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Lynda Garland. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527-1204 (Routledge, London-New York 1999) Pp. xx+343. 28 Plates. Hb ISBN 0-415-14688-7. £50.This was a book waiting to be written. In her commendably laconic preface, Garland (henceforth G) instances only one predecessor, the nonagenarian Figures byzantines of Charles Diehl, whose pertinent vignettes were Englished as Byzantine Empresses in 1964. She neglects or disdains another curio, Empresses of Constantinople (London, 1913) by J. McCabe, hard to find, perhaps not even in the library at Dumbarton Oaks where G's work "received its final touches". Diehl's elegant vacuities were never of much use, largely because (as Donald Nicol puts it with lethal politeness) he did not sully the charm of his pages with any notes or source references. G would have been my first choice, not because of her sex but thanks to her already substantial work on Byzantine women in the periodicals; cf. her sensibly immodest bibliography for the details. Furthermore, not only does G know her onions, she knows how to write about them, being unencumbered by theory and jargon - G will never be in Private Eye's Pseuds Corner for impenetrable academic guff. She has, ludicrous to relate, even been criticised for this. Writing on the women of Alexios Komnenos (one of G's topics) in Paul Magdalino (ed.), New Constantines (Aldershot, 1992), p.262 n.23, Margaret Mullett dismally snipes, "Despite the recent work of Lynda Garland a feminist analysis is still lacking". I hope this may always be so: such a valuable gap is not to be spoiled. For G, to adapt Fergus Millar's unimprovable encapsulation of the rulers of Old Rome, the empress was what the empress did, to which end she gives us in pellucid prose and (as befits our planet's leading exponent of Byzantine humour - I pray her forthcoming book on this will be in my pseudo-millennial Christmas stocking) frequently witty (e.g., pp.85 & 110 for her droll remarks on fake saintly relics and the wrestling prowess of Basil I) the most readable narrative for her chosen period since the (unmentioned) trilogy of that modern Gibbon, John Julius Norwich. Since I seem to be in danger of penning a euology, I will lob a small stink-bomb at her editor for failure to prune or pollard G's iterative tendencies. We did not need to be told three times (pp.2, 137, 150) that Sebaste is the Greek translation of Augusta; for similar dispensable dittographies, sometimes with a disconcertingly different "spin", see (e.g.) pp.66-7 (Martina a "fervent", then an "enthusiastic" Monothelite), 71-2 (Martina again, first certainly then almost certainly not her stepson's poisoner), 111 (Basil I's fatal hunting accident, for which Stylianos Zaoutzes is first acquitted, then suspected).
G nowhere formally explains her chronological femini. Perhaps at one end it is silent homage to Holum's now ageing Theodosian Empresses (1982), at the other to Nicol's recently minted The Byzantine Lady (1994). Since her own lists begin with Constantine, she clearly feels, as do I, that Byzantium got going on Monday, May 11, 330. While her limits are quite reasonable, they do deprive us of further putative good things. Normally, I invoke the principle of Samuel Johnson's verdict on Paradise Lost: "None ever wished it longer than it is." But, if only for comparative purposes, I should have liked to know what G thinks of Athenais-Eudokia, especially as portrayed in the biography by Jeanne Tsatsos (French tr., Paris, 1976). Between Holum and G, some fascinating royal women fall between the cracks, above all Ariadne (ODB reports no major study of her, nothing at all in English since Bury). Given the curious claim in the Parastaseis (G does not exploit the various mentions of imperial ladies in this whimsical work) that she was "first shameless, then chaste", Ariadne might have aided investigation of the Prokopian Theodora. After 1204, G leaps bionically to 1261, disposing then of the Palaiologues in a 3-page epilogue, thereby excluding such splendid creatures as Eirene, daughter of Theodore Laskaris I, empress of the Nicaean ruler John III Vatatzes, an imperious individual of diverse intellectual interests, whom I have always admired for shutting up George Akropolites in a court seminar on solar eclipses by calling him a "moron" - alas, at her husband's behest, she withdrew the remark.
