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Working with Roman history: Attaleiates’ portrayal of the Normans*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2017

Alexander Olson
Alexander Olson*
Affiliation:
Department of History, the University of [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper suggests that Michael Attaleiates, the eleventh-century Byzantine historian, purposefully changed the ethnic label for his contemporary Norman mercenaries from ‘Frank’ to ‘Latin’ in order to portray these figures as ethnically close to the Byzantines of his own day. In addition, it suggests that Attaleiates’ motives for such a portrayal lay in his argument that Norman mercenaries were a potential solution to the empire's challenges with the Seljuks. This article examines the ways in which Attaleiates positively portrayed Norman mercenaries in Byzantium, and how he crafted historical parallels between them and the Latins of Byzantium's Roman past.

Keywords

Michael AttaleiatesMichael PsellosByzantine Empire-historyNormansRoussell de Bailleul
Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2017 

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Support was also provided by the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. I am grateful to Professor Dimitris Krallis and Professor Leonora Neville for their guidance and critiques, and to the anonymous reviewer of the article for helpful suggestions.

References

1 Kazhdan, A., ‘Latins and Franks in Byzantium: perception and reality from the eleventh to the twelfth century,’ in Laiou, A. E. and Mottahedeh, R. P. (eds), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington D.C. 2001) 86 Google Scholar.

2 Twelfth-century Byzantine authors used the word ‘Latins’ (Λατίνοι) frequently. For example, Anna Komnene used the word ‘Latin’ 97 times in the Alexiad, but used the word ‘Celt’ (Κελτός) more often. See Kazhdan, ‘Latins and Franks in Byzantium’, 86; for Kinnamos and Choniates, see Kazhdan, ‘Latins and Franks in Byzantium,’ 86–7. For the utility of the term ‘Byzantine Roman’, see Page, G., Being Byzantine: Greek Identity before the Ottomans (Cambridge 2008) 1–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 In the eleventh century, Byzantine Romans commonly used the term ‘Frank’ for people living in western Europe. Other labels, such as ‘Celt’ were possible, and were used in some cases in the twelfth century. See note above.

4 For discussion of Attaleiates’ role as an advisor, see Krallis, D., Michael Attaleiates and the Politics of Imperial Decline in Eleventh Century Byzantium (Tempe 2012) xxii–xxiii, 13, 94Google Scholar, and especially chapter 4. For examples of Attaleiates’ own account of his role as a counsellor to emperors, see Miguel Ataliates Historia, ed. Martín, I. Pérez (Madrid 2002), 98–99 Google Scholar; trans. A. Kaldellis and D. Krallis (Cambridge 2012) 239–41. Attaleiates makes several references to himself in the text, emphasizing his familiarity with political and military events, and his expertise regarding the empire's decision-makers and their shortcomings. One notable example is Attaleiates’ retrospective portrayal of his discussion with the emperor Romanos IV concerning where to campaign in 1069. In this discussion, Attaleiates allegedly convinced the emperor to change the campaign plans by explaining to him the value of capturing the region around Chliat and preventing the Turks from using it as a base for their raids. For Attaleiates as an advisor to Romanos IV Diogenes, see Angold, M., The Byzantine Empire 1025–1204 (London 1984) 84–5Google Scholar.

5 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 85; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 206–207.

6 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 87; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 208–9.

7 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 146; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 360–61.

8 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 5; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 8–9.

9 Kaldellis, A., ‘A Byzantine argument for the equivalence of all religions: Michael Attaleiates on ancient and modern Romans,’ International Journal of the Classical Tradition 14.1 (2007) 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krallis, D., ‘Attaleiates as a reader of Psellos,’ in Barber, C. and Jenkins, D. T. (eds.), Reading Michael Psellos (Leiden 2006) 171 Google Scholar. Recently, D. Krallis has demonstrated that Attaleiates was not sincere in his praise of the emperor Botaneiates.

10 In particular, see Krallis ‘Michael Attaleiates as a reader of Michael Psellos;’ Kaldellis, ‘A Byzantine argument,’ 15.

