, AD 578-582. The mint was at Merida, well north of Seville. 583-89: The Balkans and Spain: Comentiolus was a Thracian officer who first appears in 583 on an embassy to the khan of the Avars. In the next year, he commands the forces attempting to drive the Slavs from Thrace, and for the following five years [cf below 584], he was active in the Balkans: the sources hereto are Byzantine historians like Theophylact Simocatta and Theophanes. He then turns up in Spain in 589 as patrikios and magister militum (military governor), where an inscription from CIL (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum) records his work—or that of another of the same name—strengthening the fortifications at Carthago Nova or Cartagena (see discussion in Whitby 1988: 289-90).

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c.584 (perhaps as early as 582): Italy and Africa were raised to the status of Exarchates, or rather the governors of these super-provinces were termed exarchs.* Significantly, 'Exarch' was a Greek term, preferred to the Latin title 'Prefect'. The title is recorded for the first time for Italy in 584; and for Africa in 591. Cf 592. In his Strategikon, Maurice distinguishes between Latin, which he calls ‘Roman’ [Rhomaiesti, “in Latin”] and Greek which he calls ‘Hellenic’ [Elleniesti, ‘in Greek’]. The Greek language did not start to be called the Roman or Romaic [Rhomaike] tongue until after his time. (*) Brown, Gentlemen 1984: 49, notes that no source employs the term exarchatus (the realm governed by the exarch) until after the collapse of Byzantine power in 751; and even then it is applied only to the immediate area around Ravenna, i.e. not to the rest of Italy or Africa. Continuation of a (reduced) Money Economy in the “Inner” West Changes were made in the coinage around this time. In 581-82 the Byzantine mints at Carthage and Ravenna began to issue gold coins with dates on them; and in 582-83 a new mint was opened at Catania in Sicily producing copper and possibly also gold coins (Haldon 1990: 211). The regular issuing of small change in the form of copper coins is, as distinct from gold coinage, a token of a mercantile economy. In the “outer” West this had ceased already during the 400s, i.e. in the parts of the western Roman empire that were taken over by the Saxons, Franks, Burgundians and others. Barter became the order of the day in most of what is today England, Germany, France and northern Spain. The new regimes in Vandal Africa and Ostrogothic Italy, however, continued to produce Roman-style coins in copper until after 500. Copper coins were also briefly issued in two other areas where we have reason to suppose that a somewhat more sophisticated economy survived until about 525, namely in SW Spain (Andalusia), at the heart of the Visigoth kingdom; and at Marseilles, the Ostrogoth-ruled gateway-port of the Frankish kingdoms. Byzantium defeated the Vandals and Ostrogoths in the mid-550s and new copper coins continued to be produced, now by imperial authority, at the mints in Ravenna, Rome, Sicily and Carthage. But coins are rarely found in excavations, no doubt because they had only a limited production and circulation. Vandal coins issued at Carthage until 533 circulated widely around the Mediterranean, but after Justinian re-established the mint at Carthage, coins from other mints in the eastern Mediterranean are a tiny fraction of the coinage found in the West; this of course was a reflection of the continuing decline of the East-West trade across the Mediterranean that took place in the sixth century, i.e. before the Arab invasions (Hodges & Whitehouse 1983: 28). Meanwhile minting had ceased in Gothic Andalusia and Marseilles. (Eventually even barter-trade from the Mediterranean to the northern lands ceased, namely

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during the early 600s: Hodges & Whitehouse p.91). Only one city in the West, Byzantine Rome, shows evidence of an abundant copper coinage after 600 (Ward-Perkins 2005: 113, 117). 584: 1. The Balkans: Spring: Second embassy of Elpidius; conclusion of peace with the Avars. - Maurice agrees to raise the tribute to the Avars to 100,000 gold pieces. Spring/summer: Philippicus replaces John Mystacon as commander in the East against the Persians and prepares to campaign. Autumn: Philippicus ravages Beth Arabaye, the area west of our Mosul. Summer: Slav invasions reach the Long Walls (in Thrace)*; Comentiolus’s victory near the river Ergina/Ergene (Agrianes) which is the lowest northern tributary of the Evros/Maritsa, ie near Arcadiopolis (Simocatta i.7.1-4; Whitby 1988: 90). (*) Not to be confused with the city walls of Constantinople. The Long Wall(s) were in inner Thrace. They ran for 56 km NNE across the isthmus of Europe 65 km west of Constantinople. The southern end, on the Sea of Marmara, lay six km west of Selymbria, modern Silivri. 2a. Italy: Failed Frankish invasion of Lombard Italy, subsidised by Constantinople. The Lombards now decided that it was wise to reinstate a central kingship and elected Authari/s, r. 584-90. The Pope appeals in vain to Constantinople for help. Cf 585, 586. The assumption of the title "king" in Italy by the Lombard Authari in 584 made it clear that an organised power, with which Byzantium had to reckon, was developing in Italy. Pope Pelagius dispatched letter after letter urging Gregory, his legate in Constantinople, to increase his exertions to persuade the emperor to send help. Pelagius also implored Decius (584)—the first Byzantine governor at Ravenna to bear the title ‘Exarch’—to come to Rome’s aid, but was told that he was unable to protect the exarchate, still less Rome. - Pelagius writes that he has sent envoys to Constantinople to beseech the aid of the emperor before the Lombards seize the few places that are left to the imperial government. "The district [‘territory’] about Rome is," he says, "in the main destitute of any defenders [‘completely undefended’] and the Exarch writes [exarchus scribit] that he can provide no remedy" (quoted by Loomis 1916; also Richards 1980: 12 and A Jones et al. 1992: 391: variant translation in brackets). 2b. Ravenna: Gregory’s letter [above] contains the first surviving use of the Greek term Exarch* or ‘supreme governor’ of Italy, replacing the old Latin terms Prefect and Magister Militum. An Exarch of Africa is first mentioned in 591. (*) Gk. éxarkhos ‘leader, chief’, f. exárkhein ‘to take the lead’.

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Intensification of Lombard rule in N and C Italy The native Romano-Italian landowners had previously been taxed by the Lombards only by payments in kind, and kept their estates. Now, however, they were obliged to subdivide their land with their barbarian “guests” and so lost the rents of many of their serfs. The Lombard dukes too lost the rents from various lands, as some taxes were now appropriated by the restored Lombard monarchy (Goffart pp.187 ff; Collins 1991: 192 ff). 4. Spain: The Visigoths retake the important city of Córdoba from the Romaniyans. King Leovigild was constantly at war with the Byzantines in S Spain and the Suevi in the north-west. When these enemies supported the revolt of his son Hermenegild, who had converted from Arianism to Catholicism, he finally annexed (584–85) the kingdom of the Suevi. Meanwhile, after besieging and taking (evidently by surrender) of Byzantine Seville in 584, Leovigild took his son prisoner in Córdoba, and banished him safely north to Valencia, where he was murdered by Leovigild's agents (585: John Bicl. 383-4; Gregory of Tours v. 39, vi. 43). Leovigild paid the Byzantine commander of Cordoba 30,000 nomismata to hand over the Cordoba and Hermenegild with it (Gregory of Tours; Frassato 2003: 203). At the end of Leovigild’s reign, the only non-Visigothic parts of Spain were two small territories of the Byzantine Empire. In 584 the Byzantines lost Cordoba definitively, probably by a change of loyalty on the part of the local authorities. The Visigoths under Leovigild took over. Cordoba would have dominated a good part of the formerly imperial territory including probably the town of Ecija and the towns of Iliberis (Granada), Acci (Guadix, near Granada) and Basti (Trick). It is not clear whether these towns were always independent or were subordinated to the authority of Cordoba. With the definitive change of loyalty of this important city in 584, the Visigoth border was extended towards the coastal towns like Malaca (Malaga), Abdera [between Malaga and Cartagena] and Urci [Aguilas, on the coast nearer Cartagena]. That is to say, Malaga, Urci and Cartagena were the only significant towns still controlled by the Byzantines, whose domain was now limited to the SE littoral from Gibraltar and Malaga round to Cartagena (also the N African shore opposite Gibraltar, where the key imperial towns were Tingis and Septem). Pagan Slavs occupy Christian Greece John of Ephesus writes: “That same year [581] . . . was famous also for the invasion of an accursed people, called Slavonians, who overran the whole of Greece, and the country of the Thessalonians [i.e. Macedonia: cf 586], and all Thrace [cf below under 585], and captured the cities [read: towns], and took numerous forts, and devastated and burnt, and reduced the people to slavery, and made themselves masters of the whole country, and settled in it by main

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force, and dwelt in it as though it had been their own without fear … . They still [John was writing in 584] encamp and dwell there, and live in peace in the Roman [Byzantine] territories, free from anxiety and fear, and lead captive and slay and burn: and they have grown rich in gold and silver, and herds of horses, and arms, and have learnt to fight better than the Romans, though at first they were but rude savages, who did not venture to show themselves outside the woods and the coverts of the trees; and as for arms, they did not even know what they were, with the exception of two or three javelins or darts” (John of Ephesus, 432-33). Cf below, under 586: siege machinery. 585: 1. Thrace: The junior general Comentiolus leads one of the Praesental armies against the pagan Slavs: victory at the fortress of Ansinon north-west of Adrianople. The ‘barbarians’ are briefly expelled from Thrace. See 587. “The general tenor of the historian's account of these Slavonic depredations in 584 or 585 implies that the depredators were not Slavs who lived beyond the Danube and returned thither after the invasion, but Slavs who were already settled in Roman territory. Comentiolus' work consisted in clearing Astica [the region between Phillippopolis and Adrianople] of these lawless settlers.” –Bury LRE, II: 19. 2. Italy: The Franks, as allies subsidised by Byzantium, raid into Lombard N Italy. The Exarch then reaches an accommodative truce with the Lombard leaders under king Authari, r. 584-90 (Treadgold 1997: 229). Cf 586-87: further battles. 3. The year 585 is the last date in the Ecclesiastical History of the Monophysite bishop John of Ephesus, written in Syriac. Much of it has not survived. The third part, which opens with the beginning of the persecution under Justin II (571), has come down to us, though not without some important gaps. Fourth Visit of the Plague to Constantinople 585-86: Fourth visit of the plague to Constantinople. 586: Mesopotamia: Spring: The Persians renew peace negotiations. Then: the allcavalry battle of Solachon, near Dara, against the Persians in 586. The commander was Philippicus. Heraclius senior, father of the future emperor, was second in command; he replaced Philippicus the following year. See 3 below. The Roman fortress-town of Dara or Justiniana Nova had been in Pesian hands since the early 570s The battle is described by John Haldon as an illustration of what a well-led Byzantine army could do, against the odds, for they beat a larger Persian army in (he proposes) around half an hour. Agathias states that the role of Byzantine dismounted cavalry was vital (Haldon 2001, reviewed by Cornwell, 2003: www.deremilitari.org/reviews/haldon_byzwar.htm; accessed 2005). See next.

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Mesopotamia: The Battle of Solachon, 586 (Haldon’s account: 2001, pp. 52 ff) The armies that clashed at Solachon, west of Dara, seem both to have consisted wholly of cavalry. The smaller Byzantine army of Philippicus - some were Hun ‘mercenaries’ (salaried professionals) - comprised mixed units of lancers and horse-archers, together with a force of allied Arab troops under their tribal chieftains. The larger Persian army under Kardarigan was similarly composed of units of lancers and horse-archers. Both sides may also have included heavily armoured cataphract units (Byzantine horse armour is mentioned in Mauarice’s Strategikon, dating to shortly after this time). Philippicus’s divisional commanders were Heraclius [father of the future emperor], Elifreda*, Vitalius and Apsich (a Hun). On the Persian side, Kardarigan’s subordinate generals were his nephew Aphraates and Mebod. (*) Presumably a rendering of the Gothic or Lombard name Alifreda. Rejecting proposals for peace negotiations, Philippicus advanced south from Amida as far as Bibas (Tel Besh) on the Arzamon (Zergan) River. Having crossed the river, the imperial army encamped in the plain below Mardin (Gk Mardes) on the Turkish side of today’s Syrian-Turkish border. Location: Mardin, Dara and Nisibis lie on a notional line running from NW to SE. Mardin and Solachon form the western side of an equilateral triangle whose eastern point is Dara or Daras, 12 Roman miles [18 km] from Solachon. Nisibis (Turkish Nusaybin) is located to the SE of this triangle. The Persian army under Kardarigan—a title that translates as ‘the Black Falcon’—came forward from Dara. With them they had a substantial camel train bearing water-skins, as there was little or no water between the major watercourses. Arab irregulars serving on the Byzantine side captured some Persian scouts. So Philippicus knew of Kardarigan’s approach. Hoping to surprise his Christian enemies at rest on the Sabbath, Kardarigan came forward on a Sunday. He very unwisely ordered his troops to dump their water-bags before combat began, expecting that this would encourage them to fight well, knowing that plentiful water lay ahead in the Arzamon River, 15 km behind the Byzantine line. The Persians found the Byzantines already formed up on rising ground on the plain of Solachon, looking down an incline up which the Persians would have to advance. Philippicus’s left flank was well covered by the broken and hilly ground at the foot of a mountain. The Byzantines were deployed in three large divisions. Heraclius senior, father of the future emperor of the same name, commanded the central division. As Haldon maps it, there was a small unit of Huns under Apsich placed forward, in front of the Byzantine left wing; when the battle opened, Apsich’s men moved off to become the extreme left wing. Philippicus himself was stationed at the rear in charge of a small reserve; the inclined ground meant that he could see over the main line and thus observe the course of the battle. (There was no second line as

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such, as there would be in later centuries.) The Persians too formed into three large divisions, with Kardarigan commanding the central division. He ordered a general advance and the Persians pushed ahead straight toward the Byzantine line, firing arrows as they rode. The Byzantines returned the arrow-barrage and made a counter-charge that brought both armies to a halt – except on the Byzantine right. There the heavy cavalry in Vitalius’s division succeeded in smashing into the Persian left division and broke its formation. The Persian left was pushed back and around behind the Persian central division. Seeing some of Vitalius’s men begin to disengage towards the Persian baggagetrain, seeking plunder, Philippicus sent a herald to call them back under threat of punishment. Meanwhile, in the centre, the Persians were able to rally, their former left becoming part of an augmented central division. They began to force back Heraclius’s central division. To prevent his centre collapsing, Philippicus ordered Heraclius to dismount his men. The central division now formed a wall of shields with spears projected forward, hedgehog-like. This was followed by an order to fire at the Persians’ horses, a tactic that turned the tide of battle in the favour of the Byzantines. With the Persian centre now halted and in trouble, the Byzantine left under Elifreda was able to mount a successful counter-charge and pushed back the Persian right under Mebod. Presumably (this is not stated by Haldon), Apsich’s Hun horse-archers played an important role here. Soon the Persian right broke up, and, when the now rallied Byzantine right came back into the battle, a general rout ensued. The surviving Persians all fled towards Dara, except for a small remnant of about 1,500 men under Kardarigan; they fell back to a nearby ridge or hillock and resisted fiercely. After three or four days of harassment, the Byzantines, who did not realise the Persian commander in chief was in charge of the survivors on the ridge, simply left them to die of thirst. In the event, Kardarigan was able to escape alive but with only a few hundred companions. 2. Summer: Philippicus invades Arzamene (Armenia) and besieges Chlomaron (Arzan, modern Erzerum). 3. Autumn: Heraclius senior - father (as we have said) of the future emperor ravages Persian territory. In Europe, the Avars invade and sack several towns, including probably Thessalonica – see below. 586-87: N Italy: Local imperial forces battle the Lombard king Authari. He won a major victory in 586 but was defeated by the Exarch in 587 (Collins 1991: 194; Treadgold 1997: 229). c. 586/87 Greece: Or 597: the chronology is unclear; Treadgold 1997: 229 prefers 586.*

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Avars and Slavs unsuccessfully besiege Thessalonica, which was already suffering from both plague and famine (source: Anastasius, trans., Miracles of St. Demetrius**). This was to be the first of several sieges of Thessalonica in this period. Cf 591. (*) John, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, was an eyewitness to the siege, and he tells us that the pending arrival of the Avaro-Slavic army was announced to the city's inhabitants on a Sunday, 22 September, in the reign of Maurice "of blessed memory". A reckoning has shown that September 22 in the reign of Maurice could have fallen on a Sunday only in 586 or in 597. (**) The first section or book was written ca. 615 by John, Archbishop of Thessalonica, and the second section dates from ca. 695 (Greek text). Anastasius, fl. 872, the papal librarian, was the translator into Latin. Miracula S. Demetrii, ed. P. Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de saint Demitrius et la penetration des slaves dans les Balkans. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1979. The Defence of Thessaloniki, 586 The main source, John, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, states that the Avaro-Slavic army was the largest army seen in his times, i.e. since the Justinianic plague of the 540s, and he gives a graphic description of the desolation the ‘barbarians’ wreaked in their attempt to find provisions in the environs of the city (Vryonis 1981). Further, it was the first time that the city's inhabitants had seen the armies of the ‘barbarians’. This may imply that earlier barbarian incursions had gone more directly south into Thessaly, i.e, bypassing eastern Macedonia. The inhabitants despaired of their salvation, for not only was the barbarian army large but the numbers of the inhabitants of Thessaloniki had greatly diminished as a result of an outbreak of plague which had lasted until the previous July; many of the Thessalonians were outside the city's walls tending their fields, and the army and officials were for the most part away. Of particular interest is the ability of the ‘Avaro-Slavs’ to build and equip themselves with siege machinery traditionally belonging to Byzantine military science and tactics. They deployed 1,000 ‘tortoises’*, an unspecified number of battering rams, and with a comparatively large number of petroboloi or ballistae** - 50 were placed below the city's eastern walls. The text is specific about the fact that these were built after the arrival of the ‘barbarian’ army in front of the walls of Thessaloniki and so were built by the barbarians themselves (Vryonis 1981). (*) Tortoises were mobile sheds inside which battering rams were suspended. (**) In Latin: ballista without the “r” (the original Greek form is ballistra with an “r”). – The term is ordinarily used for artillery pieces in the form of large crossbows. But as noted below, they may in fact have been sling-

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catapults. Bachrach p.330 notes that the text says petrobolos (stonethrower), ballistrae being Vryonis’s suggested translation (see reference below). In the following passage it seems that an onager is being described. It had only one large torsion-skein placed horizontally within the frame with a short vertical arm, usually with a short sling attached at its upper end. Or perhaps it is a ropepulled trebuchet***, which has a long arm and a long sling; this is suggested by the phrase “pulling down”. If it were an onager, one might expect the phrase “pulling back” to be used. It has been proposed that catapults were used for their curved trajectory, while the crossbow-like ballista were used for direct trajectory. (***) The majority view is that trebuchets are not seen until 626 or later (see there; also AD 663). “[The siege engines] were tetragonal”, says The Miracles, “and rested on broader bases, tapering to narrower extremities. Attached to them were thick cylinders well clad in iron at the ends, and there were nailed to them timbers [i.e. arms] like beams from a large house. These timbers had the slings hung from the back side and from the front strong ropes, by which, pulling down and releasing the sling, they propel the stones up high and with a loud noise. And on being fired they sent up many great stones so that neither earth nor human constructions could bear the impacts. They also covered those tetragonal ballistrae [sic!] with boards on three sides only, so that those inside firing them might not be wounded with arrows by those on the walls. And since one of these, with its boards, had been burned to a char by a flaming arrow, they returned, carrying away the machines. On the following day they again brought these ballistrae covered with freshly skinned hides [to prevent fire arrows setting them on fire] and with the boards, and placing them closer to the walls, shooting, they hurled mountains and hills against us. For what else might one term these extremely large stones?” —Saint Demetrius text, p. 154. There were some 50 of these catapults below the eastern walls and 12 siege towers along the western walls of the city. Miracles of St Demetrius: “… knowing that the aforementioned metropolis lies in the heart of the emperor because it shines forth through its virtues, and knowing that if it should suffer something unexpected, he [the Avar khagan] would afflict the crowned emperor no less than would the slaughter of children; he therefore summoned to himself the entire beastly nation of the Sklavenoi, for the entire nation was subject to him, also adding to them certain other barbarians, and ordered them all to march against Thessaloniki, guarded by God. …. on the following day, they prepared siege machines, iron battering rams, catapults for throwing stones of enormous size, and the so-called tortoises, onto which, along with the catapults, they placed dry skins, again having devised so

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that they might not be harmed by fire or boiling pitch. They nailed bloodied hides of newly slain oxen and camels onto these machines and they thus brought them up near to the wall. From the third day, and thereafter, they hurled stones, or rather mountains as they were in size, and the archers shot further, imitating the winter snowflakes, with the result that no one on the wall was able to emerge without danger and thus to see something outside. The tortoises were joined to the wall outside and without restraint were digging up the foundations with levers and axe-heads. I think that these [?diggers] numbered more than 1,000” [Saint Demetrius, pp. 148-149.] Byzantine Artillery

We know from Theophylactus Simocatta that the Avaro-Slavs acquired the knowledge of siege machinery only in 587 and began using it to take cities in the period between 587 and 597. The author of the Strategikon (ca. 600) does not tell us when the new kind of artillery was introduced into the Byzantine Empire, but the historian of Maurice's reign, Theophylaktos Simokatta, does provide information about when it came into use and what name the Byzantines gave the new weapon. Bousas, a Byzantine soldier captured by the Avars, “taught them how to construct a siege machine, for they were ignorant of such machines … . And so he prepared the helepolis to shoot missiles: (. . .)” (Strategikon 2.16.10). With this fearsome and skillful device . . . the Avars attacked many Byzantine cities, levelling the fortress of Appiareia [present-day N Bulgaria] in 587 and 10 years later [or at about the same time]* attacking Thessaloniki, which successfully resisted (2.16.11, 2.17.2). Bousas, and other Byzantine artillerymen, therefore, must have learned how to build and operate these weapons some years before 586-87. —Dennis 1998. (*) Most historians date the siege of Thessalonica to 586 rather than 597. When the Slavs and Avars first appear in the Balkans they do not possess the technology of advanced siege warfare. This is clear from both Procopius and the Strategicon of Maurice. Theophylactus confirms this in an unexpected but decisive manner. He pinpoints the moment in time and place when they acquired this technology: in 587*, before the gates of Appiareia (a town on the Danube: see earlier). From that time the Avaro-Slavic threat to urban centres and fortresses became much greater and no such establishment could henceforth rely exclusively on the strength of its walls for security. — Vryonis 1981. (*) Vryonis would date the siege of Thessaloniki, described above, to 597 rather than 586. 586-601: Gothic Spain: Reign of king Reccared. The new king was Arian at the time of his succession, but quickly announced (587) his conversion to the imperial

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‘orthodoxy’ of trinitarian Catholicism, adding the Roman-style imperial ‘praenom’ Flavius to his own (NCMH Fouracre ed. 2005: 348). On the second anniversary of his older brother Hermenegild's death, he reconsecrated the main Arian church in Toledo as a Catholic cathedral. See 589: Council of Toledo. In January 587 Reccared renounced Arianism for Catholicism, the single great event of his reign. Most Arian nobles and ecclesiastics followed his example, certainly those around him at Toledo, but there were Arian uprisings, notably in Septimania, his northernmost province beyond the Pyrenees (Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Reccared’). 587: 1. The Balkans: The first priority for Byzantium remained the Persian frontier; hence there were no strong forces in the Balkans able to prevent continued advances by Slav tribes. See below: loss of lower Greece, 587-88. Spring: Lower Danube: General Comentiolus leads 10,000 troops against the Avars in the Dobrudja (delta region); after some success, he is forced back (see the extended dissussion in Liebeschuetz 2007). The Avars pushed on south into Thrace. A further Byzantine army under John Mystacon, with his second in charge, Drocton, comes to his rescue, and the Avar counter-attack is halted near Adrianople. Spring/summer: The Avars attack towns in Thrace; Drocton’s victory at Adrianople (see next) persuades them to withdraw. Theophylact, describing the siege of Appiaria on the Danube in 587, says that this was the first occasion on which the Avars used siege machinery, and that a Byzantine deserter, Busas, had passed on this knowledge. Or the second occasion, if the siege of Thessalonica preceded that of Appiaria. It is disputed whether this was the first appearance of the trebuchet or traction-powered (rope-pulled) sling-catapult. The majority view is that trebuchets are not seen until 626 or later (see there; also AD 663). The weapon used by the Avars in 587 was probably a ballista or large bolt-firing crossbow. 2. The East: Summer: Rhomaniyans besiege Persian forts. 587-88: S Greece: This is the date given by a late source, the Chronicle of Monemvasia, for the first penetration of Slavs into the Peloponnesus. As we noted earlier, it is said that various Greek towns evacuated their populations to new sites offshore: the population of Patras, the town at the western mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, transferred to Italy; that of Argos, the town in NE Peloponnese, to the east-side island called Orove; and the Corinthians, briefly at least, also went to a nearby eastern island, namely Aegina. Only the east coast of Hellas remained untouched, according to Mango 1980: 24. But as noted earlier under 582, there is archaeological evidence of some destruction at Athens. Cf 608-10. Monemvasia itself, the south-eastern town on a fortified rocky outcrop joined to the Pelopennesian coast by a causeway, had been founded in 584 (Herrin 2007: 93).

