Strategos
Strategos or Strategus, plural strategoi, is used in Greek to mean military general. In the Hellenistic world and the Byzantine Empire the term was used to describe a military governor. In the modern Hellenic Army it is the highest officer rank. Strategos is a compound of two Greek words: agos. Stratos means army "that, spread out", coming from the proto-Indo-European root *stere- "to spread". Agos means "leader", from agein "to lead", from the proto-Ιndo-Εuropean root *ag- "to drive, draw out or forth, move”. In its most famous attestation, in Classical Athens, the office of strategos existed in the 6th century BC, but it was only with the reforms of Cleisthenes in 501 BC that it assumed its most recognizable form: Cleisthenes instituted a board of ten strategoi who were elected annually, one from each tribe; the ten were of equal status, replaced the polemarchos, who had hitherto been the senior military commander. At the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC they decided strategy by majority vote, each held the presidency in daily rotation.
At this date the polemarchos had a casting vote, one view among modern scholars is that he was the commander-in-chief. The annual election of the strategoi was held in the spring, their term of office coincided with the ordinary Athenian year, from midsummer to midsummer. If a strategos died or was dismissed from office, a by-election might be held to replace him; the strict adherence to the principle of a strategos from each tribe lasted until c. 440 BC, after which two strategoi could be selected from the same tribe and another tribe be left without its own strategos because no suitable candidate might be available. This system continued at least until c. 356/7 BC, but by the time Aristotle wrote his Constitution of the Athenians in c. 330 BC, the appointments were made without any reference to tribal affiliation. Hence, during the Hellenistic period, although the number of the tribes was increased, the number of strategoi remained constant at ten. In the early part of the 5th century, several strategoi combined their military office with a political role, with Themistocles, Cimon, or Pericles among the most notable.
As political power passed to the civilian rhetores in the 5th century, the strategoi were limited to their military duties. The strategoi were appointed ad hoc to various assignments. On campaign, several—usually up to three—strategoi might be placed jointly in command. Unlike other Greek states, where the nauarchos commanded the navy, the Athenian strategoi held command both at sea and on land. From the middle of the 4th century, the strategoi were given specific assignments, such as the strategos epi ten choran for the defence of Attica; this was generalized in Hellenistic times. One of them, the strategos epi ta hopla, ascended to major prominence in the Roman period; the Athenian people kept a close eye on their strategoi. Like other magistrates, at the end of their term of office they were subject to euthyna and in addition there was a vote in the ekklesia during every prytany on the question whether they were performing their duties well. If the vote went against anyone, he was as a rule tried by jury.
Pericles himself in 430 was removed from office as strategos and fined, in 406 the eight strategoi who commanded the fleet at the Battle of Arginusae were all removed from office and condemned to death. The title of strategos appears for a number of other Greek states in the Classical period, but it is unclear whether this refers to an actual office, or is used as a generic term for military commander; the strategos as an office is attested at least for Syracuse from the late 5th century BC, in the koinon of the Arcadians in the 360s BC. The title of strategos autokrator was used for generals with broad powers, but the extent and nature of these powers was granted on an ad hoc basis, thus Philip II of Macedon was elected as strategos autokrator of the League of Corinth. Under Philip II of Macedon, the title of strategos was used for commanders on detached assignments as the quasi-representatives of the king with a title indicating their area of responsibility, e.g. strategos tes Europes. In several Greek city leagues the title strategos was reserved for the head of state.
