Just seeing’s the map of Indonesia and remembering the Rhomania in the east would Rhomania in the east try to control Madura and bawean islands
An Age of Miracles III: The Romans Endure
- Thread starter Basileus444
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All the non-Rhomans. They started with the belief that all other states were a threat to Rome. Then they worked hard to make it true.
Yeah, given how fairly-evenly matched both sides are, unless one got in a lucky kill shot earlier, this turning into a more drawn-out fight was likely.
I know we like to focus on the dramatic against-the-odds victories and comebacks, but the reason they're special and memorable is because, by their nature, they're unusual.
There's still the issue of the safety of his wife Irene. Nothing takes priority over that.
I'm not sure either.
I'm wary of having too many archaeological discoveries happening too much earlier, when the discipline is still largely 'loot the place and focus on the mega-structures'. I don't want more Schliemanns. Discovering something like the Gospel of Thomas or the Nag Hammadi library now would probably end with them being destroyed as 'heretical nonsense'.
Well, alienating everyone does have the virtue of consistency, which is nice. And personally, 'view everyone as a threat and act accordingly' seems like one of those statements practically guaranteed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rhomania's General Crisis, Part 17.1: Sustaining the War, Part 2
Rhomania’s General Crisis, Part 17.1-Sustaining the War, Part 2:
When Sophia arrived in Thessaloniki, the first order of business was to establish a new court and administration, a copy, as close as possible, of what had been left behind in Constantinople. New Logthetes and Domestikoi were appointed to act as senior officials and to staff the Imperial Council (Cabinet). The Patriarch of Constantinople was unavailable to fill his position; the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki took his place as a stopgap measure.
Sophia’s court, though smaller in scale to that of the White Palace, continued forms and ceremonies. Herakleios III was recognized officially as the legitimate Emperor, but here Sophia functioned as de facto Emperor. One good example comes from the ceremony of the Nineteen Couches. The most detailed account of its original form dates from 899, but it may date back to the early 400s.
Between Christmas and Epiphany the Emperor held 12 dinners in the Triclinium of the Nineteen Couches (dinners ate reclining in the classical fashion). There were nineteen couches with twelve seats each, plus another same-sized couch where the Emperor and special guests ate. Each dinner had guests of different types. For example, one dinner was for military officials. Another was for metropolitan monks and abbots. The “hairy banquet” was for barbarians in Imperial service. One dinner was for selected members of the poor, in addition to one table at every other dinner specifically set aside for the poor. [1]
The original version is not attested after 1040 but it was revived by Andreas Niketas. In the construction of the White Palace, a dining hall was constructed to the same specifications as the original Triclinium. While the various groupings for each dinner changed, such as the elimination of the dinner for court eunuchs, the overall concepts were quite similar. One major innovation was the creation of a female version of the dinners, attended usually by the wives of the invited male guests, and presided over by the Empress.
When it came time for the Triclinium, Sophia presided over the traditional dinners as if she were an Emperor. For the dinners for women, her best friend and lady-in-waiting Zoe acts as ‘Empress’. (This helps spark rumors of a Sapphic [2] relationship between the two women, with several historians believing the rumors have a strong basis in reality.)
Some historians have argued that the dinners of 1661, where Sophia presents herself as Emperor in fact although not in name, provide a useful framework to understand her view of governance. The dinners, as modified by Andreas I, covered the gamut of society, at least that of the capital city. It was not proportionally representative. The poor segment (defined as the portion of the population eligible for the bread dole) only got one dinner, plus the reserved table at all the others (it should be noted that this reservation though was given only to the poor and to no other group), but was certainly more than one-twelfth of the population. But all of Roman society was represented and considered worthy of an invitation.
The fact that it is Sophia and not Athena presiding over this court allows for new opportunities. The question of foreign policy and the Roman Empire’s place in the world had been the issue that had led to the rise of the war hawks. In earlier centuries, the Roman Empire had been presented as ‘the civilized world’, although perhaps sharing that with the Persians and then the Caliphate, surrounded by barbarians of various types; note the ‘hairy banquet’. The Office of Barbarians was still, in 1662, the name of the department that dealt with foreign espionage.