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The invasion represented a major upheaval: archaeologists have found no pre-7th century building intact in the Peloponnesus (Fine p. 62). As we noted, all the antique cities of the Peloponnesus were, in Mango’s words, "wiped out" by 588, except for Corinth (Mango pp. 24, 70; also Cameron p.160; Fine 1991: 61). Loss of lower Greece We are told by a late source, the Chronicle of Monemvasia, that 'having taken and settled in the Peloponnesus, the Avars [meaning Slavs initially under Avar leadership] lasted in it for [over] 218 years, from 587 to 805'. But not in Corinth, for Corinth with the eastern part of the Peloponnesus remained in the hands of the Byzantines. And yet, according to the same chronicle, the Avars had also taken Corinth as well as the Argolis, the region south of Corinth. This apparent contradiction probably meant that Corinth, together with the Argolis, was recovered by the Byzantines and that this recovery took place shortly before 587. Certainly Corinth was in imperial hands by ca.600 when a governor was sent there (Fine 1991: 60 ff). Emperor Constans II wintered there with his army in 662-63. Fine (p.63) argues that the Slavs remained a minority in the Peloponnesus, even if they did settle in large numbers. Some fortified coastal towns remained in Byzantine hands, while the ethnic Greek Christians living in the hinterland came under the rule of pagan Slavic chiefs. The Slavs in Central Greece Pope Gregory’s correspondence suggests that by no means all of Greece was in Slav hands before 600. He wrote letters to three Thessalian bishoprics: Larissa, Thebes, and Demetrias, the modern port of Volos. Larisa (two ss in the Latin name, one s in the Greek …) had a bishop from at least 592 to 599, when he was invited to a Council at Constantinople. Thebes and Demetrias are also mnetioned in 592. The bishop of Justiniana Prima in present-day Kosovo/NW Macedonia (north of Skopje) acted in a disciplinary dispute between the bishops of Thebes and Larisa in 592 (which means that communications between the major centres were possible). And baptisms were carried out normally in Demetrias around 592. The fact that only the capital of the province and its two port-cities [were] represented may be indicative of the more troublesome position of the remaining, inland Thessalian bishoprics, to which (we may infer) regular ecclesiastical administration no longer extended. That is to say, the other bishoprics had been abandoned, presumably in the 580s. —Karagiorgou, ‘Late Antique Thessaly’, 2001, Oxford University thesis, on line at www.amoriumexcavations.org/ olga/volume%201%20-%20text; accessed 2007. See 615-16. The density of Slav settlements in Greece was far from even; studies of Slav place

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names suggest that the western parts both of peninsular Greece and of the Peloponnesus received or retained a denser Slav population than the eastern. Over 500 Slav place names are still identifiable in the area Epirus-AcarnaniaAetolia, but only some 300 in the larger area of Thessaly-Attica. Similarly in the Peloponnese there are about three times as many Slav place names in the western as in the eastern half (Argolis, Laconia). —Vlasto 1970: 8; excerpt online at “Serbianna” (sic) website, 2010. 587-89: The West: The Visigothic kingdom in Spain begins to switch from Arian to Trinitarian (‘Catholic’) Christianity. The significance of this was that Arianism could no longer be used as a Gothic rallying cry against the Greek Romanics; conversely the ‘Greeks’ could no longer draw on the Catholic loyalties of their Hispano-Roman subjects. The announcement of Reccared’s conversion (587) was followed by the Council of Toledo (589). This was, however, only the conversion of the monarchy and nobility: local areas remained Arian for many years. In January 587 Reccared I renounced Arianism for Catholicism, the single great event of his reign and a turning point for Visigothic Hispania. Most Arian nobles and ecclesiastics followed his example, certainly those around him at Toledo, but there were Arian uprisings, notably in Septimania, his northernmost province, beyond the Pyrenees. There the leader of the opposition was the Arian bishop Athaloc, who had the reputation among his Catholic enemies of being virtually a second Arius (Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Reccared’).

588: MID-POINT OF BYZANTINE RULE IN SOUTHERN SPAIN (where Constantinople now governed only the SE littoral) The chief administrative official in Byzantine Spania was the magister militum Spaniae, meaning "master of the soldiers (generalissimo) of Spain" (Bury, LRE II, chap. 19; Fouracre et al 2005: 349). The office, although it only appears in records (an inscription) for the first time in 589, was probably a creation of Justinian, d.565, as was the mint, which issued provincial currency until the end of the province (c. 625). 588: 1. Syria: Massive earthquake in Antioch kills many thousands. (This will be followed by a Persian conquest in 611/613, and then the Arab/Muslim conquest in 636.) 2. The East: Winter/spring: Priscus is appointed to replace Philippicus as commander in the East. He arrives at Monocarton [Monocartum: Tiberiopolis] near Edessa at Easter; mutiny of the army. Seeking restoration of their pay, the

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troops stoned Priscus who had to flee for his life. Philippicus is restored and Priscus transferred (May 588) to the Balkans (Treadgold 1997: 229; Soward n.d.). Mesopotamia: serious mutiny 588-89. Maurice orders military pay reduced by a quarter in 588; this causes a revolt by unpaid troops of the Eastern army: the mutiny ends when pay is restored in 589. Cf 594. Maurice was at once miserly and a high taxer; for this he was hated by civilians in the capital and the provinces as well as by his troops (Olster 1993: 50-51). Interestingly, the army maintained its discipline and cohesion, and was able to go on to win a battle with the Persians in 589. Summer: Germanus’s successes against the Persians. Germanus defends Constantina; Byzantine victory near Martyropolis in the border region of medieval Armenia-Mesopotamia; NE of present-day Diyarbakir (Soward n.d.). 3. The Balkans: Spring: Avars demand an increase in imperial tribute payments and prepare to invade. Priscus campaigns again them (summer). 4. Italy: Recovery of Classis from the Lombards (Richards 1980: 12). 5. NE Italy: The dispute continues over the ‘Three Chapters’ (tria kephalaia).* The bishops of Istria (the north-east) in the 560s had refused to condemn the Three Chapters and so remained in schism from Rome and Ravenna. Acting in support of pope Pelagius II, the Exarch Smaragdus seized Severus, the successor of Elias as bishop of Grado (Aquileia)**, and, by threats, compelled him to enter into communion with the orthodox bishop, John of Ravenna (588). Smaragdus went in person to Grado, seized Severus, who had succeeded Elias in the see, together with three other bishops, in the church, carried them to Ravenna, and forced them to communicate there with the bp. John. (*) A set of writings that, from 544, loyal bishops were expected to condemn. There was in fact no doctrinal difference among the bishops; just that the NE Italian bishops wished not to be closely supervised by Rome. (**) The archbishop of Aquileia (inland) had removed (568) his seat from Aquileia to Grado (then an island) in the face of the Lombard threat. The Lombards destroyed Aquileia in 590. Grado, which could be provisioned and reinforced from the sea, remained in Byzantine hands. 6. Old Rome vs New Rome: When John the patriarch of Constantinople assumes the title O‘ikoumenikòs Patriárches or "Ecumenical Patriarch", Pelagius the Bishop of Rome objects: see discussion below under 595. “In 588 John ‘the Faster’ held a synod at Constantinople to examine certain charges against Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch ( - in this fact already one sees a sign of the growing ambition of Constantinople: by what right could Constantinople discuss the affairs of Antioch?). The Acts of this synod appear to have been sent to Rome; and Pope Pelagius II (579-590) saw in them that John

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was described as ‘archbishop and œcumenical patriarch’. It may be that this was the first time that the use of the title was noticed at Rome; it appears, in any case, to be the first time it was used officially as a title claimed – not merely a vague compliment” (thus Encyc. Cath.). Gregory I of Rome, 590-604, seems to have claimed for the Apostolic See, and for himself as patriarch of Rome, a primacy not just of honour, but of supreme authority over the Church Universal – or so the Cath. Encyc. author reads it. In his letters—Epp., XIII, l and Epp., V, cliv—Gregory speaks of ‘the Apostolic See, which is the head of all Churches’ and says: ‘I, albeit unworthy, have been set up in command of the Church’. As successor of St. Peter, the patriarch of Rome had received from God, so he believed, a primacy over all Churches (Epp., II, xlvi; III, xxx; V, xxxvii; VII, xxxvii). His approval it was that gave force to the decrees of councils or synods (Epp., IX, clvi), and his authority could annul them (Epp., V, xxxix, xli, xliv). To him appeals might be made even against other patriarchs, and by him bishops were judged and corrected if need be (Epp., II, l; III, lii, lxiii; IX, xxvi, xxvii). This position naturally made it impossible for him to permit the use of the title Ecumenical Bishop assumed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster, at a synod held in 588” (ibid.). See further 595. 589: 1. The East: Easter: End of mutiny by the Byzantine Eastern army. Summer/autumn: Campaign in Suania, part of Lazica, present-day Georgia. Autumn: Comentiolus replaces Philippicus as commander in the East; Byzantine victory at Sisarbarnon. The Persian noble Baram or Vahram revolts against shah Hormisdas and marches to the Zab River in Upper Mesopotamia. Winter: Comentiolus captures Akbas, also in Upper Mesopotamia (Theoph. Simocatta, books iii and iv). 2. The Balkans: Spring/summer: Slavs ravage the Balkans. 3a. Italy: Romanus, d. 596 or 597, was Exarch of Ravenna, 589-596/7, replacing Smaragdus who want insane (says Richards 1980: 12). In 589 Romanus became exarch in place of the discredited Smaragdus. In alliance with the Franks, who attacked across the Alps, the new commander launched an offensive in which the towns of Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza, Altinum, and Mantua were (briefly) recovered from the Lombards. (source: the Liber Pontificalis. Raymond Davis, trans., 1989: 61; Richards loc. cit.) The direction of this offensive followed the route of the ancient Via Amelia. The Franks failed to break through to join up with the Byzantines, and with the Lombards holed up in their fortified towns, the northerners soon withdrew. In 590 Romanus advanced as far as Pavia but he too withdrew, i.e. to the ParmaBologna region. But see 603. From west to east, the major towns in this region were/are: Pavia, on a N tributary of the Po; Piacenza on the Po River; and, on the south side of the Po River: Parma, Modena and Bologna. Mantua, on the north side, is about halfway from Pavia towards the delta of the Po. From Milan (the then Lombard capital), the Via Emilia or Aemilia ran SSE,

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crossing the Po at Piacenza. From there it ran in a straight line SE away from the Po via Parma and Modena to Bologna and thence to the coast at Rimini. The Byzantine capital Ravenna lay on the coast north of Rimini, joined to the Aemilia by a branch road. Parma changed hands several times during 590-603 before being recovered definitively by the Lombards. But the Byzantines still held Bologna as late as 700; it did not fall until 727-28. Thus the Parma-Modena-Bologna region became a stable border for over a century after 603. Cf below under 643. —Bologna was to remain Byzantine until 727. — As far as is known, the Longobards or Lombards raided Byzantine Sardinia only once (589), but did not obtain control of it. — S Italy: Lombards under Zotto, Duke of Beneventum, again annihilated the fortified monastery of Monte Cassino. 3b. Italy: Pope Pelagius fell a victim (8 February 590) to a terrible plague that began to devastate Italy at the very end of 589. The Lombard king Autharis too succumbed: 5 September 590 at Pavia. It reached Ravenna in 592-93 (Richards 1980: 13-15). “The year 589 was one of widespread disaster throughout all the empire [in Italy]. In Italy there was an unprecedented inundation. Farms and houses were carried away by the floods. The Tiber overflowed its banks, destroying numerous buildings, among them the granaries of the Church with all the store of corn [read: wheat and other grains]. Pestilence followed on the floods, and Rome became a very city of the dead. Business was at a standstill, and the streets were deserted save for the wagons which bore forth countless corpses for burial in common pits beyond the city walls.” —Cath. Encyc. under ‘Gregory I’. See also under 589-93. Gregory I, writing five years later, says that the waters flowed in over the walls of the city and flooded most of it. Dialogi, HI, 19; Migne, Pat. Lat., vol. 77, cols. 268, 269. This is surprising given that in the 5th century remodelling had doubled the height of the walls to 16 metres (52 ft) [see Amanda Claridge, 1998: Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, First, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998: 332-335]. Perhaps the waters broke through some decayed segments? Gregory of Tours also relates the story. "Now in the 15th year of King Childebert (590), our deacon came from the city of Rome with relics of the saints and reported that in the ninth month (November) of the previous year the waters of the Tiber had overspread Rome in such a flood that the ancient buildings had been destroyed and the storehouses of the church wrecked, within which some thousands of measures of wheat had been lost. . . . Thereupon followed a pestilence, which they call 'inguinaria' [inguinal or “groin” plague]; it broke out in the middle of the eleventh month (January 590) and first of all it attacked

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Pelagius, the pope, and speedily he died [8 February 590]; and after his death there was great mortality among the people by reason of this plague." —Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, quoted in Loomis p. 167; also Richards 1980: 41. 4. In Spain the Visigoths switch from Arian to Catholic Christianity: first church council at Toledo 589. Or in January 587, if we follow Grant, p.112: the date of the new king Reccared's own conversion (following the example of his older brother Hemenegild, d. 585). Spain: An inscription of New Carthage, of AD 589, records that Comentiolus, sent by the Emperor Maurice to defend the small imperial province against the Visigoths, bore the title of magister militum Spaniae (in CIL ii.3420). Comentiolus repaired the gates of Cartagena in lieu of the "barbarians" (i.e. the Visigoths) and left an inscription dated 1 September 589 in the city to this day. It has since been removed to a museum. 589-93: Flood, famine and plague in Italy (as noted above). Christie 2006: 40, 500 describes the flood episodes along the Po valley in 589-90 as “disastrous”. Paulus Diaconus: “There was a deluge of water in the territories of Venetia and Liguria [the region around Genoa], and in other regions of Italy such as is believed not to have existed since the time of Noah. Ruins were made of estates and country seats, and at the same time a great destruction of men and animals. The paths were obliterated, the highways demolished, and the river Athesis (Adige) then rose so high that around the church of the blessed martyr Zeno, which is situated outside the walls of the city of Verona, the water reached the upper windows”. And, “following this flood came [AD 590] a virulent plague called inguinaria [inguinal or “groin” plague]. This so devastated the population that out of a vast multitude very few survived” (Paulus D., Hist. Long., III.23-24). See 590 and 590-92 below. - Llewellyn 1993: 97 has noted that the lower-lying parts in and around Rome turned into unhealthy malaria-prone marshes as the drainage systems were neglected and the Tiber's embankments fell into disrepair in the course of the latter half of the sixth century. By this time Italy was divided about half between the three Lombard rulers and Byzantium; the latter still ruled about a third of the peninsula as well as Sicily. 590: 1. Jan-March: Coup d’état in Persia: civil war follows; shah Hurmazd or Hormidas is killed and his son Chosroes or Khusrau II flees to Byzantium. The leading general takes the throne as shah Bahram VI. See 591. Thus Sebeos, the Armenian historian: - “Chosrou sent men bearing costly gifts to emperor Maurice, and he [Chosrou] wrote to him the following: "Give me the throne and place of rule [which belonged] to my fathers and ancestors: dispatch an army to assist me defeat my enemy; establish my reign and I shall be your son. I shall give you the areas of the Syrians, Aruastan in its entirety as far as the

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city of Nisibis and from the country of the Armenians, the land of Tanuterakan rule [zyerkren Hayots' zashxarhn Tanuterakan ishxanut'ean] [extending] as far as Ararat, and to the city of Dwin [Dvin], and as far as the shore of the Sea of Bznunik' [Lake Van] and to Arhestawan [I shall also give] a large part of the land of Iberia, as far as the city of Tiflis. Let there be an oath of peace between the two of us, lasting until our deaths, and between our sons who rule after us". Thus http://rbedrosian.com/seb4.htm; accessed 2010. 2. October: The European Black Sea coast: Maurice leads an expedition to Anchialus to inspect damage caused by the Avars (Whitby 1988). 3a. PLAGUE in Italy. One of its victims was the pope or archbishop of Rome, Pelagius. See 591. 3b. Italy: Failure of a combined Frankish-Byzantine attack on the northern Lombard kingdom. This was a large-scale Frankish invasion which received aid from the Exarch. Pavia, Milan - the Lombard capital - and other cities held out until disease forced the Franks to withdraw. In the course of the military operations led by the exarch Romanus against the Lombards in 590, ending with the reconquista of some towns in northern Italy, the imperial army was escorted by a certain number of dromons [warships] ‘sailing’ [i.e. being rowed] up the Po (letter sent by emperor Maurice to Chilperich king of the Franks, in MGH [Monumenta Germaniae Historica], III, E Austr., no.40: p.146; also Pryor & Jeffreys Dromon p.164). 3c. N Italy: Bishop Severus of Aquileia and three of his fellow bishops, upholders of the Three Chapters, were taken by force to the exarch Smaragdus at Ravenna. They were kept there for a whole year and were forced to submit to Roman (papal) ecclesiastical authority. 3d. d. Authari, Lombard king. His widely respected widow, the Bavarian-born Catholic Theodolinda, marries and thereby elevates duke Agilulf of Turin to the kingship. The diadem from her crown has survived: a circular band of metal (gold?) inlaid with Gothic-style jewel-work (Cathedral Treasury of Monza [near Milan]: illustrated in Rice 1965 p.165). In Frankish Gaul: fl. Gregory of Tours, Latin writer, bishop of Tours from 578. Author of the Historia Francorum. First of the Irish traveller-monks, Columbanus, reaches the continent … . Plague, 590-92 The “fourth” wave of the plague broke out in Rome in 590 and remained in the city for four months, January to April. It reached Narni, NE of Rome, in summer 591 and then - moving north via the imperial highway - Ravenna, Grado and Istria in 591-92. And in 592, as reported

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by Evragius, it arrived in Antioch. —Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence, 2004. Evagrius, a lawyer and honorary prefect living in the city of Antioch, wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica covering the years 431-594 at the end of the sixth century. His is the most personal of the accounts of the plague, having contracted the disease himself in 542 while still young. Although he eventually recovered, later recurrences of the plague would deprive him of his first wife, several children, a grandchild, and many servants of the family. It returned four times to Antioch in the period 542-594 (Evagrius, trans. Walford). – Little wonder, perhaps, that Syria fell so easily to the Persians – see 608. 590-604: Gregory I ‘the Great’, Patriarch of Rome, sometimes called "last of the Latin Fathers" and "the first Pope". He was the first monk to assume the chair of St Peter. Cf 595. One of Gregory’s first acts was to banish all the lay attendants, pages, etc., from the Lateran palace, and substitute clerics in their place. There was now no magister militum (military commander) living in Rome, so the control even of military matters fell to the patriarch of Rome. “The inroads of the Lombards had filled the city with a multitude of indigent refugees, for whose support Gregory made provision, using for this purpose the existing machinery of the ecclesiastical districts, each of which had its deaconry or ‘office of alms’. The corn [read: wheat and other grains] thus distributed came chiefly from Sicily and was supplied by the estates of the Church” (Cath. Encyc. 1913). From Open Towns to Fortress-Villages, 555-598 The Gothic and Lombard wars as the End of Antiquity Moorhead, in CNMH vol 1, p.158, notes that in Cassiodorus’s works - floruit before AD 535 - there are many references to open cities, while forts (castra, castella) are barely mentioned. In pope Gregory’s [acc. 590] works, however, the narrative is all forts. At the end of the Gothic wars in 555, the ageing ex-senator and scholar Cassiodorus founded his (open and undefended) monastery on his estate at Squillace-Vivarium on the east coast of Calabria. By 598, however, just 30 years after the arrival of the Lombards in N Italy, it had been transformed into what pope Gregory describes as the castrum quod Scillacium dicitur, “the fortress that is called Squillace”. It is represented today by remains on the mons Castellum or “castle mount” beside the church of S. Maria del Mare (Christie p.462). De-population and Contraction of town life in Italy, AD 540-687 In his Archaeology, Christie [2006: 60] notes that during the Gothic and Lombard wars many urban centres were decimated and the survivors forced to flee to, or encouraged to migrate to, alternative, better fortified and equipped

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seats. Fully 42 bishoprics went out of existence. Perhaps surprisingly, southern Italy – for the south is sometimes viewed as partly cushioned from the warfare – was the most badly hit: thus no bishoprics appear in Lucania, the middle section of the Italian boot, under pope Gregory (d. 604); and, of the 15 previously attested in Apulia*, just one is recorded, namely at Sipontum (Manfredonia). The formerly important see of Canosa/Canusium had no clergy at all in 591. (*) The Lombards will push down to Taranto and Brindisi by 687. Slavery Continues “The papacy owned slaves, and the pope was their master. Some worked in domestic settings, others on the papacy's vast landholdings. Of course free lessees and coloni (serfs of various kinds) also worked on church land … It is impossible to know how many slaves the papacy owned, or how much of its property was farmed by slaves. But, while there may have been growth in tied tenancy [serfdom] during the period, there is a growing consensus that there was not a precipitous decline in the slave population. Papal slaves were not a rarity.” —Adam Serfass, ‘Slavery and Pope Gregory’. In 598 we have a report of Jewish merchants buying pagan and Christian slaves in Gaul and bringing them, at the behest of imperial officials, to Naples for sale (McCormick 2001: 625 note 29). Cf 593 above. Reccared, acc. 586, the king of Visigothic Spain, eliminated the death penalty for Jews convicted of proselytising among Christians and ignored the pope or archbishop of Rome Gregory's request that the trade in Christian slaves at Narbonne, in Visigoth Septimania, be forbidden to Jews (cf below, 593). – Bachrach 1973. Map: A map of Italy at the turn of the sixth century can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Agilulf%27s_Italy.gif. On the peninsula, the Lombards held significantly more territory than the empire. 590-616: or 591-615: r. Agilulf, Lombard king with his seat at Milan. Formerly duke of Milan, he was of Thuringian (German) origin. - A gilded bronze helmet or visor inscribed with his name has survived: the earliest known portrait of a Germanic ruler seated on a throne. As against Milan, the other kings before and after him preferred smaller centres in which the Lombards would not be a minority. The most important royal residences were at Verona and Pavia. There were others at Brescia and Cividale. —Liebeschuetz 2000. 591: 1. Persian civil war: With Byzantine help, Khusrau/Chosroes seeks to recover his

