macedon - Quaestura exercitus: The evidence of lead seals

Quaestura exercitus: The evidence of lead seals_01

Wednesday, 5. March 2008, 12:35:18

Florin Curta

One of the most controversial issues of the history of the sixth-century Balkans is the role barbarians, especially Slavs, had in the transformation of the Roman world that led to the "fall of the old order"1 and the rise of the new empire, which historians call Byzantium. The withdrawal of the Roman administration and armies from the Balkans in the early seventh century is viewed by many as a result of the Slavic Landnahme. More often than not, accounts of the early Slavic history focus on the destruc¬tion brought by the invading hordes to the flourishing cities of the Bal¬kans. The classical urban culture was unable to withstand the strain of the barbarian invasions. As with the Germans in the West, the Slavic "obscure progression"2 led to the slow dissolution of the Roman frontier and the Empire finally succumbed to the growth of forces beyond its control.

Archaeological and other evidence does not confirm this over-simpli¬fied picture. Long before the first Slavic raid attested by historical sources, the urban landscape in the Balkans began to change. However, the crucial issue of how the urban life ended in the Balkans has often been approached from a rather narrow perspective, in attempt to link archaeologically ob¬servable phenomena with historical narratives, with particular barbarian raids or earthquakes. In most cases, however, ancient cities contracted and regrouped around a defensible acropolis, usually dominate by the church.3
The process of disintegration of the urban nucleus into small settlement areas was accompanied by the subdivision into smaller rooms of formerly finer buildings, by the re-use of various architectural ele¬ments, and by new buildings with mud and brick walls.4
Large civitates were replaced by comparatively smaller forts, or coexisted with them, as Justinian, or, more probably, one of his Vaubans named Viktorinos, de¬signed and implemented an enormous program of fortification in the northern and central Balkans.5
These dramatic changes in Balkan settle¬ment patterns coincided and were most likely associated with a sharp decline of rural settlements and economy. It has recently been argued that instead of large or medium-size estates, the primarily military population of the northern Balkans relied on the state supplies, themselves based on the central distribution of the annona.6
However, Justinian's response to the problems of the Danube frontier and its Balkan hinterland was not limited to his building and fortification program. A series of imperial decrees attempted to remodel the administrative structure of the Balkans.

Novel 41 of May 536 introduced the quaestura exercitus, a new adminis¬trative unit combining territories at a considerable distance from each other, such as Moesia Inferior, Scythia Minor, some islands in the Aegean Sea, Caria, and Cyprus, all of which were ruled from Odessos (present-day Varna) by the "prefect of Scythia". According to John Lydus, the prefect of the quaestura was given a special forum for a court of justice and an entire staff, both of which were "generated from the prefecture [of the East]."7
The only link between all these provinces was the sea and the navigable Danube. Since Cyprus, the Aegean islands, and Caria repre¬sented the most important naval bases of the empire, but were also among the richest provinces, it has been argued that the rationale behind Justini¬an's measure must have been to secure both militarily and financially the efficient defense of the Danube frontier. Some viewed the quaestor exercitus as the most important military commander of the Thracian dio¬cese, who also had the Danube fleet under his command, and even sug¬gested that the quaestura was an antecedent of the first known theme, the Karabisianoi.8 Others rightly pointed out that the evidence of the written sources suggests that the quaestor exercitus had financial, not military attributions.9

Ever since A. H. M. Jones interpreted the quaestura exercitus as an administrative reform designed to ensure a continuous food supply for troops stationed in the northern Balkans, scholars have insisted on the financial attributions of the quaestor. His main responsibility seems to have been the annona for the army in Moesia Inferior and Scythia Minor. The quaestura redirected taxes collected in Caria, Cyprus and the Aegean islands towards the troops stationed in these two provinces, either in cash (to pay the soldiers) or, more likely, in kind. The distribution of amphora types in the Balkans suggests the existence of a distribution network un¬der the direct control of the state, as the most common amphorae, such as Late Roman 1 and 2 and the so-called spatheia, while finds of Palestinian, amphorae (Late Roman 4-6), in particular the so-called "Gaza amphora" seem to indicate a "free-market" commercial zone restricted to areas di¬rectly accessible by sea.10
The distribution of Palestinian amphorae coin¬cides, however, with that of Phocaean Red Slip Wares (also known as Late Roman C), produced in Phocaea in western Anatolia. Such wares began to appear in significant quantities on the western Black Sea coast after ca. 470 and remained relatively frequent until about 580." They were also abundant at Argos during the first half of the sixth century.12
On the site of Diocletian's palace in Split, they were still in use after 600.13 Extensive excavations on sites in the interior, such as Ratiaria/Archar, Iatras/Krivina, Karanovo (Bulgaria) and Sacidava/Musait (Romania) pro¬duced only small quantities.14
At Sadovec, however, Phocaean Red Slip wares are completely absent.15 All sites in the interior produced large quantities of amphora shards, which suggests that the relative absence of Phocaean Red Slip wares is not an accident.

