Episode 333 - The Bachelorhood of Basil II with Mark Masterson

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Hello everyone and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 333.

The Bachelorhood of Basil II with Mark Masterson.

Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you're recovering from 1453.

Before we talk about what happened after the fall of Constantinople, I have a few very interesting interviews for you on a variety of different topics.

And we begin today on the 1000th anniversary of the death of Basil II.

Yes, Basil died on the 10th of December, 1025, and several listeners prompted me to mark this special day with an episode about one of Byzantium's greatest emperors.

I'm sure Basil needs little introduction or reintroduction. One of the longest reigning and most successful Roman emperors in history.

During his decades on the throne, he maintained and expanded the eastern conquests of his predecessors while also conquering Bulgaria and blinding quite a few people.

Most infamously, though, Basil never married, an almost unprecedented decision for a ruler of any state.

We discussed all the possibilities at the time, and concluded that most likely Basil made that decision for political as well as personal reasons.

Having spent the first twenty-five years of his life under the thumb of different men and women, and having faced two serious attempts to overthrow him, he seems to have decided to concentrate all power in his own hands, going so far as to sacrifice his own family life.

In the twenty first century we would naturally wonder if homosexuality was part of the equation. Though even if it was, it would not explain everything.

Hadrian, for example, made his affair with Antinous very public, but was still married to a woman.

But if attraction to men was part of Basil's makeup, it could offer a clue as to how he was able to live without a wife, or why no female companion is mentioned in the sources, though admittedly our sources are pretty thin.

When I researched Basil's life for the podcast, I wasn't aware of any evidence that could point towards homosexual feelings until someone introduced me to the work of today's guest.

Mark Masterson was, until recently, an associate professor Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington.

He retired earlier this year, and now is adjunct Associate Professor of Classics, also at Victoria University.

His work focuses on same-sex desire and homosocial relationships amongst men in late antiquity and the Byzantine period.

Across dozens of articles and edited collections, Mark has explored how ancient letters, literature, legal texts, and even material culture reveal a world where male friendship, desire, and brotherhood mattered deeply.

He wrote two books on the subject, Man to Man, Desire, Homo Sociality, and Authority in Late Roman Manhood, and Between Byzantine Men, Desire, Homo Sociality, and Brotherhood in the Medieval Empire.

In the latter, he explores an oration by one of Basil's contemporaries, which may offer us a rare insight into the emperor's private life.

As we discuss in the interview, homo-sociality means the social bonds and interactions that men form with one another. This is of course a big part of the sources that are left behind.

Students writing to teachers, clients, honouring patrons or friends, corresponding.

It's a valuable lens through which to learn all sorts of things about the way people really thought and felt in Byzantium, adding colour to what can otherwise be quite a grey picture.

In our discussion, we talk about the way that homoerotic or sexual language can feature in these sources, so this episode is not safe for work.

And as Professor Masterson points out, these sources don't necessarily prove anything about the personal lives of the individuals involved, but they do tell us some very interesting things, and again, add a richness to Byzantine life that can otherwise be reduced to quite a simplistic picture.

Here's the interview.

Professor Mark Masterson, welcome to the podcast. Well, hello.
Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming.
It's a great joy to talk to you on this special anniversary

of Basil II's passing. I didn't think we'd be marking a thousandth anniversary on the podcast, but here we are.

But I'd love to talk about your work more generally before we get to uh to basil so um you've researched and written a great deal about homosociality in byzantium can you explain what homosociality is and what drew you to study it within byzantium

well homosociality is the study of um single-sex groupings together so uh groupings of women or groupings of men and it's it's something that um foregrounds foregrounds gender in particular. So

who these people are that are coming together and the ways in which the fact that it's a single sex grouping matters.

So that's homosex, but in any case, homo sociality is about these single sex groupings. And what drew me to it, frankly, was

decades of work leading up to this time, especially starting with E.

Kosovsky Sedgwick, where she talked about um uh relations between men in in english culture and english literature going forward and it's very very influential work and it it shows the importance of such groupings and one of the things that i i found very interesting was the ways in which this this is a primary dynamic in Byzantium and it's it's one that it grows to be very powerful at certain times.

