Download PDF | The Dromos and Byzantine Communications, Diplomacy, and Bureaucracy, 518-1204 (Medieval Mediterranean )
220 Pages
Acknowledgements
I have to start by thanking my adviser and friend, Warren Treadgold, for the countless hours he spent reading drafts and providing advice. This work would have been impossible without his encouragement and counsel. Thank you to the history department at Saint Louis University, especially Tom Madden, Tom Finan, Damian Smith, and Philip Gavitt. Thank you to Joan Hart-Hasler and Daniel Smith in the SLU department of theological studies, Kathleen Llewellyn in the department of languages, literatures and culture, Emily Thompson and Silvia Navia Mendez-Bonito in the department of global languages, cultures and societies at Webster University, and Terry Davis-Daily in the department of social and behavioral sciences at Harris-Stowe State University.
Thank you to Mr. Paulson and Mr. Hall, who taught me to love history. Merci à Mlle O’Dell, qui m’a fait aimer la langue. Thank you to Morgan Dreiss and Paul Magdalino for editing this work. Thank you to my parents, Glen and Korey, my sister Allison, and my husband Salam. I love you all.
Introduction
In his celebrated Secret History of the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), the historian Procopius writes: For the Roman Emperors of earlier times, by way of making provision that everything should be reported to them speedily and be subject to no delay … had created a swift public Post extending everywhere1 This system, called, in Latin, the cursus publicus, and, in Greek, the dromos, was a Pony Express-style system of communications and transport. It consisted of way stations approximately every five miles (eight km), at which messengers could change their horses, with inns every thirty miles (forty-eight km) or so.
This system was created in the first century and continued operating, with some interruptions, until the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It cannot be remarked upon often enough that swift and sure long-distance communications and travel are the miracle of the modern age. Ninety-three percent of the world’s population has access to high-speed cellular internet service, and there were more mobile phone subscriptions than there were people on the planet in 2020.2 This is an unprecedented level of speed and simplicity in communications. Similarly, long-distance travel is extremely common, restricted more by legal barriers between states than by economic or technological limitations. In any given year, ten percent of the world’s population travels internationally.3
Within developed countries, long-distance travel is even more common: Fifty percent of Americans fly every year, and the average American drives 12,000 miles (20,000 km) per year. In the pre-industrial world, the largest problem faced by rulers was the primitive means of transportation and communication available to them. “Very large areas could be conquered, but not amalgamated, or only at the level of the elite.”4 Early communications systems used horses, runners, pigeons, smoke signals, and signal fires. However, the speeds that could be reached were still orders of magnitude slower than what is possible today, and the rate of communication and travel was the ultimate limiting factor in the size of a state. In the Middle Ages, instantaneous communications were found only in tales of the supernatural, where angelic or demonic forces might communicate significant events before human couriers could arrive.
Theophylact Simocatta writes that, in 602, a group of statues in Alexandria became possessed by a supernatural force and announced the death of Emperor Maurice, nine days before a messenger arrived from Constantinople with the news.5 The author of the Vita Basilii relates that, in 878, demons were overheard in the Peloponnese, gleefully discussing the capture of Syracuse by the Arabs, ten days before the first survivors began to arrive.6 To pre-modern people, instantaneous communications would have been as shocking as instantaneous travel would be to us, the relevant principle being that “[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”7 Although instantaneous communications were out of the question during the Middle Ages, relatively swift communications could be managed, though at great expense and with difficulty.
The fastest form of transportation was by water. However, this had the disadvantage of being greatly dependent upon the weather, which rendered sea travel very difficult during the winter, and better, but still uncertain, the rest of the year.8 A ship’s range was most limited by its freshwater carrying capacity, or the presence of reliable sources of water along its route. Travel by land was more reliable, in the sense that it was less likely to be disrupted by the weather, but much slower, limited to the speed of a swift horse. Land travel also required that there be an unobstructed path between the point of origin and destination, with travel speed limited by the quality of the road surface. Voyages of more than a day required places for horses and their riders to be watered and fed, safe places to sleep, and a general security in the region, so that one could be assured of reaching a destination without being attacked. Travel in the medieval period was frequently “nasty, brutish, and long.”9 The ability to send communications reliably over a large area requires a network of roads, stopping places, and safe zones that can only be provided by a state.