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throne. The Byzantine force aiding Khusrau is said to have numbered 40,000. Khusrau advances to Dara, and restores the town to Byzantium. Spring/summer: he advances to the Tigris; Mebodes or Mebod captures various Persian royal palaces. Summer: The Persians under king Vahram or Baram manoeuvre against Chosroes in Azerbaijan. The combined Byzantine-Persian army of Chosroes [Khosrau] defeats Baram (Chronicle of Se’ert, in Patrologia Orientalis XIII/4, p. 466). Byzantium acquires western Armenia, as a gift for restoring the Persian shah. 2. Pope Gregory orders grain to be sent from Sicily for Rome, which is affected by famine, drought and plague. From 591: With peace in the East, Maurice is able to turn his full attention to his near northwest. He successfully campaigns against the Avars in the NW Balkans and recovers Sirmium (Fine 1991: 32). Cf 593, 596. Although the Avars could operate at close range with lance and sword, like all steppes-people their preferred method was long-range (horse) archery, retreats and sudden returns. If an enemy fled, he was harried until completely destroyed (Hyland 1994: 32, citing Maurice's Strategikon). Pragmatic Relations in Italy Brown, in Gentlemen and Officers, 1984: 73, notes that there was an imperial policy of winning over dissident or greedy Lombards. And it was broadly successful. No less than 14 or 54% of the 26 dukes and magistri militum military commanders - serving Byzantium in Italy between the Lombard invasions and the death (604) of Gregory I were Germans (ethnic Lombards) by birth. “The readiness of the Lombard dukes to transfer allegiance to the Empire demonstrates the shakiness of the early Lombard kings’ authority”. 592-93: 1. Sixth return of the plague to Constantinople and the East, as related, eg, by Evagrius (Stathakopoulos p.118). 2a. Italy: In 592 the Roman patriarch Gregory “received a threatening letter from Ariulf of Spoleto, which was followed almost immediately by the appearance of that chief before the walls of Rome. At the same time Arichis [Latin Arogis] of Benevento advanced on Naples, which happened at the moment to have no bishop nor any officer of high rank in command of the garrison. Gregory at once took the surprising step of appointing a tribune on his own authority to take command of the city (Epp., II, xxxiv), and, when no notice of this strong action was taken by the imperial authorities, the pope conceived the idea of himself arranging a separate peace with the Lombards (Epp., II, xlv)”. —Cath Encyc., online, under ‘St Gregory’. Ariulf of Spoleto attempts to take Rome. He succeeded only in taking several forts

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on the highway from Ravenna to Rome, but this briefly divided the imperialByzantine ("Greek") realm and momentarily united the Lombard realms. Subsequently (see 593) the northern Lombards under King Agilulf will push south and besiege Rome. The exarch was at Ravenna, so the defence of Rome was managed by the local Byzantine commander ("magister militum") and the pope or archbishop of Rome Gregory. Agilulf was paid money to withdraw (593). 2b. Italy: Pope Gregory I - the term is anachronistic, so better: the patriarch of Rome - appealed to the exarch Romanus for help in assisting Naples, then under Lombard attack. Romanus evidently thought it more prudent to remain in NE Italy. Gregory then made peace with the Duchy of Spoleto, in order to relieve Naples which was threatened by the Lombards of Benevento. 2c. Italy: Duke Ariulf of Spoleto continually threatened the communication route between Rome and Ravenna and captured a number of other places belonging to the empire; and in the south Arichis, duke of Benevento, co-operating with Ariulf, pressed hard upon Naples. About the end of July, Pope Gregory concluded a separate peace with Ariulf which aroused great indignation at Ravenna and Constantinople because it was beyond the authority of the Roman patriarch to make such peace with an independent power. It would seem that it was this action which stirred the exarch Romanus to a campaign (see 593). 592-93: 50 YEARS SINCE THE FIRST GREAT PLAGUE OF 542. We may imagine there was no real recovery as yet in the number of people; on the contrary, the many revisitations of the plague no doubt continued to drive down the size of the population. On the other hand, the economic effect should have been positive, at least for non-landowners. In the second half of the 14th century, the depopulation caused by the Black Death led in western Europe to much higher wages for those who survived, mainly because of the reduced supply of labour. The resulting jump in prosperity is one of the paradoxes of the ‘Malthusian Trap’. In northern and central Italy around AD 1425 the effect was dramatic: real wages reached their pre-modern peak; in England the effect was less pronounced but still very significant. Real wages began to decline about a century after the plague, and did not return to the long run average until around 1500 in the case of Italy or 1600 in the case of a less urbanised England (Clark 2007: 47). We would expect to see a similar outcome in Byzantium, and it should have been visible at least by 590. There is evidence for such an effect in the immediate aftermath the first plague of 542. But is it observable after 575? See the entry below for 594: perhaps evidence that the effect was washed out by then. 593: 1. Emperor Maurice issued an edict forbidding any serving soldiers to resign from

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the army to enter monastic life. Cf 594. The Patriarch of Rome, Gregory, circulates the edict but bitterly criticises it in correspondence with the emperor (Duffy p.51). 2. Thrace and Illyria: Priscus’s 2nd Balkan campaign: in autumn, the Byzantine army returns to Thrace for the winter; the Slavs ravage widely in the Balkans. The Avars besiege Belgrade [ancient Singidunum] but fail to take it. The ODB remarks that in two or three decades the Avars had transformed the bands of Slavic frontiersmen into shipbuilders and formidable amphibious troops. Already in 593, the Pannonian Sklavenoi built ships or boats for the Avars as well as a bridge over the Sava River in present-day Serbia. —ODB ed. Pritsak 1991: III, 1916. Italy: Contest for the Via Amerina

3a. Italy: The Exarch reasserts imperial authority along the Via Cassia and the Via Amerina, key roads leading into Rome from the NE and north respectively. In all, 10 towns and villages were recaptured from the Lombards: “Romanus the exarch . . . wholly ignoring the papal peace, ... gathered all his troops, attacked and regained Perugia [on the Via Amerina - from the Spoletan Lombards] (592), and then marched to Rome, where he was received with imperial honours. The next spring, however, he quitted (593) the city and took away its garrison with him, so that both pope and citizens were now more exasperated against him than before.* Moreover, the exarch's campaign had roused the Northern Lombards, and King Agilulf marched on Rome, arriving there probably some time in June 593.” —Cath. Encyc. (*) Gregory [Ep. v.36] accused Romanus of ‘abandoning Rome so that Perugia might be held’. “Romanus, the patrician [patrikios, a court title] and exarch of Ravenna, proceeded to Rome. During his return to Ravenna [via the Cassian and Amerinan Ways*], he re-occupied the cities [read: fortress-villages] that were [had been] held by the Langobards, of which the names are as follows: 1 Sutrium (modern Sutri,** on the Via Cassia NNW of Rome), 2 Polimartium (Bomarzo: NE of Viterbo),*** 3 Horta (Orte), [Via Amerina:] 4 Tuder (Todi: west of Spoleto), 5 Ameria (Amelia: NW of Narni)****, 6 Perusia (Perugia), 7 Luceolis (Cantiano, NE of Perugia), and some other cities.” —Paulus D., 4.8. (*) The Via Amerina ran from from Rome north to Orte, where its crossed the upper Tiber, thence to Amelia and on to Todi and Perugia. (**) The Via Cassia was one of several highways that ran from Tuscany to Rome. Sutri was a key point on the Rome side (south-east) of Viterbo.

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(***) Evidently Romanus’s troops proceeded up the Via Cassia beyond Sutri about as far as our Viterbo and then left it, crossing east via Bomarzo to the Via Amerina at Orte. The other towns mentioned are all on the Via Amerina. (****) Both Orte and Amelia lay on the Via Amerina. Location: Bomarzo, Orte and Amelia constitute a triangle NE of Viterbo, straddling the upper Tiber valley and today’s A1 highway, on the Rome side of Orvieto. The Tiber runs through Orte. Narni, SE of Amelia, was the nodal point where the Via Falminia divided into a western and an eastern leg. Lombard Spoleto lay on the eastern leg. 3b. Attempt by the Lombard king Agilulf to take Rome: a protracted siege of the city ensued. As noted, the Exarch Romanus had left the city and taken its garrison with him. The exarch's campaign had roused Agilulf, who, after re-taking Perugia, marched on Rome, arriving there probably some time in June 593. Pope Gregory knew that the city’s grain store was too small to old very long. And, from the battlements of the city, he could see the captive Latins driven from the Campagna - the valley of the lower Tiber, - roped together with halters around their necks, on their way to slavery: "Romans tied by the neck [with ropes around their necks] like dogs” - "and led off to be sold as slaves to the Franks” (Letter V.40: variant translations). The siege of the city was soon abandoned, however, and Agilulf retired. Ignoring the Exarch in Ravenna, the patriarch of Rome, Gregory, used a large gift of silver to obtain a treaty with Agilulf: first stirrings of political independence by the papacy. Although Rome eluded him, Agilulf at this time, as we have said, took control of Perugia, a key fortress town (Collins 1991: 197). In a letter (V, xxxix) Gregory refers to himself as "the paymaster of the Lombards", and apparently silver was the chief inducement to raise the siege (Barry 2003: 50; also Wikipedia, 2010, under ‘Gregory’: relying heavily on the Cath. Encyc.). "The emperor has a paymaster for his troops in Ravenna," he wrote to the empress, "but he leaves me to be the paymaster of the Lombards in Rome." The silver paid was equivalent to 500 Roman pounds of gold or 36,000 nomismata. By this time, some Lombard notables had switched to Catholic Christianity, but their kings remained resolutely Arian (although Agilulf’s own son was baptised as a Catholic in about 604). In the Lombard kingdom, some towns had Catholic bishops, although most were Arian (Richards p.40; also Collins p.197). Cf 661-62. 4. Slavery is the topic of a letter from pope Gregory to the praetor (civil governor) of Sicily. The patriarch protests the sale of Christian slaves to Jewish merchants (among other routes, they operated along the route from Narbonne and Marseilles to Antioch). He offers no protest about non-Christian slaves such as those traded from the Slavic lands (Rotman 2009: 73-74). As we have seen [above: after 690], Gregory himself, or the church he headed, was a major slaveowner. (On the church’s justification of slavery in the first millennium AD, see

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Rotman 2009: 135 ff.) 5. Italy: Gregory writes an account of the long-dead Benedict, the monk who founded the great monastery at Monte Cassino. 593-94: The Balkans: Emperor Maurice directs (593) the Balkans army to winter north of the Danube and to subsist on the land (rather than receive pay): this will lead (594) to near-mutiny. See next. Maurice moved Byzantine military action to Slavic territory: the first crossing of the Danube was made in 594. 594: 1a. Maurice tried to avoid paying the troops in cash on the payday in 594 (payments were made annually at Easter) by offering them free uniforms and arms in lieu of cash. To avoid a mutiny, his general Priscus had to rescind the proposal (Theophylact VII.1.1.9). 1b. Edict allowing sons to inherit their fathers' jobs as soldiers in the field army: this was strongly welcomed. Evidently opportunities outside the army were far less attractive (Treadgold 1997: 283). The average annual pay of a soldier was 20 nomismata (gold coins). 2. Italy: The Lombard king Agilulf appoints Arichis I (a.k.a. Arigisus, Arechi) duke of Benevento (alt. date: 591). During Arichis’ term he often found himself at war with his neighbours, the Byzantine and other small southern Italian citystates. Capua came under his control and he annexed considerable parts of Campania and southern Abruzzi to his duchy. His long rule lasted until 641. Gaul, realm of the Franks: d. Gregory of Tours, author of the Historiae Francorum: The Post-Antique West: Gregory's attitude toward pagan literature was the conventional one of his age, namely fear of the demonic influences embodied in it. He expresses it thus: "We ought not to relate their lying fables lest we fall under sentence of eternal death." And we hear of bishops who were illiterate. It is plain that the trend of the evidence is all in one direction, namely that in Gaul by this time the liberal arts had disappeared from education. Gregory knew he could not write the literary language but in spite of this he made the attempt, and the result is what we have: a sort of hybrid, halfway between the popular speech and the formally correct literary language of Antiquity. Thus Ernest Brehaut, introduction to his 1916 translation. 594-95: Italy: Gregory, the patriarch of Rome, seeks to broker peace between the Romanic-Byzantine Exarch and the Lombards, but fails (Richards, Popes p.173).

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“Gregory began once again to mediate a private treaty even without the consent of the Exarch Romanus. This threat was speedily reported to Constantinople and the emperor Maurice responded with a violent letter, now lost, received in June 595. Luckily, Gregory's scathing reply has been preserved (Epistles V, xxxvi). Still, Gregory seems to have realised that independent action could not secure what he wished, and we hear no more about a separate peace” (Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Gregory’). Cf 595.3a below. 595: 1a. Spring/summer: Priscus’s 3rd Balkan campaign; the Avars ravage Dalmatia. See 598. 1b. Italy and Slovenia: The ancestors of the Slovenes, still of course pagan, first appear in the historical record in the Alps and on the Adriatic after the departure of the Lombards for Italy as vassals of the Avars. The Slavic-Avar progress towards the Eastern Alps is traceable on the basis of synodal records of the Aquileian metropolitan church which reveal the decline of ancient dioceses: Emona [Ljubljana], Celeia [Celye], Poetovio [Ptuj], Aguntum [Linz], Teurnia [near Lendorf], the old capital of Roman Norcium, Virunum [in southern Austria near the Slovene border], and Scarabantia [Odenburg]. The first specific date in Slovene history is 595, when they fought an unsuccessful battle with the Bavarian duke Tassilo at Toblach (Dobbiaco), SE of Innsbruck, just west of today’s ItaloAustria border (Cath. Encyc. under ‘Slavs’). Cf 600. 2. Rome vs Constantinople: In 588 Patriarch John IV ‘the Faster’ had taken the title of Ecumenical Patriarch - O‘ikoumenikòs: "world-wide", “universal” or better: "imperial" patriarch. Old Rome’s protest against this was renewed by Pope Gregory in 595 (Richards p. 175). cf 607. The Council of Chalcedon, 451, had established Constantinople as a patriarchate with jurisdiction over Asia Minor and Thrace and gave it the second place after Rome (canon xxviii). The pope or archbishop of Rome Leo I, 440-61, had declined to admit this canon, which was made in the absence of his legates; and for centuries Rome would refuse to give the second place to Constantinople. The Patriarch of Rome, Gregory, interpreted 'ecumenical' as meaning 'universal'. Richards p.11 attributes this to Rome's hyper-sensitivity about its status. Gregory protested vehemently against it in a long correspondence addressed first to John, then to the Emperor Maurice, and the Empress Constantina and others. Rome argued that "if one patriarch is called universal the title is thereby taken from the others" (Epp., V, xviii, 740). To oppose it, Gregory assumed a title borne since then by his successors. "He refuted the name 'universal' and first of all began to write himself 'servant of the servants of God' at the beginning of his letters, with sufficient humility, leaving to all his successors this hereditary evidence of his meekness" (or so the Catholic Encyclopedia saw it: citing Johannes Diaconus, "Vita S. Gregorii"). 3a. Poor relations between Romanus the Exarch of Italy in Ravenna and Pope

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Gregory in Rome. Writes Gregory: "I will only say that his [Romanus's] malice towards us is worse than the swords of the Lombards. The enemies who kill us outright are kinder than the State officials [magistrates of the commonwealth], who wear us out with their malice, their robberies [plundering] and their frauds [deceits]" (quoted in Richards p.171; brackets: variant translation). The finances of the Byzantine regime in Italy were so critical in 595 that they depended on the transfer of revenues from the less pressed islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily and subventions from the emperor himself. The reason, presumably, was that, because of warfare with the Lombards, conditions on the peninsula were so disturbed that few taxes were able to be generated or collected (Brown 1984: 7). Cf below under 596-606 and 599. Some scholars believe that fiscal pressure was felt as particularly unbearable by the populations of Italian and African exarchates because their taxes were not reinvested in the local economy, but sent to Constantinople. This process would have involved a progressive impoverishment of the local societies of the empire. This is possibly true, but it is worth noting that in a letter sent by pope Gregory to the Augusta or empress Constantina in 595, it is clearly stated that the taxation which was levied from Italy was used to cope with the military needs of the Italian exarchate itself (Consentina, Byzantine Sardinia). 3b. Patriarch vs Emperor: In relation to the Lombards, the Cath. Encyc. proposes that Gregory placed all his hopes on their Queen Theodelinda, a Catholic and a personal friend. “The exarch, however, looked at the whole affair in another light, and, when a whole year was passed in fruitless negotiations, Gregory began once again to mediate a private treaty.” Accordingly, in May, 595, the pope wrote to a friend at Ravenna a letter (Epp., V, xxxiv) threatening to make peace with Agilulf even without the consent of the Exarch Romanus. “This threat was speedily reported to Constantinople, where the exarch was in high favour, and the Emperor Maurice at once sent off to Gregory a violent letter, now lost, accusing him of being both a traitor and a fool. This letter Gregory received in June 595. Luckily, the pope's answer has been preserved to us (Epp., V, xxxvi) . . . . Still, in spite of his scathing reply, Gregory seems to have realised that independent action could not secure what he wished, and we hear no more about a separate peace”. Paganism in Byzantine Sardinia

“Of paganism in Sicily we find no trace, save that pagan slaves, doubtless not natives of the island, were held by Jews. Herein is a contrast between Sicily and Sardinia, where, according to a letter from [pope] Gregory to the empress Constantina, wife of the emperor Maurice (594-595), praying for a lightening of taxation in both islands, paganism still lingered”. —Encyc. Brit. 1911 edn, under ‘Sicily’. 596:

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1. (Or 595:) Priscus recaptures Belgrade. See 599. 2. Italy: First historical mention of Amalfi as a Byzantine port; it was a castrum [fortified village] already with its own bishop. This is also its last mention for a further 200 years. It came under the Byzantine duke of Naples until 839 (Kreutz 1996: 80, citing pope Gregory). 596-606: Italy: Lombards vs the empire in the Po valley. The contest took place along the axis of the old Via Aemilia. In Christie’s words, pp.40-41, “the local towns faltered almost fatally and the lands (were) forcibly abandoned; a military frontier may well have been imposed by the Byzantine armies, whose forces exploited the walled centres as military camps and depots. There are clear indications of islands of Italian-Byzantine resistance, either battered by the Lombards or ignored until time was available to deal with these stragglers. . . . “ “By the time truces were drawn up between the Byzantine governor-general or exarch and the Lombard king in 603, 604 and confirmed in 605, … pope Gregory lamented that ‘now the cities have been depopulated, fortresses razed, churches burned down, monasteries and nunneries destroyed, the fields abandoned by mankind and, destitute of any cultivator of the land, lies empty and solitary. No landholder lives on it; wild beasts occupy places once held by a multitude of men’”. Cf 599. The archaeology of Brescia around 600 has been described as follows. We may be tempted to ascribe the town’s ravaged condition to the Lombard-Byzantine war, but only some of it can be attributed to the struggles of AD 696-706; much of the decay and devastation dates from the earlier Gothic-Byzantine wars of the 540s and 550s: “ ...Roman buildings destroyed by fire, collapsed masonry left in situ to encumber streets and private places, blocked drains, ... makeshift houses in wood or the requisition of abandoned rooms [in classical style buildings] ...burials scattered haphazardly amid the houses, and the reduction to cultivation of large areas of the urban fabric.” —Quoted in Muhlberger; cf Broglio’s book Brescia, cited in Wickham 2005. In 603, Parma was re-taken definitively by the Lombards, while the imperials retained Bologna. The Parma-Bologna region, centred on Modena, will remain the borderland for over a century. —Italian Wikipedia under ‘Parma’, 2009, citing Marzio Dall'Acqua and Marzio Lucchesi, Parma città d'oro, Parma: Albertelli, 1979. 597: 1. Dalmatia: The Avars sent a massive raid through Byzantine Illyria (Bosnia and Dalmatia) which destroyed some 40 fortresses (Fine 1991: 32). Or in 598.

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2. Slav siege of Byzantine Thessalonica, which fails, conducted by the Slav tribes settled in the surrounding region of Macedonia. Or more probably in 586: see there. See 609. Most historians prefer 586, but the case for the year 597 is put thus by Vryonis 1981: “The first major Avaro-Slavic attack on Thessaloniki: The Miracula of St. Demetrius date the appearance of this army to Sunday, September 22, in the reign of Maurice, i.e. either in September of 586 or in September of 597. … the army besieging Thessaloniki on Sunday, September 22, in the reign of Maurice, was fully possessed of a highly developed siege technology. According to Theophylactus, they began to apply this technology only in 587; therefore the evidence for dating the first major Avaro-Slavic attack on Thessaloniki in 597 rather than 586 is now much stronger.” It is evident that by 600 all the country north of Thessaloniki was virtually lost to the Empire and that the penetration of peninsular Greece followed at once. 597: (1) d. Columba, Irish missionary to pagan Pictish-Celtic Scotland. (2) The prelate Augustine, sent from Rome, arrives in England to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons. First archbishop of Canterbury. In the west, the ‘Romano-Britons’ of Powys and the other “Welsh” principalities and the Irish were long since Christian, but the AngloSaxons and Picts remained pagan into the 600s. 597-98: Italy: The emperor was preoccupied with wars on the Eastern borders and, with the various succeeding exarchs unable to secure Rome from invasion, the patriarch of Rome Gregory took a personal initiative of starting (579) negotiations for a peace treaty with the Lombards. It was completed during the autumn of 598, when Callincus was Exarch, and was only afterwards recognised by Maurice. But it would last, or at least it remained in place, till the end of Gregory’s reign (604). Cf 601-02: Callinicus captures Agiluf’s daughter. Callincius completed the negotiations with Agilulf during 598, and in the following year (599), after all parties had signed, a formal peace of two years' time was recognised, where the Lombards were acknowledged as sovereign rulers of their holdings. —A Jones et al. 1992: 264 597-602/03: Callinicus was exarch of Italy (A Jones et al. 1992: 264). 598: 1. Balkan campaign renewed: Priscus is blockaded at Tomi, north of the Danube on the Black Sea: modern Constantja in Rumania; truce with the Avars. Comentiolus leads an expedition to relieve Priscus; but is routed (spring). The Avars advance to Drizipera in Thrace. Maurice leads an expedition to the Long Walls (in Thrace); Avar-Byzantine treaty. Complaints by the army against

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Comentiolus. Illyricum: The khan of the Avars advanced from Sirmium through Byzantine Bosnia, devastated Dalmatia, and demolished 40 ‘cities’ (read: towns and villages). Cf 599. 2. Walled monasteries: At the end of the Gothic-Byzantine wars in 555, the ageing ex-senator and scholar Cassiodorus founded his open and undefended monastery on his estate at Squillace-Vivarium in Calabria; by 598, however, 30 years after the arrival of the Lombards* in N Italy, it had been transformed into the castrum quod Scillacium dicitur - “the fortress that is called Squillace” which has been identified with remains on the mons Castellum (“castle mount”) beside the church of S. Maria del Mare (Christie p.462). (*) Paulus Diaconus (4.18) inserts in his history the text of a letter to Arechis of Benevento (acc. 591) from the ‘pope’ or archbishop of Rome Gregory, d. 604. The Roman patriarch asks that the Lombard sub-commanders in Bruttium (our Calabria) be directed to help with the transport of timber beams from that province for the repair of churches in Rome. The Lombards were to supply oxen to bring the beams to the coast whence they would be transported to Rome by sea. But evidently Byzantium retained control of most of Calabria at the end of Arechis’s long reign (d.641). 3. Byzantine Malta: Soldiers are mentioned in a letter concerning the Maltese group of islands that Pope Gregory ‘the Great’ addressed to the Bishop of Syracuse in October 598. This would suggest, says Buhagiar, that the islands had some sort of military garrison. They might in fact have been governed by a military ‘giunta’ of the type found in Italy and Sicily. This is suggested by a couple of seals, one of which (of unknown provenance) commemorated the ‘archon and droungarios’ [lord and senior officer] of Malta. —Mario Buhagiar 1997. 598-601: 1. Italy: Leontius, fl. late 6th/early 7th centuries: Byzantine official. After serving as quaestor [army quarter-master] with title of consul* in Sicily, he remained an important figure. He received a number of letters from Pope Gregory I between AD 598 and 601. (*) Greek hypatos. An honorary rank rather than an office with a unique or specific function. Typically it was a title borne by people in mid-level administrative and fiscal posts (ODB 1991: 963-64). 2. Plague again in the East, Africa and Italy - Ravenna (598: the date given by Richards 1980: 16) and Rome (599). It broke out at Constantinople in 599 and moved thence into Asia Minor. This was its seventh visit to Constantinople. The same year, 599, it was reported in Syria. It was in North Africa and Italy in 599600; at Ravenna in 600 [the date given by Stathakopoulos 2004: 333] and Verona in 601.

