Greatest Emperor (of Byzantium)

I voted for Basil number two.

I hate Justinian. He brutally crushed the Nike revolution and he closed down all schools of philosophy in Greece.

heraclius, without him byzantium falls and roman culture (at least in the east) dies early, also there would be no russia as we know it

Heraclius, his military genius was unfairly clouded by the Arab invasions in which he did not participate in direct combat.

I'd venture to say he was on par with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal (according to military historians trevor and ernest dupuy)

Heraclius had the same qualities as those three men above. He:

- reformed the Roman army

- fought superbly in mountainous terrain and maintained a first class intelligience service allowing him to maintain contact with the capital while he was in Atropatene (Azerbaijan)

- possessed excellent understanding of manuevering allowing him to fight three Persian armies contriving to surround him in the mountain ranges of Azerbaijan

- keeping the Roman EMpire alive?

- instituted currency reform with the silver hexagram to stabilise economy

- marched and sacked the Persian summer capital

- destroyed the the Zoroastarian equivalent of Jerusalem in Ganzaca

 

I believe that Theodosius I (ruled 379-395) was the most influential and therefore possibly the greatest of all Byzantine Emperors. The Theodosian Decrees outlawed all practises of pagan cults and finally established Christianity as the state religion and the one unifying factor of the Empire. Without the total identification of state and church, that was at the heart of Byzantine political philosophy, the Empire wouldn't have possessed the inner strenght to survive against all the odds for another thousand years. Furthermore, the decision to split the old Roman Empire between his two sons into the Western and Eastern part, turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Byzantium. The East-Romans counted their losses and got on with things, for,as I said before, another thousand years.

He wasn't on the list but I thought I'd mention Alexius I Comnenus, who saved the empire when it, again, was about to fall. I thought he handled the thousands of Crusaders who went through the imperial territory well, above most things.

I voted for Basil II, because, yeah...

I like Justinian as well, but he has an unfair advantage in having both Belisarius and Narses as his generals.

He's not in this, and he really shouldn't, bu I like Constantine XI. He's the only Byzantine emperor that I can truly say is a good man. Reading about his final epic defense of Constantinople made me shed a tear.

Originally posted by Imperator Invictus At the time, the Bulgars still held much of the balkins. After a long war, Basil defeated the Bulars, with a slaughter so intense that he took the title "Bulgar Slayer".

Well that name was given because Basil had captured 15 000 Bulgarian soldiers through the victorius war and had them blinded as punishment

Anyway I vote for Justinian.

Edited by Thracian

Originally posted by Belisarius He's not in this, and he really shouldn't, bu I like Constantine XI. He's the only Byzantine emperor that I can truly say is a good man. Reading about his final epic defense of Constantinople made me shed a tear.

Indeed Constantine XI was a true hero, a man I don't think you could reasonably fault from the evidence that has come down to us (the stories of him begging to be decapitated by his men must be dismissed as false as such stories are from a minority of sources of very dubious quality. See Donald Nicol's book). He gave the Eastern Roman Empire an end which it so fittingly deserved. Quite a contrast to the anti-climactic end to the Western Empire. This final act is evidence enough to combat any argument by many of the "Enlightenment" writers who claimed the Eastern Empire was cowardly.

 

I don't think you can really class Emperors as "greatest". I think you need to classify them according to different attributes. Greatest would be Justinian I, most glorious would be Heraclius, best would be Basil II (his persual of state policy was almost flawless), most resourceful (not least politically) would be Alexius I, wisest would be a contest between Leo VI, Constantine VII and Manuel II. I guess I will have to vote for Justinian as his megalomania led him to make the most impressive achievements even if they were disastrous in the long term. But he was a lucky man, he had years of previous peace behind the Empire which had been ruled by its most economically successful Emperor and had at his disposal a number of brilliant generals and administrators.

Another great warrior Emporer was Alexius Komnena. I read the diary by his daughter Anna Komnena "The Alexiad" and I really enjoyed it as a primary source. It would potentially make a great screen play. I think one of my favorite studies in history is about the Byzantine Empire and its history.


Anna Comnena /Komnene /Komnena (1083-bef.1156)
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Anna Comnena (Komnene is the Greek for the family name, Komnena its feminine form) was born two years after her father, Alexius, had made himself, not very legitimately, Roman emperor at Constantinople. As Alexius' first-born, she was soon betrothed to the son of an earlier emperor, the "rightful heir to the throne." In 1092 the engagement was broken off, and Anna's younger brother was made heir. But it was only after the death of the "rightful heir" that she was married, in 1097, to Nicephorus Bryennius, the son of a rival of Alexius, with his own claim to the throne. In a will she wrote after her father's death in 1118, Anna said that she had married Bryennius only to please her parents, but she then went on to praise him; at any rate, the couple remained married for forty years and had four children. During this time she wrote some poetry, but only brief fragments are extant.

Anna's husband had written a history of some of the emperors before Alexius, so when Bryennius died in 1037, Anna began to write the history of her father's reign, the Alexiad. She had time to write, because after her father's death, she appears to have been involved in some kind of a plot against her brother John, the new emperor. The problem for historians is that the chief source of the story of the plot is a chronicler, Ioannes Zonaras, who wrote in the 1170s in the service of John's son; later writers simply repeated Zonaras' story. Whatever the reason, Anna was at some point sent off by her brother John to live with her mother at a convent which her mother had founded. John died in 1143, to be succeeded by his son Manuel; Anna remained at her convent. Her history of her father's reign seems to have been completed in 1148, but since the end of the manuscript is mutilated, it is hard to be sure.

A funeral oration on Anna Comnena was given in 1156 (although apparently not immediately after her death) by a classical scholar who had studied with her in her enforced retirement. He and others had worked with Anna at her convent on the study of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy, and of rhetoric and history.

As unbiased history, the biggest problem with the Alexiad is the relationship between its author and its subject. It has sometimes been called hagiography, and it is true that Anna greatly admired her father and her mother, Irene. Anna tries very hard to be objective, but she can find a good (or at least acceptable) reason for almost everything her parents do. However, from the perspective given by 900 years, a reader can afford to be tolerant and simply enjoy her unquestioned ability to tell a good story.