rests, is such an arbitrary hypothesis that we must seek some 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.2 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.3

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 to-day 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 1 John of Brompton, Chronicon, p. of Nicephorus Gregoras, viii. 6, p. 317 1219 (Twysden's Hist. Angl. scrip- (ed. Bonn), that in A.D. 1321 the tores X. vol. i., 1652), states that the revenue was increased by special efforts island of Cunfu (Corfu) yielded (of the τελώναι and φορολόγοι) to the quintallos auri purissimi quindecim

of

million nomismata annuatim ; et pondus quintalli est (£600,000), cannot be utilized. The pondus centum librarum auri” (A.D. conditions of the time were exceptional. 1290).

I do not understand why Zachariä v. 2 Í have based this on the figures Lingenthal (Zur Kenntniss, 14) refers given by Beloch in his Bevölkerung this statement to the land-tax only. der griechisch-römischen Welt (1886). 4 See Paparrhegopulos, loc. cit.;

3 See below p. 236. The statement Diehl, loc. cit. ; Andreades, 7.

sum

one

apportioned. Probably a sum of more than £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 (evoeliai) 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 800 years from Diocletian to Alexius Comnenus the Roman 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 Roman 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

§ 2. Military and Naval Organization 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 stratégoi, 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 1 The cost of St. Sophia is said to cannot have cost less.

His reign have been 300,000 gold litrai lasted a little more than twelve years. £12,960,000. The buildings of Theo- 2 Gelzer, Byz. Kulturgesch. 78. philus, including the Palace of Bryas,

1

Theophilus. But it is probable that before that time the penetration of the Moslems 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 stratégoi. 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 stratégos, bore the special title of katepano, which looks like the continuation of an older arrangement.

1 Cont. Τh. 6 των πέντε θεμάτων των of Seleucia is probably due to corrupκατά την ανατολήν, A.D.

803; and

tion. Theodore Stud. Epp. ii. 64, p. 1284 4 This also is omitted in our text of επί γάρ τών π. θ. τέθειται, A.D. 819 (both Takt. Usp., doubtless a scribe's error. these passages record the temporary It appears as a kleisurarchy in Ibn commission of these Themes to a Fakih's list : Brooks, Arabic Lists, 75 superior uovootpátnyos ; cp. above, (Koron was the seat of the governor).

a

3

The rise of Paphlagonia in importance may be 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 rankCalabria, under its Dux; Dalmatia and Crete, under governors who had the title of archon;s while Thessalonica with the adjacent region was still subject to the ancient Praetorian is that Paphlagonia was a katepanate A.D. 845-347 (Acta 27, 29). The before it acquired the rank of a stratê- Emperor before his death directed gia. Michael, Vita Theod. Stud. 309, that Kallistos Melissenos should be referring to the reign of Michael II., Sent to Koloneia και την του δουκός speaks of το θέμα των Παφλαγόνων, but διέπειν αρχήν. Kallistos is called a the use of Oéua in such a passage can

5

2

3

4

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 stratégos instead of an archon of Crete, and the Bulgarian wars to the suppression of the Praetorian prefect by a stratêgos of Thessalonica. The Theme of Kephalonia (with the Ionian Islands) seems to have existed at the beginning of the ninth century ;5 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 stratêgos 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 Tafla."

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

7

9

ASIATIC THEMES

1. Anatolic. 2. Armeniac. 3. Thrakesian. Stratégiai

4. Opsikian. 5. Bukellarian.
6. Cappadocia. 7. Paphlagonia. 8. Chaldia.

9. Koloneia. Kleisurarchiai — 10. Charsianon. 11. Seleucia.