“Basil’s Thunderbolt: Niketas Ooryphas and the Portage of the Corinthian Isthmus”

David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College

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37th Byzantine Studies ConferenceChicago, Illinois

Session 1B: Middle Byzantine History

October 21, 2011

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I. Introduction

In 872 AD, the Byzantine admiral Niketas Ooryphas allegedly portaged a fleet of

dromons over the 6 km Isthmus of Corinth and gained a smashing victory over his enemies in the

Corinthian Gulf. The remarkable story of the admiral and his defeat of the pirates was an

enduring one in Byzantine history, reappearing in chronicles spanning the 10th to 16th centuries.

The origin of the story, however, can be traced to a single source, the mid-10th century Vita

Basilii, preserved in the collection of chronicles known as Theophanes Continuatus. In this Vita,

commissioned or even composed by Basil’s, grandson Constantine VII, we meet the hero

Ooryphas and hear of his surprising portage.

Niketas surfaces in the document as one of the emperor’s capable generals and naval

commanders who engage enemies of the state and restore order after the disastrous reign of

Michael III. Michael’s neglectful rule has left the west in a state of disorder and anarchy. Italy

and Sicily have been overcome by pirates from Carthage; formerly Byzantine regions of the

Adriatic have asserted their autonomy; and once Christian populations have rejected their

baptisms. With the ascension of Basil to power, Niketas is sent as the emperor’s agent to deal

forcefully and decisively with both Muslim pirates and Christian renegades.1

The document ascribes to Niketas three naval campaigns that are usually dated to the late

860s to early 870s. In the first, we hear that “Hagarenes” from Carthage are pirating the coastal 1 For modern accounts of these campaigns and the chronology, see Runciman 1988, 212-216; Nicol 1988, 30-33; Tobias 2007, 124-126, 154, 160-163, 311 n.47-50, 323 n.87-90; Treadgold 1997, …-457. Tobias argues (p. 124?) against Vasiliev’s later date in the early 880s because (p. 124?) Nasar had replaced Niketas by 880 AD as droungarios.

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towns of Dalmatia and have laid siege to its metropolis Ragusa. The desperate inhabitants resist

and send a delegation of elders to beg the Emperor to aid those under control of the Christ-

deniers. Basil responds graciously by fitting out a fleet of 100 ships under the charge of the

patrician Niketas, called Ooryphas, who was the drougarios of the fleet and a man “distinguished

above all others by shrewdness and experience.” The king sends out the commander like a

burning thunderbolt against his enemies, and news of his imminent arrival to Ragusa causes the

brigands to scurry away to menace other places.

Niketas’ second campaign follows in the subsequent chapters of the life discussing the

reduction of Italy by the same Saracen plunderers. Bari is now under siege. The emperor Basil

prudently recognizes the difficulty of the war in Italy and arranges an alliance with the Pope and

King of the Franks, also enlisting the subject peoples of the Adriatic. This great force gathered

together is under the control of Niketas. While the narrator tells us little about the admiral’s

actions, he does note that it was because of his superior “manly spirit and judgment” that the city

was so easily retaken.

Subsequent chapters of the Vita survey the intrigues of Soldan in Italy, and Esman, emir

of Tarsus, at Euripos, before turning to the final campaign of Niketas. A new whirlwind of

pirates has afflicted the empire, this time from Crete, sent out by the Emir Saet (Sael), the son of

Abu Hafs. Under the leadership of a formerly Christian rebel named Photius, this fleet of large

decked ships and smaller pirate galleys plunders, kidnaps, and kills throughout the Aegean.

Niketas meets the enemy first near the Thracian Chersonese, devastating the Cretan squadron

with Greek fire, burning 20 ships and killing the barbarians onboard. Those who escape regroup,

but Niketas is sent again with fiery vengeance. With favorable winds, he reaches the

Peloponnese within a few days, and coming to anchor at Kenchreai, he learns of the pirates

wreaking terror in the west near Methone, Patras, and Corinth. Then the narrator notes,2

“He devised a plan both brilliant and skillful.  For he did not wish to circumnavigate the

Peloponnese, rounding Cape Malea via the sea and covering a distance of thousands of

miles while losing valuable time.  But in the position he held, at night with many hands

and much experience, he immediately undertook the deed of carrying his ships over dry

land across the Corinthian Isthmus.”

