Índice de estabilidad, STIX

as the mouth”. —Paul the Deacon’s description of paintings in Theodolinda’s (d.

628) palace at Monza, near Milan. It is implied that by Paul’s own time (fl. 770) the Lombards, including of course himself, no longer dressed differently from other Italians.

In full, Paul 4.22: “They shaved the neck, and left it bare up to the back of the head, having their hair hanging down on the face as far as the mouth and parting it on either side by a part in the forehead. Their garments [this would refer to long tunics] were loose and mostly linen, such as the Anglo-Saxons are wont to wear, ornamented with broad borders woven in various colours. Their shoes, indeed, were open almost up to the tip of the great toe, and were held on by shoe latchets interlacing alternately. But later [?after Theodolinda’s time*] they began to wear trousers, over which they put (?) leggings [and?] shaggy woollen cloth [tubrugos birreos] when they rode. But they had taken that from a custom of the Romans.” Or: “Later they began to use leggings (osae), over which they put

tubrugos [and?] birreos when riding.” Postea vero coeperunt osis uti, super quas equitantes tubrugos [et?] birreos mittebant.

The word osae/osis/hosis could mean trousers, leggings or gaiters. One writer speaks of Gothic-style linen hosa as “close-fitting leg-bags”. Christie, Lombards, has even translated it as ‘thigh boots’. In Isidore of Seville (Etym. 19: 22: 30) tubrucus means ‘legging(s) that cover trousers and shins’. But the exact meaning of tubrugos birreos remains uncertain. Cf Latin birrus, birri ‘woollen rain-cloak(s)’.

Presumably the top half of the body was clothed by a shirt or short tunic.

(*) The monk of Salerno in the Chronicum Salernitanum says that

Theodolinda’s son, king Adaloald, AD 616-626, was the first who wore trousers or leggings (osa). Iste primum calcavit [sic: ?calciavit**] osam part[h]icam. “That one (he) first put on Parthian trousers”. Latin text in Walter Pohl & Helmut Reimitz 1998: 44; my translation, MO’R.

(**) Calciavit: ‘he has put his feet in (something)’ vs calcavit ‘he has trod under foot’.

625:

Three Persian armies converge on Persian Armenia, but Heraclius defeats them all (Treadgold 1997: 296). Cf 627.

The majority view would place the outmanoeuvring by Heraclius of the three Persian generals sent to defeat him in 625, rather than 624. A new chronology of Heraclius' movements put forward by Constantin Zuckerman, "Heraclius in 625,"

Revue des études byzantines 60 [2002], 189-97, compresses events normally placed in 624 and 625 into the one year, 624.

Khusro raised three separate armies to trap the Greek Romanics, but, in “one of the most remarkable campaigns of the ancient world”, Heraclius

out-manoeuvred all three, defeating each of them in turn - a feat the American

military historians Ernest and Trevor Dupuy have argued places the East Roman emperor among the great captains of history, alongside Alexander, Hannibal and Julius Caesar. —http://www.thehistorian.co.uk/crusader_samp2a.html.

Treadgold 1997: “By the spring of 625 Khusrau had brought his chief generals and many of his soldiers from the west. The king sent them against Heraclius in three army groups, led by Shahrvaraz, Shahin, and a third general, Shahraplakan.

The emperor marched south from Albania into Suinia, a district of Persian Armenia, while the enemy armies converged upon him. But he outmaneuvered them. He managed to defeat Shahraplakan just before Shahin arrived, then to rout Shahin's army and capture its camp. The remnants of the defeated Persian forces took refuge with Shahrvaraz.”

The Campaign of 625

The sequence of events as related in Theophanes and with his chronology: March 625: From Syria Heraclius leads his army to the Tigris River and the fortress-towns of Martryopolis and Amida. Meanwhile Sarabaros (Shahrvaraz) has assembled a Persian army east of the Euphrates. Heraclius raids across the Euphatres before retruning to Germaniceia. The two armies came at each other on the opposite side of the Saraos River. After an inconclusive clash, the

Byzantines retire to Sebasteia before wintering in the upper Halys valley (TCOT:

21).

Theophanes under 625: “As for Sarbaros, he collected his scattered army and went after him. The emperor picked a band of soldiers and sent them to guard the passes leading to his position; and sallying forth to the eastward passages, he

moved to confront Sarbaros. He crossed the Nymphios river and reached the Euphrates, where there was a pontoon bridge made of rope and boats.”