G sets out her general stall in five concise introductory pages. Her discussion of the acceleration of Augusta as a royal title from the sixth century (p.2) might have been endorsed by remarking its coincidental disappearance as a non-imperial lady's name (cf. Michael Whitby, New Constantines, p.91, for PLRE statistics). Byzantine bride-shows (pp.5-6 & passim) - why, I wonder but see no answer, did these only start in 788 and end in 882? - had a classical precedent in the Claudian pageant that saw Nero's mother installed as wife and empress (Tacitus, Ann. 12.1-3). Likewise, Eirene's suggestive choice of Basileus as title was prefigured by the one female Pharaoh of Egypt, Hatshepsut (Tina Turner claims to be her reincarnation, perhaps the Antipodean consequence of playing in Mad Max III), who reinforced this masculine pose with a (presumably) false beard.
Part I ("From Stage to Statecraft") encompasses Theodora and Sophia. On the former I mention, since G does not, an agreeable biography by Antony Bridge, Theodora: Portrait in a Byzantine Landscape (London, 1978), also for instructive fun and a change from Robert Graves Gillian Bradshaw's recent novel The Bearkeeper's Daughter (a title that should engender suitably ludicrous limericks). G's general estimate (pp.19-21) convincingly establishes her, without saying as much, as a Byzantine blend of Diana, Fergie, and Hillary Clinton. She stays commendably calm when grasping the ineluctable nettle of the Secret History (on its Byzantine circulation, p.12, cf. my suggestion, BZ 70 [1977] 303-5, contra Averil Cameron, that Agathias, Hist. 5.15.2-6, may indicate his reading of SH 24.15-20). As so often with the Byzantines, classical antecedents should not be overlooked, as G does (I forgive you, Lynda) my "Sexual Rhetoric in Procopius", Mnemosyne 40 (1987) 150-2. I dare say Theodora wold have relished the remark by fellow-actress Sharon Stone: "Having a vagina and a point of view is a lethal combination". Her speciality act with the geese might not be more than a hotted-up version of some mime routine. There's no need with G (p.11) to see her as an ersatz male prostitute when offering anal services. Heterosexual sodomy is common enough in classical texts, not to mention ordinary life; indeed, SH 20.9 makes this very point. But the matter is fundamental only in one of its senses. Moving to higher levels, G (p.32) follows Averil Cameron in seeing Theodora's famous rallying-cry to Justinian at the height of the Nika Revolt crisis, "A certain ancient saying appeals to me that royalty is a good funeral shroud", as irrelevant rhetoric put into her mouth by the classicising Prokopios, not noting my observation in Rhein. Mus. 125 (1982) 309-11, that the alteration of tyrannis to basileia puts a contemporary "spin" on the proverb: slip or deliberate change, by empress or historian, this should be an object lesson as to what can happen to a palaios logos in Byzantine texts. Still, G does rightly concede that the speech reflects the nature of her relationship with Justinian, about which it might be emphasised that the simple facts that he braved social convention to marry her and never remarried after her death show the genuine depth of his love for her.
Sophia has come a long way since Diehl left her out of his repertoire, thanks largely to Averil Cameron's classic article (Byz 45 [1975] 1-21) and commentary on the key source of Corippus, both of which rightly pervade (though do not dominate) G's treatment. Sophia was an unappealing cold fish, albeit she was faced with a unique problem: how to deal with a mad husband and emperor. As Sir Humphrey says in Yes, Minister: "Government is about keeping things going". One unusual and commendable Sophian characteristic was her relentless effort to keep the lid on state spending: her reuke to Tiberios, "All that we have carefully saved and stored you are scattering to the winds as with a fan", has a splendidly Thatcherite ring. Incidentally, the Corippan simile of the treasury as the stomach of the state is not so bizarre as G (p.252 n.10) says, being a favourite throughout mediaeval thought; cf. E. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957), 185. Sophia aggravatingly vanishes from sight after joining with Constantina to make an Easter present to Maurice on March 26, 601. G suggests she may have perished the following year in the accessionary pogrom wrought by Phokas. A fascinating thought: but would not such an event have left some trace in the later sources?
