King Agesilaus II And The Sacred Liver Hoax

King Agesilaus II was a king of Sparta from around 400 BCE until his death in 360 or 359 BCE. A brilliant military strategist and a model of the Spartan way of life, King Agesilaus was remembered as one of his country’s better kings. He had such an active spirit that, even in his final years, the elderly Spartan king could be found campaigning in foreign lands.

In 360 BCE, when the king was over eighty years of age, Agesilaus II accepted a military contract from a pharaoh of Egypt. The contract quickly proved to be more complicated than it originally seemed. According to Plutarch, Egypt erupted into a civil war not long after Agesilaus’ arrival. Nectanebis, a cousin of the pharaoh, rebelled in hopes of seizing the throne for himself. In addition, there was an unnamed third claimant who originated from the region of Mendes. Ultimately, Agesialus II brought his mercenaries over to the side of Nectanebis and the two holed up their forces in an undisclosed walled city. While they were waiting, Agesilaus and Nectanebis were besieged by the army from Mendes, which was supposedly much larger than what was guarding the city. As the defending garrison watched the besieging army begin to dig a series of trenches around the city, the morale of the troops quickly started to fall. Yet, Agesilaus had a plan to keep his warriors in the right state of mind.

There is a story about this event in the Sayings of the Spartans, a collection of witty Spartan verbal jibes or actions, presumably collected by Plutarch (c. 50-120) while he was researching the kings of Sparta. The sayings are often considered to be more folklore than historical record, and Plutarch even left the following episode out of his final Life of Agesilaus. Nevertheless, the tale is an interesting piece of additional information, and also gives an example of the craftiness that Agesilaus was said to have wielded. So, as always with ancient stories, enjoy the tale, but treat its historical accuracy with caution.

According to the Sayings of the Spartans, when King Agesilaus and his mercenaries were besieged by the army from Mendes, the Spartan king ordered an animal sacrifice to be performed in order to determine the gods’ favor. He had a practitioner of heptoscopy (divination based on examining livers) extract the liver of the sacrificed animal. Before the organ was ever removed, the king had already ensured that it would be a favorable omen. According to the tale, Agesilaus preemptively inked the word “victory” in reverse on the inside of his hand. When the diviner passed the liver to the king, the ink from his hand transferred the to the liver, unmistakably stamping it with the victorious word. With his clever con complete, King Agesilaus II triumphantly showed his troops the miraculous sign of the gods’ support for their cause. With his army thus inspired, Agesilaus was able to break through the siege and defeat the army from Mendes.

If you would like to read a fuller account about the Egyptian civil war between the pharaoh, Nectanebis and the army from Mendes, click HERE.

If you are curious about more kinds of divination, read our article on the subject, HERE.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, by Charles Foster, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus and Sayings of the Spartans), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

The Cold-Blooded Revenge Of Empress Dowager Lü Against Her Rival, Lady Qi

Emperor Gaozu, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, did not come from a noble family. Instead, he had grown up as a peasant during the time of the Qin Dynasty and worked as a minor local official and village head who sometimes ran afoul of the law. One day, he had a momentous encounter with a certain Master Lü, who directed Gaozu to relocate to the district of Pei. Around that time, Gaozu married Master Lü’s daughter, Lü Zhi, and earned the respect of the local populace of Pei. When mass rebellions erupted against the Qin Dynasty in 209 BCE, Lü Zhi was actively by her husband’s side as he took power first as Governor of Pei, then as King of Han, and, finally, as Supreme Emperor of China.

When Gaozu became an emperor, Lü Zhi ascended to the rank of empress. The two were quite the formidable couple and their strengths complemented each other well. Emperor Gaozu was a masterful talent scout, able to recruit, manage and utilize great generals and ministers to help him run his empire. Gaozu was known to make bad decisions from time to time, but his wise counselors had the courage to offer advice, and the emperor had the good sense to listen to their suggestions. Empress Lü, on the other hand, reportedly had a keen instinct for knowing which disaffected nobles could cause potential problems for her family. She was also reportedly ruthless enough to have several of these threats eliminated, sometimes even without consulting Emperor Gaozu. Her talents were all the more deadly, as she was a natural at political maneuvering and court subterfuge.

