Totila in Rome

In 546, Goth King Totila walked into Rome after a year-long siege.

The city was nearly empty due to starvation and suicide brought on by the siege. The siege had been so devastating for the inhabitants that Isaurian members of the guard helped the Goths scale the walls and open the gates.

Unlike the typical behavior of Germanic tribes when going through enemy territory, Totila had shown great restraint and not ravaged the countryside. It seems he wanted to restore the era of Theodoric, ruling the peninsula and nominally "under" the emperor in Constantinople. Totila went to St. Peter's Basilica to pray, showing his intention to be peaceful and a good leader.

If Justinian would not allow the suggested arrangement, however, Totila intended to punish Rome itself by destroying it. Justinian told Totila's messengers that Belisarius was in charge of the war, and sent them back. Totila started tearing down the outer walls: he did not want to waste leaving soldiers to hold the city, and didn't want it defensible if the Byzantines re-captured it.

Procopius wrote that Totila claimed he would turn Rome into "a sheep pasture." Hearing of this, General Belisarius (who had failed to lift the siege) wrote Totila a letter, warning him that destruction of Rome would result in the opposite of what Totila wanted to achieve: being seen as a noble ruler:

As those to whom a city owes the construction of beautiful buildings are reputed wise and civilised, so those who cause their destruction are naturally regarded by posterity as persons devoid of intelligence, true to their own nature. Of all cities under the sun Rome is admitted universally to be the greatest and most important. She attained this pre-eminence not suddenly nor by the genius of one man, but in the course of a long history throughout which emperors and nobles by their vast resources and employing skillful artists from all parts of the world have gradually made her what you see her today. Her monuments belong to posterity, and an outrage committed upon them will rightly be regarded as a great injustice to all future generations as well as to the memory of those who created them. Therefore consider well. Should you be victorious in this war, Rome destroyed will be your own loss, preserved it will be your fairest possession. Should it be your fortune to be defeated, the conqueror will owe you gratitude if you spare Rome, whereas if you demolish it, there will be no reason for clemency, while the act itself will have brought you no profit. And remember that your reputation in the eyes of the world is at stake.

Totila relented, and left a small force behind as he went south to re-take some territory that had been re-captured by John the Sanguinary.

That was an "Oops."

I'll explain tomorrow.

Totila as War Leader

King Totila of the Ostrogoths, although the enemy and a barbarian, was still recognized by Procopius as an impressive figure:

The armour in which he was clad was abundantly plated with gold and the ample adornments which hung from his cheek plates as well as his helmet and spear were not only purple, but in other respects befitting a king … And he himself, sitting upon a very large horse, began to dance under arms skillfully between the two armies. And as he rode he hurled his javelin into the air and caught it again as it quivered above him, then passed it rapidly from hand to hand, shifting it with consummate skill.

He also did not act the way the Mediterranean Procopius thought Germanic barbarians usually acted. The Roman/Byzantine depiction of Germanic warriors was of a group that ravaged the countryside. Totila, however, was well aware that he needed to win over the people as their king, and instead got what he needed to provision his army by collecting taxes from the towns he captured liberated from Byzantine rule.

He accepted Byzantine deserters into the ranks of his army, and it is said brought slaves into the military train, no doubt to provide non-fighting tasks like cooking and tending the wounded.

Totila showed restraint and wisdom in another incident, when after the siege of Naples he gained access to the town and its starving citizens. Food was sent on ships to aid them, but Totila captured those ships, killing the crew. With the surrender of the city, he prepared to use the provisions to feed the natives.

He knew, however, that starving people would show little restraint, and might very well make themselves ill by gorging too much when food became suddenly plentiful. Procopius explains his solution:

He posted sentinels at the gates and in the harbor and allowed no one to leave the city. Then he dealt out small rations, gradually increasing the quantity every day until the people had recovered their strength. The terms of the capitulation were more than faithfully observed. Conon and his followers were embarked in ships with which the Goths provided them, and when, deciding to sail for Rome, they were hindered by contrary winds, Totila furnished horses, provisions, and guides so that they could make the journey by land.

Despite wanting Byzantines out of Italy, Totila wanted peaceful relations with Constantinople. There was one prize that eluded him, however, and that was Rome, still under imperial control and defended by very strong walls. Totila preferred open battle, but Rome required a siege. Tomorrow we'll start the Siege of Rome.

