by Justinian. The great cathedral is now a mosque.
Not quite. Like almost all failed emperors, Anthemius was ‘disposed of’, to be followed briefly by: Olybrius, Glycerius, Julius Nepos and Romulus Augustus. Ricimer’s successor, Odovacar, another barbarian Master of Soldiers, deposed Romulus in 476 and sent the imperial regalia to the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, as the sole remaining ruler of the ‘One and Indivisible Empire’. In reality, the Western Empire was no more, and Odovacar had become an independent German monarch in Italy, like Gaiseric in Africa and Euric in Gaul and Spain.
Rather like the Highlanders in early modern Britain, the Isaurians, an independent-minded people from south-west Anatolia, were a constant thorn in the flesh of the imperial government. So much so, that the term ‘Isaurian’ was to become virtually synonymous with ‘insurgent’.
Both these colossal structures are still standing, testament to the strength and durability of Roman architecture. Inviolate for a thousand years until breached by Turkish cannon in 1453, the Walls are being restored to their original glory.
The Column of Arcadius was modelled on the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The imagery of the latter pair, though triumphalist, is not altogether devoid of a spirit of compassion and humanity. The Column of Arcadius — an ugly example of state-sanctioned chauvinism — was redeemed by no such sentiments. The monument no longer exists, bar its base; but a drawing, showing a lynch-mob unleashing a pogrom against the city’s Goths, was made before its demolition in 1715.
An appropriate soubriquet. Cambyses, king of the Medes and Persians from 529 to 522 BC, was notorious for aggression and ferocity.
Chapter 2
Constantinople is built on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sea or arms of the sea, the landward side being sealed off by the massive bulwark of the Theodosian Walls. These were pierced by six principal gates with subsidiary military gates between each pair. The Charisius Gate in the north marked the egress of one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, the Mese; the name was also given to the main street in the south, which exited via the Golden Gate. The Roman day, from sunrise to sunset, was divided into twelve hours which varied in length according to the season. Midday corresponded to the sixth hour.
At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the mummified corpse of St Euphemia, according to the seventh-century chronicler Theophylact, ‘stretched out her dead and lifeless hand to take the tome’. The ‘tome’ in question was a tract written by Pope Leo, arguing that Christ’s nature was both human and divine. This was hotly contested by the opposing faction, the Monophysites, who believed that Christ had only one nature: divine. At the Council, the dispute was resolved in favour of those supporting Leo — no doubt helped by Euphemia’s posthumous sign of approval.
Steel is simply wrought iron (i.e., iron with the impurities removed by beating when white-hot) made to absorb a little carbon. This was achieved by heating the iron in a bed of charcoal. The resulting steel could then be tempered by a process of annealing. Chemical analysis of a selection of Roman swords (e.g., the Mainz ‘Sword of Tiberius’, cited by Bishop and Coulston,
In AD 376 the Gothic nation, attacked by a terrible new enemy, the Huns, were granted sanctuary within the Eastern Empire. But, owing to ill-treatment by corrupt Roman officials, they rebelled against their hosts and defeated a huge Roman army sent to crush them, at Adrianople in 378. While one great division of the tribe, the Visigoths (‘Wise Goths’), eventually sought their fortune in the West, the remainder, the Ostrogoths (‘Bright Goths’), after a sojourn in Pannonia were suffered to settle in the East — troublesome and unwelcome guests, assigned a ‘reservation’ in the Balkans.
Chapter 3
Leo (457-74), often referred to, most inappropriately, as ‘Leo the Great’, purely to distinguish him from his grandson and successor Leo II (474), ‘Leo the Small’, was an undistinguished Dacian officer who succeeded Marcian, the emperor whose defiance of Attila persuaded the Hun king to switch his attack to the West. Dominated by Aspar, the great general who had been instrumental in securing the purple for Marcian, Leo resented his subservient status and tried to counteract Aspar’s influence by enlisting in the imperial army a force of Isaurians. These were a wild tribal people from the Taurus Mountains, ruled by a chieftain called Tarasicodissa. Changing his name to Zeno, Tarasicodissa became the commander of the Excubitors, as the Isaurian unit was named. In about 471, in the course of settling an insurrection, Zeno had Aspar murdered, taking his place as Leo’s
In 408 Alaric, king of the Visigoths, laid siege to Rome in an attempt to force the Western Emperor, Honorius, to grant his people a homeland and recognized status within the empire. Negotiations seemed to begin well, and the siege was called off. However, provoked by endless vacillation on the part of Honorius, Alaric lost patience and in 410 sacked the city. Although little damage was done and few lives lost, the sack had huge symbolic importance, sending shock waves reverberating round the Roman world.
The Romans dated important events ‘from the Founding of the City —
This began life as a huge triumphal arch erected
Egyptian carvings of the fifth and sixth centuries show soldiers of this unit, identifiable from the sunflower-like design on their shields, in graphic detail. They are portrayed wearing very traditional gear that would not have looked out of place on Trajan’s Column: scale armour with pteruges (protective leather strips) at the shoulders and between the groin and knees, and classical ‘Attic’ helmets complete with brow reinforcements and cheek-pieces. (In the Eastern Empire, uniforms tended to be more conservative than in the West, perhaps because of the influence of Hellenic tradition — the conquests of Alexander, the Persian Wars, etc.)
