Book III THE TWO EAGLES
CHAPTER III
The end of an empire
In the west of Bulgaria, at the time of the Russian invasions, there lived a count or provincial governor called Nicholas. By his wife Rhipsimé he had four sons, whom he named David, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel; to the world they were collectively known as the Comitopuli, the Count’s children. [1] Of what province Nicholas was governor we do not know, nor when he died. By the time of the abdication of Tsar Boris, his sons had succeeded to his influence; and to them the Western Bulgarians looked to preserve their independence.
Of the history of this revolution we know nothing. The Emperor John Tzimisces was apparently unconcerned by troubles in Bulgaria after his victory at Dristra. His attention was mainly turned to his eastern frontier. We only hear that, following the old Imperial policy, he established large numbers of Armenians, Paulician heretics, round Philippopolis and on the borders of Thrace. [2] This would dilute and weaken the Slavs; but it weakened them chiefly in the one way which as a pious Emperor he might regret—it increased the vigour of the Dualist heresy. To the provinces further to the west he paid no attention. It
1. In Drinov (op. cit., p. 88) and Jireček (Geschichte, pp. 173, 186, 189), and other works, we hear of a certain Shishman who was the father of the Comitopuli. His existence is deduced solely from a list of the Tsars of Bulgaria interpolated probably as late as the eighteenth century, in the Register of Zographus (see Zlatarski, op. cit., pp. 638-9). The Charter of Pincius (see Farlati’s Illyricum Sacrum, iii., pp. 111-12), calling the Tsar ‘Stephen’ in 974, is equally suspicious (Zlatarski, loc. cit.). The names Nicholas and Rhipsimé are given in a deed of Samuel’s (op. cit., p. 637), and in Bishop Michael of Devol’s MS. of Scylitzes (Prokič, Die Zusätze in der Handschrift des Johan. Scylitzes, p. 28.)
2. Cedrenus, ii., p. 382.
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was only after his death, in January 976, that statesmen at Constantinople fully realized the fact that, not only were there large numbers of Bulgarians quite unconquered, but they were restively and aggressively airing their independence. [1]
Already they had looked around for foreign support. At Easter time in 973 the old Western Emperor, Otto I, was at Quedlinburg, receiving embassies from many varied nations; and among them were envoys from the Bulgarians. But Otto was dying, and his son had other cares. Nothing came of this mission. [2]
Meanwhile, at home, Samuel, the youngest of the Comitopuli, was establishing himself in sole supremacy. How the brothers organized the independent kingdom is uncertain; possibly they each took over a quarter of the country and ruled it as some form of a confederacy, with David, the eldest, as their head. [3] Fortune, however, favoured Samuel. David was soon killed by Vlach brigands at a spot called the Fair Oak Wood, between Castoria and Prespa, in the extreme south of the kingdom. Moses set out to besiege the Imperial town of Serrae (Seres), probably in 976, on the news of the death of the terrible Emperor John; there a stray stone cast by the defenders ended his life. [4] Aaron had a gentler temperament
1. Cedrenus, ii., p. 434, says that the Comitopuli revolted on John Tzimisces’s death; but we know that they were independent in 973 (see below). Probably the West Bulgarian question lay dormant, till on John’s death the Bulgarians became actively aggressive. Drinov’s theory (loc. cit.) of an independent Western Bulgaria that seceded in 963 depends on the existence of the mythical Shishman and on a paragraph in Cedrenus, ii., p. 347, which has clearly been interpolated out of place. Drinov has, however, been copied by Jireček and Schlumberger and the Cambridge Mediaeval History.
2. Annales Hildesheimenses, p. 62. An embassy from Constantinople arrived at the same time.
3. Zlatarski (op. cit., p. 640) definitely divides up the country between them. I think that rather too confident.
4. Cedrenus, ii., p. 435. He mentions Aaron’s death at the same time as David’s and Moses’s, though actually it occurred later. The legend of David’s retirement, as the sainted Tsar David, into a monastery, given in Païssius (Istoriya Slaveno-bolgarskaya, pp. 33, 63, 66, 70), and in Zhepharovitch’s Stemmatigraphion (eighteenth-century works, though compiled from older sources), is obviously of no historical value. See Zlatarski (op. cit., pp. 646-7).