2 Bekker 1838, p. 300.

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This surprise attack left his enemies so terrified, confounded, mixed up, that they forgot their

courage and could not group themselves for battle.

The result was a complete victory for the patrician and awful deaths for the enemies. The

narrator notes that Niketas easily overwhelmed the hostile fleet, burning some ships and sinking

others, killing some men by sword and drowning others. Killing their commander, he sent the

survivors in flight across the Peloponnese. But like a hunter with wild animals, he netted the

escapees and caught them alive, subjecting them to awful punishments that are disturbing in their

explicit narration of religious violence.  He flayed the former Christians among the group who

had denied their baptism, telling them that their skin did not belong to them. He attached others

to beams and dipped them in kettles of pitch, telling them that a gloomy baptism had been alloted

them. The last image that we have of Niketas Ooryphas is a man contriving fitting punishments

for Christian apostates and burning the enemies of the state with terror. In rapidly executing

strategy and delivering punishment, the admiral appears as a burning thunderbolt who has struck

his enemies with sudden and painful punishments for their crime.

The Realities of Portaging

Modern scholars who have surveyed the political history of the middle Byzantine

centuries have often passed over the portage of Niketas as unworthy of comment, or simply

repeated it as an historical fact in a skeleton chronicle of the ninth century. This

unproblematized reading of the account of the portage has followed the seamless narrative,

which glosses in only two sentences the admiral’s brilliant strategic maneuver. But this literal

reading also reflects the problematic modern notion that it was relatively easy to move a wooden

ship over a narrow land bridge in the premodern era. The idea that portaging ships was an

ordinary activity reflects scholarly opinion about the archaeological monument known as the

diolkos of Corinth, the ancient trans-Isthmus road running between Corinthian and Saronic

Gulfs. The predominant modern interpretation of the diolkos is that it functioned as a route for

regular ship portaging—as though galleys and sailing vessels were transferred overland daily, or

even hourly—much like modern ships passing through the canal. When the story of Niketas

Ooryphas’ portage is read against an imagined operation of constant transfer of ships, it hardly

appears abnormal. Niketas’ maneuver is only unusual in so far as it marks a chronological

outlier to the recorded portages of antiquity.

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However, this literal read of the Niketas episode immediately falters when the realities of

moving large wooden vessels six to seven km over land are considered. In the ancient and

Byzantine world, it was never easy to move out of water vessels 20-30 m long, 4.5 m wide, 4 m

high, and over 20 tons in weight—about twice the length and width of an 18 wheeler tractor

trailer truck. Indeed, the designers of the Olympias, the modern replica of an ancient trireme,

calculated that a full crew of 150 men could lift and move a 20-25 ton trireme no more than 10-

30 cm out of the water by strength alone. A law in classical Athens even prohibited launching

triremes with fewer than 120 men or hauling up triremes with less than than 140. Ancient and

medieval galleys were simply too large and too heavy to move long distances by physical

strength alone. Equipment was necessary, as was a major supply of labor, and with them time

and money. The transfer of fleets over isthmuses demanded an extraordinary and heroic

operation.

The topographic realities of the Corinthian Isthmus, in particular, made portages of this

land bridge especially marvellous. The narrowest part of the land bridge spans 6,000 meters and

climbs steeply from sea level to an elevation of 80+ meters at the spine, rising and climbing at an

average slope of 2-3%. Our handful of ancient accounts of military galleys being transferred

over the Isthmus suggest laborious, costly, and time-consuming endeavors that were

extraordinary in their day. Thucydides, for example, notes that in 428 BC, an army of

Peloponnesians had to prepare special dragging devices called holkoi for hauling ships over the

land bridge; the Spartans, the historian notes, worked zealously in making preparations for a

portage that never even occurred. Polybius tells us that Demetrius of Pharos’ transfer of vessels

in 220 BC came only after some significant outlay of money used to prepare for the transfer. A

remarkable inscribed poem from Corinth records the transfer of the Roman proconsul Marcus

Antonius’ fleet in 102-101 BC as an athletic feat that no one had ever before achieved; Marcus

Antonius and his colleague Hirrus boast that the portage followed great planning, demanded only

a few days, involved only limited confusion, and resulted in no injury or death. Such accounts

demonstrate that dragging a fleet over the Corinthian Isthmus was a protracted enterprise that

required, minimally, some apparatus for moving the vessels, some labor supply, some days time,

and a well thought out plan.

