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‘My name is Euphemios…. Euphemios of Amastris’: memories of a eunuch at his emperor(s)' service in the Byzantine insular and Coastal koine (ca. 680–ca. 740)
(Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2024-01-01) Zavagno, Luca
This chapter will focus on the career of a eunuch of the Koiton or Cubiculum (the imperial bedchamber). Born in Amastris in Paphlagonia in the late seventh century, Euphemios's castration was arranged by his parents and moved to Constantinople, where he served at court under several emperors in the turbulent period following the arrival of the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean. As the Byzantine empire struggled for its life by drastically rearranging its political, administrative, bureaucratic, and military structures, Euphemios acted as a trustworthy agent and loyal servant to several Byzantine emperors. As he managed to go through all the stages of Byzantine education (from primary to high school), he secured a position at the imperial shipyards of the capital. As the emperor Justinian II rewards him for exposing a conspiracy, Euphemios starts globetrotting across the Mediterranean while at the same time managing to climb his way up the offices of the central Byzantine administration. As Euphemios's fictional life is based on hagiographical sources, Byzantine chronicles, material evidence (seals), and archaeology, this chapter will account for his travels, deeds, and encounters across some important gateway and urban communities of the so-called Byzantine koine. This encompassed liminal insular and coastal urban (and urban-like) communities while also promoting economic interaction, social contact, and cultural interchange. Euphemios's career path and travels on behalf of the Constantinopolitan court took him to Cyprus, Butrint (where he supervised the consignment of supply to the local garrison), Malta (where he helped local military authority in the negotiations with the rising Muslim power in north Africa), Sardinia (where he brokered appeasement between Sardinian political leaders and the Papacy), the Balearics, Amalfi (where he delivered messages granting a pompous Byzantine title to the local ruler), Syracuse (where he was appointed as local stratēgos), and, finally, Ravenna (where he occupied the prestigious role of exarch during the final decades of Byzantine rulership and died just a few years before the capital of Byzantine Italy fell to the Lombards in 751).