The Nika Riots, Part 2

Let's look at how Emperor Justinian managed to stop the Nika Riots and save Constantinople. We saw yesterday how the Blue and Green factions were angered over the treatment of some of their own people, and how an attempt by Justinian to placate them with a chariot race erupted into rioting.

Now, previous emperors had sometimes canceled chariot races to avoid bringing people together and getting their adrenalin and testosterone built up, but Justinian took a different approach. He thought a chariot race would appease the crowd and give them something to focus on besides rioting.

How bad had the rioting become? They demanded that Justinian get rid of a prefect, John the Cappadocian, and one other legal administrator. Justinian agreed, and appeared in public from his balcony over the Hippodrome to apologize for the problems of his administration. He carried a Bible, and declared amnesty for all the rioters if they would cease the riots.

They were not appeased, however. Some wanted to declare a new emperor, and picked Hypatius,  a nephew of former emperor Anastasius I who was a favorite of the working-class Greens. Hypatius, uncertain of having popular support and not wishing to go against Justinian, took refuge from the crowd in the imperial palace with Justinian. Hypatius had a brother, Pompeius, who joined him. A cousin, Probus, another nephew of Anastasius, also wanted nothing to do with a potential hostile change in succession and fled the city.

The riots showed no sign of winding down in the next couple days, and Justinian considered fleeing Constantinople himself. The sea was open to him. His wife, Theodora, stopped him, saying (according to Procopius, who may, of course, have been embellishing) "Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss. Never will I see the day when I am not saluted as empress." (Sounds like she didn't like the thought of exile, no matter how lavish it might be.)

A plan was crafted to quell the danger by bribing some of the rioters and overwhelming others. The plan started with Narses, a eunuch who had no connections or loyalties outside of the royal family that he served, and could therefore be trusted to carry out the first phase. (Narses would later be known as a military strategist during the Gothic Wars.)

Tomorrow I'll tell you how the plan worked.

The Blues and Greens

People love sports, and people love their sports teams, and rivalries abound. 'Twas ever thus, and Ancient Rome was no exception.

In Rome and the later Byzantine Empire, chariot races were extremely popular, so popular that the different teams, called demes (from a Greek word meaning "people" as in the words democracy and demography, but here used to mean "faction"), that were so persistently popular and polarizing that they became social and political forces and could be fiercely opposed to each other. The Blues included many of higher status, while the Greens were more of a working-class group.

There were four factions: the Blues (Veneti), the Greens (Prasini), the Reds (Russati), and the Whites (Albati); these colors were first mentioned by Pliny the Elder. The largest and most powerful were the Blues and Greens. These factions maintained their identities over centuries, starting with the time of Augustus in the 1st century BCE and lasting into the 8th century CE and beyond.

It is the 6th century in the Eastern Roman Empire that we will concern ourselves with, and the time of Emperor Justinian I (482 - 565). Although some modern scholars minimize the impact these factions had on society, evidence of the Nika Riots shows how strong an effect they could have on major cities where large numbers of the different colors resided.

Whole neighborhoods were described as pro-Blue or pro-Green. The factions created their own militias, and the emperor would sometimes request help from them in military matters. They even got involved in religious matters. When the Council of Chalcedon met, their conclusions were supported by the Blues, while the Greens were opposed (although these distinctions were not universal).

Even a 12th-century scholar, Theodore Balsamon, whose writings preserved information from earlier sources now lost to us, when writing about the Council of Trullo (in 692), comments that the emperors had no control over the factions and had to appease them.

Justinian, according to contemporary chroniclers Procopius and Evagrius Scholasticus, favored the Blues, likely because they included more elites and politicians. This made the Blues more arrogant and likely to cause trouble in Constantinople for others. Despite this, there were times when all factions felt the need to speak out against the state and join forces. One such time was the Nika Riots, when the Blues and the Greens united against Justinian. It started when the prefect of Constantinople arrested some members of the Blues and Greens in connection with some deaths during riots after (what else?) a chariot race.

The suspects were all to be executed, and on 10 January 532, the sentence was carried out. The Riots did not come about because of the executed men, but because of two—one Blue and one Green—who escaped execution by luck. I'll explain tomorrow.