In the Aetolian League and the Achaean League, where the strategos was annually elected, he was the eponymous chief of civil government and the supreme military commander at the same time. Two of the most prominent leaders re-elected many times to the office in the Achaean League, were Aratus of Sicyon and Philopoemen of Megalopolis. Strategoi are reported in the Arcadian League, in the Epirote Republik and in the Acarnanian League, whereas the leaders of the Boeotian League and the Thessalian League had different titles and Tagus respectively. In the Hellenistic empires of the Diadochi, notably Lagid Egypt, for which most details are known, strategos became a gubernatorial office combining civil with
Alania
Alania was a medieval kingdom of the Iranian Alans that flourished in the Northern Caucasus in the location of latter-day Circassia and modern North Ossetia–Alania, from its independence from the Khazars in the late 9th century until its destruction by the Mongol invasion in 1238-39. Its capital was Maghas, it controlled a vital trade route through the Darial Pass; the kingdom reached its peak under the rule of king Dorgolel. The Alans originated as an Iranian-speaking subdivision of the Sarmatians, they were split by the invasion of the Huns into the European and the Caucasian. The Caucasian Alans occupied part of the North Caucasian plain and the foothills of the main mountain chain from the headwaters of the Kuban River in the west to the Darial Gorge in the east. Alania was an important buffer state during the Byzantine-Arab Wars and Khazar-Arab Wars of the 8th century. Theophanes the Confessor left a detailed account of Leo the Isaurian's mission to Alania in the early 8th century. Leo was instructed by Emperor Justinian II to bribe the Alan leader Itaxes into severing his "ancient friendship" with the Kingdom of Abkhazia which had allied itself with Caliph Al-Walid I He crossed the mountain passes and concluded an alliance with the Alans, but was prevented from returning to Byzantium through Abasgia.
Although the Abkhazians spared no expense to have him imprisoned, the Alans refused to convey the Byzantine envoy to his enemies. After several months of adventures in the Northern Caucasus, Leo extricated himself from the precarious situation and returned to Constantinople. After Leo assumed the imperial title, the land of his mountaineer allies was invaded by Umar II's forces. A Khazar chieftain, hastened to their succor and, in 722, the joint Alan-Khazar army inflicted a defeat on the Arab general Tabit al-Nahrani; the Khazars erected several other strongholds in Alania at this period. In 728 Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik, having penetrated the Gate of the Alans, devastated the country of the Alans. Eight years Marwan ibn Muhammad passed by the Gate in order to ravage the forts in Alania. In 758, as Ibn al-Faqih reports, the Gate was held by Yazid ibn Usayd; as a result of their united stand against the successive waves of invaders from the south, the Alans of the Caucasus fell under the overlordship of the Khazar Khaganate.
They remained staunch allies of the Khazars in the 9th century, supporting them against a Byzantine-led coalition during the reign of the Khazar king Benjamin. According to the anonymous author of the Schechter Letter, many Alans were during this period adherents of Judaism. In the late 9th century, Alania became independent from the Khazars. In the early 10th century, the Alans fell under the influence of the Byzantine Empire due to the conversion of their ruler to Christianity; the conversion is documented in the letters of Patriarch Nicholas Mysticus to the local archbishop, whose name was Peter. When Ibn Rustah visited Alania at some point between 903 and 913, its king was by Christian; the Persian traveller came to Alania from Sarir, a Christian kingdom to the east: You go to the left from the kingdom of Sarir and, after three days of journey through mountains and meadows, arrive in the kingdom of Al-Lan. Their king is Christian at heart. You travel for ten days among rivers and woods before arriving at a fortress called the "Gate of the Alans".
It stands on the top of a mountain at the foot. The Byzantines, who had adopted an anti-Khazar foreign policy, involved the Alans in a war against the Khaganate during the reign of the Khazar ruler Aaron II the early 920s. In this war the Alans were defeated and their king captured. According to Muslim sources such as al-Mas'udi, the Alans abandoned Christianity and expelled the Byzantine missionaries and clergy contemporaneously with these events. Aaron's son married the daughter of the Alan king and Alania was re-aligned with the Khazars, remaining so until the collapse of the Khaganate in the 960s. After the downfall of Khazaria, the Alan kings allied with the Byzantines and various Georgian rulers for protection against encroachments by northern steppe peoples such as the Pechenegs and Kipchaks. John Skylitzes reports that Alda of Alania, after the death of her husband, "George of Abasgia", received Anakopia as a maritime fief from Emperor Romanus III; this happened in 1033, the year when the Alans and the Rus sacked the coast of Shirvan in modern-day Azerbaijan.