11 Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, chapter 4. Examples include an unnamed Norman who singlehandedly destroyed a Turkish catapult outside of Manzikert, see Attaleiates, 82–3 and Krallis, 159. For Krallis’ discussion of Attaleiates’ extended treatment of the Norman Roussel as a ‘heroic ideal,’ see Krallis, Michael Attaleiates and the Politics of Imperial Decline, 157–69 and 215.

12 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 126–7; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 310–311.

13 Attaleiates, ed. Perez Martín, 27; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 60–1. Shepard, J., ‘The uses of the Franks in eleventh-century Byzantium,’ Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (1992) 291 Google Scholar, suggests that this Norman may have been Hervé, an important Norman mercenary in the 1050s and 1060s.

14 Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, 159, for an important example involving the Romans’ failure to support Frankish companies in their defence of the Roman camp against a Turkish attack. See Attaleiates, 232–3 for the account of this event. This particular band of westerners might have been French in general and not necessarily Norman. Attaleiates and his contemporaries, however, were only beginning to make such a distinction between Normans and other Franks. In this passage Attaleiates chooses the term ‘Frank’ which was more generally applied to westerners, although it could still mean ‘Norman.’ He puts them in the same category. For the ethnic makeup of ‘Normans’ in Southern Italy during the eleventh century, see Houben, H., Roger the Second of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, trans. Loud, G. A. and Milburn, D. (Cambridge 2002) 11 Google Scholar.

15 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 93–4; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 224–7.

16 The juxtaposition is, however, not exclusive to Normans and Romans. Even Alp Arslan was presented as magnanimous in the aftermath of the destruction of the Roman army at Manzikert. For this incident, see Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 122–3; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 298–301. The author thanks the anonymous reviewer for this observation.

17 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 7; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis,12–13.

18 For the meaning of ἰσοπολιτεία, see the Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon for ‘equality of civic rights.’ A. Kaldellis and D. Krallis, in their translation of Attaleiates’ History, have translated the word as ‘commonwealth,’ which seems apt.

19 For more on the battle of Troina, see Odorico, P., ‘Le backgammon de Kékaumenos. À propos d'un passage peu clair et d'une bataille peu connue,’ Zbornik Radova 50 (2013) 423–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Malaterra, Geoffrey, The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard, trans. Wolf, K. B. (Ann Arbor 2005) 56–7Google Scholar; Skylitzes, John, Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. Thurn, H. (Berlin 1973) 425–26Google Scholar. For the recent translation, see Skylitzes, Ioannes, A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057, trans. Wortley, J. (Cambridge 2011) 400 Google Scholar; Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 7; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 12–13.

21 John Skylitzes, ed. H. Thurn (Berlin 1973) 425–26; trans. Wortley, 400.

22 For examples of Attaleiates using the term ‘Franks’ (Φράγγοι), see Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 127, 135, 212; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 310–311, 332–33, and 542–43. There are many more examples in the text.

23 For this anonymous leader, possibly Hervé, as a Latin, see Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 27; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 60–61; for Crispin and Roussel, see Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 93 and 135; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 224–25, 332–33.

24 See above.

25 A simple search on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae will yield 7 uses of the word in all of Psellos’ corpus (and it was not used in the Chronographia), and 9 uses in all of Keroularios’ corpus.

26 For Attaleiates as a probable reader of Appian, see Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, 59–60. See also Kaldellis, ‘A Byzantine argument,’ 22. See also Pérez Martín's introduction to Miguel Ataliates: Historia, l-lii. Attaleiates quotes Appian in the Historia, 221.

27 Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, 52–69.

28 Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, 51. Also see Pérez Martín, lii.

29 Psellos, Michael, The Historia Syntomos, trans. Aerts, W. J. (Berlin 1990) 5 Google Scholar.

30 Psellos, Michael, Chronographia, ed. Reinsch, D. R. and Kambylis, A. (Berlin 2014) 7, 24. 20–21 (p. 217)Google Scholar. For the identification of this group of barbarian mercenaries as Normans who came to Byzantium by way of Italy, see Shepard, ‘The uses of the Franks,’ 292–3.

31 Cassius Dio, 1.7.1. This excerpt is evidence of the Roman claim of descent from Aeneas. It is apparent that the relationship with Aeneas meant that his other descendants, ie. ‘Latins,’ were related to the Romans.

