Priscus (General)

Priskos (lat. Priscus ; † 613 in Constantinople ) was an Eastern Roman general under Maurikios , Phocas and Herakleios and the son-in-law of the middle one. It had its most prominent use during Maurikios ' Balkan campaigns , alongside Petros and Komentiolus .

Priskos was evidently well educated and must have mastered Greek as well as Latin, at that time still the command language of the Eastern Roman army: Theophylactus Simokates reports of rhetorically demanding speeches "in the traditional language of the Romans" that Priskos gave to the soldiers (e.g. B. Th. Sim. 6,7,9). However, Theophylakt does not report whether the soldiers understood their generals.

Military career

Under Maurikios 587–602

In 587 Priskos was to succeed General Philippikos as magister militum per Orientem . Since he also had the task of announcing the planned 25% pay cuts, the 588 troops, who also felt they were being disrespected by their new commander, refused to recognize Priscos, so that Philippikos, in order to end the mutiny, took command again. after the soldiers refused to conduct military operations for a year.

Instead, Priskos was given command of the Roman troops in the Balkans. His first Balkan campaign with inexperienced forces failed in 588. In 593 he led an army very successfully against the Slavs in Moesia , but in 594 he was replaced by Maurikios' brother Petros because of insubordination . Nevertheless, in the following year he received the supreme command of another army upstream, where he also acted successfully against the Avars , but did not pursue them in 596 to the displeasure of the emperor.

In 597/598 he and his men were trapped by the Avars in Tomis on the Black Sea and could only be appalled when Komentiolos struck the Avars in the rear. But when Comentiolus was besieged by the Avars, Priskos did not come to his aid. In the following years Priskos operated together with Komentiolos in the area of ​​today's Banat very successfully against the Avars. This was a turning point in the history of the Avars, as they were no longer considered invincible. This was to have far-reaching consequences for the rule of the Avars over other peoples.

Under Phocas (602–610)

Of the three generals mentioned, Priskos was the only one to survive the fall of Maurikios. He was in Armenia in November 602 and had the task of raising new troops there for the Balkan front when the soldiers of the magister militum per Thracias mutinied, moved to Constantinople, killed the emperor and put their spokesman Phocas on the throne. Priskos was far enough away from the scene and was able to come to terms with the new emperor. At the turn of the year 602/603 he was appointed comes excubitorum , an important post in the immediate vicinity of the ruler. In 606 he married the daughter of Phocas, but later fell out of favor when the citizens of Constantinople erected statues of him.

Under Herakleios (610-613)

When the fall of Phocas became apparent in 610, Priscus conspired with Herakleios against his own father-in-law. Herakleios gave him the supreme command of an army in 611/612 and commissioned him to smash the Persian garrison of Kaisareia . After a snub by Priskos and a successful breakout of the Persian garrison, Herakleios had his tonsure sheared in 612 and put him in a monastery, where he died the following year.

rating

Overall, Priskos seems to have been a very capable general, whose loyalty was, however, often unduly strained and therefore gambled away the trust of Maurikios as well as Phocas and Herakleios. After the experiences that he had made with the rebellious troops on the Persian front in 588, he seems to have been careful from now on to take the wishes of his men into consideration, which led to the fact that he sometimes did not obey the orders of the headquarters and major ones Avoided risks. Nonetheless, he managed to survive two coups at once and come to terms with the new rulers, at least as long as his outstanding skills as a general made him indispensable.

As one of the few survivors of the political turmoil from 602 to 611, he played an important role for Theophylactus Simokates as the protagonist of his work, especially for the Balkan campaigns. The historian reports sometimes very negatively about Petros, Komentiolus and Phocas, but sometimes also about Maurikios, the real hero of his portrayal.

literature

See article Maurikios .

• Michael Whitby : The Emperor Maurice and his Historian. Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare. Clarendon Press, Oxford et al. 1988, ISBN 0-19-822945-3 .
• Arnold HM Jones , John R. Martindale, John Morris : The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume 3: John R. Martindale: AD 527-641. Volume B: Kâlâdji - Zudius. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1992, ISBN 0-521-20160-8 , pp. 1052 ff., ( Online at Google Books ).