CHAPTER VII

fINAncial and military administration

 

1. Finance

 

The Imperial revenue in the Middle Ages proceeded from the same principal sources as in the earlier ages of the Empire: taxation and the profits on the Imperial estates. The machinery for collecting the revenue had perhaps been little altered, but the central ministries which controlled the machinery had been considerably changed. The various financial and cognate departments which had been subject to the authority of the two great financial ministers and the Praetorian Prefects, under the system introduced by Constantine, are now distributed among eight mutually independent ministries.

The Logothete or Accountant of the General Treasury, or, as lie was briefly called, the General Logothete, had inherited the most important duties of the Count of the Sacred Largesses. He ordered and controlled the collection of all the taxes. He was the head of the army of surveyors, controllers, and collectors of the land and hearth taxes, and of the host of commerciarii or officers of the customs.

The Military Logothete administered the treasury which defrayed the pay of the soldiers and other military expenses, which used to be furnished from the chests of the Praetorian Prefects. The Wardrobe and the Special Treasury were stores for all kinds of material used for military and naval purposes ; on the occasion of a warlike expedition they supplied sails and ropes, hides, tin and lead, and innumerable things required for the equipment. The President of the Special Treasury controlled the public factories, and the Chartulary of the Wardrobe was also master of the mint.

The estates of the Crown, which were situated chiefly in the Asiatic provinces, were controlled by two central offices. The revenues were managed by the Chartulary of the Sakellion, the estates were administered by the Great Curator. The pastures in western Asia Minor, however, where horses and mules were reared for the military service, were under the stewardship of another minister, the Logothete of the Herds, while the military stables of Malagina were directed by an important and independent officer, the Count of the Stable. These latter offices had been in earlier times subordinated to the Count of the Private Estate.

The Sakellion was the central treasury of the State. We have no particular information concerning the methods of disbursement and allocation, or the relations between the various bureaux. But we may suppose that the General Logothete, who received the income arising from taxation, paid directly to other departments the various standing expenses which were defrayed from this revenue, and handed over the surplus to the Sakellion. This treasury, which received directly the net income furnished by the rents of the Private Estates, would thus have contained the specie available for the expenses of military expeditions, for buildings and public works, for the extravagances of the Court and all the private expenses of the Emperor. The annual savings, if savings were effected, seem to have passed into the personal custody of the sovran, so that Irene was able to conceal the treasure which she had accumulated.

The Sakellion itself was under the control of the chief financial minister, the Sakellarios, who acted as general comptroller. The special financial ministries were not subordinate to him, but he had the right and duty to inquire into their accounts, and was doubtless responsible for all disbursements from the Sakellion.

Bullion, furnished by the State mines, came to the General Logothete, who must have sent it to the Wardrobe to be coined, while other bullion might be deposited before mintage in the Special Treasury. From the Wardrobe the coins would pass to the Sakellion.

The two principal direct taxes, on which the Imperial finance rested, were the land-tax and the hearth-tax. These had always been the two pillars of the treasury, for the hearth-tax was only a modification of the old capitation, being levied, not on the free man and woman, but on the household.The population of cities, including the capital, did not pay the hearth-tax, at least in the eastern provinces. The leaseholders on the Imperial estates were not exempted from the land-tax, which all landed proprietors and tenants paid; and the house­holders of Constantinople and the other cities were burdened by an analogous charge on sites, which was known as the "urban tribute". The uniform hearth rate was probably combined in the same schedules with the other tax and collected by the same officials.Other sources of income were the toll on receipts (an income-tax of the most odious form, which Irene was praised for abolishing), death duties, judicial fines, and, above all, the duties levied on imports, which must have amounted to a substantial sum.

The unpopular fiscal measures of the Emperor Nicephorus, which are briefly recapitulated by a hostile monk, afford us a vague glimpse into the obscure financial conditions of the Empire. His official experience as General Logothete had enabled him to acquire an expert knowledge of financial details which few sovrans possessed, and he was convinced that the resources of the State were suffering and its strength endangered by the policy of laxity and indulgence which had been adopted by Irene. In the first year of his reign there was a severe taxation, which may have driven many to embrace the cause of the rebel Bardanes. We may probably conjecture that his severity consisted in restoring wholly or partly the taxes which his predecessor had recently abolished. We may be disposed to believe that he acquiesced in the disappearance of the tax on receipts, for if he had revived it, his enemies, who complained of all his financial measures, would hardly have failed to include in their indictment the revival of a burden so justly odious. But we may reasonably assume that he restored the custom duties, which were levied at the toll-houses of Abydos and Hieron, to their former figure, and that he imposed anew upon Constantinople the urban tribute, which Irene had inequitably remitted.