32 Cassius Dio, 1.7.1.

33 App. Reg. 1.1.1; Dionysios of Halicarnassos, Roman Antiquities, 1.64.1–4.

34 Plut. Rom. 33.5.

35 Cassius Dio, 4.17 and 7.32.1–32.10.

36 App. Reg. I.13. Appian's Roman History, trans. White, H. (New York 1955–62)Google Scholar.

37 My thinking on historical parallels has been inspired by O'Brien, E., ‘Arms and letters: Julius Caesar, the commentaries of Pope Pius II, and the politicization of papal imagery,’ Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009) 1075 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. O'Brien discusses a specific example of how a medieval political figure and historian (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini) used a historical parallel with the classics (Julius Caesar) in order to hint to his audience how the author intended the future to unfold.

38 Cassius Dio, 7.32.10.

39 App. BC. I.3.23.

40 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 15; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 12–13 and 30–31.

41 For the Maniakatoi, see Shepard, ‘The uses of the Frank,’ 284–285.

42 For Varangians, Rus, and Scandinavians accompanying Maniakes in Sicily, see Shepard, ‘The uses of the Franks,’ 282. There were other ways of connecting ancient ethnic labels with groups contemporary to middle Byzantium. For example, the connection between Albans and Albanians, see Branousi, E. L., ‘Oἱ ὅροι Ἀλβανοὶ καὶ Ἀρβανίται καὶ ἡ πρώτη μνεία τοῦ ὁμονύμου λαοῦ είς τὰς πηγὰς τοῦ ἐνδεκάτου αἰῶνος,’ Σύμμεικτα 2 (1970) 207–54Google Scholar.

43 App. Hann. 6.39.

44 Plut. Rom. 37.1. See also, Dionysios of Halicarnassos, Roman Antiquities, 1.71, in which it is stated that Numitor was the grandfather of Romulus and Remus, and that Albans founded Rome as a colony.

45 App. Hann. 6.39.

46 App. Pun. 12.89.

47 P. Magdalino, ‘The Byzantine background to the First Crusade,’ Canadian Institute of Balkan Studies (Toronto 1996) 11.

48 Magdalino, ‘The Byzantine background to the First Crusade,’ 12. For this exception, see Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 139; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 342–3.

49 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 158; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 394–5.

50 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 159–160; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 396–9.

51 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 162; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 404–5.

52 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 162; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 404–5.

53 Attaleiates, ed. Pérez Martín, 162; trans. Kaldellis and Krallis, 406–7.

54 For background on Roman identity and ancestry in Byzantium, see Kaldellis, A., ‘From Rome to New Rome, from empire to nation-state: reopening the question of Byzantium's Roman identity,’ in Grig, L. and Kelly, G. (eds.), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford 2012)Google Scholar.

55 Cassius Dio, 16.43.

56 Psellos, Michael, The Historia Syntomos, trans. Aerts, W. J. (Berlin 1990) 21 Google Scholar.

57 For further discussion of Attaleiates and Psellos seeing western European ‘foreigners’ as semi-Roman by virtue of their membership in an ἰσοπολιτεία, and as desirable leaders on account of their military deeds on behalf of the Roman state, see Krallis, Michael Attaleiates, 168–9.

58 On the marriage alliance and negotiation, see A. G. Panagopoulou, Οι διπλωματικοί γάμοι στο Βυζάντιο 6ος-12ος αιώνας (Athens 2006); Loud, G. A., The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (New York 2000) 211–12Google Scholar. On the request for Norman manpower, see Stephenson, P., Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204 (Cambridge 2000) 158 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Houts, Elizabeth, ‘Normandy and Byzantium,’ Byzantion 55 (1985) 553 Google Scholar. Van Houts discusses a Norman source, William of Poitiers’ History of William the Conqueror, which includes a reference to the Byzantine Roman emperor's desire for William to be his neighbour, so that he could stop Turkish incursions.

59 Shepard, J., ‘Aspects of Byzantine attitudes and policy towards the West in the tenth and eleventh centuries,’ in Howard-Johnston, J. D. (ed.) Byzantium and the West, c.850-c.1200: Proceedings of the XVIII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. Oxford 30th March-1st April, 1984 (Amsterdam 1988) 101 Google Scholar.