Though the existence of such a communications network is a prerequisite for the existence of a centralized state, it may be set up as a matter of deliberate policy or exist as the result of unrelated decisions. For instance, the speed with which the US Postal Service delivers mail by land (approximately a week for destinations within 1800 miles/3000 km) is, in part, a result of the system of interstate highways. However, the speed of postal delivery was not a factor in the construction of the interstates, and the USPS is not responsible for highway maintenance. The American interstate system is, therefore, an example of a system that indirectly facilitates long-distance communications.
However, in the states of the pre-modern Mediterranean, road networks enabling long-distance communications were set up with that express purpose in mind. These peoples had little concept of economic development; their road networks were developed for the purpose of moving troops, taxes, and state communications. Any improvement in the lives of the people along the routes was incidental. The interest in communications in this period is exemplified by the optical telegraph set up by Leo the Mathematician (c.790–post 869). This system had outposts on a series of peaks from the Cilician Gates to the Great Palace in Constantinople, more than 450 miles (725 km).10 The fires would be lit at different times to communicate different messages and could carry information from the border to the capital in about an hour. Systems like this were common throughout the pre-modern Near East or anywhere where a chain of peaks made it convenient, and have been made famous by their inclusion in modern media such as The Lord of the Rings.11
The remains of at least one Byzantine beacon in Asia Minor has been identified, located at Kayser Kale.12 Another beacon has been identified at Acrocorinth, which may have been part of an optical telegraph in the Peloponnese in the tenth century.13 Although the optical telegraph is the most spectacular of the pre-modern communications technologies, far more common were systems that relied on horses and riders. Although slower, these systems could transmit messages of any length, and even some objects. The most organized of these were the postal systems set up by the largest states. All early Near Eastern empires had some system to communicate with officials and foreign states.
The Hittite Empire maintained a system of roads and issued “letter-orders” to couriers, giving them the right to demand rations and animals as they traveled.14 Couriers were always kept on hand and were among the officials who slept in the palace.15 However, the Hittites did not take the logical next step and set up a system of relay posts. That step was first taken by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, most likely during the reign of Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE).16
This system, called the King’s Road, was maintained by local governors. Couriers moved between relay stations using pairs of mules, and usage was regulated with ring seals and other documents.17 There are problems converting Assyrian measurements into modern units, making it difficult to know exactly how fast the couriers could move, but it was quite swift, with couriers averaging around 87 miles (100 kilometers) per day. The Medes and Achaemenids maintained and extended the Neo-Assyrian system. The main trunk line, the Royal Road, ran from Susa to Sardis, and it is claimed its couriers traveled 1,677 miles (2699 km) in seven days, a speed of around 24 mph (38 kph).
The system also extended into other parts of their empire.18 All incarnations of the Persian state maintained postal systems, although relatively little is known about them. Much of our information comes from Herodotus, who said that nothing in the world traveled faster than Persian couriers, and wrote of them the famous line, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”19 The next oldest system after the Persian Royal Road was the Roman cursus publicus, which was set up in the first century CE. The cursus publicus operated two services: a courier service for sending messages, and a wagon service for transporting supplies and people. The cursus publicus was substantially reformed under Diocletian (r. 284–305) and continued to evolve during late antiquity.
The Arabs inherited both the cursus publicus and the Royal Road, and, during the Umayyad and Abbasid period, operated the postal system called the barīd. This system persisted throughout the Middle Ages; today, barīd continues to be the word for “post” in much of the Islamic world. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire also inherited a portion of the cursus publicus. However, the events of the seventh and early eighth centuries, which disrupted Byzantine control over much of their territory, made it necessary to reform the Post’s administrative system. When the Byzantine state stabilized in the mid-eighth century, a new organization, the dromos, was created; it was similar in operation to the other pre-modern postal systems. Unlike the Byzantine Empire, the states of the western Mediterranean and regions further north did not keep up their portions of the cursus publicus.
As discussed below, it seems likely that the Ostrogoth and Vandal kingdoms maintained some kind of postal system, and the Frankish kings maintained some road infrastructure into the eighth century, but these were not similar to the systems maintained by the Byzantines or Arabs. There is not enough information about the Persian Royal Road to produce a monograph. However, information about it is included in works on the period. The cursus publicus was thoroughly described in Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im Römischen Reich by Anne Kolb, published in 2000, while the barīd was described by Adam Silverstein in Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World, published in 2007.