The notion that Niketas Ooryphas transferred 100 ships in the darkness of a single night

is impossible to accept given what we know about the Isthmus, ancient comparative episodes of

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portaging, and logistics required for such an operation. While one could argue that there is some

kernal of truth to the story that was later elaborated and embellished, it is much easier to view the

portage itself as an invention of a 10th century author well aware of his ancient history.

The Significance of Portaging

In the immediate context of its narrative, the portage marks an extraordinary and heroic

action that enlivens and dramatizes Basil’s restoration of order in the Aegean through capable

admirals. In this respect, it signals a continuity in the way that historians traditionally narrated

the overland transfer of fleets in times of war. In the genre of ancient history, overland portages

functioned as stratagems that drew attention to the skillful and clever military genius of generals

and admirals, who deceived their enemy via quick retreats or surprise attacks. The Roman writer

Frontinus, for instance, notes in his book on strategems that an admiral ought to know “how to

escape from difficult situations.”3 He gives the example of Lysander the Spartan who, when

blockaded with his entire fleet in one of the harbors of Piraeus, secretly disembarked his men and

carted his fleet into an adjacent harbor. Polyaenus, another author of stratagems, provides as an

example Dionysius I of Syracuse, who, when similarly blockaded in the harbor of Motya, laid

down wooden rollers and transported out 80 ships in a single day. Thucydides and Polybius both

describe the conveyance of ships over the Corinthian Isthmus as furtive strikes intended to catch

the enemy unaware, while Cassius Dio notes that Octavian’s transfer over the same Isthmus

enabled him to surprise and make gains on Antony and Cleoptra. For the writers of ancient

history and books on strategy, portaging functioned to illustrate devices for dramatic attack,

escape, and strategic maneuver that drew attention to the brilliance and capability of the general

or admiral.

To this end, ancient historians described portages over the Corinthian Isthmus in

somewhat standard terms. They treat the Isthmus as a landscape separating two opposing forces

in opposite gulfs. Since any reader would have recognized the overland movement of ships as

extraordinary, they often provide some rationale for why the transfer occurred, or explain how it

occurred without saying very much at all. They note the secrecy of the event and the intention of

surprise attack, retreat, or evasion. They comment on the rapidity, immediacy, or diligence of

the porters. And they note the result of the portage and relate it the character of the porters.

3 Frontinus 1.5.7.

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Niketas’ portage over the Isthmus follows this general pattern. The author sets the scene

by referring to the geography of the two gulfs, one occupied by the enemy, the other by the

Byzantines, and he places Niketas’ fleet at Kenchreai. He ascribes to the admiral a good

motivation, grounded in ancient conceptions of Peloponnesian geography: he did not wish to

circumnavigate the Peloponnese, losing valuable time while rounding Cape Malea. The narrator

summarily notes how the portage occurred without really explaining anything at all: “with many

hands, with much experience.” He highlights the secrecy of the event by setting the portage in

darkness and catching the enemy unaware, and he makes the immediate and rapid manner of

action occur within a single night. The result of the portage is a complete victory for the

Byzantines and glory for Basil. The narrator’s earlier comments about the character of Niketas

are confirmed: he is as decisive and immediate as a thunderbolt, striking and dominating the

enemy when least expected.

As a stratagem, Niketas’ portage provides a good example of what Kaegi, Haldon, and

others have described as the general middle Byzantine attitude to war: avoid pitched battles,

minimize loss, launch surprise attacks, use deception when possible.4 The sources for Niketas’

stratagem, in fact, are not hard to track down. Collections of strategems and tactics that had

circulated in the Roman and Late Antique periods were popular again throughout the 10th

century. And the two principal historical sources for ancient portages over the Corinthian

Isthmus, Thucydides and Polybius, were, of course, known to 10th century writers interested

anew in the classical past.5 At the end of the century, we find commentary in the Suda on two

Corinthian portages from Polybius as well as a scholion explaining a portage implicit from two

lines in a play of Aristophanes. Niketas’ portage specifically calls to mind Polybius’ description

of Philip’s transfer of ships into the Corinthian Gulf in 217 BC in an effort to catch an Illyrian

fleet off guard. And even Niketas’ capture of the enemy—described in terms of a hunter netting

wild animals—evokes passages like the one in Maurice’s Strategikon that depicts the best

military strategy as a hunter making use of stratagems for scouting, stalking, and netting wild

animals.

