When we arrived at the lecture hall, we were one of the first. The door was already open though, and professor Doxiadus cheerfully greeted us while he was apparently ordering papers at his lectern. “Oh, professor?” Kalina suddenly stopped in her tracks. Doxiadus looked at her inquisitively. “I, uhm… I want to do next week’s review about Leander’s Tower.” “Ah, yes… such a beautiful building, with an interesting history too,”
he said, “And Alexandros, have you picked a building yet?”
Not having a clue, I just said the first that came into mind. “The Hippodrome, sir.” “That’s a popular choice, I guess. But as you’re the first, it’s yours. I’ll, ehm… I’ll add you both to the list then.”
We found a place somewhere near the very middle of the lecture hall. In the following minutes the lecture hall would begin to fill. In fact, there were even more people than there were in previous lectures. Had professor Doxiadus’ lectures become so popular, or were these people just seeking a place to warm up after being outside? When everybody was seated – some people sat on the steps or against the walls – Doxiadus began by showing a picture of three portraits behind him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy so many of you had the courage to brave the cold and snow to be here tonight. We also have some guests tonight, which are students of my dear colleague at the archaeology department, Professor Bokova. Mrs. Bokova’s class is currently studying artefacts of the high medieval Roman era, and she has therefore asked me to allow her students to follow some of my lectures, to give them a proper background.”
As he gestured to his right, the pantsuit woman sat there on a seat against the wall. Wait, was that Mrs. Bokova? I wanted to ask Kalina, but she gestured me to be quiet.
“You probably remember last week that the Imperial Throne was occupied by the three young sons of Demetrios I, who would go down in history successively as Nikophoros IV, Anthemios I and Basileios III. You’d also remember that Nikophoros and Anthemios were both murdered by unknown assailants, who we now expect to be on the payroll of the Iron Council. And of course you still know who the Iron Council was – as we covered them this afternoon – their roll in Imperial politics in that period, and the political battles between them and the mother of the three boys and willow of Demetrios, the Queen-Regent Prokopios. And most likely you remember Aitakatenina Kantakouzenos, who was the sole surviving child of the unfortunate first Kantakouzenos Emperor Mikhail, and who was in fact a secret pawn of the Iron Council in the Queen-Regent’s court. She was also married to the Megas Domestikos – or supreme commander of the Imperial Army - Mavros Meschos. Although her husband was no less than 27 years older than her, she would have eight children - though only three would survive childhood.”
“Last week, our story ended in August 1222, when the Queen-Regent began to share her power with the youthful Emperor Basileios III, who was twelve at the time. Basileios is believed to be a very active Emperor from the start, although he has shown a somewhat cruel tendency in his childhood. It was therefore quickly realized by the Iron Council and most of the other nobles that this young man – who outlived his brothers – would be destined from greatness. The Iron Council had tried to control this boy through his aunt Aikatenina – who had recently been allowed to rejoin the regency council – but then she would catch a very unpleasant case of lingering pneumonia and she would have to resign from the political stage. While Aikatenina would retreat to her husband’s extensive domains in Macedonia, her post at the regent council would be given to the court bishop and the right hand of the Patriarch, Romanos Argyropoulos. Romanos was very young at the time, but he was the son of the previous court bishop, Nikophoros, who himself was good friends with the Patriarch. It was Romanos who would extend his family’s influence beyond the eclectic field and make the Argyropouloi one of the main players in the Imperial politics at the reign of Basileios III.”
“Now, pretty soon after Basileios became a co-ruler together with his mother, he began to show the ambition to extend the reach of the Empire and to strengthen its weak points. This manifested the first time when the young Emperor ordered his armies to retake the Ionian Islands, off the coast of Epirus. These islands had long been part of the Empire, but they had been lost to the King of Sicily during the disastrous reign of Andronikos Komnenos. The Sicilians had however soon lost them to the Arabs during the Third Crusades. The Arabs on their turn could not hold onto the islands which lay so close to the Christian homelands and it would a small powerless sheikdom ruled by… yes, a woman. To keep it short, the conquest of the Ionian Islands was a short and easy one, and the islands were added to the thema of Epirus. There was another, much bigger and much more strategic hole in the Empire.”
A map showed up of central Anatolia.