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599: 1a. Balkans: Joint campaign by Priscus and Comentiolus on the upper Danube: they lead (summer) a major expedition via Sirmium into the heartland of the Avars north of the Danube. There they defeat the Avars in four battles. It is said that “17,000” Avar prisoners were taken (Treadgold 1997: 234). 1b. Maurice refused ransom for Byzantine prisoners held by the Avars: “12,000” Byzantine men are executed. 2a. The West: The exarch Callinicus fought in person against the Slav invaders of Istria, the peninsula south of Trieste, today the western-most part of Croatia (Brown 1984: 91). 2b. Italy: A treaty (it was confirmed in 605) was struck between Byzantium and the Lombards: the Exarch Callinicus, ruling in Ravenna, agrees with king Agilulf (ruling from Milan) to formally partition northern Italy. But no extra troops were sent from Constantinople; evidently the Avar war had depleted the treasury. Cf 602. The grave economic malaise that afflicted Italy is indicated by the difficulty the authorities had in raising relatively minor sums. In 599 the exarch was compelled to borrow 600 pounds or litrai of gold [43,200 nomismata] from the archbishop of Ravenna, and in the early years of the following century the authorities had difficulties in meeting the demands of the Lombards for tribute payments ranging from 12,000 to 36,000 solidi ( = up to 500 pounds) (Brown 1984: 7). Cf above: AD 561. Wickham says that in Italy the “local state was weaker [than in other parts of the Empire] . . .; tax-raising slowly broke down even in Byzantine areas, as it had done in the Lombard kingdom by 600” (Framing the Early Middle Ages). 3. Spain: During the rule of Reccared, 586-601, the Byzantines again took the offensive and probably even regained, or gained, some ground. Reccared recognised the legitimacy of the Byzantine frontier and wrote to Pope Gregory requesting that a copy of the earliest treaty with the empire be obtained from the Emperor Maurice. Gregory simply replied (August 599) that the text of the treaty had been lost in a fire before Justinian’s death and warned Reccared that he would not want it found because it would have granted the Rhomaniyans more territory than they actually then possessed. —NCMH: New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Rosamund McKetterick et al., 1995: 349. New Technology in the West: the Plough The light sole-ard or scratch plough or “atratum” [Gk arotron] is replaced by the heavy mouldboard (slicing) plough or “plovus”. Lynn White dates the first indisputable appearance of the mouldboard plough to

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after the Roman period, namely 643 AD, in a northern Italian (Lombard) document: White, Medieval Technology, Oxford 1962, p. 50. On the other hand, White describes the linguistic researches of B. Bratanic, who showed that 26 technical terms connected with the heavy plough and its use "are to be found in all three of the great Slavic linguistic groups, the eastern, western and southern", pointing to its adoption by these people before their division in the later sixth century, and indicating that the mouldboard plough was invented by 600, then introduced to western Europe.* Despite this, "Bratanic does not claim the invention of the heavy plough for the Slavs, but for 'some northern peasant culture' as yet unidentified”: White, Medieval Technology, pp. 49f. (*) The mouldboard plough was never adopted by Byzantium, which continued to use the scratch-plough it inherited from Antiquity: Harvey 1989: 122. 600: 1. Peace treaty with the Avars: Maurice agrees to pay 120,000 nomismata (gold coins) to the Khagan. The treaty did not hold (Fine 1991: 32). See 601. 2. (or 598:) An army delegation goes to Maurice to complain about their misuse by the general Comentiolus. Among the party was one Phocas, a ‘centurion’, who for his troubles was publicly humiliated (but later is elevated to emperor: see 602). By 600, Phocas was a non-commissioned officer or ‘subaltern’ (junior officer) in the Roman army that served in the Balkans, and apparently was viewed as a leader by his fellow soldiers. We may guess that he was the commander of a bandon (arithmos, numerus, tagma) of 300 men, i.e. in our terms halfway between a major and a lieutenant-colonel. He was a member of a delegation sent by the army in that year to Constantinople to submit grievances to the government about Comentiolus, the army's commander. The delegation's complaints were rejected, and, according to several sources, Phocas himself was mistreated (slapped etc) by prominent court officials at this time (Olster 1993: 51). 3. The NW: Dalmatia was threatened by the Slavs, and Gregory, the pope or archbishop of Rome, wrote in July of 600 to Bishop Maximus of Salona, near Split, of the terrible anxiety he felt for the local bishop and his flock. Gregory also mentioned that the Slavs were now finding their way into Italy. - "Et de Slavorum gente, quæ vobis valde imminet, affligor vehementer et conturbor. Affligor in his, quæ iam in vobis patior; conturbor quia per Istriæ aditum iam Italiam intrare coeperunt". - ‘And by the people of the Slavs, who greatly threaten you [Maximus], you are being vigorously afflicted and disquieted. You are being afflicted by this, that already in (by) you is being suffered; you are being confounded because (you) having been attacked through Istria already, they [the Slavs] have begun to enter into Italy.’ – My poor translation: MO’R. Coupled with the other disasters of the reign of Justinian, the plague may have

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reduced the population of the Mediterranean world by the year 600 to no more than 60 percent of its count a century earlier, says J. C. Russell, "That Earlier Plague", Demography 5 (1968) 174-184. c. 600: 1. Italy: Taxation and slavery are covered in a letter from the patriarch of Rome, Gregory, to Constantinople: “The island of Corsica is burdened with such an excess of exactions and burdens [imperial taxation] that those who live in it are barely able to pay what is demanded by selling their children. Hence it happens that, abandoning their own dear country, the inhabitants of that land are forced to flee to that most cruel nation, the Lombards. For what can they suffer from the barbarians that is more burdensome and cruel than that they should be so reduced and straitened as to be compelled to sell their own children? [sold in order to afford their taxes]”. — Text in Cave & Coulson 1965: 356-357. 2. Italy: 73 fortresses and towns. A list attributed to George of Cyprus named 40 imperial castra or strong-holds and 33 other centres on the Italian mainland (not including Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica). Territory In 600 "New Rome" (Byzantium) still dominated the whole Mediterranean basin, from the Straits of Gibraltar to Egypt and Palestine. Only Greece and Italy had seen serious losses to the imperium: the Lombards dominated north and northwest Italy and there were two independent Lombard dukedoms or "duchies" (Spoleto and Benevento) separating Byzantine Ravenna and Rome from the Byzantine "boot" of Italy. Greece was being raided by the Avars and Slavs but still remained under the control of Constantinople. Cf 603, 605. The Eclipse of Trade in the West By AD 600 pottery imports to Northern Italy were rare; ‘ARS” (‘African red slipware’: fine table-ware from Byzantine Tunisia) is only occasional by now, except in Friuli at the top of the Adriatic – traded via the Byzantine-controlled ports of Aquileia and Grado. Wickham notes that ARS even reached what is now southern Austria, via Aquilea or Grado and thence over the Alps, until the early seventh century. But for the most part Lombard and Byzantine N Italy relied after 600 almost wholly on local production of ceramics: as seen for example in the archaeology of Modena (Wickham, Early Middle Ages, 2005: 731). One of the very last long-distance trade-ships still operating in the West was a grain transport wrecked off southern France between 600 and 625 (Kingsley 2009: 33). Likewise in south Italy, most ceramics were now domestically produced, although Lombard Benevento, well inland, was still receiving some ARS into the late seventh century. Pottery production in the South, e.g. at Byzantine Naples,

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was overall of higher quality than in the North (ibid, pp.736 ff). Troop Numbers and Total Population in Italy Not all of the “73” centres noted earlier under c.600 can have been garrisoned with troops. T S Brown guesses - there is no literary evidence - that the total enrolled strength of the imperial army in Italy was 15,000. He deducts an estimated 5,000 men at Ravenna and 2,000 each in Grado [the island port of Aquilea, capital of Venetia-Istria, west of Trieste at the top of the Gulf of Venice], Rome and Naples. That leaves only 3,000 for all the other castra. Allowing, say, 300 men - one numerus or bandon - per castrum, the 3,000 would be enough to garrison just 10 minor strongholds (cf discussion in Brown 1984: 84). Christie p.355 guesses that Grado may have had as few as 1,200 soldiers; but proposes that certain strategic bases were garrisoned with “much grander” forces, such as the 4,000 troops at Osimo, south of Ravenna near Ancona. He even proposes that Liguria alone - the littoral province around Genoa - had 13,000 troops, arguing that each main centre was garrisoned by at least one numerus or regiment of “500” men (p.372). This is not plausible when we note that major expeditionary armies could number as few as 15,000 men. Cf later after the entry for 641: Treadgold and others suggest that 10,000 is more probable for the total troop numbers in Italy. Even if half the 73 centres were garrisoned, the average per centre would hav been 278 soldiers. Another way to approach this question is via the size of the total population, noting that over the ‘Byzantine millennium’ troop numbers (see Treadgold, Army pp. 161-63) fluctuated around the level of 1.2 to 2.4% of the population. McEvedy & Jones, Population History, propose that in 600 Italy had only about 3.5 million people, about half that of the heyday of the undivided empire around AD 150. (There is good data for around AD 150, and certainly a fall of 50% by 600 is credible.) Allowing for the fact that some regions, e.g. Sicily and the Po Valley, were more intensively settled than some others, e.g. the mainly upland Lombard duchy of Spoleto, we can say very generally that in 600 about half the population Italy was ruled by Byzantines (1.75 M) and half lived in the Lombard realms (1.75 M). Now 1.5% of 1.75 M is 26,250. That would represent the upper limit of the number of the semi-professional troops able to be fielded by the empire in Italy. Thus Brown’s guess of ‘15,000’ is sensible; and Christie’s figures for Liguria looks very doubtful. Estimates for the population of the city of old Rome in AD 600 range from as low as 5,000 people to as high as 50,000 (Christie p.61). Holmes 2001: 26 proposes that in the late 500s Rome might have had ‘30,000’ people, and so perhaps only 20,000 around 600. 600-603: Severe famines (Stathakapoulos p.337).

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601-02: Illyria: In a campaign against the Avars and their Slav and Gepid subjects, Byzantine armies under Priscus cross the Danube in the region of modern Belgrade: the Morava and Tisza valleys (Fine 1991: 33). The army of emperor Maurice turns the tide against the Avars. Sirmium was relieved and the Avar khan Bayan was forced to retreat back across the Danube. The East Romans followed and he was soundly defeated: "not since the days of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius had Roman power asserted itself so effectively north of the Danube", says Obolensky 1971; also in Smith, www.oglethorpe.edu/faculty/~b_smith/ou/bs_foundations_chapter5; accessed 2009. To frustrate the Avar tactics of attacking from all sides, Priscus divided his army into three large squares. At other times he formed three large crescents to enclose the Avars when they were attacking frontally (Heath 1976: 50). Let us imagine that he commanded 15,000 men, i.e. 5,000 in each of three squares. If formed five men deep, a square was 250 men wide (or say 125 metres). Presumably the crescents would have formed a less dense body: perhaps a kilometre wide (5,000 men x five deep x one metre per man = 1,000 metres). 601-03: N Italy: In 601 an aggressive act on the part of the exarch Callinicus —he took prisoner the daughter of the Lombard king Agilulf and her husband—led (602) to war with Agilulf (A Jones et al. 1992: 264). (Cf below under 602-03.) Callinicus’s successor, Smaragdus, from 603, will again made a peace with the Lombards that endures until after pope Gregory's death in 604. 602: 1. Constantinople: Famine and riots in the capital, which Maurice managed to put down with difficulty (Treadgold 1997: 235). See next. 2a: The Danube: Avaric power seemed reduced to the point of dissolution when the victorious general Priscus was once more relieved of his command by the Emperor Maurice, early in 602. - It was probably at this time that Priscus (Priskos) was made Count of the Excubitors, head of the palace regiment. 2b: A “disastrous” decree: Maurice orders the army to winter beyond the Danube and live off the land, i.e. by requisitioning food from the local Slavs. Whitby 1988: 165 proposed that the Byzantines may already have collected enough supplies and the plan may have been to continue campaigning as winter was the time the Slavs were most vulnerable to defeat. At any rate the Balkan army mutinied and there was a revolt in the capital, 22 November: execution – beheading - of Maurice. His five sons also were beheaded. Accession, 27 November 602, of the ‘centurion’ Phocas, r. 602-610. Outbreak of a further Persian-Byzantine war: Chosroes or Khusrau II invades Roman Mesopotamia. Maurice was the first Eastern emperor to lose his crown since the foundation

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of Constantinople. What seems to have tipped the army into revolt was a report, or a rumour, that Maurice refused to ransom prisoners held by the Avars (Olster 1993: 51). Olster proposes, p.53, that the army may have only wished to protest and it may not have decided to depose Maurice before it reached the city. The issue was decided by the Excubitors, the imperial guard: they refused to defend Maurice or to obey Comentiolus their commander. The history of Theophylakt of Simokatta covers AD 582-602 and the reign of Maurice: English trans. as The History of Theophylact of Simocatta: An English Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. An Egyptian Greek by birth, Theophylact held high judicial office in Constantinople: “reliable but not profound”, say Dudley & Lang, p. 209. The term “Sklavinia” (tribal districts inhabited by Slavs) is first attested in the History of Theophylact Simocatta, but the word was used especially by early ninth-century authors, such as Theophanes Confessor. Theophylact’s was the last of the series of classicising Greek histories that stretched back to the third century. For the next few centuries, history would be recorded only in uneducated chronicles. Cf 627. More specifically, there are just two chronicles that cover the next few centuries. The chronicle of patriarch Nicholas, written at the end of the 8th century, covers the years 602-769, and the rather fuller Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor devotes 213 pages to the period 602-813. Mango, in Rice 1965, writes thus: “It would be futile to pretend that an adequate history of the Byzantine empire in the 7th and 8th centuries can ever be written; all we have is a chronological skeleton, a meagre outline of the doings of emperors, of wars and battles, mentions of earthquakes and other portents, and much verbiage on theological disputes. And yet it was precisely during these two centuries that witnessed the transformation of the Later Roman Empire into a medieval state” (p.106). The Reign of Phocas, 602-610

602-610: PHOCAS, afterwards called 'the Tyrant' Age unknown; Treadgold 1997: 236 guesses “55”. He was a “centurion” or junior officer of Greek-speaking Thracian origin, raised to the throne by the mutinous Balkan army. Wife: Leontia. Daughter: Domentzia, who was married, probably in 605, to the general and patrikios Priscus. Phocas was the first post-Antique emperor to wear a

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beard, a custom that remained until the end of the empire (Constance Head, 1980, ‘Physical descriptions of the emperors’, Byzantion 50). A bronze folles minted at Nicomedia in 603-4 bears a carefully drawn portrait of him, showing that his beard was trimmed except at the chin where it was pointed. His hair is medium to long, i.e. to below the ears. 602: Constantinople: City-wide riots started due to a famine, the Green chariot racing faction turned against Maurice, and a mutinous army under Phocas arrived outside the gates. Olster (1993) downplays the role of the Blue and Green demes in Phocas' seizure of power, rejecting Theophylact's account. He prefers John of Antioch's account, which places greater emphasis on the role of the Balkan army, located just outside the walls of Constantinople. In any event the imperial family fled the city on 22 November; Phocas was proclaimed emperor the following day. Maurice and his sons were captured and, on 27 November, all were executed. The patriarch Cyriacus appears to have shared in the unpopularity of the emperor Maurice that caused the latter’s deposition and death. Cyriacus still, however, had influence enough to exact from Phocas at his coronation a confession of the orthodox faith and a pledge not to disturb the church (Theophanes, Chronicle, A.M. 6094; Niceph. Callis. H. E. xviii. 40; Theophylact. Hist. viii. 9). 602-03: 1. Gothic Spain: In the spring of 602, Witteric, one of the conspirators with Sunna de Mérida to reestablish Arianism in 589, was given command of the army to repulse the Byzantines. From his position of power at the head of the army, he surrounded himself with people in his confidence. When it came time to expel the Byzantines, Witteric instead used his troops to strike at and depose the king Liuva II (Spring 603). 2. Italy: Around the year 602 (or in 601: the date preferred by A Jones et al.) the exarch Callinicus attempted to renew the peace, at the same time kidnapping the Lombard king Agilulf's daughter and her husband in order to gain greater negotiating leverage. Paulus Diaconus: “In these days the daughter of king Agilulf was taken from the city of Parma, together with her husband named Gudescalc (Gottschalk), by the army of the patrician [patrikios] Gallicinus (Callinicus), and they were brought to the city of Ravenna.” Agilulf responded by invading (602) Imperial Italy, destroying the border town of Padua, west of our Venice, and capturing nearby Monselice [ancient Mons Silicis], SE of Padua. After Padua’s Byzantine garrison was allowed to leave for Ravenna, the town was levelled (Fanning 1970: 34; Richards, Popes p. 174). The End of Antiquity: Beginning of the Middle Ages: Padua, sacked in 603, was rebuilt thereafter on an irregular pattern. —Greenhalgh 1989, ch 4.

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Lombard and Byzantine Italy in 603 If we follow LaRocca 2002, the Italian peninsula was divided thus between the Lombards and Byzantium: — Most of the far north, from Turin across to modern-day Slovenia, was held by the Lombard king; but not the middle section of the Po Valley below Cremona. Cf entry below for 603. — Byzantium held the coastal strip from Nice through Genoa (ancient Liguria: lost in 640-643), to the edge of Tuscany. The latter, from Lucca to Viterbo, was ruled by the Lombards. According to LaRocca, disagreeing with Brown, the Lombards held a tongue of country at the top of the Adriatic, including Aquilea and Grado, and there was no land traffic from the mainland opposite Byzantine Venice to Byzantine Istria (Trieste). The Cambridge Ancient History, 1970 p.537, concurs with LaRocca. More specifically, inland Aquileia was held by the Lombards, while coastal Grado was under Byzantine control. Ruling from Ravenna, the Exarchate controlled the middle and lower Po Valley from Cremona and Parma (until 603) down to the Pentapolis. Ancona, however, was held by the Lombard duke of Spoleto. See next entry under 603: loss of Cremona. Tracking north from Rome, the Via Flaminia divides at Narni (Narnia); Spoleto lies on the eastern leg known as the “Flaminia Nova”. The two legs rejoin as one highway near modern Foligno - SE of Perugia and Assisi - before proceeding NE to the Adriatic coast in the Pentapolis, namely at Fanum Fortunae (modern Fano) between Ancona and Rimini. The Exarchate controlled a narrow corridor that ran south along a different and nearly parallel road, the Via Amerina, through Gubbio, Perugia and Todi to Rome. Much of the eastern leg of the Flaminia (Flaminia Nova), however, including Spoleto itself, was held by the Lombards. The Amerina of the Byzantines lay a little west of the Lombard Flaminia. North-west of Rome, the Lombards held Viterbo, while the fortress at Sutri to the SE was garrisoned by imperial troops. Rome and the whole of Latium down to Gaeta were Byzantine. The territories of Spoleto, the Exarchate and Benevento met at a point east of Rome – just east of the Liri valley (upper Garigliano) - about half-way across the peninsula. The Liri valley fell to the Lombards only in 702 (see there). In the south, the Lombard duke of Benevento held a tongue of coastal territory – the whole Volturno valley - south of the Garigliano River. This included Capua. In other words, there was no overland traffic from Rome to Byzantine Naples except by permission from Benevento. This was probably no great disability: it was always faster and cheaper to send heavy goods, including soldiers, by ship.

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— The Rhomaniyans held about half of Campania including Naples and Amalfi. Salerno, however, came under Lombardic Benevento. There was a further imperial outpost around Paestum [south of Salerno: towards Calabria]. — Benevento ruled south as far as Cassano in northern Calabria and Lucania, the top of the Gulf of Taranto between Cassano and Taranto. In other words there was only sea traffic between Byzantine lower Calabria and Byzantine Puglia. — All of Puglia, from the Ofanto River (Canosa) to Taranto and on to the point of the heel was Byzantine. The End of Antiquity: Fortified Hilltop Villages in Italy Archaeologists have used pottery fragments to date the transition from the Classical settlement pattern—large villas and small holdings in open or exposed areas—to the Medieval pattern of walled villages located mostly on naturally defensible hilltops. This process is called incastellamento. (a) North of Rome South Etruria is the name given to the region north of Rome to the right of the Tiber river, including the Via Flaminia, and extending NW to the ‘lakes region’ around Nepi and Sutri. Hodges & Whitehouse note that the size of the population here, as in Italy at large, had been falling since as early as the second century, i.e. since well before the barbarian incursions. A long secular decline continued over the succeeding centuries into the Late Imperial and then Gothic eras. In the case of South Etruria, the decline in the population reflected in part a migration to Rome, but there was definitely an overall reduction in the population in Italy (and indeed in North Africa). Rome itself actually saw periods of growth, notwithstanding the overall fall in the ‘background’ rural population. Several ancient highways ran through South Etruria to converge on Rome. On the west, the Via Amerina – fortified against the Spoletan Lombards by the Byzantines - came south through Nepi. Further along it joined the Via Cassia, running from Sutri. Nearer the Tiber, the Via Flaminia ran almost straight and nearly exactly north-south into Rome. In the Umbrian highlands it was under Lombard control.

Pottery fragments show that the earliest hilltop settlements in this region appeared precisely when we might expect, i.e. at the time of the Lombard invasion. Presumably the exact date would be c.570-84: during the rule of the first Lombard duke of Spoleto. At the 30-40 km mark from Rome, a zone of fortified hilltop sites was established, east of Sutri and Nepi, between the lower Via Amerina and lower Via Flaminia. These sites were “strategic hamlets” that constituted a defence in depth. Behind this protective screen, i.e. in the lowland zone immediately north of

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Rome: within 25 km, many of the open, undefended settlements continued in use (Hodges & Whitehouse pp 44 ff). (b) Central Italy The province of Molise, whose capital town is Campobasso, west of Foggia, is located in south-central Italy, in the interior, north and NE of Naples, and extends to the Adriatic coast. Its southern border is the border with Campania and Apulia. In Molise the large and open ‘classical’ sites were abandoned in favour of much smaller hilltop locations at about the same time, i.e. in the 500s or perhaps the early 600s. Cf first Lombard duke at Benevento: Zotto, from ca. 571. Probably the Great Plaque of 542 was significant in reducing the population, or perhaps better: speeding its continuing decline. If the key factor preventing recovery after the plague was the levying of higher taxes by Justinian, then we should expect to see the effects by around 580. It would not be a coincidence that the troops of Zotto, the first Lombard dux of Benevento, were active in the 570s and 580s. One may guess that the Benevantan Lombards stood in the way of military aid coming from Byzantine Naples and Rome to Molise, meaning that the locals had to defend themselves. Marauding bands - whether Lombards or fellow Latins - could be more effectively resisted if the now smaller population retreated to fortified hilltop hamlets. But it took several centuries - not until about AD 950 - for the hilltop pattern to become almost universal in central and south Italy; the process called incastellamento was complete by that time (Hodges & Whitehouse pp. 46 ff). (c) Calabria At the end of the Gothic wars in 555, the ageing ex-senator and scholar Cassiodorus set up his—open and undefended—monastery on his estate at Squillace-Vivarium. By 598, however, 30 years after the arrival of the Lombards in N Italy, it had been transformed into the castrum quod Scillacium dicitur, “the fortress that is called Squillace”. It is represented today by remains on the mons Castellum (“castle mount”) beside the church of S. Maria del Mare (Christie 2006: 462). 603: 1a. Italy: Agilulf’s Lombards, with assistance from Slav allies sent by the Avar khan, captured the Byzantine fortress-towns of Cremona (21 August); and Volturnia: Vulturina or Valdoria, on the north bank of the Po near Parma; and Mantua, modern Mantova (13 September) (Paulus, Hist Lang. IV.25). Cremona was destroyed, being razed to the ground. These towns had resisted the invaders for 33 years. The Byzantine garrison of Mantua was allowed to leave for Ravenna. A truce was struck, and Agilulf’s daugher and son-in-law were retruned.