This picture is confirmed by finds of lead seals. There are 82 seals known so far that were dated to the sixth or seventh century (see Appen¬dix). More than half have only the name of the owner without any office or title. They were most likely commercial seals, with a variety of names, sometimes represented by more than one seal (such as Damianos, George Theodoulos, Leontius, or Peter). There are also cases of namesakes: four different individuals named John, three named Peter, and three other named Theodore. Judging from the evidence of such names as Boutzios, Bassos, or Moldozos, a small number of seals may have belonged to local merchants of Thracian origin.16
The largest number of seals was found at Tomis/Constanta, a site that also produced a large quantity of amphorae and imported pottery.17
Inscriptions attest the presence of merchants from the East in Tomis, and wine seems to have been an important import: at least one trader from Alexandria was engaged in supplying Tomis with large quantities of wine.18
The westernmost seal found in the region is that of Calarasi, on the left bank of the Danube, just across from the important city of Durostorum/Silistra. This clearly suggests that the distribution of seals had something to do with access to the Danube or to the sea.

In addition, two lead seals of clear Aegean provenance (one from Pergamon, the other from Ephesus), found in Dobrudja, indicate com¬mercial contacts with western Asia Minor and regions close to, if not part of, the quaestura exercitus. No such seals was found in the rest of the Balkans, and this distribution strongly suggests that commodities traded by seal owners did not reach the interior. Whether this is due to the state-run distribution network or should be explained in terms of a specific organization of trade in the Balkan provinces, cannot be decided on the basis of seals alone. The sharp contrast between the relatively large number of seals in Scythia Minor and Moesia Inferior, on one hand, and the ab¬sence of such finds in the rest of the Balkans, including coastal areas, on the other, suggests, however, that there is more here than just a connec¬tion between sea trade and commodities moving in the interior. By con¬trast, there are very few commercial seals in Crimea, despite the rela¬tively large number of sixth- and seventh-century seals found in Cherso-nesus and other sites in the region19