Alania is not mentioned in East Slavic chronicles, but archaeology indicates that the Alans maintained trade contacts with the Rus' principality of Tmutarakan. There is a stone grave cross, with a Cyrillic inscription from 1041, standing on the bank of the Bolshoi Yegorlyk River in present-day Stavropol Krai north of Alania. Two Russian crosses, datable to ca. 1200, were discovered by archaeologists in the heartland of medieval Alania. The Alans and Georgians collaborated in the Christianization of the Vainakhs and Dvals in the 12th and 13th centuries, Georgian missionaries were active in Alania and the Alan contingents were employed by the Georgian monarchs against their Muslim neighbors; the Alanian-Georgian alliance was cemented in the 1060s, when the Alans struck across Muslim Arran and sacked Ganja. In the 1120s King David the Builder of Georgia visited the Darial to reconcile the Alans with the Kipchaks, who thereupon were allowed to pass through Alania to the Georgian soil. David's son, Demetre I journeyed, c.
1153, to Alania acco
Constantine VI
Constantine VI was Byzantine Emperor from 780 to 797. The only child of Emperor Leo IV, Constantine was named co-emperor with him at the age of five in 776 and succeeded him as sole Emperor in 780, aged nine, his mother Irene exercised control over him as regent until 790, assisted by her chief minister Staurakios. Though the regency lost power when Constantine reached maturity in 790, Irene continued to attempt to exercise control, retained the title of Empress. Constantine suffered military defeats and made unpopular decisions, such as marrying his mistress, Theodote. Irene had Constantine deposed and imprisoned in 797 and seized power for herself, becoming the first Empress regnant of the Empire. Constantine died shortly thereafter. Constantine VI was the final ruler to be universally recognized as Roman Emperor, being recognized as such by both the Empire which he ruled in the east, the papacy and the Western European powers over which the pope held suzerainty. With his mother becoming Empress regnant upon his deposition, the papacy crowned Charlemagne as a new Emperor in Western Europe, asserting that a woman could not be Empress in her own right.
This laid the foundations of a new polity, independent of the East, that would evolve into the "Holy Roman Empire". Constantine VI was the only child of Irene. Constantine was crowned co-emperor by his father in 776, succeeded as sole emperor in 780, at the age of nine. Due to his minority and her chief minister Staurakios exercised the regency for him. In 787 Constantine had signed the decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea, but he appears to have had iconoclast sympathies. By Constantine had turned 16 years old, but his mother did not relinquish executive authority to him. In 788, Irene herself broke off the engagement of Constantine with Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne. Turning against Charlemagne, the Eastern Romans now supported Lombard pretender Adalgis, forced into exile after the Frankish invasion of Italy. Adalgis was given command of a Roman expeditionary corps, landing in Calabria towards the end of 788 but was defeated by the united armies of the Lombard dukes Hildeprand of Spoleto and Grimoald III of Benevento as well as Frankish troops under Winiges.
After a conspiracy against Irene was suppressed in the spring of 790 she attempted to get official recognition as empress. This backfired and with military support Constantine came to actual power in 790, after the Armeniacs rebelled against Irene. After campaigning unsuccessfully in the Balkans, Constantine restored his mother in 792 after just two years out of power. Once in control of the state, Constantine proved incapable of sound governance, his army was defeated by the Arabs, Constantine himself suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Kardam of Bulgaria in the 792 Battle of Marcellae. A movement developed in favor of the Caesar Nikephoros. Constantine had his uncle's eyes put out and the tongues of his father's four other half-brothers cut off, his former Armenian supporters revolted. He crushed this revolt with extreme cruelty in 793, he divorced his wife Maria of Amnia, who had failed to provide him with a male heir, married his mistress Theodote, an unpopular and canonically illegal act which sparked off the so-called "Moechian Controversy".
Although the Patriarch Tarasios did not publicly speak against it, he did refuse to officiate the marriage. Popular disapproval was expressed by Theodote's uncle, Plato of Sakkoudion, who broke communion with Tarasios for his passive stance. Plato's intransigence led to his own imprisonment, while his monastic supporters were persecuted and exiled to Thessalonica; the "Moechian Controversy" cost Constantine what popularity he had left in the church establishment, which Irene took care to vocally support against her own son. On 19 April 797 Constantine was captured and imprisoned by the supporters of his mother, who had organized a conspiracy, leaving Irene to be crowned as first Empress regnant of Constantinople, it is unknown when Constantine died. He was buried in the Monastery of St. Euphrosyne. In the early 820s, the rebel Thomas the Slav claimed to be Constantine VI in an effort to gain support against Michael II. By his first wife Maria, Constantine VI had two daughters: Euphrosyne, who married Emperor Michael II Irene, who became a nunBy his mistress and second wife Theodote, Constantine VI had two sons, both of whom died young: Leo An unnamed son List of Byzantine emperors Ostrogorsky, George.