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In other words, the Lombards now seized the whole middle section of the huge Po Valley. The imperialists retained Bologna, and the Parma-Bologna region (centred on Modena) will remain the borderland for over a century. —Italian Wikipedia under ‘Parma’, 2009, citing Marzio Dall'Acqua and Marzio Lucchesi, Parma città d'oro, Parma: Albertelli, 1979. From west to east, the major towns in this region were /are/: (a) Pavia, on a N tributary of the Po; (b) Piacenza on the Po River; (c) Cremona; and, on the south side of the Po: (d) Parma, (e) Modena, and (f) Bologna, inland from Ravenna. Mantova lies north of the Po, almost on the same longitude as Modena. Measured from Milan, Mantova [Mantua] is about halfway towards the east coast. Paul the Deacon, 4.28: “Agilulf departed from [his capital] Mediolanum (Milan) in the month of July, besieged the city of Cremona with the Slavs whom the Cagan [khagan], king of the Avars, had sent to his assistance, and took it on the 12th day before the calends of September [21 August 603] and razed it to the ground. In like manner he also assaulted Mantua, and having broken through its walls with battering-rams, he entered it on the ides (l3th day) of September, and granted the soldiers who were in it [i.e. the Byzantine garrison] the privilege of returning to Ravenna. Then also the fortress which is called Vulturina [Valdoria near Parma] surrendered to the Langobards; the soldiers indeed fled, setting fire to the town of Brexillus [modern Brescello: NE of Parma]”.

Slavs were present at the successful sieges of Cremona and Mantua as allies of the Lombards, who had requested help from the Avar Khagan in their struggle with the Byzantines, under the terms of the ‘everlasting’ alliance concluded between these two parties and the Franks. At Mantua, battering rams were employed, their first recorded use by the Lombards. It is tempting, says McCotter (2003), to believe they were brought by the Slav contingent. While frequently violent, the Lombard invasions were perhaps not allconsuming: the upper class Romans were “neither wiped out nor reduced to servitude. Only their tax exemption, if present, was terminated”, says Goffart p.184. Others, eg Wickham, Early Medieval Italy p.66, contend that ownership of much of the land did in fact go to the Lombards. See Wickham’s chapter in Rosswein et al. 1998. 1b. Italy: Following these reverses, Callinicus is dismissed, and Smaragdus is re-

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appointed Exarch. —A Jones et al 1992: 264. 2. Convenient date for the EARLY LOWPOINT OF THE DARK AGES IN THE WEST: Midpoint between the death of the last important Latin philosopher, Boethius, c.525, and the revival of Latin learning under Charlemagne. In 782 Alcuin will found a palace school in Charlemagne's capital. 603-05: The East: Revolt by Narses, the local Byzantine general, who captured Edessa. Guilland: “Having revolted against the usurper Phocas (602-610) Narses seized Edessa; he relied on the support of the King of Persia, Khosroes, in fighting against Phocas. The latter sent an army under the command of the eunuch Leontius to fight against the Persians and suppress Narses's uprising. Leontius was defeated by Khosroes. Replaced by Domentziolus, the latter persuaded Narses to surrender and promised to preserve his life. After being sent to Byzantium, Narses was burned alive in 604 in spite of the promises made to him. Narses was a valiant general, and his name alone spread terror among the ranks of his enemies. (Theoph. Simocc. 112, 208, 213, 219; Theoph. 451 f.).” —Rodolphe Guilland 1943. Phokas sent general Germanos against him. Invited by Narses, the Persians invade (603). They defeated Germanos, who was wounded and died. Then, having reaffirmed his treaty with the Avars, Phokas transferred extra troops from Europe to Asia and sent (604) them under Leontios, a eunuch general, towards Edessa. Narses fled. Then at Arxamoun Leontios came up against a Persian army led by shah Khosroes that included elephants. The Byzantines were defeated. The Persians captured (605) Daras “and all Mesopotamia and Syria, taking innumerable prisoners” (TCOT: 2-4). See 605. “Popular riots in 603 and 605, a revolt in Edessa, and an alliance between Narses, the rebel commander, and the Persians, bear witness to the immediate antagonism to Phokas. But the new ruler commanded enough loyalty to uncover and repress these plots”, writes Judith Herrin, 1987: 193. 603-610: Spain: Witteric (Spanish: Witerico) was king of the Visigoths in Hispania. He spent time fighting the Byzantines during his reign, and one of his generals occupied Sagontia (Gisgonza), probably in 605 (Thompson, Goths in Spain 1969: 158). Gisgonza - also Gigonza, ancient Sagontia: was located inland from Cadiz. This suggests that the south-west quadrant of the province of Baetica was completely Byzantine in 600, from Málaga west to the Atlantic at the mouth of the Guadalete near Cadiz [Gades]. It was probably during his reign as well that Bigastrum—near Cehegin, in our NW Murcia: inland NE of Cartagena—was taken, for its bishop appears in a council of Toledo in 610 (Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Witteric’). 603-656:

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The Balkans were left in Slav hands. In the half-century from 602 to 657, the Byzantine government made no serious efforts to reconquer the region. Indeed troops were actually withdrawn from the Balkans in ca. 620 to augment the Anatolian army. Italy too was left to its own devices. Cf entries for 615 and 616; also 625-43 – exarch Isaac. Of course there was much danger in the East, but the main reason that nothing substantial was undertaken in the near west, even after the defeat of Persia, was no doubt a lack of resources: money and trained manpower. Plainly the economy was in very poor shape by 610. And, as we note below, the plague of 608-10 was its eighth visit to the empire since the mid 500s; and in the 620s seven of 11 mints had ceased operating or were closed (see there). Such trained manpower as was available was devoted either to civil war - see 608: army of Africa - or to holding back the Persians (cf 612 - Syria), and then the Arabs (cf 644). 604: d. Pope Gregory. 604-18: Macedonia: The Slavs besiege Thessaloniki three times: in 604, 615 and 618. The first siege, by 5,000 Slavs, probably in October 604, broke a longstanding peace in the region (Treadgold 1997: 931, citing Lemerle). 605: 1. The East: The army under Phocas’s relative Dom[n]entziolus ends Narses’ revolt and stems the Persian advance. Here our chronology follows Olster, 1993: Domentziolus persuaded Narses to surrender and promised to preserve his life. After being sent to Byzantium, Narses was burned alive in 604 or 605 in spite of the promises made to him. Narses was an effective general, and his name alone had spread terror among the ranks of his enemies (says Theoph. Simoc. 112, 208, 213, 219; Theoph. 451 f.; TCOT: 3). 2. Aged about 60, Priscus/Priskos, formerly Maurice’s general and still serving as Count of the Excubitors, marries Phocas’s daughter, Domentzia. But due probably to a misunderstanding, Phocas decided Priscus saw himself as his heir, and was ready to kill him until the general was saved by the “mob” (spectators in the hippodrome) (Olster 1993; Theophanes places this in 606-07). 3. Spain: One of Witteric’s generals captured Sagontia or ‘Gisgonza’, the Byzantine outpost in the west, inland from Cadiz, probably in 605. It was probably during his reign, 603-10, as well, that Bigastrum near Cartago Nova (Cartagena) was taken, for its bishop appears in a council of Toledo in 610. See 612. Already by the year 600 Byzantine Spania had dwindled to little more than Málaga and Cartagena and it extended no further north than the Sierra Nevada,

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the range of mountains where Granada is located. 4a. Italy: The Lombards capture imperial ‘Balneus Regis’ (Bagnarea) and ‘Urbs Vetus’ which is our Orvieto: W of Spoleto, SW of Perugia (Fanning 1970: 37; Paulus 4.32). 4b. King Agilulf concluded a new treaty with the Byzantines in November 605 that established quasi-permanent borders with the exarchate, which scarcely changed over the next century (the only major exception being the Lombard conquest of the Ligurian coast in the early 640s and much of Apulia by 675). – Encyclopaedia Britannica, current edition 2009, online, under ‘Lombards and Byzantines’. The price of peace was the return of Agilulf’s daughter and son-in-law and the payment by the exarch Smaragdus of 12,000 solidi. A further truce operated in 607-10 (Paul the Deacon, 4.32; Fanning 1970: 37). Italy in AD 605 In the north, the Lombard-imperial boundary lay in the lower-middle Po Valley about half-way between Lombard Pavia (near Milan) and Byzantine Ravenna. Byzantium also ruled the Ligurian coast west and east of Genoa; and the Venetian coastal strip; and a solid belt of territory in central Italy running SW from Ravenna and Ancona to Rome; and small areas in the far south and south-east on the peninsula. As we noted earlier, the Exarchate controlled a narrow corridor that ran south from Ravenna along the Via Amerina through Gubbio, Perugia and Todi to Rome. Much of the eastern leg of the Via Flaminia, however, including Spoleto itself, was held by the Lombards. The Amerina of the Rhomaniyans lay a little to the west of the Lombard Flaminia. Under the Exarch, there were three ‘patricians’ [patrikioi, senior officials], based at Rome, Naples* and in Sicily. If we imagine that each commanded 2,000 troops, we will not be far wrong. A smaller fifth force, commanded by a dux, was based at Rimini further down the Adriatic coast, while at the northern end of the Adriatic another Magister Militum had a few troops with which to defend Istria [present-day SW Croatia] and Byzantium’s remaining foothold around Venice. Thus we have, say, 6,000 troops in Ravenna, a total of 6,000 in Rome-NaplesSicily (2,000 each); 1,250 in Rimini and 750 at Grado for a total of (say) 15,000 troops. (*) In the Letters of pope Gregory the Great (590-604), we read that the aqueduct at Naples, which had been cut by Belisarius in 536, was again in working order by 598, and the port continued to serve as a centre of commerce. —Drinking water commonly came from wells and cisterns; aqueducts were almost universally used solely for bringing water to the baths and, to that extent, were just an urban “refinement” (Ward-Perkins 1984: 122-25).

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— A small land corridor along the Via Amerina connected Byzantine Ravenna to Byzantine Rome (map in Brown 1984: 38). — The large Lombard ‘duchy’ of Benevento sat between the three southern imperial ‘duchies’ so-called: Byzantine Naples, old Calabria ( = our Apulia or Puglia) and Bruttium ( = our Calabria). Brown 1984: 49 remarks that in the 600s ducatus simply meant ‘ducal authority’; it was only in the course of the 700s that it came to be applied to ‘the region administered by a dux’. Curiously, LaRocca, 2002: Map 1, has the whole of the heel as far as Hydruntus, modern Otranto, being lost to the Lombards between 604 and 616. If so, it was restored to the empire thereafter (presumably in 663 by Constans). — Sicily does not appear in the annals of war and famine, probably because this was, for its people, an age of peace and prosperity. See 615-23. Mutilation replaces Execution

605 or 606: Mutilation: Informed of plots or alleged plots, Phokas has the dowager empress Constantina tortured. She names two patricians, Romanos and Germanos, and a third person Elphidios. The emperor orders Constantina and her three daughters and Germanos executed (put to the sword). Romanos is decapitated. Elphidios’ hands and feet are cut off and he is burnt alive (TCOT: 5; Garland 1999). For examples of mutilation in later reigns, see under 637-38. There is probably a distinction to be drawn between those mutilated ahead of being killed and those who were mutilated in order to live as a living demonstration of perfidy. 607: Phocas issues an edict to comfort Pope Boniface III, re-confirming Rome's primacy among the patriarchs: "the See of Blessed Peter the Apostle should be the head of all the Churches". This was an attempt to heal the "Gregorian quarrel" (above: 595) (Brand p.11). Boniface was an ethnic Greek born in Rome. He had known Phocas while serving as papal representative in Constantinople. On one view, the first Patriarch of Rome to bear the title of "Pope" [Papa, Pappas]—but there is no such title—was Pope Boniface III in 607. It is said, wrongly, that he assumed the title of "universal Bishop" [itself a mistranslation of Gk o‘ikoumenikòs patriárches, ‘patriarch of the imperium’] by decree of Emperor Phocas. In fact, by recognising the primacy of Rome, Phocas was only saying, in effect, that such a title should no longer be used by the archbishop of Constantinople (who did continue to use it: Richards, Consul p. 221). After all, papa simply means ‘father’. It is better to look to after 641, when three of the four eastern patriarchates were submerged by Islam, for a ‘first pope’. Or earlier, e.g. when Gregory I began acting independently of the secular governor of Italy, the Exarch at Ravenna. Or later still, e.g. 800, when the Roman archbishop crowned the king of the Franks as Emperor. Or earlier yet, in the

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pontificate of Leo I (d. 461), perhaps the first to claim the universal jusidction of the Roman bishop. . . . 607-10: The East: Four years campaigning by Khosrau’s Persians, in which they reduce all the fortresses of East-Roman Mesopotamia. They seize upper Mesopotamia, Syria (607), Palestine and afterwards push deep into Asia Minor before retiring (TCOT: 6). Antioch held out. See 608 below. A Rhomaioi field army was headquartered thereafter in Cappadocia in eastcentral Anatolia (until 621). From 607: In Italy the Lombard dukes switch from Arian to Catholic Christianity. 608: 1. The East: The Persians again cross the Euphrates and briefly re-capture Byzantine Syria before (as noted) proceeding into Phoenicia and Palestine. But some key fortresses and towns held out, e.g. Edessa and Apamea in Mesopotamia (until 611), Antioch in Syria (also until 611), and Jerusalem until 614. The Romaniyans recovered much of the Syrian hinterland, although not the major fortress-towns of Dara [Gk: Daras, Mesopotamian Anastasiopolis, west of Nisibis, modern Nusaybin] and Hesna* [Syriac: Hesna de Kepha, Turkish: Hasankeyf, on the Tigris], and the year ended in stalemate (or so Olster 1993: 96 reads it). (*) Hesna is in today’s ‘Turkish Syria’: between Diyabakir in Turkey and Mosul in Iraq; nearer the former. 2. Africa: Together the father and son, the two Heracliuses,* as consuls, launched a rebellion against Phocas in 608. They stopped the regular grain shipments from Carthage to Constantinople (TCOT: 6; Olster 1993; Treadgold, State 1997 p.239). (*) Heraclius senior, Exarch of Africa, had served as a general in Persia the 580s, and had been second in command to Philippicus; in the 590s he was a general in Armenia. The senior Heraclius bribes the garrison commander in Libya to his side and dispatches an army under his nephew Nicetas east to invade Egypt in the spring or early summer of 608; Alexandria and most of lower (northern) Egypt were quickly taken (see 609). The first Heraclian coins minted at Alexandria date from before September 608 (Olster 1993: 121). John of Nikius says, in his ch. 109.24, quoted by Olster 1993: 124, that the vanguard of the army dispatched from Carthage numbered 3,000 men. If so, then possibly the whole provincial army of Africa (15,000 men) was sent to Egypt (15 K = Treadgold’s guesstimate: Army 1995 p.63).

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The Heraclian revolt would mark, according to Olster, a crucial turning point in Byzantine history. Lasting over two years and costing many thousands of lives, the revolt sapped Byzantine manpower and finances and left the frontiers largely undefended. This would facilitate the loss of Syria, Palestine and Egypt to the Persians. Cf 609: Bonosus v. Nicetas. 3. Rome: The ‘Column of Phocas’ was the last monument to be built in the Roman Forum. The inscription on the pedestal of the column indicates that the gilded statue on top was dedicated in AD 608 by Smaragdus, the exarch (governor) of Italy, to the Byzantine emperor Phocas. The emperor had earlier been persuaded by the pope or archbishop of Rome, Boniface IV, to give the great Pantheon temple to the church. It became (possibly as late as 613) the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, I.4). 608-09: Civil war between the Heraclii and Phocas’s generals. Its disruptive effects, argues Olster, were such as to facilitate the massive Persian conquests of the next decade, which (he proposes) ended Roman [Byzantine] hegemony in the Mediterranean basin. In that sense, he argues, Phocas’s reign “closed . . . the history of the Roman Empire” (1993: 21). Cf next. Cf Foss: “The Persian war may be seen as the first stage in the process which marked the end of Antiquity in Asia Minor. The Arabs continued the work”: Clive Foss, quoted in Hodges & Whitehouse p.61. 608-10: 1. PLAGUE and famine in Constantinople (608-09) (Theophanes, TCOT: 6). This was the eighth visit of the plague since the middle 500s. 2. The Balkans: Coin hoards and other evidence confirm that the Slavs had by now penetrated as far as Hellas or east-central Greece, as we know it. Likewise the last coins from Olympia in the western Peloponnesus date from this time (Haldon 1984: 44; Whitby 1988: 8; Fine 1991: 62). Haldon 1990: 45 would date the permanent occupation of the Peloponnesus by the Slavs to after 609/10. Cf 625. 3. Renewed attacks by the Persians (609-10): a large Romanic/Byzantine army is routed. The Persians capture much of Asia Minor and (609 or later: see below) reach Chalcedon, present-day Turkish Kadikoy, on the Bosphorus opposite the capital. (Theophanes dates this to 608: TCOT: 6; Olster puts it in 616.) THE END OF ANTIQUITY: The wheat supply from Egypt to the East Roman capital was first temporarily interrupted in 608 during the Heraclian revolt; by the Persians again in 619: see there; and finally terminated (by the Arabs) in 641.

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Heavy cavalry The culmination of the development of cavalry in Iran can be seen in the famous relief of Khusrau II, r. 591-628, at Taq-i Bustan near Kermanshah* in western Iran. The sculpture shows a fully armoured knight, very close in appearance to the mediaeval knights of Europe, and yet still without the stirrup - which it seems was already in use in Byzantine armies. The horse’s head is protected with a ‘chamfron’ (head armour) and below its head wears a double-layered front ‘bard’ of body protection, the top layer made of lamellar armour. The bard covers only the front: most of the horse’s body is not protected by armour.**- The evidence in Iran seems to contradict Lynn White's assertion that the stirrup was an essential precursor of the heavily armoured knight, even though in Western Europe it appears that White's thesis may hold true. (*) Kirkuk and Baghdad in Iraq and Kermanshah in Iran are the points of an equilateral triangle. (**) Horse armour is not reported by the Byzantine sources in Justinian’s time; but emperor Maurice’s Strategikon. c.600, does mention it. "The horses”, he writes, “especially those of officers and the other special troops [key NCOs], in particular those in the front ranks of the battle line should have protective pieces of iron about their heads and breast plates of iron or felt, or else breast and neck coverings such as the Avars use." (Emphasis added: Whether the phrase ‘or else’ implies that Avar horse armour was different or simpler is unclear.) It seems that Byzantium adopted or re-adopted horse-armour after 580 in imitation of the Avars. In the battle of 622 (see there) emperor Heraclius’s horse wore barding of thick felt. And in 627 (see there) he rode a horse protected by armour of “sinew”, presumably boiled leather. 608-15: Boniface IV, patriarch of Rome. He sought and gained permission from Phocas to turn the Pantheon temple in Rome into a church. It was dedicated to St Maria ad martyres and lavishly endowed by the emperor (Richards p.177). 609: 1. Greece: Thessalonica holds out against another assault by the surrounding Slavic tribes in Macedonia (Haldon 1990: 44). 2. Decisive year of the Persian War (opening phase). In the East, the war turned irrevocably in the Persians' favour when Phocas was forced, or chose, to withdraw most of the army from the frontiers in Armenia and Syria in order to deal with a dangerous rebellion under Heraclius that had spread from the province of Africa to Egypt. Olster notes that Phocas’s general Bonosus, bearing the title “count of the East”, proceeded by sea from Asia Minor to Egypt to face the Heraclian forces

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under Nicetas and his deputy Bonakis. Travelling by ship, Bonosus was probably able to bring few troops with him; and Olster rightly supposes that the rebel Heraclians outnumbered him. Cf above: 608. Even so, Bonosus’s Phocaeans troops from the Asia Minor town of Phocaea - defeated the Heraclians and killed Bonakis, whose beaten army retreated to safety behind the walls of Alexandria. Next Nicetas (cousin of Heraclius jnr) counter-attacked and destroyed Bonosus’s army. Olster argues that the struggle was very bitter and Bonosus’s expedition represented a vast drain on imperial resources at a critical moment (1993: 120, 125). The defence of the eastern borders in Mesopotamia and Syria was entrusted to the unreliable demes or urban militia, and now Persian armies captured all of the Byzantines' key fortresses along their frontier and drove the Rhomaniyans from Armenia. Edessa fell to Khosrow II Parvez [parvez, ‘the ever victorious’] in his sweep across Mesopotamia in 609 (Chronicon, p. 699; Olster prefers 611). Then, according to some, the Persian general Shahin, having sacked the main Cappadocian city Caesarea, raided all the way to Chalcedon, across the straits from Constantinople. But there is no mention of this in one of the key sources, The Life of Theodore. Olster, 1993: 90, therefore prefers to date the capture of Anatolian Caesaraea to 611 and the raid to Chalcedon to after Theodore’s death, i.e. in 616. Byzantine Antioch: The Jewish community revolted and lynched Patriarch Anastasios II. This revolt was provoked, says Herrin, as much by Phokas's efforts to convert the Jews as by the proximity of the Persians, who did not succeed in capturing the city until 611. – Herrin 1987. The East: Caesarea as a Nodal Point Nicolle 1993: 20 notes that there were only three passes large enough to take an invading army into or out of eastern Anatolia: [1] south-north from/to Cilicia [the part of Asai Minor nearest to Cyprus] north through the Taurus Mountains via the Cilician Gates and thence to/from Caesarea (present-day Kayseri) and Iconium (Konya); [2] north-east from Adana in Cilicia via the Seyhan River and through the Anti-Taurus Mountains and thence to Kayseri/Caesarea; and [3] westwards from Malatya (Melitene), through a further pass in the Anti-Taurus Mountains. Routes 2 and 3 joined at a point about midway between Caesarea and Melitene. One might add a fourth: an ancient Roman road ran north-west from Germanicia, present-day Marash or Karamanmanash, into the Anti-Taurus range; this road too met the routes to/from Melitene and Adana at a point about midway between Caesarea and Melitene.

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Above: Map of Cilicia and the NE corner of the Mediterranean. 609-10: 1. The East: “A large infantry force” under Gregoras marches overland from Egypt to the capital and later troops under the command of Herakleios the younger sail to Constantinople from Africa in “towered ships” (TCOT: 8). “Only when Alexandria had been taken after fierce fighting with Phokas's general Bonosos, and the Egyptian fleet brought under control (November 609), was it possible for Herakleios (junior) the consul to embark for the capital. He commanded the fleets of Mauretania and Africa manned by Mauroi, local Berbers, and protected by the Virgin, whose icon was displayed on their mastheads. Constantinople had not only been deprived of grain from Africa and Egypt after 609, but the winter of 608-609 had been unusually harsh, causing bad harvests, famine, and even freezing the sea” (thus Herrin 1987; Theophanes, TCOT: 8, writes of “a large army from Africa and Mauretania”, i.e. the Maghreb). 2. The allies of Heraclius minted coins at Cyprus and Alexandretta in Syria; September 609 is the earliest possible date, 1 September being the start of the Byzantine year (Olster 1993). Coin: Bronze follis of Alexandretta, Syria, AD 610, officina A, 8.75 g, 30 mm, 185º.- Obverse: δ mN ER(ACLI)OCONSULII [ = our lords, the Heracliuses, consuls]; facing busts [looking forward] of Heraclius, on left, and his father, the Exarch Heraclius, on right; both are bearded and bare-headed wearing consular robes; between their heads, a cross. – Reverse: Large M* between A / N / N / O and X / IIII; above, cross; beneath A; in ex, (A∈XA)N∆ . [ = Alexand+retta] DOC 16, MIB 16a.