Emperor Gaozu and Empress Lü had two children. These were Princess Yuan and the future Emperor Hui. Although Lü Zhi was Gaozu’s wife and empress, she was not the only woman in his life. To the empress’ chagrin, there was a harem of other women that the emperor spent time with. These consorts, and their children, had the potential to challenge Empress Lü’s authority as empress and also endangered her son, Hui’s, position as heir apparent. There were at least seven other sons fathered by Emperor Gaozu with different women, and each of these sons had been granted control of a kingdom by their father.

The greatest rival to Empress Lü was a certain woman named Lady Qi. Emperor Gaozu and Lady Qi had a son named Liu Ruyi, and the emperor showed both mother and child great affection. In fact, in 195 BCE, the very year of Gaozu’s death, the emperor was seriously considering the idea of making Prince Ruyi the heir apparent instead of Hui. Fortunately for Empress Lü, most of the nobles were against the idea. Several influential members of the court, including the imperial secretary, Zhou Cang, the master of ritual, Shusun Tong, and Marquis Zhang Liang of Liu, successfully convinced the emperor to keep his current heir apparent. Convinced by his vassals, Emperor Gaozu reaffirmed Hui’s position as heir and sent away Liu Ruyi to take up the throne of Zhao.

When Emperor Gaozu died on June 1, 195 BCE, Hui became the new emperor and Lü Zhi’s title shifted to that of Empress Dowager. Although her son was the emperor, real power in the empire fell into the hands of Lü Zhi. Unfortunately for Lady Qi and her son, Liu Ruyi, the empress dowager had not forgotten or forgiven their disruption in the imperial succession.  With Gaozu no longer around to shield them, Empress Dowager Lü quickly began plotting her revenge.

Not long after Gaozu’s death, Liu Ruyi began receiving messages from the empress dowager, asking him to leave his domain of Zhao to make an appearance in the Han capital of Chang’an. Luckily for the king of Zhao, the late emperor Gaozu had sent his trusted royal secretary, Zhou Chang, to act as Liu Ruyi’s prime minister, with instructions to keep the young king safe. Zhou Chang intercepted three of the empress dowager’s summons and sent the messengers back with replies that the king of Zhao would not be traveling to the capital city. Thwarted, Empress Dowager Lü changed her tactics. She sent a message summoning only Zhou Chang to Chang’an, making no mention of Liu Ruyi. Zhou Chang accepted the summons and set off on the road to the capital. Little did he know, however, that Empress Dowager Lü had sent a separate letter to Liu Ruyi, which arrived after the prime minister had already departed from Zhao. This time, Zhou Chang was not present to intercept the letter. Without his prime minister’s cautious counsel, Liu Ruyi decided to travel to Chang’an.

Despite Empress Dowager Lü’s hatred for Lady Qi and Liu Ruyi, Emperor Hui still had a surprisingly warm relationship with his half-brother. To the empress dowager’s annoyance, when the vulnerable Liu Ruyi arrived in Chang’an, Emperor Hui immediately brought him under his protective wing. For months, the emperor kept his half-brother nearby, letting Liu Ruyi eat meals with him and even allowing him to sleep near the emperor’s own chambers. Yet, Hui could not keep his eye on his brother forever, and the empress dowager was a patient woman. Near the end of 194 BCE, Emperor Hui left Chang’an on a hunting trip, leaving his half-brother behind. When the emperor returned to the city, Liu Ruyi had died of suspicious causes—the Grand Historian, Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), claimed that Empress Dowager Lü had him poisoned.

While horrible, Liu Ruyi’s early death was a kind fate compared to what allegedly happened to his mother. At the time of Emperor Gaozu’s death, Lady Qi had already been in Chang’an, so the empress dowager quickly arrested her and locked her in the palace. With Lady Qi in her grasp, the empress dowager apparently delved into her own darkest and most deranged thoughts to come up with a punishment for her hated rival. Sima Qian graphically wrote, “Empress Lü later cut off Lady Qi’s hands and feet, plucked out her eyes, burned her ears, gave her a potion to drink which made her dumb, and had her thrown into the privy, calling her the ‘human pig’” (Shi Ji 9, trans. Burton Watson). Sima Qian further alleged that Empress Dowager Lü’s brutality greatly distressed the young emperor, resulting in Hui turning to heavy drinking and other bad habits. He died in 188 BCE, at only twenty-three years of age.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Social media crop of Palace Ladies, painted by Gu Kaizhi  (345–406), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) by Sima Qian, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaohou 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaozu-emperor-of-Han-dynasty  

