A Syntacterius Oration to the emperor.
Let a syntacterius oration here be spoken about your most kind soul both as such for leaving and thus marvelous. It is thus a commingling of prayers and tears by us to you, our most excellent lord and emperor.
May you return from the east to the east again and again like lightning as the sun in its unending cycle does, a rich light shining down on your subjects and scorching the barbarians. Besides this, may you extinguish Babylonian fire, rein in the impulses of lions, and draw fire down from the sky against the hostile phalanx. May you split the sea asunder, drive back the river, and make war on Amalek.
A cloud may cast a shadow over your head stripping you of your burn, but a pillar of light goes before your shield guiding you. May the Lord smooth away any high and rough mountain, fill the ravines for you, and make the curves straight. May you don up your head with wreaths of victory and may you return to us with with myriads of victories gloried with many routs. May the angels fight alongside you and God act as your fellow general and cover the new Pharaoh with the sea for you.
Further, may you reconcile the chasms and cut down the wall of the palisade, making a hostile enemy into a friendly one by your might, most imperial and victorious.
I speak with one voice for the voices of many when I say this to you last: may you not stay long from us who wish to see you, but may you return in haste more bright with victories and more radiant, o most excellent of all emperors incomparable in clandestine beauty and greatness of nature.
46. PS pg. 142: ...but at Helenopolis, which the locals call more rurally Eleeinopolis, which did not seem a good omen.
47. Yet the stupidity of men, so to say poor habits, lack in faith in obvious proof, and the unintelligible did not put trust in one of them, but the obvious was ignored and no sense was given to what was come hurled from above.
48. PS pg. 143: Tzombus
49. PS pg. 143: the attack
50. When he perceived it, the emperor mounted his horse and called his soldiers together astounding his foreign men and again subordinating them, ordering this only as punishment: that they put in the furthest away parts for his own security.
51. Here it would seem there was a Byzantine word for the agent who took control of the city that Attaliates considered too barbaric to be used in his narrative because he replaced it with a participle meaning 'he who takes over.' I would suspect that it is Latin in origin
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52. The practice of Bible divination, sors evangelica, is a long Byzantine tradition. We find Heraclius doing the same thing at challenging junctions in his war with the Persians. The priest would open the Bible and turn to the random page to a random verse that would then be interpreted for what it boded for the future.
53. The full quotation which the priest turned to was John 15.20-16.3
54. PS pg. 145 adds to divination: god sent
55. PS pg. 146: And so the enemy surrounded him and took him captive leading him off to the sultan in chains. On coming before his sight, he did not stand a slave nor as a captive taken to the sultan. Nor did the sultan treat him like a slave or a captive, but had him constantly in his presence asking about the emperor showing him his own might and filling him with terror and fear. The man praised all of this and counseled him taking liberty that the Roman emperor's force standing against him was at a disadvantage.
56. PS pg. 147: When morning came, a contingent of Uzes, having a commander Tamin thus called a Scythian appointed by Tornicus Cotertzes, deserted to the enemy.
57. PS pg 147: He was ignorant that Tarchaniotes persuaded as well Ruselius, who was minded to come aid the emperor, learning of the arrival of sultan and his approach on the emperor had set out with his men and fled ignobly through Mesopotamia to Roman territory, the cowardly man not even sending a message to his master or doing any befitting.
58. PS pg. 147-8: Yet he assented and gave them a cross so that by this sign they could return to him unharmed bearing carrying tidings which they might learn from the sultan. For what he sent, induced by the hopelessness of the situation was that the sultan would leave the place and make camp further away from his encampment, while the emperor would set up camp at that place where the Turks had had their encampment and would come to terms with him. He was offering victory to the enemy high-mindedly just as those in the know had agreed, the most victorious symbol, the cross being sent to him.
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59. Z pg. 700: In the midst of this, ambassadors came from the sultan to discuss peace. The emperor did not altogether warmly receive them he gave them messages and permitted them to return to their lord and say that, "If you want to discuss peace, leave behind the place in which you are encamped move camp to somewhere far away so I can set up camp with the Roman army where the barbarian encampment now is." With this said boastfully to the ambassadors, he commanded them to go back shortly. They reported the emperor's words to the sultan and he with the men about him were [still] desirous of peace agreement. As the emperor was arrogant, he was persuaded by some of the men about him who said that the sultan was afraid that he did not have sufficient enough an army and was therefore seeking peace so that battle should be avoided and he could bring in another force, so neither waiting for the return of the ambassadors nor thinking of anything else he ordered the war trumpets to be sounded.
60. PS pg. 149 adds: Andronicus, the son of the Caesar
61. PS pg. 150 testifies sultan named Axan
62. PS pg. 150-1: When he was assured by the ambassadors and Basiliacus that the man thrown before his feet was him giving off a pitiful lament, he straightaway as though a mad man sprung up from his throne and put it right. He put his foot on the man before his foot as customary and rose up him embracing him saying to him, "Do not fear, o emperor, but be of good cheer, since you will suffer no bodily harm and shall be honored worthy of the excellence of your majesty. Foolish is he who does not reverence the unexpected fortunes he is given."
63. Z pg. 703: He said, "Do not grieve, emperor, for such it is to be human. I will conduct myself towards you not a as a captive, but as an emperor."
64. The long lasting memory of Mantzikiert even lived on as a major down turn in Byzantium's decline in the following excerpt from Bessarion's encomium to Trebizond:
Bessarion: Encomium to Trebizond pgs. 182-3:
From Egypt, the Saracens, from Persia again, the Turks came as well as lands below, the former putting Palestine, Syria, and Pamphylia beneath them, while the latter put everything in between up until Bithynia under them and enslaved them including even taking the Roman emperor Romanus surnamed Diogenes captive, while the Romans held Europe and everything towards the dawning sun in word, while the Scythians, Huns, and the Pecheneg race and I know not who else attacked it on all sides and plundered all of the Mysians.
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65. Z pg. 703: He then came to Theodosiopolis clothed barbarically (the sultan had provided him his own vestments)...| Zonaras confuses the Greek word στολή 'vestment/army', which actually based on context refers to the Turkish army with him. Even Greek writers of the age make mistakes!
66. Z pg. 704: When news of his capture reached the capital, people were split amongst themselves by it. Some were in favor of giving the empress power again, others giving the whole thing to the elder of his sons, and still others working out joint rule between the empress and her sons.
67. PS pg. 152: One of the first to rise up to his proclamation was the counsel of philosophers Psellus just as he boasts in his books. It is said that the empress was of this persuasion not to receive Diogenes in return
68. These two lacunae are in the text as published by Bekker.
69. Attaliates in his account understandably forgets that Andronicus received Diogenes like a gentleman feting his return with a lavish banquet, as Psellus tells us (Chapter 49). Attaliates understandably 'forgets' this event since the irony of it would have been more than most men could handle. The man who had betrayed him at Mantzikiert, now received him generously.
70. Bibliotheca graeca Medii Aevi by Constantine Sathas. Tomos V. 1876, pgs. 392-4
145. To Andronicus Ducas while on campaign against Romanus Diogenes
I am not amazed that you have conquered and taken hold of the enemy by your superiority, most noble and martial man, my dearest friend, because of as such your honor, strategic sagacity, and your cunning in war. I praise you for your marches, advances, stratagems [here word also carries negative connotation of thievery and fraud], devices, thoughtful invention, and embellished change of scale. I amazed with you for your struggles, presence in the battle, phalanx, the appearances before the routs, the division on both in columns…and of the opponent, either crosswise or on each sides, one of them in columns, the other in the cycles that men cunning in this name them. For it does not thus happen either with great fear or from the first vestibule, resplendent with victory and victories you may be received again by us, but from martial plans, from tactical movements, from lines and divisions, and noble fights and such things as the head of a general is crowned by.
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At that moment, we all stood midway in the air divided in our opinions on both sides and very joyous for any news from where you were. The greater part of us and more divine voices were pleased, thrice-beloved and most magnificent man, to hear from your messengers of your rout by name and victory. It has thus been written in the above books, or rather from above you have received these noble deeds as gifts.
You, although the head of the serpent is not yet broken, have announced this good news. It has already been lost on us, since the full length of the serpent has not yet been taken care of, while the arch-evil head has not yet been broken, though may the beast may be struck down by your lightning bolt and this, not deep below nor unseen, but high up and manifest as you come upon the den, strip down the remaining parts, and inflict a terrible poison throughout it for the righteous.
You, with a hand of gold, arms of steel, and a chest of bronze, when you have completed it, please send news. For I am already devising words of praise for you for when there is final victory and I shall place an uncontaminated laurel gathered from Attic meadows upon your head.
However, there is still the basilisk upon my mind! Of whom do I speak? The most wily Chataturius, who please do not let escape and slip through your hands. Let the beast be captured at once by your hands, since he is not a part of length of the serpent, but at the same level with the head of the serpent.
After all of this, shall I pour [kisses] around your neck, shall I caress your right hand stained with righteous blood seeing with my own eyes the fair sight, and shall I proclaim you in the middle of the City climbing upon the highest surface so that my voice may be heard throughout the world, if it is possible, to make it heard the furthest away?
What is there for me to make famous of you, most sagacious of all men? For not, if you prescribe it shall it be of a contrary nature, since the memory should not be from set purpose, not from commandment, but bubbling up from below gushing forth in noble substance. I will make you famous even in Hades if indeed that is where spirits are left to remembrance.
You need craft no message about yourself, since this happening suffices for you in the place of any, even this one of mine, although it shall shortly be said, that you have caused the death of the empire of the Romans.
71. Romanus Diogenes had two sons by the Augusta Eudocia, Nicephorus and Leo, who Anna Comnena attests to, without whom this reference might be lost on us.
72. I think this speech might need some explanation with all of Attaliates’ rhetoric and unending sentences in a paraphrase and explanation. As he says in the paragraph following this speech is meant to be like something you would find in Sophocles, a dramatic speech delivered at that very moment to Michael Parapinaces, clothed both in pagan and Christian language:
O emperor, what do you think should be done with this man. Has he wronged anyone by sacrificing himself for the Roman Empire when he could have sat around in the palace and been lazy? He has been recognized and well treated by his enemy who recognize their victory comes from God. How can you order his eyes put out when he no longer poses any threat to you having renounced the empire, renounced public life, and become a monk? He poses no threat, yet you are insatiable in your lust for power and so you order this respecting nothing not even kin. Woe be upon you, o emperor, and may fortune curse you for ambition.
73. PS pg. 154 adds after Colonia the name Theophilus
74. Z pg. 706 adds the following explanation: His eyes were very cruelly put out and because no care was given his head swelled up and the wounds caused it to become infested with worms, while the air about him was rank with the foul smell of rot.
75. καὶ πρὸ τῆς τελευτῆς ὀδωδώς
76. PS pg. 154-5: It is said these things were done without the knowledge of the emperor Michael, who later confirmed them, the Caesar conceiving them and arranging them secretly.
77. Here I think is the appropriate place to add a short excerpt from the Timarion, the Byzantine equivalent of Dante'sInferno, written in the eleventh to twelfth century in which Romanus Diogenes figures. The narrator has recently died and like any good Greek gone to Hades not Hell where he is escorted about and meets a man who he asks about a tent he keeps hearing moans from:
As I had told him all about things in life, I asked him who was the man living in that tent and who the elder was beside it and the reasons for bellowing.
The vulgar man said:
The man living in the tent whose who innermost laments you have heard is the famous Diogenes from Cappadocia. Chiefly what I know about his life is that he was brought in to rule, that he marched against the eastern Scythians, and that he was taken captive. Then he was freed and tried to return to Byzantium and was not permitted to continue ruling, but was taken hold of by war and oath and treacherously, as you see, blinded being brought to these things by a trick of mischievous terror [or 'cunning man'].
Bibliography
- Attaliates, Michael. ed. Immanuel Bekker. Historia. Corpus Scriptorium Historiae Byzantinae. Bonn, 1853.
- Bessarion. ed S, Lambros. Εγκώμιον εις Τραπεζούντα. Νέος Ελληνομνήμων 13. 1918.
- Bryennius, Nichephorus. ed. Augustus Meinecke, Corpus Scriptorium Historiae Byzantinae. Bonn. 1836.
- Psellus, Michael. ed. Constantine Sathas. Bibliotheca graeca Medii Aevi. Tomos V. 1876.
- Psellus, Michael. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans. E.R.A. Sewter, rev. ed., (New York: Penguin, 1966).
- Pseudo, Scylitzes. ed. E.T. Tsolakes. Ἡ συνέχεια τῆς χρονογραφίας τοῦ Ἰωάννου Σκυλίτση Ἑταιρεία Μακεδονικῶν Σπουδῶν. Ἵδρυμα Μελετῶν Χερσονήσου τοῦ Αἵμου 105. Thessalonica, 1968.
- Timarion. R. Romano, Pseudo-Luciano, Timarione. Byzantina et neo-hellenica neapolitana 2. Naples: Università di Napoli. Cattedra di filologia bizantina, 1974.
- Zonaras, John. ed. L. Dindorf. Ioannis Zonarae epitome historiarum, vol. 3. Leipzig: Teubner, 1870.
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