But seven years later, in a.d. 809, in view perhaps of the imminent struggle with the Bulgarians, he prepared a formidable array of new measures to replenish the sinking contents of the treasury.

I. In all cases where taxes had been reduced in amount, they were raised again to the original sum. It is possible that this applied to reductions which had been allowed during the preceding twenty years.

II. The kapnikon or hearth-tax, which had replaced the old capitation-tax, was a fixed annual charge of two miliarisia (2s.). But monastic and religious institutions, orphanages,hospitals, homes for the aged, although legally liable, had been exempted from payment for many years with the connivance of the government. We cannot hesitate to ascribe this inequitable favour to the policy of the pious Empress Irene. It was monstrous that the tenants on the monastic lands should be free from the burden which was imposed on all other farms and estates. Religious institutions multiplied rapidly; private persons were constantly founding new monasteries; and there was a prospect that every year the proceeds of the hearth-tax would suffer further diminution. Nicephorus was fully justified in insisting that this exemption, unauthorised by law, should cease, and in forcing the institutions which had not contributed their due share to the maintenance of the State to pay the arrears of the tax since the year of his own accession.

III. The land-tax, which continued to be the most important source of revenue, was the most troublesome to adjust and to control. Nicephorus ordered that a new survey should be made, and that the tax should be raised in amount by the charge of a shilling on the receipt which the tax-collector delivered. In the case of large estates there was no difficulty in collecting the duties; the whole propert was liable for a fixed sum, and if some tenants were too poor to pay, it did not matter to the fisc. But great estates (which were to increase in number and extent in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries) seem at this time not to have been numerous; small proprietorship prevailed. The system which the government employed to secure the treasury against loss when a farmer failed or could not make his land yield the necessary margin of profit did not work satisfactorily. The farms of a commune were grouped together for this purpose, and if one farmer was insolvent, the amount for which he was liable was distributed as an extracharge (epibole) among the other members of the group. For poorer members this imposition was a considerable hardship, and the circumstance that Nicephorus deemed it expedient to modify the system seems to show that there were many cases of small proprietors reduced to penury. So far as we can interpret our brief record of his measure, he sought to devolve the responsibility for the taxes of the poor upon their richer neighbours. The fiscal debt of a defaulting farm no longer fell upon a whole group, but upon some neighbouring proprietor, and this liability was termed Allelengyon or Mutual Security.

But what was to happen to the indigent defaulter? Nicephorus enrolled him as a soldier, compelling the same more prosperous neighbour to provide for his military equipment by paying the sum of eighteen and a half nomismata. We are not told whether this sum was regarded as a price for the land, which ought to have been transferred to the possession of the neighbour who was held responsible for it, or even whether the proprietor was compelled to sell it.

The growth of monastic property was an economic evil which was justly regarded by Nicephorus with disquietude, and he adopted the heroic measure of incorporating in the Imperial domains the better lands of some rich monasteries. We cannot doubt that the transaction took the form of a compulsory sale, the price being fixed by the treasury; it is impossible to suppose that it was naked confiscation, which would have been alien to the methods of Roman policy. But the taxes which had been paid on the entire property continued to be exacted, according to our informant, from the diminished estates of the monks. We know too little of the conditions and provisions to enable us to pronounce whether this measure was unreasonably oppressive; but it is clear that Nicephorus was prepared to brave the odium which always descended upon the medieval statesman who set the economic interests of the State above those of its monastic parasites.

But if Nicephorus increased his domains at the expense of pious institutions, he also alienated portions of the Imperial estates, and the motives of this policy are obscure. It is recorded as a hardship that he sold Imperial land on the coasts of Asia Minor, at a fixed price, to unwilling purchasers, who, accustomed to sea-faring and trade, knew little or nothing about agriculture. Here again we must remember that the case is presented by an enemy, and that we are ignorant of all the circumstances of the alleged coercion.