The End of Antiquity

By 625: The Slavic invasions and plague had already brought about urban collapse in the Balkans (Soltysiak 2006). Except for a number of towns whose garrisons were maintained from the sea, and the east coast of the Peloponnesus, the whole Greek peninsula was lost to Rhomaniya-Byzantium for nearly two centuries. As noted above, except in Salonika [Thessaloniki] and the island of Paros, "not a single Early Christian church remained standing in all of Greece" (Obolensky p.80).

East Britain, or better ‘Anglo-Saxonia’: The second wife of the ‘pagan’ king Edwin of Northumbria, the northernmost Anglo-Saxon realm, was

Ethelburga, died c. 647. She was the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent, a

‘pagan’, and his Christian wife Bertha, herself daughter of the Frankish (Merovingian) king of Paris. Ethelburga’s marriage to Edwin in 625 triggered the conversion of the north of England to Christianity.

Edwin converted to the ‘Roman’ religion in 627; but this was not decisive:

his successor reverted to ‘paganism’ (or the True Faith as of course most saw it). It was not until the reign of Ethelburga’s son Oswald, d.642, that the whole ruling caste in Northumbria finally went over to Christianity

(Wikipedia, 2007,under ’Oswald’).

The enemies of the Anglo-Saxons in the west and north-west, the post-imperial “Celts” or Britons of Wales and Strathclyde, or at least their ruling stratum, had been Christian since late Roman times. A letter written already by St Patrick, d. 493, to ‘king Coroticus’—if the latter was indeed a king in

‘Celtic’ Strathclyde—indicates that the Christianisation of southern Scotland had made considerable progress by that time.

625/26:

b. Heracleonas, future emperor, son of Heraclius and Martina.

625-43:

The Exarch of Byzantine Italy was Isaac. According the Greek inscription in verse on his funerary urn at Ravenna, he was an Armenian “of an illustrious family”,

“companion of kings in battle”, and “commanded the army of the east and of the west” (translated in Cadell’s Journey in Cariniola, 1820 p.34; Isaac’s earlier military career had been in the East with Heraclius). Overall, according to Richards p.35, his governorship was a notable period of imperial consolidation and military success against the Lombards. Cf 630.

Hutton, in his Ravenna, 1913, took a different view: “Isaac the Armenian was appointed and he ruled, as his epitaph tells us, for 18 years, 625-643. Isaac's rule [or its final year] was not fortunate for the imperialists. He is probably to be acquitted of the murder [in 630/31] of Taso, Lombard duke of Tuscia, but it is certain that Rothari [acc. 636: see there], the Lombard king in his time, [here

Hutton quotes Paulus Diaconus:] "took all the cities of the Romans which are situated on the sea-coast from Luna in Tuscany to the boundary of the Franks [=

the greater Genoa region]; also he took and destroyed Opitergium [Oderzo], a city between Treviso and Friuli [i.e. north of Venice], and with the Romans of Ravenna he fought [AD 643] at the river of Aemilia which is called Scultenna (our Panaro River) [= the Modena-Bologna region]. In this fight 8,000 fell on the Roman [Byzantine] side, the rest fleeing away." Cf 636.

A different translation of Paulus 4.45 reads thus: “King Rothari [acc. 636] then captured all the cities of the Romans [Byzantines] which were situated upon the shore of the sea from the city of Luna (the port of Luni) in Tuscany up to the boundaries of the Franks. Also he captured and destroyed Opitergium (Oderzo) a city placed between Tarvisium (Treviso) and Forum Julii (Friuli: Cividale). He waged war [in 643] with the Romans of Ravenna [led by the exarch Isaac] near the river of Emilia [a tributary of the Po: near Modena] which is called the Scultenna (Panaro). In this war 8,000 fell on the side of the Romans and the remainder took to flight.” (Isaac was probably killed in this battle.)

Territory

In 626 Byzantium still ruled most of the Mediterranean basin, from North Africa and Sicily to Asia Minor. The Eastern provinces - Syria, Palestine and Egypt - were in the hands of the Persian shah, but as we know from hindsight, only temporarily. Slavic tribes had irrupted into, and settled in, the Balkans.

Peninsular Italy was divided between the Lombards and the Empire. And in present-day Spain, the Visigoths now had full control, having recently ousted the Byzantines from their former south-eastern enclave.

626:

1. The East: Even when pregnant, the empress Martina accompanied Heraclius.

Heraclonas, perhaps her fourth child, was born at Lazica in 626 while Heraclius was on campaign against the Persians, and she was with him at Antioch (with a child) when the news was received of the serious defeat by the Arabs at the river Yarmuk in August 636 (Garland, ‘Martina’, 1999).