“This is, of course, Georgian Anatolia. If you remember last lecture, I finished with the rise and fall of Queen Thamar and the Kingdom of Georgia. By this time Georgia had been reduced from a leading regional power to a collection of shattered lands and fiefdoms spread around the periphery of the old kingdom. Its heartland was located in central Anatolia, which Thamar’s armies had conquered in the first years of the thirteenth century. Thamar herself had moved her court from the Alan lands to Lykandros quite recently, again showing these lands – known then as Georgian Anatolia – were the core of her kingdom and in fact her last serious sanctuary against the Khwarezmi Persians who had ravaged her realm. Emperor Mikhail had been allied with Thamar, and Demetrios and later Prokopios and the Iron Council had tolerated the Georgian occupation of central Anatolia, even through it basically cut the Imperial parts of Anatolia in half. But in that time, Georgia continued to wane, and by 1224 the young Basileios had decided that respecting the Georgian possession of the land – or in fact the sovereignty of the Georgian kingdom as a whole – was not in the best interest of the Empire. It was thus decided that it would be taken, even though it would mean the definite destruction of a former ally.”
“The Imperial Army crossed into Georgian Anatolia in early October, 1224. As Basileios was still not of age, its commanders in the field were the Megas Domestikos, Mavros Meschos and Nikophoros Argyropoulos, who you know was the former court bishop but also an accomplished leader of men. Mavros would lead the main army from Sinope to Kaisareia, where it would receive reinforcements from the archons of Galatia and Koloneia. Nikophoros would then lead another, somewhat smaller force from Ankyra and would head directly south to Tyana. These movements were largely successful, and Nikophoros would even be able to take Tyana before Kaisareia fell. Queen Thamar had dispatched her entire army – commanded by her marshal Davit – to hold Kaisareia, but when it became evident they could not lift the siege Mavros was performing, it returned to Lykandros. When Nikophoros marched to Lykandros to meet Mavros’ army for the final assault on the Georgian holdings, the two armies met and although the Georgian army was outnumbered more than two to one, it was a very tough fight. In the end, the Georgian army routed, but not before leaving a bloodbath and having Nikophoros Argyropoulos as a hostage! However, the messenger who was to bring this news to the Megas Domestikos was attacked by bandits on the road, and thus Mavros would only hear about it after the Imperial Army had taken Lykandros after a fierce battle. And after, it needs to be said, Nikophoros had died in the crossfire.”
“So, with Mavros Meschos having taken Georgian Anatolia in under half a year, his fellow commander dead and his body lost, and Queen Thamar on the run to her final stretch of land somewhere along the Caspian coast, I think this would be a nice time to get us some coffee. When you get back, I’ll cover what happens to these newly conquered lands, how Basileios comes to age and how the children of Nikophoros Argyropolous take the political stage.”
Professor Doxiadus walked off with the pantsuit woman. They were followed by some senior student. “She is an archaeology professor?”
I asked Kalina as we also got up. “Who, Bokova? Yeah, she’s one of the core professors at the department.”
I remembered she was also a friend of Kalina’s mother, and judging from her name she would also be Bulgarian. “You have classes from here?”
Kalina shook her head. “No, she mostly handles pre- and postgratuates and all the really advanced stuff. These students are probably from one of her so-called hand picked classes, you know, for if you only get straight A’s”
Judging from that, it sounded kind of snobby, and I liked her even less. And I thought she was just Doxiadus’ assistant or something. I wonder if she knew my grandfather. She seems quite a few years older than Professor Doxiadus though. After coffee, we got back into the lecture hall. Professor Doxiadus already had a number of portraits projected on the wall behind him. The first three actually looked quite alike.
“So, with the conquest of Georgian Anatolia in the spring of 1225, the Roman Empire now once again had control over entire Anatolia – with the exception of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia of course. The main city in the area, Kaisareia, would become the seat of a bishop who would also wield worldly power. This was a rarity in the Empire at the time though – only the archbishop of Macedonia would also wield worldly power as a strategos – but it also meant he would be one of the highest ranking clergy in Anatolia. And it was another Argyropolous, namely Romanos’ older brother Manouel, who would become this bishop of Kaisareia. It needs no explanation that he had gotten this prestigious job through his brother’s influence at the Imperial court, seeing Manouel was only 18 at the time. Nontheless, Kaisareia would militarily fall under a newly formed thema, the Thema of Charsianon whose strategos was the former archon of Galatia. Apart from the bishopric of Kaisareia, Emperor Basileios would give another post in the newly conquered land to someone in his court, and actually someone very close to him. For the archon of Lykandros would be none other than his cousin Aitakenina Kantakouzenos. Some have reasoned that this was an elaborate plot to finally get her out of the Imperial court and out of Constantinople, but most historians believe the main reason for this appointment was to have her hold the place for her husband until he would retire. This appointment is also an important one, because it was the first appointment of a post that was immediately made hereditary, instead of having this privilege bestowed upon after a few years of service. This was probably done to provide the de facto heirs of Mikhail VIII with an apanage.”