That civilized vs. barbarian dichotomy had been breaking down for quite some time. Including Persian and Caliphal Arab societies as part of the civilized world had been the start, but by 1662 the Romans formally recognized the rulers of Persia, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, the Triple Monarchy, Ethiopia, Vijayanagar, China, and Japan as equals to the Roman Emperors. The foreigners might be irritating and weird, but their development was such that the barbarian label didn’t seem to fit.
Demetrios III had framed it differently. In his history of Roman-Latin relations, he had projected an image of a Roman Empire faced by a Latin ‘world’, diverse in some respects and politically fragmented but with many basic commonalities. One of these was a general antipathy to the Romans, as shown by their repeated acts of aggression over centuries. His views grew more nuanced toward the end of his reign, particularly as the matter of Italy came to the fore, but his earlier presentation was by far the most well-known and accepted by the Roman people. That was the crux of the war hawk position: if the Latin world, by definition, was inclined to be hostile to the Romans, with only differences of degree and ability to act on that hostility, then diplomacy was a frail reed on which to lean. Only force was reliable.
A new understanding of Roman-Latin historical relations is presented at the court of Sophia, with its most articulate expressor being Zeno Chrysaphes. He is emblematic of a new generation of Roman intellectuals, who may have some childhood memories of the War of the Roman Succession, but are not profoundly shaped by it like their elders. Chrysaphes argues that the causes of Roman-Latin hostilities are far more contingent and specific. The Wittelsbach Emperors and Venetian Doges were both Latins, but the former’s dynastic claims and the latter’s willingness to use mass violence to secure trade concessions otherwise had nothing else in common.
Roman-Latin hostilities thus needed to be understood on a case-by-case basis, not as part of an overarching pattern with inherent premises. Because the causes of hostilities were complex and varied, the tools for dealing with them also needed to be varied. And if the causes were varied and not inherent, the possibility of peaceful and more stable defusing was significantly greater than that presented in the worldview of the war hawks.
This presentation was part of a wider presentation that looked at the world not as divided not just between civilized and barbarian, or between cultural worlds, but between political states. In the context of Roman-Latin relations, the Roman Empire was, really, just one state among many. It may be far older, but it was still just one state among many. It was not, in that respect, inherently special, with the instinctual hostility that special-ness tends to arouse.
The Romans, as a state actor in a system of states, would inevitably incur hostilities at certain points. An example of this was the souring of Roman relations with the Spanish and Arletians over Roman expansionism in Italy. This was a product of Roman action within the state system that threatened Spanish-Arletian relations. If the hostility was the result of innate Latin hostility to the Roman ‘world’, why had the Spanish and Arletians not expressed it earlier during the height of Theodor’s invasion, when it would have been much more dangerous?
One counter-argument was that Rhomania had already acted as a member of the European state system with Helena I’s diplomatic initiatives and marriage alliances, which had then ended with Theodor’s justification for invasion. Zeno concedes that but argues that this shows the danger of dynastic entanglement but does not invalidate the wider model. Helena’s diplomatic initiatives had resulted in the best Roman-Latin relations overall for over seventy years. The war with Hungary during that period had been a result of disputes over Serbia, a state action. No innate Latin hostility to Rhomania expressed itself during the Eternal War, which if one wishes to do the most harm to the Romans, would have been the time to do so.
This model admittedly does a much better job of explaining Roman-Latin relations in more recent years. A model that contains only state actors acting on political motives cannot accommodate the Crusades, although Roman-Italian disputes over trading rights in the medieval period fit better. But Zeno and his like-minded contemporaries aren’t trying to create a single model to explain all of Roman-Latin relations, as Demetrios III had tried to do. They are trying to create an intellectual framework that explains more recent Roman-Latin relations, particularly the last 50 years, in a way that justifies a more flexible and diplomatic approach than that presented by the war hawks.
This approach proves popular among the officials of Sophia’s court. The need for good foreign diplomacy becomes particularly clear after news of the anti-Latin pogrom in Constantinople arrives in Thessaloniki. Foreign diplomacy is harder for Sophia because the foreign ambassadors are all resident in Constantinople and officially recognize the government there as the legitimate authority in Rhomania. But there is a Spanish consul that provides a channel for diplomacy.
When the news arrives, Sophia offers condolences to the consul. There are some awkward moments when the consul desires compensation, while Sophia doesn’t think she should have to pay for something done by partisans of the opposing side in a civil war. That matter ends up going nowhere for the time being.