History of the Byzantine State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cutler, Anthony. "Constantine VI". The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 501–502. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.. Garland, Lynda. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-14688-3. Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2630-2. Dominique Barbe, Irène de Byzance: La femme empereur, Paris, 1990
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family in the context of a feudal or monarchical system, but sometimes appearing in elective republics. Alternative terms for "dynasty" may include "family" and "clan", among others; the longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, otherwise known as the Yamato dynasty, whose reign is traditionally dated to 660 BC. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as "royal", "princely", "ducal", "comital" etc. depending upon the chief or present title borne by its members. Historians periodize the histories of numerous nations and civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties; as such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, to describe events and artifacts of that period. The word "dynasty" itself is dropped from such adjectival references; until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members.
Prior to the 20th century, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. In nations where it was permitted, succession through a daughter established a new dynasty in her husband's ruling house; this has changed in some places in Europe, where succession law and convention have maintained dynasties de jure through a female. For instance, the House of Windsor will be maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II, as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands, whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant; the earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna. In Limpopo Province of South Africa, Balobedu determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance.
Less a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic system – that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute the line of succession. Not all feudal states or monarchies were/are ruled by dynasties. Throughout history, there were monarchs. Dynasties ruling subnational monarchies do not possess sovereign rights; the word "dynasty" is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of a family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company. It is extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team; the word "dynasty" derives from Latin dynastia, which comes from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to "power", "dominion", "rule" itself. It was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, "power" or "ability", from dýnamai, "to be able". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne.
For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to reigning families, a "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, their son Duke Maximilian was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Since the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position; the term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II through her sister Princess Margaret, is in the line of succession to the British crown.
On the other hand, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a male-line descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, possesses no legal British name, titles or styles. He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet, a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who
Snowshoe
A snowshoe is footwear for walking over snow. Snowshoes work by distributing the weight of the person over a larger area so that the person's foot does not sink into the snow, a quality called "flotation". Snowshoeing is a form of hiking. Traditional snowshoes have a hardwood frame with rawhide lacings; some modern snowshoes are similar, but most are made of materials such as lightweight metal and synthetic fabric. In addition to distributing the weight, snowshoes are raised at the toe for maneuverability, they must not accumulate snow, hence the latticework, require bindings to attach them to the feet. In the past, snowshoes were essential tools for fur traders and anyone whose life or living depended on the ability to get around in areas of deep and frequent snowfall, they remain necessary equipment for forest rangers and others who must be able to get around areas inaccessible to motorized vehicles when the snow is deep. However, snowshoes are used today for recreation by hikers and runners who like to continue their hobby in wintertime.
Snowshoeing is easy to learn and in appropriate conditions is a safe and inexpensive recreational activity. However, snowshoeing in icy, steep terrain can be more dangerous. Before people built snowshoes, nature provided examples. Several animals, most notably the snowshoe hare, had evolved over the years with oversized feet enabling them to move more through deep snow; the origin and age of snowshoes are not known, although historians believe they were invented from 4,000 to 6,000 years ago starting in Central Asia. British archaeologist Jacqui Wood hypothesized that the equipment interpreted to be the frame of a backpack of the Chalcolithic mummy Ötzi was part of a snowshoe. Strabo wrote that the inhabitants of the Caucasus used to attach flat surfaces of leather under their feet and that its inhabitants used round wooden surfaces, something akin to blocks, instead. However, the "traditional" webbed snowshoe as we know it today had direct origins to North American indigenous people, e.g. the Huron, so forth.