“The portraits behind me picture the four children of Nikophoros Argyropoulos, who would play a significant though sometimes short role in these following years. The first and oldest son is Matthias, born in 1205. He was an able military commander and he would be the Megas Domestikos’ right hand after his father’s death. After the destruction of the Sultanate of Erzurum – I’ll come to that later – he would become Basileios’ personal bodyguard and spy master though, and one of the Emperor’s most trusted friends and advisors. Second is Manouel, about whom I just spoke. He was born a year later and he would become the bishop of Kaisareia in 1225, at a very young age but with the consent of the Patriarch. Third is the man who I showed before; Romanos Argyropoulos, who had succeeded Nikophoros as the court bishop and who would essentially bring his brothers and sister in favour with the Emperor. And finally there is Alexandra, the only surviving daughter of Nikophoros. She would, through the mediation of Romanos, marry Basileios on September 1st, 1226. A lot has been said about Alexandra Argyropoulos, who was only a few months older than the Emperor. Most of these story portray her as a lusty, indulgent and lazy woman, In fact, it has been said that after the two youths were married, they had locked themselves up in the Imperial bedchambers for two full weeks. In any case, she quickly became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son named Nikolaos on August 24, 1227, in fact less than a week before his father’s birthday. Nikolaos was Basileios’ first heir and certainly the thing the Emperor loved more than anything in the world. Sadly however, Alexandra would die a year afterwards, while giving labour to her second child, at only the age of eighteen. Basileios would eventually marry another girl named Glykeria Bryennios.”
“Before Alexandra died, the Imperial Armies had already been on the move again, and had destroyed the last remains of what was once known as the Turkish Sultanate of Erzurum. The Empire had now reached the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and thus the newly conquered land would soon be collectively dubbed as Mesopotamia. It was Basileios to use these newly conquered lands as a point from there to conquer the Levant. That is right, after he had undone the Turkish invasions after the Battle of Manzikert, Basileios had made it his goal than to no less but to reconquer the lands the Roman Empire had lost since the 7th century and fully restore it to its former glory. Now, had it been any other moment in time, or had the Emperor been any other man, this would probably have been madness. But now the Roman Empire was it the apex of its power, it’s Emperor was young and strong and possibly the most capable man who sat on the Imperial Throne for at least a century, and the Levant was a patchwork of squabbling crusader states and rebellious Arabian sheikdoms. So next lecture, where we start in 1230, we will see if the renewed power of the Empire will be able to cope with the ambitions of its new Emperor.”
The themata map appeared on the screen. The Empire’s shape had become a bit less awkward.
“Before I end this lecture, however, it’s time to take out the good old themata map. As you can clearly see, the big hole in the Anatolian holdings has been filled. Georgian Anatolia had been partitioned into three. First there is Aitakatenina’s archontia of Lykandros ofcourse, as number 27 on the map. Secondly Kaisareia was made a worldly bishopric, but it was also merged with the archontia of Galatia to create a whole new thema; Charsianon. And finally Tyana would be added to the Imperial controlled lands. These lands, commonly referred to as Phrygia, had actually grown pretty large by now, and as you can clearly see they effectively divide Anatolia in two; a western half which is divided into themata and which is therefore ruled by the strategoi, and a western – recently conquered – half which is mostly divided into archontia, who answer directly to the Emperor. This division is most certainly intentional, in order to keep the western strategoi in check. Wheter it’s efficient in doing that… we’ll see that later on.”
“So, that was it for today. I hope that my guests didn’t find my lecture too boring, and I hope my students learned something too. Alas, see you all Thursday again!”
We started packing our bags. “I’m sorry Alex, I really have to go,”
Kalina said as she quickly stood up and stuffed her notebook, textbook and pens in her bag. “Oh, that’s a shame,”
I said somewhat disappointed. “I know, I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you Thursday, okay?” “Yeah, yeah, sure,”
I said, “but what’s the rush?” “Well, I got a job interview, actually. Well, bye love!”
And she was gone in the masses. A job interview at this hour?