The knife is, of course, in some form, one of the oldest tools of Man.
     The invention of fire would, eventually, bring about stews. And yes, these should taste better hot—but how not to burn your fingers? Long curved slivers of bark! . . . During the Bronze Age, the modern spoon was crafted.

Two tines is all the first fork had, a large-ish
heavy implement invented by the Romans
and widely used, for holding down a roast
on a platter, allowing a sliding carve—

used for serving too: for all intents and purposes, a kitchen fork.

For courtiers and the civilized would
the daintier variation in
Byzantium at its apogee be
forged, that enabled gracefully conveying
the succulent morsel to a
tinted mouth without it staining and

not only, as was ostensibly
the purpose of these table forks refined
now from the whitest molten silver
with chalcedony slender handles,
to spear the sticky shriveled
slippery berries out of a wine-sauce.

By the 8th century C.E. most gentle households of the Eastern Empire were feasting with elegant table forks and boosting new standard of etiquette.

*

Though he had assumed the title at the age of three, Basil II began his career as ruling emperor only when he turned eighteen, in 976. Shorter than his forebears and stocky, according to the premier chronicler of the succeeding century, Michael Psellus, Basil was of less than regal appearance—except when on horseback. . . . Also, from quite young, for all his carousing he had displayed a keenness about statecraft, unlike his incorrigibly frivolous, irascible brother and coemperor Constantine, who couldn't have been happier—it was understood—to be relieved himself of all statesmanly charge. Unfortunately Basil's rule, during the first nine years, was spent defending the throne against rebellious military factions whose dynastic leaders saw themselves as its just heirs—it was not absolute in Byzantium that the emperor be born in the purple. These civil strifes had flared up all on the Asia Minor sprawl of the Empire.

     In Europe, the self-proclaimed Tsar of Bulgaria, Samuel II, had been recovering lands formerly fallen into the Byzantine fold. With little struggle he had exceeded those former boundaries to conquer (Byzantine) Thessaly on the Aegean Sea. Once in its capital, Larissa, Samuel stole Thessaly's holiest relic, the corpse of St. Achilleus, to translate to the cathedral at Prespa, which he had recently made his capital of Bulgaria. Basil redirected his army. . . . At the mountain pass called Trajan's Gate, just southeast of Sardica (present-day Bulgaria's capital, Sofiya) Basil's army marched straight into Samuel's crushing hands—it was the year 986.

     Now, in order to maintain his throne against a certain intent pretender back in Asia, who had increased his ranks enormously with recruits along the way to seizing Constantinople, Basil had urgently to reinforce his own, seriously diminished militia. Only Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, could be sought to deliver troops on the adequate scale; for his aid, Basil proposed to deliver his sister, Anna, with the proviso that Vladimir embrace the Orthodox faith, and that Russia wholly sway under the spiritual dictate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This was not too much to ask—Vladimir had been looking for a state religion under which to unify his variously heathen people. . . . It took the better part of a year, but finally a force stormed in on the Black Sea to meet up with the Emperor's approval: titans he himself then lead to his most decisive, bloodiest victory yet! —Vladimir was to be paid.

     Basil stalled. And stalled. . . . A born princess had never married outside Byzantine nobility. To be dispatched so freely by the emperor was outrage! to the Princess, who had not known of the pact; to the people; to the Patriarchate even, that had thereby so much to gain; to the Emperor himself! —Vladimir was tiring.

    He siezed Cherson, Byzantine outpost on the northern shores of the Black Sea. A humiliated Basil packed off a humiliated Anna—to a prince reputed, moreover, to house 800 concubines!

    But Vladimir proved true. Town after town and village after village Russia was converted; all concubines and four earlier wives dismissed; churches and monasteries erected at his word; personally Vladimir godfathered thousands! He is, today, Saint Vladimir of Kiev.

989 blew in with a harassing
winter, a worse a hundred year-old crone
could not remember—waves in the sea froze!
Aurora borealis on the seventh
of April spidered up the sky intently.
For three weeks in the heart of summer blazed
a comet in the night. Portents all! Emperor
to rabble—could not have been more certain.

     On the night of October 25 an earthquake rent Constantinople that split the central dome of Hagia Sophia itself. Basil had sent an envoy with a now replenished infantry to plea with the shifty Prince David of the Upper Tao region of Georgia, who, in 978, had been granted temporary governance of neighboring imperial territory, to cede all his lands, upon his death, to the throne. Not a soul was lost—David graciously complied.