Samuel de Champlain wrote, referencing the Huron and Algonquin First Nations, in his travel memoirs, "Winter, when there is much snow, they make a kind of snowshoe that are two to three times larger than those in France, that they tie to their feet, thus go on the snow, without sinking into it, otherwise they would not be able to hunt or go from one location to the other". In 2016, Italian scientists reported "the oldest snowshoe in the world" discovered in the Dolomites and dated to between 3800 and 3700 B. C; the indigenous people of North America developed the most advanced and diverse snowshoes prior to the 20th century. Nearly every Indigenous peoples of the Americas culture developed its own particular shape of shoe, the simplest and most primitive being those of the far north; the Inuit have two styles, one being triangular in shape and about 18 inches in length, the other circular, both reflecting the need for high flotation in deep and powdery snow. However, contrary to popular perception, the Inuit did not use their snowshoes much since they did most of their foot travel in winter over sea ice or on the tundra, where snow does not pile up deeply.
Southward the shoe becomes narrower and longer, the largest being the hunting snow-shoe of the Cree, nearly 6 ft long and turned up at the toe. Smaller models, developed most notably by the Iroquois, are narrower and shorter, reflecting the need for maneuverability in forested areas; the Plains Indians wore. Despite their great diversity in form, snowshoes were, in fact, one of the few cultural elements common to all tribes that lived where the winters were snowy, in particular, the Northern regions. Snowshoes were adopted by Europeans during early colonialism in what became Canada and the United States; the French voyageurs and coureurs des bois began to travel throughout the land of the Cree and Algonquin groups of indigenous North Americans in the late 17th century to trap animals and trade goods. In order to travel in the terrain and climate, they utilized the tools of the native populations, such as snowshoes and canoes. Snowshoes became popular during the French and Indian Wars, during conflicts such as The Battle on Snowshoes, when both the French/Indian and British factions both wore snowshoes to battle above a reported four feet of snow.
The Oxford English Dictionary reports the term being used by the English as early as 1674. In 1690, after a French-Indian raiding party attacked a British settlement near what is today Schenectady, New York, the British took to snowshoes and pursued the attackers for 50 miles recovering both people and goods taken by their attackers; the "teardrop" snowshoes worn by lumberjacks are about 40 inches long and broad in proportion, while the tracker's shoe is over 5 feet long and narrow. This form, the stereotypical snowshoe, resembles a tennis racquet, indeed the French term is raquette à neige; this form was copied by the Canadian snowshoe clubs of the late 18th century. Founded for military training purposes, they became the earliest recreational users of snowshoes; the snowshoe clubs such as the Montreal Snow Shoe Club shortened the teardrop to about 40 inches long and 15 to 18 inches broad turned up at the toe and terminating in a kind of tail behind. This is made light for racing purposes, but much stouter for touring or hunting.
The tail keeps the shoe straight while walking. Another variant, the "bearpaw", ends in a curved heel in
Justinian II
Justinian II, surnamed the Rhinotmetos or Rhinotmetus, was the last Byzantine Emperor of the Heraclian Dynasty, reigning from 685 to 695 and again from 705 to 711. Justinian II was an ambitious and passionate ruler, keen to restore the Roman Empire to its former glories, but he responded poorly to any opposition to his will and lacked the finesse of his father, Constantine IV, he generated enormous opposition to his reign, resulting in his deposition in 695 in a popular uprising, he only returned to the throne in 705 with the help of a Bulgar and Slav army. His second reign was more despotic than the first, it too saw his eventual overthrow in 711, abandoned by his army who turned on him before killing him. Justinian II was the eldest son of Anastasia, his father raised him to the throne as joint emperor in 681 on the fall of his uncles Heraclius and Tiberius. In 685, at the age of sixteen, Justinian II succeeded his father as sole emperor. Due to Constantine IV's victories, the situation in the Eastern provinces of the Empire was stable when Justinian ascended the throne.