And so, in terms of my earlier work,

I started as a late Roman historian and investigator. So, I wrote a book called Man to Man, and that was about the fourth century, the 300s, which actually is

classifiable as early Byzantium. And this was a time that

was,

as far as I can tell, the homosexual increased in some sense, and you had an unmarried emperor on the throne, Julian, and he is a centerpiece in my book.

And then later on, I got drawn to this yet again with the book Between Byzantine Men, which also centers homosexual. And one of the dynamics I see, and I'm not alone in seeing this, was

definitely an emphasis on

men in particular

running the empire.

And then we have the climax of the unmarried emperor Basil II.

And I think that we have a very strong homosocial dynamic going.

And one of the things then that drew me also to homosociality was

I wanted to write what I see as

an omission. I want to write a wrong around avoiding discussion of

homoeroticism, that is sex and desire between men in these places, because I find that there is evidence there for this. And frequently that's not been spoken of.

And

we can maybe get into reasons for that later, but this was definitely a focus.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now, it's really interesting because

You know, we're quite limited with our sources at times in Byzantium. And one of the the things that does occasionally survive is letters between people, usually men,

in all sorts of dynamics, teacher and student and patron and so on. And

so

in the book where we sort of focus on the Macedonian dynasty and this era of Byzantine revival,

you know, you explore a number of themes around

homosexuality.

Can you just tell us a bit more about the sources in that period? What kind of sources are they and how do you interrogate them to discover things that

previous generations of scholars might not have picked up on?

One of the things that happens for sure is that the letter, the letter collections

have frequently been ruled

out of consideration for their content.

uh

because the so the line goes it's all very formalistic These letters are all about getting something done, and the content of them does not particularly matter.

It's building relations to get ahead, more or less.

They're supposed to be very pragmatic. They're supposed to be very utilitarian.
They're supposed to just get stuff done.

I really push against that and

pull these letters between identifiable historical characters into the conversation.

And yes, these letters follow some formal conventions, but then the conventions in any individual letter will be manipulated in this way and that way to show personality.

But it's even more than that. And this gets into how I interrogate such a text.
And I interrogate these these texts.

I investigate these texts by analyzing,

I'm looking for sexual subtexts,

so references to the body.

And for example, Emperor Constantine VII,

Porphyro Genetos,

he

has cock jokes in his one of his letters.

And there's more where that comes from.

And then still other letters that

still another letter

I've got from him. There's a reference to oral sex at the beginning.
It's letter six.

It didn't make the cut in the book. It sure could have, though, let me tell you.

So it's looking at metaphors of the body and evidence of desire, actually taking these things seriously. In other words, there is referential content.

Now, whether or not they are sleeping together or even if they're really feeling this desire or not, what matters to me is that that is putting these things out as a topic that is legible.

It is there. And these are historical characters too.
This isn't some made-up fiction,

which

some scholars could then run to and say, well, it's just made up. It's not real.
It's not real. And

in the end, I think we've got historical characters actually saying these things. So I think it's worth our time.
But not only that, also too, you can analyze these texts for

quotations from the Bible.

quotations from philosophy and like Plato, which frequently is homoerotic,

and quotations from still other literature.

For remember,

this Greek of these letters is a classicizing Greek, and

it's these are educated men who are writing to each other.

And

in addition to that, there will be references to, and you can read this in between Byzantine men, to poems from the Greek anthology.

And

a lot of those poems are graphics, actually.

And so you analyze this communication

between men that both reverences bodies, but then also reverences literature. And these biblical allusions frequently are to things like the Song of Songs, which again is erotic material.

It's not just Romans 1.26. No, they're not actually talking about that at all, but rather stuff that is corporeal and full of desire.

So I interrogate the letters that way, and then I I also interrogate the histories, for example, to focus in on bodies and desire such as we can see them there.

It's probably worth just saying, like, because you've brought up

that sense of the

hinterland of a lot of these figures, what they grew up reading, and then what they took an interest in reading in their spare time.

Because the popular image of Byzantium is the icon and people in robes that cover the body, and obviously Christian restrictions on all sorts of sexual behavior.

And what I particularly enjoyed about your work is

if we know what these people were reading and writing and enjoying in their spare time, it adds this layer of depth that is missing from that popular picture.

