Skip to Content

Leo imperial strator and dioiketes of Amorion (ninth/tenth century)

 
 

Obverse

Cross potent of patriarchal type on three steps. Circular inscription beginning at lower l. No visible border.

+ΚΕΟΗΘΙΤ

Κύριε βοήθι τῷ σῷ δούλῳ

Reverse

Inscription of four lines preceded and followed by decoration. No visible border.

+
..ΕΝ
...ΤΡΤ
..ΗΥΚΙΤΤ
ΜΟΡΙΟ
+

Λέωντι βασιλικῷ στράτορι καὶ δηυκιτῇ τοῦ Ἀμορίου

Obverse

Cross potent of patriarchal type on three steps. Circular inscription beginning at lower l. No visible border.

+ΚΕΟΗΘΙΤ

Κύριε βοήθι τῷ σῷ δούλῳ

Reverse

Inscription of four lines preceded and followed by decoration. No visible border.

+
..ΕΝ
...ΤΡΤ
..ΗΥΚΙΤΤ
ΜΟΡΙΟ
+

Λέωντι βασιλικῷ στράτορι καὶ δηυκιτῇ τοῦ Ἀμορίου

Accession number BZS.1955.1.1528
Diameter 24.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 3, no. 88.1.

Translation

Κύριε βοήθι τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Λέωντι βασιλικῷ στράτορι καὶ δηυκιτῇ τοῦ Ἀμορίου.

Lord, help your servant Leo, imperial strator and dioiketes of Amorion.

Commentary

Amorion (modern Hisar), located in the eastern reaches of Phrygia, 168 km to the southwest of Ankara, seems to have served as the residence of the strategos in the early history of the theme of the Anatolikoi. The city was of major strategic importance against Arab penetration into central Anatolia. Sacked in 838, it never fully revived; but as shown by the present seal, it became the administrative center of a dioikesis.

The seventh/eighth-century seal of Elias ἡγούμενος πόλεως τοῦ Ἀμορίου defies our powers of explanation (Lihačev, Molivdovuly, 204, pl. LXXII, 5).

Amorion is first mentioned as a bishopric in the fifth century; Laurent argued that the see attained the rank of an autocephalous archbishopric by 787 and then of a metropolis after the Byzantine recapture of the city in 856-863 (Corpus V/1, 369, 570). On the other hand, thanks to a seal (Zacos-Veglery, no. 1879), Seibt proposes that its promotion to archbishopric must have occured in the first half of the eighth century (Galatien und Lykaonien, 125, note 95). This rings true because we know from a narrative source that it had become a metropolis before 803 (TM 10 [1987] 27: Eudoxos metropolitan of Amorion mentioned in the Life of St. Euthymios of Sardeis). Two more eleventh-century seals of metropolitans were published by Zacos, Seals II, nos. 750, 754.

See Laurent, Corpus V/1, 368-69, 570; Zgusta, 69; Galatien und Lykaonien, 122-25; Brandes, Städte, 133-35. ODB I, 79-80; C. Lightfoot, "Amorium. Unearthing a Byzantine City," Minerva 5/1 (1994) 14-16.

Bibliography