Post-Plague Constantinople

Although during the horrific events of the first recorded appearance of the Bubonic Plague during the time of Justinian we read that rivals put aside their differences, the aftermath did not usher in a golden age of humanity.

A chief chronicler of that time, Procopius, tells us that people started changing the course of their lives and acted according to their "better angels":

Nay, more, those who in times past used to take delight in devoting themselves to pursuits both shameful and base, shook off the unrighteousness of their daily lives and practiced the duties of religion with diligence, not so much because they had learned wisdom at last nor because they had become all of a sudden lovers of virtue, as it were—for when qualities have become fixed in men by nature or by the training of a long period of time, it is impossible for them to lay them aside thus lightly, except, indeed, some divine influence for good has breathed upon them—but then all, so to speak, being thoroughly terrified by the things which were happening, and supposing that they would die immediately, did, as was natural, learn respectability for a season by sheer necessity.

This virtuous behavior did not last in those who turned to it simply because they feared they were dying:

Therefore, as soon as they were rid of the disease and were saved, and already supposed that they were in security, since the curse had moved on to other peoples, then they turned sharply about and reverted once more to their baseness of hearts.

Still, the status quo would have been manageable, except that more had changed than just behavior:

And work of every description ceased, and all the trades were abandoned by the artisans, and all other work as well, such as each had in hand. Indeed, in a city which was simply abounding in all good things, starvation almost absolute was running riot. Certainly, it seemed a difficult and very notable thing to have a sufficiency of bread or of anything else; so that with some of the sick it appeared that the end of life came about sooner than it should have come by reason of the lack of the necessities of life.

Justinian couldn't raise the taxes he needed to continue his building projects—particularly the churches he wanted to build to appease God. He also couldn't maintain a military presence as he would prefer, and lost much of northern Italy to the Lombards, after just recently conquering it from the Ostrogoths.

In fact, let us return to northern Italy at this time and see how the plague affected the fighting there. To do this, we'll accompany General Belisarius, who had been so successful just a couple years earlier.

Burial During Justinian's Plague, Part 2

Just because deaths during the Justinian Plague were so numerous that they couldn't dig graves and had to resort to piling them up in stone towers doesn't mean that "proper" funerary procedures weren't followed.

Procopius does state that "At that time all the customary rites of burial were overlooked."

A "proper" funeral involved a procession by friends and relatives and a priest to the place of interment—either a tomb or a cemetery plot—with chanting. The priest would have been notified as soon after death as possible, so he could start spraying for the deceased. Relatives would stay with the deceased and read prayers in order to aid the soul to understand that it is entering the afterlife.

The decedent would be washed and dressed according to their station in the community, and sometimes covered with a white cloth. His or her hands would be crossed on their chest. There was a memorial service at the gravesite and chanting while the body was lowered into its final resting place.

This procedure was not possible when thousands were dying each day. Procopius tells us:

For the dead were not carried out escorted by a procession in the customary manner, nor were the usual chants sung over them, but it was sufficient if one carried on his shoulders the body of one of the dead to the parts of the city which bordered on the sea and flung him down; and there the corpses would be thrown upon skiffs in a heap, to be conveyed wherever it might chance.

The shared grief brought enemies together:

At that time, too, those of the population who had formerly been members of the factions laid aside their mutual enmity and in common they attended to the burial rites of the dead, and they carried with their own hands the bodies of those who were no connections of theirs and buried them.

It was not long before this that General Belisarius had stopped the Nika Riots, fighting between two factions in Constantinople (the blues and the greens) who hostility toward each other threatened to tear Constantinople apart.

It would be nice to think that this tragedy brought people together in a permanent detente. Tomorrow we'll see id that was the case.

Burial During Justinian's Plague, Part 1

Sometimes a disaster strikes a civilization that kills so many so fast that the systems for providing support and burial cannot keep up. Such was the case when the Bubonic Plague came to town. One of the earliest recorded cases of the plague sweeping through civilization came during the time of Emperor Justinian I of Constantinople.