And so you've got these people living in a culture that perhaps pushes against the body. Certainly, you know,

hardcore ascetic monks would like to kind of eliminate, you know, a lot of

sinful excesses of pleasure and the body and so on.

But the culture that people enjoy reading in elite circles is entirely of the pre-Christian world, where appreciation of the body and the sensual was very important. Is that fair to say?

Yes,

any

it is fair to say, and I agree with it, and any account of this time should include both of those things.

I see the empire in terms of a place of colliding discourses

where

you've got a lot of not liking the body against desire, but then you can unearth with really not much difficulty at all

still other ideas. And these things are in dialogue with one another and in conflict, to be honest.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's just,

is it really so different from now? We live in a time of colliding desires and differing perspectives on, let's say, things like gay marriage. So

some here in New Zealand, some, of course, are most people are pretty happy with it, but there is a very vocal minority that is still furious over the whole thing. So

listeners will know, you You know, I've spoken to Anthony Caldellis a huge amount, who's trying to say, why shouldn't Byzantine political life be just as rich and complex as it is today?

And so, in your work, I kind of see someone pointing out why shouldn't someone's internal

relational and sexual desires and interests be just as rich and complicated as they were a thousand years ago.

I think

it has a way of making

even investigations into what the monks are doing and all the rest. So in very Christianized areas,

keeping all of this rest of this in mind has the potential to make everything much more interesting.

So increasing the complexity and also, I think, humanizing the Byzantines more because, you know, the popular view of, you know, everything's covered up and it's just icons and prayers all the time.

I mean, who can do that? Nobody can, clearly, you know, so it's not possible.

Absolutely.

So let's get into an example of where things become actually overtly homoerotic,

which

is one of those things, you know, listeners, when I mention it, it'll come back to them, which is Basil I.

So

the...

the origins of the Macedonian dynasty itself. And I think at one point I was referring to Basil in passing as the hunky stable boy from his youth, which is a slight

misremembering that he then got to work in the imperial stables.

But it was clear from the gist of his biography, as confused as it was, that he had been spotted for his looks and his athleticism as a young man and then had sort of risen surprisingly through the corridors of power.

And there was a lot of mystery around that. But reading your work again, you know, you actually dug into the details of this.

Can you tell listeners a bit about the overtly homoerotic parts of Basil's story?

What I found is

it was that chapter was very challenging to write because I was juggling seven histories to, and I even have one page has a chart, like this story occurs here and that story occurs there as a help to the reader.

And actually, it helped to me when I was getting ready for today, I was thinking, oh, thank god I did that chart. It's very helpful.

But one of the things that emerges, and it goes across the histories, it's more present in some than others, but

and that is

his

beautiful physique. He is a hunky stable boy.
Misremember that all you like. I'm not sure that's a misremembrance.
I think it's very good. So

I'm going to steal that. So,

but

one of the things that you find is he's awaking awakening love.

So, and the word eros and the verb derived from it, these things are used. Desire is talked about.
The same terms that are used for

to refer to Michael's interest in Eudakia Ingarina, who eventually will be Basil I's wife, the same words that are used about his desire for her are used for his desire for Basil also.

So the

accounts are staging the beauty of his body constantly, and we have words of desire and all the rest. And it appears, you know,

the first thing that happens whenever he's going to get into yet another good situation where yet again he is promoted, and that is

his physical beauty and the excellence of his physique and what he's able to do with it.

He tames a horse and there's a lot of suggestive stuff there. And then one thing that is really, really over the top and that's a wrestling match where there's a Bulgarian who's come to town and he's

And the Bulgarian is saying, no one can beat me. And of course, this is intolerable to Theophilitsis and Michael III.
But Basil, he will wrestle

the Bulgarian. And so they wrestle and he throws him onto a table.
And the language that is used is the language of sexual intercourse. And

so this particular wrestling scene is very sexy in the Greek. And then to just seal the deal once and for all and forever.
The Medrid Schelitzes, the illustrated manuscript, shows

you show them the picture of that and it looks like he's screwing him on a table. So

it's and this the language is

the language itself of course and of course there's Plato is present in the language. You can demonstrate that too.
So again there's that nexus to educated

educated audience who what are they reading like we were talking about earlier? What are they reading in their spare time? Again, you can

draw on that also.

