Alea iacta est

In the Beginning, Man Created God, Part XVI

Previously on "YHWH's Excellent Adventure"

Part 1: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In which we learn that YHWH wasn't the first god to want to be alone.

Part 2: YHWH rules, Chemosh drools! In which we learn most of Biblical history was pulled out of King Josiah's backside.

Part 3: By the Rivers of Babylon. In which the Hebrews crib most of their afterlife from the Persians.

Part 4: Alex the Kid in Hellenic World. In which Alexander the Great conquers the known world and everyone learns to love, Greek-style.

Interlude: Danny Boy, the Lions, the Lions are calling. In which Daniel becomes a Prophet despite not knowing the first things about his own surroundings.

Part 5: I ♥ MACCABEES. In which the flame of cosmopolitan Hellenism is snuffed out by religious fundamentalists.

Part 6: Quacks, Kooks and Loons of the Roman Empire. In which we see that the early Roman Empire was a utopia for two bit religious frauds and crazy cults.

Part 7: Would the real Messiah Please Stand Up? - In which we began to example just how much we really know about Jesus.

Part 8: The Greatest Story Ever Made Up - In which we see as the four gospels progressively transform Jesus from Jewish messiah and adopted son of god into the ever-co-eternal Logos and saviour of mankind

Part 9: Speaking in Tongues - In which early Christianity is finally torn from its Jewish roots, and gentiles steer the religion to a far different future than its founders intended.

Part 10: I, Constantine - In which Christianity is Romanized, and becomes the state religion of one of the greatest powers of the world.

Part 11: You say homoousios, I say Homoiousios - Christians agree to disagree, then disagree to that, and start fighting each other.

Part 12: Rock the Kaaba! - a lesson in prophecy from the Wrecker of Mecca.

Part 13: Just makin' it up as you go along - Hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide see every facet of their life controlled by laws that seem to have been conjured up out of nowhere.

Part 14: Ashura Smackdown - Husayn vs. Yazid - The "Religion of Peace" gets off to a very bad start.

Up next...

Part 15: Justinian's Flea, Heraclius' penis, and the making of the medieval world..

It is tempting to look at the Middle East of today and believe that such an outcome was always fated to happen, that in the end, the outcome of history was almost pre-ordained. A mistake made by both the religious and the non-religious, as we shall soon see, that was not the case.

The Roman Empire may have collapsed in the fifth century in the west, but in the east, it was still going strong. In 527 AD, Justinian took the reigns of the empire, and almost succeeded in resurrecting the empire of old. With his famed generals, Belsarius and the eunuch Narses (the latter more fearsome than a lack of testicles might normally indicate) managed to seize back the Italian peninsula from the Ostrogoths, bringing both Romes under another ruler, once again. Justinian undertook a great building project in Constantinople, including constructing the Hagia Sophia, a building that still stands in modern Istanbul.

Above: Justinian and his peeps. Gotta love the socks/sandals combo.

Great Emperor I hear you say? Brought back Rome's former glory?

Well no, because this was the beginning of the period when things rapidly turned to shit.

For one, Justinian's adventures in Italy proved self-defeating. For one, life under the Ostrogoths wasn't really that unpleasant for most Italians - the Goths preserved most of the Roman civic structure, and had brought order to a region plagued by recent strife. All the new war did was destroy that order, and completely decimate urban Italian life. Justinian destroyed that which the Goths had preserved: Roman civilization. In addition, the destruction of the Gothic kingdom opened the way for the Lombards, a much more savage people, who completed the job of re-primitivising Italy, and drove out the Eastern Romans once and for all.

Then a great plague - the eponymous "Justinian's Flea" came. This plague does not loom large in most modern imagination, despite the fact it was possibly larger and more consequential than even the Black Death. It devastated Justinian's empire - killing two-thirds of the population. According to contemporaries, it was killing 10,000 a day in Constantinople, and in total, by its end, a staggering 25 million had died!

What does this have to do with religion, I hear you ask? Well, stay with me for a while. The plague meant that Justinian's armies were now massively over-extended, and that his borders lacked defenders. As a result, the Empire grew weaker and weaker during the period of his successors. The ongoing war with the Persians, soon renewed, did not help matters.

During the reign of the despised Phocas, the Persians under Khosrau II made a lightning strike against the empire, and soon conquered Mesopotamia, the Levant, and North Africa. Constantinople itself was soon threatened. The Romans would need a miracle to survive.

They got one with the emergence of Heraclius. The son of the Exarch of Carthage took the throne, raised the siege of Constantinople and in a stunning campaign, reversed all the Persian gains. Piously, at the reconquest of Jerusalem, Heraclius marched into the city as a barefooted pilgrim, carrying the "True Cross" itself. With Persia itself threatened, Khosrau was deposed by his own people, and the Persians capitulated.

Above: Heraclius receivers Khosrau's submission. Or maybe they're dancing. Who can tell.

But once again, things turned to the shit. As the Romans and Persians gazed at each other like punch-drunk fighters in the final round of the ring, a new force appeared on the horizon - Arabs, recently united by a new leader, and from one of the few plague unaffected areas, swept into the Middle East. Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia all fell quickly - Persia itself, once one of the mightest empires of the classical world, crumbled and disappeared from history.

Heraclius' armies went to face the new threat but....without their Emperor.

Where was he?

Lying in Constantinople, paralysed by both severe hydrophobia and a agonising disease of the urinary tract of which, as Nicephorus the historian said: "Every time he voided water, he was obliged to lay a board across his stomach to prevent it spurting in his face".

The people of Constantinople, once having believed their Emperor divinely blessed due to his exploits, now thought him cursed, now doubt due to his incestuous marriage with his niece Martina.

In addition, religious heresy was tearing apart his Empire. When the Persians had conquered the Levant and Egypt they had encouraged monophysitism as a sort of "fuck-you" to the Orthodox patriarchs in Constantinople. Now that these regions were once again under his control, Heraclius' was pressed to clamp down on the religious freethinking.

In an effort to compromise, Heraclius tried a third path - Monothelitism - in an attempt to heal the rift. It didn't work, and in the pivotal battle against Muslim invaders, Heraclius' Arab Christian troops switched sides. The Empire was soon left with only Anatolia and it would seem, not for long.

And that's how a flea, a penis, and a religious argument no-one even remembers brought down two of the greatest power of the sixth century.

Posted by Quentin George at July 5, 2009 07:12 PM