IV. In his diligent quest of ways and means, the sudden acquisition of wealth, which we might now classify under the title of unearned increment, did not escape the notice of Nicephorus as a suitable object of taxation. He imposed heavy charges upon those who could be proved to have suddenly risen from poverty to affluence through no work or merit of their own. He treated them as treasure-finders, and thus brought them under the law of Justinian by which treasure-trove was confiscated. The worst of this measure was that it opened a fruitful field to the activity of informers.

V. Death duties were another source of revenue which claimed the Emperor's attention. The tax of 5 per cent on inheritances which had been instituted by the founder of the Empire seems to have been abolished by Justinian; but a duty of the same kind had been reimposed, and was extended to successions in the direct line, which had formerly been exempted. The lax government of Irene had allowed the tax to be evaded, by some at least of those who inherited property from their fathers or grandfathers; and when Nicephorus ordered that it should be exacted from all who had so inherited during the last twenty years, many poor men were in consternation.

VI. It is remarkable that a statesman possessing the financial experience of Nicephorus should have shared the ancient prejudice against usury so far as to forbid the lending of money at interest altogether. The deliverance of society from the evils attendant upon merciless usury was dearly purchased by the injury which was inflicted upon industry and trade. The enterprise of merchants who required capital was paralyzed, and Nicephorus was forced to come to their rescue. He aided them in a way which was highly advantageous to the treasury. He advanced loans of twelve pounds of gold about, exacting the high interest of 16,2/3 per cent. The government was not bound by the prohibition of private usury, which it is possible that the successor of Nicephorus prudently abolished.

VII. The custom duties, which were levied at Abydos and had been remitted by Irene in her unscrupulous desire to conciliate the favour of Constantinople, had been immediately re-enacted by her successor. Household slaves of a superior kind were among the most valuable chattels which reached the capital by the route of the Hellespont, and the treasury profited by the cooks and pages and dancers who were sold to minister to the comfort and elegance of the rich families of Byzantium. But there was also a demand for these articles of luxury among the inhabitants of the Aegean coasts and islands, who could purchase them without paying the heavy charges that were exacted in the custom-houses of Abydos. Nicephorus abolished this immunity by imposing a tax of two gold pieces (24 shillings) a head on all such slaves who were sold to the west of the Hellespont.

The chronicler Theophanes, whose hostile pen has recorded these fiscal measures, completes his picture of the Emperor's oppressions by alleging that he used to pry into men's private affairs, employing spies to watch their domestic life and encouraging ill-disposed servants to slander or betray their masters. "His cruelties to the rich, the middle class, and the poor in the Imperial city were beyond description. In the last two years of his reign, he excited the murmurs of the inhabitants by a strict enforcement of the market dues on the sales of animals and vegetables, by quartering soldiers in monasteries and episcopal mansions, by selling for the public benefit gold and silver plate which had been dedicated in churches, by confiscating the property of wealthy patricians. He raised the taxes paid by churches and monasteries, and he commanded officials, who had long evaded the taxation to which they were liable as citizens, to discharge the arrears which they had failed to pay during his own reign. This last order, striking the high functionaries of the Court, seemed so dangerous to Theodosius Salibaras, a patrician who had considerable influence with the Emperor, that he ventured to remonstrate. "My lord," he said, "all are crying out at us, and in the hour of temptation all will rejoice at our fall." Nicephorus is said to have made the curious reply: "If God has hardened my heart like Pharaoh's, what good can my subjects look for? Do not expect from Nicephorus save only the things which thou seest."

The laxity and indulgence which had been permitted in the financial administration of the previous reign rendered the severity of Nicephorus particularly unwelcome and unpopular. The most influential classes were hit by his strict insistence on the claims of the treasury. The monks, who suspected him of heterodoxy and received no favours at his hands, cried out against him as an oppressor. Some of his measures may have been unwise or unduly oppressive—we have not the means of criticizing them; but in his general policy he was simply discharging his duty, an unpopular duty, to the State.

Throughout the succeeding reigns we obtain no such glimpse into the details or vicissitudes of Imperial finance. If there was a temporary reaction under Michael I against the severities of Nicephorus, the following Emperors must have drawn the reins of their financial administration sufficiently tight. After the civil war, indeed, Michael II rewarded the provinces which had been faithful to his cause by a temporary remission of half the hearth-tax. The facts seem to show that the Amorian rulers were remarkably capable and successful in their finance. On one band, tkere was always an ample surplus in the treasury, until Michael III at the very end of his reign deplenished it by wanton wastefulness. On the other, no complaints are made of fiscal oppression during this period, notwithstanding the fact that the chroniclers would have rejoiced if they had had any pretext for bringing such a charge against heretics like Theophilus and his father.

