Constantine Margarites (Greek : Κωνσταντῖνος Μαργαρίτης) was a senior military officer and courtier of the Empire of Nicaea in the mid-13th century.
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
The Empire of Nicaea or the Nicene Empire was the largest of the three Byzantine Greek rump states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled after Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian forces during the Fourth Crusade. Founded by the Laskaris family, it lasted from 1204 to 1261, when the Nicaeans restored the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople.
His life is only known from the brief, and very hostile, references to him in the History of George Akropolites. [1] Akropolites disparages Margarites, as well as many other of the low-born "new men" who rose to prominence as favourites of Theodore II Laskaris (ruled 1254–58), as opposed to the traditional aristocracy which customarily monopolized high offices. [2] According to Akropolites, Margarites was born in the theme of Neokastra in northwestern Asia Minor, a "peasant born of peasants, reared on barley and bran and knowing only how to grunt". He joined the thematic army and rose to the rank of tzaousios . His skill impressed the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes (r. 1222–54), who placed him in his own bodyguard, and later raised him to the post of megas tzaousios. Apparently on his accession, John's son Theodore II Laskaris made him archon tou allagiou, i.e. commander of the imperial bodyguard ( allagion ), and later even raised him to the new post of megas archon . [3] [4]
George Akropolites was a Byzantine Greek historian and statesman born at Constantinople.
Theodore II Doukas Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258.
The themes or themata were the main military/administrative divisions of the middle Byzantine Empire. They were established in the mid-7th century in the aftermath of the Slavic invasion of the Balkans and Muslim conquests of parts of Byzantine territory, and replaced the earlier provincial system established by Diocletian and Constantine the Great. In their origin, the first themes were created from the areas of encampment of the field armies of the East Roman army, and their names corresponded to the military units that had existed in those areas. The theme system reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries, as older themes were split up and the conquest of territory resulted in the creation of new ones. The original theme system underwent significant changes in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the term remained in use as a provincial and financial circumscription until the very end of the Empire.
In Akropolites' account, he appears in the context of Theodore's winter campaign of 1255 in the Balkans against Bulgaria, where he and the protosebastos Manuel Laskaris were placed in command of the forces of the theme of Didymoteichon to keep watch over the Bulgarian frontier, but not engage in any expeditions of their own, while the emperor himself returned to Asia Minor. [5] In the spring of 1256, however, the Bulgarians, learning of the emperor's absence, invited a raiding party of 4,000 Cumans to invade the Nicaean holdings in Thrace. As the Cumans approached Didymoteichon, Margarites and Laskaris disregarded the emperor's instructions to avoid a direct confrontation, and engaged the raiders. As Akropolites narrates, the swift Cuman horse-archers were able to unhorse and defeat the heavily armoured and slower Nicaeans, who broke and fled. Laskaris was able to find refuge in Adrianople, but Margarites and the other commanders of the army were captured. Akropolites reports that the prisoners were sold to the Bulgarians and that the Cumans fled north when they learned that Theodore II had crossed the Hellespont and was advancing on them, but the other contemporary historian, Theodore Skoutariotes, contradicts this, saying that a small Nicaean detachment was able to catch up with the Cumans, defeat them and liberate the prisoners. [6]
The Balkans, also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range.
The Second Bulgarian Empire was a medieval Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1396. A successor to the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Tsars Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II before gradually being conquered by the Ottomans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. It was succeeded by the Principality and later Kingdom of Bulgaria in 1878.
The title of protosebastos was a high Byzantine court title created by Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.