So

this moment is something. And then when

Schilitzes, the historian writing at the end of the 11th century, so the next century, because

the history I'm speaking of here is the life of Basil, I believe, and it's mid-10th century that's when this was written but skalitzes uh who um did compose some on his own but he also copied tons um but he copies well and it's the the the greek reads well so people don't hate scholitzes he's actually it's nice that he's around

he adds some further language around shame and all the rest that only redoubles the sexual content.

And then the illustrator of this Scholitz Schalitzi's manuscript so that's where that met where that picture that I described earlier is right there

they're they're picking up on that further so

so it's it's quite graphic and it's worth saying the life of Basil is commissioned by his grandson so this is not a slanderous history trying to put him down this is this is saying

This is part of his legend, is how good looking he was and how much people liked him. And that makes him somewhat worthy to have founded this dynasty.
Oh, no.

And Grandpa, of course, has cock jokes in his letters to his buddies. So, yeah.

It's an interesting one because it just made me think of

Andronicus Komninos, who is this very disreputable cousin of Manuel Komninos, who ends up taking the throne.

And in passing, someone said, the thing about him is he looked like an emperor, like he was good-looking and he looked the part.

And you kind of get that today with, you know, American presidential elections are decided by who has the best hair and this sort of thing, you know, that idea of someone being so, you know, being Hollywood, you know, leading man looks is something people naturally respond to and look up to.

So, yeah.

Although the current president.

But yeah, no, but I take the point also.

Maybe he has more hair than his opponent. Not necessarily better, but yeah.

Anyway,

we've sort of set up the thought world around

Basil II. I very much encourage people to check out

both Between Byzantine Men and

Man-to-Man. I've put the links for them in the show notes.

But let's get to Basil II himself. The listeners know him well, widely considered to be one of the great Byzantine emperors,

ruled for well over three decades alone and technically, sort of nearly 50 years on the throne. The key word there, though, is alone.

Almost unprecedentedly, Basil did not get married. That was an extraordinary decision, not just amongst Byzantine emperors, but any kind of Christian ruler and most rulers in general.

Now, when I covered this on the podcast, the most popular theory

was that Basil had been so disturbed by a youth spent under the thumb of others, of Phokas, Zimiskis, and his uncle Basil, that he decided I'm going to concentrate power in my own hands to this extreme of not even having an empress or in-laws, or and it would seem perhaps discouraging his nieces from getting married and so on.

That remains, as far as I can tell, the most convincing explanation for this decision. But we are guessing.
We don't know enough about Basil to have a firm firm grasp on this.

And of course, from our perspective in the 21st century, a man who chooses not to have a wife might suggest something else.

Now, at the time, I didn't see any evidence in the sources for homosexuality in Basil's life until I came across your book. Someone pointed it out to me about a year after I'd covered Basil.

So let's get into this.

The passage you analyzed comes from an oration given by Simeon, the new theologian, who was a monk and contemporary of Basil's.

Now, I did actually briefly cover Simeon on the podcast and his belief in God's divine energy and the way one could experience it, but that will probably be gone from most listeners' minds.

So, could you just remind them who Simeon is and then what he says in this particular oration?

Simeon is

just a little bit younger than Basil. They're about the same age,

and

he started as

a minor official in the court. So he was having a secular career.

And it's quite likely, by the way, that he was a eunuch, too.

But at some point, he was no longer in the court. And that is probably related to various choppings and changes that happened with Nikephoros Philokas II

and

Johannes Siniskis.

You know,

some people win, some people lose, some people are going to be monks now, and that's that. And so I think that's probably what happened.
And so he's on a different side.

And so

he's a monk.

He has a

has a,

excuse me,

not just blanking he he has a monastery at saint mamas

and uh

and over the years he is leading monks there one thing to keep in mind though is that he is in constantinople so this isn't some little monastery let's say on in the sinai peninsula for example it's he's in town

and one of the things that resonary with cloud for example talks about talks about how

the secular officials maintain relations with these monks.