If our knowledge of the ways and means by which the Imperial government raised its revenue is sadly incomplete and in many particulars conjectural, we have no information as to its amount in the ninth century, and the few definite figures which have been recorded by chance are insufficient to enable us to guess either at the income or the expenditure. It is a remarkable freak of fortune that we should possess relatively ample records of the contemporary finance of the Caliphate, and should be left entirely in the dark as to the budget of the Empire.

We have some figures bearing on the revenue in the twelfth century, and they supply a basis for a minimum estimate of the income in the ninth, when the State was stronger and richer. We learn that Constantinople alone furnished the treasury with 7,300,000 nomismata or £4,380,000, including the profits of taxation on commerce and the city markets. It has been supposed that the rest of the Empire contributed five times as much, so that the total revenue would be more than £26,280,000. At this period the greater part of Asia Minor was in the hands of the Seljuk Turks, while, on the other hand, the Empire possessed Bulgaria and Crete. It might therefore be argued that the Emperor Theophilus, who also held Calabria and received a certain yearly sum from Dalmatia, may have enjoyed a revenue of twenty-seven to thirty millions.

But the proportion of 1 to 5, on which this calculation rests, is such an arbitrary hypothesis that we must seek smiel other means of forming a rough evaluation. We are told that in the twelfth century the island of Corcyra yielded 1500 pounds of gold or £64,800 to the Imperial treasury. The total area of the Imperial territory in the reign of Theophilus (counting Sicily as lost, and not including Calabria, Dalmatia, Cyprus, or Cherson) was about 546,000 kilometres. The area of Corcyra is 770, so that if its contribution to the treasury was as large in the ninth as in the twelfth century, and was proportional to its size, the amount of the whole revenue would be about £46,000,000. But the population of the islands was undoubtedly denser than in most regions of the mainland, and it is probably an insufficient set-off to have left out of account Calabria and some other outlying Imperial possessions, and to have made no allowance for the vast amount contributed by Constantinople. Yet this line of calculation suggests at least that the Imperial revenue may have exceeded thirty millions and was nearly half as large again as the revenue of the Caliphs.

If we accept £25,000,000 as a minimum figure for the revenue arising from taxation of all kinds, we must add a considerable sum for the profits arising from the Imperial Estates in Asia Minor. Disregarding this source of income, which we have no data for estimating, we must remember that the weight of gold which if sent to the mint today would be coined into twenty-five million sovereigns represented at Byzantium a far higher purchasing power. It is now generally assumed that the value of money was five times as great, and this is probably not an exaggeration. On this hypothesis the Imperial revenue from taxation would correspond in real value to £125,000,000.

It is impossible to conjecture how the expenditure was apportioned. Probably a sum of more tlian £1.000.000 was annually spent on the maintenance of the military establishment, not including the cost of campaigns. The navy, the civil service in all its branches, religious foundations, doles to charitable institutions, liberal presents frequently given to foreign potentates for political purposes, represented large claims on the treasury, while the upkeep of a luxurious Court, and the obligatory gifts on stated occasions to crowds of officials, consumed no small portion of the Emperor's income. Theophilus must have laid out more than a million a year on his buildings. It is only for the army and navy that we possess some figures, but these, are too uncertain and partial to enable us to reconstruct a military budget.

Perhaps the most striking evidence of the financial prosperity of the Empire is the international circulation of its gold currency. "In the period of 8 0 0 years from Diocletian to Alexius Comnenus the Eoman government never found itself compelled to declare bankruptcy or stop payments. Neither the ancient nor the modern world can offer a complete parallel to this phenomenon. This prodigious stability of Eoman financial policy therefore secured the "byzant" its universal currency. On account of its full weight it passed with all the neighbouring nations as a valid medium of exchange. By her money Byzantium controlled both the civilised and the barbarian worlds."