Procopius, who recorded much of the history of this era, wrote of the advance of the plague and how it affected its victims. He also tells us of the impact it had on society:

Now the disease in Byzantium ran a course of four months, and its greatest virulence lasted about three. And at first the deaths were a little more than the normal, then the mortality rose still higher, and afterwards the tale of dead reached five thousand each day, and again it even came to ten thousand and still more than that. Now in the beginning each man attended to the burial of the dead of his own house, and these they threw even into the tombs of others, either escaping detection or using violence; but afterwards confusion and disorder everywhere became complete. For slaves remained destitute of masters, and men who in former times were very prosperous were deprived of the service of their domestics who were either sick or dead, and many houses became completely destitute of human inhabitants. For this reason, it came about that some of the notable men of the city because of the universal destitution remained unburied for many days.

Modern scholars doubt that the number reached 10,000 per day, but generally agree that 5,000 per day was a believable number. These dead were so numerous that burial in the ground was no longer possible. An unusually creative method for containing the corpses was employed:

And when it came about that all the tombs which had existed previously were filled with the dead, then they dug up all the places about the city one after the other, laid the dead there, each one as he could, and departed; but later on those who were making these trenches, no longer able to keep up with the number of the dying, mounted the towers of the fortifications in Sycae, and tearing off the roofs threw the bodies there in complete disorder; and they piled them up just as each one happened to fall, and filled practically all the towers with corpses, and then covered them again with their roofs. As a result of this an evil stench pervaded the city and distressed the inhabitants still more, and especially whenever the wind blew fresh from that quarter.

Sycae was in Thrace. Climbing outside a tower and dropping corpses into it to fill it up was a truly horrific and gruesome solution to a problem.

A proper funeral had certain actions to be performed. Were these actions completely ignored in the haste to dispose of the diseased bodies? Not necessarily. Tomorrow we'll look at how to have a "proper" funeral when your goal is to eliminate too many bodies. (The illustration is a picture of bones from a mass grave of plague victims during the Justinian Plague.)

Procopius and the Plague

The Plague of Justinian in the 540s was determined to be an early strain of the Bubonic Plague by researchers in recent years who were able to examine evidence from contemporary skeletons. The writings of Procopius described the pattern:

They had a sudden fever, some when just roused from sleep, others while walking about, and others while otherwise engaged, without any regard to what they were doing. And the body showed no change from its previous color, nor was it hot as might be expected when attacked by a fever, nor indeed did any inflammation set in, but the fever was of such a languid sort from its commencement and up till evening that neither to the sick themselves nor to a physician who touched them would it afford any suspicion of danger. It was natural, therefore, that not one of those who had contracted the disease expected to die from it. But on the same day in some cases, in others on the following day, and in the rest not many days later, a bubonic swelling developed; and this took place not only in the particular part of the body which is called boubon, that is, "below the abdomen," but also inside the armpit, and in some cases also beside the ears, and at different points on the thighs.

The advanced symptoms were different for different people:

But from then on very marked differences developed; .... For there ensued with some a deep coma, with others a violent delirium, .... For those who were under the spell of the coma forgot all those who were familiar to them and seemed to lie sleeping constantly. ..., they would eat without waking, but some also were neglected, and these would die directly through lack of sustenance. But those who were seized with delirium suffered from insomnia and were victims of a distorted imagination; for they suspected that men were coming upon them to destroy them, and they would become excited and rush off in flight, crying out at the top of their voices.

This describes what Evagrius noted as the hallucinations. The following stage was worse:

Death came in some cases immediately, in others after many days; and with some the body broke out with black pustules about as large as a lentil and these did not survive even one day, but all succumbed immediately. With many also a vomiting of blood ensued without visible cause and straightway brought death.

It defied the medical experts, who could not understand the pattern of the disease:

For example, while some were helped by bathing, others were harmed in no less degree. And of those who received no care many died, but others, contrary to reason, were saved. And again, methods of treatment showed different results with different patients.

He also gave us an account of the effect it was having on their society. That will be less gruesome than today's post, but no less tragic. I'll share that next time.

Procopius

One of the chief sources of the Gothic Wars and of 6th century Byzantine history is Procopius of Caesarea (c.500 - c.565), a Greek scholar and historian from Palestine. Besides writing Words on the Wars, he also wrote something now called Secret History, "secret" because it contained anecdotes that would be dangerous to him if published in the lifetime of his subjects, and On Buildings, a book about Emperor Justinian's public works.