Shortly after this audience, Sophia proclaims two reforms that, by themselves, are far more symbolic than substantive, but they are quite symbolic. In one, she pledges to abolish the Ambassadorial Quarter once she is in control of Constantinople. This had been a section of Constantinople where foreign ambassadors had been forced to reside, with imposed Roman staff. This had been to make it easy for Roman authorities to spy on the ambassadors.
This has been fiercely resented by foreign ambassadors. Everyone knew that ambassadors also engaged in espionage; that was how the game was played. But in other capitals, ambassadors found their own residences and staff. Roman treatment, one Russian diplomat complained, made one feel more like a prisoner than a guest. Roman abolishment of the Quarter is meant to demonstrate that Rhomania will act like one of the players in the established diplomatic system, not demanding special treatment.
The other change is more cosmetic, but still shows the willingness to act as one of the players, not a special entity. The Office of Barbarians is renamed, eventually settling much later on the Office of Foreign Intelligence Services. Absolutely nothing else is changed about the department but the switch to a far more neutral title is noticed and appreciated by foreign observers. Said observers know the Romans are spying on them. That is just how the world works. The gratuitous insult on top of that was what was irritating.
Foreign affairs and how Rhomania should interact with the world, particularly the Latin world, had been what had fueled the war hawk faction from its outset. But the General Crisis had raised other concerns as well which would also need to be addressed, one way or another.
[1] See “Court Society and Aristocracy” by Paul Magdalino in A Social History of Byzantium.
[2] TTL term for lesbian.
A more realistic, nuanced and less paranoid view of the world around them is just what the doctor ordered and frankly something they'll probably realise would have saved then alot of grief over the last 200 years. Better late than never though and another positive development coming out of the court in Thessaloniki
If this is hinting that Sophia actually pushes through a major program of economic and land reforms then her side almost certainly wins the marathon even though it failed at the sprint.
The reality of the era is that the nations which could muster a rising middling class and a broad smallholder class were the ones which had the financial and economic sophistication, and broad loyalty from the populace, to endure long wars.
It is not a coincidence that Britain, with 9 million people, was able to muster 20% of its GDP for 20 years running to fight and bankroll the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars against a nation with more than three times that many, and win.
Reforms favoring the smallholder and mercantile classes will severely crimp the loyalty Constantinople can command from soldiers and especially civilians, and allow Thessaloniki to turn much more of its economic sinews to the purposes of warmaking.
I see classical realism has arrived! I like how this has spurned an intellectual rethink of how Rhomania sees itself in the world. When will the University of Constantinople start an IR department?
Great work @Basileus444 as always!
I know this is an annoying subject but as somebody who has reread through all of the comments of this timeline the fact that there seems to be an equal amount of comments of people complaining that Rhomania is too strong and its too weak makes it so clear that this timeline has kept a perfect balance for the tribulations a surviving Roman Empire would have
I am very surprised the Romans continue to dine in the same way as their classical counterparts. Maybe it'll be worth reflecting on by future Romans in case they start to romanticize the old Empire.
Sophia's political philosophy is just what Rhomania needs to recover and maintain stability, though it will hardly matter as long as the Tourmarches maintain power over the Emperor in Constantinople. Hopefully, we will see a decisive Sophia faction victory in the future.
Sophia's political philosophy is just what Rhomania needs to recover and maintain stability, though it will hardly matter as long as the Tourmarches maintain power over the Emperor in Constantinople. Hopefully, we will see a decisive Sophia faction victory in the future.
I’m pretty sure this is deliberate archaism and not a reflection of “normal” 17th century dining practices, even by the standards of court ceremony.
Yeah, although given how much crap the Latin world has given Rhomania over the past centuries, I can understand their paranoia. In short, I think the Roman attitude has been bad and self-defeating and in need of correction (hence this whole mess), but I understand how they developed it.
I get that, and that's the OOC reason for why I use Strategos and Logothete and Kephale rather than English equivalents. But 'Office of Barbarians' was just too emblematic of an attitude that really needs to go. Yet having the head-spymaster have the title of Protospatharios (First Sword Bearer) should help it keep some special flavor.
Given how the university system is supposed to provide officials for the Roman government, an IR department is a really good idea.