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than his brothers, it seems, for it was his pacifism that was to prove his ruin in the end. At the moment he was content to play second fiddle to Samuel, who probably by the year 980, if not before, was enjoying the title of Tsar. [1]
From the Peace of Dristra till his death in 976 the Emperor John had ignored the west, though probably he intended to deal with it later, when an occasion should arise. On his death the young Basil II, already for thirteen years a nominal Emperor, succeeded to the full authority. But for four years Basil’s hands were tied by the great rebellion of Bardas Sclerus in Asia. Even till 985 his position was insecure; he himself was gay and careless, while all his ministers and generals plotted against him.
These years gave Samuel his opportunity. Already in 976 the Comitopuli had been aggressive enough to attack Seres; and, though that attack failed, under cover of such action they were able to establish themselves over all of Peter’s former Empire west of a line drawn south from the Danube considerably to the eastward of Sofia; though Philippopolis lay to the east of it. At the same time Samuel sought to add prestige and spiritual force to his dominion by refusing to acquiesce in the extinction of the independent patriarchate. The old seats, Dristra and Preslav, were no longer available; but, it seems, a Patriarch, called Gabriel or Germanus, was established first in Sofia, and later moved to Vodena, and thence to Moglena and to Prespa; on his death his successor, Philip, had his
1. For Aaron’s career see below, pp. 230-1. With regard to Samuel, I think that he already called himself Tsar by the time of Boris’s and Romanus’s escape (see below, pp. 220-1); but Constantinople never recognized the title.
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seat at Ochrida. [1] These peregrinations probably coincided with the movements of Samuel’s Court, which, after visiting Sofia and Vodena, settled for about the last fifteen years of the century at Prespa, and soon after 1000 moved to Ochrida, the holy city of Clement and of Nahum, the real centre of Western Bulgarian civilization. [2] The presence of a patriarchate under his close control must have greatly strengthened Samuel’s hands, especially as Samuel, unlike Peter, could not be suspected of leanings towards the Greeks. But Samuel also seems to have dealt tactfully with the Bogomils. We have no direct evidence; but throughout his career he seems never to have come into collision with the people. Probably the aristocracy of his realm was more Slav than Bulgar, and therefore there was less cause for friction than there had been in Peter’s reign, round the old Bulgar capitals. Possibly, too, the Bogomil heresy never penetrated far into Macedonia, where Clement had established the orthodox faith on more popular foundations.
Samuel’s consolidation was very nearly wrecked by an embarrassing escapade on the part of the sons of Peter. Soon after the Emperor John’s death the ex-Tsar Boris and his brother Romanus escaped from Constantinople and set out for Samuel’s court at Vodena. It would have been difficult for Samuel to know how to receive his former sovereign; and Boris probably did not realize that he was seeking refuge with a rebel. However, fate intervened.
1. In Ducange’s List of Bulgarian Archbishops (op. cit., p. 175), Gabriel-Germanus, the first after 972, resided at Vodena, then Prespa. In Basil II’s ordinances about the Bulgarian Church, quoted in Gelzer (in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, ii., pp. 44—5), Sofia (Sardica, Triaditza, or Sreditza), Vodena, Moglena, and Prespa appear as having been seats of the patriarchate. Gabriel’s successor, Philip, is placed in Ducange’s list (loc. cit.) at Ochrida.
2. Zlatarski (op. cit., p. 640) makes Sofia Aaron’s capital; but I do not think that the land was divided up so definitely. I think that the capital moved with the patriarchate. By 986 (the capture of Larissa), Samuel’s capital was Prespa (see below, p. 222; also Presbyter Diocleae, p. 294). By 1002 it was Ochrida (see Zlatarski, Istoriya, i., 2, pp. 702-3).