The doors to the monastery were open and there was spiritual advising and all the rest. So even as though we are retired from the world and all the rest, she believes,

and I'm persuaded of this myself,

they are not retired from the world in some sense, especially when the monastery is in town.

So in any case, he comes to grief in the early 11th century

because he sponsored

what was charged to be inappropriate veneration of his predecessor,

also confusingly named Simeon.

And so, he was forced out and eventually

ended his life on the other side of the Bosphorus, so not too far away.

And one of the things that seems pretty clear is that this opposition to Basil II

was a feature of his entire life. And that and

I'm persuaded that

he was being harassed for political reasons.

Just I can't really substantiate that, but it seems likely enough.

So, this particular oration that draws your attention,

can you tell the listeners the gist of the whole oration and then where

a particular analogy about the emperor comes in?

Yeah,

this 10th

ethical oration is called On the Fearful Day of the Lord and on the Judgment to Come. And he's saying that one should live life as though the final judgment were already present.

And

he says, though, that this shouldn't be so difficult

at all to do,

which is a viewpoint, I suppose. In any case, living in accordance with God's commandments is to have it as easy.
And let me provide an example, he says.

It's as easy as

what happens when a rebel is forgiven by the emperor.

So he then has a little story about a rebel who is forgiven by the emperor. So you are the rebel, but and God will forgive you, just like this.
And I really, I must read you the

particular part because

it's fun.

Anyway, so an emperor, a rebel has been resisting the emperor. This is terrible.
But

the emperor sends little messages. You should come and see me.

I'm a forgiving person.

I will forgive you. And so the rebel does.

The rebel does come to him and embraces his feet. And then this is the part of the parable that I want to read.

When the rebel has embraced his feet, the emperor fell upon his neck and kissed him all over and kissed to those eyes of him that is the eyes of the rebel which were shedding tears for many hours and when he fell on upon his neck and kissed him of course that's luke right there so this is appearing right there so we've got lots of kissing going on here then having ordered that a crown robe and shoes similar to those he was wearing be brought, he himself personally clothed his erstwhile enemy and opponent in always avoiding any verbal abuse of him.

And

not only this, but as he was making merry and rejoicing together with him all day and all night, holding him tight and kissing him mouth to mouth, to so great an extent did he overlove him that he did not separate himself from him in sleep, lying down with him, holding him tight on the bed,

covering him completely with his emperor's cloak, and putting his face on all his members.

So, and members sounds very euphemistic,

but we all know what that means. And the Greek is just like that.

One of the things, too, is rejoicing together with him all day.

This is also a reference to the

one of the parables, I believe,

rejoice together with the wife of your youth.

So again, we've got two, we've got New Testament and Old Testament here, and then we've got all of this bodily material.

So what to make of this?

Well,

The only emperor we've had on the throne for some time

is in fact, Basil II.

So, this text written in the capital

is,

who could we possibly be meaning

but this? In other words, it's something that would occur to someone who heard this text or read it.

It'd be something to consider. In addition,

as

your listeners no doubt know, Basil did face some rebels earlier in his career. So

the Phokades and the Scleroi.

And he was nicer to some

and not so nice to others. And so he was nicer to the Scleroi.

um rather more forgiving even though he was certainly provoked but the phokades he was like nah don't have time for them no no way so um we've got an emperor here who is

spending his time.

Well,

this is quite sexual, the writing here,

spending his time with a man in bed.

It's a

more than likely, if we're thinking, if we're reading this at the time, we're going to be thinking of Basil II, just because Emperor has been mentioned. And then also here, too, there is reference to

treating a rebel quite extravagantly. And think about it.

Not only all this sexual stuff, but also too,

crown robe and shoes similar to what he was wearing. They're supposed to be brought to him.
In other words, he's being honored quite extravagantly.

So there's a...

a lot going on here. And I think it then

it shoehorns really rather nicely into what the position that Simeon's in.

In other words, in opposition to this figure.

Simeon uses a lot of same-sex imagery elsewhere in his works. And so this is a common thing that he does.
And then for him to decide to show an emperor engaged in excessive behavior like this is

not, to my mind, not that unexpected.

Is it the insult of the century?

I don't think it is, to be honest. I think it's, if anything, it's teasing to some extent.

