The Senate rapturously granted their glorious emperor the title of “Scipio,” and when he arrived in sight of the capital, it was to find the entire population streaming out to meet him, waving olive branches and cheering.† Singing hymns, they carried the emperor into the city, following the True Cross through the Golden Gate in a procession complete with the first elephants ever seen in the city. After marching to the Hagia Sophia, they watched as their victorious emperor raised the cross above the high altar. It had been six long years since Heraclius had left the city, but now he sat enthroned in all his glory. He had snatched the empire from the jaws of extinction and overthrown the power of Persia. The True Cross was enshrined, and the Lord’s enemies were scattered before it. Surely, this was the dawn of a new age.
Heraclius had restored the empire to its former glory, and, in appearance at least, it still resembled the classical world of antiquity. A Greek or Italian traveler could walk from the Strait of Gibraltar through North Africa and Egypt to Mesopotamia and feel comfortably at home. There were regional differences, but the cities were all reassuringly Roman, the language was Greek, and the culture was Hellenized. Most towns had the same familiar plan, complete with sumptuous baths waiting to wash the dust from tired feet and aqueducts and amphitheaters dotting the landscapes. Life may have been a bit more turbulent and uncertain, but it continued much as it had since the Romans first arrived with their powerful legions and ordered architecture.
But there were important differences, too. Even in educated circles, few men were now bilingual. Latin had always been widely considered an unsatisfactory language for sophisticated discussions, especially theological ones, and over the centuries it had slowly died out. Western officials posted to the East had been able to obtain phrase books with local Greek expressions to assist them, but no one bothered to return the favor. The cultural flow swept relentlessly in one direction only, and though Greek thought still moved west, in the East the Latin classics of Virgil, Horace, and Cicero remained untranslated and widely unknown. By the time of Heraclius, few men could understand the archaic language that the empire’s laws were written in, and the emperor, who prized military efficiency above all else, swept away the old trappings of the Latin empire. Greek was made the official language, and even the imperial titles were modified accordingly. Every emperor from Augustus to Heraclius had been hailed as Imperator Caesar and Augustus, but after him they were known only as Basileus—the Greek word for king.* The break with the past was startling but long overdue. The empire was now thoroughly Greek, and within a generation the old imperial language was extinct.
In the spring of 630, Heraclius made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, walking barefoot to Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre to return the True Cross to the Holy City. He was riding high on a wave of popularity, but he soon discovered that his triumph over the Persians brought with it the familiar specter of religious dissension. Syria and Egypt had always been Monophysite, and their re-absorption into the empire ensured that the religious debate was reopened with a vengeance. Such a state of affairs was an ominous weakness for the next invader to exploit, but where faith was involved, not even the conqueror of Persia could force his stubbornly independent inhabitants to fall into line.
The empire had been ravaged by the war with Persia, losing more than two hundred thousand men to the struggle, and now it was ripping itself apart internally as well. Despite the recent victory, the days of prosperity seemed long gone. Too many cities had been sacked and farms burned for the rhythms of everyday life to resume. Perhaps with time and stability the merchants and laborers would be coaxed back to their trades and prosperity would return, but the long, crippling war between Persia and Byzantium had left both empires exhausted. The cost of Heraclius’s great victory was a weakened and vulnerable empire, and the only saving grace was that Persia was in an even worse state. In 622, however, the very year Heraclius had set out on his great campaign, a new and infinitely more predatory enemy than Persia had been born.
*Transporting silks from the Far East was both expensive and slow, but fortunately for the empire, two monks had discovered the secrets of the silk moth’s life cycle and managed to smuggle several out of China. The delighted Justinian immediately planted mulberry trees in the capital to provide them with food, and Byzantium’s most lucrative industry was born.*After he had completed the conquest of Italy, Justinian’s old commander Narses was recalled with an alarming lack of tact. The wife of Justinian’s successor mocked the ninety-year-old eunuch by sending him a golden distaff with a letter of dismissal. “Since you are not a man,” it supposedly read, “go spin wool with the women.” Enraged by the unnecessary insult after a lifetime of service, Narses muttered that “he would tie her such a knot that she would not unravel it in her lifetime.” Preparing to go into retirement in Naples, he spitefully invited the long beards—Lombards—into Italy. The peninsula was not united again until the risorgimento of the nineteenth century.*The cross had been found in the Holy Land by Constantine the Great’s mother, Saint Helena, and was believed to be the very cross on which Christ was crucified.*This was known as the Hodegetria and was the holiest relic in Byzantium. Believed to have been painted by Saint Luke himself, it was brought to Constantinople in the fifth century and installed in a monastery built specifically to house it.†Shahin committed suicide after the battle to escape the wrath of his vicious overlord, but Chosroes II had the body packed in salt and transported to the capital. When it arrived, he had it whipped until it was no longer recognizable.*Chosroes II certainly didn’t help matters with his conduct. After one battle he sent his defeated general a woman’s dress, provoking an instant rebellion.†Scipio Africanus, the greatest of the Roman Republic’s military heroes, had defeated the mighty Hannibal and ended the Second Punic War.*After his victory over the Persians Heraclius took their title of “King of Kings,” but thought better of it and stuck with the more modest Basileus.
12
THE HOUSE OF WAR
With the Sword will I wash my shame away.
—ABU TAMMAM, ninth-century Arab poet
The hot desert wastes of the Arabian Peninsula seemed neither particularly inviting nor threatening to the Byzantines, and there seemed no reason to suspect that they ever would. Populated by squabbling nomadic tribes, the region hardly seemed likely to pose a serious threat to anyone, much less the huge Byzantine state. In 622, however, the deserts were beginning to stir with a new energy as a man named Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina and began hammering together the tribes of the interior. Infusing his followers with a burning zeal, Muhammad divided the world between Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the House of War). Their duty was a holy jihad, to expand the House of Islam at the point of a sword. Within five years, the Muslim armies were unleashed, and they exploded out of the desert with frightening speed. The timing of the invasion could hardly have been better. Hungry for conquest, the Arab armies arrived to find both great empires of the region exhausted and near collapse. The crippled Persians could put up little resistance. Their king Yazdegerd III appealed to both the Byzantines and the Chinese for help, but neither could offer any real assistance, and his fall was swift. Within a year, his tired armies were defeated, and he spent the next decade fleeing from one location to another until a local peasant killed him for his purse.