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As the brothers reached a wood on the frontier, a Bulgarian outpost took them to be Imperial spies; and Boris was shot dead by a Bulgarian arrow. Romanus managed to save his life, hastily explaining who he was. At first the soldiers received him with enthusiasm as their Tsar. But their zeal died down when they learnt that he was a eunuch, and they took him to Samuel. It has always been a cardinal principle that no eunuch can sit upon a throne, so Romanus by himself presented no difficulty. Samuel took him into his service and gave him various honourable positions. [1]
Secure in his own dominions, Samuel soon indulged in further aggressions abroad. All along the frontier, in Thrace and Macedonia and on the Adriatic coast, there were ceaseless and destructive Bulgarian raids. But from the year 980 onwards he concentrated particularly on the Greek peninsula, directing his main attention against the city of Larissa in Thessaly. Every spring, before the harvest was reaped, he led his army down into the fertile plain and sat before the city. But Larissa was defended by a wily soldier. In 980 a certain Cecaumenus, of Armenian origin, was appointed Strategus of Hellas—the theme in which Larissa was included. Each year, as Samuel approached, Cecaumenus hastily made his submission to him: until such time as the season’s harvest was gathered and the city amply provisioned; then Larissa
1. Cedrenus, ii., p. 435, who tells of the brothers’ escape and of Boris’s death, and announces that he will tell more of Romanus later, which he does on p. 455. Yachya of Antioch (translated in Rosen, Imperator Vasilii Bolgaroboïtsa, pp. 20-1) amplifies the story by saying that Romanus was proclaimed Tsar, and proceeds as though it was Romanus who conducted the war against Basil. But Yachya apparently did not realize that Romanus was a eunuch, which would prevent him occupying the throne. Zlatarski (op. cit., pp. 650—60) assumes from Yachya that Romanus was Tsar with ‘Comitopulus’ working for him; but it was unheard of that a eunuch should reign; moreover, Yachya, writing at a distance, clearly mistook Romanus for Samuel most of the time, especially with regard to his death (p. 58), which is an utter muddle. I think that Uspenski is right, in his review of Rosen’s book, not to take Yachya too seriously.
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reannounced its allegiance to the Emperor, who highly approved of this manoeuvre. Samuel, who could not, or did not wish to, attempt to storm the city, thus found it, on its revolt from him, in a fit state to stand a protracted siege. And so for three years he was foiled in his ambitions against it. But in 983 Cecaumenus was recalled, and the new strategus was unwise and honest in his loyalty. When next Samuel invaded Thessaly he found the country openly hostile; so he destroyed all the crops. After three seasons of such treatment, in 986 Thessaly was more or less in a state of famine; and when that summer he began a close blockade on Larissa, the city was soon face to face with starvation. To such straits were the inhabitants reduced that a woman was found eating the thigh of her late husband: whereupon the authorities decided to surrender. Samuel treated the population with severity, selling them all as slaves, with the exception of the family of Niculitzes, one of the local gentry. For some reason Niculitzes, who was a connection of Cecaumenus, was spared, and showed his gratitude by taking service under Samuel. [1] Amongst the captives was a little girl called Irene, whose beauty was later to raise her to a fatal eminence. Along with the population, Samuel transferred the city’s holiest relics, the bones of its bishop, Saint Achilleus, to decorate and sanctify his new capital at Prespa. [2]
The capture of Larissa scandalized Constantinople. Already there had been growing anxiety there about the Bulgarian menace. In 985, when a great comet trailed across the sky, the poet John Geometrus wrote an ode
1. Cecaumeni, Strategicon, ed. Vassilievsky and Jernstedt, pp. 65-6, written by the Strategus’s grandson. The date is fixed by evidence provided by an anonymous writer in the same MS., whose grandfather, Niculitzes, probably the father of the turncoat of Larissa (ibid. p. 96), was Strategus of Hellas in 980. See preface (ibid., pp. 4, 7) and the excellent account in Schlumberger, op. cit., pp. 622 ff.
