The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (16 page)

that closed the east end, the central one contained a mosaic of the Virgin 'extending her pure hands towards us and granting to the Emperor long life and victory over his enemies'.

For the Great Palace itself, Basil provided a new treasury, resplendent new baths and another triclinium; he also largely rebuilt the Chalke, endowing it with new marbles and mosaics appropriate to what was, after all, the principal gateway into the imperial residence. It was the same with the other palaces - the Mangana, the Magnaura, the Eleuthera, the Hieria, St Mamas: none escaped his attention. Few Emperors if any did more to ensure that Constantinople remained what it had always been - the most opulent city in the world, a vast treasure-house that was itself a treasure. It is a sad irony indeed that, in the whole of that city, there now survives of his work not one stone resting on another.

By the high summer of the year
879,
Basil the Macedonian could look back on twelve years of quite remarkable success. His armed forces were stronger than they had ever been. To both east and west, the Saracens were in retreat. The Paulicians had been crushed. The Bulgars and the Serbs had been converted, and had entered the Orthodox fold. The Photian schism was over, having effectively proved to the Pope in Rome that Byzantium was not to be trifled with. The revision of the laws was well under way, with the
Proch
eiron
already published and work on the
Epanagoge
proceeding apace. The principal buildings of the capital had been restored and embellished, while at the point where the grounds of the Palace swept down to the Marmara his own great church, the Nea, rose tall and triumphant, a continuing reminder to the world of the majesty and magnificence of its founder. In little over a decade the coarse and illiterate Armenian peasant, who had reached the throne by way of two of the vilest murders that even Byzantine history could recall, had proved himself the greatest Emperor since Justinian.

And Justinian had had no son to succeed him; Basil, truthfully or not, could claim four. For the three younger ones he cared litde - his second, Leo, he loathed — but his eldest son, Constantine, the only child of his first wife Maria, was the apple of his eye: the only human being, perhaps, whom he ever really loved. Outstandingly handsome and possessed of all Basil's superb physique, Constantine had been little more than a boy when he had first accompanied his father into battle, mounted on a snow-white horse and wearing, we are told, golden armour. In
869
he had been crowned co-Emperor and, if the preliminary negotiations had not turned sour, might well have married the daughter of Lewis II, thus uniting both Eastern and Western Empires under his sway. He nevertheless showed high promise of proving himself, in the fullness of time, as great a ruler as his father - perhaps even greater.

And then, suddenly, at the beginning of September
879,
he was dead. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but Basil never recovered from the blow. This, as he saw it, was divine retribution — God's punishment for the murder of His anointed. Despite all that he had achieved, despite even the building of the most resplendent church in Christendom, he had not been forgiven. From that moment he began to withdraw further and further into himself, lapsing into deep depressions which occasionally led to bouts of insanity. At such times, one man only could hope to control him: Photius. He would humour the distracted Emperor by arranging ever more elaborate Masses for the soul of Constantine, whom he ultimately went so far as to canonize; when that was no longer enough, he and his close friend Theodore Santabarenus, Archbishop of Euchaites, even engineered a seance in which Basil was confronted with what he believed to be the shade of his son on a white charger, carrying a lance and clad from head to foot in gold — only to see the apparition fade away as he approached to embrace it.
1

In all these activities, if the Continuator is to be believed, the Patriarch had one overriding object in view: to prevent the succession of Basil's second son and now his heir apparent, Leo. We do not know why this should be: the boy was quick-tempered and generally judged to be somewhat overfond of women - his relationship with the beautiful Zoe Zautsina was already causing much clicking of tongues - but there was no reason to think that he might not make a fine
basileus,
nor is it easy to accept the theory that Photius was working for the restoration of the Amorian dynasty, to w
hich he was related only distantl
y and by marriage. However that may be, he did all he could to work on Basil's known dislike of his son - and to considerable effect.

When Leo was just sixteen he had been married off, much against his will, to a relative of Eudocia's, an ill-favoured girl of asphyxiating piety named Theophano; he had, however, steadfastly refused to give up Zoe. Theophano had complained to Basil, who had flown into a fury and flogged his son with his own hands till the blood came, Zoe for her part being banished from the capital and married off in turn to a certain

1
However this trick was performed, there can be little doubt that the story itself is true, since Basil is known to have built a church on the spot where he saw the vision.

Theodore Gutzuniates, of whom little is known — or needs to be. Meanwhile the Patriarch continued his whispering campaign, dropping ever darker hints of conspiracies and treachery. Given his mental and emotional state, the old Emperor proved all too easily persuaded. Only a year or so later, the young prince was arrested and imprisoned without trial, narrowly escaping with his eyes. He remained a captive for the next three months,
1
after which his father reluctantly freed him.

What prompted his release is unclear. Leo himself attributed it to the merciful intervention of the Prophet Elijah; hardly more probable is the claim of certain chroniclers that the Emperor's decision was largely due to a parrot, persistently squawking 'Alas, poor Leo!' from its cage in the imperial dining hall: such a lamentation, one suspects, would have been far more likely to result in Basil's wringing the bird's neck with his own hands. More probably he simply gave in to public pressure, for Leo was highly popular everywhere outside his immediate family and had never been charged with any crime. The Emperor, however, remained unconvinced: not long afterwards when his son, restored to his honours and dignities and marching in a state procession, was suddenly greeted by the crowd with a round of applause, the old man could not resist shouting back to them that their cheers were unjustified, since the boy would surely cause them much sorrow and distress in the future.