 

2.Military and NavalOrganization

 

I. Under the Amorian dynasty considerable administrative changes were made in the organization of the military provinces into which the Empire was divided, in order to meet new conditions. In the Isaurian period there were five great Themes in Asia Minor, governed by strategoi, in the following order of dignity and importance : the Anatolic, the Armeniac, the Thrakesian, the Opsikian, and the Bukellarian. This system of "the Five Themes," as they were called, lasted till the reign of Michael II, if not till that of Theophilus. But it is probable that before that time the penetration of theMoslems in the frontier regions had rendered it necessary to delimit from the Anatolic and Armeniac provinces districts which were known as kleisurarchies, and were under minor commanders, kleisurarchs, who could take measures for defending the country independently of the strategoi. In this way the kleisurarchy of Seleucia, west of Cilicia, was cut off from the Anatolic Theme, and that of Charsianon from the Armeniac. Southern Cappadocia, which was constantly exposed to Saracen invasion through the Cilician gates, was also formed into a frontier province. We have no record of the times at which these changes were made, but we may suspect that they were of older date than the reign of Theophilus.

This energetic Emperor made considerable innovations in the thematic system throughout the Empire, and this side of his administration has not been observed or appreciated. In Asia Minor he created two new Themes, Paphlagonia and Chaldia. Paphlagonia seems to have been cut off from the Bukellarian province; probably it had a separate existence already, as a "katepanate", for the governor of the new Theme, while he was a strategos, bore the special title of katepano, which looks like the continuation of an older arrangement. The rise of Paphlageaia in important may connected with the active Pontic policy of Theophilus. It is not without significance that Paphlagonian ships played a part in the expedition which he sent to Cherson, and we may conjecture with probability that the creation of the Theme of the Klimata on the north of the Euxine and that of Paphlagonia on the south were not isolated acts, but were part of the same general plan. The institution of the Theme of Chaldia, which was cut off from the Armeniac Theme (probably a.d. 837), may also be considered as part of the general policy of strengthening Imperial control over the Black Sea and its coastlands, here threatened by the imminence of the Moslem power in Armenia. To the south of Chaldia was the duchy of Koloneia, also part of the Armeniac circumscription. In the following reign (before a.d. 863) both Koloneia and Cappadocia were elevated to the rank of Themes.

The Themes of Europe, which formed a class apart from those of Asia, seem at the end of the eighth century to have been four in number—Thrace, Macedonia, Hellas, and Sicily. There were also a number of provinces of inferior rank— Calabria, under its Dux; Dalmatia and Crete, under governors who had the title of archon; while Thessalonica with the adjacent region was still subject to the ancient Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum, an anomalous survival from the old system of Constantine. It was doubtless the Slavonic revolt in the reign of Nicephorus I that led to the reorganization of the Helladic province, and the constitution of the Peloponnesus as a distinct Theme, so that Hellas henceforward meant Northern Greece. The Mohammadan descent upon Crete doubtless led to the appointment of a strategos instead of an archon of Crete, and the Bulgarian wars to the suppression of the Praetorian prefect by a strategos of Thessalonica. The Theme of Kephalonia (with the Ionian Islands) seems to have existed at the beginning of the ninth century; but the Saracen menace to the Hadriatic and the western coasts of Greece may account for the foundation of the Theme of Dyrrhachium, a city which probably enjoyed, like the communities of the Dalmatian coast, a certain degree of local independence. If so, we may compare the policy of Theophilus in instituting the strategos of the Klimata with control over the magistrates of Cherson.

It is to be noted that the Theme of Thrace did not include the region in the immediate neighbourhood of Constantinople, cut off by the Long Wall of Anastasius, who had made special provisions for the government of this region. In the ninth century it was still a separate circumscription, probably under the military command of the Count of the Walls, and Arabic writers designate it by the curious name Talaya or Tafia.

A table will exhibit the general result of all these changes:

 

Asiatic Themes

Strategiai: —1. Anatolic. 2. Armeniac. 3. Thrakesian. 4. Opsikian. 5. Bukellarian, 6 Cappadocia, 7,  Paphlagonia. 8. Chaldia.9. Koloneia.

Kleisurarchiai: —10. Charsianon. 11. Seleucia.

NAval Themes

1. Kibyrrhaiot. 2. Aigaion Pelagos.

European (and other) Themes

Strategiai. 1. Macedonia. 2. Thrace. 3. Hellas. 4. Peloponnesus. 5. Thessalonica.       6. Dyrrhachium 7. Kephalonia. 8. Sicily. 9. Klimata.

Ducate.  10.Calabria.