The Tragic Witchcraft Trial Of Agnes And Anna Von Mindelheim

During the 15th century, a giant hailstorm wiped out approximately a mile of crops in a region of farmland near the city of Salzburg, Austria. When the affected farmlands produced incredibly low crop yields for a reported three years after the incident, the Inquisition was asked to launch an investigation into possible witchcraft. Among the team of inquisitors sent to inspect the case of the hailstorm was a professor from the nearby University of Salzburg named Heinrich Kramer. This inquisitor would later write about the outcome of the investigation in the infamous book he co-wrote on witchcraft—the Malleus Maleficarum.

After fifteen days of deliberation, the inquisitors concluded that witchcraft was, indeed, afoot. After the team examined possible suspects, two women in particular fell under the most suspicion. These were Agnes, a bath-woman, and a certain Anna von Mindelheim. The two women were reportedly arrested by magistrates on the same day and sent to two separate prisons. On the first day of their incarceration, the imprisoned women both professed their innocence of any crime, either against God or man. Yet, as often happened in witchcraft cases, once the inquisitors began to apply torture, the coerced testimonies of the women became quite bizarre.

The bath-woman, Agnes was the first of the two women to break under torture. Heinrich Kramer did not specify what painful contraptions or implements were used on Agnes, but whatever it was caused enough agony to make her confess to some of the stereotypical rumors prevalent about witches at the time. Abandoning her earlier claim of innocence, she now said that a demonic familiar told her to take a pail of water out to a field. When she arrived there with the water, Agnes found that she was not alone—sitting under some trees in the field was Anna von Mindelheim and also the arch-demon, Satan, himself.

With Agnes’ arrival on the scene, Satan allegedly arose from his spot under the tree and instructed Agnes to dig a hole in the ground. When the hole was completed, Agnes reported that she poured the water from the pail into the pit and then stirred the liquid with her finger. According to Agnes and the inquisitors, this ritual, combined with an invocation of the demons, supposedly caused the devastating hailstorm that ravaged the region. In addition to this story, Agnes also confessed under torture to having a sexual relationship with an incubi demon for over eighteen years.

As for Anna von Mindelheim, Heinrich Kramer did not go into much detail about her confession. Instead, he simply wrote that her testimony generally agreed with that of Agnes. After being suspended by her thumbs, with her feet not touching the ground, Anna von Mindelheim confessed to an array of common witchcraft stereotypes—meeting in a wooded field, manipulating weather by stirring a puddle, and having a long sexual relationship with a demon.

By the second day of the women’s imprisonment, the application of torture caused both Agnes and Anna to change their original plea of innocence to that of guilty. With the confessions in hand, inquisitors evidently did not deliberate or crosscheck the validity of the testimonies. Instead, Agnes and Anna von Mindelheim were executed by burning on the third day of their imprisonment.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Image from a pamphlet on witchcraft, published by The Public Domain Review on Flickr, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and Flickr).

Sources:

• The Malleus Maleficarum (part II, question 1, chapter 15) by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated by Montague Summers (Dover Publications, 1971).
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Malleus-maleficarum#ref247983  

The Odd Saxon Siege Of Syburg

Of the lands invaded and subjugated by Charlemagne, none irritated the Frankish king like Saxony. From the year 772 to 785, Charlemagne launched a military invasion of Saxony on almost a yearly basis. His motive, according to the chroniclers of the Royal Frankish Annals, was “to attack the treacherous and treaty-breaking tribe of the Saxons and to persist in this war until they were either defeated and forced to accept the Christian religion or entirely exterminated” (RFA, year 775). The rebellions in Saxony slowed down after a mass execution at Verdun in 782 and the conversion to Christianity of major Saxon leaders in 785, but the Saxon War would not officially end until 804, when thousands of Saxons were forcibly relocated from their homeland.