Part II ("Regents and Regicides") runs from Martina, termagent empress of Herakleios, to Zoe Porphyrogenneta whose eleven pages in New Constantines took three feminists (Hill, James, Smythe) to write - and how many to change the light bulb? En passant, was there nothing to be rescued from the sources, along with David Olster's work on Phokas, about the latter's wife Leontia (absent from ODB) whom he crowned Augusta with pomp and speed? A propos of Martina, I especially like G's notion (pp.70-1) that Constans' accession speech was penned by his enigmatic mother Gregoria. In general, G overstates the case for Martina, but there may be a case to overstate. Likewise with the unlovely Eirene, whose thrice-criticised (pp.91-4) taste for eunuch generals might be palliated by looking back to the achievements of Justinian's Narses and Solomon. At the risk of spoiling a good story, how credible is the oft-told tale of Theophilos' branding of the errant monks? In Bury's words, "Some admiration is due to the dexterity and delicacy of touch of the tormentor who succeeded in branding 12 iambic lines on a human face". G's admirable avoidance of "gender-bias" is well evidenced by her defence (p.107) of Michael III against the usual charges of drunkenness and so on. Amid the familial tangles, male and female, of Leos V and VI, I would have found space for the hilarious claim by Sir Iain Moncreiffe Of That Ilk in his Royal Highness: Ancestry of the Royal Child (London, 1982) that these Byzantines provide an ancestor for the first son of Charles and Diana; cf. Runcimans' amusing review, TLS Sept. 9, 1982. Theophano as an innkeeper's daughter (p.126) should evoke Helena the bar-maid, with which fancy Gibbon had such famously low fun. It smacks of classical libel, Euripides' lachanopole mother and the like, but may strike a resonant chord with Australian readers, thanks to their illustrious fish-and-chip monger, Pauline Hanson. On the role played in this reign's machinations by the patriarch Polyeuktos (pp.128-34), G might have ponderd the two intemperate blasts aimed at him by Suda (H 392, P 1959, Adler). My impression from Psellos, Chron. 3.5, is that Romanos III was impotent with Zoe, rather than just her being sterile (G 138). There were limits to Skleraina's culture (p. 151): she could not even recognise a famous Homeric tag on Helen of Troy's beauty (Psellos, Chron. 6.61). Regarding his marital ambitions for her, both Constantine IX and Skleraina might have appreciated the bon mot of Sir James Goldsmith: "When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job opening".
Part III ("Empresses as Autocrats") takes us from Theodora, perhaps thus a little artificially segregated from Zoe, to Euphrosyne Doukain, by way of Eudokia Makrembolitissa, Maria of Antioch, and a crowded chapter on the royal ladies of the hag-ridden Alexios Komnenos - G well quotes Mullett's delicious witticism: "The message of the 1080s was one of family values: if you want to get ahead get a mother: and Alexios had two". G does not seem to take any of the older German and Russian work on Theodora into account (ODB has the details). A. Friendly's monograph on Mantzikert, The Dreadful Day (London, 1981), is not mentioned; nor is the suggestive appearance of Romanos IV Diogenes in the Timarion. Not all would be as confident as G (p.278 n.3) that Eudokia was the compiler of the Violarium lexicon, while her note (p.280 n.54) may mislead on the Paris Ivory: Romanos II and Bertha-Eudokia are surely the traditional candidates, Romanos IV and Eudokia being but an idea of Iole Kalavrezou-Maxeiner. Contrariwise, G (p.198 n.123) is too hesitant over Browning's surely unarguable re-dating of Anna Komnene's death to c.1153-55. Finally, G might have made much broader use for her Komnenan chapter of that delightful character Michael Italikos, mentioned only once (p.196 n.106) and Gautier's edition of his manifold works does not even make her repertory of sources.
Almost the last 100 pages are taken up by Tables, Glossary, Notes (unlike most reviewers, I don't mind having them at the back), Bibliography, and Index - excellent all. Twenty-eight plates conform to Rostovtzeff's dictum that illustrations should be there to instruct, not entertain. The book is physically attractive and (though I claim no chalcentric trawl) remarkably free from misprints - a rarity in an age where floppy disks have put sub-editors out of business, albeit the pasted-in new caption to plate 17 shows somebody was awake at the eleventh hour.
Overall, this is an unusual case of a book being as good as its blurb claims. It is not the last word on everything, but is often the first one, a great achievement. Garlands for Garland. Now, we need a companion volume on Byzantine emperors. Given her spadework for such here provided, no prizes for guessing who I think could do it best.
Barry Baldwin, University of Calgary
A New International Web-based Journal
Dr Peter v. Moellendorff has recently announced the inception of a new electronic journal: PLEKOS.