The stories about Niketas Ooryphas, then, show an awareness of historical and tactical

texts that were suitable to the literary climate of the mid-10th century when the court of

4 See Kaegi 1983; Haldon 1999, pp. 34-42; Pryor and Jeffreys, 2006, 382-406 on naval strategy and secret stratagems.5 Kazhdan 2006, 314-315; Kaledellis 2007, 180-181.

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Constantine VII showed, as Kazhdan noted, a certain nostaligia for the classical past. The

portage, of course, only makes sense in light of real Byzantine engagements and failures in the

Aegean in the 9th and 10th centuries. Crete had fallen to Muslims in the 820s and was virtually

out of control until the conquest of Nikephoras Phokas in 961, this despite repeated campaigns to

reclaim the island.6 The reference to the Isthmus of Corinth in the Vita is the first recorded

instance of the phrase in Greek documents in some 500 years and indicates that the landbridge

has become a strategic arena again between east and west. The portage of Niketas over the

Isthmus marks a brief moment of spectacular and heroic naval success during a generally

inconsistent period of Byzantine naval affairs in the Aegean.

Beyond the 10th century, the story of the cunning and heroic admiral upsetting the enemy

proved a popular one re-presented and reinterpreted in later chronicles. The story appears

slightly rephrased in John Skylitzes’ Synopsis of Histories, with only a couple of minor additions

and a single ommission,the line about Niketas comparing torture with rebaptism. On the other

hand, punishment was the compelling aspect of the story as represented in the illustrated

manuscript of John Scylitzes in Madrid. Here, we can see Niketas represented as a man sitting

and dispensing clever and horrific tortures; the artist has even imagined punishments that the

narrative does not mention. At roughly the same time, John Zonaras provides a concise

summary, reducing the length of the account by over half. The portage is described in a single

sentence, and the horrible punishments have disappeared: Niketas is simply a man skilled in war.

The final representation of the Niketas legend appears in the 16th century Longer

Chronicle of Pseudo-Sphrantzes, usually ascribed to Makarios Melissenos. In this account,

written in years under Ottoman rule, the author draws freely from earlier sources, repeating many

phrases, but also elaborating in interesting new ways like locating the site of the portage. The

pirate enemy of earlier accounts is no longer a mixed group of formerly Christian rebels and

Muslims controlling Crete, and Photius, the ex-Christian antagonist of the earlier stories, has

disappeared entirely. The enemy now consists of a homogeneous Muslim Hagarenes who are

menacing Christians. And Niketas has grown in significance as a “a man marvellously strong,

energetic, and experienced in all forms of warfare of land and sea, who knew devices (μηχανὰς)

like no other.” These devices include especially the portage of the Isthmus, which marked a

“great strategem and splendid deed worthy of memory.” 6 Tobias 2007, 125, has noted eight separate campaigns from the 820s to 950 to reclaim Crete . This list includes 820s, 843, 866, 911, and 949.

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Melissenos notes this portage three times, the final as a tangent to his account of the

Ottoman siege of Constantinople, in which Mehmet II built a wooden slipway over the Galata

peninsula and rolled his fleet into the Golden Horn. This “amazing feat” and “most excellent

strategem” makes Melissenos think that Mehmet was imitating Octavian Augustus’ crossing of

the Isthmus in his campaign against Mark Antony, or perhaps the patrician Niketas who had

repeated the move in his engagement with the Cretan pirates. In fact, Melissenos himself may

have been thinking of two altogether different portages: the Carthaginian Hannibal’s transfer of

ships via greased rollers from the city of Tarentum to its harbor in 212 BC, and the portage in

907 AD of Prince Oleg, who, in besieging Constantinople, allegedly outfitted 2,000 ships with

wheels, hoisted the sails, and caught a favorable wind that carried his fleet into the Golden Horn.

Whether or not any of these related portages actually occurred, or were themselves as legendary

as the portage of 872, it is clear that the admiral’s brilliant accomplishment—the crossing of the

Isthmus with ships—fit perfectly within a historical tradition for narrating dramatic overland

portages. Like the portages of antiquity, the transfer of fleets in 872 marked a brilliant stratagem

that provided an immediate and tangible proof of the admiral’s strength—like a bolt of thunder

sent by the emperor.

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