For most of the war, the Saxons kept to a cautious and defensive strategy. They would wait until Charlemagne had traveled to a periphery of his empire, such as Italy or Spain, before revolting against the Franks. Nevertheless, to the dismay of the Saxons, Charlemagne, or one of his generals, would always eventually cross into Saxony and crush the rebellion within a year or two.

Despite the generally defensive trend of the Saxon rebels, they did go on the offensive every now and then, especially in the 770s. In 774, for instance, the Saxon rebels reached as far as the borderland castle of Büraburg. Two years later, in 776, they marched even further westward and took the castles of Eresburg and Syburg. Finally, in 778, the Saxon rebels advanced as far as the Rhine.

Of these particularly aggressive years of rebellion, the battle for Syburg was one of the more peculiar encounters between the Franks and the Saxons. It all began when Charlemagne marched into Italy in 776 to deal with a rebellious subordinate by the name of Hrodgaud. When the Saxons learned that the Frankish king was away, they rebelled and forced the castle of Eresburg to surrender. After the capitulation of Eresburg, the Saxons marched against Syburg and offered the garrison a chance to surrender. The defenders of Syburg, however, were more stubborn than those of Eresburg, so they kept their gate firmly shut and refused the Saxon offer. In response, the rebels settled in for a siege.

At this time, the bulk of Charlemagne’s army must have been in the south, for the Saxons felt they had enough time to build catapults at Syburg. The Saxon army, however, apparently had poor engineers, or terrible aim, for the siege weapons reportedly misfired or imploded, ultimately causing more damage to the besieging army than to the defenders. When the Saxons saw that their siege engines were not working, they decided to resort to simpler methods. In the end, the Saxon leadership told the engineers to abandon the dangerous catapults and to instead construct ladders and other tools that would be useful in scaling a wall.

The Saxons, however, would not get to storm the walls of Syburg with their freshly constructed ladders. Before the siege preparations were complete, something odd reportedly appeared above a church in Syburg. The authors of the Royal Frankish Annals wrote that there were sightings of two fiery red shields hovering above the church. This oddity has been interpreted various ways, from the possibility of it being a signal flag for the defenders or maybe even some sort of natural phenomenon or optical illusion. Whatever the case, the sighting caused the defenders of Syburg to rally and led the Saxons into despair.

After the sign appeared above the church—whether it was caused by man, weather or God—the warriors of Syburg poured out from their defenses to attack the besieging Saxons. With the force of their sudden sortie, the Franks successfully broke the siege and pursued the fleeing Saxons toward the River Lippe. Not long after the battle, Charlemagne marched into Saxony with his main army and quickly forced the Saxons to surrender.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Depiction of a battle between Saxons and Franks, by Alphonse de Neuville (1836–1885), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.
• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.  

Four Pranks That Caligula Allegedly Played On His People

The ancient accounts on the reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula (r. 37-41) are so biased and filled with folklore and rumor that it is near impossible to know how perfectly or poorly the real Caligula fit with the written descriptions. Whatever the case, the scholars of Rome unanimously portrayed Caligula’s reign as one filled with savagery, debauchery, terror and madness. Yet, the emperor was not always violent. When Caligula was not decimating one of his own legions or assassinating a rival, he could be found heaping great affection on his friends or even dancing into the night with senators. Of his more peaceful mischiefs, Caligula seemed especially fond of pranks. Here are four pranks that Suetonius (c. 70-130+) claimed were orchestrated by Rome’s most insane emperor.

1) One time, when Caligula planned to attend a theatre performance, he was said to have preemptively scattered gift vouchers around the reserved seats of the equites (members of the equestrian order) in order to lure commoners into that area. When crowds of people rushed to grab the vouchers, Caligula giddily waited for the drama to occur; his attention, of course, was on the audience, not the stage. As the time of the performance neared, the fashionably-late equites arrived at the theatre, expecting to find their seats empty, as usual. This time, however, they found a mob of plebeians falling over themselves in the reserved seating area, a sight which undoubtedly caused a spectacle.