Justinian came to the throne in 527, and in that same year Procopius became the legal advisor to Justinian's chief military commander, Belisarius. Procopius followed Belisarius through his various campaigns, both losses and victories, in places as varied as the banks of the Euphrates, Constantinople (where Belisarius suppressed riots with mass executions in the Hippodrome), the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, and the wars in Italy to re-unite the Western Roman Empire with the Eastern.

Historian Edward Gibbon claimed that Procopius "successively composed the  history, the panegyric, and the satire of his own times." He both admired and criticized Belisarius and Justinian.

Procopius also gives us a firt=st-hand account of the Plague of Justinian, living through its first recorded appearance of the Bubonic Plague in Europe:

During these times there was a pestilence by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated. Now in the case of all other scourges sent from heaven some explanation of a cause might be given by daring men, such as the many theories propounded by those who are clever in these matters; for they love to conjure up causes which are absolutely incomprehensible to man, and to fabricate outlandish theories of natural philosophy knowing well that they are saying nothing sound but considering it sufficient for them, if they completely deceive by their argument some of those whom they meet and persuade them to their view. But for this calamity it is quite impossible either to express in words or to conceive in thought any explanation, except indeed to refer it to God. For it did not come in a part of the world nor upon certain men, nor did it confine itself to any season of the year, so that from such circumstances it might be possible to find subtle explanations of a cause, but it embraced the entire world, and blighted the lives of all men, though differing from one another in the most marked degree, respecting neither sex nor age.

He offers us details that seem unlikely:

Apparitions of supernatural beings in human guise of every description were seen by many persons, and those who encountered them thought that they were struck by the man they had met in this or that part of the body, as it havened, and immediately upon seeing this apparition they were seized also by the disease. Now at first those who met these creatures tried to turn them aside by uttering the holiest of names and exorcising them in other ways as well as each one could, but they accomplished absolutely nothing, for even in the sanctuaries where the most of them fled for refuge they were dying constantly.

Tomorrow we'll look at his description of the symptoms.

The Plague of Justinian

Long, long ago I made a brief mention of the Plague of Justinian, and I've made many posts dealing with the Bubonic Plague, the Black Death, and Yersinia pestis. Researchers looking at ancient DNA from victims confirmed that what struck the Eastern Roman Empire during the reign of Justinian was an earlier version of the same plague, eight centuries before its most famous appearance in Europe.

Procopius mentions it in 541, writing that it started at Pelusium, a busy port just east of the Nile delta. Contemporary writers claimed it came to Constantinople on grain ships from Egypt that carried rats. (Egypt was a large exporter of grain to the Roman Empire.) Justinian himself became ill early on, but recovered. 

Procopius claimed that at its height, the plague was killing 10,000 per day; modern scholars agree that it may have been as high as 5,000 per day at its peak. This is an exaggeration, but the following from his Anecdota (also called "Secret History") may not have been:

When pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable.

(Procopius was not always kind in his assessment of Justinian or the people he kept around him.)

The plague had results that we have seen before: farmers died, grain prices rose. Laborers took advantage of the shortage of workers and demanded higher wages.

Justinian passed laws trying to keep the economy working. In March 542 Justinian wrote a law to prop up the banks, writing that this was amid the "encircling presence of death" that had "spread to every region." In 544 he imposed price and wage controls, writing that the "chastening which has been sent by God’s goodness’ should have made workers ‘better people’ but instead ‘they have turned to avarice." Gold coins were still minted at this time, but they were made with less gold than previously.

Tomorrow I'll share some first-hand accounts of some who lived through it.

Emperor Belisarius

For the sake of ending the Byzantine invasion of Italy to conquer the Ostrogoths and unify the old Western Roman Empire with the Eastern Byzantine Empire, King Vitiges of the Ostrogoths agreed to terms with General Belisarius.

The Goths at Ravenna had little choice: they were running out of supplie. A fire destroyed the granaries inside Ravenna. This may have been sheer accident, but Procopius offers two theories: Vitiges' queen, Matasuntha, may have caused it herself, angry at her forced marriage to Vitiges, or citizens were bribed by Belisarius to cause Ravenna's fall. (There's no evidence for either conspiracy.) Moreover, once of Belisarius' commanders seized grain supply ships headed toward Ravenna and diverted them to Belisarius' troops.