Basil became the first Byzantine general to have mounted his entire army, actually on mules, two for each of possibly as many as 40,000 men, one for the rider, another burdened with his armor and equipment; and so, 600 miles across the Anatolian plain were dashed, to wrest the city of Aleppo, in north Syria, from the siege of the Egyptian Caliph Aziz. On the return, Basil was lavished by some landed aristocracy. Out of the genuine disgust of flaunted riches, once back in Constantinople he issued an edict entitled: "New Constitution of the Pious Basil the Young, by which are Condemned those Rich Men who Amass their Wealth at the Expense of the Poor," whereby numerous of the mighty rich were reduced to no better than the lowliest peasant they had once exploited or neglected. Assured now of the peasantry's devotion; with the power of the provincial aristocracy greatly dissolved, Basil could sit free of insurrectional threat on his throne.

     Recently Doge Pietro Orseolo II had impressed Venice's prowess against Slav pirates on the Adriatic, and, called on by the Pope, against Saracen invaders in south Italy. Basil entered into a treaty with Pietro of his own design, whereby Venice would protect all of the Empire's Dalmatian colonies along the Adriatic, indeed rule them under Byzantine suzerainty, in exchange for rare commercial privileges. As if that were necessary! The offered lands alone would provide Venice—which had no hinterland; no agriculture, but subsisted solely on her industry and trading—with ample breadbasket for a fast-rising population, as well as vast forest timber for shipbuilding—which, in turn, would mean greater maritime protection of Dalmatia, greater expediency in mobilizing troops should other military service be required. Thus, relieved of all potential revolt in his Asian provinces, or themes as they were known, and fortifying, by sharing, his authority at the coastal European reaches of his Empire, Basil had secured his army from spreading thin, to concentrate on recapturing Samuel's regained—but also entire—dominions. (Fierce Samuel had never stopped spreading his Bulgarian Empire throughout the Byzantine Balkans—Basil shrewdly had been biding his time for a meticulous, sweeping counteroffensive campaign.)

Bulgar Slayer

It had always been customary to wage
War in spring, persist through summer; break for the cold
Months—Basil reasoned otherwise, rest solely
Upon the chain of objectives met. He laid

Siege unrelentingly at Vidin, on the Danube,
For entirely eight months until he subdued

The stronghold, while Samuel, who by this time had
Lost half already of his Bulgaria,

Plundered distant enemy Adrianopolis—
A moment of exuberant, no doubt,
And ruthless boost for the losing side.
July 1014 came the coup de grace.

Accounts differ insignificantly—
Well may be that 15,000 of the Tsar's
Troops, in one fell swoop, by a risky sly
Maneuver of the Imperial army,

Were captured by surprise
Where they were camped, at a pass deep in the rough
Vicinity of currently the borders
Of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece;

What ensued . . . would earn Basil rightfully
The sobriquet of Bulgaroctonos,
Affixed to his name for ever afterward
As no other (legislative, diplomatic,

Even martial) deed. One in every hundred
Captives . . . was allowed to keep one eye,
That should lead the blind back through the darkened
Mountain woods to Samuel, who'd fled.

     By the time he was sixty in 1018, Basil could boast of having the Bulgar Lands, indeed all of the Balkan peninsula! under his seal. However implacable in war; never the morbid sort, he was strong in mercy and fairplay in peace—he dismantled a stringent, previous system of levies; and by all means knew how to exact the pledge of fealty. Astoundingly he continued, strictly diplomatically, to annex states into the Byzantine orbit: as far out in Asia as Armenia to the north, hugging the southern shores of the Black Sea, and down to Syria; in Europe, north to the Danube and west to ankle-high on the Italian boot.

     As footnote, it might be said that Samuel II had succeeded in escaping the barbarity only through the heroism of his son. In the nearby town of Prilep, his hopes all shattered—the living nightmare of his men's return!—he was but a vestige of his former terror. He fell into convulsion, lapsed into a coma, and, in all of two days, was ghost.

     Let us return to the spring of 1004:

    Pietro Orseolo is in Constantinople; almost 15 years after its earth shook, still signs show . . . but in splendor, ongoing prosperity, general hubbub and esprit, no other city in all Christendom is apt for Venice as her model. At his side, Pietro has his son Giovanni, whom officially he has associated with himself in rule, raising alarm among his councillors that he is planning secretly to institute a bloodline monarchy; behind them trails a retinue . . . splendidly attired, but so are—they can't help noticing—without gleaming adornments the common grocer and his wife around them, in cloaks and tunics of the vividest pigments (sea greens and blue; such carmine!) that staggers the Venetian eye, so keen—on all goods to further trade with the Lombards and the Germans. The wealthier merchants (of brocades and damasks, of rugs; of carbuncles, spices and tusks; of golden candelabra) wear their robes embroidered with metallic threads, encrusted with amber and turquoise, beryl and pearls.