After a preliminary strike against the Arabs in Armenia, Justinian managed to augment the sum paid by the Umayyad Caliphs as an annual tribute, to regain control of part of Cyprus. The incomes of the provinces of Armenia and Iberia were divided among the two empires. In 687, as part of his agreements with the Caliphate, Justinian removed from their native Lebanon 12,000 Christian Maronites, who continually resisted the Arabs. Additional resettlement efforts, aimed at the Mardaites and inhabitants of Cyprus allowed Justinian to reinforce naval forces depleted by earlier conflicts. In 688, Justinian signed a treaty with the Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan which rendered Cyprus neutral ground, with its tax revenue split. Justinian took advantage of the peace in the East to regain possession of the Balkans, which were before almost under the heel of Slavic tribes. In 687 Justinian transferred cavalry troops from Anatolia to Thrace. With a great military campaign in 688–689, Justinian defeated the Bulgars of Macedonia and was able to enter Thessalonica, the second most important Byzantine city in Europe.
The subdued Slavs were resettled in Anatolia, where they were to provide a military force of 30,000 men. Emboldened by the increase of his forces in Anatolia, Justinian now renewed the war against the Arabs. With the help of his new troops, Justinian won a battle against the enemy in Armenia in 693, but they were soon bribed to revolt by the Arabs; the result was that Justinian was comprehensively defeated at the Battle of Sebastopolis, caused by the defection of most of his Slavic troops, while he himself was forced to flee to the Propontis. There, according to Theophanes, he took out his frustration by slaughtering as many of the Slavs in and around Opsikion as he could lay his hands on. In the meantime, a Patrician by the name of Symbatius proceeded to rebel in Armenia, opened up the province to the Arabs, who proceeded to conquer it in 694–695. Meanwhile, the Emperor's bloody persecution of the Manichaeans and suppression of popular traditions of non-Orthodox origin caused dissension within the Church.
In 692 Justinian convened the so-called Quinisext Council at Constantinople to put his religious policies into effect. The Council expanded and clarified the rulings of the Fifth and Sixth ecumenical councils, but by highlighting differences between the Eastern and Western observances the council compromised Byzantine relations with the Roman Church; the emperor ordered Pope Sergius I arrested, but the militias of Rome and Ravenna rebelled and took the Pope's side. Justinian contributed to the development of the thematic organization of the Empire, creating a new theme of Hellas in southern Greece and numbering the heads of the five major themes- Thrace in Europe, the Anatolikon, Armeniakon themes in Asia Minor, the maritime corps of the Karabisianoi- among the senior administrators of the Empire, he sought to protect the rights of peasant freeholders, who served as the main recruitment pool for the armed forces of the Empire, against attempts by the aristocracy to acquire their land. This put him in direct conflict with some of the largest landholders in the Empire.
While his land policies threatened the aristocracy, his tax policy was unpopular with the common people. Through his agents Stephen and Theodotos, the emperor raised the funds to gratify his sumptuous tastes and his mania for erecting costly buildings. This, ongoing religious discontent, conflicts with the aristocracy, displeasure over his resettlement policy drove his subjects into rebellion. In 695 the population rose under Leontios, the strategos of Hellas, proclaimed him Emperor. Justinian was deposed and his nose was cut off to prevent his again seeking the throne: such mutilation was common in Byzantine culture, he was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea. Leontius, after a reign of three years, was in turn dethroned and imprisoned by Tiberius Apsimarus, who next assumed the throne. While in exile, Justinian began to gather supporters for an attempt to retake the throne. Justinian became a liability to Cherson and the authorities decided to return him to Constantinople in 702 or 703, he escaped from Cherson and received help from Busir, the khagan of the Khazars, who received him enthusiastically and gave him his sister as a bride.
Justinian renamed her Theodora, after the wife of Justinian I. They were given a home in the town
Tervel of Bulgaria
Khan Tervel called Tarvel, or Terval, or Terbelis in some Byzantine sources, was the Khan of Bulgaria during the First Bulgarian Empire at the beginning of the 8th century. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named him Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, he was born a Pagan like his grandfather Khan Kubrat. But was possibly baptised by the Byzantine clergy. Tervel played an important role in defeating the Arabs during the Siege of Constantinople in 717–718; the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans states that Tervel belonged to the Dulo clan and reigned for 21 years. According to the chronology developed by Moskov, Tervel would have reigned 695–715. Other chronologies place his reign in 701–718 or 700–721, but cannot be reconciled with the testimony of the Imennik; the testimony of the source and some traditions allow identifying Tervel as the son and heir of his predecessor Asparukh, who had died in battle against the Khazars. Tervel is first mentioned in the Byzantine sources in 704, when he was approached by the deposed and exiled Byzantine emperor Justinian II.