1 Mark Whittow, The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025 (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1996), pp. 69-95.
2 Lucien Musset, "Entre deux vagues d'invasions: la progression slave dans 1'histoire europeenne du Haut Moyen Age," in Gli Slavi occidentali e meridionali nell'alto Medioevo (Spoleto, 1983), pp. 981-1028.
3 Even sixth-century foundations, such as the city excavated by Bulgarian archaeolo¬gists at Carevec, near Veliko Tarnovo seem to have been built according to the "contrac¬tion model". See Vencislav Dinchev, "Zikideva-an example of Early Byzantine urbanism in the Balkans", Archaeologia Bulgarica 1 (1997), 54-77.
4 Subdivison: Ludwika Press and Tadeusz Sarnowski, "Novae. Romisches Legionslager und fruhbyzantinische Stadt an der unteren Donau," Antike Welt 21 (1990), 242. Re-use of architectural elements and walls of mud and brick: Veneciia Liubenova "Selishteto ot rimskata i rannovizantiiskata epokha," in Pemikl. Poselishten zhivot na khalma Krakra ot Vkhil. pr. n.e. do VI v. na n.e., ed. by Teofil Ivanov (Sofia, 1981), p. 112.
3 For Viktorinos and the implementation of Justinian's forts, see Dennis Feissel, "L'architecte Viktorinos et les fortifications de Justinien dans les provinces balkaniques," Bulletin de la ЅосШѓ nationale des antiquaires de France 1988,136-46. For Justinianic forts in present-day Bulgaria, see Dimitar Ovcharov, Vizantiiski i balgarski kreposti V-Xvek (Sofia, 1982).
6 Florin Curta, "Peasants as 'makeshift soldiers for the occasion': sixth-century settle¬ment patterns in the Balkans", in Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, ed. by Thomas S. Burns and John W. Eadie (East Lansing, 2001), pp. 199-217. For annona in the Late Roman cities, see Jean Durliat, De la ville antique a la ville byzantine. Leprobleme des subsistances (Rome, 1990).
7 John Lydus, On Powers II 28. For novel 41, see Corpus luris Civilis, vol. 3, ed. R. Schoell and G. Kroll (Berlin, 1954), p. 262. According to John, Justinian set aside for the prefect of Scythia 'Чпгее provinces, which were almost the most prosperous of all" (On Powers II 29). For the quaestura exercitus, see Ernest Stein, Histoire du Bas-Em-pire (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 474—475; Paul Lemerle, "Invasions et migrations dans les Balkans depuis la fin de l'epoque romaine jusqu'au VIH-e siecle", in Essais sur le monde byzantin (London, 1980), p. 286; Michael F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economic. 300-1450(Cambridge, 1985), p.404; Samuel Szadeczky-Kardoss, "Bemer-kungen Uber den 'Quaestor Iustinianus exercitus'. Zur Frage der Vorstufen der Themen-verfassung," in From Late Antiquity to Early Byzantium. Proceedings of the Byzantino-logical Symposium in the 16th International Eirene Conference, ed. by Vladimir Vavrinek (Prague, 1985), pp. 61-64; Michael Whitby, The Emperor Maurice and His Historian: Theopylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare (Oxford, 1988), p. 70. The most comprehensive analysis of the quaestura exercitus is now that of Sergei Torbatov, "Quaestura exercitus: Moesia Secunda and Scythia under Justinian," Archaeologia Bulgarica 1 (1997), 78-87.
8 Szadeczky-Kardoss, "Bemerkungen," pp. 61 and 63.
9 Torbatov, "Quaestura exercitus," p. 80.
10 Catherine Abadie-Reynal, "Ceramique et commerce dans le bassin eg6en du IV-e au VII-е siecle," in Homines et richesses dans I'Empire byzantin, ed. by G. Dagron, vol. 1 (Paris, 1989), p. 159. For Palestinian amphorae in sixth-century Gaul, see Michel Bonifay and Dominique Pieii, "Amphores du V-e au VH-e s. a Marseille: nouvelles donn6es sur la typologie et le contenu," Journal of Roman Archaeology 8 (1995), 97. At least one cargo of amphorae, that of the Yassi Ada shipwreck, was interpreted in connection with the quaestura exercitus. According to such views, the ship sunken off the southwestern coast of Turkey not long after 625 transported the annona for distribution to the Byzan¬tine troops in the East. Peter G. van Alfen, "New light on the 7th-c. Yassi Ada shipwreck: capacities and standard sizes of LRA1 amphoras," Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996), 213.
11 A. Minchev, "The late Roman fine ware import to the western Black Sea coast," in Ancient Bulgaria. Papers presented to the International Symposium on the Ancient His¬tory and A rchaeology of Bulgaria, University of Nottingham, 1981, ed. by A. G. Poulter (Nottingham, 1983), p. 197; Andrew Poulter, "The use and abuse of urbanism in the Danubian provinces during the Later Roman Empire," in The City in Late Antiquity, ed. by John Rich (New York, 1992), p. 130; Andrei Oparj, Aspecte ale viefii economice din pmvincia Scythia (secolele IV-VIp.Ch.). Pmducfia ceramicii locale si de import (Bu¬charest, 1996), p. 137. See Michael Mackensen, "Mediterrane Sigillata, Lampen und Amphoren," in Invillino-Ibligo in Friaul I. Die romische Siedlung und das spatantik-fr&hmittelalterliche Castrum, ed. by Volker Bierbrauer (Munich, 1987), p. 235.
12 Abadie-Reynal, "Ceramique et commerce," p. 155.
13 Ivancica Dvorzak Schrunk, "Dioklecijanova palaca od 4. do 7. stoljeca u svjetlu keramickih nalaza," Vjesnik Arheoloskog Muzeja u Zagrebu 22 (1989), 94.
14 Georgi Kuzmanov, "Ceramica del primo periodo bizantino a Ratiaria," Ratiariensia 3-4 (1987), 112; Burkhard Bottger, "Die Gefafikeramik aus dem Kastell latrus," in latrus-Krivina. Spatantike Befestigung undfriihmittelalterliche Siedlung an der unteren Donau, vol. I (Berlin, 1979), p. 62; C. Scorpan, "Descoperiri arheologice diverse de la Sacidava," Pontica 11 (1978), 160-161; B. Borisov, "Issledovaniia rannevizantiiskoi keramiki iz Slivenskogo okruga," Thracia 8 (1988), 90-118.
15 Michael Mackensen, "Amphoren und Spatheia von Golemannovo Kale," in Die spat-antiken Befestigungen von Sadovec (Bulgarien). Ergebnisse der deutsch-bulgarisch-osterreichischen Ausgrabungen 1934-1937, ed. by Syna Uenze (Munich, 1992), p. 235.
16 loan Barnea, "Antroponime traco-dace pe sigilii bizantine," Thraco-Dacica 8 (1987), 203-206.
17 G. Papuc, "Ceramics rotnana ttrzie cu decor $tampilat descoperita la Edificiul Ro¬man cu mozaic din Tomis," Pontica 6 (1973), 153-192; A. RSdulescu, "Amfore cu inscriptii de la Edificiul roman cu mozaic din Tomis," Pontica 6 (1973), 193-208.
18 Merchant from the East: IGL 23,44. Wine trader from Alexandria: IGL 28. See also Poulter, "The use and abuse of urbanism," p. 127. Although the social group most fre¬quently referred to in fourth- to sixth-century inscriptions from Tomis and other cities of Scythia Minor is the military, there is occasional mention of craftsmen and merchants. See Alexandru Barnea, "Changements sociaux et economiques dans la province de Scythie (IV-VI-e s.)," Balcanica Posnaniensia 5 (1990), 402. " I. V. Sokolova, "Vizantiiskie pechati Vl-pervoi poloviny IX v. iz Khersonesa," Vizantiiskii Vremennik 52 (1991), 201-213. See also I. V. Sokolova, "Les sceaux byzantins de Cherson," Studies in Byzantine Sigillography 3 (1993), 99-111.