THE GREAT MAN THEORY AND BYZANTIUM

In times not too long ago how the public was taught about the roman empire during the imperial period is focused almost exclusively on the military exploits of the emperors. There are certain consequences of this framework. It lays sole responsibility for the flourishing of the state in the hands of one man and maybe a few key players.

This type of framework of history is referred to as the great man theory of history which posits that the course of civilization can be and ought to be lead by the exceptional individuals who are able to steer the course of history single-handedly. Names that are prominent in this theory are Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and the like.  It is these “great men” who define the cultures and eras they inhabit by sheer force of will and extreme competence and usually romanticized violence. There are variations on this theme which appear throughout history outside of state craft and the masculine sphere. The genius scientist or inventor or industrialist who single-handedly changes a field such as Einstein, Edison, or Ford. There are also Queens who fit this mold, such as, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, and Catherine the Great. 

All of these figures are indeed very successful and exceptional individuals and have been variously praised as champions of various virtues depending on the age. It is also easy to relate their own story as a reasonable approximation of the age that they lived in as their work as monarchs, executives, thinkers and otherwise do indeed make a lasting impact on the world that they in habit. This makes telling the story of an age much simpler, too, as it boils down the millions of individuals living a diverse set of lives and in a diverse set of communities into a more easily consumed narrative. This narrative can play to our own sense of how things either ought or ought not to be done. Thus, ideals that we want to see manifest the heroes and the history that we want to see. It is, of course, not really this simple.

It should be noted that despite how neat this historical hermeneutic may make things appear, the theory has received criticism since its inception.

Firstly, it is sometimes the greatness of leaders itself that ends up causing a decline in subsequent generations as no one but that individual understood how to make the system work as they built it. The trope of the son of a great king ruining the kingdom that took the former king a life time to build is one that has roots in historical precedent. The Emperor Justinian I of the Eastern Roman Empire is generally acknowledged as the man who nearly managed to reestablish the old roman order after the fall of the western half of the empire in 476. He along with a team of highly competent individuals reformed the law codes, built many architectural wonders, and reconquered North Africa, Spain, and Italy (not in that order). Justinian rightly deserves to be one of the great men of history for these accomplishments and is one of the few figures from the era that the average 21st century citizen might be able to identify. An anecdote is very telling from this period that contextualizes the place his reign has in history. One of the greatest accomplishments of his reign was the rebuilding of the Hagia Sophia. It was the largest church at the time and remained so until the Italian Renaissance, and finished within a single decade. On completing the work Justinian is reported to have said “Solomon, I have surpassed you”. The Hagia Sophia is an architectural wonder, but due to the speed of its completion the dome would collapse and need to be repaired by future generations. A monumental achievement, but one that left future generations significant structural problems. His dynasty would not last long, a common reading of his reign points out that with the empire stretched thin over the expanded territory it became vulnerable to concerted efforts of invasion from The Persian Sasanid Empire and the Arab Expansion in the 620s. There was a whole generations worth of missteps that did not help either so it is not quite fair to lay all of the blame at Justinian’s feet, but the point remains that sometimes the golden age under one ruler is also undermined by the choices of that same ruler.

Secondly, sometimes the best and most competent individuals of an age are not able to stem the tide of historical events outside of their control. For this there are few better examples than that of the Emperor Heraclius. In summary, following the fall of the Justinianic Dynasty the usurper Phocas nearly ran the empire into the ground, brutalizing the populace and botching a war with the Sasanids so badly that they were able to invade territory not held the Persians since Alexander the Great’s campaigns nearly a millennium before! The exarch of North Africa Heraclius was able to gather enough support to usurp the usurper and seize the capital of Constantinople. The Persians, who had never stopped advancing had taken Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and were marching through Anatolia itself creating alliances with barbarian tribes to the north to surround what remained of the imperial heartland. In a wild gamble Heraclius took an army across the Black sea to attack the Persian heartland to draw the attention away from Constantinople. This strategy eventually was successful and even eventually sparked a military coup in the Sasanid ranks which allowed the Byzantines to reclaim the territory that they had lost. There was peace for a few short years, when the Arab expansion rolled up all of the territory that had been regained, only stopped by the Caucasus Mountains in eastern Anatolia. A man who had gained a throne to a lost empire, who had won back that empire, in the end lost it again swept away by the currents of historical events bigger than empires.

Thirdly, we can infer from the last point is that the actual forces of history are rooted in deeper and wider narratives of socioeconomic and cultural pressures not just military, political, or intellectual power of exceptional individuals. The criticism of the great man theory go well beyond this but this seems a good place to leave the question for now. It is simply not so easy to say that great people are the ones that “make history” but it does help simplify the telling of history to relate a few biographies rather than try to recover every detail of the lives of commoners, particularly before the modern era, when people started writing more about the common citizen. With this in mind the framing of this project will follow exceptional people as a means of simplifying the history, but please recognize that the scope of the project covers nearly 40% of recorded history, (eight times the length of United States History), so detail is necessarily going to be lost that could be expanded upon. The purpose here is to convey the relation of church and state and this method of simplification will hopefully provide a skeleton for further study.