2) Caligula did not discriminate in his pranks—commoners were just as likely to be pranked as the nobility, and the amphitheatres of Rome were his favorite pranking grounds. On one hot day, while the Romans were enjoying a gladiatorial show under the shade of the amphitheatre’s canopy, Caligula supposedly had the cover rolled back, letting the hot rays of light pour down on the crowd. The prank, however, soon took a darker turn, for Caligula supposedly called in his military to keep the people from leaving their hot and uncomfortable seats.

3) In another instance, Caligula let hype grow and build around an upcoming gladiatorial show. When show time came, the Romans eagerly shuffled into the seats, expecting to see the battle of the century. Yet, it was not famous warriors and vicious beasts that were ushered out to the arena. Instead, the spectators watched with disappointment as the most elderly gladiators available and the lamest, slowest animals on hand wobbled out to fight, as Caligula mischievously had arranged.

4) Caligula would also single out individuals for pranking. One of the most elaborate targeted pranks that the emperor pulled off came at the expense of an unnamed soldier who made some disturbance while Caligula’s favorite performer was on stage. According to the tale, Caligula later called this disturber aside and gave him a very important, highly-confidential letter, which needed to be delivered to the king of Mauretania. Acting as a dutiful legionnaire, the soldier sailed across the Mediterranean and carefully hand-delivered the message to the Mauretanian king. According to Suetonius, Caligula’s top secret letter to Mauretania’s king read, “Do nothing at all, either good or bad, to the bearer” (The Twelve Caesars, Gaius Caligula, section 55).

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Reconstruction of an original Roman portrait of emperor Caligula (r. 37-41), photographed by G. Dall'Orto, placed on top of a painting of Rome by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves and edited by James B. Rives. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.  

The Mysterious Earthen Miracles of 822

In 822, a little under a decade after Louis the Pious (r. 814-840) became sole emperor of the Franks, something really strange occurred in his realm. The chroniclers of the Royal Frankish Annals wrote about the incident in their entry for the year 882. According to them, not only did unexplained earthen structures appear that year, but the mysterious creations were also found in multiple locations in the empire.

In the region of Thuringia, a peculiar ditch was found, measuring about fifty feet long and four feet wide. The dirt excavated from the spot had not traveled far; approximately twenty-five feet from the ditch was an elevated block of earth, and, like the ditch, it measured fifty feet long and four feet wide. The authorities, or at least the chroniclers, could not find any motives or suspects for the weird rectangle of soil.

The next incident occurred in Arendsee, near Magdeburg, in Frankish-controlled Saxony. There, an unordered earthen dam appeared on a local stream or river after just one mysterious night of work. No one in the region came forward to claim that they had worked on the project, leaving the chroniclers of the Royal Frankish Annals, and the royal court that they worked for, baffled by the structure’s sudden appearance.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Louis the Pious (from BL Royal 16 G VI, f. 198v) on a pixabay.com soil background, both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.

After His Death, The Body Of King Hálfdan The Black Was Supposedly Divided Between Different Regions Of His Kingdom

While most of the Yngling Dynasty of ancient Sweden and Norway is considered legendary or semi-legendary, the figures of Hálfdan the Black and especially his son, Harald Finehair (the first king to unite Norway), are more solidly considered to have been real people. Nevertheless, their stories are still heavily filled with fantastical folklore. Almost all of the information on Hálfdan the Black and his famous son comes from skaldic verse and Icelandic sagas—hence the plentiful folklore—yet, armed with caution and a skeptical eye for dramatic filler, readers can glean a general sense of the reigns of these two kings.

According to Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga saga and Hálfdanar saga Svarta, which were included in his Heimskringla, Hálfdan the Black (so-called because of his black hair) was a powerful 9th-century king in southeast Norway. As the saga tells it, Hálfdan was raised in his mother’s homeland of Agthir. When he turned eighteen, he inherited the throne of Agthir from his grandfather, Harald the Redbeard, and quickly annexed a piece of Vestfold from his half-brother, King Olaf. He also expanded by force into Vingulmork, Raumarik, Heithmork, Thótn, Land and Hathaland. In addition, Hálfdan reportedly also acquired Sogn through marriage.