The cursus publicus of the third and fourth centuries was further elaborated on in Lukas Lemcke’s Imperial Transportation and Communication from the Third to the Late Fourth Century. The present work is meant to complement them by describing the Byzantine dromos, completing the study of the pre-modern postal systems of the Mediterranean. The dromos, which existed from the mid-eighth century until 1204, has been studied before, most importantly in three works: D. A. Miller’s “The Logothete of the Drome in the Middle Byzantine Period;” Rodolphe Guilland’s “Les logothètes;” and Camilla MacKay’s “The Road Networks and Postal Service of the Eastern Roman Empires.” Miller’s article is focused on the logothete, the minister who headed the dromos, and his subordinate officials. However, the article does not address the practical aspects of the Post’s operations at all. It also suffers from the assumption that all Byzantine offices descend from late Roman ones, and erroneously tries to argue that the logothete of the dromos is a renaming of the curiosus, the head of the late Roman postal inspectors.
Another important work is “Les logothètes: études sur l’histoire administrative de l’Empire byzantin,” a long article published by Rodolphe Guilland in 1971. Guilland is not interested in the functioning of the Post, but rather in the names and careers of the men who headed the department. The study of Byzantine titles and offices was Guilland’s long-term project, eventually resulting in the publication of Titres et fonctions de l’empire byzantin in 1976. Despite its limited subject matter, Guilland’s work provides a guide to and analysis of many of the sources that specifically mention the dromos, although it has been somewhat superseded in this by Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit.
Finally, there is Camilla MacKay’s 1999 dissertation, “The Road Networks and Postal Service of the Eastern Roman Empires (First–Fifteenth Centuries AD): Social Effects on the Provincial Population,” which is a study of the effects of the road network and Post on the people of Greece. It is useful for its discussion of the sources for the Byzantine period. However, the usefulness of its conclusions is severely limited by the author’s focus on translating and analyzing the texts (MacKay is a philologist, not an historian), her attempt to cover 1400 years of history in 178 pages, and by the small geographic scope, which excludes most of the territory in which the Post operated. These three works represent most of the original research that has been done on the dromos in the last three generations.
There have also been other authors who have worked on the Post in smaller ways, or whose work intersects this topic. For instance, Michael Hendy discussed the Post’s network of relay stations as part of his study of the Byzantine economy, and Francis Dvornik speculated on the dromos’ role in intelligence gathering. The present book is divided into two parts, the first part covering the years from 518 until the end of the seventh century, and the second 762 to 1204, respectively. Each part is a history of the contemporary postal system, its operations and infrastructure, and its effects on the political, military, economic, etc. structures of the empire. The first part begins in 518 because it is the end date for Kolb’s Transport und Nachrichtentransfer, and because the reigns of Justin (518–527) and Justinian (527–565) were a period of change in many Byzantine institutions, including the cursus publicus.
However, the sixth and seventh centuries were not a period of extreme, sudden, or even planned change in the operations and administration of the postal system and these remained essentially the same as they had been during the Roman period. The Roman cursus publicus and the Byzantine dromos were different organizations and not merely different names for the same institution. Specifically, the dromos was headed by a logothete and a central administration.
Therefore the second part of this book begins in 762, with the first confirmed mention of the logothete of the dromos (although the position may have existed up to twenty years earlier). It ends with the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade (12–15 April 1204). Although the dromos as an institution may have lingered for a short time afterwards, it was soon extinct, as neither the Latin Empire nor any of the Byzantine successor states operated any kind of postal system.
Each part is divided into two sections: a discussion of contemporary postal infrastructure and operations; and the relationship of the Post to Byzantine society. Most of the discussion centers on the officials who administered the postal system (the logothetes, Masters of Offices, and their subordinates) and not on the actual delivery of messages. This is because, unlike a modern postal system which supplies the personnel for moving messages, the cursus publicus and dromos provided only the basic infrastructure. Anyone wanting to move a message would have to provide his own courier or carry it himself.
This is an unusual work, in that it does not rely on a single or even a few sources but draws from many sources across nine centuries. This approach to the material is necessary because there are only two sources that directly discuss the operations of either the cursus publicus or the dromos (Procopius and Michael Psellos), and neither is comprehensive. Therefore, laws, anecdotes, seals, inscriptions, archaeological reports, and other bits of information have been drawn together to provide a more complete picture. This mosaic of sources presents complex problems of interpretation, solved by a systematic approach to their interpretation.
