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186

THE THEMES OF THE EMPIRE. [CH. LIII.

of the emperors, were cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents, the consulars, and the counts, was superseded by the institution of the themes,* or military governments, which prevailed under the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear, were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest, and the memory of lost dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of the Euphrates; the appellation and prætor of Sicily were transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid advantages. The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries of the Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of Antioch, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the allegiance of Christ and Cæsar: one third of Italy was

pars 1.

* See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i. p. 1-30, who owns, that the word is our waλaιá. Oέpa is used by Maurice (Stratagem. 1. 2. c. 2) for a legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post or province. (Ducange, Gloss. Græc. tom. i. p. 487, 488.) Some etymologies are attempted for the Opsician, Optimatian, Thracesian, themes. [Although he wrote about them, Constantine has given us a very confused idea of what Themata actually meant. The history of the word may be found in the Thesaurus Stephani (4. 281). Originally denoting what was placed or fixed, it was applied to the stationary legions, and then to the provinces in which they were quartered. The names by which these were distinguished, may, in a few instances, certainly not in all, have been taken from the legions, by which they were guarded. Opsician is evidently a Greek imitation of the Latin obsequium. The legion, that was so called, may have been posted along the southern shore of the Propontis, as a convenient station from which detachments might be drafted to take their turn of service at the palace; or the name may have marked the general character of the inhabitants, as suggested in a note to the preceding chapter. See p. 119-120.-ED.]

annexed to the throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed; and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty extended their sway from the sources of the Tigris to the neighbourhood of Rome. In the eleventh century, the prospect was again clouded by new enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of Italy were swept away by the Norman adventurers; and almost all the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the emperors of the Comnenian family continued to reign from the Danube to Peloponnesus, and from Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding stream of the Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, were obedient to their sceptre: the possession of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Ægæan or Holy sea, and the remnant of their empire transcends the measure of the largest of the European kingdoms.

The same princes might assert with dignity and truth, that of all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city, the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous state. With the decline and fall of the empire, the cities of the West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts, of Paris and London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the situation and extent of Con

"Ayios meλayós, as it is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the corrupt names of Archipelago, l'Archipel, and the Arches, have been transformed by geographers and seamen. (D'Anville, Géographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la Grèce, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos (Observations de Belon, fol. 32, verso), Monte Santo, might justify the epithet of holy, ❝ytos, a slight alteration from the original aïyaloç, imposed by the Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of aiyes, or goats, to the bounding waves. (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph. Antiq. tom. i. p. 289.) [The waves of the Ægæan did not bound more than those of any other sea. Its numerous islets, scattered over its surface like goats on an extensive plain, are more generally considered to have been the origin of its ancient name. The same feature is still associated with its modern appellation, and every sea, studded with a cluster of islands, is called an Archipelago.-ED.] According to the Jewish traveller, who had visited Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the great city of the Ismaelites. (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudèle, par Baratier, tom. i. c. 5, p. 46.)

188

GENERAL WEALTH AND POPULOUSNESS. [CH. LIII.

stantinople, her stately palaces and churches, and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her treasures might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few cities could be discovered which had not been violated by some fierce Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless to possess. From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was sinking below its former level; the powers of destruction were more active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war were imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the Barbarians, was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of his sovereign; the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer, and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their country was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil, climate, and situation; and, in the support and restoration of the arts, their patient and peaceful temper was more useful than the warlike spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces that still adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by the misfortunes of thosewhich were irrecoverably lost. From the yoke of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their brethren; the moveable wealth, which eludes the search of oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile; and Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably entertained; their followers were encouraged to build new cities, and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity supplied a race of faithful

and obedient soldiers. Did we possess sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of the Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a chosen example; it is fortunate enough that the clearest light should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.

As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus,* were overrun by some Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of Bulgaria. The strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops, had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and learning; but the savages of the North eradicated what yet remained of their sickly and withered roots. In this irruption, the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the Grecian blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure purified from the Babarians; and the humble remnant was bound by an oath of obedience, tribute, and military service, which they often renewed, and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and the Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction of the approach of the prætor of Corinth, revived the courage of the citizens. Their sally was bold and successful; the strangers embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was ascribed to a phantom, or a stranger, who fought in the foremost ranks under the character of St. Andrew the apostle. The shrine which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of victory, and the captive race was for ever devoted to the service and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt of two Sclavonian tribes in the neighbourhood of Helos and Lacedæmon, the peace of the peninsula was

Εσθλαβώθη δὲ πάσα ἡ χώρα καὶ γέγονε βάρβαρος, says Constantine (Thematibus, 1. 2, c. 6, p. 25), in a style as barbarous as the idea, which he confirms, as usual, by a foolish epigram. The epitomizer of Strabo likewise observes, καὶ νῦν δὲ πᾶσαν "Ηπειρον, καὶ ̔Ελλάδα σχεδὸν, καὶ Μακεδονίαν, καὶ Πελοπόννησον Σκύθαι Σκλάβοι νέμονται· (1. 7, p. 98, edit. Hudson,) a passage which leads Dodwell a weary dance (Geograph. Minor. tom. ii. dissert. 6, p. 170-191), to enumerate the inroads of the Sclavi, and to fix the date (A.D. 980) of this petty geographer.

190

FREEMEN OF LACONIA.

[CH. LIII. often disturbed. They sometimes insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at length the approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to define the rights and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi, whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of gold. From these strangers the imperial geographer has accurately distinguished a domestic, and perhaps original race, who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the much-injured Helots. The liberality of the Romans, and especially of Augustus, had enfranchised the maritime cities from the dominion of Sparta ; and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled them with the title of Eleuthero, or free Laconians.* In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the name of Mainotes, under which they dishonour the claim of liberty by the inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores. Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended to the cape of Malea ; they accepted a chief or prince from the Byzantine prætor, and a light tribute of four hundred pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity rather than of their dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the character of Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks. By the zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of Christ; but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were proscribed in the Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesust forty cities were still numbered, and the declining state of Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be suspended in the tenth century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique

* Strabon. Geograph. 1. 8, p. 562. Pausanias, Græc. Descriptio. 1. 3, c. 21, p. 264, 265. Plin. Hist. Natur. 1. 4, c. 8. [The free Laconians of modern times and the Mainotes are two distinct tribes. The former call the mountain-district which they inhabit Tzakónia, a corruption of Laconia, and themselves Tzakoniates. The latter occupy the Brazzo, or Braccio de Maina, a small district between the ancient Tænarus, now Cape Matapan, and the river Calamata. In the early part of the present century, it contained a hundred villages and 45,000 inhabitants, ruled by fourteen chiefs. (Dodwell's Tour in Greece, vol. ii. p. 414.) The erection of Greece into a separate kingdom will probably melt down into the general mass the races that so long maintained a wild and vague independence.-ED.]

+ Constantin. de Administrando Imperio, 1. 2, c. 50—52.

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