Hálfdan’s years of military expansion coincided with a palpable agricultural boom, which further extended his reputation as a successful king to the point of his subjects allegedly attributing their good crop yields to their liege. Consequently, when the middle-aged king unexpectedly died reportedly from falling through thin ice near Lake Randsfjorden, the people were afraid that their lands would lose fertility. Similarly, the sagas claimed that the medieval Norwegians also believed that the region where Hálfdan’s body was buried would be supernaturally blessed with bountiful fields. Therefore, at least according to Snorri Sturluson, it was decided that the body of Hálfdan the Black would be divided among several burial mounds located throughout his kingdom. Apparently, the head was entombed at Hringaríki, while three other sections of Hálfdan’s body were buried at Raumaríki, Vestfold and Heithmork.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Image of Halfdan the Black falling to his death through ice, by Erik Werenskiold  (1855–1938), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Heimskringla, by Snorri Sturluson and translated by Lee Hollander. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964, 2018.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harald-I-king-of-Norway  

The Odd Ceremony Used By Emperor Gaozu To Bind His Ministers To A Pledge

According to Han Dynasty tradition, the first emperor of that dynasty, Emperor Gaozu (r. 202-195 BCE), wanted the majority of the kingdoms in China to remain firmly in the hands of the Liu imperial family. Therefore, by the end of Gaozu’s reign, the emperor’s sons, brothers and nephews ruled most of the empire’s kingdoms. The emperor was apparently so concerned about the rise of a rival family that he called his most important officials together in a meeting and had them swear to depose any new kings who were not from the Liu family.

The ministers and generals who were called forth to make this pledge were allegedly faced by an odd ceremony. According to the account of Grand Historian Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), the emperor brought a white horse to his meeting with these courtiers. In front of the crowd, the emperor supposedly sacrificed the white horse and smeared some of the animal’s blood on the lips of his ministers. Then, with their lips reddened, the important officials made their pledge to depose any new king that was not from the Liu family.

In 180 BCE, the Liu nobles and other loyal vassals did, indeed, rise against a rival family. Their rival was the Lü family, the clan to which Emperor Gaozu’s wife belonged. From the time of Gaozu’s death in 195, to the time of her own death in 180 BCE, Empress Lü had feverishly worked in hopes of making her Lü clan equal or greater than her husband’s Liu family—she placed numerous members of the Lü family in positions as generals, marquises and kings. Yet, when the empress dowager died in 180 BCE, the Liu nobility and their followers quickly raised their forces, seized the capital city, and launched a systematic extermination of the whole Lü clan. In the end, it is possible that the story about the white horse could have simply been propaganda produced by the Liu family to justify their massacre of the encroaching Lü.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Marengo, painted by James Ward (1769–1859), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji) by Sima Qian, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Emperor Charlemagne And Empress Irene Almost United Their Empires

For those who like to contemplate the alternative paths where history might have led under different circumstances, the almost-achieved marriage between Emperor Charlemagne of the Franks and Empress Irene of Constantinople is an intriguing concept. Charlemagne began his reign in 768, as a co-king alongside his brother, Carloman. In 671, however, Carloman died, leaving Charlemagne as sole ruler of the Franks. During his years on the throne, he sent his army in all directions, campaigning over the years in Italy, Saxony, Spain, Brittany, Dalmatia, and several Eastern European regions. Throughout his long reign, Charlemagne cultivated a strong relationship with the popes of Rome and was crowned as emperor in the Roman fashion by Pope Leo III in the year 800.

In Rome’s rival city, Constantinople, Empress Irene was making her own remarkable rise to power. Irene was said to have been a commoner from Athens who joined the nobility by marrying Emperor Leo IV in 769, after she was discovered in an imperial beauty contest. After her husband died of a fever in 780, Empress Irene served as regent ruler for her son, Emperor Constantine VI, who was around ten years old at the time. Irene kept power in her own hands until 790, when she was ousted by the military in favor of her son. Despite this, Constantine VI interestingly asked Irene to return as co-ruler in 792, a proposition which she, of course, accepted. Irene, however, was not content with sharing power. In 797, after Constantine VI had lost support among the populace, the clergy and the military, Irene successfully usurped sole power in Constantinople and had her son blinded. The blinding must have been particularly brutal or botched, for Constantine VI reportedly died of the wounds.