2. Cedrenus, ii., p. 436.
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entitled with grim punning ‘To The Comitopulus’ in which he presaged woe and called for his great hero, the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, to rise from the dead and save his Empire. [1] But, though Nicephorus was gone for ever, the Emperor Basil was ready to act as his stepfather’s substitute. In 985 he had disgraced the great Paracoemomenus Basil, on the suspicion of some vast plot, the secret of which has never been unravelled. [2] The strain of the experience utterly changed the young Emperor’s character. He was now aged twenty-seven. Hitherto Basil had been gay and dissipated and idle; henceforward he threw all that aside, and schooled himself into a state of relentless asceticism, unrivalled in Byzantium save among the holiest saints. He hardened his body to welcome discomfort and his mind to distrust culture. Henceforward his energy was unflagging; he thought nothing of campaigning at seasons when armies usually reposed in winter quarters; he was unmoved by horrors or by pity. He became a terrible figure, chaste and severe, eating and sleeping sparsely, clad in unrelieved dark garments, never even wearing the purple cloak nor the diadem on his head. He concentrated on one thing only, the establishment and consolidation of his own personal power, as Emperor, for the harmony of the Empire. [3] Tsar Samuel, a Bulgarian rebel in the Emperor’s eyes, [4] might well fear such an adversary, for all his own boldness and ruthlessness. But as yet the
1. Joannes Geometrus, Carmina, p. 920.
2. This episode is admirably told in Schlumberger, op. cit., pp. 573 ff.
3. Psellus, Chronographia, pp. 16—19—a portrait and character sketch of Basil II.
4. Cecaumenus, in his correspondence with the central Government, talks of the ‘Rebel Samuel’ (Strategicon, p. 65). According to Matthew of Edessa (p. 34), Basil ordered the Bulgarian rebels to submit in 986. Asoghic (pp. 124–5) traces the war to a story of the Bulgarian king asking fcr an Imperial wife and having a substitute foisted off on to him. This must be a complete legend.
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change brought no result. The Emperor was young and untried.
Moreover, his first trial of strength against Bulgaria was disastrous. In the summer of 986, as soon as possible after the news from Larissa had reached him, he set out with a large army into the heart of the Balkans, along the old Roman road past Philippopolis. His objective was Sofia, the capture of which would prevent the Bulgarians from expanding into their old eastern provinces. The Emperor’s approach brought Samuel hurrying back from Thessaly, and, with Aaron and the eunuch-prince Romanus, he marched up to defend the city. The Imperial troops successfully passed up the River Maritsa, and through the Gate of Trajan (the Pass of Kapulu Derbend) into the plain in which Sofia lies; there they encamped at a village called Stoponium, just beyond the pass, some forty miles from Sofia, to wait for the rearguard to come up. Meanwhile Samuel had time to occupy the mountains near the city. At last, at the end of July, Basil moved on again and reached the walls of Sofia. But his attempted siege was marked with ill success. Owing to mismanagement or lethargy—it was the height of summer—or mere treachery, his soldiers conducted themselves half-heartedly: while a surprise Bulgarian attack on his foraging parties made the whole army short of provisions. After only twenty days Basil gave the order to retreat. Already discouraged and depressed, he had heard disquieting rumours. He had left the Magister Leo Melissenus to guard the passes through which he came. The Domestic Contostephanus now spread a report that Melissenus, of whom he was desperately jealous, was engaged in deserting his post and betraying the Emperor. Melissenus had played a somewhat equivocal part in Syria shortly before ; and so the Emperor’s suspicions were easily roused against him. Basil would
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not risk his throne by remaining in the depths of Bulgaria.