It's a deliberate archaism. I suspect, but am not certain, that the classical dining style is the argument for the ceremony dating back to late antiquity.
Remind me of this in a couple of days and I can take a closer look. Too busy today to do so.
Rhomania's General Crisis, Part 17.2: Sustaining the War, Part 3
Rhomania’s General Crisis, Part 17.2-Sustaining the War, Part 3:
While the role of the market in Roman society was hardly a new thing in the mid-1600s, it had grown substantially in the last century. For some people, some of the time, this could be quite a good thing. For some people, some of the time, this could be quite a bad thing. Free market enthusiasts might ignore the last part, but most other people did not. The role of commerce in society, while maintaining a just and fair society for all, including consumers, is a constant question across time and space.
Confucians notably were heavily biased against merchants, since they didn’t produce anything themselves. Christianity didn’t have the same extent of bias, but there was certainly suspicion, with the Catholic Church’s abolishment of usury, lending money at interest, being the best-known example. (This also led to the development of the stereotype of Jewish moneylenders and bankers, since they weren’t bound by anti-usury laws.)
Rhomania was hardly exempt, but followed a somewhat different tact. Merchants and commerce were recognized as providing a useful service. They didn’t make anything, but they did move goods and services to where they were needed. Thus, a certain extent of profit, as compensation for their efforts, was justified. But beyond that was price-gouging. It was the same with loaning money at interest. A certain amount of interest on a loan was acceptable, with the understanding that the payment of interest was compensation for the possibility of default on the principal. The lower the risk, the lower the acceptable rate of interest, and vice versa.
The rise in importance of the market and of a more capitalist [1] economy is also taking place in the Latin west, but Rhomania’s circumstances are somewhat different. A complete abolition of lending money at interest was clearly unworkable as it disincentivizes any loan activity, with the result that in the west the anti-usury laws went completely out the window. The more moderate Roman strictures gave them significantly more flexibility and staying power.
The issues over what exactly the just profit and just interest should be, how to enforce them, or whether to completely jettison them as was happening in the west had been growing for decades. Demetrios III and Athena had been somewhat cognizant of this, but had not addressed it adequately. Partly this was because there was no sharp shift to make the process obvious; instead, the temperature of the water in the pot was ever so steadily increasing.
Demetrios had made some effort in this regard with his development of differential taxation and his prioritization of repaying wartime loans to common folk in the form of war bonds over the repayment of large loans to major moneylenders. But that had been the extent of his efforts. The focus on winning the war, foreign policy, and ill health had prevented more work being done in this regard. Athena, for her part, followed in her father’s footsteps.
The sharp shock that brought the issue out in the open was the tourmarches opening up of the land market, completely eliminating the concept of the just price in regard to the sale and purchase of real estate. This won them the supporters of those who wanted to get rid of the restrictions entirely. Sophia, for her part, had to respond in some way.
No observer ever credited Sophia with the intelligence of Athena or Demetrios III, but she was better than her mother or grandfather at listening to the advice of others. The university at Thessaloniki provided a plentiful supply of learned men who had thought a great deal about the issues facing the Empire and the ways in which they should be addressed. One of these learned men who quickly came to prominence was Manuel Strymbakon, the Prokathemos (second-in-command in a Kephalate’s administration) of Chalkidiki.
He is credited with the statement: “The welfare of the people is the supreme law.” This is quite a contrast with the idea that the autocrat’s will is the supreme law, but the actions of Herakleios III lately are doing a good job of illustrating the flaw in that model. Strymbakon is also a strong advocate of the epanagogue, an argument that had been postulated by Patriarch Photius eight centuries before which stated that while the Emperor did make the law, he was also subject to said law.
These arguments Sophia finds intriguing for two major reasons. The first is the Army of Suffering. Outside of the Anatolikon theme, Sophia’s government has done practically nothing to curb the rebels, all resources desperately being needed elsewhere. But by the middle of 1662, she is in possession of a report on the Army of Suffering, much of it written by Kastrophylax of the Cilician Gates Leo Theosteriktos, the official with the greatest personal knowledge of the Army of Suffering. The report is highly detailed with a variety of sources, including interrogations of captives of the Army of Suffering.