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(*) The Greek symbol for 40, i.e. the coin had a value of 40 nummi. 610: 1. The capital: Phocas prepared a fleet to contest Heraclius’s entry to Constantinople. A botched naval battle, fought “in the city”, i.e. in Sophia Harbour [Harbour of Julian]* on the city’s southern shore, was followed by a clash on land. The decisive point was that the imperial guard, the Excubitors, or rather their commander, Priscus, switched from Phocas’s to Heraclius’s side. According to Theophanes, Phokas was seized by the mob and burned to death in the Forum of the Ox (TCOT: 9; Olster 1993: 136). As against this, John of Antioch, cited by Kevin Crow [http://www.romanemperors.org/phocas.htm#N_20_ ] says that Phocas was taken by the Excubitors and handed to Heraclius who personally killed him. After cursing the fallen emperor, his self-appointed successor kicked Phocas and beheaded him on the spot. Phocas's right arm and hand were then cut off and his corpse was disembowelled, thrown into a skiff and burned. (*) The harbour nearest the Great Palace. Heraclius was aged about 35 when he assumed the throne. The Chronicon Paschale describes his arrival in the harbour of the capital in 610, his ‘golden hair and white armour’ seeming to promise a return to the great days of Rome. (As Vasiliev remarks, p. 143, light hair seems odd for a family of Armenian ancestry; but perhaps his mother was a non-Armenian. She was from Carthage but her racial background is not known; it is quite possible that she was of Germanic, i.e. Vandal, blood.) 2. fl. Isidore, bishop of Seville, in Visigothic Spain, author of an important encyclopaedia and chronicle. His statement, "the Slavs took Greece from the Romans", although a simplification, was fundamentally correct. Cf 615. Urban Population Decline since 550 Treadgold 1997: 279 puts the population of the capital at slightly over 200,000 in AD 610, much down from perhaps 375,000 in 540, but higher than the immediate post-plague size of 150,000 around 550. In 610 Alexandria probably had over 100,000 people; and Antioch, following the earthquake of 588, perhaps 50,000. All the ‘cities’ in Greece (those not abandoned) were under 10,000 except Thessaloniki. Rome at this time had about 50,000 people (according to Encyc. Brit. 15th edn; also Christie p.61), or, more likely, far fewer than that. According to Olster: “The cost of the (Heraclian) revolt, the mercenary [sic*] army of Heraclius and its supply, the subsidies to the barbarians in Africa, and the loss of the revenue of the eastern provinces (including Egypt where Nicetas had given a three-year remission of taxes to gain the support of the inhabitants) had bankrupted the Empire. Even George of Pisidia, Heraclius’s court poet, was

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forced to admit that the money, the ‘nerves of war’, was exhausted and the coffers empty” (1993: 137). Cf 616 – salaries halved. (*) Olster must have had in mind the Berbers he recruited (see earlier under 609110). All soldiers were paid; evidently for Olster and some others a soldier who does not speak Greek ipso facto becomes a mercenary. * * * To recap: The pagan Slavs entered the empire with and behind the Avars during Bayan's wars with the emperor Maurice and settled permanently. This was the period of the 'de-hellenisation', or rather the de-Christianisation, of the Balkans and Greece. "During some 30 years [582-612], the ethnic composition of the Balkan peninsula was completely changed", writes Browning p.38. This conclusion, however, is not supported by genetics: see the discussion below after AD 674. The murder of Maurice in 602 provided the Persian shah Chosroes or Khusraw with a very useful pretext for war with his patron’s successor. The Sassanian 'King of Kings' would now come closer to success than any other Persian monarch in trying to destroy the Roman state. He invaded Asia Minor and Mesopotamia each year for four years (607-10), and then, in an unprecedented success, captured and sacked the great metropolis of Antioch (611), Damascus (614) and the holy city Jerusalem (614/5). Chosroes removed the relic of the True Cross from Jerusalem. He also advanced again into Asia Minor (612) and took Byzantine Egypt (616/619). In 617 the Persians threatened Constantinople itself. See there. The End of Antiquity in the Balkans

Urban life collapsed in most of the Balkan peninsula in the halfcentury from 580 to 630. Partly this reflected the devastation wrought by successive waves of the plague (Soltysiak 2006). Sirmium, west of – just upstream from - Belgrade, once an imperial capital, was completely deserted after its surrender to the Avars in 582. (Belgrade seems to have held out for several decades more: Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions an imperial governor of Belgrade negotiating with the Slavs in about 630: Fine 1991: 36.) Thereafter practically the entire peninsula passed out of imperial control for nearly two centuries. "Cities did not survive in the conquered areas", says Browning (p.43). Cyril Mango, 1980, argues that in Greece proper the Peloponnesian ‘cities’ (towns) were "wiped out". Browning for his part will say only that "many" of the smaller inland cities were "probably" abandoned by their inhabitants and their walls allowed to fall into ruin (1975: 44, 91). The last coins from Olympia in the western Peloponnesus, for example, are from the reign of Phocas, 602-10 (Fine 1991: 62). The Rhomaioi held only the Aegean coast and parts of central Greece, as it now

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is, together with coastal cities elsewhere. Further archaeological work will be required before we can judge whether the literary sources are exaggerating. But certainly the pagan invaders devastated the Balkans. Except in Salonika [Thessaloniki], besieged in by the Slavs in 586, and the island of Paros in the S Aegean, the central island of the Cyclades or Kikladhes group, "not a single Early Christian church remained standing in all of Greece" by 625, writes Mango 1980: 69-70; also Fine 1991: 62. In Italy a similar process had occurred somewhat earlier, during the period 540-590, as a result first of the long wars between Byzantium and the Goths and then the Lombard invasion. Thus Pope Gregory wrote in 590: "Our cities are destroyed, our fortress are overthrown; our fields laid waste; the land is become a desert" (Richards p.47). It was also in this period that the old Roman senatorial families were destroyed or dispersed (ibid, p.247). Nothing could be done, in the short term, to restore the lost prosperity of the destroyed, or superseded, city system. In the political domain, however, the empire's fortunes were eventually restored by the new emperor Heraklios (610641). He crushed the Persians in one of the great epic campaigns of history, 62229.

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The Reign of Heraclius, 610-641

610-641: HERACLIUS or Herakleios. English pronunciation: “hair-a-kleye-us”. In full: Flavius Heraclius Augustus. Heraclius junior, aged about 35, came to the throne in 610 by overthrowing the emperor Phocas. He was the son of Heraclius senior, the Exarch of Carthage. Wife: (1) Fabia-Eudocia, d. 612; and (2) Martina his niece, m. 614, “the most detested empress of all time” (says Garland). Sons: Heraclius Constantine and Heracleonas. A solidus from about 640 depicts Heraclius with his son Heraclius Constantine. The senior emperor has a large pointed beard with a very wide moustache, possibly twirled or shaped. “Robust, with a broad chest, beautiful blue eyes, golden hair, a fair complexion, and a wide thick beard." —Leo Grammatikos’ description of Heraclius in his Historia. The Chronicon Paschale, whose author was a contemporary, likewise mentions his ‘golden’ hair. Presumably it means light brown. (His mother was Carthage-born, so perhaps of Germanic, Vandal descent.) Heraclius tried unsuccessfully to win the Monophysite Christians back to the Byzantine church by offering them a doctrinal compromise known as Monothelitism: “Christ might have two Natures and Persons but only one Will or Energy”. Heraclius drove the invading Persians from Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria, and forced the Avars back into central Europe. He recovered the Christian relic regarded as the True Cross from the Persians and returned it to Jerusalem. Gibbon: “Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of the empire”. But before the end of his reign, Syria, Palestine and Egypt fell to the newly Muslimised Arabs (Gk Sarakenoi: "Saracens"). 610-611: 1a. The East: Chosroes/Khusraw directs successful Persian attacks on the Syria and eastern Anatolian cities. “Outmarching the Anatolian army of Priscus, [general] Shahin seized (611) Cappadocian Caesarea for the second time in two years. And well ahead of

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Nicetas’s army in the south-east, Shahrvaraz [lit. “Imperial Boar”]* reached Antioch, where the Blues and Greens and Jews were running riot, and captured the great city as well. Having cut the Prefecture of the East in two, from Antioch he turned south and took Apamea and Emesa. Priscus, who seems to have had a much larger army than Nicetas, contrived to besiege Shahin in Caesarea over the winter. The capture of the Persians in Caesarea would have been a decisive counterblow; but Shahin broke out in the spring of 612” (Treadgold 1997). (*) The Persian general Khuriam or Farrokhan (Farrox) Shahrwaraz. His name was Farrokhan; shahrbaraz was an honorific meaning ‘(Great) Boar (i.e. most fearless) [waraz, varaz or baraz] of the City (Empire) [shahr, ‘imperial’]’. Having taken the Roman outposts of Edesssa and Apamea in Mesopotamia (610), the Persians advanced to the walls of Antioch where they defeated an East Roman army (May 611: TCOT: 9). Late in 611, according to some sources, the Persians proceeded into Armenia and Asia Minor. They captured Nicopolis; Theodosiopolis which is modern Erzurum in old w. Armenia - present-day NE Turkey; and Anatolian Caesarea: Byz. Kaisareia, modern Kayseri. Theophanes says “tens of thousands” of Byzantines were taken prisoner at Cappadocian Caesarea, most of them no doubt refugees from the wider region (TCOT: 10) When Caesarea was recovered by the East Romans in 612, it had been reduced to ruins. The Persians retained Syria and Armenia (see next). 1b. The East: Heraclius offers peace, but Chosroes rejects his offer. Heraclius then (611) dispatches a presumably small army under Priscus* against the Persian garrison in Caesarea. Priscus besieged the Persians for some months but they defeated the East Roman besiegers and escaped (612). At about the same time, the Persians on the Syrian side captured the important fortress of Melitene or Malatya (Olster 1993: 85). (*) The great survivor: he had served successive emperors since before 588. 2. Spain: Gundemar, the Visigoth king, 610-612, by edict (610) moved the primatial see of Carthaginiensis [the east-central fifth of Hispania] from Byzantine Cartagena to Visigothic Toledo and campaigned against Spania, the Byzantine enclave, in 611; but to no effect (NCMH p.351). Cf 612-21 and 614-19. 611-15: From 611: GENERAL CRISIS. The Persians capture the great East Roman metropolis of Syrian Antioch – in 611 or perhaps 613: the date is disputed and then Damascus, 613/14. An East Roman counter-offensive fails, 612 or 613. Tarsus in Cilicia and Melitene or Malatyah in Mesopotamia were also lost. Meanwhile the Slavs sweep into Greece and Dalmatia. In Europe, the Avars and Slavs swept into the Balkans in all directions. As we

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know from Isidore of Seville and the Miracles of St. Demetrius, they raided Thessaly, Hellas, the Aegean Islands, Epirus and Achaia, which was the N part of the Peloponnese. Isidore of Seville, in his Chronicon (Patrologia Latina 83, col. 1056), says that in the "5th year" of the emperor Heraclius [=?615] "the Slavs took Greece from the Romans".* The Avars and Slavs were also in action further west. Imperial rule in Dalmatia was reduced (612-615) to just seven Romance-speaking coastal or island towns. From NW to SE, they were: Osero, Veglia/Bekla, Arba/Arbe, Zara/Zadar, Trau (Trogir), Spalato or Aspalaton (Split) and Ragusa or Dubrovnik. These urban centres remained loyal to Byzantium for a further 500 years. Cf 613, 615. The Reduction of Roman Dalmatia (*) Isidore s.120: “Heraclius has completed five years of his imperial rule. At the beginning, the Slavs took Greece from the Romans [Byzantines]; the Persians took Syria, Egypt, and many provinces. Also in Spain, Sisebut [612-21], king of the Goths [Visigoths], took certain cities from the same Roman [Byzantine] ‘militia’ and converted the Jews subject to his kingdom to the faith of Christ.” 611-618: Central Asia: The Turkish Khagan, ‘Shih Kuei’ - his Chinese name - reestablished central rule in the western Turkic regions. He maintained good relations with the Byzantines in the west and the Chinese in the east. 612: 1. The East: Nicetas, Heraclius’s cousin, leads a counter-attack from Egypt into Persian-controlled Syria. This ends in a battle that supposedly claimed ‘20,000’ lives – presumably a Pyrrhic victory for the Persians (Olster 1993: 85, citing Agapius of Menbidj). Cf 613. Nicetas took part in the conquest of Egypt from Phocas, had been governor of Egypt, and was famed for bringing the Holy Sponge and Holy Lance (‘Lance of Longinus’) to Constantinople from Palestine in 612 (others say in 615). From 619 to 628/9 he appears to have been exarch of Africa. —Lynda Garland, ‘Gregoria’, citing Chronicon Paschale, 703; Nicephorus, Short History, 2; and Theophanes, Chronographia, AM 6102 [AD 609/10]. 2. The empress Eudocia dies. Heraclius privately marries his niece Martina. The marriage is not acknowledged until 614. 612 or 614: At the invitation of the Langobardic king Agilulf, the Irish monk Columbanus establishes a monastery at Bobbio on the Trebbia River NE of Genoa, south of Milan. The scriptorium there will become a flourishing centre for the copying and illumination of sacred texts. The earliest extant manuscripts with decorated initial letters come from Bobbio, where the tradition may have originated. 612-21:

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Visigoths end Byzantine rule in SE Spain. See 615. 613: 1. Date of a coin hoard of 264 gold coins found in the western wall of old Jerusalem in 2008. The coins were minted at the beginning of Heraclius’ reign: between the years AD 610-613, one year before the Persians conquered Byzantine Jerusalem (AD 614). One may imagine they were hidden away when the Persian army was approaching. Details at www.antiquities.org.il. Cf 613-14 below. 2. The East: When Shahin took Melitene, general Philippicus reacted by invading Persian-held Armenia, forcing Shahin to follow him over rugged terrain and suffer heavy losses. Meanwhile, in the main campaign, a larger army under the personal command of Heraclius* fought a bloody but inconclusive battle with the Persians outside Antioch. They regrouped, defeated him, and forced him to abandon Cilicia [the region of Asia Minor opposite Cyprus] (Treadgold 1997: 289). (*) It was almost unknown for Roman emperors after about AD 400 to command armies in person; but this was an exceptional crisis. Further counter-attack in Syria: A detachment of the Byzantine army, under Philippicus, brother-in-law of the late Maurice, made a raid on Armenia, diverting the Persians’ attention, while Heraclius leads the main army against Antioch. In a major battle beneath its walls, Heraclius was decisively beaten; and retreating into Asia Minor, he was caught and defeated once more by the pursuing Persians (or so says the source called Pseudo-Sebeos: in Olster 1993: 85). Sebeos: “Together with his brother Theodosius, he [the emperor] assumed the military command, assembled a multitude of troops, and crossed into Asorestan [Syria] by way of Antioch. A great battle took place in the area of Asia, and the blood of the generals coursed violently to the city of Antioch. The groupings and clashings were severe and the slaughter was great in the agitation. Both sides were worn and wearied in the fight. However, the Iranians grew stronger and pursued the fleeing [Byzantines], receiving the victory, in addition to [the renown of] bravery. Yet another battle took place close to the defile leading to Cilicia. The Byzantines struck the Iranians in a front of 8,000 armed men. And they [the Byzantines] turned and fled. The Iranians grew stronger, went and took the city of Tarsus and all the inhabitants in the district of Cilicia”: Chronicle of Sebeos, at http://rbedrosian.com/seb8.htm; accessed 2009. Collapse of Imperial Rule in the Balkans 613-15: The Danubian limes or defended border, reestablished around the year 600 by Maurice, gave way for good around 613-615. The last fortified points succumbed to the Avars and Slavs: Naissus/Nish and Justiniana Prima in present-day

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southern Serbia, and Sardica: modern Sofia in today’s Bulgaria. Thessaloniki alone resisted the numerous Avaro-Slavian sieges (in 586, 615, 618). —Bouras in Laiou 2002. Some 400 years would elapse before Constantinople would again assert its rule as far as the Danube. 613-14: The East: The Persian general Farrokhan, whose title was Sharbaraz, Gk: Sarbaros, took Damascus and Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire in 613 and 614. The Holy Cross, or a large fragment of it, was carried away in triumph (614). Theophanes (TCOT: 11) says that “90,000” Christians were killed by the Persians and by the Jews who assisted them to take “Jordan, Palestine and its holy city”. It is not clear if this means the number who died in Palestine or just in Jerusalem. See discussion below under 614. 613-19: The East: According to Judith Herrin, 1987, “it was during the long campaign of 613-19 that many of the oldest urban centres [in Asia Minor] were overrun. The classical way of life was brought to an abrupt end*; survivors took refuge in citadels and new mountain settlements more like fortified villages than ancient cities”. (*) More likely this was a slow process over the period 550-650. See the discussion in Wickham 2005: 625-29 and passim. Public Baths Public baths seem to have gradually gone out of use in the period 600-800 in most of the cities which survived in their original locations. Those towns that were rebuilt or moved to a new location usually had none at all. But as late as 691, the Quinisextum Council (canon 11) forbade priests to take a bath in company with a Jew, indicating that baths were still in use, at least in Constantinople. Evidently the major centres maintained the custom. Thus Theophanes mentions bath-houses in Constantinople lacking water during the drought of 766-67, implying that they were still in use. And we find references to upper class women taking baths in the 9th and 10th centuries. Also the main bath at Thessalonica continued in use into the second millennium (K. Dark in Harris 2005: 128). In Lombard Italy the very form of ancient baths impressed king Liutprand, 712744, so much that he declared (in a lost inscription: Calderini 1975, 179) that he was going to build one ‘with beautiful marbles and columns’ for his summer palace in the countryside at Corteolona [Corte Olona, east of Pavia] (c. 729) - but he then decided to build a church instead. At Rome in the late eighth century, it was recorded that pope Hadrian made deaconries and then processed from them ‘to the bath’. This was probably the one

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in the atrium of S. Peter's, where the poor could bathe; it was evidently still in use, and Hadrian is recorded as restoring it (2.506, 510). Needless to say, he also restored pipelines and aqueducts* which fed water to the City. —Greenhalgh 1989. (*) As we remarked earlier, drinking water came from wells and cisterns; aqueducts were almost universally used solely for bringing water to the baths and, to that extent, were just an urban “refinement” (Ward-Perkins 1984: 125). 614: Dalmatia: (or in 615:) Raiders, probably Avars rather than Slavs, sacked and destroyed the provincial capital Salona [modern Solin] near Split. Led by the local Romano-Illyrian secular and religious authorities, the survivors fled to Diocletian’s old walled palace at nearby Split, some five km south-west, which was able to hold out (Fine 1991: 34; Harris 2003: 25 – others prefer to date the abandonment of Salona to 639: see there). The Slavs, in the shape of the future Croats and Serbs, may have arrived a little later, as part of an aggressive migration, in the 620s, of peoples from north of the Carpathians (thus Harris). When Salona was destroyed by an invasion of Avars and possibly Slavs shortly after AD 612, some of the survivors took refuge in nearby Split. According to a 13th century writer, only the richer refugees built houses. The others took up residence (by 639) in the towers and substructures of the old imperial palace (of Diocletian, d. 305 AD). Thus: from Roman palace to Roman ruin in three centuries. 2. The East: Having taken Damascus (613), the Persians under general Farrokhan, called Shahr-Baraz, Gk: Sarbaros, invade Palestine and sack Jerusalem (614). To please his Christian wife, Chosroes removes the True Cross of Christ, or at least a fragment of it, to Persia. Defeat meant Christ had failed to protect his faithful, and at least some Christians concluded that weakness was the reason. Thus, we should not be surprised to hear from Antiochus (an eyewitness) that "a few weak-minded" Christians renounced Christ. The Persians Take Jerusalem, 614

The Persian army under general Shahrbaraz marched on and took (613) Damascus, and then (614) it was Jerusalem's turn. After a brief but sharp resistance - a three-week siege - the Christian (and Jewish) holy city fell on 22 May 614. There followed a massacre of the Christian inhabitants in which the Jews took the lead (Horowitz 1998). The monk Antiochos Strategos, cited by Armstrong 1996: 212, says that more than "67,000" people were slaughtered (Conybeare 1910). For this to be credible we must believe that the city’s basic population had been much augmented by refugees

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from the countryside. Khusroe's army, aided by “24,000” Jews from Tiberias, Nazareth and the mountains of Galilee, besieged Jerusalem for several weeks, capturing it in May or June 614. The conquest was a bloody affair in which ‘Parthians’ [sic: Sassanians] and Jews massacred anywhere from “60,000 to 90,000” Christian inhabitants of the city (90,000: Theophanes, TCOT: 11). A more likely estimate is 20,000; and the accounts of Jewish participation in the slaughter of Christians are found exclusively in Christian sources, and thus perhaps suspect (but accepted by Horovitz 1998). Another ‘35,000-37,000’ Christians were enslaved and exiled to Persia. The city itself was sacked. Incredibly large numbers: “As the Persians began to drive them away from the Mount of Olives, where this sermon was given, Zacharias bade farewell to Jerusalem: 'Peace to you, Sion, bride of Christ, peace to you, Jerusalem, holy city; peace to you, Holy Anastasis, illuminated by the Lord . . . this is the last peace and my final greeting to you; may I have hope and length of days that I may eventually gain your vision again?' " Then the column of prisoners moved off, 35,000 according to the Armenian bishop Sebeos, leaving behind many thousands of dead. Sebeos says 57,000 died; Strategikos, relying on Thomas, one of the unfortunate survivors who had to bury the bodies, claims 66,509, and gives a detailed breakdown of the figures by location. To contemporaries, the capture of the holy places by the pagan [sic] Zoroastrians was an unparalleled disaster”. —Judith Herrin, at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/herrin.html. The loss of Jerusalem was the subject of a poem by George of Pisidia. For some, the sack of Jerusalem in 614 was the central event in the destruction of Christian Syria ‘from which the province was never to recover’. Even today, the ruins of the churches destroyed by the Persians in 614 litter the Syrian countryside. The sack of Jerusalem by the Persians (614) as narrated by a Byzantine monk “(The Persians) fought for 20 days. And they struck so hard with their ballistas [large crossbow-like artillery pieces] that on the 21st day they razed the city walls. Afterwards, the evil enemies entered the city in a fury, like frenzied wild animals and angered snakes. Like rabid dogs they tore the flesh of the faithful with their teeth, and they spared no-one, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, neither child nor baby, neither priest nor monk, neither virgin [i.e. nuns] nor widow ..." —In Conybeare 1910. 2a. Asia Minor: The Persians may well have destroyed ancient Sardes or Sardis [Gk Sardeis], present-day Sart, inland east of Izmir-Smyrna (or in 616). This is deduced from the sudden ending of coin finds.

