Last time
in Byzantine Historical Narratives and Primary Source Reviews I covered the
tragic and war-filled reign of the emperor Maurice. The subsequent brutal rule
of the emperor Phocas, and his overthrow by Heraclius (Herakleios) are covered
primarily by several 7th century chronicles. The first is the Chronicon Paschale (Easter Chronicle), a
Byzantine source that – like all universal histories – tries to establish the
entire history of the world from the Biblical creation down to the author’s own
day; in this case the middle years of Heraclius. The second chronicle I wish to
talk about here is actually not technically Byzantine – the Armenian History of
Sebeos, who describes the dramatic events of Heraclius’ later years and was
witness to one of the most important events in world history: the rise of
Islam. A final third chronicle here is Egyptian; the chronicle of John, bishop
of Nikiu, who recounts in great detail the rise of Heraclius and the civil war
against Phocas, along with the Arab conquest of Egypt.
When the emperor Maurice fell
victim to a full-blown military revolt in the year 602 CE, which resulted in
the death of his entire family and the accession of Phocas, the tentative peace
which had been reigning on the eastern frontier with Persia was irreparably
shattered. The Sassanian Persian king Chosroes II (Khosrow II, 590-628) had
previously been saved from an internal rebellion thanks to the help of the
emperor Maurice, but with the cost of significant concessions on the frontier with
the Romans. With the violent regime change in Byzantium Chosroes saw an
opportunity, and by claiming to support the legitimate ruling family he went to
war against his former benefactors. Phocas’ ill-documented reign was marked by
tyranny, murder, and a badly fought war against the invading Persians, and so
it was not surprising that he faced extreme dissatisfaction from across the
empire. A few years after Phocas assumed power a certain Heraclius, son of the
exarch of Africa who was also called Heraclius, rebelled against Phocas and led
an army towards Constantinople. Phocas’ control rapidly crumbled and Heraclius
entered the capital in 610, having Phocas killed and assuming the throne for
himself. The tyrant had been overthrown, but the new emperor still had a
massive war with Persia to fight. Having no problem with the change in
Byzantium’s government, the armies of Chosroes swiftly took huge portions of
the eastern Roman empire – Egypt, Syria, the entire Levantine region. Most
embarrassing for the Romans was the loss of Jerusalem, from which the Persians
took back to their capital at Ctesiphon a number of relics, including the True
Cross Upon Which Our Lord And Saviour Jesus Christ Was Actually Crucified.
Thanks to renewed efforts by the Byzantines from 622 onwards, and especially
the failure of a siege on Constantinople (626) by the Persians and their Avar
allies, this long and terrible war finally swung in Heraclius’ favour. The
Persians were driven back, occupied territories restored to Byzantine-Roman
control, and when Persia itself was invaded and its army defeated between 627
and 628, Chosroes met a rebellion and was overthrown. The government of the
newly-installed Persian ruler, Siroes (Kavadh II, who was Chosroes’ son)
quickly sued for peace, and thus the final war between the Romans and Persians
drew to a close. Heraclius could return to his capital in triumph, knowing that
the empire had been saved at last.
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| The Herakleian Dynasty - or three of them, at least |
These are essentially the events
that the Chronicon Paschale narrates.
The chronicle itself begins with the mythical creation of the Earth and the
story of Adam and Eve, extending down through the millennia and encompassing
the entire history of the Roman empire and all that, but the fact is that the
only really useful bit of a chronicle is in the final few sections. When the
writer is relating events from their own day or immediately prior they can
often grant a unique window onto that period of time, especially if they are
the only witness to such events. The writer of the Paschale chronicle is not quite the only witness to the events he
describes*, but nevertheless such sources are rare and ought to be treasured.
Elsewhere in the narrative are occasionally useful bits of information gathered
from sources we no longer have access to, such as a much fuller and more
detailed account of the Nika revolt (532) against the 6th century
emperor Justinian I, which has information on the event not given in either
Malalas or Procopius. But such details are few and far between, and it is the
writer’s own day with which we must concern ourselves.
Speaking of the writer, there is
a reason we know this text as the ‘Easter Chronicle’; we know nothing about the
person who wrote it. We certainly do not know his name. The name of the
chronicle simply states that it is a history from Adam down to the twentieth
year of the reign of Heraclius, and so no help can be found here. The name ‘Easter Chronicle’ has been assigned to
it thanks to the text’s interest in reviewing the different methods of
calculating the date of Easter, and its use of Easter cycles and Easter tables
to frame its chronology. In absence of an actual name of an author, the name ‘paschale chronicon’ is as good as any.
Speaking of chronology, this chronicle – or at least the later sections of it –
is very keen on firmly dating the events it describes to a fairly exact year.
Each year in this history has its own entry in the chronicle, dated according
to fifteen year cycles (known as the indiction) and to which emperor was on the
throne at the time, helpfully including which year of his reign it is, this
chronicle is much more precise at dating events than John Malalas ever was.
Alongside this, the chronicle also mentions who was consul that year (a
practice that appears to be dying out during these later centuries of the Roman
empire), as well as on occasion numbering which Olympiad each period could be
(an Olympiad being a four-year cycle which, supposedly, showed when the Olympic
games ought to be held, although the Olympic games had been discontinued by the
emperor Theodosius I at the end of the 4th century). These various
systems of dating, which are weaved together in the Chronicon Paschale, give a rather nice and understandable – if not excessive
– chronological framework to the entire text, one that would not be improved
upon until the joint chronicle of George Synkellos and Theophanes the Confessor
arrived nearly two centuries later.