Its area of specialisation is research on all aspects of communication in Late Antiquity. It contains articles, reviews, and information on Classical Philology, Byzantine Studies, Linguistics, Patristic Studies, Ancient History, History of the Ancient Church, Philosophy, Classical and Christian Archaeology, and Art. There is no charge for viewing, downloading and printing material from Plekos. Contributions are welcomed on any subject and in a variety of languages.
Dr v. Moellendorff writes:
"Plekos is a recently founded online periodicum. It is consacred to research on late Antiquity. We are interested in articles which examine texts, pictures, archeological sites, or monuments from the perspectives of being shaped by the mental and communicative structures of this period or themselves being involved in shaping them. Interdisciplinary research, of course, will be particularly welcome. All disciplines concerned with work in this field are invited to participate. Accepted languages are German, English, French, Italian, Spanish; all contributors are asked to preface their articles with a short summary in German or English. Articles will be submitted to the board and, if accepted, published at once. In this way we hope to be very quick in publishing.
Information about the procedure for submitting articles and reviews - which you are kindly invited to do - is available on the Homepage of PLEKOS: http://www.plekos.uni-muenchen.de
BYZANTINOROSSICA
Editorial Board:
C.C. Akentiev (Editor-in-Chief), A.B. Chernyak, L.G. Khrushkova, B.I. arshak, V.M. Lurie, I.P. Medvedev, A.V. Nazarenko, G.M. Prokhorov, V.N. Zalesskaya.
The following publications are available (in Russian, unless otherwise stated):
1. BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 1 (1995): Liturgy, Architecture, and Art in Byzantine World: Papers of the XVIIIth International Byzantine Congress (Moscow, 8 15 August 1991) and Other Essays Dedicated to the Memory of Fr John Meyendorff, Ed. by C.C. Akentiev. XXV + 312 pp. + 56 pls. with 77 black-and-white ills.
Contents: Includes, among numerous articles in Russian, R.F. Taft, "Church and Liturgy in Byzantium: The Formation of the Byzantine Synthesis"; N. Ozoline, "La symbolique cosmique du temple chrétien selon la Mystagogie de Saint Maxime le Confessor"; T. Spidlik, "Le temps et l'histoire selon les grands penseurs russes"; and reviews of more than 20 books, including the publications of G. Dagron, T. Spidlik, D.M. Bulanin, J.G. Deckers et al., E. Zanini, etc.
Price: Approx. US $40.00.
2. BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 3 (1997): Liturgy and Hymnography in Old Rus, Ed. by C.C. Akentiev. About 300 pp. + 50 black-and-white ills.
Price: Approx. US $40.00.
In preparation/to appear shortly:
1. BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 4 (1998): The Holy Sion in the Byzantine Tradition: Ideas, Images, Realities, Ed. by C.C. Akentiev.
2. SUBSIDIA BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 3 (1998): (Title in Russian) (=Archaeological publication of the unique silver plate [XIIIth C,Constantinople] decorated with the depiction of the Aerial Flight of Alexander the Great, supplied with some additional materials for the study of Alexandria in medieval literature and art). With English summary.
3. SUBSIDIA BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 4 (1999): The Russian translation of Robert F. Taft, S.J., The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. The origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today, 2nd rev. ed., Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1993.
4. SUBSIDIA BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 5 (1999): (Title in Russian) (= Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of a Byzantine temple based on integrating the traditional methods of Christian archaeology, iconography and liturgics). With English summary.
5. SUBSIDIA BYZANTINOROSSICA, Vol. 6 (1999): H.O. Ledvedev, (Title in Russian) (= The critical edition of the Acts of the Constantinopolitan councils in the XIVth century, with textological and historical commentaries). With French resumé.
Bibliography of Australian and New Zealand Scholarship 1997-1998
The following bibliography includes an update on publications listed as forthcoming in the previous issue. Further updates will appear in forthcoming newsletters.
H. Tarrant, "Restoring Olympiodorus' Syllogistic", Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997),411-424.
-, " Politikh; Eujdaimoniva : Olympiodorus on Plato's Republic", in K. Boudouris (ed.), Plato's Political Theory and Contemporary Political Thought, International Association for Greek Philosophy and Culture, Athens, 1997, vol. II 200-207.
-, 'Observations on the Text of Olympiodorus On Plato's Gorgias', Mnemosyne 51 (1998), forthcoming.
R. Jackson, K. Lycos and H. Tarrant, Olympiodorus: Commentary on Plato's Gorgias, translated, with introduction by H. Tarrant, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1998.