Archontates. 11.  Dalmatia. 12. Cyprus

 

II. There were considerable differences in the ranks and salaries of the strategoi. In the first place, it is to be noticed that the governors of the Asiatic provinces, the admirals of the naval Themes, and the strategoi of Thrace and Macedonia were paid by the treasury, while the governors of the European Themes paid themselves a fixed amount from the custom dues levied in their own provinces.Hence for administrative purposes Thrace and Macedonia are generally included among the Asiatic Themes. The rank of patrician was bestowed as a rule upon the Anatolic, Armeniac, and Thrakesian strategoi, and these three received a salary of 40 lbs. of gold (£1728). The pay of the other strategoi and kleisurarchs ranged from 36 to 12 lbs, but their stipends were somewhat reduced in the course of the ninth century. We can easily calculate that the total cost of paying the governors of the eastern provinces (including Macedonia and Thrace) did not fall short of £15,000.

In  these provinces there is reason to suppose tfeat ttae number of troops, who were chiefly cavalry, was about 80,0oo. They were largely settled on militafy lands, and their pay was small. The recruit, who began service at a very early age, received one nomisma (12s.) in his first year, two in his second, and so on, till the maximum of twelve (£7 : 4s.), or in some cases of eighteen (£10 : 16s.), was reached.

The army of the Theme was divided generally into two, sometimes three, turms or brigades; the turm into drungoi or battalions; and the battalion into banda or companies. The corresponding commanders were entitled turmarchs, drungaries, and counts. The number of men in the company, the sizes of the battalion and the brigade, varied widely in the different Themes. The original norm seems to have been a bandon of 200 men and a drungos of 5 banda. It is very doubtful whether this uniform scheme still prevailed in the reign of Theophilus. It is certain that at a somewhat later period the bandon varied in size up to the maximum of 400, and the drungos oscillated between the limits of 1000 and 3000 men. Originally the turm was composed of 5 drungoi (5000 men), but this rule was also changed. The number of drungoi in the turrn was reduced to three, so that the brigade which the turmarch commanded ranged from 3000 upwards.

The pay of the officers, according to one account, ranged from 3 lbs. to 1 lb., and perhaps the subalterns in the company (the kentarchs and pentekontarchs) are included; but the turmarchs in the larger themes probably received a higher salary than 3 lbs. If we assume that the average bandon was composed of 300 men and the average drungos of 1500, and further that the pay of the drungary was 3 lbs., that of the count 2 lbs. and that of the kentarch 1 lb., the total sum expended on these officers would have amounted to about £64,000. But these assumptions are highly uncertain. Our data for the pay of the common soldiers form a still vaguer basis for calculation; but we may conjecture, with every reserve, that the salaries of the armies of the Eastern Themes, including generals and officers, amounted to not less than £500,000.

The armies of the Themes formed only one branch of the military establishment. There were four other privileged and differently organized cavalry regiments known as the Tagmata: the Schools, (2) the Excubitors, (3) the Arithmos or Vigla, and (4) the Hikanatoi. The first three were of ancient foundation ; the fourth was a new institution of Nicephorus I, who created a child, his grandson Nicetas (afterwards the Patriarch Ignatius), its first commander. The commanders of these troops were entitled Domestics, except that of the Arithmos, who was known as the Drungary of the Vigla or Watch. Some companies of these Tagmatic troops may have been stationed at Constantinople, where the Domestics usually resided, but the greater part of them were quartered in Thrace, Macedonia, and Bitynia. The question of their numbers is perplexing. We are variously told that in the ninth century they were each 6000 or 4000 strong, but in the tenth the numbers seem to have been considerably less, the strength of the principal Tagma, the Scholarians, amounting to no more than 1500 men. If we accept one of the larger figures for the reign of Theophilus, we must suppose that under one of his successors these troops were reduced in number.

The Domestic of the Schools preceded in rank all other military commanders except the strategos of the Anatolic Theme, and the importance of the post is shown by the circumstance that it was filled by such men as Manuel and Bardas. In later times it became still more important; in the tenth century, when a military expedition against the Saracens was not led by the Emperor in person, the Domestic of the Schools was ex officio the Commander-in-Chief. The Drungary of the Watch and his troops were distinguished from the other Tagmata by the duties they performed as sentinels in campaigns which were led by the Emperor in person. The Drungary was responsible for the safety of the camp, and carried the orders of the Emperor to the generals.