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One of many classical Roman roads ran from Smyrna on the coast eastward to Sardes and Philadelphia, thence across the upper Meander River to Laodicea. At Apamea, the road divided into a northern route running NE to Amorium and Ancyra. There the road divided again, the upper branch running north-east to Sinope on the Black Sea coast. The other branch went SE to Caesarea. 2b. SW Asia Minor: Destruction of Ephesus, south of Izmir/Smyrna, probably by earthquake (614; but possibly by fire and/or the Persian sack of 616). The city survived, but on a lesser scale. In the late 600s, probably before 660, the surviving population abandoned the classical site* and relocated to the nearby hill of Ayasuluk. Thus in about 50 years Ephesus was reduced from a city to a town and then from a town to a village. (*) Ancient Ephesus, today one of Turkey’s most famous tourist attractions, is considered by many the country’s most impressive archaeological site. The Lonely Planet guide describes it as "the best-preserved classical city in the east Mediterranean, and among the best places in the world to get a feel for what life was like in [classical] Roman times". 3. fl. John Moschus [Ioannes Moskhos], an ethnic Greco-Syrian monk and theologian, author of the Spiritual Meadow, stories of famous monks and hermits. He lived most of his life in the East before coming to Rome in 614-15. His compilation in Greek, the Leimõn ho Leimõnon, Latin: Pratum spirituale, ‘Spiritual Meadow’, is one of the earliest hagiological works. In it he narrates his personal experiences with many great ascetics he met during his extensive travels in the East, and repeats the edifying stories which these ascetics related to him. The text acquaints us with the numerous heresies that threatened to disrupt the Church in the East (thus Cath. Encyc.). One story has a monk ascribing his infection with leprosy to his having lapsed into fornication. He immediately returned to being a monk. 614-16: The Aegean: Rowing in their small boats, several Slavic tribes raid along the coast of Thessaly, western Asia Minor and various Aegean islands. They launch a combined sea and land attack against Thessaloniki (Fine 1991: 41). See discussion under 615. The Miracles specifically refers to refugees in Thessalonica from Nish and Serdica (Sofia in modern Bulgaria), indicating that those towns had already fallen to the Slavs. The Demise of Roman Spain

614-24: Spain: King Sisebut, 612-620/21, was a highly literate monarch; a number of his writings have survived; he was also an outstanding warrior. More than any Gothic king before him, he became the scourge of the Byzantines in Spania. —

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Fouracre et al., eds, New Cambridge Medieval History pp.351 ff. In 614 and 615, presumably having learnt of Heraclius’s preoccupation with the Persians and Avars, Sisebut launched two “massive” expeditions against the Greeks and conquered the major centre Málaga and the lesser town of Assidio ca. 615: before 619, when its bishop appears at the Second Council of Seville (thus Isidore and Fredegarius, cited in Kaegi 2003: 89). The Gotho-Hispanics conquered as far as the Mediterranean coast and razed many centres to the ground. Sisebut possibly also razed the Byzantine capital Cartagena, which was so completely desolated that it never reappeared in Visigothic Spain (Foureacre et al. think this did not occur until after 619). - This effectively ended the life of Byzantine Spania. _____________________________ In 621, the Rhomaniyans still held a few lesser towns, but Suinthila recovered them shortly, and by 624 the entire province of Spania was in Visigothic hands, save the Balearic Islands, which were an economic backwater in the seventh century (Wikipedia, 2009, ‘Spania’). _____________________________ c. 615: 1. The far West: As noted, the Visigotho-Spanish overrun most of the Imperial territories in Spain (Treadgold 1997: 290, citing Thompson’s Goths in Spain). See 616, 621. 2a. The Balkans: Although the Slavs belonged to different tribes, several of them united, probably in 615, in an unsuccessful attempt to storm Thessalonica by land and sea. Around the same time, the Avars opened a general offensive in the empire's north-west, taking Salona, Naissus (Nish), and Serdica (modern Sofia). Not long afterward, they deported many of the local Byzantines to Avar territory near Sirmium. 2b. Greece: After 610: As stated, Slavs from Thessaly and from the area around Thessalonica attempted to storm Thessalonica by land and sea but they fail. The Slavic boats were destroyed by a forceful wind which, of course, was believed to be due to the city’s protector St Demetrius (Treadgold, State and Society 1997: 290). Cf 618. This is said to have been the first time that the Slavs took to the sea using their “monoxyla”, single or multi-log dug-out ‘sailing canoes’. Greek: mono (single) + xylon (tree). They would have rigged their dug-out boats with sails and probably also added planks to the boat sides to increase the freeboard and put on some kind of outrigger [rowing platform] to make the boat more seaworthy (‘The Rus Project’, accessed 2009, at www.qnet.fi/rus-project/monoxyla). Cf 624, 626. The date of 615 is approximate. Of the date of the first Slavic attack on Thessalonica, recorded in Miracles, book 2, we are told only that it occurred

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under the episcopate of John, the author of book 1. As Florin Curta has explained, the description of the territories that the Slavs ravaged before turning against Thessalonica is viewed by many as fitting into the picture of Heraclius’s early regnal years, snapshots of which are given by Isidore of Seville and George of Pisidia. In particular, the fact that the author of book 2 specifically refers to maritime raids by ‘canoe’ (2.1.179; see also 2.4.253, 254) is reminiscent of George of Pisidia’s reference to the “Sclavene wolves” (in his Bellum Avaricum 197–201). Historians agree, therefore, in dating this attack to the first decade of Heraclius’s reign. This time the ‘Sclavenes’ had brought with them their families, for “they had promised to establish them in the city [of Thessalonica] after its conquest” (Miracles 2.1.180). – Curta 2001 and 2005. 615: Italy: d. Agilulf, Lombard king. Part of his funerary crown survives: an attractive cross in “barbarian” style, illustrated in Rice 1965, p.164. The net effect of Agilulf’s efforts was the conquest of the middle third of the Po Valley downstream towards imperial Ravenna, and a modest parcel of territory in SE Tuscany (map in Brown 1984: 38). From the Lombard side, this might be seen as a modest, even disappointing, achievement. But Brown 1984: 83 has suggested that the Lombards did not yet have a decisive military advantage. Just 50 years after deaths of Justinian and Belisarius, the Byzantines probably retained a superiority over the ‘barbarians’ in weaponry, armour and discipline. The mobility with which local units moved to different areas suggests, says Brown, that the imperial army in Italy continued to consist mainly of cavalry. A letter of Pope Martin, acc. 649, mentions that the Byzantino-Roman troops were equipped with lance, sword, bow and shield, which is what one would expect given the terms of best practice as set out in Maurice’s handbook or Strategikon, c.600. Thus, says Brown, the imperial forces in Italy probably retained much of the rigid discipline and sophisticated equipment and tactics exemplified by Belisarius’ and Narses’ armies in the previous century. On the Lombard side all males were available for military service (Christie p.356). We will therefore guess that Lombard fighters normally outnumbered the Byzantines, but equally they included many men of lesser military quality. Maurice’s Strategikon, ca. 600, also notes the weakness of the Lombard temperament and their mode of fighting. They fought with no discipline

(“impetuous and undisciplined”), little to no battle order (“they despise good order, especially on horseback”) and generally had few if any of their horsemen performing reconnaissance ahead of the army. Because “they [did] not concern themselves at all with scouts”, they were easily ambushed along the flanks and rear of their battle-line. They also failed to fortify their camps at night. Their skill at fighting with the cavalry lance could be nullified by the use of feints, ambushes, false negotiations and the choice of a difficult terrain

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or fortified sites for battle (trans. Dennis p.119).

615/616: 1. Asia Minor: Sassanid armies overrun Anatolia and sack Ancyra, Sardis, Chalcedon etc: Persian occupation of Chalcedon, the town on the Asian shore opposite Constantinople (616). The walls of Smyrna, however, refurbished in the Justinianic period, proved strong enough to withstand the Persian onslaught (Hodges & Whitehouse p.67). At Sardis, most of the city was abandoned thereafter (before 700); only a hilltop fortress continued into the Middle Ages. Moreover, in archaeology, bronze coins, the small change of the economy, practically disappear after this time (Mango 1980: 72-73). This reflected the near de-monetarisation of the economy by 700. The “End of Antiquity” The effect of the Persian invasions is shown by coin finds at Sardis in W Asia Minor: bronze coins are plentiful until 616; but very few thereafter, and almost none dating from the 8th and 9th centuries (Mango p.73, citing Foss). But this evidence is not by itself decisive, as after Constans II (d. 668) coin issues were small until the 9th century. Deurbanisation at Sardis certainly begins in the 610s, i.e. in the Persian period, but (as against Foss) most archaeologists prefer to locate deurbanisation within a longer period of disruption, i.e. over many decades or even a century. The Greek islands, alone of all the sub-regions of the Byzantine heartland, were relatively safe from attack, and there alone do we find significant seventh-century monumental constructions. Thus it is fairly clear that in Asia Minor endemic warfare and raiding was the major factor – the Sassanian (Persian) and then Muslim (Arab) incursions. At most classical sites after 650 building work is only occasional and then only in the form of fortifications and defences. The

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population had become ruralised and the ‘centres of settlement’ were in fact simply refuges, staging points or garrison centres. Examples include Sardis, Ankara, Amorium, Prousa (Bursa), Pergamon and Myra (Wickham 2005: 628 ff). 2. The Persians attack Egypt, 616-19. Cf 617-19. When the enemy invaded the Delta, the refugees were driven into Alexandria. The city was thus crowded with a great multitude of people wholly dependent for their support on charity. When the difficulty of feeding them, which fell chiefly upon the patriarch John V ‘the Merciful’ or ‘the Almsgiver’, became an impossibility, through a failure of the harvest, John fled to Cyprus with the imperial general Niketas, and left the province of Egypt to the Persians (Milne 1898). 3. (or 616:) New style of silver coin, the miliarison or hexagram. It was the emperor Heraclius who in 615, or a little later: see 616 and 619-21, revived an effective silver coinage, drawing the metal for his abundant issues mostly from the secularization of church plate during the crisis of the Persian war. The new coins were known as hexagrams, since they weighed six grammata (6.84 grams), a weight higher than any used for regular coinage during the entire period of the Roman Empire. Diameter: around 23 mm. For comparion, an Australian $2 coin weighs 6.6 g (diameter 20.5 mm) and a US quarter is 5.67 g (diameter 24 mm). 4. Military reform: A new fighting force called THE OPSIKION, literally “retinue”, was created by a regrouping of palatine soldiers. Or the Opsikion may have been formed by combining the two ‘praesental’ armies that had for long been based in and around the capital (Treadgold 1995: 74). The regrouping seems to have been effective by 615, when a ‘count of the Opsikion’ is recorded in the position previously held by the comes domesticorum or ‘count of the domestics’.* The Opsikion troops evidently accompanied the emperor on his military campaigns in the East and formed the nucleus of a new regiment that was later to be based in Thrace and Bithynia, the north-westernmost region of Asia Minor, opposite Constantinople (thus Judith Herrin 1987). See 659. (*) Head of the imperial bodyguard: comes ‘companion, count’ domesticorum ‘of (from) the household (troops)’. Dark Ages in the West Two Irish dates are useful in marking out the Dark Ages in the Latin West: the death of Columbanus (d. 615) and the birth of John Scotus Erigena (b. ca 810). — In the West very few manuscripts were copied between 550 and 750. Literary culture slid into a deep decline and was replaced with a primarily oral culture. The fact that more than half of the few biblical commentaries surviving from the period 650-850 were written by Irishmen shows how "dark" the times were in "Latin" (Lombard) Italy and Merovingian Francia.

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— Mid 6th century: Very unusually for a Westerner, Columbanus knew a little Greek, having been tutored in it at the monastery of Bangor in Ulster by Comgall. Columbanus reputedly knew Sappho's writings, as well as those of the Latins: Virgil, Ovid etc; but it must be doubted that he had enough Greek to easily read Sappho.* - Born in Leinster, SW Ireland, Columbanus was aged 20 in about 560/563. He proceeded to Frankish Gaul in 585 or 590, aged about 45/50 - with the aim of converting the remaining Arian Christian Suevians of NW Spain to Catholic Christianity. He went to newly-Catholic Lombard Northern Italy in 612, where he founded the monastery of Bobbio, south of Milan. 9th century: Another Irishman, Erigena (aged 50 in about 860), was made head of the palace school in Paris by Charles the Bald. He too is said to have studied Greek; it is claimed that the only other Westerner with any real knowledge of Greek was the papal librarian Anastasius. The Christian East also experienced a dark age, albeit less dark – this is discussed later: see before the chronology for 641 ff. (*) Greek in Ireland “On their green island and in the monasteries of Irish character on the northern English coasts, they did not read Homer or Plato, but rather learned [only] the Greek alphabet wholly or in part, excerpted Greek words from late antique sources - Jerome, Macrobius, Boethius, Priscian, Isidore, and others - and probably even participated in the transmission of glossaries; as for complete texts, only short liturgical pieces were evidently known. With a knowledge of Greek acquired in this manner, they could not understand or translate longer Greek texts with which they were unacquainted.” —Berschin 1988. 615-16: Greece: Coin hoards concealed at various places on the E side of Greece— Solomos, Athens, Chalkida, modern-day Nea Anchialos [in Thessaly: on the coast opposite the tip of Evvia/Euboea], Thessalonica, and Thasos in the north Aegean —indicate that these coastal areas came under threat from the Slavs in 615-6 or a little later (Metcalf 1962). This threat has been connected to sea-raids by the pagan Slavs around the time of the siege of Thessalonica, as recorded in the Miracles of St. Dêmêtrios. See below: 615-23. 615-18: Pope Deusdedit. - This period in Italy saw two uprisings against imperial rule, which was financially burdensome and militarily inadequate. The Exarch was killed in Ravenna, and a local military commander in the south declared himself emperor and seized Naples. Constantinople quickly dispatched a new Exarch who crushed the rebellion. See 616. 615-23: The Avars and Slavs take almost all of imperial Illyricum, our north-west Balkans; and pagan Slavs ravage through Christian Greece. Cf 618.

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— As noted earlier, Mango 1980: 69-70 says that "not a single Early Christian church remained standing in all of Greece" by 625, except in Salonika [Thessaloniki] and the island of Paros. — To quote the much later ‘Chronicle’ of Monemvasia [ca. 1000], "In another invasion they (the Avars) subjugated all of Thessaly and Greece . . . they made also an incursion into Peloponnesus, conquered it by war, driving out the noble and Hellenic nations. Those among the Greeks who succeeded in escaping … dispersed themselves here and there. The city of Patras [south side of the Gulf of Corinth] emigrated to the territory of Rhegium [Reggio in Calabria] … [and] some sailed to the island of Sicily and they are still there in a place called Demena, call themselves Demenitae instead of Lacedaemonitae [Spartans] and preserve their own Laconian [south Peloponnesian] dialect". —Quoted by Mathews, ‘Naples’. 615/6-25/26: Italy: Reigning Dowager Queen Theodolina or Theodelinda, Bavarian-born queen of the Lombards, 615-25. Co-ruler with her husbands, first king Autharis, 584-90, and second Agilulf, 591-615, she then ruled as regent for her son king Adaloald or Adololdo [acc. 616, aged 14], who was deposed (626) by her son-inlaw, Arioald. She was instrumental in commencing the restoration of Athanasian Christianity - the ancestor of modern Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy - to a position of primacy in Italy against its rival, Arian Christianity. Cf 636-52 – king Rothari. 615-21: The End of Antiquity ‘delayed’ on Crete, AD 620. Unlike many other parts of the empire, Crete thrived at this time, partly because it was never occupied by the Slavs (although raided in 623). Inscriptions dating to the reign of Herakleios, around 615, have long focussed attention on the later stages of the Cretan ‘city’ or town of Gortyna. The town was substantially rebuilt following an earthquake that occurred between 618 and 621. The praetorium [square in front of the governor’s residence] was reconstructed with a “superb” dedication to the emperors; the judiciary basilica was reconstructed as a hypaethral (open, unroofed) chamber, with a raised apse at the back. Herakleios’s officials also rebuilt the town’s water supply, creating an aqueduct that ran alongside the praetorium from the south, culminating in a castellum divisiorum [central pond, tank or tower for water distribution: endpoint of an aqueduct], a “splendid” nymphaeum [artificial grotto or open rotunda with a water shrine], and numerous fountains. Two colonnaded streets crossed at the praetorium. Following another earthquake around 666–670, however, the porticoes and the main church collapsed. Now the town became a modest village: street paving was covered with beaten earth, the rebuilt houses now sheltered the potters who revived their production, and a church and several houses with their own oil presses sprang up in the praetorium (Morrisson & Sodini, ‘Sixth Century’, in

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Laiou ed., 2002). As with Ephesus [see below under ca. 650], but for different reasons, in about 50 years Gortnya declined from a small city to a village. 616: 1a. Or in 615 [Kaegi 1993: 89]: Beginnings of a Byzantine retreat in Spain: the Visigoths capture most of the remaining Byzantine enclave in the south. Then by 617, peace was agreed. See 624. 1b. Spain: “Heraclius has completed [616] five years of his imperial rule. At the beginning [see above under 608-10], the Slavs took Greece [Graecia*] from the Romans; the Persians took Syria, Egypt [617-19: see there], and many provinces. Also in Spain, Sisebut [d. 621: see 620], king of the Goths, took certain cities from the same Roman ‘militia’ and converted the Jews subject to his kingdom to the faith of Christ.” —Isidore of Seville, Chronica Maiora. There are two redactions; hence the squashing together of many dates. (*) The text called Miracles of St Demetrius mention that the Slavs devastated Epirus and Achaia [the western Peloponnesus], so we can be certain this meant Greece proper and not just Illyricum (the NW Balkans) (Curta 2001: 107). 2. To deal with the crisis, Heraclius halved the salaries of soldiers and the civilian bureaucracy (Paschal Chronicle, 706, cited by Treadgold 1995: 147; also 1997: 380; and Haldon, Transformation, p.225). The basic annual pay, probably 20 nomismata, was reduced to 10. In the case of soldiers, probably arms and uniforms were provided free as a substitute for the reduced cash allowances. A new silver coin, the hexagram, was minted for this purpose: the new coins were inscribed “God help the Romans!” (Treadgold 1997: 290). About two-thirds of the Eastern field armies that Heraclius inherited when he took over in 610 were maintained. "This was not only a remarkable achievement but one vital to the empire's future survival", says Treadgold 1995: 207. See 622. Heraclius halved his outlays from perhaps two million nomismata in 610 to 1 M by about 620 (rising to 1.5 M by 641). Over the longer term, the outlay from the treasury fell from about four million nomismata in 565 to only about 1.5 million by 641 (Treadgold 1995: 196). 3. Italy: In the Exarchate of Italy, unpaid soldiers had already assassinated the exarch John, and at Naples a rebel, John of Conza, had proclaimed himself emperor. After the reform of salaries had restored the treasury's solvency, Heraclius was able to send the new exarch Eleutherius with the pay that was overdue. Eleutherius soon restored a measure of order to Italy, and executed

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John of Conza (Treadgold 1997). —In 616, the Neapolitan dux Cousinus [Giovanni Consino or John of Conza: Paul the Deacon’s Consia] attempted to establish his independence, but the new exarch Eleutherius defeated and killed him in the following year (or in 618: A Jones et al. 1992: 436). —The exarch Eleutherius, a eunuch, led his troops from Ravenna to Rome and then on to Naples to defeat the rebel John of Conza (Paul the Deacon, 4.34). Brown 1984: 91 cites this as evidence of the continuing mobility of the army in Italy, which may indicate that it was a mainly cavalry force. —Meanwhile, the Lombard dux Sondrar or Sundrarius had defeated Eleutherius, and peace was gained only by the exarch agreeing to pay 500 Roman pounds (litrai) of gold annually (ibid.) Now 500 litrai was 36,000 gold coins. How this could be afforded on top of his troops’ pay is unclear, but in any event one imagines that it was peace with the Lombards that allowed Eleutherius to take his troops south against John of Conza’s rebels. 4. The end of Antiquity: The town of Sardis in western Asia Minor was abandoned for a hilltop castle or acropolis after 616. Of the coins excavated at Sardis, 1,011 derive from the years 491-616: eight for each year elapsed; 90 coins from the yrs 616-700: about one per year; and just nine coins from yrs 700-900. Thus http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~dcaner/hist217/laworld-facts.html; accessed 2003 “…[Western Asia Minor:] One of the richest lands of classical civilisation was now dominated by villages and fortresses.” –Foss, Ephesus after Antiquity, 1979, quoted in Hodges & Whitehouse p.63. The Case of Sardis “During [the] late antique period”, writes Greenhalgh, “new building in Sardis was either ecclesiastical or private: public building, the very backbone of the classical city, disappears. Indeed, the excavators have guessed that, after the Persian attack of 616 AD - and comparing what they found before this date with what remained after it, - the population must have declined by about 90 per cent. In spite of this, Hanfmann, 1983: 214, remarks on the continuity and the recurrent civic activity, with vigorous rebuilding and renovation - right up to the destruction of 616 AD.” —Michael Greenhalgh, ‘The Greek & Roman Cities of Western Turkey’. Foss and Scott (2002) note that the entire nature of the town of Sardis changed after 616. The remains attest extensive destruction, followed by a total lack of evidence for almost a half century. In addition, some time in the seventh century an earthquake loosed a landslide from the acropolis that fell onto the lower town (already abandoned) and covered part of the temple of Artemis and caused the

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collapse of the gymnasium and other public buildings. When evidence is again available [from 660], the city was fundamentally different: the ancient metropolis (on the plain) had become a field for ruins, while the new ‘city’ focused on a castle on the ancient acropolis (on the hill). The first evidence for a medieval town at Sardis dates from the mid-seventh century*, when the main east-west road was rebuilt. The large fortress (whose exact extent cannot be determined because of subsequent erosion of the hill) became and remained the centre of medieval Sardis. Its walls sheltered a substantial settlement, much of it obliterated by later construction. Rebuilding of the road shows that the place was not isolated but still stood on a major route of communication between the coast and the interior of Asia Minor, i.e. from Smyrna to Philadelphia. – Foss & Scott 2002. See 716 - sacked by Arabs. (*) See entry for 660. 616: From Vandals to East-Romans to Saracens: MIDPOINT IN THE PERIOD OF BYZANTINE RULE IN NORTH AFRICA 616-20: 1. The East: The Persians re-take Syria, invade Egypt (617-19), and control most of Asia Minor. The Patriarch of Alexandria at this time was Cyprus-born John ‘the Almsgiver’; his biography was afterwards written by the his friend Bishop Leontius (see under 650). 2. Italy: The new exarch, the eunuch Eleutherius, 616-620, seems to have found the now fragmentary imperial state in Italy in utter confusion, and indeed on the verge of dissolution. In about 616, as we noted earlier, the Lombard dux Sundrarius defeated him and forced a treaty. Eleutherius bought peace by consenting (c. 617) to pay the yearly tribute of 500 or 550 pounds of gold which perhaps pope Gregory had promised when he made a separate peace with the Lombards in 593, when Rome had been practically in the hands of the ‘barbarians’. As noted earlier, Naples had been usurped by a certain Joannes of Compsa or John of Conza. Ancient Compsa, modern Conza, was/is a town in the highlands of eastern Campania, NE of Eboli, near the Lucania-Apulia border. Hutton calls him "a wealthy Samnite landowner". He proclaimed himself lord in Naples, and it is obvious that even in Ravenna there was grave discontent. Eleutherius soon disposed (ca. 618) of the usurper of Naples (Paul the Deacon 4.36; A Jones et al. 1992: 436; also Hutton 1913: my chronology follows that of Jones et al.).

