Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

maurice 105
At Maurice’s accession the Roman position in the Balkans appeared perilous,
with Slavs overrunning much of the countryside and the Avars controlling
a bridgehead across the Sava at Sirmium. 41 The Avars tried to
exploit the change of emperor by demanding diplomatic gifts, and then an
increase in annual payments from 80,000 to 100,000 solidi. The extra tribute
was conceded after an Avar invasion reached Anchialus on the Black Sea.
This purchased two years’ peace from the Avars, but all the time the Slavs
were on the move, ravaging and restricting the areas of Roman control: in
584 they approached the Long Walls of Constantinople, and then in 585
had to be driven from the Thracian plain. Such Roman actions prompted
Slav bands to wander towards less protected areas, and the lower city of
Athens was sacked, followed by Corinth in 586, and in the same year
Thessalonica, the second city of the Balkans, was briefly besieged. In
autumn 586 the Avars found a suitable excuse to renounce their treaty, and
again they swept from Pannonia to the eastern foothills of the Stara Planina
near the Black Sea. Maurice raised a scratch army through harsh conscription,
but 40 per cent of the 10,000 troops were apparently unsuitable for
battle, and their commander, Comentiolus, seems to have restricted his
aims to curbing Avar depredations and keeping them north of the Stara
Planina. In this he failed, partly perhaps because of his troops’ inexperience,
and he was pursued across the mountains. In the Thracian plain,
however, the Avars were less successful, in that the major cities withstood
their attacks and a force of Lombards inflicted a tactical defeat on them.
At this point the chronology of Balkan events becomes uncertain,
because our main source, Theophylact Simocatta, who was writing a generation
later, did not fully understand events. The detailed solution adopted
here is no more than a possibility, although the contrast of severe crisis in
the late 580s followed by considerable recovery in the 590s should be
right. 42 In 588 Priscus, recently returned from the mutinous eastern army,
was given command with the task of attempting to defend the Stara Planina
again. He was no more successful than Comentiolus, since Roman garrisons
were too small to defend key passes. The Avars managed to capture
Anchialus, and the Chagan donned imperial robes, which the empress
Anastasia had dedicated in a church there, and blatantly challenged
Maurice’s authority as emperor. The Avars then pushed south to Heracleia
on the Sea of Marmara, where they ravaged the shrine of the martyr
Glyceria, but eventually withdrew after receiving a payment from the
Romans, and perhaps also influenced by rumours of a Turkish threat to
their homeland in Pannonia. 43
After this catastrophe for Roman control, Maurice himself took the field
and marched across Thrace to Anchialus in autumn 590, perhaps to
41 Whitby, Maurice 140–51. 42 See ibid. 151–3. 43 Ibid. 153–5.
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