And it makes sense when you think about the broader

dynamic of homociality that's inter inflected by homoeroticism that we can document um

in the 10th century in particular so so when you're one is thinking of that entire context then the weight of this and what it might mean um is is something that you're able to um i think you're able to bring those two things together

it's very very interesting to read obviously i recommend people read the book to get all the detail. Can we just pull out a couple of things? So you mentioned Luke in passing.
Yes.

So there's a reference, is that a reference to sort of Jesus forgiving someone with a kiss?

This is the prodigal son. Yeah.
Okay.

Yeah. So

and

the son who who

misbehaved the most, he comes back, but dad loves him the most. And so he gives he gives a kiss to him.

And so Simeon's kind of using that reference as a comparison, that

just like in the prodigal son, the emperor in this case will forgive the rebel, but he then goes on to

draw this picture. Let's say it wasn't referring to a real person.
That's clearly someone going over the top, over-loving someone.

And

we should probably bring in at this point that you point out that the son of Bardas Klyros, the rebel, Romanos Sklyros, gets put on Basil's advisory council immediately. Yes.

So there's a sense that that could be the person being referred to here, that perhaps there was rumor around that not only did the Skliroi get forgiven very quickly, but there were other things going on in the palace.

Robin, I see great things for you.

That's really something.

I love that. It's not a point I made, but

I think that that is

one thing that could be

occurring to people as a possibility. Because, you know, in the end, what do we know about what the great do behind doors?

It would be, you know, so we don't need to say that that definitely happened or not for it to be something to think about. Yeah.

But so

in this case, the analogy Simeon's drawing is saying that if you ask God for forgiveness, that forgiveness will come no matter how undeserving you are, like a rebel who the emperor forgives.

But

if the example he's giving is, let's say, a reference to Basil's behavior, which his audience would have understood,

is he being ironic and sort of funny because he's clearly not being

moralistically disapproving. As in, he wouldn't use this analogy if he thought homosexuality is the worst thing in the world.
I can't use that in an analogy about God's forgiveness because

that would damage the point I'm trying to make.

The levels of irony in this are,

well, it can be a full-time hobby, to be honest.

It's hard to evaluate.

In the book, I try to figure out and

I discuss various options around

what might be ironic and what might not be. I think in the end one makes sense of these things

as a reader who

interprets on the basis of like where they are.

In other words,

meaning happens at the point of the reception of the text.

Meaning happens as you are reading it based on the position you're in and the presuppositions you have and what kinds of things you might be thinking about.

And in the end though, you know, the idea here,

this particular

this particular parable, yes, this is supposed to be God.

And then we wind up with face on members at the end.

So

it seems somewhat out of control, to be honest, especially for a monastic writer.

But that's one of the things about Simeon. He's a very interesting thinker in this way, where he does speak about the presence of

God, even in his balanos, his acorn, which is his word for penis so so he will um he will go ahead and and go further than others do but he's i think um

i think he's very confident in the presence of

of

the excellence and brilliance and wonderfulness of God throughout creation.

So I think this is one of the things. So

divine goodness illuminates everything.

And if you're going to really take that seriously,

and you know, theologians will say that, but then all of a sudden they do identify things that, no, definitely not that. Definitely, don't do that.
Don't do that.

In other words, you can't see that here,

whereas you can see this here.

So one of the things I think we could say is that this is both illustrating

his idea of the

omnipresence of God's power and excellence. But at the same time,

he's having, maybe he's having some cake and eating it too. He's also doing some political stuff at the same time because

there's too much going on here that maps quite neatly onto

the political situation.

Fantastic. Well, I recommend people check out the book to discover more and to make connections of their own.

And thank you so much for coming on the podcast and shedding light on, you know, a dark area of Byzantine life. Yeah, yeah.

One last thing I'd like to say

is that

one way to look at this from Simeon is that it's evidence of

a way of thinking about Basil's sexuality that was out there.

It might very well be evidence of that. It certainly is evidence of a way that people could be thinking about it.
So I think that that's something to keep in mind and something to hold on to.

It's a data point.

And goodness knows, we need all the data points we can have about Basil II.

Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah.

Mark, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Robin.
I sure appreciate it.

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Hi, folks. It's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

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