The first day of the retreat passed quietly enough; but the Imperial army, encamping that night in a wood, was reduced almost to panic by a rumour that the Bulgarians were in possession of the passes and by the passage of a brilliant meteor across the sky. Next day, Tuesday, August 17, as it entered the defiles, Samuel suddenly swooped down from the mountains. The carnage was tremendous, and all the Imperial baggage was captured. The author, Leo Diaconus, was only saved by the agility of his horse. It was with a pathetically small remnant of his army that the Emperor Basil reached Philippopolis. On his way he discovered that Melissenus had remained at the passes with perfect loyalty, and that the perfidious conspirator was Contostephanus. Humiliated and angry, Basil reached Constantinople, vowing that some day he would be avenged. Giving voice to the disappointment of the Empire, John Geometrus wrote another ode, entitled ‘To the Woe of the Romans in the Bulgarian Defile.’ [1]
Of the next years we know little. Samuel apparently followed up his victory by overrunning Eastern Bulgaria, capturing the old capitals, Preslav and Pliska, and establishing his power as far as the Black Sea coast. [2] Soon afterwards he turned his attention to the west, against the great Imperial city of Dyrrhachium. How, or exactly
1. Joannes Geometrus, Carmina, p. 934. Leo Diaconus took part himself in the campaign, of which he gives a vivid account (pp. 171–3), though he does not mention the treachery of Contostephanus. That is told by Scylitzes (Cedrenus, ii., pp. 436–8). Leo’s failure to mention it does not, I think, render the story suspect. Basil would certainly try to keep it at the time from his soldiers. Moreover, Leo mentions that there was a rumour that the passes were in Bulgarian hands. Asoghic mentions the campaign, but with fictitious details.
2. Basil had to recapture them in his 1001 campaign (see below, p. 235). They were probably occupied now; indeed, Basil’s attack on Sofia seems to imply that Samuel was known to be contemplating an eastern campaign.
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when, it fell into his hands we do not know; probably it was before the year 989. The government of the city was given to the Tsar’s father-in-law, John Chryselius. [1] The capture of Dyrrhachium gave Bulgaria an outlet on the Adriatic, and put the country in direct touch with the West. Samuel had, it seems, already received a confirmation of his Imperial title from the Pope—probably from some creature of Saxon Emperors such as Benedict VII, at the time of the Emperor Otto II’s wars against the Eastern Empire in 981 or 982; certainly the Pope did not, or could not, insist that his recognition should be accompanied by a declaration of his spiritual suzerainty. [2] At present, however, Samuel could hope for little aid from the West. The ruler of the West was a Greek, the Empress-Mother Theophano, sister to the Eastern Emperor Basil.
Basil had been unable to prevent Samuel’s expansion. From 986 to 989 he was distracted again by great rebellions in Asia, those of Bardas Phocas and Bardas Sclerus. The year 989 was the gloomiest of all at Constantinople. On April 7 the Aurora Borealis lit up the sky with terrible pillars of fire, presaging woe; and soon news came that the Russians had captured Cherson and the Bulgarians had captured Berrhoea. [3] The Russians soon gave up their conquest, tamed by conversion to Christianity and appeased by the gift of an Imperial bride to their Great Prince—Basil’s own sister Anna was sacrificed in marriage to Vladimir, son of the savage Svyatoslav. But Basil could not so easily dispose of the Bulgarians.
Berrhoea, situated among the foothills of Macedonia,
1. Yachya (p. 27) and Joannes Geometrus, Carmina, p. 955, both make allusions to Samuel’s aggressions in the west about 988–9. Probably these refer especially to the capture of Dyrrhachium, which remained in Samuel’s hands till 1005. (See below, p. 239.)
2. Innocent III (Ep., p. 1112) refers to Samuel as having been papally recognized as Emperor.
3. Leo Diaconus, p. 175.
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was one of the strongest fortresses that guarded the approach to Thessalonica; and it was soon clear that the great seaport was the object of Samuel’s present ambitions. After Berrhoea, the Bulgarians, under Samuel’s lieutenant, Demetrius Polemarchius, managed by a ruse to capture the fortress of Serbia (Selfidje) [1]; and Bulgarian marauders began to occupy the countryside right down to the Aegean coast. Things became so serious that Basil was forced into fresh action. Already in 988 he had attempted to guard against Bulgarian encroachments by establishing colonies of Armenians on the Macedonian frontier; but they had proved ineffectual. By the end of 990, however, his troubles in Asia and with the Russians were settled, and he could plan more drastic steps.
Early next spring the Emperor set out for Thessalonica. At the end of February he passed through the Thracian village of Didymotichum, where the old rebel Bardas Sclerus was living now in retirement. Basil went to interview him, and invited him to come to the war; but Bardas refused, on the plea of old age and infirmity—with justification, for he died a few days later, on March 7. [2] Meanwhile Basil reached Thessalonica, where he paid his vows at the altar of Saint Demetrius, patron of the city and one of the most helpful of all the saints that watched over the Empire. He also won the support of a living local saint, called Photius, who prayed for him nightly throughout his campaigns. [3]
But of these campaigns we know nothing, save that for four years the Emperor remained in Macedonia, capturing many cities, razing some and garrisoning others, and
1. Cecaumenus, Strategicon, pp. 28–9—undated, but this seems to be the most probable occasion. Demetrius caught the Imperial commanders bathing outside the walls.
2. Yachya, p. 27.
3. Encomium of Saint Photius of Thessalonica, quoted in Vasilievski, Odin iz Grecheskikh Sbornikov, p. 100— 1.
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eventually returned to Constantinople with a large amount of prisoners and booty. Among the recaptured cities was Berrhoea. [1] It is to be doubted that Basil spent all four years in the field; probably he made frequent journeys to his capital to superintend the government. We are told of various Armenian warriors who took over the command in the Emperor’s absence. All seem to have fought bravely, but in the end were worsted by the Bulgar. Foremost amongst them were princes of the dispossessed house of Taron, which for some time past had intermarried with the aristocracy of the Empire. Samuel’s movements during these years are very obscure. Probably he kept to the mountains, following the old Bulgar practice of avoiding a pitched battle save when the enemy should be caught in a difficult position, in some valley or defile. But Basil, wilier now, never gave him the opportunity. This caution, however, kept Basil from completing his work. He never risked advancing into the wild country that Samuel made his headquarters [2]; and so, for all his booty and captured fortresses, the Bulgarian menace was only very slightly lessened when in 995 the Emperor was summoned again on urgent business to the east.
Basil left behind him, as commander on the Thessalonican front, Gregory, Prince of Taron. [3] On the news of the Emperor’s departure, Samuel came down from the mountains and advanced to Thessalonica. Deceived by the meagre force with which Samuel demonstrated before the walls, Gregory sent his young son Ashot, with too few troops, out to meet him. They were ambushed
1. Yachya, pp. 27-8. Scylitzes (Cedrenus, ii., p. 447) merely says that Basil visited Thessalonica, to see to its defences and pray to Saint Demetrius. Asoghic (ii., p. 145) refers to the recapture of Berrhoea and tells of the Armenian soldiers.
2. Ibn-al-Asir (Rosen, op. cit., p. 246) says that Basil reached the centre of Bulgaria. This probably refers to his previous campaign against Sofia, then known as Sredetz (the centre).
3. Cedrenus, loc. cit.
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by the main Bulgarian army and for the most part slain; Ashot himself was taken alive. Gregory, hearing of it, lost his head and rashly hurried out to rescue his son. But he too fell into a Bulgarian trap, and was butchered with almost all his army, fighting bravely. [1]
This disaster to the garrison was very serious, but Samuel did not venture to attack Thessalonica itself. Instead, after ravaging the countryside and recapturing Berrhoea, he took his prisoners back to his capital. Basil was too busy to come back to Europe himself; but he sent one of his ablest generals to command against the Bulgarians, Nicephorus Uranus, who arrived with reinforcements at Thessalonica in the course of the year 996. [2]
Samuel was spending the season of 996 in the Greek peninsula. He had held its gateway Larissa for ten years now, and he was able to advance unopposed up the Vale of Tempe and through Thermopylae and Boeotia and Attica to the Isthmus of Corinth. There was a panic in the Peloponnese; even the Strategus Apocaucus was affected by it, and fell ill from worry and uncertainty as to how he could organize a defence. It needed all the tact and spiritual gifts of Saint Nicon Metanoitë to soothe his shattered nerves. But, as everyone waited anxiously for the attack, the news came that the Bulgarian army was in full retreat for the north. [3]
Nicephorus Uranus had followed Samuel into the peninsula, and succeeded in recapturing the fortress of Larissa. Leaving his heavier accoutrements there, he passed on through Pharsalia and over the hills of Othrys to the valley of the Spercheus. On the far bank of the river the
1. Cedrenus, ii., p. 449.
2. Ibid., loc. cit.: Berrhoea, retaken by Basil in 991, had to be again retaken in 1003. Samuel must therefore have recaptured it now.
3. Ibid., loc. cit.: Nicon Metanoite, ed. Lampros, pp. 74-5. This incident must occur now (not, as Schlumberger says, in 986)—the only occasion when we know that Samuel advanced on the Isthmus of Corinth.
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Bulgarians were encamped, laden with the spoils of Greece. The river was flooded from the summer thunder-showers; and Samuel thought himself secure. But by night the Imperial troops forced their way through the turgid torrent and fell upon his camp. The Bulgarians were slaughtered as they slept. Samuel and his son Gabriel-Radomir were wounded, and only just managed to escape with a few followers. Their losses were terrible; all their booty was recovered, and all their prisoners released. Uranus returned in triumph to Thessalonica, and later to celebrate in Constantinople the glory of having driven out the invaders from Greece. [1]
Yet, despite this victory, Basil could not venture on a final crushing campaign; he was still too heavily committed in Asia. And so the next few years remained probably the most splendid in Samuel’s career. After the first shock of his defeat he had written to the Emperor offering to submit on terms; but soon he withdrew his offer, realizing that he was not at the moment to be attacked. According to a rumour current in Antioch, he was negotiating when he heard that the rightful Tsar (Romanus, son of Peter) had died in captivity at Constantinople. He at once broke off the negotiations and proclaimed himself Tsar. But Romanus, so far from being a Tsar imprisoned in Constantinople, was a eunuch in Samuel’s own service, and lived on for many more years. Probably it is now that we must place the story told earlier by Scylitzes of Samuel’s last surviving brother, Aaron. Aaron, more peaceful than Samuel, urged for terms to be made with the Empire, and probably succeeded in winning the support of a large proportion of the Bulgarians. His influence and his policy were alike distasteful to
1. Cedrenus, loc. cit. Sathas, Chronique de Galaxidi, and Schlumberger (op. cit., ii., pp. 139 ff.) place here the story of the Bulgarian attack on the village of Galaxidi on the Gulf of Lepanto. See above, p. 174.
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Samuel; and so he was taken and summarily put to death with all his children, save one son only, John Vladislav, who was saved by his cousin Gabriel-Radomir. Thus Samuel was left sole and undisputed Tsar; but the news reached the eastern frontier of the Empire in a rather vague form, which the local historians amended in their own imaginative way. [1] Samuel’s ruthlessness cowed the peace party; and so when he decided to break off relations again with the Emperor there was no opposition left. The internal history of Samuel’s reign is a blank to us. We only know of his system of taxation, namely that every man to possess a yoke of oxen was obliged to pay yearly a measure of corn, a measure of millet, and a flagon of wine. [2] This was no doubt a very old Bulgarian system. It seems that the people, Bogomils as well as orthodox, made no complaint against his rule, either from indifference or from terror. His lieutenants, on the other hand, used all too frequently to betray him. This was probably due to the greater prospects of material comfort and luxury that the Empire could offer; for Samuel’s Court in the Macedonian mountains was lacking somewhat in refinement. The Comitopuli do not seem to have extended the same patronage over letters and culture as did the monarchs of the house of Krum. On the other hand, Samuel was a great builder. Not only did he throw great fortifications round his strongholds; but from these years date several churches, still standing in part to this day. Near Prespa the Church of Saint Germanus, and the church built on the island to hold the relics of Saint Achilleus from Larissa, and in Ochrida—which became
1. Yachya (in Rosen), p. 34: Cedrenus, ii., p. 435. I do not think that Yachya deserves much credence with regard to Bulgarian affairs. Scylitzes’s account is much more likely to be true. We know that Aaron was living in 986 (from Michael’s MS. of Scylitzes, Prokič, p. 29). This seems to be the most likely occasion for his pro-Greek policy to have been a menace, and also his death may well provide the origin of Yachya’s story.
