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Thomas protospatharios and kommerkiarios of Abydos (tenth century)

 
 
title

Obverse

An octagonal design made of two superimposed squares with a hare on the inside. Within a border of dots, there are remains of a circular inscription that started from the top:

σΔου

[Κύριε βοήθει τῷ] σῷ δού[λῳ]

title

Reverse

Inscription of four lines. Border of dots.

μ
πθˋSκ
μερκι
Rυδˊ

[Θ]ωμᾷ [(πρωτο)σ]παθ(αρίῳ) (καὶ) κ[ομ]μερκι[α(ρίῳ)] Ἀβύδ(ου)

Obverse

An octagonal design made of two superimposed squares with a hare on the inside. Within a border of dots, there are remains of a circular inscription that started from the top:

σΔου

[Κύριε βοήθει τῷ] σῷ δού[λῳ]

Reverse

Inscription of four lines. Border of dots.

μ
πθˋSκ
μερκι
Rυδˊ

[Θ]ωμᾷ [(πρωτο)σ]παθ(αρίῳ) (καὶ) κ[ομ]μερκι[α(ρίῳ)] Ἀβύδ(ου)

Accession number BZS.1955.1.4515
Diameter 16.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 3, no. 40.19.

Translation

Κύριε βοήθει τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Θωμᾷ πρωτοσπαθαρίῳ καὶ κομμερκιαρίῳ Ἀβύδου.

Lord, help your servant Thomas, protospatharios and kommerkiarios of Abydos.

Commentary

The obverse design is most interesting. The octagonal pattern is similar (but without the circle) to the one surrounding the portrait of Juliana Anicia in the Vienna Dioskorides. Hares seldom appear on lead seals. See, for example, Sig., 27; ten similar specimens are kept at Dumbarton Oaks (BZS.1955.1.4452-4460 and BZS.1951.31.5.3760).

The city of Abydos, at the entrance of the Hellespont, has always had great importance as a point of control of the straits. From the fifth to the eighth centuries the main official mentioned there is the komes, who received his salary from the state, taxed the bypassing ships (texts put together by Zacos-Veglery, p. 1637), and sometimes accumulated the command of the Hieron, at the exit from the Bosporus to the Black Sea. The komes disappears with the eighth century, and a military governor of the fortress, the paraphylax, makes his appearance and is attested by many seals in the ninth century; sometimes he cumulates the office of kommerkiarios (cf. Listes, 343). The controls made in Abydos gave their name to a special institution, the abydos, which appears in other parts of the empire, most of all in Thessalonica and which gave its name to the title of abydikos (cf. Oikonomides, Abydos; DO Seals 1.18).

The earliest known kommerkiarios [of the apotheke] of Abydos is attested in the mid-seventh century; other kommerkiarioi are attested in the eighth century, and more appear in the ninth, when they are obviously related to the collection of a duty from passing ships (this is clearly attested in 992: Zepos, Jus I, 260-261), no doubt the kommerkion, which appears around the year 800. Maybe they were also called phorologoi.

An archon of Abydos is also attested by a seal and a text around the year 800. It is not impossible that this title existed only for a limited time and, for this reason, is mentioned in few sources only at a period of transition.

Together with the rest of the littoral of the Opsikion, Abydos belonged also to the naval theme of Aigaion Pelagos, was normally visited by the strategos (Arhweiler, Mer, 78), and seemed to have been the seat of a tourmarches. We shall ignore here a ninth-century seal (Zacos-Veglery, no. 3088) that probably belonged to a strategos of the Kibyrraiotai (and not of Abydos as initially published; cf. the remark of W. Seibt, in ByzSl 36 [1975] 212). A strategos is said to be sent to Abydos in 963 (Leo the Deacon, Bonn, 44), but he could well be a strategos of the Aigaion. The first secure mention of a strategos of Abydos is of the year 1004, and again in 1025 and 1033, often with maritime duties (Skylitzes, 346, 368, 388). In the eleventh century he exercised authority to the northern shore of the Dardanelles as well as on the islands (at Madytos: Sathas, MB V, 423, 487), a detail that shows he was in fact a naval commander, such as the strategos of the Aigaion. A katepano of Abydos appears in 1086 (Lavra I, no. 48, line 3). The city's fortifications were repaired by Manuel I Komnenos (Theodori Prodromi, De Manganis, ed. S. Bernardinello [Padua, 1972], 79, 80).

In this context, one can understand the existence of typically naval thematic officials at Abydos, such as the kentarchos. On the contrary, the existence of a seventh/eighth-century chartoularios of Abydos (Zacos-Veglery, no. 867A) should be related to the early theme of the Opsikion rather than to the Karabisianoi, who seem not have had any thematic structure.

From the earliest period, Abydos was a suffragan bishopric of Kyzikos (DHGE 1, cols. 209-10). It became a metropolis at the beginning of the reign of Alexios I Komnenos (1084?) and retained this rank until the Turkish conquest in the fourteenth century (cf. Laurent, Corpus V/1, 622). To the seals of bishops and metropolitans mentioned by Laurent, one can now add those of Basil (bishop?) and Michael and Demetrios metropolitans (Zacos, Seals II, nos. 374, 587; Lihaçev, Molivdovuly, 130-31, pl. LXVI, no. 2).

See Bibicou, Recherches, 179-81; H. Arhweiler, "Fonctionnaires et bureaux maritimes à Byzance," REB 19 (1961) 239-52; Arhweiler, Mer, passim; Oikonomides, Abydos; ODB 1, 8-9.

Bibliography