     Basil, recall, of

Not the drop of ardor for extravagance;
one of least voluptuous of emperors,

whose frugality verges on austerity;
whose carelessness of speech, manner, and hygiene

has stooped more than the most fastidious
of his courtiers, presbyters, and officers,

for once, has spared no sense submitting his guests
to the pomp befitting connubial event:

with banquets, and races; with personal slaves
dispensing wines and ministering toilets;

with pageantry of poets and musicians,
choirs and soloists, acrobats and tamers of lions;

with regattas surrounding the port on
all three waters, flying the rapturous standards—

     Giovanni Orseolo and Maria Argyros are marrying.
     She is distantly related to Basil, who will never have a wife and heirs of his own; whose coemperor Constantine's daughters are much too less than ravishing to betroth away—well, one of them isn't, really, who had been the promised of young Otto III, until lately head of the Western Empire, a rare, charismatic blend of mystic, politician and warrior, who, as vassal of God and Christ on Earth, would have seen united the two greatest apostolic empires. . . . But things don't always turn out as they're meant; and now that princess is, perhaps, a bit too old, a bit too evidently jaded; but even probable is that Pietro, who had been friend and ally of the fallen Otto, in deference to his memory, would consider her an inappropriate spouse for his Giovanni; perhaps a superstition was in place.

    Maria is fragile, but her bearing graceful and her manner pleasant; she is of few but well-linked words, given to prudent speculation; her eyes are bright, her chin is firm, her hands are elegant. Giovanni stands a head above her, not over-proud, and admiring, a becoming air of roguish daydreaming; his touch is bracing. In ceremony, they have accepted each other's ring, symbol of exclusive and eternal wedlock; they have joined their right hands over the Book of the New Covenant.
     We gather now again in the Imperial Chapel for the Office of the Crowning. We have proceeded behind the couple, behind the Doge and Dogaressa, behind the venerable Coemperors of the Holy Byzantine Empire, who will bestow today the matrimonial crowns upon this union, behind the venerable Archbishop Sergios II Manuelitis. Blessed are all who fear the Lord and walk in His ways.

O Holy God, You formed man out of the dust of the earth.
You fashioned woman from his rib and joined her to him . . .

Now, O Master, stretch your hand from Your holy
dwellingplace and join these Your servants . . .

In your indescribable graciousness and great goodness You came to Cana
in Galilee, and blessed the marriage which took place there . . .

—Hear the supplication of us Your servants.
As You were there, also be here with your invisible presence.

Bless this union of Your servants Maria and Giovanni with peaceful
and long life, matrimonial chastity, mutual love in the bond of peace;

long-lived posterity, happiness in their children, and the unfading
crown of glory . . .

     The crowns are placed.
     The couple sip of the wine of the Common Cup. Henceforward their lives will be a common one, one with the other blessed.
     . . . Basil disposes of a complete palace for the couple, in which they stay until the fall, when Maria, quite demonstrably blessed now her union with Giovanni, with her coterie of servants, and all Venetians set sail. . . .

     Three months in late summer and fall of 1005, another comet hovers in the southern skies—over the great lagoon. In 1006, after disastrous harvests in Dalmatia and surrounding Lombardy, Venice is gripped by famine. Plague follows. Giovanni, Maria, and their offspring succumb.
     Picture St. Peter Damian (then merely bishop of Ostia) wringing his hands vindictively—he paints a picture of the princess on her deathbed, that, quoted by John Julius Norwich in his (both invaluable!) A History of Venice and three-volume Byzantium, is of such libellous verve it is worth re-quoting here in full:

"'Such was the luxury of her habits that she scorned even to wash herself in common water, obliging her servants instead to collect the dew that fell from the heavens for her to bathe in. Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. Her rooms, too, were so heavy with incense and various perfumes that it is nauseating for me to speak of them, nor would my readers readily believe it. But this woman's vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take His revenge. For He raised over her the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither, filling her bedchamber with an unbearable odour such that no one—not a handmaiden, nor even a slave—could withstand this dreadful attack on the nostrils; except for one serving-girl who, with the help of aromatic concoctions, conscientiously remained to do her bidding. And even she could only approach her mistress hurriedly, and then immediately withdraw. So, after a slow decline and agonizing torments, to the joyful relief of her friends she breathed her last.'"

*

Selected Bibliography

Byron, Robert. The Byzantine Achievement, Reprinted ed. London and New York 1987
Cantor, Norman F. The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, London and New York 1999
Fine, Jr., John V. A. The Early Medieval Balkans, Ann Arbor, MI 1991
Norwich, John Julius. Byzantium (Vol. II: The Apogee), New York 1996
A History of Venice, New York 1982
Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State, Trans. Joan Hussey. Revised ed. New Brunswick, NJ 1969
Psellus, Michael. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. Revised ed. London 1966
Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church Reprinted ed. London 1991

 

JOSE ARMAN PITA lives in Brooklyn, works in Manhattan and that’s all one needs know.