Empress Irene and Charlemagne began sending emissaries to each other’s courts as early as the year 787, when the two were considering a marriage between Constantine VI and one of Charlemagne’s daughters, either Rotrude or Hruodtrude. The match, however, fell through and, like a true break-up, both sides claimed their liege was the one that broke it off, with the Franks writing that Charlemagne refused and the Greeks swearing that it was Irene who changed her mind. Interestingly, the two officially became pen pals in 798, one year after Constantine VI was blinded. Charlemagne received a letter from Empress Irene expressing her wish to maintain peace between their empires. In response to her letter, Charlemagne sent an emissary to her court in Constantinople.

Liutgarda, Charlemagne’s fourth wife, died only months before her husband was crowned as a Roman emperor in the year 800. Within two years of that date, in 802, Irene and Charlemagne were again exchanging high-ranking emissaries to each other’s courts. According to the writing of Theophanes the Confessor (c. 782-818), Charlemagne and Irene were negotiating a marriage to each other that could have put most of the lands between the Pyrenees and Anatolia under a single political entity. This intriguing possibility, however, never came to fruition, as Empress Irene was forced into exile and died in 803. Her most trusted officials had conspired against her, possibly in resistance to the alleged marriage proposal of Charlemagne. When the Frankish emissaries returned from Constantinople in 803, they did not bring with them a marriage acceptance letter, but instead brought news of Irene’s removal from power, and an entreaty of peace from the new emperor of Constantinople, Nicephorus I, who was Irene’s former minister of finance.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Woodcut Illustration of Empress Irene and Charlemagne, printed by Johannes Zainer Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. at Ulm ca. 1474, uploaded by Kladcat, [Public Domain/CC 2.0] via Flickr and Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernhard Scholz and Barbara Rogers. Ann Arbor Paperbacks / University of Michigan Press, 1972.
• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irene-Byzantine-empress-752-803 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Empress_Irene/ 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Constantine_VI/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Theophanes-the-Confessor  

After Crushing A Spartan Army, King Antigonus III Of Macedonia Reportedly Shouted Himself To Death

In 227 BCE, King Antigonus III ascended to the throne of Macedonia. He spent the first years of his reign mainly defending his borders, but King Antigonus soon obtained an incredible offer from the Peloponnesus. Around 225-224 BCE, he received and accepted a request from Aratus of Sicyon, calling for Macedonian troops to move into Achaean League territory in order to defend against an expansionist Sparta, ruled by a competent Spartan king named Cleomenes III (r. 225-222 BCE).

After accepting Aratus’ request, King Antigonus III and his army entered the Peloponnesus around 224 BCE and virtually turned the Achaean League into a protectorate. With the arrival of the Macedonians, King Cleomenes III set up a strong defense on the Oneian hills, but he was forced to retreat after the citizens of Spartan-occupied Argos rebelled. Following Cleomenes’ retreat, Antigonus moved in and pushed the Spartans back into Laconia and, from then on, Cleomenes could do little more than raid and pillage settlements. Nevertheless, the Spartans still had a powerful army, but money was running short and Macedonia had the advantage if a war of attrition developed. Therefore, King Cleomenes III was eager for a decisive victory to keep his soldiers’ morale high and to entice foreign lenders to invest money in his military campaign. This eagerness and desperation, however, resulted in the disastrous battle of Sellasia in 222 BCE, where much of the Spartan army was encircled and killed by Macedonian forces. After the battle, Cleomenes fled across the Mediterranean and Antigonus III occupied Sparta.

Unfortunately, a few days after occupying Sparta, Antigonus III had to rush his forces back to Macedonia to confront an Illyrian army that had invaded the Macedonian homeland during his absence. Either during his crushing of this Illyrian army, or possibly during the earlier battles against the Spartans, King Antigonus III supposedly shouted out such an enthusiastic and powerful battle cry that he ruptured a blood vessel, leading to a massive internal hemorrhage. Antigonus’ army defeated the Illyrians in 222 BCE, but he quickly fell ill from his peculiar wound and died in 221 BCE.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Sculpture from the MET museum (photographed by Shayna Michaels), in front of a painting of Alexander the Great by Pietro da Cortona  (1596–1669), both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Cleomenes), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antigonus-III-Doson 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cleomenes-III  
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D70