The Byzantine navy was preventing any supplies from reaching Ravenna along the Adriatic coast. Belisarius had succeeded in capturing major towns in northern Italy, so no relief for Ravenna was forthcoming.

Emissaries from Emperor Justinian arrived to be part of the negotiations, with orders to speed up a resolution (the Persians were massing on the Byzantines' eastern front). They were willing to accept an offer made by Vitiges a couple years earlier: allow the Goths to keep the extreme northern parts of Italy and take some treasure as tribute.

Belisarius, however, wanted a complete victory, and refused to sign the treaty. Vitiges worried that there was something wrong with the arrangement and became suspicious. The dragging out of a resolution made the Goths start to question Vitiges' leadership. A plan was formed that seemed acceptable to almost all: all fighting would cease and Ravenna would be opened to the invaders if Belisarius—whom the Goths had come to respect as a war leader and a person—would accept the throne of the Ostrogoths himself.

Everyone agreed to the plan, but Belisarius said he would not accept the rule unless he could do so in the presence of all the Goth nobles. Belisarius sent any of his commanders who were likely to object to this plan in different directions to secure other parts of the country. He also sent ships to bring grain to Ravenna to feed the citizens, further endearing them to the idea of his rule.

Ravenna opened its gates to Belisarius and the Byzantine force in May 340. With the Byzantines inside the gates, and no chance of the Goths to defend Ravenna, Belisarius reneged on the deal, refused the crown offered to him (see illustration), and claimed Ravenna as part of the Byzantine Empire.

That summer, Belisarius returned to Constantinople with Vitiges as hostage and the treasury of Ravenna. Justinian, because of the rumors of Belisarius almost accepting the crown, did not grant his general a parade in his honor, which would have been the typical reward for a successful campaign.

Still, things were looking up for Justinian: Italy was under his rule, and the army was free to go to the eastern front and brace for Persian attack. Then, in 541, an uncontrollable problem struck, and ran through the empire for years.

Tomorrow we'll learn about the Plague of Justinian.

The Failure at Milan

The insubordination of John the Sanguinary that led to the division in the Byzantine army between the forces commanded by Belisarius and those commanded by Narses created further problems. The Siege of Milan was one example.

Then called Mediolanum, it was the second wealthiest city in Italy after Rome. Archbishop Dantius of Milan sent messages to Belisarius, asking him to come and free them from Ostrogothic rule. Belisarius sent a force of 1000 men to secure it under a man named Mundilas. After occupying Milan, the soldiers spread out to secure the smaller towns and forts.

King Vitiges of the Ostrogoths then sent for help from the Franks (although Byzantine Emperor Justinian had sent gifts to the Franks to get them to stay out of the conflict). A force of 10,000 Burgundians responded, surrounding Milan. (They were sent by Theudebert I, son of Theuderic I, who later explained to the emperor that, since they were Burgundians and not Franks, he had no control over them.) Since the Byzantine force had been dispersed to other towns, Mundilas could not attempt attacking the siege.

Belisarius ordered other divisions to go to Milan, but those divisions would not do so right away. They asked other nearby divisions for support. Those divisions, led by John the Sanguinary and General Justin, would not agree to help until they got advice from Narses.

The delays were making life in Milan difficult. They were not well provisioned, and starvation was becoming a real threat. Belisarius pleaded with Narses to tell the others to help Milan. Narses relented, but the delays in communication and disagreement proved fatal for Milan. Mundilas had taken the city in April 538. It was now March 539, and starvation forced him to accept the terms presented by the enemy: give over the city and your men's lives will be spared.

The soldiers were allowed to leave with their lives, but for the rebellion of the Milan townspeople, punishment was severe. Procopius reports that 300,000 men were slain, the women given to the Burgundians as payment for their service, and the city destroyed. (The illustration is of some of the remaining Roman walls.) One of the victims was Reparatus, brother of Pope Vigilius.

Narses received some blame for this disaster; it led to his recall (mentioned yesterday). Belisarius, now reconfirmed as supreme commander, prepared to go after the capital city of the Ostrogoths, Ravenna.

