If you're really so curious, Brother Elpidios, why don't you ask the abbot what he thinks? You're not that curious? Mm, might be just as well. Read some more, why don't you?
JUSTINIAN
Marriage agreed with me. Being able to slake my lust whenever I felt like it agreed with me. And Eudokia and I got on when even when not joined together panting on the marriage bed. She had an odd, sideways way of looking at things that went on in the palace- I suppose because she was not accustomed to the life from birth, as I was- that made me take the ancient customs less for granted, too.
George the ecumenical patriarch died in the spring of my first year as Emperor. After rather less bickering than usual, the local synod of bishops chose the three men from among whom I was to choose his successor: Paul, Kallinikos, and Theodore. Now, Theodore is far from the least common of names, but having it presented here gave me pause. I asked Niketas, who as synkellos to George administered churchly affairs until a new patriarch was installed, "Is this the same Theodore my father deposed because he was a monothelite?"
"Emperor, it is," he said, "but since the sixth holy and ecumenical synod anathematized the doctrine to which he formerly adhered, he has truly repented of his earlier error. His orthodoxy is now complete and unquestionable."
"Complete, maybe, but far from unquestionable," I answered, and ordered Theodore brought before me.
It proved to be as Niketas said: he was indeed of perfect orthodoxy. "The Holy Spirit speaks through each ecumenical synod, and makes God's will clear," he declared. "I was in error, but am no longer. Restore me to the patriarchal throne, and I shall prove to you the truth of what I say."
The other two prelates the local synod had named were also worthy men, each of them later serving as patriarch of Constantinople. Now, though, reinstalling the man my father had ousted struck my fancy. I ordered it, and it was done.
"Your father would never have done that," my mother said after I announced my decision. "He never abandoned a friend, and, more important, he never forgot a foe."
I tossed my head. "I am not my father," I said. "Just because he did things a certain way doesn't mean I have to do them that way, too." I was still arguing with my father, as boys do on the way to manhood. Now, though, he could no longer answer back, so I, unlike most boys, won all the arguments.
That would have been better had I been right all the time. Well, I have learned- painfully, as such lessons are often taught. By God, by the Virgin, by the saints, I forgive no foes today.
Everyone who advised me- not my mother alone- seemed passionately convinced all matters should remain as they had been in the time of my father. This applied even to Theodore, the restored patriarch. "If you but continue on his course, Emperor," he said, "the Roman Empire will do well."
"Is that so?" I said. "Shall I depose you, then, because he did?"
Theodore suffered such a coughing fit, he had to retire from the throne room. I laughed till my sides ached at getting the better of the prelate. But, while he no longer importuned me after that, the bureaucrats and soldiers who came before me kept trying to hold back even the idea of change.
This, of course, accomplished the opposite of what they wanted, making me even more eager than I had been to overturn my father's arrangements regardless of whether they had been foolish. What lad has ever reached sixteen years without being certain everything around him is the creation of a pack of doddering idiots and deserves nothing better than being tossed upon the rubbish heap? I had no patience for what had been done; my mind turned instead to what I might do.
As I say, every lad of like age is full of the same ideas, being convinced to the uttermost depths of his soul that all the people older than he, and especially all kinsfolk and men of authority older than he, have not a counterfeit follis's worth of sense among them. Most lads, though, have to accept the authority of their elders, possessing no power, no wealth, of their own.
I was not most lads. I was Emperor of the Romans. I had all the power of the Empire behind me, and all the wealth, too. I could do as I chose, not as anyone chose for me. It had not been done that way before? Precedent and conventional usage argued against it? So what?
Furthermore, I saw- I was certain I saw- an opportunity to which my so-called counselors were deliberately blinding themselves.
After the failure of their impious and infamous assault upon this God-guarded and imperial city, the Arabs had fallen into disarray. Mauias, their longtime ruler, passed from this earth into hellfire two years after they gave up the siege. Upon his death, several misnamed commanders of the faithful held their throne in Damascus in quick succession, none securely. Abimelekh, the latest, had gained it in the same year I did, though already older than my father at his death.
Through all the turmoil among the deniers of Christ, my father had sat quiet, content to receive the tribute Mauias had agreed to pay after his fleet was destroyed and his army beaten. He preferred that to battle.
I thought otherwise. Summoning my advisers, I said, "With the followers of the false prophet quarreling among themselves, should we not seize the moment to take back some of the lands they stole from the Romans during the reigns of my grandfather and my great-great-grandfather?"
The sakellarios, a dour man named Romanos, said, "The treasury has not the gold for a long campaign, Emperor."
"Since we are at peace, should we not remain at peace?" John the city eparch said, though nothing outside Constantinople was properly his area of concern.
And Christopher, the comes excubitorum, said, "Having been little used of late, the army will not be at its peak fighting condition."
I clapped a hand to my forehead. "We have not fought and so we cannot fight? The longer we do not fight, the worse we will fare when the time for fighting comes! If we stay at peace for a generation, will we be altogether destroyed when war breaks out?"
"That is not what I meant, Emperor. I-" Christopher began.
I cut him off, declaring, "I do not care what you meant. I hear d what you said, and I did not care for that, either. We shall take advantage of Abimelekh's weakness, and the war, undoubtedly a short and successful one, will more than pay for itself."
"Such promises are more often made than fulfilled," Romanos said sourly.
"You have heard my will expressed. You shall carry it out," I said. They all bowed in submission. I glowered at Romanos. I did not need a treasurer who told me why I could not do things. I needed one who would find ways for me to do as I wanted. If this copper counter obstructed me, I would replace him- and I knew with whom.
But that could wait. More urgent was picking the proper general to lead the campaign against the followers of the false prophet. Christopher the comes excubitorum I dismissed out of hand. The only military virtue I had seen him display was looking splendid in his gilded shirt of mail. That sufficed in Constantinople. In the field, it did not.
If I appointed Theodore of Koloneia commander of the army, that left the imperial bodyguards with no one to keep a tight rein on Christopher. I decided I dared not take the chance. Theodore also stayed in the imperial city.
Of the three generals who had beaten back the Arabs in my father's day, Kyprianos had by this time met the common fate of mankind. When I asked Myakes what he thought of Petronas, he rolled his eyes. "He promises more than he can give," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Myakes explained how, in my father's expedition against the Bulgars, Petronas had promised victory after my father went off to Mesembria on account of his gout. I knew too well he had no victory there, only defeat and humiliation. And so I resolved not to name Petronas to high command.