Persians, Avars and Slavs besiege Constantinople, 626

2. Siege of Constantinople: While the emperor is in the East with the army, two armies: the first a Persian and then an Avar-Slav army approach the capital. The latter supposedly comprised “80,000” men; 18,000 would be more credible (June-July).

The patriarch Sergius led a litany to the monastery of the Panagia Odigitria or

Hodegetria: an icon, believed to have been painted by St Luke, of the “All-holy Guide”, i.e. Our Lady ‘of the Sign’ [she points to the Redeemer], just before the final attack of the Avars, and very soon a huge storm crushed the enemy fleet, and so eventually saved Constantinople. The storm was credited as a miracle of the Virgin Mary.

Sequence of events according to Theophanes (TCOT: 22ff):

Khosroes recruited more troops and gave an army each to his generals Sain or Shahin and Sarbaros [Pers. Shahvaraz]. The larger force under Sain was

apparently as large as 75,000 men. Sarbaros is sent (before June 626) west to attack Constantinople. Learning of this, the emperor divided his army into three divisions. One was sent to aid Constantinople. Another, under his brother

Theodore, was sent against Sain’s army. Heracles himself took the third to Lazika to negotiate an alliance with the Khazars.

Theodore defeated Sain’s army. Heraclius meanwhile joined up with a large Khazar force of “40,000” men west or NW of Tiflis (Lazica: modern Georgia), and the combined Khazar-imperial army proceeded south into Persian territory.

Meanwhile (June 626) Sarabaros reached Chalcedon and the Avars came

overland through Thrace to Constantinople while their, or rather the Slavs’, dug-out boats came through the Bosporus and into the Golden Horn. After a “10-day”

siege the Avars withdrew but the Persians wintered around Chalcedon.

Theophanes, AD 626: “As for Sarbaros, he [the shah] dispatched him [Sarbaros] with his remaining army against Constantinople with a view to

establishing an alliance between the western Huns who are called Avars and the Bulgars, Slavs, and Gepids, and so advancing on the City and laying siege to it.

When the emperor learnt of this, he divided his army into three contingents: the first he sent to protect the City; the second he entrusted to his own brother Theodore, whom he ordered to fight Sain; the third part he took himself and advanced to Lazica.”

Meanwhile, perhaps in September 626: but most modern scholars say 627, Heraclius led his Rhomaniyans and Khazars into Persia territory, or rather some of the Khazars: many deserted when they learnt the campaigning would continue into winter. Khosroes dispatched an army under Rhazates against Heraclius.

From Gazakon, Rhazates’ army followed that of Heraclius toward Nineveh (modern Iraq) which the emperor reached on 1 December 627. There on 12 December he crushed Rhazates in battle. 23 Dec: Khosroes withdraws from Dastigard to Ctesiphon.

The Land and Sea Siege of Constantinople, 626

The Chronicon Paschale, a Byzantine chronicle, says that Shahr-Waraz, in Gk:

Sarbaros, arrived to take over the command of the Persians at Chalcedon in late June 626, a few days before the arrival before Byzantium of the Avars and Slavs led by the Khakân or khan* on 29 June 626. The Slavs are described as all on foot

and lacking armour (Fine 1991: 43). The Avars by contrast were of course a well-equipped cavalry force,

(*) The name of this khan, unlike his predecessor Bayan II and his successor Kubrat, has not survived in the written record.

The siege failed owing to the fact that the Rhomaniyan galleys retained their command of the sea and so prevented the planned co-operation between the Avars and the Persians. Thereupon the Khakân sullenly retired with his baffled and starving troops.

See next: The term manganon was used to cover siege engines, but the more technical term manganikon emerged in the seventh century. The word is first used in the Chronicon Paschale describing the Avar machines at the siege of Constantinople in 626. This itself is an early work, further reinforcing the belief that the Avars were the people who introduced the trebuchet to the East Romans. - Stephen McCotter 2003.

Theophanes Confessor: “As for Sarbaros, he attacked Chalcedon while the Avars approached the City by way of Thrace with a view to capturing it. They set in motion many engines against it and filled the gulf of the Horn with an immense multitude [of men], beyond all number, whom they had brought from the

Danube in carved boats. After investing the City by land and sea for 10 days, they were vanquished by God's might and help and by the intercession of the

immaculate Virgin, the Mother of God. Having lost great numbers, both on land and on sea, they shamefully returned to their country.” - The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813, translated by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

Gibbon: “Sarbar, the general of the third [Persian] army, penetrated through the provinces of Asia to the well-known camp of Chalcedon [the Persians had come this way before], and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he impatiently waited the arrival of his Scythian friends [the Avars] on the opposite side of the Bosphorus. On the 29^th of June, 30,000 barbarians, the vanguard of the Avars, forced the Long Wall* [in inner Thrace], and drove into the capital a promiscuous crowd of peasants, citizens and soldiers. Four-score thousand [80,000] of his native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae, Russians, Bulgarians, and

Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of the Chagan [the khan of the Avars];

a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the whole city was invested on the 31^st of July, from the suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers; and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of the European and Asiatic shores.”