This book is divided into two parts, covering the sixth and seventh centuries and the eighth through the twelfth, respectively. As discussed above, this division is made because the Roman cursus publicus and the Byzantine dromos were different organizations and not merely different names for the same institution. Similarly, the source material for each period is different because the nature of the state and society based in Constantinople had changed dramatically, becoming increasingly centralized as time went on.
The direct source for the earlier period is the Secret History of Procopius. This work is a diatribe against the emperor Justinian, and its section on the cursus publicus describes the ways in which Justinian had degraded the operations of the system. As discussed below, Procopius’s description appears to be essentially accurate. However, it is far from comprehensive, and has therefore been supplemental with information from other sources. For the later period, the only work directly on the dromos is an unusual work by Michael Psellos, in which he attempts to explain the colloquial expression σήμερον τὰ ἅγια κούντουρα (“today the holy post horses”).20 This leads him to provide some details about the operations and funding of the dromos in his time. However, like Procopius, Psellos is hardly all-inclusive in his description, and so we are forced to look elsewhere for more information.
In the earlier period, the most useful of these sources are papyri, which represent a special interpretative problem. By the sixth century, local governments in Egypt had fallen into the hands of pagarchs: wealthy men who took responsibility for the collection of taxes in a pagus, or rural district.21 The pagarchs reported directly to the central government and operated by enlisting the services of the descendants of the curial class who had once staffed the city councils.
This governing structure was unique to Egypt, and so the evidence presented here may not be representative of how the cursus publicus was maintained in other parts of the empire. For the later period, there is no equivalent to papyri, not only because Egypt was no longer part of the empire, but also because the dromos, although still supplied by the countryside, was supervised by bureaucrats appointed from Constantinople. In place of papyri, we have their seals, once attached to documents by which they managed the empire’s business, and the taktika, which specify their place within the Byzantine hierarchy.
One hundred forty-three published seals of officials of the dromos were examined (listed in Appendix 3). Two were excluded from the analysis of their religious imagery but were used in other sections: that of Theophylaktos (PmbZ 28222), published as Šandrovskaja, Pečati 32, because it was not possible to borrow a copy of Šandrovskaja; and that of Manuel (PmbZ 24896/PBW 20119), published as Laurent, Orghidan 215, because the obverse side has been obliterated. The seal of Pothos (PBW 20104), published as ZN 680, was excluded from all analyses because it cannot be dated more precisely than early tenth century through 1204. The seal of Ioannes (PmbZ 3371), published as Konstantopulos (JIAN 9) 407 α, is here dated to the eleventh century.
It was published as seventh through eleventh, however the seal gives Ioannes, logothete of the dromos, the title of proedros, which places the seal in the eleventh. For all other seals the date given in the publication has been accepted. Because the dates of many seals are not very precise, they have been normalized to demonstrate how they are distributed across space and time using a technique created by Jonathan Shea, in which each seal is given a number of points, six in this case, and then distributed across the period when it may have been created.22 Each century has been divided into thirds.
If a seal can be attributed to one third of a century, then all its points have been assigned there. If a seal can only be attributed to a century, then each third of that century has received two points. If a seal can only be attributed to half a century, then the second third of that century has received two points, and either the first or third has received four. If a seal is attributed to two centuries, then the points have been spread across all six thirds. In addition to the seals of the dromos, seven seals of interpreters(hermeneus, diermeneus) have also been examined.
However, they have not been included in Appendix 3 nor in the analyses with the other seals. None of the seals of interpreters says that its owner was tou dromou, but rather specify the language they translated (Bulgarian, English), or another department (droungarios). Taktika, or precedence lists, should not be confused with the Byzantine military manual known as the Taktika. Both terms come from the Greek taxis, “order;” the first regards the proper ordering of officials at banquets and receptions, and the other, the ordering of troops. We possess five Byzantine precedence lists, which are conventionally referred to as the Taktikon Uspenskij (early ninth century), the Kletorologion of Philotheos (899), the Taktikon Benešević (934/4), the Taktikon Escorial (971–5), and the work called that of Pseudo-Kodinos (ca. 1350).23 There is a difference in the nature of these documents.
Three of them (Uspenskij, Benešević, and Escorial) are simply lists of ranks and titles, listed according to the state hierarchy, with a very brief introduction and conclusion. The Kletorologion perhaps deserves the title of “protocol manual,” since it contains instructions for several ceremonies and a more extensive list of officials. Similarly, Pseudo-Kodinos produced a compilation of ceremonies and protocols, which begins with an ordered list of officials.24 All of these works have been used here to date various offices and to elaborate on the role of the dromos court ceremony.