See you tomorrow.

Belisarius and Narses

The outcome of the insubordination of John the Sanguinary created a dangerous precedent. General Narses disagreed with General Belisarius' approach to the conquest of Italy from the Ostrogoths, and was motivated to disobey the orders from the man who was supposed to be sole commander of the Byzantine forces. Procopius wrote "And from that time both these men began to regard each other with great suspicion." (The illustration shows mosaics of the two generals; Belisarius is on the left.)

One example of the army splitting was at a siege of Urbino. Originally a united army, at one point John's opinion was that the siege would not work. Narses agreed, and John and Narses withdrew their divisions despite Belisarius pleading for them to stay. Belisarius stayed, and Urbino did succumb (after the failure of their water reserves).

John's impatience with sieges worked against him when he tried and failed to besiege Caesena. Abandoning that goal, he got lucky by taking another town by surprise.

The fall and winter of 538 saw the Byzantine army working under two different commanders. Narses even ignored the letter from Emperor Justinian stating that Belisarius was in charge. Narses was recalled to Constantinople, where he remained secure in the emperor's good graces. (Years later he would help the Empress Theodora and Belisarius' wife, Antonina, in a major coup.)

Jumping ahead a little: Narses returned to Italy and the ongoing Gothic Wars in 551 with Justinian's cousin Germanus. Germanus, however, died on the way, and Narses was given supreme command of the army. Belisarius had at this time occupied Rome (after another siege), but was ready to retire from many years of war. (The retirement was temporary.)

Narses later fought a battle against the Goths that made him regarded as Belisarius' equal as a general and strategist. But let's return to the earlier part of the wars and see what Belisarius was doing when some of his commanders would not follow orders.

Extreme Weather

"Volcanic winter" is a frightening phrase. It is the result of a volcanic eruption that spews so much ash and dust into the atmosphere that it encircles the globe and prevents sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. 

A volcanic winter took place in the 530s CE, the most severe drop in temperature in the Common Era. An eruption of sulfate aerosols possibly in late 535 dropped summer temperature averages in 536 by at least 4-5 degrees Fahrenheit. In 539-540, a second volcanic eruption caused summer temperatures to drop another 5 degrees.

This was recorded in the Northern Hemisphere by contemporary writers in Constantinople. Procopius, whose writing revealed the secret of where silk came from, records of 536 

...during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness … and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear."

Cassiodorus, in a letter in 538, describes the sun's rays being weak, no shadows from people at noon, the sun's heat being feeble, the moon "empty of splendor," prolonged frost, unseasonable drought, frosts during harvest, the need to use stored food because harvests were so poor.

The Annals of Ulster mention a failure of bread in the year 536.

Dendrochronology (tree ring analysis) shows very poor growth in Irish oak in 536. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show substantial sulfate deposits around 534±2 years, which offers evidence for the volcanic eruption. Which volcano was the cause, however, has never been agreed upon. The 536 event was worse than 1816, when the explosion of the Mount Tambora volcano caused the "Year Without a Summer."

As mentioned in the prior post, the line regarding the Battle of Camlann in the Welsh Annals that says of 537 "there was great mortality in Britain and Ireland" is likely a reference to the famine that resulted from the volcanic winter.

The 536 event was not the only severe weather crisis in the Middle Ages. Next time, let's jump forward to the Great Famine of 1315-17.

500

This is the 500th post on the Daily Medieval blog. In its honor, let us look at the year 500 CE and how it overlaps some of the previous 499  posts.

500 was a leap year. January 1st was a Saturday. July 4th was a Tuesday.

It was the birth year of Gildas, a monk, who wrote the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae ["On the Ruin & Conquest of Britain"], a chief source of history for early Britain, although much is called into question. A life of St. Gildas written later by a friend of Geoffrey of Monmouth makes Gildas out to be a contemporary of King Arthur, and yet Gildas never mentions him. He does mention the Battle of Mount Badon, for which 500 is a possible date.

It is the year that Clovis I pursues King Gundobad of the Burgundians after a military engagement, forcing him to pay annual tribute.

It is the approximate date of the formation of the Kingdom of the Franks, that reached a high point a few centuries later with the family of Charles Martel.

It is the approximate birthdate of Aregund, whose jewelry provided an impressive grave excavation.

It is the birthdate of the Byzantine historian Procopius, from whom we learn how the West got the secret of silk from Nestorian monks.

500 was, of course, only the year according to the Julian calendar.
For the Romans, it was 1253 Abs urbis condita ["from the city's founding"].
Jews considered it the year 4260-61.
The Byzantines numbered years from the founding of the world, 5509 years before Christ, so to them it was 6008-09 (the year started on 1 September).

Thanks for reading!

Got Silk?

Silk was not a medieval invention. According to Chinese tradition, Empress Si-Ling-Chi in 2460 BCE watched silkworms spinning cocoons; she unwound several cocoons, then ran the strands together to make thread, then wove the result into cloth to make a robe for Emperor Huang-Ti.

The Silk Road routes

Unverifiable, but it may very well be true. What is slightly more historically documented is that China guarded the secret of this magnificent fabric for centuries, but was willing to manufacture the cloth and sell it for very high prices to others. Wealthy people from other countries would gladly pay large sums to purchase it—soft and smooth, light to wear, dyed easily—so knowledge of this material spread. India somehow figured out the secret and was manufacturing its own silk by the 2nd century CE.

Ezekiel mentions silk, which means it was known to the Middle East in the 6th century BCE. Aristotle mentions the process of dealing with the cocoons, but the knowledge must have been lost for awhile, because it seems to be a mystery to that part of the world centuries later. We are told that Julius Caesar (100-15 March 44 BCE) had silk curtains. It is thought that the Romans first encountered silk in the hands of the Parthians in the first century BCE. By the end of the 1st century CE, Rome was trading for silk with the Parthians; we don't know what kind of "mark up" the Parthians were putting on the silk that they got from the East, but it was probably substantial. Although more than silk was traded between the East and West, silk was one of the few things only available from the Far East, and so the collection of interconnected trade routes from China and India to Byzantium and Alexandria became known as the "Silk Road."

Of course, it is cheaper to manage production yourself, and the Byzantine scholar Procopius (500-565 CE) tells us how some Nestorian monks* gave the Emperor Justinian the secret: the thread comes from silkworms that could not survive transportation, but their cocoons would travel well if insulated in dung and fed on mulberry leaves when hatched. Byzantium created a thriving silk industry and supplied Europe for centuries. The silk factories were staffed by all-female crews, and so were called gynaecea—after the name given to the section of a Roman or Greek home devoted to women.

Marco Polo on the Silk Road

The cycle of industrial espionage continued, however, when Muslims, who learned the secret of silk when they conquered Persia, took over Sicily and Spain. By the 13th century, Europe was producing its own silk and purchasing less from Byzantium. By the 15th century, France had its own factories. This was necessary, according to Louis XI, because purchasing silk from Italy created a trade deficit for France of 40-50,000,000 gold écus.**

Silk is different from cotton or wool in that it is not spun; rather, two or more strands are twisted together. To produce this, new techniques were invented. The simple reel is said to have been first devised for holding strands of silk, which could be up to a mile long. Two reels would be set up to unwind simultaneously so that their strands could be twisted together in a technique called "throwing."

The Middle Ages loved silk so much that a whole new vocabulary was created to describe its uses in fabrics:

• alexander - a striped silk
• baldachin - a warp of gold thread with a woof of silk
• begin - 14th century rayed silk fabric
• camlet - half silk/half hair (such as angora)
• cendal - woven silk material
• ecarlate - high-quality silk
• gauze - semi-transparent silk (from 13th century onward)
• imperial - silk with gold thread; originally from Byzantium, later called baldachin
• osterni - silk dyed purple
• samite - silk with interwoven gold or silver threads
• sarcenet - thin soft silk with slight sheen; sometimes called "shot"
• tartaire - silk from Tartary

...and in all these centuries, it hasn't lost its luster.

*Remember the Nestorians? They were a branch of Christianity deemed heretical a century before Procopius, who made their home in the East where William Rubruck ran into them.
**Story of the Silk Road by Yiping Zhang, p.146 (I don't normally bog things down with citations—I assume you trust me!—but this number was so ... impressive that I felt the need to point to a source. It may be a huge exaggeration.