(*) The long wall in rural Thrace; not to be confused with the outer walls of Constantinople. Also called the Long Walls or the Wall of Anastasios I, a system of fortifications erected west of Constantinople and extending a distance

of two days journey. With a thickness of 3.3 metres and a height over five metres, these walls were over 45 km long and extend from Selymbria on the Sea of

Marmara to the Black Sea. The wall is made of hard pinkish mortar with nodules of brick. The wall has towers (rectangular and polygonal), forts with gateways and an outer moat. Originally constructed by Anastasios, the wall proved ineffective and was many times penetrated by invaders. It was no longer maintained after about this time and became just another ruin in the countryside.

More prosaically we can say that a two-sided siege ensued as the Persians arrived via Chalcedon (July). The ‘pagan’ Slavs in their “canoes” and ‘transport rafts’

crossed to the eastern shore of the Bosporus. There they picked up thousands of Persian troops, but the Byzantine navy intercepted and sank them on their way back. Meanwhile on the west, the Avars deployed 12 siege-towers; they failed to breach the walls (7 August 626). Seeing the Avars fail to gain the surrender of the City, the Persians decided in due course to withdraw (early 627). That is, the Persians remained encamped on the Bosphoros, within sight of their objective but unable to cross over to it, until the winter of 626-27.

Gibbon: “During 10 successive days, the capital was assaulted by the Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the impenetrable tortoise [infantry in a closed-shield formation]; their engines discharged a perpetual volley of stones and darts; and 12 lofty towers of wood exalted the combatants to the height of the neighbouring ramparts.

But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of Heraclius, who had detached to their relief a body of 12,000 cuirassiers [armoured cavalry]; the powers of fire and mechanics were used with superior art and success in the defence of Constantinople; and the galleys, with two and three ranks of oars, commanded the Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle spectators of the defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a fleet of Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbour; the vassals of the Chagan [khagan, Avar monarch]

threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and, after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and formidable retreat.”

The available Byzantine soldiers for the defence of the city, including the last-minute reinforcements, numbered about 12,000 men, perhaps more.* The walls had been strengthened, and ample provisions had been made. Grain, now that Egypt was lost, came from the rich, or perhaps better: least poor, province of Africa, i.e. Tunisia.

(*) According to the Chron. Pasch., 718.18-22, there were some 12,000 cavalry soldiers in the city in 626, some of whom were Armenians (ibid.

724.11; cf. G. Pisid., Bell. Av. 280f). These must have been mostly those troops sent by Heraclius. There is no report of their arrival, but they are described as elite troops (Chron. Pasch., loc.cit.); while Heraclius' brother Theodore arrived later, as the siege was raised (Chron. Pasch. 726.4-10), having encountered and defeated the army of the Persian general Sahin in

the East (cf. Theophanes, 315.17-22).

The empire's naval forces, or those available at the capital, comprised 70 dromons or large oared war-galleys. On 7 August they prevented the Persians linking up with the Avars.

The fleet was strong enough to intercept every attempt to cross the Bosphorus, thereby cutting off the Persians from their comrades-in-arms, for the latter had not brought with them (say from Syria or Egypt) any naval equipment or boats, a fact that gives some strength to the conclusion that they did not really intend to capture Constantinople themselves, but had made the move out of strategic considerations, i.e. to compel Heraclius to withdraw his main force from Armenia.

626-28:

1. Seventh visit of the plague since 542. It hit Palestine in 626-27 and Persia in 628. —Stathakopoulos 2004: 120.

2. fl. the poet George of Pisidia.

His works include, to cite the Latin titles of the Greek originals: 1: "De expeditione Heraclii imperatoris contra Persas, libri tres", ‘Concerning the expedition of the emperor Heraclius against the Persians in three books’, an account of the Persian war, which shows him to have been an eyewitness of it; 2:

"Bellum Avaricum" (or Avarica: ‘The Avar War’), describing the defeat of the Avars who attacked Constantinople in 626, and were defeated, during the absence of the emperor and his army; and 3: "Heraclias" or "De extremo

Chosroae Persarum regis excidio" (‘Concerning the final/distant defeat/military

Chosroae Persarum regis excidio" (‘Concerning the final/distant defeat/military