The core of this work is therefore provided by these sources: in the earlier period, Procopius’s complaints about Justinian’s misadministration of the cursus publicus, supplemented by the evidence of the papyri; in the later period, a digression in an etymological discussion by Psellos, along with the evidence provided by the seals and taktika. In addition to these core sources, a wide net has been cast for any information related to the Post, however tenuously connected. This includes many historians and chronicles, legal and administrative documents, ceremony and protocol manuals, archaeological reports, inscriptions, chrysobulls, acts of ecclesiastical councils, saints’ lives, collections of correspondence, and miscellaneous works of prose and poetry.
In drawing small pieces of information from so many disparate sources, there is the danger of treating the sources as passive quarries of data rather than as works with their own context and agenda. This can lead to a work becoming an antiquarian’s collection of barely related facts, or to an anachronistic Frankenstein’s monster of historical prose, with bits of information from different authors, eras, locations stitched together to create an unrealistic interpretation of the past.
The first problem has been avoided here by creating frameworks based on an understanding of the material conditions and administrative structures of the Byzantine state, supported by the evidence provided by the core sources. The evidence of the remaining sources has then been placed within this framework. For instance, in the section below on the geographic extent of the dromos, potential routes are first examined for whether the empire physical controlled them, then whether they were administratively necessary.
To this analysis is added the evidence of the seals, and then finally evidence from other sources. In this way, the section does not devolve into a collection of anecdotes about travel. The problem of anachronism is avoided by careful attention to a source’s context. For instance, the Peutinger Table is a route diagram, whose original was probably drawn in the third century, compiled from ancient itineraries.25 It is tempting to treat it as a Roman atlas and trace the most likely routes from town to town. However, this would result in anachronism, as the Table was not designed with this use in mind. No attempt was made by the artist to ensure the contemporary accuracy of the routes, so that it includes features that never co-existed: Pompeii, destroyed in AD 79, shares the page with Porolissum, founded in 106.
The Table was never meant for practical use but was a showpiece reflecting imperial power.26 With these issues in mind, it has been used here only to confirm that a physical route between two locations existed at some point prior to the fourth century, and not to date it more precisely or to provide any other information. Although explicit analyses like this have not been made of each source, the context of the sources, their original time, location and purpose, and the knowledge and biases of their creators, have been considered in each instance, so that no anachronism results.
The late Roman cursus publicus and Byzantine dromos are important parts of both the history of pre-modern communications and the history of the Roman and Byzantine states. Understanding them brings us closer to understanding communications, trade, and diplomacy in the Mediterranean world, and to understanding the operations and limits of the Byzantine state. Because this work uses many names and words in foreign languages and alphabets, and there are several systems for translating and transliterating these, a brief note on the practices used here is required. An attempt has been made to err on the side of clarity rather than linguistic purity. People, places, and terms that are generally known by an Anglicized name (Justinian, Constantinople, Master of Offices) are referred to as such. Other words are left in the original language.
Relatively obscure persons are disambiguated using their index numbers from the various prosopographies. Places are given the contemporary name, with modern or alternative names in parentheses on their first use or for clarification – for example: Adrianople (modern Edirne). English word “post” is used as little as possible in its non-postal senses (“after,” “office or position,” etc.) because it is potentially ambiguous; where it refers to the cursus publicus or dromos, it is capitalized. “Logothete” is used instead of the Greek logothetēs since this is common in the English-language literature. Names, individual words, and short phrases in Greek and Arabic have been transliterated according to the American Library Association-Library of Congress (ALA-LC) transliteration schemes.
However, when a modern author has used a different transcription for their own name, their choice has been respected. In addition, the titles of some works that are commonly referred to with a different transliteration in library catalogs have been referred to with the common transliteration to make them easier to locate. Similarly, “velum” is used for βῆλον instead of bēlon or vēlon and vigla for βίγλα because this conforms to major works like the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Passages and phrases in Greek longer than three words have been rendered in the Greek alphabet. On all maps, coastlines and roads are derived from shapefiles produced by the Ancient World Mapping Center.27 The locations of sites are derived from Johan Åhlfeldt’s “Digital Map of the Roman Empire.28 Ancient units of measurement (for example, Roman miles) are accompanied by modern units. Both American customary and SI units are used throughout the text: American units first, then SI units (“It is 375 miles (600 km) from Thessaloniki to Istanbul.”).
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق