From a Groom to an Emperor – Part III – „The one who sleeps beside”.

It took ten years before Empress's prophetic words were fulfilled. In the meantime, Basil steadily climbed the Byzantine hierarchical ladder, mostly because a favorable combination of circumstances allowed it.

The most powerful man in Byzantium at that time was Emperor’s uncle Bardas. Bardas was a man of luxurious administrative abilities. In 865, he removed the parakoimōmenos Damian whose influence he was afraid of, and appointed Basil on his place.

Parakoimōmenos (Greek word for “The one who sleeps beside”) was the head of royal nuptial bed, something like a “guardian” of emperor’s bedroom who, due to the fact that he stayed close to the emperor, had the opportunity to be at the source of valuable information. This position was usually reserved for eunuchs, but in Basil’s case, they made an exception. Very soon, Bardas regretted for promoting Basil on such high position, and he expressed that with these words: “I got rid of the fox; but in his place I have put a lion who will end by devouring us all.”

The emperor’s uncle and former emperor’s groom were now worst enemies. In April 866, during the campaign for Crete, an island that the Arabs captured from the Byzantines, Basil and his men killed Bardas.

Still enchanted, a month after Basil’s return to Constantinople, Michael III gave the crown of co-emperor to his little pet. The stranger from Thrace officially became the second man of the empire and just one step behind the throne.

Afraid of Emperor’s capricious and sometimes unbalanced nature, Basil left nothing to chance. He devised a plot. In the night between September 23 and 24, 867, after a feast on the court, his men killed a drunken Emperor in his bedroom. 

Phrygian Dynasty was succeeded by new Macedonian dynasty. This new dynasty will become the most famous Byzantine dynasty that ruled almost for two centuries over the Roman Empire (867-1056).

Staggering rise of ambitious and ruthless newcomer, crowned with legends that are not deprived of historical background, is convincing testimony to the fact that the path to the Byzantine throne was open to everyone and that the biggest “nobody” could have climbed on the very top of the Roman Empire.

This was typical for early (4-7 century) and middle Byzantine (7-11 century).  In the late Byzantine Empire (11-15 century), just a member of some of the most prominent noble families could have become an emperor.  

To read Part IV – Basil the Noble, click HERE.

To return to Part II – Little Theophilus and Big Basil, click HERE.

read more...

German opera – Evelyn Waugh

When in June 1941 famous English writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) returned from Greek battlefield, where he participated in the battle for Crete as a British soldier, he was asked to describe his first war experience.

Everyone expected an extensive report. However, Evelyn Waugh was brief. He wrote only this:

„War is like German opera, too long and too loud“

read more...

Cleopatra, the first tycoon in the history of human kind!

With the wealth that was worth today’s hundred billion dollars, this Egyptian queen was also and the first victim of tabloid writing: the myth of her as a "queen of whores” was created by her biggest adversary, Emperor Octavian.

She was a child of incest, born as a goddess, queen at the age of 18 and the richest leader in the Mediterranean before she turned 20.  When she was 21, she slept with the most powerful ruler of that time to protect the best interests of her country. She married her own brothers when she needed them and killed them when they ceased to be useful. She became a mother of four children, and never had family problems, because the fathers of her children, already married, lived on the other side of the sea. We are talking about Cleopatra, the last in line of the great Egyptian Pharaohs.

She was not Egyptian, as many believe – she was Greek. Her hair was not black, it was more likely the color similar to mead. Although she is remembered as a seductress, it is difficult to speak of her as beauty by Hollywood standards. She was nothing like, for example, Angelina Jolie: she was tiny, like a little bird, and had a distinctive hooked nose. She spoke several languages and was a gifted speaker. She loved sex, but she loved more a good conversation. She wasn’t a nymphomaniac - she lost her innocence with Julius Caesar. If she and her ancestors were killing each other, they didn’t think of it as a crime; if they practiced incest, there was no word for it in their time.

Cleopatra VII was already in her time (she was born in 69 BC) something that we call today “celebrity”. During her lifetime, myths, rumors and speculation surrounded her, and they followed her name even when she died. If she was, with the wealth that was worth today’s hundred billion dollars, the first tycoon in the history of human kind, she was also and the first victim of tabloid writing.  The myth of her as a “queen of whores”, which follows her name to this day, was created by the Romans, who preferred to deal with her looks and alleged lust more then with her extraordinary intellectual capacity.

In her latest book “Cleopatra. A Life”, American historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, Stacy Schiff claims that the idea of sexually insatiable queen, dangerous and starved with blood and power, was created by Cleopatra's biggest adversary, Emperor Octavian.

Cleopatra grew up in a luxury of Alexandria. A whole squad of servants and teachers took care of her. Thanks to them, she gained an excellent education, which was generally Greek. Her schoolbooks were works of two historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. She mastered the oratory skill and spoke at least nine languages. 

Such education was not reserved just for her. Women in Egypt always had a lot of rights, and in Cleopatra’s time, their independence was almost equal to that which exists today. When it comes to marriage, women themselves chose their husbands, and in case of divorce, to which they also had the right, the stronger half had to support his ex-wife until he pays of the dowry. Woman’s property was sacrosanct, and in divorce proceedings, the court was always on the side of women and children.

Schiff states that women had very active role in social life: they were able borrow money, to be priestesses in temples, they initiated court proceedings and steered boats.  They dealt with a variety of jobs and were more than successful. It is believed that women possessed a third of Egypt’s wealth.  Herodotus wrote that Egypt is a country in which "women urinate standing up, and men sitting down".

Cleopatra came to the throne at a time when Egypt began to decline, and Rome was expanded to its borders. However, despite that decline, in the height of her power she ruled over the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Schiff says that she was more than capable ruler: she was skillful, cunning, she knew how to suppress the rebellion and to relieve hunger, how to manage money and when to build a fleet.

According to her father's will, Cleopatra shared the throne with her ten-years-younger brother Ptolemy XIII, with whom she was married. It is likely that even her parents were brother and sister, because in Egypt, incest was a tradition for centuries.  Cleopatra's ancestors, Greeks from Macedonia, adopted that tradition and they have ruled Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great. Schiff says that this means that Cleopatra was Egyptian, just as much Elizabeth Taylor was. 

However, Cleopatra didn’t want to share the throne with her brother. She got rid of Ptolemy XIII in a civil war while they were still teenagers, and later on the rest of her closest family – she poisoned her second brother, with whom she was also married, and after him her own sister, which was showing way too much ambition.

Besides being a skilled ruler, she was adorned and with persistence and enthusiasm. When she ended in exile because of her manipulations, she returned to the palace, from which she was thrown out, smuggled in a sack. Julius Caesar was already in the palace, because he used political turmoil to rule over Egypt.  Although it is concluded that the royal couple was tied with their charisma and intellect, and that there was a strong sexual attraction between them, it still isn’t possible to find an answer to a question how did Cleopatra succeeded to persuade Caesar to support her and independent Egypt. Whatever she did, it will still remain recorded in history that Cleopatra saved her country by seducing Caesar.

Very soon, they had a son whom Cleopatra named Caesarion - Little Caesar. She presented her lover to her people by sailing the Nile with him for nine weeks. Whether because of Cleopatra or something else, Caesar was fascinated with Egypt. Alexandria, from where Cleopatra ruled her Empire, was wonderfully beautiful city, with fascinating mechanical wonders such as hydraulic lifts and machines that used coins to work.  In short, Rome was a simple province in comparison to the capital of Egypt. However, Caesar was not just thrilled with architectural solutions. Inspired by Egypt, on his return to Rome he launched a series of reforms, laid the cornerstone of the public library, asked for a census and envisioned a series of constructions that were similar to the sophisticated Egyptian dams and dikes.

When Caesar was killed in 44 BC, Cleopatra enthroned Caesarion as the ruler. But she still needed the support of Rome, and that is, Mark Antony. Cleopatra mesmerized the new Roman ruler, who was considered as a great womanizer, to such extent that Mark Antony gave her the library at Pergamom, Cyprus and almost all cities on the Phoenician coast.

Cleopatra remained with him for ten years. Mark Antony, in contrary to Roman custom, even demanded to be buried in the same grave with her. Death eventually separated them.

In a civil war for power over Rome, Octavian defeated Mark Antony. After that, Mark Antony committed suicide. After his suicide, Cleopatra tried to negotiate with the new Emperor her future and the future of her children - Caesarion and three other she had with Mark Antony. Despite all her intelligence, skill and education, she wasn’t successful. Octavian killed Caesarion as the oldest child, and spared the lives of younger children.

Cleopatra ended her life by committing a suicide.  According to legend, she poisoned herself. At the time of her death, she was only 39 years old.

read more...

War of Goddesses!

Angry because Themistocles demanded of them to pay taxes, allies of Athens once refused to do so. Themistocles was furious and sent envoys on the island of his allies in order to deliver them a threatening message.

Two powerful goddesses, the goddess of power, and the goddess of persuasion, will force the allies to comply and pay the tax to Athens - threatened the Athenian statesman.

Islanders, however, answered with the same measure.

We are unable to pay - the people answered to Themistocles. Two goddesses that are more powerful do not allow us: the goddess of the poverty and the goddess of despair.

read more...

Better Side of Nicotine!

Each pack of cigarettes has a warning about the brutal truth of harmful effects of tobacco, but it does not inform that smoking bans around the world are creating a new trend – the number of marriages, friendships and close relationships is increasing between the people that are pounded in the rooms for smokers.

Each pack of cigarettes tells us that smoking causes cancer of all possible internal organs, that it has negative consequences for pregnancy...  But, the pack does not say that smoking, in a way, modeled today’s culture of entire civilization and that in recent decades it shaped the lifestyle of modern men and women.

Anti-smoking mania that is currently affecting the western world came to the extent in which the cigarettes are thrown out of the cultural and social life.

Besides prohibiting the advertisement of cigarettes, their display in films and on television also is avoided, and recently, a great "rewriting of history" is in fashion.

In the United States, they erased a cigarette from the hand of the famous Beatle, Paul McCartney, on the cover of re-released album "Abbey Road", and the French have removed cigarettes from the paintings of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, that adorned their ceremonial post stamps. If smokers, hundreds of years ago, were so "notorious", the question is, how would the present-day popular culture look like, and who would, for example, instead of Humphrey Bogart, stand for a cultural icon of the 20th century. For, although Bogart died back in 1957, every kid now knows that he was a great charmer, who never took a cigar out of his mouth. He based his image on a specific method of smoking, holding a cigar in his mouth between two smokes. Such smoking even entered in the Oxford Dictionary, as a verb “bogarting”.

If the new technologies initiate remastering of the old movies, like the French did with their stamps, it would be likely that "Casablanca", from a cult film, will become a comedy, in which the main actor is doing something strange with his hands. Richard Klein, a professor of French literature and the author of “Cigarettes are Sublime”, a kind of history of smoking, said that “Casablanca" is a type of a film in which cigarettes are providing specific light and character. Klein noted another significant "contribution" of Bogart’s cigarettes; if there was not so much smoking in Casablanca, Franklin Roosevelt would not be so thrilled with the film in 1942, and he would not set up a meeting with Churchill and De Gaulle in Casablanca at the beginning of 1943, where there was made a significant improvement in the U.S. and France relations. America, then, ceased to maintain relations with the Government in Vichy and De Gaulle’s move was acknowledged,  and who knows how the course of World War II would have been if Roosevelt and De Gaulle had not met in Casablanca.  Klein also noted that Hitler was sworn anti-smoker, and that, because of this, smoking at that time was accepted as a kind of patriotic duty.

When it comes to popular culture, one should ask what would happen to the famous scene from the movie "Basic Instinct" in which Sharon Stone crossed legs and, close-up, showed her crotch and became a symbol of sexuality for teenagers. To reiterate, this is performed at a hearing where she was a suspect for murder, during which she lit a cigarette, although they cautioned her that it is prohibited. And, in the fatal moment, she uttered a "cult" line: "What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking?"

Smoking, however, is not only an integral part of the cultural heritage of human civilization. Cigarettes did for a long time kill our internal organs, but with an extremely proactive marketing of tobacco companies, cigarettes became a significant social factor. Hypothetically speaking, if no one smoked, the men around the globe would not have a significant advantage in winning the women. For years the older seducers teach kids that you should always have a lighter with you even if you do not smoke, because you never know when a girl needs a fire. For a long time, the first lit cigarette usually went after the first intercourse, and for boys it was the entrance into the world of men.

Cigarettes, on the other hand, had a significant impact in the "conquest of freedom" of weaker gender in their fight for gender equality, and, eventually, they became a symbol of female emancipation and independence. Puritans in America, in the first period after the Second World War thought that there is a subconscious link between the consumption of cigarettes and sexuality, emphasizing "the rigidity of the situation in which a woman puts something between the lips."