Besides the Thematic and the Tagmatic troops, there were the Numeri, a regiment of infantry commanded by a Domestic; and the forces which were under the charge of the Count or Domestic of the Walls, whose duty seems to have been the defence of the Long Wall of Anastasius.These troops played little part in history. More important was the Imperial Guard or Hetaireia, which, recruited from barbarians, formed the garrison of the Palace, and attended the Emperor on campaigns.

The care which was spent on providing for the health and comfort of the soldiers is illustrated by the baths at Dorylaion, the first of the great military stations in Asia Minor. This bathing establishment impressed the imagination of oriental visitors, and it is thus described by an Arabic writer:

"Dorylaion possesses warm springs of fresh water, over which the Emperors have constructed vaulted buildings for bathing. There are seven basins, each of which can accommodate a thousand men. The water reaches the breast of a man of average height, and the overflow is discharged into a small lake".

In military campaigns, careful provision was made for the wounded. There was a special corps of officers called deputatoi,  whose duty was to rescue wounded soldiers and take them to the rear, to be tended by the medical staff. They carried flasks of water, and had two ladders attached to the saddles of their horses on the left side, so that, having mounted a fallen soldier with the help of one ladder, the deputatos could himself mount instantly by the other and ride off.

It is interesting to observe that not only did the generals and superior officers make speeches to the soldiers, in old Hellenic fashion, before a battle, but there was a band of professional orators, called cantatores, whose duty was to stimulate the men by their eloquence during the action. Some of the combatants themselves, if they had the capacity, might be chosen for this purpose. A writer on the art of war suggests the appropriate chords which the cantatores might touch, and if we may infer their actual practice, the leading note was religious. "We are fighting in God's cause; the issue lies with him, and he will not favour the enemy because of their unbelief."

III. Naval necessities imposed an increase of expenditure for the defence of the Empire in the ninth century. The navy, which had been efficiently organized under the Heraclian dynasty and had performed memorable services against the attacks of the Omayyad Caliphs, had been degraded in importance and suffered to decline by the policy of the Isaurian monarchs. We may criticize their neglect of the naval arm,but we must remember that it was justified by immediate impunity, for it was correlated with the simultaneous decline in the naval power of the Saracens. The Abbasids who transferred the centre of the Caliphate from Syria to Mesopotamia undertook no serious maritime enterprises. The dangers of the future lay in the west and not in the east,—in the ambitions of the Mohammadan rulers of Africa and Spain, whose only way of aggression was by sea. Sicily was in peril throughout the eighth century, and Constantine V was forced to reorganize her fleet; accidents and internal divisions among the Saracens helped to save her till the reign of Michael II. We shall see in another chapter how the Mohammadans then obtained a permanent footing in the island, the beginning of its complete conquest, and how they occupied Crete. These events necessitated a new maritime policy. To save Sicily, to recover Crete, were not the only problems. The Imperial possessions in South Italy were endangered; Dalmatia, the Ionian islands, and the coasts of Greece were exposed to the African fleets. It was a matter of the first importance to preserve the control of the Hadriatic. The reorganization of the marine establishment was begun by the Amorian dynasty, though its effects were not fully realized till a later period.

The naval forces of the Empire consisted of the Imperial fleet, which was stationed at Constantinople and commanded by the Drungary of the Navy, and the Provincial fleets of the Kibyrrhaeot Theme, the Aegean, Hellas, Peloponnesus, and Kephalonia. The Imperial fleet must now have been increased in strength, and the most prominent admiral of the age, Doryphas, may have done much to reorganize it. An armament of three hundred warships was sent against Egypt in a.d. 853, and the size of this force may be held to mark the progress which had been made. Not long after th death of Michael III. four hundred vessels were operating off the coast of Apulia.

We have some figures which may give us a general idea of the cost of thesa naval expeditions. Attempts were made to recover Crete from the Saracens in a.d. 902 and in a.D.949, and the pay of officers and men for each of these expeditions, which were not on a large scale, amounted to over £140,000. This may enable us to form a rough estimate of the expenditure incurred in sending armaments oversea in the ninth century. We may surmise, for instance, that not less than a quarter of a million (pounds sterling), equivalent in present value to a million and a quarter, was spent on the Egyptian expedition in the reign of Michael III.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SARACEN WARS