The report pulls no punches, making clear the conditions in southern Anatolikon just prior to the rebellion, showcasing that many rebel grievances were amply justified. Sophia is forced to agree. She will not condone the actions of the rebels, but admits that the long career of corruption, extortion, and abuse of Kephale Kalos Papadopoulos is something that the central government should’ve ended long before the rebels did so. Constantinople’s failure to do so is to its shame.
The other reason derives from the conditions Sophia had seen on her journey from Constantinople to Thessaloniki. This had not been a carefully staged and planned visit along the Via Egnatia, but a hurried scrabble along the backroads of Thrace. Sophia had been horrified by the conditions of poverty and squalor she had witnessed, far outside of her experiences. And this is in Thrace, one of the richest of the themes.
It is a mark of Roman pride and claim for superiority that they were the ones to teach the Latins how to use forks, although Henri II is the first monarch of France or England known to regularly use the utensil. But is it really true that half of all Romans are too poor to even have their own fork? And if that is true, what does that do to the claim of Roman superiority?
Sophia thinks that the Roman governments needs new channels of information to resolve these issues and prevent similar crises from occurring into the future. Exactly who proposed the reform is unclear with several different claimants but the basic structure is quickly established. The first version is a group of sixteen individuals, each one selected randomly from the Macedonian tax rolls, one from each of the sixteen tiers of the tax system. Exactly how each person is chosen randomly from the records is unclear, but the plan is that this will be expanded to have sixteen members from each mesazon of the Imperial heartland. The inspiration for much of this seems to be derived from the Festival of the Nineteen Couches, including the use of sortition which is how the poor attendees for the dinners had been selected.
The purpose of this grouping is to provide a broad cross-current of Roman society that can bring issues and concerns to the Roman government’s attention. This setup is believed to be more efficient than having petitions needing to be issued from the provinces as needed, an often-tedious process that especially the poor and undereducated find difficult to manage. Proposed legislation can also be presented to provide feedback.
It must be emphasized that the group’s function would be purely advisory. It can propose legislation or critique legislation, but cannot issue or revoke legislation. This helps give rise to its name. Since its function is to provide counsel, it is to be called a Council, but to distinguish it from the meeting of key Roman officials called the Imperial Council, it is called the Lower Council. Eventually the implied link between the Imperial Council, which does have lawmaking powers, and the Lower Council, will bear fruit, but not at this time.
Many are greatly skeptical of the plan, particularly of including the lower rungs of society, but Sophia forges ahead. Providing a way to get information from the lower rungs of society in a more-timely manner is a significant point of this idea after all.
There are some growing pains. It quickly becomes apparent that the government will need to pay the attendees, most of whom cannot afford otherwise to be away from their homes and livelihoods. Also, the representatives of the poorest tiers are illiterate and focused entirely on local affairs, which is a problem for someone who is supposed to represent a wider group. This does not mean the representatives are stupid, but intellectual snobbery has a field day.
The result of these initial teething problems is a compromise between Sophia’s original model, which had embraced all sixteen tiers, and those who wanted something more modest. The revised Lower Council will have a representative, decided by sortition and serving for a year, from all four tiers of the dynatoi and mesoi, but only from the upper two tiers of the banausioi and paroikoi. That is to ensure that representatives have at least a certain amount of education and ‘imperial-scope mindset’, rather than fixating on purely local interests.
[1] I am defining capitalism here as an economic system where the dominant actors in said economy are private actors operating on a for-profit goal.
Can we implement this in the UK? Seems our political elite are blind (being kind there) to the grievances of those lower down in the pecking order.
Otherwise great work. The lower council of Sophie’s reforms are maintained will allow the centre to manage issues before the tinderbox lights as with the Army of Suffering. Will the lower council be adopted by the Despotetes?
The Lower Council reform shows good intentions but the Devil hides in the details. For instance how will the Council decide on which subjects it will advise or inform the Imperial government? If it will be by majority vote then the lower classes won't have many chance of putting forth their problemsto the Imperial Government.
It did mention that they are chosen via lottery from the tax rolls, with a certain number per tax level. As for who in the council brings things to the emperor or empress, each member likely can bring things up individually, though having multiple supporters likely helps.
Also one must remember this is just the initial role out of these reforms, there will be teething problems and adjustments as time goes on. You're probably not going to see something wild like a commoner become a Roman Senator short term but you'll probably have this become a more accurate representative of the population as time goes on