So, during the seventies, picture of a woman with a cigarette represented a symbol of independence and freedom from the conservative morality, and that was embodied in an advertising campaign for cigarettes, "Virginia Slims" with the slogan "You've come a long way, baby." This send a message: a woman that smokes a cigarette is a free woman, she enjoys it independently from the man who wants to approach her with a lighter.

In Europe, tobacco control is gaining momentum in the last decade, while in America this struggle is far more present in people's lives, which is why America has become known as a country where smoking is forbidden even in your own apartments because the neighbors may sue you because you are poisoning them through the ventilation system.

Since 1965, the percentage of smokers in America dropped from 45 to about 20 percent of the total population. Hannah Arendt, German political theorist of Jewish origin, had once written that the smokers in line reminiscent her of an unpleasant scenes from her youth, when Jews were still entering the cattle wagons on their way to the gas chambers. That feeling smokers may experience at any airport in Europe, where visitors are forced to seek special rooms for smoking, and where they are pushed as in a nature reserve.  In these “smoking reserves” , however, it is easy to see that relations among people are somewhat closer, because, as non-smokers mind their own business around the airport, smokers chat in a small space.

 A
In America there is a phenomenon of "smoker's lobby" in large corporations, where the closest relations are made  in the very smoking rooms. This is, maybe, best shown in the most popular sitcom in the last decade, "Friends", when one of the main characters deliberately starts to smoke because she saw that those colleagues of hers who go on smoke-break are getting along better with the head of the company.

Therefore, among smokers who are becoming a new legal category, a new kind of solidarity and opportunity for bonding is created. It is interesting that Ireland was the first country in Europe to introduce a general smoking ban, and that included smoking in pubs, which was seen as a major blow to their local culture. The first effect was a decline in visits to pubs, but in the long term, sociologists have noted another effect - increase in the number of marriages. This was explained with increased interaction between the smokers who were, after the ban, forced to attend small spaces for smokers. In simple words, the average guy in smoking zone has better chances with a girl.

United Kingdom also adopted a total ban on smoking in 2007, which led to the closure of many pubs, particularly low-profit local "holes" for fun for the people in the neighborhood, who felt that it was not right to drink beer without a cigarette.  The respected British weekly newspaper The Economist noted that in the first two years of ban existence, about 27 pubs per week was closed on the island. Some pubs have managed to adopt by attract wine lovers, and almost all pubs have started to serve food (which until recently was unthinkable).

With a change of pub character, "lifestyle" of an average Briton was also changed.  Until the smoking ban, 75 percent of Britons has visited pubs, of which two thirds were considered as regular guests. This is how the journalist of The Economist described a new situation:  “The tables are sticky with half-dried beer. There is a wide range of beers to choose from, but often it tastes as if the pipes have not been cleaned for weeks. Until smoking was banned from pubs in 2007, the front half of pubs stank of cigarettes while the back half was suffused with a smell from the toilets. Sadly, today, the tables are as sticky as ever and, while the cigarette smoke has gone, that has only allowed the toilets' odour to pervade the entire place.”

The only argument which "fighters for the rights of smokers" can not deny are many medical reports that prove that smoking is not only harming health of those who smoke, but people around them to. This is why these bans are slowly conquering the world. Greece is one of the last European countries that was scheduled to introduce a ban in restaurants from September 1 this year, but that was unrealistic in a country that still has 40 percent of smokers. Association of restaurateurs responded with initiative “ashtrays on the tables again”, and the Greeks continued to smoke like chimneys. Most bizarre ban on smoking in Europe is certainly the one in Amsterdam. In front of a certain coffee shop, housed in the middle of Red Light District, opposite to the local church, stands a large sign: "If you smoke marijuana, which is mixed with tobacco, then smoking is permitted only outside. If you smoke marijuana without tobacco, then smoking is allowed inside."

The first ban

The first known smoking ban was introduced in Mexico, in 1575, and involved the use of tobacco in the churches, in all the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Then the Turkish Sultan Murad fourth banned smoking in the Ottoman Empire, and Pope Urban Seventh threatened to "excommunicate anyone who is caught taking tobacco in the church, whether he is smoking, chewing or inhaling it through the nose."

The first "secular" building where smoking was prohibited is the old government building in Wellington, New Zealand, where smoking was prohibited in 1876. The reasons for this prohibition, however, were not medical but in fear of fire, since this building is still the second largest wooden building in the world.

read more...