Justinian acquired Tervel's support for an attempted restoration to the Byzantine throne in exchange for friendship and his daughter in marriage. With an army of 15,000 horsemen provided by Tervel, Justinian advanced on Constantinople and managed to gain entrance into the city in 705; the restored emperor executed his supplanters, the emperors Leontius and Tiberius III, alongside many of their supporters. Justinian awarded Tervel with many gifts, the title of kaisar, which made him second only to the emperor and the first foreign ruler in Byzantine history to receive such a title, a territorial concession in northeastern Thrace, a region called Zagora. Whether Justinian's daughter Anastasia was married to Tervel as had been arranged is unknown. Only three years however, when Justinian II consolidated his throne he violated this arrangement and commenced military operations to recover the ceded area but Khan Tervel routed the Byzantines at the Battle of Anchialus in 708. In 711, faced by a serious revolt in Asia Minor, Justinian again sought the aid of Tervel, but obtained only lukewarm support manifested in an army of 3,000.
Outmaneuvered by the rebel emperor Philippicus, Justinian was captured and executed, while his Bulgarian allies were allowed to retire to their country. Tervel took advantage of the disorders in Byzantium and raided Thrace in 712, plundering as far as the vicinity of Constantinople. Given the chronological information of the Imennik, Tervel would have died in 715. However, the Byzantine Chronicler Theophanes the Confessor ascribes Tervel a role in an attempt to restore the deposed Emperor Anastasius II in 718 or 719. If Tervel had survived this long, he would have been the Bulgarian ruler who concluded a new treaty with Emperor Theodosius III in 716. However, elsewhere Theophanes records the name of the Bulgarian ruler who concluded the treaty of 716 as Kormesios, i.e. Tervel's eventual successor Kormesiy, it is probable that the chronicler ascribed the events of 718 or 719 to Tervel because this was the last name of a Bulgar ruler that he was familiar with, that his sources had been silent about the name, as in his account of the siege of Constantinople.
According to another theory Kermesios was authorized by Tervel to sign the treaty. Most researches agree that it was during the time of Tervel when the famous rock relief the Madara Rider was created as a memorial to the victories over the Byzantines, to honour his father Asparukh and as an expression of the glory of the Bulgarian state. On 25 May 717 Leo III the Isaurian was crowned Emperor of Byzantium. During the summer of the same year the Arabs led by Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik crossed the Dardanelles and besieged Constantinople with a large army and navy. Leo III made a plea to Tervel for help, relying on the treaty of 716 and Tervel agreed; the first clash between the Bulgarians and the Arabs ended with a Bulgarian victory. During the first stages of the siege the Bulgarians appeared in the Muslim rear and large part of their army was destroyed and the rest were trapped; the Arabs built two trenches around their camp facing the walls of the city. They persisted with the siege despite the severe winter with 100 days of snowfall.
In the spring, the Byzantine navy destroyed the Arab fleets that had arrived with new provisions and equipment, while a Byzantine army defeated Arab reinforcements in Bithynia. In early summer the Arabs engaged the Bulgarians in battle but suffered a crushing defeat. According to Theophanes the Confessor, the Bulgarians slaughtered some 22,000 Arabs in the battle. Shortly after, the Arabs raised the siege; the Byzantine-Bulgarian victory of 718 and the victory of the Frankish king Charles Martel in the battle of Tours stopped the Muslim advance in the interior of Europe. In 719 he again interfered in the internal affairs of the Byzantine Empire when the deposed emperor Anastasios II asked for his assistance to regain the throne. Tervel sent troops. Anastasios marched to Constantinople. In the meantime Leo III sent a letter to Tervel in which he conjured him to respect the treaty and to prefer peace to war; because Anastasios was abandoned by his supporters, the Bulgarian ruler agreed to the pleas of Leo III and broke relations with the usurper.
He sent to Leo III many of the conspirators who had sought refuge in Pliska. Tervel Peak on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named