Until Theophanes the Confessor –
and his fellow historian, Patriarch Nikephoros, whom I shall examine in the
next review – the Byzantine historians essentially vanish without a trace. For
the next two centuries we have virtually no contemporary eyewitness accounts to
the history and events of the Byzantine-Roman empire. It is at times such as
these in which we must seek information elsewhere, and for the remaining years
of Heraclius and his immediate successors we have a historical work from nobody
less than Bishop Sebeos, an Armenian. Sebeos’ history is a fascinating work,
for it documents one of the most crucial world-shaping events ever to occur –
the rise of the Islamic Caliphate.
The prophet Muhammad died in the
year 632 CE, and in the years immediately afterwards the Arabian tribes
organised themselves and expanded northwards, into the war-weary empires of
Rome and Persia. Heraclius’ regime had successfully defeated their Sassanian
enemies, but barely a decade later they were near powerless to prevent Arab
expansion into the war-torn provinces of the Levant, Syria, and Egypt. The
Persian empire in the east, meanwhile, which was experiencing a chaotic series
of coups and revolutions since the fall of king Kavadh II (Siroes), eventually
collapsed under the Arabic onslaught, thereby ending centuries of Roman-Persian
rivalry.
Sebeos understandably keeps
Armenia centre-stage, and this is no bad thing for those interested in
Byzantine, Persian or Arabic history. Armenia is a truly ancient culture, and
its land, doomed to be forever wedged between greater powers, is intriguing to study
when gauged in the light of Roman and Persian experience. The Byzantines are
quite able to tell their own history, but through the outsider’s lens as shown
by the Armenian historians perhaps we can gain a clearer picture, one less Byzantinocentric
and truer to what was really going on with the all-important eastern frontier.
Armenia was a vassal buffer-state, a border zone and plaything of the Roman and
Persian empires whose destiny was more often than not decided by foreign
powers.
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| Wow. I think this picture has just sold Armenia to me. |
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| During the reign of Constans II |
With Heraclius finally gone, his
son Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III) – co-emperor alongside his father
for nearly three decades – smoothly ascends the throne only to die after only
four months of solo-rule. This early death sparked something of a succession
crisis in the empire, with the throne passing to Constantine III’s teenage
half-brother Heraklonas, son of his step-mother Martina, rather than his infant
son Constans. After the intervention of a general of Armenian extraction,
Valentinus, Martina and Heraklonas are deposed and mutilated, and the young
Constans II (Pogonatos – the Bearded) is allowed to accede to the throne. He
was to rule for the next twenty-seven years, and it is during his reign that
Sebeos’ history eventually concludes. For a brief run-down on this confusing
old Herakleian dynasty, here is a little timeline:
Phocas
(602 – 610)
– Usurper who overthrew the emperor Maurice. Killed by Heraclius
Heraclius
[Herakleios] I (610 – 641) – Founder of Herakleian
dynasty, son of Heraclius the Elder
Herakleios
II/ Constantine III (641) – Son of Heraclius by his first wife.
Sole-emperor for four months
Heraklonas
(641) – Son of Heraclius by his
second wife. Violently overthrown and mutilated
Constans
II Pogonatos (641 – 668) – Son of Herakleios II/Constantine III
Constantine
IV
(668 – 685) – Son
of Constans II. Emperor during the famous siege of Constantinople between 674
and 678
Justinian II the
Slit-Nosed (685 – 711) – Son of Constantine IV. Overthrown and
exiled from 695 to 705, retook the throne and was then executed in 711, ending
the Herakleian dynasty
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| Is your beard as good as that of Constans II? No, I bet it isn't. |
We shall now deal briefly with our last chronicle of the day, that of John, a late 7th century bishop of the city of Nikiu (Pashati) in northern Egypt. While originally written in Greek, the only manuscript was preserved in the Ethiopian language Ge’ez, so again I cannot find any decent critical editions of it. The chronicle is very useful for the early Heraclian period, for it offers unparalleled detail on the reign of Phocas, the revolt of Heraclius and his father against the tyrant, the Islamic invasion and conquest of Egypt, and the Heraclian succession crisis of 641 CE. While it gets very bogged-down in religious sermonising, thanks to the theological disagreements between the Byzantine provinces and the capital, I found this chronicle (or at least its century-old translation by R.H. Charles) quite readable, and the ratio between theological, political and military events was kept nicely balanced. For an account of the rise of Islam, and how this was greeted in the former Byzantine provinces, John of Nikiu’s account is an absolute must.
So that then is a beginners’
guide to the 7th century. The final Roman-Persian war and the rise
of Islam, as told by a Heraclian chronicler, an Armenian bishop and an Egyptian
cleric.
* Aside
from the Armenian history of Sebeos, one of the best sources of information on
this period is the poetry of George of Pisidia. Like a flattering court
minstrel, George wrote a number of compositions which recounted the heroic
exploits of the Heraclian armies during this war. I have not found any
translations of these pieces, so I have not given here any proper review of
this material – just be assured that such material does exist, and that it is
most useful for our histories of this war.
** Ishmael,
Hagar – This Biblical explanation for where the Arabs originated is quite
common in the Christian sources such as these. More often than not Muslims are
referred to as Ishmaelites or Hagarenes, and this is especially so in the
histories of Sebeos and John of Nikiu.
Bibliozantium
7
Chronicon Paschale. L. Dindorf (ed.)
Bonn. [Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae], 11/12, (1832). In two volumes.
Chronicon Paschale – 284-628 AD. Translated by
Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
[Translated Texts for Historians], 7, (1989).
Sebeos’
History. Translated by Robert Bedrosian. New York: Sources of the Armenian
Tradition. (1985)
The
Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Translated by R.W. Thomson. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press. [Translated Texts for Historians], 31, (1999). In two
volumes.
The
Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu. Translated by R.H. Charles. London: Williams and
Norgate. [Text and Translation Society], (1916).
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