Menander The Guardsman

So, I've been hunting around for some time trying to find the source of this mysterious Byzantine Ambassador to the Empire of the Turks, one Zemarchos, that Grousset mentioned in his "Empire of the Steppes." I've now graduated to total obsessive-compulsive mode.

This fellow Zemarchos is a captivating figure to me simply because he doesn't exist. Now, of course he exists(ed), but not really. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as Donald Rumsfeld likes to say, but except for a couple of lines about a Byzantine Embassy in the 6th century, no one knows anything about him. And that is the part that really grabs me–that part stimulating my imagination, curiousity, inner-geekness or whateever you want to call it. We're talking seven centuries where we have no written reports of a Western or Christian traveler going any further East than Baghdad until John de Pian Carpini crossed over in the mid-13th century. Sure, a few Arabs traveled around the Muslim world in the intervening years–the Muslim world was prety damned big back then– notably Ibn Battuta. (What I would give to be able to sit down and have coffee with Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. Think of the stories!) So it's not hard to see how rewarding knowledge of his journey could be as it would be a very long time until a Westerner did what they did. Even more tantalizing is that Carpini and his contemporaries were largely going out into the frigid wastes of Siberia and North Eastern Asia to make treaties with the Turks successors, the Mongols, just like Zemarchos did. Might be a few parrallels to compare there, no? I'm afraid most of that will be left to speculation–not reality–because there just aren't enough sources.

But back to our story: after hearing out a Turkish proposal to alter the Silk Road a bit northwards with its end at the Byzanto-Crimean ports sometime in the late 6th century Justin II or Tiberius II Constantine or the emperor Maurice sent Zemarchos on a reciprocal embassy to, as Gibbon calls it, "a valley of the Golden Mountain [where] they found the great khan in his tent, seated in a chair with two wheels, to which a horse might be occasionally harnessed."

Along with the trade alterations Byzantium had recently signed a treaty of alliance with the Turks, known as the Tueh-Che from Chinese sources, against Sassanid Persia, Rome's perennial foe. Had the Persians or the Byzantines known the ferocity of the storm forming in the Arabian Desert I doubt they would have embarked on their twenty year war. Instead, Zemarchos, ignorant of the future, muddled through the present.

The first time I read Grousset's mention of Zemarchos I immediately wrote down his name and the following questions on my note pad: who was he? A man of the cloth? A merchant? A soldier? Where was he from? Perhaps the East? Was he of barbarian extraction? An Avar? A Laz? Greek? What did he think of the Turks? Did he leave any account of his journey? How do we know he even went?

In the last several days I've discovered a bit more about Zemarchos (or Zemarchus) but not a lot. He did not leave an account of his embassy. Nor do I know his trade, other than that he was an ambassador. His ethnicity is a mystery to me still. But, I do know this: he did go to the East and his embassy was recorded to a certain degree.

As Gibbon writes, "All the details of these Turkish and Roman embassies, so curious in the history of human maners, are drawn from the Extracts of Menander, in which we often regret the want of order and connection."

Alas, this isn't a book for just everyone. The cheapest copy I could find of Menander The Guardsman was around $75, from Amazon and used, no less.

So, the wife will check it out from the library at UT and I will read it. And I will then report back to you its earth shattering revelations.