2. Cedrenus, ii., p. 530. Basil continued this system.
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his capital soon after the turn of the century—the Churches of Saints Constantine and Helena and Saint Sophia show his architectural zeal. The devastations and improvements of subsequent generations make it hard now to pronounce upon their style. They appear to belong in temper to the provincial Byzantine school, as opposed to the Imperial school of Constantinople—a school in close touch with Armenian architecture. Possibly Samuel’s architects were Armenian captives from the colonies in Macedonia; but more probably these churches represent the first ambitious artistic efforts of the native Bulgarian-Slavs.
Comforts might be crude, but there was romance too in the Bulgarian Court. The Tsar, by his wife Agatha Chryselia, had several children whose wild passions brought love into Bulgarian history. Samuel had brought Ashot, the captive Prince of Taron, to his capital and kept him there imprisoned. But Miroslava, the Tsar’s eldest daughter, caught sight of him and lost her heart. Vowing to kill herself unless she became his bride, she secured his release. After their marriage, Ashot was sent by his father-in-law to help in the government of Dyrrhachium. They betrayed the Tsar later. [1]
About the same time—probably in 998—Samuel, checked for the moment in the south and the east, determined to expand to the north-west, along the Adriatic coast; the possession of Dyrrhachium showed him the value of being an Adriatic Power. He was too cautious to attempt, like his predecessors, to conquer the valleys of inland Serbia; instead he kept to the coast, where an excellent opportunity was given to him. The principality of Dioclea, modern Montenegro, was suffering from the weak rule of a child, Vladimir. Samuel invaded his country, capturing the town of Dulcigno and the person
1. Cedrenus, ii., p. 451: Prokič, p. 29.
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of the young Prince without any effective opposition. Vladimir was sent into captivity at Prespa, and Samuel moved northward and made himself suzerain of Terbunia, the principality that lay next along the coast. In consequence of this Bulgarian aggrandizement, the Emperor Basil, who could not afford to maintain squadrons so far away, formally handed over the policing of the Adriatic to his loyal vassal-state of Venice. [1]
Again one of Samuel’s daughters intervened. Like her sister, the Princess Kosara was stirred by the thought of a handsome young captive; and before long she fell in love with the Dioclean prince. Samuel listened to Kosara’s prayers; Vladimir was released and restored to his throne, with Kosara as his consort. At the same time Vladimir’s uncle, Dragomir, was established in Terbunia. Both the princes acknowledged the overlordship of the Bulgarians, and Vladimir at least abode loyally by his fealty. [2]
The fame of Samuel’s prowess reached even to the Magyars; and their king, Saint Stephen of Hungary, sent to make an alliance with Bulgaria. Its terms were somewhat vague, but they were sealed by a marriage-alliance; Stephen sent his daughter to wed Samuel’s son and heir, Gabriel-Radomir. But the Hungarian girl was not as lucky in love as were her sisters-in-law. There was at the court of Ochrida a slave called Irene, who had been captured as a child at the fall of Larissa, a creature of marvellous beauty. The Princess, probably all too well endowed with the looks of her father’s race, the race that gave its name to ogres, could never hope to rival the radiant Greek captive. Gabriel-Radomir forgot his wife’s high lineage, that her father was a king and her
1. Presbyter Diocleae, pp. 294-5. Undated, but it probably was the cause of Basil’s formal cession of the Adriatic to Venice (Dandolo, p. 227).