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616-26: Italy: By this time the power of the Exarchs of Ravenna had so declined that they were moving from an offensive policy in external affairs – seeking the recovery of territory from the Lombards – to a defensive policy: preserving the empire’s existing possessions (Brown 1984: 52). Cf 625-43 below. 616-40: Eadbald, Anglo-Saxon king ruler of Kent. He reverted to ‘paganism’, before coming back to Christianity. 617: The NW Balkans: According to the Miracula Sancti Demetrii or ‘Miracles of St Demetrius’, written during these decades, entire provinces of Illyria were horribly ravaged. In 617, according to the Miracula, "a new swarm of low-bred Slavs settled further down [i.e. in what is now Serbia], and from there took incursions in most of Prevalitania, Dardania [present-day Kosovo], New and Old Epirus and Macedonia, and making the majority of towns and provinces uninhabitable". Cf 618: siege of Thessaloniki. 617-19: The East: The Persian general Shahrvaraz completed his devastating campaign by capturing Egypt, the richest of the Byzantine provinces and the bread-basket of Constantinople, along with its capital Alexandria, between 617 and 619. The chronicles say that “Shahrvaraz invaded Egypt and, with much bloodshed, subjected it with Alexandria to the Persians” (text in Palmer et al. 1993). No real details of how Nicetas lost Egypt have survived; but Olster 1993: 120-21 is doubtless right in proposing that Egypt—or at least the local troops that he commanded—had not recovered from the ravages of the earlier civil war of 609. Gibbon, Decline and Fall: “Pelusium, the key of that impervious country [Egypt], was surprised by the cavalry of the Persians: they passed, with impunity, the innumerable channels of the Delta, and explored the long valley of the Nile, from the pyramids of Memphis to the confines of Aethiopia. Alexandria might have been relieved by a naval force, but the archbishop [John] and the praefect [Nicetas] embarked for Cyprus; and Chosroes entered the second city of the empire, which still preserved a wealthy remnant of industry and commerce. His western trophy was erected, not on the walls of Carthage, but in the neighbourhood of Tripoli [Libya]; the Greek colonies of Cyrene [Cyrenaica] were finally extirpated [an exaggeration*]; and the conqueror, treading in the footsteps of Alexander**, returned in triumph through the sands of the Libyan desert.” (*) In fact, Greeks ruled in Cyrenaica until the Arab conquests of the 640s. (**) Some 950 years earlier, in 331 BC, the original conquering Greek, Alexander of Macedon, had made an excursion west to the great Siwa Oasis in the Libyan desert, just inside the modern Egyptian border.

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618: 1. Macedonia: In 618 or perhaps around 620, a large Avaro-Slav army besieged Thessalonica by land, but not by sea. Curta 2006: 73 says in “617 or, at the latest, 618”. The assailants belonged to various Slavic tribes already resident in Macedonia and Thessaly—the Droguvitai (“Drogubites”), Sagudatai, Velegezêtai (“Belegezites”), Vaiounêtai (“Vajunetes”), Verzerêtai (”Berzetes”)—who agreed unanimously to besiege Thessalonica under the leadership of a certain ‘chief’ (Gk: archon) called Chatzôn. When he was killed, they send to the chagan of the Avars for aid. Their intentions were so clear that their wives and children camped in front of the walls of the city, ready to occupy it as soon as it fell. With the sea free, provisioning was assured. Moreover the Byzantines had learnt how to neutralise the Avars’ siege engines. The siege was lifted after little more than a month (33 days). This was to be the last serious threat to Thessaloniki for some centuries (Fine 1991: 42; Burke and Scott 2000: 3). Cf 619, 621. The siege must have taken place in 617 or 618 at the latest, and appears to have lasted just over a month. In the end, however, the Qagan (chagan) could not take the city. Instead, he opened negotiations with the besieged to obtain monetary compensation for withdrawing his troops (Miracles 2.2.215). The truce struck between Byzantium and the Avars allowed the emperor to transfer troops from Europe to Asia Minor. Thereafter (622) Heraclius was able to launch a campaign against the Persians (Haldon, Transformation p.45). 2. The plague returns to Constantinople – its ninth visit (others say sixth) since the mid 500s. 3. The Spanish Visigoths capture the African side of the Gibraltar strait from Byzantium. 618-19: PLAGUE again in New Rome (Constantinople), its sixth visit in 80 years: Heraclius considers (618) removing the court to Carthage (Angold 2001: 43; also Stathakopoulos 2004). Persian Conquest of Roman Egypt

2. As the Persians advanced from Palestine, the imperial government decided to end the free handouts of bread - made from Egyptian wheat - to residents of Constantinople. After 619 grain supplies came from Thrace and elsewhere, but now people had to pay for their bread (Fossier p.283; Treadgold State 1997 p.292; Herrin 2007: 26). In the 400s, 80,000 loaves had been distributed daily in Constantinople: Socrates Scholasticus, ii.13.

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618-48: THE ‘END OF ANTIQUITY’ AND THE ORIGINS OF A BYZANTINE STATE Under Justinian (d. 565), Egypt had supplied eight million artabae* of wheat or enough to feed a population of one million (much of the grain was re-exported from Constantinople, eg to Thessalonica). Grain sailing season from Alexandria to Constantinople: September-October. Stock station at Tenedos, the small island at the mouth of the Hellespont. Last grain shipment: 619. — Erdkamp 2005: 229; Curta, Slavs 2001: 138. (*) About 30 litres. An artabe or artaba of size 38 litres contained 30 litres of wheat. Abandoning the traditional free distributions of bread was a highly unpopular measure. After the loss of Egypt in 618-19, the price of a loaf was set at three folleis (bronze coins). When the official in charge of the new system, John, nicknamed "the Earthquake", tried to more than double the price to eight folleis, a crowd of protesters, led by some of the palace guards (Scholai: who in this period were ceremonial guardsmen, not real fighters), advanced to St. Sophia “in riotous ill humour” (Herrin 1987). In 600 Constantinople was still principally fed from Egypt, by far the empire’s richest province. Justinian’s reconquests had also restored to the empire the other two great grain provinces, Sicily and ‘Africa’ (greater Tunisia). It is not clear what proportion of grain was being transported from the West to the East, but enough for Heraclius senior to be able, in 608, to blackmail Phocas, i.e. by withholding the grain supply from Carthage. Even so, as Wickham explains, 2005: 124 ff, Egypt must have been of paramount importance to the Eastern capital. This is the background to an understanding of the Persian and then Arab conquests of the period 613-642. The East Roman empire lost on two occasions two-thirds of its land area and three-quarters of its wealth (Hendy’s remark, cited by Wickham p.125). It managed once, but not twice, to defend itself, feed Constantinople, and reconquer the lost lands. The first loss of Egypt to the Persians in 618-19 was immediate in its impact (people had to pay for their bread and the capital’s population must have declined quickly), but Wickham thinks, disagreeing with Olster, that the impact was not catastrophic. Probably Africa and Sicily increased in importance in the three decades 618-48. The Arabs threatened Africa from the 640s, but did not succeed in taking the grain-lands of Proconsularis (northern Tunisia) until the 690s. But the loss of Egypt forced, or encouraged, the rulers of New Rome to make fundamental adjustments to the way the army and state were run. Thus we may now properly speak of a “Byzantine” state (Wickham p. 125). 619: 50 YEARS SINCE THE LOSS OF MILAN TO THE LOMBARDS 619:

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Thrace: Avar campaign in Thrace in which it is said that they took a very improbable “270,000” Christian captives (Fine 1991: 42, citing Nicephorus). Even 27,000 sounds unlikely. An Avar detachment rides on to Constantinople and threatens the capital, but the walls defeat them. Gibbon, citing the Paschal Chronicle and Nicephorus: “The chagan [monarch: from Turkic khayan, ‘leader’] was encamped in the plains of Thrace [Kaegi 2003; 118 places this in 623]; but he dissembled his perfidious designs, and solicited an interview with the emperor near the town of Heraclea. Their reconciliation was celebrated with equestrian games; the senate and people, in their gayest apparel, resorted to the festival of peace; and the Avars beheld, with envy and desire, the spectacle of Roman luxury. On a sudden the hippodrome [of Heraclea] was encompassed by the Scythian [Avar] cavalry, who had pressed their secret and nocturnal march: the tremendous sound of the chagan's whip gave the signal of the assault, and Heraclius, wrapping his diadem round his arm, was saved with extreme hazard by the fleetness of his horse. So rapid was the pursuit that the Avars almost entered the Golden Gate of Constantinople with the flying crowds: but the plunder of the suburbs rewarded their treason, and they transported beyond the Danube 270,000 captives.” Thus the Avars raided the extramural suburbs of Constantinople, causing great terror and panic among the local population. The patriarch Sergios agreed to a loan of church plate to provide silver for a new coin. Some say this was struck to buy a peace treaty with the Chagan. At this time supplies of other metals, even bronze in the form of antique statues, were collected and melted down to be minted as coin. “But normally the gold and silver in church liturgical vessels was only sold to ransom Christian prisoners, and Sergios's innovation clearly represented an unusual measure of support for secular matters” (Herrin loc. cit.). Others propose that he offered the emperor the wealth of the Church to equip a holy army to take the war into Persia. At any rate, the emperor arranges a truce with the Avars, and transfers troops from Europe to Asia. See 621-22. 3. The far north-east: Treaty with the Onogur Turks, living in the north Caucasus: Heraclius secures an ally against the Avars and protects at the same time the empire's northern flank against Persia (Obolensky p.89). Cf 627. 619-20: Italy: Revolt by the Exarch. Finding the situation in Italy to be unsatisfactory, and taking advantage of Heraclius' preoccupation with the Sassanids, the eunuch exarch Eleutherius proclaimed himself emperor at Ravenna in 619, with the intent of setting up his capital in Rome. On the way from Ravenna to Rome in 620, however, while still deciding how to convince the new patriarch of Rome, Boniface V, to grant him a crown, he was murdered by his own soldiers. They were apparently still loyal to Heraclius. They sent his head to the emperor in Constantinople (Liber Pont.: A Jones et al. 1992: 436). The pretender was killed on the Via Flaminia-Amerina* between Cagli and Gubbio, i.e. south of Urbino and north of Perugia; the Liber Pontificalis says “at

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the castrum called Lucioli” or Luceoli, modern Cantiano, NE of Perugia (Paul the Deacon 4.34; LP 71.2: Davis trans., p. 65). (*) There were two nearly parallel highways running from Ravenna to Rome. The western road called the Via Amerina ran south to Perugia and was under Byzantine control. The other, the Via Flaminia, diverged into two legs north of Gubbio; both legs - Spoleto being on the outer (easterrn) leg were under Lombard rule. See next. The Rome-Ravenna Axis When the incursions of Faroald (d. 584), the first Lombard Duke of Spoleto, had originally cut the Via Flaminia, the lifeline between Rome and Ravenna, another road, the Via Amerina – a little to the west - was improved and fortified at intervals, works that represented some of the last road-building carried out in Italy in Late Antiquity. For a photograph of a surviving high watch-tower from the Amerina SE of Narni, go here: http://www.vasanellovt.it/Page_Lingua_Inglese.html; then scroll down to La Toricella. The Via Amerina was a highway that ran north to Perugia. The better known Via Flaminia—or Viae: the ‘old’ Flaminia Vetus and the ‘new’ Flaminia Nova— diverged at Narni. These roads ran on the east, broadly parallel with the Amerina. Spoleto was located on the eastern leg, the Nova. Tracking from Rome, one first took the Via Cassia, the ancient road via Viterbo to Florence. The Amerina commenced as a branch road diverging from the Cassia near Baccanae, SE of modern Sutri. It ran thence NE through Falerii – presentday Civita Castellana: 65 km directly north of Rome - or in other words NE of Nepi, SE of Viterbo. It then continued directly north through Orte to Tuder [present-day Todi: west of Spoleto], and on through the valley of the Upper Tiber to Perusia [modern Perugia] and then, after crossing the Tiber, went NNE to Gubbio (Diehl, Etudes byzantines 1905: 70, citing the ‘Anonymous of Ravenna’). From Todi to Perugia, the line of the highway was approximately that of the modern E45 autostrada. If one draws a line west-east through Todi to Spoleto, it crosses three southnorth roads in sucession: the Amerina at Todi (Byzantine), the Flaminia Vetus at Masa Martana (Lombard) and the Flaminia Nova near Spoleto (Lombard). As the new military and strategic route, the Via Amerina "became the communications core of Imperial Italy and the chief support to the claim that imperial Italy was still extant". —Hallenbeck 1982: 8. 2. The End of Antiquity in Asia Minor: Morrisson & Sodini, ‘Sixth Century’, in Laiou ed. 2002, note that archaeologists have documented the decline of many coastal cities or urban centres, such as Ephesos, and even of towns that were at

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some remove from the sea, such as Sardis and Ankyra. The Persian attacks accelerated, or at least coincided with, the end of the city of Antiquity and the transformation of towns into ruralised villages. The fate of other cities is comparable: Aphrodisias in south-west Asia Minor survived the plague of 541– 542, but suffered severe depredations “around 619–620” [or perhaps earlier: see 616], and died away thereafter, without having been conquered. It was simply abandoned. 620: 1. A bearded emperor: Image on a bronze dekanummium coin, from the mint at Catania, Sicily, 619-620 AD: obverse D N HERACLIVS PP AVG, i.e. Latin dominus nostrum Heraclius perpetuus Augustus: ‘Our master Heraclius perpetual-eternal Augustus-holy ruler’. The coin shows him crowned, draped and with a cuirassed bust facing with short beard holding a ‘globus cruciger’ or globe topped with a cross in his right hand. His predecessor Phocas seems to have been the first emperor to wear a beard. Maurice, who Phocas had deposed, was clean-shaven. 2. Italy: Lombard coinage was initiated in Tuscany, probably c. AD 620, with the issuing of imitative tremisses of Herakleios and later of Constans II, acc. 641, with a ‘cross potent reverse’. 620-21: 1. (or in 619) “Being short of funds [for war], he [the emperor] took on loan the moneys of religious establishments [“the pious houses”] and he also took the candelabra and other vessels of the holy ministry from the Great Church, which he minted into a great quantity of gold and silver coin” (Theophanes). 2. Asia: “Sarbaros [Shahbaraz, a title meaning "the Boar of the Empire"], the Persian commander, … took his forces and came to Cilicia that he might turn the emperor round by his attack on Roman territory. Fearing, however, lest the emperor invade Persia by way of Armenia and cause disturbance therein, he could not make up his mind what to do” (ibid.) —The Chronicle of Theophanes, trans. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott 1997. 3. Spain: King Sisebut, in a great campaign in perhaps 620 or 621, managed to capture Carthago Spartaria (Cartagena), the Byzantine provincial capital, known to the Rhomaniyans as Justina, the most important city of all the provincbyzantine ciliciacilicie. The Spanish Wikipedia (2009) prefers to date this to 622. The two versions of Isidore’s History allow various dates for this event: 615, 621, 622 and 625, the latter suggesting that Sisebut’s successor Suintila captured the town. It fell by the treason of some of its inhabitants who opened the gates of surrounded town to the Visigoths. The town was then razed. After the fall of Carthago Spartaria several other towns fell to Sisebut, and following his death in 621 [or earlier in 619], Malaga and the remaining coastal towns of the Straits fell into the hands of his successor Suintila, i.e. by 624.

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So far was Sisebut from being an illiterate barbarian that he tried his hand at Latin poetry and wrote a life of St Desiderius of Vienne [France]. His Latin poem on astronomy, Carmen de Luna or Praefatio de Libro Rotarum, is dedicated to a friend, thought to be Isidore of Seville (Riche, … Occident Barbare, Paris 1962 pp. 268, 304). 620-23: The Balkans undefended: In ca. 620 (or perhaps 621-22), Heraclius moved all troops from the Balkans to the Eastern front. This action seems to have allowed the Avars a wider range of raiding and of control in the Balkans. In 623, or earlier, they ambushed the emperor himself near the Long Wall in inner Thrace (Theophanes dates this ambush to 619: TCOT: 12). Cf 623: Slav raid on Crete. Among the troops brought to Anatolia were the 8,000 or so survivors of the old Army of Thrace; they will in due course form the fighting force of a new Thracesian province or “theme” (Treadgold, State p.374). —On the themes [themata], see below under 659-62. 621-22: The East: After the peace treaty with the Avars (620 or 621), the emperor transferred (621 or 622) what remained of the imperial troops in Europe (“his European armies”) to Asia, despite evident Slavonic activity (TCOT: 13). New recruits had been enrolled in the lists, armed, trained, instructed as to their Christian role, and prepared for serious action. In other words, Heraclius rebuilt the Byzantine army. He sails from the capital [4 or 5 April 622] initially to Cilicia to prepare for his counteroffensive against Sassanian Persia (June-July 622: Chronicle of Theophanes 1997: 437). He was the first emperor since Theodosius I to personally lead an expedition (says Norwich 1988: 189). The Expedition to E Anatolia, 621-22 Heraclius drilled his troops on the parade grounds of Bithynia in NW Asia Minor in late 621, combining new tactics with spiritual indoctrination. Thence he sent them to central Anatolia: a single large army of possibly over 30,000* men is brought together at or near Caesarea, and it trains for the coming offensive. Since he sailed to Cilicia, we assume he travelled from there by land to meet up with the army near Caesarea. (*) Noting that the entire army reached 70,000 in 627 (see there), Treadgold State p.294 proposes “50,000” for 621-22. But the 70,000 of 627 included a large number of Khazars; so the number of Byzantines who came together in 621-22 may have been nearer 30,000. After further training, the army proceeded (622) into Armenia before wintering “in the vicinity of” the Black Sea coast. From there Heraclius invaded Persian

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territory in the spring of 622. Others place this in 623. After much skirmishing he defeated the Persians under Sarbaros [Shahvaraz]. It is not stated where, but, because Theophanes mentions Sarbaros coming back out of the (Anti-Taurus) mountains, presumably the battle took place in the western sector of upper Mesopotamia. The training seems to have paid off: the victory was won using a feigned retreat (TCOT: 14-15). Treadgold 1997: “Heraclius made a truce with the Avars, promising them tribute in order to free himself for a campaign against the Persians. In July [622**] the emperor led his reorganized army to Cappadocia, where he found the Persian army under Shahrvaraz. The Persian general occupied the Cilician Gates to keep the emperor out of Syria; but when the Byzantines turned toward Armenia and threatened to outflank Shahrvaraz, he followed them. After some indecisive manoeuvres, the armies came to a battle [in 622, probably at the start of August**], in which Heraclius defeated Shahrvaraz. Although the victory was not a crushing one, the Persians left Anatolia, and the effect on both sides' morale was considerable. It was the Byzantines' first defeat of the Persians in years.” (**) There was an eclipse of the moon on 28 July 622 which serves to correct Theophanes’ chronology. He places the battle soon after the eclipse, meaning that the true date is 622 (Theophanes’ Chronicle 1997 edn: 437). Horse armour The Persians, defeated in a skirmish probably in Cappadocia (or perhaps Armenia), withdraw from Asia Minor. Describing this battle, Theophanes mentions Heraclius’s horse-armour. The emperor’s horse “took a lance-thrust in the flank and received many sword-blows to the face [but], because he [the horse] was wearing armour of layered felt, he was unharmed, nor did the sword have any effect”. In 627 (see there) the emperor rode a horse protected by armour of “sinew”, presumably ‘boiled’ (hardened) leather, cuir bouilli. – Not literally boiled but softened by soaking in water or wax, then shaped and let dry. 621-31: Suinthila or Swintila, Visigoth king of Spain. The Visigoths finally take the last Byzantine foothold in south-east Spain. Suinthila’s troops eliminated the Byzantine enclave in the period 621-25. Collins 2004: 77 suggests that Cartagena fell “around 625”. Post-Antique Latin: The historian and scholar Isidore, bishop of Seville, wrote his encyclopaedic Etymologiae during this reign. He quotes from 154 authors, both Christian and pagan. Many of the Christian authors he had read in the originals; of the pagans, many he consulted only in current compilations. The Chronology of Heraclius’s Eastern Campaigns Here we contrast the chronology proposed by Treadgold, 1997: 294 ff, with that of Nicolle 1994 who follows Theophanes.

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621: The Army of Thrace is transferred to Asia, to bolster the troops already there. Heraclius drills his forces to a high state of readiness. 622, July: From Cilicia, the emperor leads his army into Cappadocia, against Shahrvaraz. When the Byzantines turns towards Armenia, the Persian army follows. In September Heraclius defeats Shahrvaraz (the date can be fixed absolutely from an eclipse mentioned by Theophanes). Then Heraclius returns to Constantinople, apparently leaving the army in or near Armenia. Nicolle concurs. Winter 622-23: Armenia. 623: Heraclius was in the West, dealing with the Avars. Winter 623-24: The Byzantine army wintered in Azerbaijan (ancient Albania). 624: Heraclius retakes Theodosiopolis in what had been Byzantine Armenia. Then he proceeds against Dvin, the capital of Persian Armenia, which he sacked. (Nicolle, following Theophanes, puts this in 623.) Next, he invaded the Persian province of Atropatene, which is our southern Azerbaijan and N Iran. By summer, his army was over halfway to Ctesiphon. The Persians came against him but pulled back. Continuing on, the emperor stopped in N Iran to sack Ganzaca and destroy its fire temples. Nicolle, following Theophanes, puts this in 623. Next he took the shah’s summer palace in the mountains. By now it was autumn. Heraclius decided to turn around and proceed to Caucasian Albania, formerly a Persian protectorate, and go into winter quarters there. Winter 624-25: Albania (Azerbaijan). 625, spring: Heraclius marches SW from Albania into Suinia [NE of Lake Van], a district of Persian Armenia. There he was threatened by three separate Persian armies, and routed them all. He decided to winter in Byzantine Armenia, and, as he withdrew past Lake Van, the Persians followed. Another Byzantine victory followed, and Heraclius took winter quarters beside Lake Van. Winter 625-26: Armenia (Lake Van). 626:

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Heraclius takes Amida in what had been Byzantine Mesopotamia. Learning that the Persians are marching away from him towards Constantinople, he turned to intercept Sharvaraz in Cappadocia. Nicolle appears to place this in 625. After an inclusive clash, the emperor now divided his forces. One corps he led to the Caucasus. A second corps (12,000 men) was sent to aid Constantinople and a third, larger corps went into eastern Anatolia to check another Persian army proceeding westwards. In June Shahrvaraz’s army reached the Sea of Marmara opposite Constantinople. There a combined Avar-Slav siege was defeated. A large part of the Persian corps perished. Winter 626-27: The three Byzantine corps wintered separately. Heraclius was in Iberia (modernday Georgia). 627, summer: The bulk of the Byzantine forces in Anatolia marched to join the emperor in Iberia. Meanwhile Heraclius’ own corps defeated and killed the Persian commander Sharaplakan. Late summer: With Iberian and Lazican* allies, Heraclius led a large combined army deep into Persian territory. Nicolle puts this in 626. December, in Assyria: At Nineveh, near modern Mosul, the Byzantines and their northern allies crushed the Persians in a major battle. (*) From east and west Georgia respectively. Iberia lay inland; Lazica bordered the Black Sea. Winter 627-28: The winter campaign continues. The Rhomaniyans capture Dastigerd, the shah’s favourite palace. An offer of peace was rejected, so Heraclius proceeded towards the enemy capital Ctesiphon. It was protected by a canal in high flood, so the Byzantines turned back to Atropatene [i.e., NNE to northern Iran]. Khusrau was rapidly overthrown. (622:) Muhammad and Abu Bakr flee Mecca for Medina: the Muslim "Hegira" or hijra, 'emigration'. This will become the base year for the Islamic calendar. Cf 624. 622-23: NE Asia Minor: “In this year Chosroes, emperor of the Persians, appointed as his commander Sarablangas [Pers. Sharaplakan], an energetic man filled with great vanity; and having entrusted him with the contingents of the so-called Chosroegetai and Perozitai [elite regiments], sent him against Herakleios in Albania [modern Georgia].” – Theophanes, online at www.deremilitari.org; accessed 2009. In late 622 when Heraclius moved further east—probably on the Satala*Theodosiopolis road—the Persian army had no other choice but to follow. In

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February 623, after several failed attempts to come to grips with the Romans and intense skirmishing, Shahrbaraz decided to attack. Defeated by Heraclius, he retreated. The cleric and poet George of Pisidia was taken along as chaplain on this expedition, expecting (as indeed happened) that George would glorify the emperor in verse. A J Butler 1902: 123, perhaps unkindly called his poems “tedious”. Tastes differ: Michael Psellus, fl. AD 1067, compares him with, and even prefers him to, Euripides; but the later may not have been known in detail to Psellus (Both the poets used iambic trimeters.) (*) Satala was near today’s Gumushane, which is south of Trabzon. Theodosiopolis is today’s Erzerum. In other words, the battle was fought somewhere NW of Erzerum. 623: 1. Anatolia: The Persians again briefly occupy Caesarea* and sack Ancyra. The sequel exemplifies the >>THE END OF ANTIQUITY