In these last tormented years, Basil found some slight relief from his sufferings in the chase; and it was while hunting near his country palace of Apamea in the summer of
886
that he met his end. How he did so remains a mystery. Most of the chroniclers record that he died as a result of a hunting accident, and leave it at that; two, Simeon the Logothete and the anonymous author of the
Vita S. Euthymii,
give us a detailed account of what they claim to have occurred, but the story they tell is so improbable that our suspicions are immediately aroused. According to their version Basil was riding alone — 'for his companions were tired' -when he surprised an enormous stag drinking at a stream. He spurred his horse towards it, but the animal suddenly turned and charged, somehow contriving to hook its antlers under his belt and pull him from

1
The fourteenth-century chronicler Nicephorus Gregoras, whose history does not cover this period, mentions in passing that Leo's imprisonment lasted
three years
- a statement that has been almost universally accepted by modern historians. Our tenth-century sources, on the other hand, either give its duration as three months or take refuge in vague phrases which nevertheless suggest a relatively short period. See Vogt, 'La Jeunesse de Leon VI le Sage' in
Revue Historique,
Vol. clxxiv, p. 424
.

his saddle. It then galloped off into the forest, dragging the helpless Emperor with it.

The rest of the party were unaware of what had happened until they saw their master's riderless horse approaching; a small group of Farghanese
1
then started off in pursuit and finally caught up with the stag, surrounding it and slowly closing in until one of them was able to cut Basil free with his sword. The Emperor fell senseless to the ground, and while the others crowded round him the stag escaped. (It was never caught.) When he recovered consciousness, his first act was to order the immediate execution of the guard who had freed him, on the grounds that he had raised his sword against his sovereign; he next commanded that the distance should be measured from the place where the accident had occurred. (This was later calculated to be sixteen miles.) Only then would he allow himself to be carried back to the Palace, where he was found to have suffered a severe haemorrhage of the stomach. After lingering nine days in agony, he died on
29
August. He was seventy-four years old.

What are we to make of this absurd farrago? Why, first of all, in the name of elementary prudence - let alone imperial protocol - was a mentally disturbed Emperor in his middle seventies left completely unattended? How, experienced hunter that he was, did he allow such an accident to occur? Why did he not himself slash through his belt, with the knife that he always carried? Why, come to that, did the stag not free itself from its burden before making its escape? And, having failed to do so, could it really have dragged a man famous for his colossal physique sixteen miles across rough forest country? All this sounds suspicious enough; but it becomes still more so when we discover that the rescue party was led by the Armenian Stylian Zautses, father of the mistress of young Leo and soon to be the most powerful man in the Empire after the Emperor himself.

And so we come to the last and most important question of all: did Basil the Macedonian meet his death, as the chroniclers claim, through an unfortunate (and extremely improbable) hunting accident, or was he murdered by Stylian - presumably with the knowledge and approval of his son Leo? Motives, certainly, would not have been lacking. The old man was growing increasingly unbalanced. Once already he had thrown Leo into prison; and he was perfectly capable, from one moment to the next, of ordering his execution. Stylian was in similar danger; he was

1 The Emperor's Turkish bodyguard, composed of slaves imported from the lands beyond the Oxus. So many of them came from Farghana that the name was indiscriminately applied to them all.

known to be one of the closest associates of the young prince who, if he were to replace his father on the throne, would almost certainly manage to rid himself of the insufferable Theophano and make Stylian's daughter Zoe his Empress - as indeed he subsequendy did.

But for none of this do we have any hard evidence, let alone a shred of proof; and the verdict must remain open. We can only say that, if there is ever any possible justification for patricide - always assuming that Basil was in fact his father - Leo might have claimed it; and that none of the benefits that the old man had conferred upon his Empire -his military victories, his settlement of religious conflicts, his legal revisions, his financial and administrative reforms, the political stability that he created, the arts and sciences that he encou
raged, the superb buildings with
which he adorned his capital and, by no means least, the vastly increased prestige that he won for Byzantium in both the East and the West - could mitigate the brutality and bloodshed by which he had come to power. If, as seems likely, he himself died by an assassin's hand, his fate was not undeserved.

8

Leo the Wise

[886-912]

Most animals, when their mate is dead, retire into perpetual widowhood. Human beings, on the contrary, unconscious of the shameful nature of their weakness, are not satisfied with one marriage, but proceed immodestly to contract a second and, not content with that, go from the second to a third.

The Emperor Leo VI

In view of the relations existing between Basil and his successor, who now ascended the throne under the title of Leo VI, it is hardly surprising that the old Emperor's obsequies should have been kept to a minimum. Returned to Constantinople and clothed in full imperial regalia, his body was exposed according to tradition in the Triclinium of the Nineteen Beds.
1
Here the requiem was chanted, at the close of which the Master of Ceremonies repeated thrice the time-honoured formula:
'Come forth, Basileus, the King of Ki
ngs and Lord of Lords summons thee. Take th
y c
rown from off thy h
ead.'
The
praepositus
then removed the diadem and replaced it with a simple purple cap. And that, so far as the records go, is all. The coffin was presumably transferred to the Church of the Holy Apostles for burial, but even this is far from certain; what we do know for a fact is that one of Leo's first actions as
basileus
was to bring back the remains of Michael III from his burial-place at Chrysopolis, and to reinter them in that same church, in a sarcophagus that had formerly held those of Justin I or II. Now to do such honour to the murdered Emperor while deliberately flouting the dispensations ordered by his murderer seems — even if we make allowance for Leo's never-concealed hatred of Basil — an unnecessarily blatant insult to the latter's memory; if, on the other hand, Leo knew himself to be the son not of Basil but of Michael, such a gesture was no more than might have been expected.